Guild Wars 2

Thieves are supposed to be 130 range glass-cannons. But cannons have range and thieves can’t have 900 range without a cost(heaven forbid having 1200 range like other classes). Thieves are allowed to be glass-daggers. Shatter easily like glass, inflict minor wounds like daggers and can’t reach you if you’re more than half an arm’s length away.

Since it would seem dual skills are supposed to be multi-click skills, why not apply it to all skills for a greater sense of control to make the thief class more about subtle planning and finesse.

Deathblossom-Press 3 consecutive times to apply all three bleeds. If you don’t press it 3 times before landing it won’t apply the bleeds that you didn’t click for. Because you know, being able to control how many bleeds you apply is useful.

Unload- Fairly straightforward, press for each bullet, first bullet consumes all initiative and shots thereafter consume none until you accidentally press it once more than the total 8 shots, then it consumes another 5 initiative.

Shadow Shot- Press once to shoot, press again to apply blind, press again to teleport.

Shadow strike- Press once to stab the person, once to torment and again to teleport back.

In all seriousness though, the only skill that I feel could actually benefit from the multiclick system would be flanking strike and that is assuming it is changed to do something extra should you decide not to steal a boon. Or at least make it like mesmer sword auto attack and do extra damage if there is no boon.

Out of curiosity, assuming Sword/Pistol does get “balanced” as they often like to put it, what weapon set will be your fallback.

But if it does end up coming out better than before like the person above suggested, I can just feel the complaints coming. Give one class something, some complaints here and there but whiners are usually shot down. Give it to a thief and boom, instant uproar.

Ooh, new genius plan. Maybe they should split unload so you have to press it for each bullet.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Yea these two skills are definitely on long cooldowns compared to their counterparts:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_Leap
counterpart
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dark_Pact

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blink
counterpart
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Flash

Yea mesmer definitely needs more control.
Riiiiiiiiiiight.

Comparing apples and oranges really. Mesmers were practically built for control while eles were built for boons and damage which would explain why lightning flash has the longer cd+dmg. Not to mention lightning flash is rarely used for escapes(in my experience) but instead used to deal damage and enter a fight quickly. It is also relatively easy to fit cantrips traits into an ele whereas mesmers if they’re going for control have much better options to take than manipulation boosting skills.

Dark pact is not only a longer immobilize, but it also is much more reliable in more places. Illusionary leap is constantly screwed up by just about any incline making it fail more often than not in places like Silent Storm where there are hills/stairs in many places.

Its an autodefense trait, what did you expect. Auto-defense traits usually range in effectiveness depending on how informed and skilled your opponent is. If they are neither, they will activate these passive defenses hundreds of times without learning anything and not even knowing why the ele is tumbling so much, or why their auto attack isn’t doing any damage, etc etc. Good players however, will know what traits to look out for and will be able to quickly deduce what your build is depending on what you’re using, what boons you have and how you obtain them. This will allow them to not only avoid, but possibly even use your defenses against you by activating them at inopportune times(necro realizes you have cleansing fire, auto attacks to stack bleed+poison+dhuumfire to force it to activate).

I guess it just seems UP because Anet’s goal for these new heals was obviously to make heals that were an actual type of skill that could be traited, not just a random skill like withdraw. They wanted to make Skelk venom a venom heal skill but they also didn’t want it to be too powerful since it can and probably will be traited for, which you can’t do for the other heals. Take ranger heals for example. None of their heals had a skill type and therefore none of them could be traited for. But now they have the spirit type heal and can trait it. But Anet doesn’t want these new skills to invalidate the old ones so they have to make them weaker as a base than the original heals because unlike those heals, the new ones can be traited for things like shorter cds, longer durations, etc.

Obviously if the person is running a venom share build they are not focusing on their own abilities and comparing it to other heals is silly when it is essentially a group heal when used with a venom share build(which is the only build I’d recommend using it in unless you have it for flavor I guess). Heck, if we wanted to compare it number vs number, then account for the venom share on 5 other people. HiS gets a boost when traited for stealth, skelk gets a boost when traited for venoms, which is the draw of the skill.

So, assuming you have leeching venoms and venom aura(we’ll exclude residual venom just for simplicity sake), skelk venom will give you 4210 healing off the bat and 4 ticks of venom for each person so that is 24 ticks total with 20 on your 5 allies and 4 on you.(Obviously this is just an optimal situation where you have 5 allies within range, just to get a feel for the full potential). Skelk heals for 645 each tick so that is 2580 per person coming up to a total of 15480 healed from the venom. Now leeching venoms will heal for 325 times 4 for each person(it works when other’s get it right? If not disregard this part) so that is an additional 1300 per person or 7800 total.

This brings the grand total of healing up to 23280 minus the initial 4k heal on yourself. It is obvious this does not benefit the thief alone as much as the other skills do, but then again it is also obvious that the thief alone is not what the purpose of venoms is about. If venoms were meant to be as selfish as the other thief heals(just saying selfish because thief skills tend to focus on the thief alone) they wouldn’t have traits designed to make them benefit the group.

Venoms are best in a VENOM build(go figure). Hide in Shadows is best in a STEALTH build(again, go figure) and Withdraw is best in any situation that does not require stealth or venoms. Saying one is definitively better than the others in every situation is simple minded and very arrogant.

Just a thought, staff could work well with this as it would give you 2 things to do should you be CC’d during your mantra charging. You could phase retreat while still charging to probably confuse the opponent just enough to finish charging, or you could chaos armor to give yourself some boons and maybe protection which would go well with the extra 600 toughness.

Only problem is you really wouldn’t get much dmg out of staff and even clones on GS would be superior with sharper images.

Out of curiosity, do you still get the win bonus if you are switched even if you don’t volunteer? My problem with it isn’t the point values or the win bonus or anything. Its just simply not fun to be winning and working together with your team then all of a sudden you get swapped over to a team of complete strangers who are likely to leave. Whats worse is the people that are so desperate for a win that they leave their team to force autobalance then immediately join the winning team when the teams even out.

Like Reesha said, constantly switching teams and respawning in base is a huge waste of time and you don’t really know what to do. You just feel like you’re stuck with a lose no matter what because some people are playing just to win.

I’m sure you all know the feeling of being like 50 points short of winning or having just captured a point or scored with the orb then seeing that little Volunteer box pop up. You pray that it doesn’t decide to pick you yet anytime you are really close to winning it always seems to pick you out of the 5 others on your team. Its just obnoxious. I will admit, giving the person who volunteers a win bonus was a good place to start, but honestly, it seems like the wrong end of the spectrum. You should punish people who leave their teams, not punish people who stay with their team then slap a win bonus on it.

There already is a debuff in place known as Dishonorable that is a step in the right direction. People who constantly leave their teams shouldn’t be allowed to disappoint another team with their pettiness.

Just to sum up, I’m saying that you should fix a problem at the source, not put a bandaid on the symptoms. If people can’t RQ their team, there will be no reason to autobalance people to other teams and reward them with win bonuses.

Leave a match early once in a day:Warning+5 minute lock out
Leave a match early twice in one day: Warning+10 minutes
Three times:30 Minutes
Four times: 90 Minutes
Five times: 3 Hours
Everytime thereafter double the time. Should you reach 6 or more infractions, your count will not reset daily until the time is served.

The only builds that would benefit from the new signet over ether feast or mantra in TPvP are probably PU builds due to constant clone generation and tanky nature, and possibly phantasm burst builds for fast reset of phantasms but that is a high risk move seeing as it could leave you without any heal for quite a bit.

I personally when playing this, exhaust all my interrupts except for shatter. The only time I really need to use the shatter first is if they’re like a ranger or warrior and get a long stability up. I contemplated off hand sword for the strong phantasm but the group interrupt on magic bullet is awesome as well. I hadn’t though of disenchanter though, that could solve my stability problem and conditions in one go.

Build can be found at the following link
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW8alwzipnRzmGb9IhpH923Cn0DTz6TXqAvB-ToAg0EMpYyxkhJJTWmGdssYXA

Now I know it obviously isn’t the most original build out there, especially with the recent buffs to the pertaining skills. None the less, I’d like some opinions on the matter. I’ve contemplated making the build more shatter focused by dropping 10 in chaos and adding them to Dueling for deceptive evasion(after playing a shatter build and PU, this trait has always been hard for me to drop).

I’m also open to rune suggestions because Speed is mostly preference because I personally abhor moving slowly and swiftness is hard to come by for me. I’m also curious if Sword Pistol is the best weapon set for this so suggestions on that are appreciated. The build as it is makes for some very easy point defending with chaos storm. Basically once the first interrupt occurs they’re stuck in chaos storm for the long haul(this is also why I’d hate to lose Chaotic Interruptions for Deceptive Evasions).

I am also indecisive when it comes to Amulet choices. I’ve contemplated just dropping the idea of crits and picking a tankier necklace because my crit is at a kind of weird middle ground.

Could also use help with countering tankier warriors as they usually give me a run for my money and their conditions can dps me down before I can build up enough might off interrupts.

~Thanks in advance

Just my observation, but I’m now seeing a freaking ton of pure tank condition builds all running some variant of 0/0/10/30/30 with the points all being in the last 3 trees. Obnoxious to kill and rely on condition damage. Ran into like 3 of them in a single match and usually at least one in each match thereafter. I feel like a FotM build could be emerging. Regens like crazy(at least from my perspective as an interrupt mesmer).

Plus its good to get newer/casual players started on more skillful builds because chances are if you google recent mesmer builds, a large portion of the related material will be PU so not only will they start playing mesmer without actually learning most of the class’ mechanics, but they’ll get dumped on for playing a build they just found. Learn the more complex builds and playstyles first, then experiment with the meta builds so that you already fully grasp the class mechanics and can now compete with the people who just rolled the FotM build.

Makes sense they’d be annoyed in WvW if they were in a large group and therefore unable to see the warrior. Nothing bites more than being in middle of zerg and then all of a sudden dropping because a warrior parked in the back used killshot. On another note, nothing beats using distortion with traited reflect when you see a charged killshot coming. Most warriors don’t even recognize the animation since so few mesmers I’ve seen actually run it.

I wasn’t saying people won’t complain if the class they like is nerfed. I’m saying it will be the fairweather bandwagoners who say the class is unplayable and ditch the class entirely when its nerfed. Now you could take your own advice and instead of saying your class is weak, learn it, play it and get better instead of dropping “warrior is underpowered/nerfed” everytime you get downed. It does go both ways. It’d be very hypocritical to call out people who say warrior is OP everytime they die then basically turn around and call your own class weak anytime someone downs you.

lchan.2169:

Izer.2083:

lchan.2169:

as far as i am concerned, the warrior is a melee character. the whole lot of people who complain about them are mostly range players, who somehow never kept their distance and allowed the warrior to come to close. To me, thats your fault. Dont expect the warrior to have to cover the distance to meet you at melee range only to melee with pathetic damage. Plus covering the distance means we have to take damage too.

So really, to those to play range character, learn to play and keep your distance. And dont go playing a range character with a melee weapon and come crying because you dont have a chance against the warrior.

You dont know how hard it is sometimes when we need to cover ground just to get the melee distance. It can sometime take 1/3 of our health or more to do that.

The problem with range jobs. is with warriors stability…. and – duration cripple, immob. chill trait.

Any ranged jobs only got mostly 2 immob skill with a 2 sec duration at max
Chill skill mostly are ground target u can dodge rolled it easily
Cripple the duration is too short
Ward and knockback u can go through it with stability

And what i hate the most is how the hell i can stop a warrior when he using berserker stance and balanced stance at the same time when using Rush it’s a 2sec insta 1200 range…. and u’re saying u have to take damage to close the gap? even if’re not using GS u still can throw bolas come easily with shield stance…

So how can i solo kite a wr…. if u’re that good in kiting maybe i’ll need to learn from u a lot… from my point of view GW2 range jobs can only kite pve mobs (not all of them).

What I’m saying is that. Wr need a lot of nerf (at least in stability or condition) or change their trait line a bit. their good trait is to accesible and too good… especially the trait line In defense and tactics.

A full defensive trait with zerk gear are the one mostly used somthing like this
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAS5+CFvxQqwBE0DNMLqCVB8I9ANGw0A-jExAYfB5kXR0Y11YKXioaA-w
And dev say warrior can’t do both (survival and damage) I’ll kill anyone to get my ele to get that kind of final stats…

Even with dolyak signet and balanced stance they got a 16 sec stability (without trait) with trait adding one extra balanced stance and extra 25% duration for stance they got a 28 sec stability in total… and 10 sec of almost immune condition…
1. They’re thick as hell due to regen
2. They hurt as hell
3. They stun like hell ( try fight against a group of 3 good coordinated wr player. they’ll stun lock 5 people to dead easily)

The only job i can think of, which easier to defeat Wr is mez

Dude…all i can say is, one on one melee, dont expect a medium or light armoured individual to win the fight. There is no way you expect that to happen. If that happens, what the hell will anyone role a warrior. Then the whole game might as well be ranged characters. Just because we can gain stability means we can only engage one individual. If you are the unlucky one, too bad. But think…what happens after we down one person?….

btw…our range weapons are really slow.

Just because warrior is a primarily melee class does not mean they should be the end all be all for melee. That is just terrible balancing. But ok I guess, if warriors should be the master of close combat, remove rifle, longbow and any skill with greater than 130 range(melee range). It only makes sense that a master of close combat should be not only the greatest at melee combat but also only melee combat.

But you do bring up a very valid point? Why would anyone roll a warrior? This is the problem. People who roll classes not because they like it or because its their favorite but because it is the FotM meta build that they got off google so it must be good. And those will be the same people who are the first to whine warrior is getting nerfed and will be unplayable. If you really take the time to learn a class and enjoy it, you shouldn’t just drop it the second it gets nerfed.

I’d say either leave it as it is and simply increase the damage OR give it reflection and remove the ability to move during channel just like rangers. Giving it movement, the ability to tumble without actually cancelling it and reflection is just too much and I’d imagine that is what went through Anet’s head when they decided to let warrior move during channel.

I don’t see why anyone even cares…
I mean really you wouldn’t even know they were clicking skills unless you watched it from their perspective so unless you’re noticing from their playstyle alone does it really make a difference? Try it, cover the skill bar with you hand or something and watch them playing, can you tell they’re clicking skills? To each their own.

Faranox.4217:

Offhand axe is highly unpopular. I can’t say with certainty if this is due to the weapon needed some polish OR people not coming up with good builds for it.
Having reflection on it would be nice, but I’d rather see something like the 100Blades final hit on it, because right now it seems like a melee range Volley (albeit with more individual hits so a higher chance for more critical damage). Also, whirl finisher- useful or useless?

Added damage would be nice. Something like a bonus on last hit and another bonus if all hits connect. Whirl is pretty meh though IMO. Seems cool in theory but in practice only long whirls have a chance of making an impact and at the same time long whirls might outlast the combo field. Not to mention their benefits are randomly distributed. If it were something like dagger storm where the bolts were just visual effects but the real attacks would fly towards the nearest targets and hit as many targets as possible it would be better.

Warlord.9074:

Necrotize.2974:

Hammer is a control weapon. Why should it have a dps focus too?

Why should a control weapon be a weapon?

…
To give warriors a method of CC and a hard counter to long channels…

Plus the alternative would be just making all weapons pure dps and having no control effects whatsoever so everyone essentially does the exact same thing just with different animations.

The reason it is probably better is because you’re trying to compare a weapon skill to thief’s class mechanic. Steal is their adrenaline/burst skills and they are heavily limited by who or what they are facing. The skill they steal isn’t always applicable to the class they’re facing. Take the steal from ele for example, melee range chill for long duration. Ele has so much removal from water that you’d be lucky for that chill to last very long. Same goes for warrior. Say they’re a hammer build. It’d be suicide to try and use stolen axe skill on them seeing as they have no projectiles and they attacks are devastating in melee range during long channels.

Not to mention, IIRC you can tumble during whirling axe and still deal the full damage whereas tumbling during thief stolen axe breaks casting.

Hammer is a control weapon. Why should it have a dps focus too?

mini.6018:

Wait a second !Does armor and health in this game really count ? My bad i tought boons,teleports ,invulnerabilities ,blocks,stealth,autoseeking spam attacks.Sorry

Of the things you listed lets see which a thief has. Boons? Nope. Teleports? Yes. Invulnerabilities? Unless you wanna count pistol whip’s evade, there are no invulnerability skills. Blocks? Nope. Stealth? Yes. Autoseeking attacks? Seeing as thief is the only class without 1200 range options and their burst damage requires them to be in melee range I wouldn’t exactly call that autoseeking.

But on the topic of stealth. You act like its hard to hit a backstab thief even in stealth. Thief is IMO squishier than ele due to the lack of boons to pad your health or negate damage. Stealth is nice against mediocre players who just stand there when you go into stealth but against anyone who has half an idea about how to fight thieves it is still pretty easy to get hit in stealth, especially if you’re trying to setup a backstab.

Heck, half the time when I’m fighting stealth spam thieves on my thief, I’ll see them stealth, wait a second or two, spin around and CnD. Hit invisible thief and vanish and they usually have no idea what just happened.

mini.6018:

Ehragus.5843:

mini.6018:

Wait a second !Does armor and health in this game really count ? My bad i tought boons,teleports ,invulnerabilities ,blocks,stealth,autoseeking spam attacks.Sorry

Ofc it does. Let’s say u get hit for 12k. Doesnt having 10k hp vs 20k hp matter?

Other class.Blocks 12k hit,Sealth ,can’t see target hence no 12k hit,protection 12k hit =8k,teleport away from melee = no hits.No need for heals

Warrior .Facetanking 12k hits.Needs to heal.

If a warrior is bad enough to be facetanking backstabs then he deserves to take 12k damage.

Definitely no. Healing signet should be reworked so the active is actually worth using but granting it stealth is not the way to do it. The single best way to counter warriors is by watching their telegraphed skills and dodging/blocking the right ones. Give them the ability to use those skills with relative safety in stealth and you’ve got yourself one master of all trades in training.

And if it did grant stealth it sure as hell wouldn’t be 5 seconds, that’s longer than thief’s stealth heal and on 2/3 the cd with a top notch passive effect.

Stealth does seem like it needs a little something. I mean, most of the time when I’m fighting other thieves(especially the backstab thieves) I just put on an offhand dagger and cloak and dagger near me as soon as I seem them vanish. 9 times out of ten I’ll vanish and they’ll appear a second later wondering what just happened.

Poison does seem like the perfect way to counter healing signet. The problem then arises in cleansing ire. The current meta of very stun heavy builds includes two main burst skills, skull crack and earthshaker. Both of those will effectively remove any poison on the warrior when coupled with cleansing ire. I guess the main issue is that basically the 3 best traits for surviving can all be found in one trait line and can all be taken together instead of competing for positions or being in different lines.

Everyone just keeps saying “healing signet is not op because X” or “healing signet is not OP alone” but I’m not calling it OP and that wasn’t the purpose of this thread >_>

The problem I have with HS is not that its hard to deal with, it is just the passivity of basically all of warrior’s healing. Warriors should have to properly manage their heals like other classes instead of just having slot and forget traits/skills that just do it for them and aren’t worth using. A slight minor problem that emerges from this is that it is impossible to interrupt their passive healing because there is nothing to interrupt.

Wasn’t QQing, was just a suggestion because personally I don’t think the actual numbers are OP, its just warriors should have to manage their heals like other classes instead of having a signet that is literally not worth activating and is only useful when unused. Yes, burst is the obvious counter to the passive regen, but couple that with blocks/stuns the warrior can achieve pretty long periods of time where they aren’t taking damage barring conditions to make up for the time they are, assuming they survive the initial burst.

Is HS op? IMO, no. Does it need to be reworked to encourage active play instead of warriors entire method of healing being passive(adrenal+HS+Ire), I think so. So instead of shooting down ideas or just being plain unpleasant, why don’t you contribute a worthwhile opinion with support instead of just the bandwagon class battle cry of “L2P”.

Offtopic slightly but adrenaline should be lost on a missed burst skill to tone down adrenal health. The current mechanism basically rewards you for missing with your skills with higher hp regen for the 7 seconds it takes to burst again(I think, don’t know exact cd).

As I’m sure many of you are aware, many people have serious problems with healing signet and the passivity of the skill. As it stands there really is no reason to use the active portion and no need to manage it. What if it was changed, not in numbers but in function. Allow it to apply a 5-10 second boon every 5-10 seconds(as long as the two are equal) that grants similar regeneration yet is its own boon so it stacks with regeneration and make the active heal for the same or slightly more.

This means that the warrior now has to manage their heal. If they leave the boon on forever they run the risk of thieves/mesmers stealing the boon and gaining their regeneration or the threat of necromancers corrupting it(I think corrupting it into torment would be a nice fit) or just having it stripped by other means and not having their regeneration, at which point they need to decide; can you make it till the next tick of regen or do you need to use the active to keep yourself standing.

Feedback?

Furako.4829:

Gorni.1764:

you don’t give just boons, you share the auras themselfes which can be quite effective when you time it well (CC or damage-reduction+chill). This won’t be noticeable in larger groups though .

That’s true, but it’s only 5 seconds every 25, 30 or 40 depends on aura.
And those effect activate only when you’re struck and aren’t that strong: Burn and might, chill and 10% lesser damage, stun with an internal cooldown of 2 secs…

The most of the good from an auramancer build comes from the boons he/she gives with the auras..boons who usually are up for almost 90-100% of the fight, while the auras effect are up only 20% of the time.

Necrotize.2974:

I personally always wanted an on attunement aura trait.

That’s a little too much, only that trait alone will be overpowered, expecially if combined with something like Fresh Air, who result in an almost perma-shocking aura. And if we consider adding an internal cooldown, that may make the trait less attractive.

Auramancer is a very fun and solid build, but as I say, just feeling I should and can do a little more, we’re talking about a Grandmaster trait who need at least 2 adept trait to become really useful instead of the other one we can choose.

Or at least that is my opinion, as I said before, is easy to make this trait overpower instead of balanced

I would’ve imagined a trait like I described would have an internal cd per element like evasive arcana, so each element’s aura is independent of each other but also on a cd that is either equal to or greater than the cd on swaps.

I personally always wanted an on attunement aura trait. It would probably be a grandmaster depending on the cd but basically just grant the corresponding aura depending on which element you switch to. So if powerful auras stayed a GM tier trait you would have to choose between sharing auras or having instant access to any of the 4 auras.

Like he said in his post, outside of large scale WvW where enemies are actually focusing on you or can easily get to you staff really starts to fall flat unless you’re just stalling people. Back to the suggestions though, they all seem pretty reasonable.

Another change I’d like to see personally is just a universal casting time for the auto attacks on staff, not just chain lightning. They should all be 1 second IMO instead of the 1.3 to 1.5 they are now. Possibly even change ice spike to either apply more/longer vulnerability or hit faster because as it stands almost no one gets hit with it unless you slow/immobilize them first.

Ya, if you play your cards right you should be almost invulnerable in pve assuming you manage your aggro properly. Make sure your toughness isn’t too high, otherwise it will prevent your earth elemental from grabbing aggro. Between projectile reflection and destruction from focus, invulnerability, blinds from lightning hammer/air and pets you should be able to easily solo things and take on some group events solo depending on the type of boss. Slow but powerful melee bosses are a snap with just lightning hammer, ranged bosses can be a pain if you don’t cycle your focus skills properly.

I personally loved S/F leveling up because well apart from some really easy might stacking, the skills just looked cool. A lot of your damage will come from air and fire, basically start in fire, use air until everything is on cd, then go back to fire. Although I will admit that the main reason S/F appealed to me was the projectile mitigation because in pve enemies plinking away at me annoys the hell out of me. Between swirling winds, magnetic wave and obsidian flesh you have 3 ways to prevent projectiles and and really long invulnerability skill.

Tips for aoe, get good at aiming dragon’s tooth or kiting enemies under it. It does great damage and has a short cd. Like they already said, phoenix behind them so that is passes through once, explodes, then passes through again. Line up foes and aim for the farthest one if you can because the auto attack in air pierces for I think 5 enemies IIRC. Don’t let long cast times leave you doing nothing, utilize the 3 instant cast skills between air and earth for either damage+blind or invulnerability during channeling.

Use lightning flash for easier openers or easier escape. IE, start casting churning earth, just as it is about to explode lightning flash to your target area. The explosion will occur there and you won’t have to worry about enemies running out of the area.

I like it. People should have to adjust their style to fit their location instead of just play exactly the same everywhere. Plus most classes have ways to pull you to your death, so counter with evades, stability, stun break etc. Plus it is probably the funniest map kills wise. Being about to die and inattentive person is about to finish you, walks over to you only to fall right through glass floor as they’re about to finish you.

Also this could just be me, but I love female animations for staff soooo much more than male. The way they just kind of spin in the air and float when casting meteor swarm is just my favorite thing ever.

Mash Hog.5672:

Necrotize.2974:

From playing my mesmer the bigger problem is minions(namely ranger pets) being able to instinctively lock onto the real mesmer. For example, if a ranger sees a mesmer coming up, just target and click the F1. Your pet will now only attack the real mesmer and go straight for them the second they emerge from stealth even if clones/phantasms are dealing more damage to them. It basically makes it incredibly for rangers to target a mesmer for the rest of the fight.

Nice, I didn’t know that!

NP. Rangers(as long as they aren’t petting zoo rangers) need all the help they can get when it comes to mesmers with their rooting auto attack making accidentally attacking clones a huge waste of time. Ranger was just an easy example but IIRC it happens the same with necro summons, if the mesmer is their first attack target they’ll just keep going right for it.

From playing my mesmer the bigger problem is minions(namely ranger pets) being able to instinctively lock onto the real mesmer. For example, if a ranger sees a mesmer coming up, just target and click the F1. Your pet will now only attack the real mesmer and go straight for them the second they emerge from stealth even if clones/phantasms are dealing more damage to them. It basically makes it incredibly for rangers to target a mesmer for the rest of the fight.

I personally always thought pistol/rifle would fit the ranger profession nicely. They’re supposed to be master hunters(albeit bow fits better with the general theme but still). GS always seemed really out of place for ranger IMO.

Could just give clones visual appearance of buffs on the mesmer without them actually having the real effect.

I’m sure everyone can relate, you’re doing great, working well with your team or about to score major points by killing a lord or getting the orb and then poof, the autobalancing pops up. You’re now left with a choice, purposefully lose the match because one purpose decided they couldn’t stand to have a loss on their record or take your chances and end up on the other team anyway, just now you really have no benefit to having been on the other team for 10 minutes and scoring tons of points.

While I like the fact that volunteering guarantees winning experience, it is very annoying to be doing something for your team like capturing a point or scoring with the orb only to be switched to the other team that is now down a capture point/30 points/150 points etc. There really should be a penalty for leaving a match early instead of just providing incentive for not leaving and sticking it out. Fight the problem at the source. Make it so that leaving a match early puts you on say a 5 minute cd and you can’t enter any rooms until it ends. If you go in after those 5 minutes and still leave early in say the next hour, bar you from entering matches for the next 15 minutes etc etc. Have these “barred durations” increase quickly and reset daily as to not allow constant quitters to rack up hours of bar time(gotta think of their feelings too unfortunately).

My solution may not be elegant but I feel like it would get the point across that you can’t just ditch your team to avoid a loss then just rejoin the second auto-balancing happens and join the winning team that someone just got booted off of.

If you have any ideas though feel free to share.

Flamethrower is a pretty easy way to level for most people. Has range, aoe, burst, blind and knockback all in one. The first ten trait points if you’re going for fast leveling should be in Tools to pick up Speedy Kits, which nets you easy perma-swiftness. After that it really is preference. You could stick with flamethrower or if you like spamming keys grenades once you have the master grenadier trait(playstyle is not for everyone) or go for bombs which are also pretty nice since smoke bomb in pve is like godmode for the duration on slow mobs.

And don’t take anything that people say to heart. Heck, I’ve had people tell me to stop 2 spamming when I’m using P/D and I’m just awestruck by how much people can hate thieves while simultaneously knowing so little about them. But at the same time, don’t let all the “thieves are OP talk” dissuade you from trying every build. Try out a perma-stealth D/P build to get down your backstab positioning. Switch to S/D to learn how to better time your evades. There’s something you can learn from all of the weapon sets.

Well the easiest thing to do is wait till they get nerfed but since you picked thief that means you don’t take the easy way out

First, do not use the stolen ability from warriors on hammer warriors, way too risky and its basically a free stun. Second, if they are using healing signet, the fight just got a bit harder as this does not play to the strength of a hit and stealth backstab burst and you will need to utilize poison effectively(usually from shortbow or venom) to keep their healing down. You should not initiate the fight unless you’re in stealth. They will most likely try to open with earthshaker or use it if they see you go into stealth, dodge it. Before the Dec 10th nerf it is going to deal a lot of damage to you.

Oddly enough, one of the best weapon sets I’ve found against hammer warriors is P/D. The slot 3 skill teleporting you out of earthshaker range quickly and neutralizing healing signet all in one. Plus the constant bleed stacks will help suppress the healing. They say healing signet isn’t good vs burst but that is only half true. Against classes like thief whose burst relies on positioning, it works very well as many hammer warriors run mace/shield in other slot meaning they just block if you go into stealth.

Dodge the highly telegraphed skills and if they switch to a mace dodge the first few attacks because chances are it’s gonna be skull crack.

1/4 second seems manageable. Obviously it’d be better if it was instant but still, that is fast enough to basically prevent immobilize lockdown now that it stacks up to 5 seconds(which I personally am really enjoying with devourer venom and Sbow sneak attack). I personally would’ve like something like a dirty fighting skill(which seems to fit nicely with the boon stealing and pistol whipping of sword) so you shadowstep to them and say attach a chain, go through the cast time and teleport backwards, pulling the target with you and causing a knockdown.

I don’t know though, that’s just my personal view of the sword because I always thought of it like a street fighter’s weapon where anything goes and you play dirty tricks on your enemy to get the upper hand.

Ehh, most other classes don’t have very good downed abilities either, but it also depends on the situation. Thieves have a terrible #2 ability against other thieves for example, the second you teleport they use infiltrator signet to shadowstep back to you and complete the stomp. In pve thieves #1 attack does very little damage but it bounces which can be good or bad depending on who is near you and how low hp the targets are.

But as you described, the #2 and #3 skills on most classes are designed to either stop a stomp or make yourself revive faster(ranger and guardian mostly), not just thief. In pve though, thief’s 2 and 3 abilities are pretty underwhelming compared to things like rangers or guardians that if you’re just fighting one mob can basically net you a free revive.

So to sum up, thief’s downed abilities are ok for pvp, terribly designed for pve.

Out of curiosity, did they state how long this cast time would be? I mean if it is something minuscule like 1/4 a second I can’t see it being such a huge problem, it’ll still do the trick, just not while we’re stunned which I imagine is why they’re changing it, because they don’t want it to basically be a version of Hard to Catch that is easier to control and removes conditions. In my opinion that means Hard to Catch needs to be reworked though but that is a topic for another thread.