Guild Wars 2

It only blocks 1 attack(2 if you count Deja Vu) and you can move while holding the shield up even though the screenshots show you kneeling down and holding it up. While I do wish it blocked all attacks for a duration, the phantasm it summons seems really good, especially since I think you can potentially summon two of them with one skill use and their alacrity buff can bounce between other phantasms. So multiple phantasms giving you and other phantasms alacrity.

Balancing should be simple enough(at least more so) now that you can only get 3 trait lines. This means they can balance it effectively by making sure all traits, and to a greater extent, all grandmaster traits are up to snuff and playstyle defining.

But naturally all this jumping around and phantasm/clone control, newer players will have trouble killing competent mesmers(its this way now for a lot of people) so there will be a lot of complaining and whining about the new stuff being super OP and uncounterable. Just have to hope that the people responsible for balancing are confident in their decisions and don’t just revert or nerf whatever they spent so much time on.

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

dank.3680:

DaShi.1368:

I worry that the shield phantasm will be another iMage.

I don’t really. To me it looks like it functions much like scepter 2, it has counter play but when landed right, good effect.

Better to compare it to the pDisenchanter. A phantasm that uses a bouncing projectile attack that deals low damage, but makes up for the lack of damage with incredible utility.

Was there even a skill for a phantasm on shield? I dont remember seeing one on the video. Didn’t he use 4 and 5 on the POI?

Shield 4 is a block that stops a single attack. On expiration of the block(either time out or absorbing a hit) a phantasm that throws a shield will spawn. It bounces off enemies giving them chill/slow(can’t remember which) and hits allies giving them Alacrity/Quickness(again, can’t remember which). Then if you blocked a skill the first time, it becomes Deja Vu, and can block another attack while the initial skill is ticking down on its cooldown.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

hmm you guys does make a good point, continuum is probably not the best skill to use when dying.

Of course not, you use it when you think you’ll almost die in the next few seconds . :P Of course, that kind of prediction in PvP will be very difficult for a lot of people, so chances are it’ll mostly be used for movement and cd/burst potential.

Probably trolling, but even so, can’t use Continuum Shift as a reactionary second life bar like you can with DS. If you eat the burst then try to Shift, its already too late.

I’m just getting 66% off this bit here : “Alacrity functions as the inverse of chill by speeding up skill recharges rather than slowing them down.”. It could be anything, but I’m just gonna assume it’ll be 66% but have short durations of like 3 seconds max as that seems to be how mesmers apply special buffs, in quick, short durations, reapplied rapidly.

As for 66% being OP, hard to tell without actually being able to playtest it. Mesmers have a really complicated playstyle and it’ll be hard to provide a definite answer just off speculation. Also since 66% is just an assumption on my part, no real point to argue whether it could hypothetically be OP :P

IIRC they did say Alacrity would essentially be the reverse of Chill, so it would make sense that it decreased CDs by 66% for the duration of Alacrity. So it would make Phase Retreat have a CD of around 2-3 seconds if traited and under the effects of Alacrity.

Also, seriously laughed at comparing Continuum Shift to Spectral Walk. The only thing they have in common is resetting your position. Necros would probably kill, raise from the dead and kill again to make Spectral Walk reset HP, Coodldowns, endurance and life force.

HawkMeister.4758:

I could care less how much “mandatory” fun a lot of people have.

I logged in thinking I had a bug, as I know this normally IS a bug.
Eventually noticed the hardly noticeable flightcap, due to the heavy sepia and couldn´t bear to continue with this after more than 5 minutes.

As a German I´m not even surprised anymore at the ´merican insensitivity, but having this FORCED on me for the rest of the day is downright kittenarded.
CYA tomorrow.

I guess its forced on you in the same way Anet is forcing you to keep playing.

You mentioning a planes in my presence is incredibly offensive and I feel triggered. How dare you talk about planes when just seven years ago, my paper airplane flew out the window and into traffic. Clearly I’m not over this tragedy and I think you’re being incredibly disrespectful using the word “plane” when clearly you don’t understand my pain.

This offends me deeply for reasons that obviously weren’t the intention so I demand that everyone stop having fun.

There’s nothing wrong for feeling sad about a tragedy, but trying to force everyone to stop doing everything that might remind you of that event is incredibly selfish. Just judging from general reactions, a majority of people enjoy this joke and don’t see it in any way as mocking a tragedy.

Remember, Elixirs cause autism everyone. Keep your children away from those autism spreading engineers.

Jokes are supposed to be funny for the person doing them. That’s how it usually is for April Fools jokes anyway. I personally thought it was amusing, and there are no changes in PvP matches so that’s just what I did. Since there are none in PvP, it might be safe to assume it doesn’t occur in dungeons either, but I didn’t check so something else should.

And for all the people saying it shouldn’t be necessary to make these changes to disable the joke, it isn’t. If it annoys you so much that you can’t even play a game you enjoy playing then maybe you need to build up a higher tolerance for jokes.

People in the map chats of areas I’ve visited seemed to think it was funny, it just seems like lots of people here can’t take a joke though…

IMO, kits are what are reducing build diversity, specifically grenades. The damage they bring is just too good to pass up in most cases and demands 6 points in a trait line simply because if not, you’re just hindering yourself. In consequence, kits are the standard that all other utility skills are compared to, and frankly, most don’t measure up. For example, if I want a good stunbreak, why would I take something like Goggles over Elixir Gun? Egun comes with a stunbreak and so much more. I mean, conditions are a huge weakness for most engineer builds, but you still don’t see people swapping out one of their kits for Elixir C.

Incendiary Powder is good, but it’s really just a side effect of the fact that a majority of builds already run 6 into Explosives for grenades.

What would increase build diversity even more than nerfing kits or incendiary powder would be to buff the other utilites(*cough*gadgets*cough*) so that they didn’t pale in comparison to Tool Kit and Grenade Kit.

gebrechen.5643:

I think its fair. As a class with pretty much no usable stability in almost all builds and definitely no long lasting usable stability,

/lol

Sarcasm over the internet isn’t the best idea, so I’m unsure of your meaning. If it is indeed sarcasm, I’d love to hear about how to squeeze stability into a 3-kit condi build or a celestial rifle build. It makes sense that engis should have a good way to strip stability since they lack it themselves and are very reliant on CC for bursts.

Without a video or screenshot, all we really have is your word. Your very hard to believe word.

Only time you’d ever take 10k damage from Supply Crate is if you afk’d inside it for the entire fight while still somehow not cleaving the turrets down. Even then its a bit of a stretch.

How well is Restorative Mantras working for you? I’ve been considering taking 1 point out of Inspiration to go into Chaos. So not only do you now have permanent regen so long as you keep phantasms up, but you also have about 33% protection uptime in addition to your phantasmal defender. Unsure if the survivability is that needed, but it sure is satisfying to have an incoming 8k dmg reduced to less than 3k.

I think its fair. As a class with pretty much no usable stability in almost all builds and definitely no long lasting usable stability, Engi has strong ways to counter it now. Especially since their burst is typically reliant on grenades, CC was usually necessary to land the burst. Not to mention most builds pretty much have 2 kits at least as a baseline, so think of Slick Shoes as being good enough if it can bring something to the fight equal to another kit. If it isn’t as good as or better than say Elixir Gun, then there’s little to get worried about.

Besides, plenty of classes run blinks/teleports that effectively counter slick shoes AND probably make the engi waste their burst. Necros, Thief, Mesmers, Eles and even guardians to some extent(assuming you teleport after the puddles stop forming). It still requires melee range to be effective which typically isn’t the best range for the engi to stay at anyway.

Now they just need to code the mobs to be able to use Portals and mesmers will become the true Minion Master.

Finally an excuse to make a pure glamour build!

Rev skills also seem to have some nice inherent synergy with this style of play.

If your build has no way to close gaps and your entire setup is based around melee range attacks, the ranger isn’t OP, you’re just bad at planning and don’t want to change your build/utilities.

Judging from your sentence about them escaping immobilize and vines, I’m guessing you’re a ranger. Ranger is probably best equipped to handle thieves out of most classes, but it means specializing and making some choices you might not normally make to seal the deal. First of all, you need very good control of your pet. If you’re pet is just standing far away from you while the thief is stealthed, its just a free CnD target. If your pet is close to you however, you force the thief to stay close as well. You have very good anti stealth skills at your disposal as well.

Wolf’s Fear Howl can be used near a Shadow Refuge to fear them out of it, giving them reveal and putting their main reset skill on cd. Rapid Fire tracks thieves through stealth so long as you initiate the attack before they disappear. This means not only can you keep damaging them, you can get a rough idea of where they’re headed. Also on the long bow is Barrage. AoE cripple can mean the difference between getting backstabbed or forcing a retreat. Lastly, there’s Sic’ Em. 6 seconds of reveal plus increased damage and speed on your pet is plenty of time to land a burst and finish the job.

Aside from that, it helps to think of a retreat as a victory. If they run away to reset, you’ve effectively won and forced them to stop. Stealth is a delicately balanced skill, making it too strong or last too long could destroy WvW and PvP, making it too weak could effectively hamstring a majority of thief builds unless it is replaced with an actual form of damage mitigation.

Love the build. I too prefer scepter to sword. While I can see the boon rip and immob being useful, Torment thrown in gives me a nice set of 3 constant conditions(bleed, torment, poison from doom sigil and occasionally confusion from Scepter 3) plus whatever staff brings at the time. Plus I enjoy the ranged ability better since I really miss blink when I run with sword. Against lots of warriors/rangers, I’d probably be forced to use sword for the immob and boon rip to stop stability, but I still prefer scepter.

Jana.6831:

Necrotize.2974:

Why not just nerf and buff wildly in both directions and hope it works out.

Isn’t that what’s already happening?

Maybe it just needs to happen more until we hit that sweet spot? Just go into the damage modifiers for all the skills and randomly add in "0"’s and “.”’s making some skills hit like wet noodles and others hit like wet noodles filled with cement.

Why not just nerf and buff wildly in both directions and hope it works out. Stealth now is capped at 1 second, but grants 100% damage reflection. Backstab has an internal cd of 120 seconds, but executes anyone below 75% hp, bypassing blocks, invulnerability and even the downed state. Blinds have their duration reduced by 90% but cause those suffering from them to have their entire screen go black till the blind is gone. All evades on thieves have their invulnerability duration cut by 95% but the cast time stays the same, but evading into someone who doesn’t have stability knocks them down for 3 seconds.

Also what Serenadin said. Gearing characters doesn’t really become expensive at all until 80, so there’s really no harm in leveling an alt. And who knows, you may accidentally figure out which class you like more simply by which one levels up to 80 the first. It might be a weird concept, but level a class because you enjoy the process, not because you’ll think you might like playing it at level 80, because if it turns out that you don’t, those resources and time will feel like a waste.

If you’re having trouble with survivability, Lightning Hammer is great damage and damage mitigation, all in just the autoattack. Heck, even if you aren’t having trouble, lightning hammer wrecks things. Signet of Air is also a nice thing to pick up if you’re running D/D, but not necessary if you run staff since staff can stack perma swiftness anyway(which makes running around a little less boring since you’re managing cooldowns).

I never bothered much with food leveling, but pretty much anything near your level that increases power/precision/ferocity(in that order of usefulness) will be fine.

Elementalist will give you a lot more room to grow. They are viable and useful in all game modes and they can be played fairly straight forward if you’re still not comfortable cycling through all 4 attunments(IE, in PvE you can just as easily stay in fire attunement a majority of the time).

If anyone is familiar with it, I’ve always loved the Tinkerer/Engineer/Gear Master skills from a game called Dragon Nest. Essentially you have stationary turrets that work just like the ones we have, then you have weak little duck robots that chase enemies and perform a few basics attacks but die easily, then you have one particularly large robot(named Alfredo) who you have some more degree of control over. Game to game translation wise, he’d function similar to a ranger pet, but instead of having activated abilities, you toggle which abilities you want him to use and he only uses those which are turned on, pretty much as soon as they’re off cd and he’s near an enemy.

I only bring this up because I really want something more than just “mobile turrets”. Mechanical creatures similar to summoned elementals, but with the control of ranger’s pets really. My only fear for this idea is that if by some miracle this does happen, they’ll make the specialization “reliant” on the summoned things to achieve full potential, which isn’t bad in theory, but in practice we all know what happens when your class mechanic is based around AI.

Well, for sheer damage, staff would probably lend itself better to soloing IMO. Large AoEs, high damage, easy access to might without using a lot of skills, hard and soft CC, and you get water fields to blast if you’re ever in need of emergency heals. That’s not to say D/D is bad, I just always preferred staff for PvE since enemies rarely walk out of AoEs. There is a really good guide for eles Here

It offers in-depth analysis of all weapon skills and useful utilities as well as explaining what traits you might take for certain situations. There are even example builds that you can use and play around with. Eles are a very strong class once you get familiar enough with them, not to mention they bring a lot of good things to a party. Hope that helped.

I vote ranger, until there comes a time when thief can shoot them back from over 1500 units(cough rifle cough) I’ll be a sad gimmicky condition trapper.

Cool, I’ll try both of those things and see how they work out. Thanks for the advice.

Zero Day.2594:

DarkSyze,
I’m not supposed to tell you this, it’s top-secret-insider-information from within ANet’s development team back from 6 years ago when they were still developing the game. In early testing phases, stealth didn’t have a timer and it lasted infinitely, worse yet it was never removed! And at that time the modifier for back-stab was x500 (not x2.4 as it is now)… Many developers where complain at each other that they were constantly getting back-stabbed for 1,000,000 damage while they were testing classes.
True story.
I believe it’s still relevant to today.
Please use this information in your crusade for justice.

The good ol’ days, when stabbing someone in the back crashed servers and overloaded combat logs.

Just to clarify, this is WvW, if that makes a difference.

I’m playing a trapper P/D build that I’m enjoying quite a bit, but it seems that more often than not, auto attack will continue to fire even once I enter stealth(usually via trapper runes+trap). We’re not talking the projectile was in transit while fighting, I mean I literally stop to drop the trap, I gain stealth, and then about a half second later, autoattack kicks back in, not even using the sneak attack, just the regular, single shot autoattack.

Is this a bug? Or is it just loading queued autoattacks that I pressed before the trap? It doesn’t happen all the time(never after CnD), but if I’m fighting several enemies especially, it will sometimes just break right out of stealth without a sneak attack. Would you suggest turning auto attack off if it really is just me spam clicking 1 too much? Or would the damage loss be too great. Any help or just general tips are much appreciated.

Parries are something I’ve always wanted for thieves. Although I fear that outright blocking things on a class with no weapon cds would not be a good combo, even if there were measures to prevent them from being spammed. Perhaps make parry and parried boons and conditions respectively. While under the effects of Parry, damage is reduced(probably more than protection, but exact number really depends on the other skills and the defense they offer) and the Parried condition applies a damage increasing debuff similar to Vulnerability yet stronger in magnitude but much shorter in duration.

Nephrite.6954:

Necrotize.2974:

HtFde.3856:

Nephrite.6954:

Stupid whiners should really shut up and play the profession long enough to find out if it’s really OP or not. PM me as a thief and I’ll get on my engi to show you if thieves are OP or not. I’ve main a thief for almost a year now and still get my kitten wiped when ever I make a single mistake in duels but once I get on my engi… kitten I rarely lost a duel unless if they were really good players(which was rare).Spvp ranked,unranked and hotjoin pfffffff no problem and I’ve only played that class for LESS THAN A WEEK. All I had to do was spam bombs, stack might, plant turrets spam some more and my opponent will either be close to dead or retreating. I wipe the floor with thieves on my engi…

Hostile wording and shifting of focus are usually a sign that one has run out of arguments – in addition to that calling pretty well worded critique “whining” without providing any more agruments is a tad … childish? Stomp your foor and go wanna, wanna, wanna play thieeeeeeef as is!!!

And – just for your information – the discussion is about WvW. Almost noone in this thread ever complained about thieves being OP in sPvP.

Sometimes it really helps to read a few posts before ranting …

Or they could just be genuinely annoyed. These forums are pretty much a testament to stubborn people who will refuse to admit anything once they’ve chosen a position. This isn’t too bad at first, but then the forums get flooded by people who just hate thieves due to their experience fighting them, which leads to plenty of “THIEF OP PLZ NERF” type threads. Coming up with new arguments might convince the less stubborn, but the general progress of events is

1. Someone complains that thief is broken

2. Helpful people offer advice for how to beat thieves, people who disagree offer their arguments(which vary in politeness depending on the OP)

3. If the OP is stubborn/trolling/etc, they reject all help and usually make some flawed argument that has been regurgitated since the beginning of this game.

4. Helpful people leave, all that is left are the people that disagree, who have probably dealt with the exact same type of thread dozens of times prior.

After a certain number of times, it just gets old. “Thieves are OP cause I played a thief once and won”, “All these people are thieves and say thief is OP”, “(Some ramble about stealth and cross class comparisons)”. If everyone could have civil arguments and not spam threads with the same topic, hostile replies would be a lot less frequent.

Read my post properly. I never said anything about nerfing the thief.

I know, and I wasn’t accusing you of it. I was just saying that people here can get hostile because they have the exact same arguments over and over and make zero progress. They make a well-reasoned argument, only to have it ignored and complained about. So saying that he’s out of arguments because he’s annoyed/shifting the focus isn’t really truthful since even if he did post an argument, chances are it would be ignored or disregarded and the cycle would continue.

HtFde.3856:

Nephrite.6954:

Stupid whiners should really shut up and play the profession long enough to find out if it’s really OP or not. PM me as a thief and I’ll get on my engi to show you if thieves are OP or not. I’ve main a thief for almost a year now and still get my kitten wiped when ever I make a single mistake in duels but once I get on my engi… kitten I rarely lost a duel unless if they were really good players(which was rare).Spvp ranked,unranked and hotjoin pfffffff no problem and I’ve only played that class for LESS THAN A WEEK. All I had to do was spam bombs, stack might, plant turrets spam some more and my opponent will either be close to dead or retreating. I wipe the floor with thieves on my engi…

Hostile wording and shifting of focus are usually a sign that one has run out of arguments – in addition to that calling pretty well worded critique “whining” without providing any more agruments is a tad … childish? Stomp your foor and go wanna, wanna, wanna play thieeeeeeef as is!!!

And – just for your information – the discussion is about WvW. Almost noone in this thread ever complained about thieves being OP in sPvP.

Sometimes it really helps to read a few posts before ranting …

Or they could just be genuinely annoyed. These forums are pretty much a testament to stubborn people who will refuse to admit anything once they’ve chosen a position. This isn’t too bad at first, but then the forums get flooded by people who just hate thieves due to their experience fighting them, which leads to plenty of “THIEF OP PLZ NERF” type threads. Coming up with new arguments might convince the less stubborn, but the general progress of events is

1. Someone complains that thief is broken

2. Helpful people offer advice for how to beat thieves, people who disagree offer their arguments(which vary in politeness depending on the OP)

3. If the OP is stubborn/trolling/etc, they reject all help and usually make some flawed argument that has been regurgitated since the beginning of this game.

4. Helpful people leave, all that is left are the people that disagree, who have probably dealt with the exact same type of thread dozens of times prior.

After a certain number of times, it just gets old. “Thieves are OP cause I played a thief once and won”, “All these people are thieves and say thief is OP”, “(Some ramble about stealth and cross class comparisons)”. If everyone could have civil arguments and not spam threads with the same topic, hostile replies would be a lot less frequent.

The fact that you linked Zero’s “Nerf Wish list” thread leads me to believe you’re just trolling, or really don’t read, possibly both. But I guess since the word “Thief” is in a thread title, they must be OP right?

DarkSyze.8627:

Ario; read https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QVy_C-Z0-k and https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback-Merged/first You are wrong about thief class not be OP, you are wrong for thief stealth not problem, you call other not stealth player name " stealth hater", 2 year+ beta before you join guild wars 2; many player and thief say thief is Op and stealth same. Even arena net create own thread of thief class concern…. so here is chance to call arena net same name “stealth hater”. Arena net create thief class and know thief class better than you and all player. You Lose! Arena net Win!

If you read the opening post in the thread you linked, you’d know they made that thread so they’d have an excuse to merge/delete all the whining threads, Anet doesn’t ever actually say that they have a problem with thief, they just acknowledge that there are tons of threads about more or less the same thing. I can say I play any class I want, doesn’t mean I’m good at it or that my opinion is worth a kitten though. Some people that have been playing since beta say stealth is broken, some say those people are wrong. It really is just a he said she said situation using testimonials that are hardly justifiable. I mean, someone could say they’ve played GW2 for year, doesn’t mean they’re an expert, nor does it mean they mained a thief at any point in those years. They could’ve mained warrior that entire period, does that make them an expert on balance then?

Come on though, if we get a new weapon that can be both MH and OH, we’ll get a whole new skill set with X/X, and then 5 new dual skills via Sword/X, Dagger/X, X/Dagger, X/Pistol, and Pistol/X.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Expect rifles and you’re going to be disappointed come HoT launch. Get ready for that dual warhorn thief hype, boys!

I’d be happy with a bard…

I feel it evens out since chill can really negate the defensive capabilities of stealth. Gaining stealth while chilled probably won’t prevent much damage because you’ll still be in range of attacks(if melee) or still relatively close to the point of origin(if ranged) meaning AoEs or simply people who continue autoattacking in melee still have a good chance to hit.

You can’t really make cross class comparisons either, cds and initiative are very different. For example, if I’m playing say a mesmer, I can exhaust my cds on one weapon set, then switch to the next and start all over. However, if I’m a thief and I spend all my initiative on one weapon set, switching to the other still leaves me with the same initiative and no skills to use till it regens.

In addition, if it slowed initiative regen, you would be hurting thieves arguably more than other classes. Initiative is required for ALL weapon skills, so slowing its regen affects all weapon skills. But against other classes, chill will only affect the cds of skills that are already on cd or put on cd once chilled.

I kinda just want a one-handed weapon that can be in MH or OH so that we get a whole slew of new #3 skills in addition to a whole new set…

I can understand the desire for a 1200 range weapon, but I think you have to acknowledge that if we did get such a weapon, it definitely wouldn’t be able to really bursty without some serious drawbacks(meaning it would only really be good for gimmicky quick kills in perfect scenarios) since having something with the power of say ,Killshot, coming out of stealth just screams one-trick pony that will get nerfed anyway, leaving you with a single target, not-so burst weapon that probably wouldn’t be worth it anymore.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Simon.3794:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Simon.3794:

doesnt matter because warrior is #mostnerfedclass2014

Good. They have one more year to go and they’ll be on par with thief.

not even close, warrior was completely out of the PvP meta for more then half a year in 2013
has thief ever been out of any meta at all? non

Actually yeah, when people went bunker and thieves were running away more than killing players. You saw it in the QQ players posted. The topic shifted from “teef kill me with 21k bakstab” to “I cant kil Teef keeps resetting”.

And secondly, this thread is about nerfing. Warriors have been nerfed once between 2012 and 2013. Thieves have been buffed once during that time, maybe two more times in 2014.

Stop victimizing your profession, Simon.

If they everyone stops victimizing their class, how will the barely literate masses know who to feel sorry for and who to complain about in Map chat?

I’ve always wanted a Feign Death type of skill. It would probably need to grant stealth instantly for a few seconds, and when the stealth is gone you appear downed, that way people wouldn’t just see you fall into downed state from half health and can assume that you must’ve been downed while in stealth. Would probably have to deal a good chunk of damage to anyone who used a finisher on you or maybe apply a long immobilize to people who deal a certain amount of damage to you in this fake downed state.

Always nice to see new builds to play with. Although in your 5 elixir build you still have Supply Crate as the elite, giving you only four elixirs, meaning you are only operating at 80% elixirness.

zaced.7948:

anything except charr/norn.

I thought it looked good on small norn women? But definitely not male norns, they just look way too big for the weapon.

But if you want the easiest to see, probably don’t want asura either. As usual, humans get the best, sylvari are close but may or may not have slight clipping due to their hair(hardly noticeable though unless you play zoomed in on your character’s face).

Or, to solve the premature death of pets, give them Rock Dogs that have the frontal immunity :D

glock.6590:

lol you guys dont realise how bad this game will be if they nerf fire/air. It will take forever to kill people because of high sustain or many ways to avoid damage.

A duel between 2 thieves cannot end without fire and air sigils. Stop making stupid stupid suggestions.

The only build that is Overpowered is celestial elementalist. And even the cele ele is not that OP its just too useful compared to other builds.

Then we’ll enter the age of Decap Engi. No one needs to kill each other so long as we can stop them from getting points long enough to run out time :D

Stand The Wall.6987:

notice how i simply offered a likely scenario to be the cause of the OPs frustration and dont take a stance either way.

I’m aware. If such a scenario was in fact the cause of the OP’s frustration, I explained why classifying Caltrops in their current state as an exploit would be a bad idea and cause many problems if the changes were made. An important part of any argument is to predict possible counter-arguments and get a jump on them early. It saves us all some time and quickly weeds out if someone has an actual problem with the thing in question or if they were just posting in the heat of the moment after getting annoyed.

They’re gonna be meta builds no matter what happens. The best you can hope for is that every class gets some sort of meta build that can compete reasonably well with a decent amount of the other popular builds. Short of giving every class the exact same stats and exact same skills, there will always be counters to thing and certain builds will be more prevalent. So until there comes a day when you can just randomly throw points into any tree and still be successful with any weapon/utilities, there will be builds that are either slightly or much stronger than others.

Nerf cele, see the rise of already somewhat prevalent tanky turret engineers. Ele may or may not fall into complete garbage like it was for a long time depending on the severity of the nerfs. Hambow was popular even before cele changes, now it just has more stopping power. People never stop complaining about thieves. “Stealth is OP, learn to dodge noob”, new spec arises, “Stop evade spamming noob” despite the fact that if you take out stealth and evades, thief literally has no form of damage mitigation except blinds and some weapon sets don’t even have that, so yeah, I’m sure nerfing their core damage mitigating skills will take them out of the meta.