Guild Wars 2

Celestial offers more stat totals than any other set, however celestial isn’t a master in any specific category. It’s good for jack of all trades kind of builds but not every profession can do that.

This is for pvp atleast, but it shouldn’t be 1000 loss in stats more like 830 (643+643+922 =2208 VS 434×7=3038). I don’t know if you added the totals up O.o

Kyuubi.2640:

This is a L2P issue. Its high risk, hi reward, very skill based.

I’d agree on the first 2, but not the 3rd. It’s really not all that skillful to press 1-3 and the occasional gale + dragon’s tooth. It isn’t brain dead but its not skillful either.

D/D is the ol’ high risk high reward that envelops the thief archetype most people like it for. Many however get tired of requiring such a high risk to get anything done that they resort to easier (key word easier, not easy) builds like s/d and d/p.

D/D was not nerfed at all, it technically was buffed just in a way that doesn’t help it at all. If you’re rocking it right now I’d say don’t worry about what the people say, it isn’t changing this patch. Your death blossom and dancing dagger will still be as unreliable as it was before.

evilapprentice.6379:

NinjaEd.3946:

VA isn’t an issue, its the baseline of the venoms that really don’t have much going for them.

Yes, the baseline venoms are the problem.

Why haven’t baseline venoms been buffed?

VENOMOUS AURA.

You do understand that the issue is this – It’s extremely hard (probably approaching impossible) to design a Venom utility that is strong enough to be worth taking on it’s own WITHOUT it becoming ridiculously OP when you have the option of spreading that skill onto 5 other players/AI’s.

That is the heart of the issue – Anet cannot design venoms worth taking on their own when they have to be balanced with the possibility of that effect being applied 5 more times in mind.

It comes down to what those venoms do.

Take spider for example, is it op to share that X5 hits across 5 other people? Not really, poison doesn’t stack intensity and only stacks 9 times so you don’t get a whole lot for spreading it.

BV doesn’t stack period, it just resets and venoms are spent in an AoE fashion when applicable so you can just toss that out the door.

Ice drake venom lasts so short even with a group its like a little rubberbanding effect for the group and then its over. Disregarding VA, you cannot buff ice drake because we already have devouer venom. If you buff its effect to last longer than DV (4 seconds is quite a lot for chill) then its easily broken with a little condition duration. Ice drake doesn’t fit thief thematically and it conflicts with DV before even adding VA to the mix.

Skale venom lasts a few seconds, so does spreading that across a group help a lot? Yes, but how is it any different from epidemic? Have a bunch of people focus their conditions on target X and spread, sure its arguably too strong to some but its been with us for how long so it must be acceptably balanced if people are going to point fingers at VA before epidemic. Epidemic is actually much stronger because it spreads those conditions and stacks to enemies, VA helps skale venom get applied 3(4) x5 just for torment and vulnerability and that’s anywhere between 6 and 12 trait points so don’t tell me VA is the reason they can’t address this venom.

Skelk is just implemented wrong. Its a really strong burst heal almost like ether renewal and then its on a super long cooldown. They completely forgot that thief doesn’t have a very large health pool (lowest tier) so when you heal for over 100% of your max hp and are left with a 45(36) second cooldown you wonder whats the point. VA doesn’t make this any stronger than having classes like regen warrior or ranger or guardian or ele or engineer healing which is far more consistent and on a far more sturdy class who can take a hit at the frontline.

Lastly, devourer venom doesn’t need a buff. Whether its solo or in a group its a fairly strong skill that does its job well. So VA doesn’t matter in this venom’s case.

tl;dr

VA is not the reason for venoms to be unchanged, the lack of a thief sponsor at anet pushing for any actual changes towards thief is the problem. Have you seen our traps lately, or p/p, or the sept. balance changes? They just aren’t willing to help thief because either they don’t care, which I would hate to believe, or because they just don’t know how to handle it because there is no one giving proper feedback on the dev team in favor of thief diversity. The only time we’ve seen someone at anet play thief they were dead the majority of the video or they were giving tips that the thief community already knew like caltrops and choking gas proc’ing signet of malice.

Posting a link to a build won’t help you much good citizen, you’re better off looking up builds on streams and watching how they’re played. Even after that you can always tweak the build to your liking and the streamers will often give suggested tweaks for various playstyles.

I mean how do you even intend to play thief? There are many ways to come at it and there is no one build that has it all so its hard to just throw links at you and expect it to help. Do you want to play like a dirty brawler? Do you want to nuke people? Do you want to melt people? Do you want to distract people?

Asc armor is if you want to feel your best, but this game is more on skills/traits/decisions than your armor. Even if you had rare armor you could outplay someone depending on their build and skill level.

Ascended trinkets and weapons are fairly easy to make, armor is just a big waste imho. I don’t mind the miniscule stat increase but at least make em purty ; ;

LordByron.8369:

I perfectly agree.
It should get the same animation of a stealthed thief.

2/4 stealth attacks do have an animation, the other 2 are incredibly obvious and just require awareness of your surroundings.

If you get caught off guard from a stealth attack (didn’t see a thief enter the fray) well that’s kind of what thief is there to do. They don’t have any other options atm.

Simon.3794:

NinjaEd.3946:

Thief is far less forgiving even with such rules like not revealing when they haven’t dealt direct damage. Thief cannot make nearly as many mistakes as warrior, warrior’s need to not sulk in this “nerf” when all they had to do is just execute an F1 and win.

Actually thieves can make way more mistakes then warrior due to the fact that they can disengage whenever they feel like.

While a warrior, you pretty much go in, do your kitten or die while chased by enemy thief
unless if you are lucky that no one chased you.

Pretty sure mobility warrior can disengage a fight at will. Also if they disengage and run away while you regen to full for being ooc, did they really win?

Running away isn’t forgiving, taking heavy hits and cc and easily recovering from it while still maintaining your damage is forgiving. Being deceived from a stealth class is entirely to blame yourself for especially if you’re dying to “perma stealth” because of how bad those people play.

Sweetbread.4701:

NinjaEd.3946:

Sweetbread.4701:

It would be pretty nice if thieves actually got some form of counter play one of these days for just a single aspect of their class. No way to counter stealth beyond sic’ em or blind random aoe that only works on morons, no burden of skill on the thief to actually be able to land their own attacks in stealth, thieves ignore chill, thieves ignore interrupts, thieves ignore kiting with z axis teleports that don’t require LoS, thieves ignore kittening death with 800 escape tools. I get that there needs to be something for idiots and casuals to feel competitive with, but good god this kitten defies all logical reasoning.

Please link 6/6/6/6/6 build, I want it O.o

Somehow asking for just one thief mechanic to have some sort of actual counter play immediately translates to “lol 6/6/6/6/6 build”. Good to see the natural thief response to a list of things that lack counter play is hyperbole and misdirection without actually addressing anything brought up. Really shows the intelligence and thought put into these discussions by the people that desperately don’t want to lose their giant handicap.

More like the lack of experience against and with these discussions are severealy lacking and when people just look at things for their face value without any consideration of the class as a whole it puts a skewed view making any room for an honest discussion impossible. You shouldn’t just list off things that thief is capable of all at once and try sounding it off as some OP unicorn build, so again either link that 6/6/6/6/6 build or quit trying to paint thief under a heinous light.

Sweetbread.4701:

It would be pretty nice if thieves actually got some form of counter play one of these days for just a single aspect of their class. No way to counter stealth beyond sic’ em or blind random aoe that only works on morons, no burden of skill on the thief to actually be able to land their own attacks in stealth, thieves ignore chill, thieves ignore interrupts, thieves ignore kiting with z axis teleports that don’t require LoS, thieves ignore kittening death with 800 escape tools. I get that there needs to be something for idiots and casuals to feel competitive with, but good god this kitten defies all logical reasoning.

Please link 6/6/6/6/6 build, I want it O.o

Wasbunny.6531:

Necro changes in four words…

Hop on board! I do know that my necro build isn’t going to change for squat after the update.

Yeah engineers are really good, in any game mode. You just need to look how others play it in their respective game modes, fight against them, learn what they do and any tricks to their skills. It’s a very strong class atm when you get their rotations down, power or condition or bunker or support, or w/e you like.

ButterOfDeath.2873:

NinjaEd.3946:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

As much as I’d like to see the dmg bonus apply on stolen items, the trait is pretty good even without it. For me, it’s like something I don’t notice when it doesn’t proc and notice it when it saves me from certain death. And somehow I like the rng side of it too.

A thief enjoying an RNG factor in their build? Who are you?!!

Seriously, how can anyone enjoy the random effect this trait produces? Thief needs quick decisions to pull of their bursts and stay alive, having a 1 in 5 chance to recharge your skill(s) is just awful. There needs to be a purpose to this trait other than “ooh, piece of candy”.

Maybe instead of skill type recharged on steal it just recharged 1 utility skill that is currently on cooldown, meaning if you only had 1 on cooldown you could use it again to atleast give some decision making back in the thief’s hands. There’s your mix of rng and choice in one package.

I still think it would require a change to the “bundle damage” because why on earth did they give bundle damage to a class that has zero bundles. Spec for that ele to hopefully drop you a conjure? No, it shouldn’t be so ridiculous like back fighting. I don’t know any other trait so out of place where it literally has nothing to do with the profession. Give some bonus depending on the type of stolen item you hold onto like

-Defensive items (consume ecto, feathers, healing spring) give you 10% movement speed

-Offensive items (whirling axe, bone crack, rifle, throw X, etc) give you 5% bonus damage.

Naturally using the item removes the effect or not having an item means no effect.

Resetting one ability already on cooldown would be extremely overpowered.
Throw in a shadow refuge, steal, throw another one, repeat for perma stealth.
Plus that’d be preparation not improvisation.

Then again, add an ICD so that trickery spec’ed thieves cannot repeat this every 21 seconds. It ain’t hard to figure out how to balance low cooldowns. I’m well aware of the potential abuse an on demand reset button does, steal is a rather hard ability to counter on its own and giving them full control over utility cooldowns is a lot.

Also why are we still going off the definition of a trait as if logic applies in this game?
-Inspiring Battle Standard warrior trait: works on all banners, not just the elite.
-mug thief trait: where is my loot?
-furious retaliation thief trait: this is when you hit them below 50% not them hitting you, so where is the retaliation part coming from?
-hard to catch thief trait: doesn’t really make you hard to catch :/
-merciful ambush thief trait: has no relation to an ambush.

I could look for more if you’d like.

DeceiverX.8361:

I believe I misread your earlier post, but I still don’t see why buffing them would solve anything. For those in WvW, it could become a serious issue, and as I said, for many people who play WvW, their racial decisions are often influenced by their racial elites. Nothing screams OP, perhaps, but there are some skills which are strictly better than others and synergize incredibly well with some builds. Just going out and buffing these isn’t a solution either unless each race gets an equivalent version of each skill made available. Should something turn out to be a wee bit stronger than other elites, thus making the entire race in demand, we’ll now see party kicks by race and class and the WvW/GvG meta even stricter.

I don’t see it being much different from profession elites at that point. Everyone is going to have something that’s useful in a specific situation, you can’t expect everyone to get something like signet of rage. Now if a racial elite was universal and was decent then I’d say there is a problem but if they are tailored into less desirable encounters such as corner stacking in a dungeon (because you can’t be as mobile) then it does nothing to help in wvw which is already a terrible place of balance.

IF they didn’t do one patch every 5+ months I’d say tweak it to avoid imposing a stricter GWEN meta. They don’t have to throw in this giant overhaul and expect it to be gravy without proper player feedback, just look at how well that worked on Healing signet. The do little things here and there every month just to give them a little shine but in the back of their mind, always make sure it isn’t something that can turn out to be abusive rending other profession elites useless. I 100% agree to not make racial elites in any shape or form stronger than profession elites, but I do believe they need some attention to spice things up.

GVG fights have rules anyways so if this is a trouble that crosses over to wvw where a racial elite is now stitched into a group comp, both respective parties can say “we’re not using racial elites”. Most people acknowledge broken comps and will kindly not use them assuming they are mature enough.

Cygnus.6903:

NinjaEd.3946:

Thief is far less forgiving even with such rules like not revealing when they haven’t dealt direct damage. Thief cannot make nearly as many mistakes as warrior, warrior’s need to not sulk in this “nerf” when all they had to do is just execute an F1 and win.

Although I agree thief is less forgiving and revealing them for everytime a random Aegis or blind prevents the damage is a bad idea, those random Aegis and blinds also prevent the damage from the warrior burst.

I think the nerf is a step in the right direction, although I do think it is a slight overnerf.

I main a warrior, and I also play thief secondary (playtime is about 4-1 in favor of warrior). I never lose a duel against a warrior on my thief, while I lose plenty the other way around.

Warrior doesn’t just have burst though they have sustained damaged. Axe auto attack is very strong, greatsword can still hit mighty hard and you get the occasional whirlwing attack in for several thousand, hammer (for w/e reason) hits for several thousand and although it is rather slow you can’t honestly expect someone to evade everything especially if they are baited into a cc chain which is certainly not hard to accomplish.

I wouldn’t say BS is the only damage source on d/x but it is most definitely the largest portion whether it be HS + BS (d/p) or CND + BS (d/d), they cannot risk sitting around using nothing but aa, and they HS can only be used once before the enemy anticipates another and counters them hard. Shadow shot is the only one with some defense and damage built into it but still its only 1 attack it helps avoid and it can’t be spammed without making you completely vulnerable.

There is no reason to cause reveal when you havn’t dealt any direct damage. Stealth is both a defense and offense and depending on the build, essential for them to do anything. Stealth itself could use some tweaks but if this debate boils down to people just spamming their stealth attack until it hits then I ask those to read my above suggestion so both parties get a little slice of the pie. On a familiar note:

-sneak attack bullets appear despite being stealthed, there is that counter (evade just right, take 1-2 bullets, reveals them and trashes their dps).

-Tactical strike only blinds on the front attack while dealing next to pathetic damage. The daze ain’t nice but s/x doesn’t use stealth for anything but repositioning.

-SB is the same as sneak attack however it is only 1 shot. Unless they had used SR their stealth shouldn’t be all that long for you to either just kite away using LoS to obstruct their arrow or spot the arrow incoming. Some block channel skills will not break form unless you hit them with melee so this ranged portion just gets ignored also.

DeceiverX.8361:

I completely disagree with your statement.

Reaper of Grenth’s use is almost exclusively one for PvP. All of the norn elites provide massive assistance in PvP scenarios – stealth, hard CC, movement long-duration fury, might, and regen, and huge bonuses to health, Hounds and Warband allowing for hit-blocking and are recipients of support skills and effects, and Take Root’s incredible bleeding applications. Some WvW players explicitly run certain races for these abilities, especially the norn and sylvari ones.

Unless all races get the same effects, there’s no way to properly allow them in sPvP or even buff them further.

Where did I say put them into pvp?

I said buff them because they cannot be used in a competitive scene. Buff doesn’t mean give it a jet pack and missile launcher shoulder pads, it just means make them semi useful instead of turning yourself into a liability.

Also take root bleeding is pathetic and the seeds die quick, warband and Balthazar hounds die in split seconds, and 3/4 shapeshifts on norn are highly telegraphed and offer no real sustain since you disable your healing skill.

Lastly, how is a self stealth which isn’t actually a stealth (so no trait benefits) at all beneficial to pvp?

VA isn’t an issue, its the baseline of the venoms that really don’t have much going for them. BV with a cast time for a 1.5 second stun, DV is hard to buff because its a 4+ second immobilize already, ice drake just sucks and cannot be buffed either so it will remain as such, spider just adds more gravy to the mix of endless poison access (which only stacks duration), skale only lasts a few seconds for a very short uptime, skelk is easy to counter and has a horrible hps.

I agree venoms need a little too much investment just to make an appearance. Tone down that necessity by reworking the venoms and give a little attention towards the traits. For example,

-Spider venom’s only purpose is for on venom proc effects like leeching venoms. Increase the number of hits to say 8, reduce the poison duration to ~4 seconds, and lower the cooldown to 30 seconds.

-Skale venom is the only venom that gives something to a condition build. It should stand on its own but it should stay in check so that VA doesn’t overpower it. Increase the number of strikes to 4, increase the torment duration to 8 seconds, lower the vulnerability duration to 8 seconds, and lower the cooldown to 40 seconds. Reason is to give it a little punch if you spend it effectively without having to heavily invest into condi duration and venom recharge to give it an impressionable effect.

-Ice drake needs to just be removed. It cannot be increased in duration even without VA because of what chill does in high durations. Not only that, chill just seems out of place on thief despite what source a “venom” can be put under. Give some support so it doesn’t conflict with Devourer venom to a little thing I call Karka venom. Your next 3 attacks transfer a condition to your foe. Cooldown 45 seconds. This would be able to stand on its own for a non-venom build for the dirty fighter approach and give a nice support skill for VA.

- Devourer is pretty strong even on its own, traits just make it that much better. This is the only venom I think that VA holds back from receiving any buff because immobilization stacking is quite powerful. Still, I think its a great venom.

-Basilisk Venom is mainly used for its short cooldown effect and giving burst thieves that moment of opportunity they need to pull of some bursts. Really no reason to change it except I wish petrify acted differently from stun where it could be unblock able or ignore stability. Overall it’s still a good enough skill for any thief build.

-Skelk venom just doesn’t keep thief up. Thief isn’t the kind of class that takes a while to go from full to dead, a few mistakes or even 1 bad mistake and it hurts. So when you pop skelk venom and heal for 180% of your max health it just shows how unnecessary the heal per hit is. This venom I believe should get special attention to something with some sustain. Remove the flat heal at the start but keep the cast time. Increase the number of strikes from 4 to 15, and reduce the healing base from 645 to ~450. Lastly reduce the cooldown to 40 seconds. This gives a very stretched out healing especially with leeching venoms so that missing isn’t heavily punished. The actual healing total from this skill wouldn’t change much but it would be more dependable than healing to full in a split second and now you got X charges left with absolutely no gain. The hps does go slightly up because the cooldown reduction. Even without leeching venoms, this would still result in a fairly noticeable heal but for the most part fall into the same role as signet of malice where you have to specialize to use it best (number of hits for SoM, leeching venoms for skelk).

Jayden Ennok.3687:

As much as I’d like to see the dmg bonus apply on stolen items, the trait is pretty good even without it. For me, it’s like something I don’t notice when it doesn’t proc and notice it when it saves me from certain death. And somehow I like the rng side of it too.

A thief enjoying an RNG factor in their build? Who are you?!!

Seriously, how can anyone enjoy the random effect this trait produces? Thief needs quick decisions to pull of their bursts and stay alive, having a 1 in 5 chance to recharge your skill(s) is just awful. There needs to be a purpose to this trait other than “ooh, piece of candy”.

Maybe instead of skill type recharged on steal it just recharged 1 utility skill that is currently on cooldown, meaning if you only had 1 on cooldown you could use it again to atleast give some decision making back in the thief’s hands. There’s your mix of rng and choice in one package.

I still think it would require a change to the “bundle damage” because why on earth did they give bundle damage to a class that has zero bundles. Spec for that ele to hopefully drop you a conjure? No, it shouldn’t be so ridiculous like back fighting. I don’t know any other trait so out of place where it literally has nothing to do with the profession. Give some bonus depending on the type of stolen item you hold onto like

-Defensive items (consume ecto, feathers, healing spring) give you 10% movement speed

-Offensive items (whirling axe, bone crack, rifle, throw X, etc) give you 5% bonus damage.

Naturally using the item removes the effect or not having an item means no effect.

DeceiverX.8361:

NinjaEd.3946:

Muchacho.2390:

NinjaEd.3946:

They’ve add more healing skills in the past, its not impossible to add some elites. They should make racial elites stronger though, they serve no competitive use (N/A in pvp) so… how about I enjoy my wolf form?

The racial skiils were always intended to be weaker and are more just for fun skills.

And some are actually really good…

If they had some effect on legit pvp or even GvG (hardly acceptable atm) then I’d agree. But they do not, and they rarely see a place in pve aside from jokes. PVE dungeons I agree in not letting htem excel in any form but open pve, why can’t my Balthazar hounds live for more than 6 seconds? Why can’t my sylvan hound do something impressive aside from ignore conditions (which AI hardly ever use)? Why can’t my artillery barrage do something? Such wasted skill slots even in the game mode that is meant for fun.

I’ll give you a few reasons:
1.) Elite skills aren’t balanced relative to each other by race.
2.) Powerful racial elites will deadlock players into possibly playing certain professions for min-maxing.
3.) The new universal/human race overlay to allow enemy movement prediction would be rendered useless when your standardized enemy performs a non-standard action.
4.) In order to account for the RP’ing part of the RPG, every single race would need access to each of these skills, in which case why not just make more class elites or unify some of these class elites’ effects between classes?

I disagree with more passive gameplay options, but would like to possibly improve the suggestion: All professions should have access to an elite skill classified as one of each of their categories of utilities (signets/traps/clones/spirits/minions/spirit weapons/consecrations/physical/etc.).

There are hardly any racial skills that serve a pvp purpose though. Also there are racial elites that are easily out performed by a profession elite (artillery barrage vs mortar or rampage vs bear form). The point is make them less situational and more of a little boon. Take the asuran golem suit, right now if you get in it you literally lower your defenses despite it giving you almost 2k toughness and nearly 1k vitality because of the skills it has. Melandru support is weaker than a engi just pulling out elixir gun and will more than likely get you killed for entering it.

There are base lines to keep them in check, they don’t have to be stronger than any comparable profession elite, just let them be useful. Right now grenth and snow leopard are the only 2 I find useful, with snow leopard only being good to cover ground.

We already have a ton of might duration rune sets, some of which just look like a copy and paste suggesting the dev’s didn’t feel like taking the time to make them interesting.

Something new please!

How about a, dare I say, middle ground for those for and against this.

Increase the aftercast of backstab to 1 second. Additional effect, gain quickness for 1 second on successful backstab hit.

This punishes the thief for missing a backstab so they can’t so quickly try again, but reverses that punishment if they make contact so the aftercast is essentially ignored.

There is your example of a reasonable suggestion instead of just “give them reveal if they miss because stealth = adrenaline and Life force = adrenaline and pets = adrenaline, etc”. I remember some main warriors actively protesting against flat out comparing 1 mechanic to another and here we are, seeing a warrior doing just that with zero regard to the profession as a whole. Please be reasonable if you want something changed :/

ButterOfDeath.2873:

NinjaEd.3946:

Swap places with residual venom, (make improvisation GM), change it to guartuntee 1 utility skill type on cooldown will recharge (which would cross over to healing and elite skills.

Reason I say it should move up to GM is because its pretty kitten powerful getting a 2nd cast especially if you run all 1 skill type like deception or venoms. Residual venom is also pretty weak :/

Overpowered, that’d allow a full deception thief (aka: everybody nowdays) to reset all his/her cooldowns every 20 seconds.
That alone with shadow refuge is almost perma stealth.
Plus it’d not be improvisation anymore if you know what you’ll reset!

Simple fix, ICD 90 seconds. Also swap the % dmg bonus with bundle to something relating to the stolen item, like movement speed or that 5% while you have a stolen item. This way the 2nd part effects you the entire time and the OP skill recharge is not used so quickly.

Swap places with residual venom, (make improvisation GM), change it to guartuntee 1 utility skill type on cooldown will recharge (which would cross over to healing and elite skills.

Reason I say it should move up to GM is because its pretty kitten powerful getting a 2nd cast especially if you run all 1 skill type like deception or venoms. Residual venom is also pretty weak :/

Zefrost.3425:

Stealth needs to be changed to work exactly like the adrenaline change. It’s called balance, guys. Stealth is WAY more forgiving than adrenaline.

---

- Guardian activated aegis when you stealthed? Good, he counterplayed you. I’m sure you’ll just stealth again in 4 seconds again anyway while his aegis is on a 90s cooldown.

- Necromancer used well of darkness and you missed? He counterplayed you with a 50s cooldown. Your stealth is on a 4s cooldown.

- Thief spamming evades while you’re stealthed? Nice, you’re both overpowered.

- Warrior used his shield block while you stealthed? Cool, he’s actually playing the game. His block is now on a 25s cooldown while you can stealth again in 4s.

- Meditation guardian using multiple sources of block, blind and evades while you’re stealthed? He’s using cooldowns to randomly try to mitigate your overpowered skills with no telegraphs because you’re INVISIBLE.

---

If warriors could use burst skills while in invisible every 4 seconds and spam EVISCERATE EVISCERATE EVISCERATE EVISCERATE until it hits as well, the game would definitely reach esports status.

-On guardian, there are far better alternatives to hitting your virtue of courage to “counter” a thief in stealth.

-Revealed is 4 seconds, stealth is only guartuneed on builds like d/p which don’t require a target or long cooldowns like blinding powder or stealt traited (hidden thief), etc. Even so, on a necro vs d/p you could always DS→ fear them as they attempt to leap and ruin their day in those few seconds if backstab is an issue. That’s on any necro build.

-So you acknowledge invisible =/= invincible? Good to know I guess, but it sounds like you think thief should move at 90% reduced movement speed and lose all endurance when they enter stealth which just makes me giggle inside.

-Stealth lasts 3 seconds (on general applications), block lasts 3 seconds. Even so, you wouldn’t immediately throw up shield stance so you would have enough time to block and open them up. If you’re up against d/d and you can figure out how to use your shield then there is no hope for you.

-See first point. Pretty sure you don’t need a target for virtue of justice blind or blinding blade to apply its effects.

-The end of the line, eviscerate is a 10 second cooldown yes, but think about all the methods warrior can use to secure a strike. Crippling strike with axe throw, bolas, bulls charge, kick, shield bash, hammer #4 or #5, etc. With that, eviscerate stage 3 (incredibly easy to obtain) has a 3.0 multiplier and 1008 base damage while backstab has 2.4 multiplier and 806 base damage if it hits on the back or sides. Frontstab damage is actually weaker than a stage 1 eviscerate and is a reality forced upon many thieves who go up against players who have a clue.

Please L2p, don’t just make a bunch of profession and say you have experience with them without actually using them extensively. Only class I’ve struggeled with against thief is necro vs d/p steal spec because their blind and interrupts take advantage of me being rather slow, the rest just run away or come in groups which is the absolute worst place to use for an example of imbalance.

Thief is far less forgiving even with such rules like not revealing when they haven’t dealt direct damage. Thief cannot make nearly as many mistakes as warrior, warrior’s need to not sulk in this “nerf” when all they had to do is just execute an F1 and win.

Mesmer getting stuck in a rock with swap: $12.00
Thief using withdraw to their death: $20.00
Warrior complaining about someone else being OP: Priceless.

@ Chicago Jack

They need to do more frequent updates, period. Asking “top” pvp players helps I imagine, asking for a ptr to get some widespread feedback on actual testing from a multitude of players (who all vary in playstyle) helps. But the bottom line is they spend far too long tip toeing around this elephant in the room and its kittenin a lot of players off. People don’t necessarily want to see build x nerfed or buffed and call it a day, they want something refreshing. When you see the same builds over and over there can be many reasons but the main one is the best ratio of risk and reward.

I’m sick of seeing hambow, I’d honestly wish they just send isiaih to do his thing and remove it from play until they find a suitable approach to balancing it (which would never happen (: YEAH!) Instead they shave a small % off things every 5+ months and expect it to make any difference. For such a long wait you’d think there’d be same very long reach of balance changes to everything instead they touch a few things and wait. I just don’t enjoy being stuck in slow motion when dev’s are just throwing their potential down the toilet sitting around waiting for something to fall onto their laps.

I’d still say that anet has a far better approach than many games I’ve played in the past, but man do they still have a long ways to go to make any real impression. So many of my guildies already left because it just stayed stale for too long… and still is.

Muchacho.2390:

NinjaEd.3946:

They’ve add more healing skills in the past, its not impossible to add some elites. They should make racial elites stronger though, they serve no competitive use (N/A in pvp) so… how about I enjoy my wolf form?

The racial skiils were always intended to be weaker and are more just for fun skills.

And some are actually really good…

If they had some effect on legit pvp or even GvG (hardly acceptable atm) then I’d agree. But they do not, and they rarely see a place in pve aside from jokes. PVE dungeons I agree in not letting htem excel in any form but open pve, why can’t my Balthazar hounds live for more than 6 seconds? Why can’t my sylvan hound do something impressive aside from ignore conditions (which AI hardly ever use)? Why can’t my artillery barrage do something? Such wasted skill slots even in the game mode that is meant for fun.

They’ve add more healing skills in the past, its not impossible to add some elites. They should make racial elites stronger though, they serve no competitive use (N/A in pvp) so… how about I enjoy my wolf form?

Chicago Jack.5647:

This being said, there is a certain spec of thief that is really strong right now and no one would deny how strong it is in competitive play. Hopefully the changes coming down the pipe will help address the issues regarding it. However the thief class, as a whole, is not as unbelievably #hashtagop as many forum-goer’s think.

Some of those things that make thief “really” strong don’t have a thing to do with thief however. The fact that crit damage got nerfed with ferocity so to some degree, they made the wise decision and buffed zerker amulet, however all that did is make dps trait lines less important. To top it off, in that same patch all sigils had their own ICD which resulted in fire/air combo which many builds utilize to give them burst they would otherwise be lacking.

The fact that thief is highly offensive and hardly has acceptable build diversity (same traits chosen in various trait lines, not a whole lot of options) leads to these “strong” builds being overused and stale. I’ve made some semi-fun builds that both in practice and on paper looked kitten but in the end, it just goes back to the things that work with the highest pay. It’s really boring and from the looks of it I am not gana enjoy my thief much more this feature pack.

I hate seeing misleading nerf requests, and that’s about the vast majority of these forum posts. What I hate even more is when they get what they cry for.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Even as a Warrior main, it has often bothered me how I can have multiple stances activated at once. In GW1 you could only have 1 active Stance at a time, which makes sense. Right now, Stances don’t feel like Stances, they feel like Signets with no passive. Of course, you can’t just have Stances override each other with no change to their active, it would make them far too weak. So here are some ideas I have:

• Endure Pain and Berserker Stance get longer durations. Rather than being flat immunity to one type of damage, have them be a certain % reduction. It should be fairly high in the 75-80% since you can longer activate both at the same time. I main War but I play other classes enough to know how annoying it is to have a build focused on dealing one type of damage and to be unable to do anything for a duration of the stance. Having it be a reduction means that while you aren’t doing a lot of damage to them, you’re at least doing something.

• Frenzy needs the damage taken increase to be lowered more for it to ever be seen as viable. With the buff to Brawler’s Recovery you MIGHT be able to have a build that doesn’t need Berserker Stance but as it currently is I don’t see it getting a ton of use in this upcoming patch.

• Alternatively, the CDs of Stances get a reduction to make up for the new restriction. It’s a more simple change and one I find much less interesting but probably much easier to implement.

• Balanced Stance is going to need to be an actual stance that gives the same effect as Stability. The potential problem from this is that Dolyak Signet might become the obvious choice. The CD might need a slight reduction to make it still look attractive.

• The Defy Pain and Last Stand traits would need to be changed. You don’t want a Stance being overwritten when you need it most. Last Stand could be swapped to Dolyak Signet with maybe a 5 second shorted ICD to make up for the lack of Swiftness. Or you simply have it give the Swiftness for free. I always disliked traits like Defy Pain but in keeping with the theme perhaps it could have a damage reduction vs physical damage bellow 25% health, similar to Automated Response (which got overnerfed btw).

• It would be nice to see your characters actual fighting stance change when using different stances. It gives a more obvious visual cue so you wouldn’t have to keep an eye on their health bar (something the Devs have said they want to minimize as much as possible). Some examples would be Balanced Stance being your typical L-shaped Karate stance, Berserker would be sort of hunched forward like some sort of wild animal, Endure Pain some form of macho horse-riding stance, and Frenzy as a slightly bouncing boxing stance. I know this would probably never happen because there’s multiple races so adding all those animations would be work intensive but it wold really go a long way in making it feel like your character just changed their fighting style and didn’t just get a glowy aura.

• I almost forgot about Defiant Stance…honestly it would need to be buffed before I even worry about it. I don’t like the idea of a stance with a cast time, especially when it’s so circumstantial as it is. There’s currently a little bit of synergy with Frenzy atm but it’s still not good and the new system would invalidate it. To even make it viable it needs to be instant cast so you can use it while being spiked and probably even need a longer duration to justify that CD.

1. Can’t agree with a longer duration. Maybe a shorter cooldown as compensation but 75-80% is still a lot and it also harms their use on less defensive builds that use the stance to cover a weakness. I like letting some damage get through as an idea but no to a longer duration.

2. Frenzy is only for some 2 skills, whirling axes and 100b. Really all quickness utility skills are under used because of their downside effect and the effect quickness towards defenses on its own (shorter leap distance, shorter evade frame, etc).

3. again, prefer this over a longer duration. NOT BOTH HOWEVER. O.o

4. Balanced stance is highly used and is a great stance even if it isn’t a true “stance”. A 40 sec cooldown with 8seconds of stability(and swiftness), some people seem to undervalue stability but it is a very strong boon to have.

5. Swiftnesss almost has no purpose towards last stand (balanced stance), really no reason to touch the ICD for a free break stun. Nerf to passive immunities should be enforced, even if the ICD is “long”.

6. could be cool, although I’d hate to see my char slouched over even more.

7. Definitily could use a buff since it is highly telegraphed (bright blue, your numbers turn green, etc). It just needs a slight duration increase, its potential heal is phenomenal its just so easy to ignore.

Wolfield.9812:

Prefer 2 thieves to 2 of any other class on me.

Yeah really, 2 condi engi or Mesmer just pour rain on my day if they’re coordinating in some form of voip.

Lithril Ashwalker.6230:

NinjaEd.3946:

Why are we still pretending venoms are meant for a condition build?

why are you not contributing to the post by staying on topic of possible bugs, not what they are meant for.

Because its not something any other profession avoids if they want to rack up might to throw a bunch of conditions. Also using poison as a reference for “crappy damage” just implies you believe venoms to be meant for a condi build when they are not. Poison even on condi builds is meant to cover up and reduce healing, not tick hard. The only damaging condition is torment from skale but for how short the effect lasts your might should more than let it do its thing and give you some extra might afterwards for w/e you may want.

Long story short, this will have no effect. Just one of the many reasons a lot of thief players are upset about this upcoming patch, nothing really changed us.

You can’t just throw things onto venoms and say “here are thou holy grail”, venoms aren’t meant for condition builds and their meant to be played as a somewhat invested build and not an extra utility. Unless they plan to add more skills (prolly 2016) they are meant for utility atm.

Also ice drake doesn’t make sense stun breaking, it makes more sense to scrap this venom because it conflicts with devourer venom and is impossible to balance. There is no way to buff ice drake without making it OP because of how quickly condi duration + venomous aura would make it, and it sucks as it is now. Best they try something new for it.

There have been a number of great suggestions on venoms, but I don’t agree with these to the slightest.

I’d much prefer they scrap traps for something else. I enjoy (the current) ambush and shadow trap’s idea, but the other 2 just seem out of place for a thief. The fact that ambush is a trap also kinda ruins it for me.

When I’m playing thief, I rather not wait around for things to happen. I rather play the go-getter and be as reactive as possible in a fight.

1. is meant to be used with some stategy. If you just shot it at their current location they could move a couple yards and boom it missed. If you are contesting a point in pvp and want to choking gas + cluster bomb (aoe weakness) you can do so on that point which most people will try to avoid. In other words, you can dictate their moves or punish them for soaking it up.

1. is the same, it isn’t meant to be some long lasting meltdown, its a small cast poison field. The only reason for it is to combo for aoe weakness, reduce healing on groups, and proc signet of malice.

1. is almost the core of our sb, giving us high mobility especially on high terrain. I can’t understand why anyone would want that removed without having played thief…

All in all, nty.

There are multiple things the changes to rapid fire bring. For instance, 1 dodge now evades more shots (evade frame the same, shot frequency increased). Additionally due to a much shorter channel time reflects can start affecting you at the point of no return meaning you have to be more careful in using it against certain targets. Lastly, you can start scaring the kitten out of people with your tommy gun.

Why are we still pretending venoms are meant for a condition build?

style.6173:

The winners:
Ranger, Engi, and Guardian

The losers:
Thief

Everyone else is in the middle.

Why must the truth hurt so much!

I’d put Mesmer at the top over guardian tbh, they got a lot of nice bug fixes (could be more that hasn’t been posted yet) along with some moderate attention to their traits. I don’t agree with all of it but they did get some good attention in comparison to “everyone else” and thief.

In groups, yes retaliation can hurt A LOT. In smaller groups, retaliation cannot be strong because of the access some classes have to it. The potentially high uptime on it having it stack duration simply will never allow retaliation to be a threat in smaller fights. Most applications of retaliation are AoE anyways indicating where it is meant to be used.

Like most of them, some however are relating to lost causes such as last refuge and anything trap related. They just don’t work and cannot work with how both the class kit acts as well as how revealed mechanics work. Otherwise, I liked the read.

I’m sure for the traits you suggested to proc on reveal rather than stealth would be reworked to compensate for the much shorter duration? Especially shadow’s embrace?

Prince.7198:

Kontrolle.3514:

From a WvW perspective

Rangers, the changes are just plain op.
necro, stability stomp every 7 seconds … sure
mesmers, enough said already
guardians, thats alot of hard buffs.
thiefs, because they remain pure cheese
ele, useless except that glyph changes
engineers, mostly useless changes except that awesome 2 s cripple on TK…
Warriors, the only real nerfs in this update

Betting 2000 gold this guy has never played thief!

I don’t have that money anymore, they bugged my steal ; ;

nicknamenick.2437:

————————————————————————
Guardian: Elusive power = 10% more damage when endurance issnt full
Warrior: Stick and Move = 3% more damage when endurance issnt full
THEY ARE BOTH minor grandmaster!!
————————————————————————
Fiery Wrath = 10% more dmg on burning targets.
Why issnt this 7%? because its a major Adept trait.. or even 5% because most of those major adept traits are often only 5%
————————————————————————
And i aint gonna compare all weapon dmg skills, but most of them have the highest dmg coefficient also.
————————————————————————
This is what i prefer:
-Nerf 20% dmg from leap of fait.
Its a low cooldown LEAP with blind.. it doesnt need that high dmg.
-Nerf those traits above
-Nerf 5% dmg from whirling wrath
(yeah even 100b got 5% dmg nerf)
-Nerf 20% dmg from shield of wrath
(this does INSANE burst when its already terrible good)
Thank you

1. Its a gm trait in a non-power trait line. Look at the stats it gives, vitality and healing power. Stick and move is in a power trait line, not to mention the fact that warrior’s have very high power coeficients already.

2. Burn isn’t that high of an uptime. Although it could be toned down since in team fights it will be on often in some cases, it’s still not as reliable as dmg against bleeding target or target with A condition like some traits. Its like the trait with 20% damage increase while you have aegis, it looks nice until you realize how often you actually get that benefit.

3. Ehh, not really. Some yes and some no, but warrior has far higher power coefficients on their spike skills. Even if some of them on their own are easily telegraphed, warrior can combo them extremely well in multiple ways to get them off.

4. None of those are needed nerfs. The real culprit are double proc sigils (air/fire) mixed with semi-burst builds. Also are you honestly going to complain about shield of wrath burst? You realize how difficult it is to even have that fire off right and it has a LONG cooldown.

If you want to level thief, get used to the limited role mentality. You are more than welcome to try things out but in the end you’re going to realize there isn’t a whole lot to choose from on a thief. If you enjoy those builds, then I say go for it and play the game to your liking. If you want real diversity I’d pick another profession.

Agree on F1 change, but they should do away with swap pet as an F button and give total control over all 3 of their skills. Additionally they need some function to direct the pet like in some games where you hold a key and use your mouse to then select where you pet goes in the event you forsee some nasty AoE incoming.

I don’t think they need to evade, it’s just about actually commanding them instead of letting some half kitten AI program do the majority and fail miserably.

Also flying pets (and enemies) need to ignore terrain, gliding up the xyz axis is already in play since we have water combat, why do bird pets need to go around edges to reach a target? Is it really any different from a pet or mob chasing you in water when you go up and down and around?

kill shot, because its hilarious baiting people into it.

Carighan.6758:

Sarrs.4831:

I think chill might be overcosted across the board. I mean, look at Ice Drake Venom.

Chill suffers the same issue in general as confusion does for Mesmers specifically. It’s not as strong as the effects would have you believe.

Depends on the game mode, in wvw thanks to lovely 40% condi food 2x engi can easily stack 15+ stacks of confusion on you which basically means for the next few seconds do not use skills or it will hurt (1-2k I was experiencing, could of been more maybe on a different set up).

Then it draws back to food wars 2 however, just get – incoming condi duration food. Amazing balance ain’kitten

Sykper.6583:

NinjaEd.3946:

Sykper.6583:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Warriors will still be much more popular then guardians for reasons

1: They have higher burst potential

2: They can bunker just as well if not better in some situations, they also do so without loosing nearly as much damage potential due to having double the starting health pool
(guardians may have protection but given the god awefull cool downs for abilities that apply it & how slow the hammer auto chain is it just is to easy to counter.)

3: they have more build options that are viable at higher levels of play

4: Warriors have a great deal more crowd control, snares, cripples, stuns, dazes etc…

So in the end all the guardian really excels at is condition removal & being tanky as long as the long CD abilities last (assuming they are not immediately converted to conditions or stripped or stolen.)

Ehhh, I agree on everything but your second point. Warriors cannot really…‘bunker’ to the extent that Guardians can, I can think of only one or two builds a Warrior can run to ‘play at bunker’, but those are really only solid on points. As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

But, that is not to dismiss the other three points, Warriors will still reign supreme in popularity.

Have you played with rousing resilience with a regen warrior?

I can’t link the build atm but it has endless condi removal with something like 4.5k armor 20+k health and a lot of blocks/evades. Their group regen is incredibly strong.

I will be trying to mess around with Rousing after the balance patch when it gets buffed, but I am going to state that I believe Defy Pain is a better option since Endure pain negates raw damage while higher toughness simply lowers it. Rousing might be better once it doubles after the patch.

Endless condi-removal, absurdly high toughness, blocks and evades (20k+ health is innate in almost every warrior build) and group regen? You are likely talking about a banner warrior (the only source of the Regen Boon) alongside ‘Shake It Off’ Skill and ‘Cleansing Ire’ trait. That particular build, of which I can very like guess, involves catering 12 points into Defense and Tactics to achieve. For those less-informed, those are trees without offense capabilities.

Actually the build doesn’t use cleansing ire, or soldier runes. I’d love to post it but the build site seems to of exploded because it don’t work no more (and it was great for pvp build templates). Would love a link to something like gw2skills.net/editor if anyone has one.

In a group it can actually be adjusted to dish out heavy spikes if need be. I have 0/0/30/30/10 and if I want a little offense put on might defenses. I stick to mace/shield and rack up some might, especially if there is a mosh pit at mid, swap to sword/wh which has int sigil. I immediately savage leap to a target or if they’re in range flurry 1 time, move to interrupt any additional hits (first 1 immobilizes before it even hits somehow) and final thrust them. If they have the sustain I won’t even go after them but in a team fight I can stay on point, not go down without a hell of a lot of focus fire, and dish out 5-7k spikes at people depending on their toughness while pumping out heavy healing and condi conversion.

Having heavy armor, cleric amult, toughness from trait line and rousing resilance+3 stun breakers its good against power and will be even more powerful with the duration buff to RR. With wh conversion (and the #4 actually removing conditions) with vigor and purity sigils with water runes and shake it off I just brush them off or evade them or better yet regen through it. It’s fun to play if you have people with you, but 1v1 its just sit still and do nothing.

Sykper.6583:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Warriors will still be much more popular then guardians for reasons

1: They have higher burst potential

2: They can bunker just as well if not better in some situations, they also do so without loosing nearly as much damage potential due to having double the starting health pool
(guardians may have protection but given the god awefull cool downs for abilities that apply it & how slow the hammer auto chain is it just is to easy to counter.)

3: they have more build options that are viable at higher levels of play

4: Warriors have a great deal more crowd control, snares, cripples, stuns, dazes etc…

So in the end all the guardian really excels at is condition removal & being tanky as long as the long CD abilities last (assuming they are not immediately converted to conditions or stripped or stolen.)

Ehhh, I agree on everything but your second point. Warriors cannot really…‘bunker’ to the extent that Guardians can, I can think of only one or two builds a Warrior can run to ‘play at bunker’, but those are really only solid on points. As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

But, that is not to dismiss the other three points, Warriors will still reign supreme in popularity.

Have you played with rousing resilience with a regen warrior?

I can’t link the build atm but it has endless condi removal with something like 4.5k armor 20+k health and a lot of blocks/evades. Their group regen is incredibly strong.

Momekic.8603:

NinjaEd.3946:

1) Ranger (many great things)
2) Engineer (great focus on builds other than condi, loved it mostly)
3) Mesmer (major QoL on some phantasms, condi buff for idk what reason)
4) Warrior (stronger attention on new GM traits, well deserved nerf to adrenaline)
5) guardian (nice things, that meditation renewed focus and stability on tomes epic)
6) Elementalist (didn’t really see a whole lot, but some nice control on elementals and nice glyph buff)
7) Necromancer (awesome approach to lich form, nice DS change. Not much else.)
8) Thief (buffs but in the wrong areas, questionable nerfs but nothing really bad.)

^
another vote for this as the way it turned out.

If you look closely, it’s almost as if the order of Ready up episodes directly placed themselves in that list with the exception of thief and ele O.o