Guild Wars 2

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.)

Conquest is fine, its the map and rule sets in conquest that are at fault (although I believe profession balance to be the “culprit”.

1. 5 points on kill, it adds up quick on certain maps where side objectives don’t really help your points.

2. Small maps, makes for easy mobility and allows for “zerging”.

In the end, why not zerg? You get 5x X points, you are entirely less likely to die and you when you win you can drop 1 guy to cap the point and send 4 people to another. In the meantime the other team has to wait on a spawn time so for a short window you have the easily distinguished upper hand. Better yet, I’ve seen most drop 1 extremely heavy bunker (guardian usually) and send 4 people to bounce between points dominating. Counter? Do the same thing…. Result? zzzzzz

Remove points on kill and make larger maps. Give a reason to split up so that traditional roles prior to this non sense can go back to a regular appearance. Right now the “roamer” is just sitting on the backline waiting to pick anyone off who happens to be running away, few matches I see them actually back capping or taking side objectives like the enemy lord or beasts (svanir, chieftan).

This is from watching tourny’s and playing tpvp. Hotjoin has its own share of problems.

BrunoBRS.5178:

alchemyst.2165:

Delete last refuge, replace it with Assassin’s Equilibrium.

that sad moment when your GM trait is so bad it wouldn’t be broken to have it as an adept minor.

What? You crazy, AE be too stronk, it needs to be 1 tier higher. Spammable stability needs nerfing!

Seriously though, who designed this trait, and who honestly thought it needed to be put in the acrobatics trait line?

Maugetarr.6823:

NinjaEd.3946:

NinjaEd’s ideas

I like the change to ambush

I’m not crazy about the shadow ward. Not because of the reveal, but because I think it will run into the same niche play that the current shadow trap has (i.e. not really used)

Mark of the Blade is cool, but it could use a shorter distance and a longer rollover time I think. Maybe 30s CD, 15 sec rollover, 900 range, without the damage though. Perhaps just a shorter CD (25s) for that rollover time if everything else is unchanged. Great framework for working with though.

Forgiven Greed would be pretty awesome for a S/D trickery build. Decent team support with a decent tradeoff.

Traits are good.

By rollover you mean the mark counting down along with the cooldown by extending the mark duration to 15 seconds?

Thank you for the feedback^^

I made this post only with the intention of asking for diversity, but I guess changes towards are least favorable toys fit into it. I know there are a lot of smart thief minds out there who know what a skill should do and understand how somethings have a ripple effect in regards to balance, only hope that we can bump heads and give anet a reason to listen.

Are you using a mug->backstab combo? I believe mug would interfere with your backstab causing it to reveal you and therefore lose your 100% crit backstab. That’s just a guess, I don’t know what else could be the issue.

Against my intentions,

traps should be scraped for something I’d like to call Dark arts.

The theme of dark arts is offensive magic, an evil twin of deception skills as they focus on offense. There will be some overlap between the 2 in how they feel but their use will be clear as day.

[Skills]

Ambush: Call upon a shadow ally to assist you in combat. This skill can only be activated while in stealth.
-Call upon 1 of 3 allies: p/p with smoke field drop and withdraw; d/d with scorpion wire and deathblossom; or a shortbow thief who uses disabling shot and cluster bomb.
-Smoke field drop, scorpion wire, and cluster bomb are all actives as a second button for ambush. They only have 1 cast so you have to time either a pull, a smoke field, or a blast finisher. Meant to give more control and less chances of being predictable.
-p/p thief will only use withdraw if it takes more than 20% of its health in a single hit. (max 1 use)
-d/d thief will on occasion use death blossom.
-increase thief ally health to ~7k.
-Increase ally duration to 30 seconds.
-Summoned ally will spawn near you and attack the nearest target.
-cooldown remains at 35 seconds.
-Thief summons are now a black fog human silhouette.

Shadow Ward: Summon a warding which causes reveal to enemies. -> Shadowstep to your void and gain stealth.
-no cast time but does NOT break stun.
-void duration 150 seconds.
-Stealth duration 5 seconds.
-shadow step max distance 10,000 units.
-Void pulse frequency once every 5 seconds.
-Reveal duration 5 seconds.
-you can only shadowstep to the void if an enemy is affected by reveal the void caused.
-Shadowstepping to your void destroys it and puts it on cooldown.
-Cooldown 60 seconds (doesn’t start until it expires or you shadowstep to it).
-warding animation is a faint black symbol on the ground.
-warding radius 600 units.
-Max number of targets 3.

Mark of the Blade: Mark your foe with a quick jab.-> Teleport to this target to gain might and fury.
-Might 10 stacks for 5 seconds.
-fury for 5 seconds.
-time frame to teleport on successful jab 10 seconds.
-jab causes light damage per second for 10 seconds. Damage is similar to binding blades.
-Break stun on the teleport.
-Jab requires contact to switch over to the teleport. Missing the jab will put it on a full cooldown.
-Cooldown 40 seconds.
-Jab range 130.
-Teleport range 1,500 units.

Forgiven Greed: Remove all of your boons and grant them to nearby allies. Gain health for each boon given.
-Number of targets 4.
-Range 450 units.
-Health gain per unique boon 110 + (0.04x healing power) (might stacks only give 1 application of this).
-Cast time 1 second.
-Cooldown 25 seconds.

[Traits]
-Corrosive traps->Ritual markings: Drop a dark field when you activate a dark art. Field radius 240. Field duration 4 seconds. This field applies 2 vulnerability every second to up to 3 targets while active.
-Master Trapper->Shroud Master: Reduce the cooldown of dark arts by 20%.

Ambush now flows with an actual ambush, should be more reliable since their major skill would be on command vs at the start, and should do a little better of sticking around.

Shadow trap was split because it seemed like one jumbled mess. I wanted to retain the idea of back porting in pvp objectives and give the offensive measures its own place. The reveal would have a small place in pve for the few mobs that use stealth but generally work best in pvp and wvw.

Mark of the blade is meant to be the 2nd half of shadow trap, but work on less stealth and more on setting yourself up to snipe someone. You could jab a backline squishy, go in the fray dealing some damage and in the blink of an eye be back on your target ever so threatening with 10 might and fury. If you miss the jab however you get nothing for some time, and the teleport isn’t forever.

Forgiven Greed is meant for boon heavy spec’s such as s/d and trickery. The heal can be fired off rather quick but it only activates per unique boon so stacking up might to disperse it won’t do much. You need a variety, and close by allies for this to get you somewhere. Additionally the cast time and small radius makes it less reliable to fire off. With heavy healing power and a strong boon source you can truly play a form of defensive support which depends on an aggressive offense.

Thoughts?

Raiyo.1584:

phirefox.2568:

Just one thing about Torment on Scepter AA…

#revertScepterChanges2014

why do u complain about scepter change. its actually a good change , we mesmers finally get some buffs that were needed . scepter was useless before , such low damage , we needed to compensate it .

so much qqing about nothing actually .. we mesmers were bottom tier , gettign wrecked by almost everything . u think thats fun for us mesmer ? it sure isnt

Another case of a Mesmer pretending they are worthless. Stop playing Mesmer if that’s honestly how you view it. You’re doing things wrong if you believe Mesmer to be as terrible as you say.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

lvis.3824:

Thief changes are good?
From what Pov?

Just check all the profession subforums and you will get an idea about how feels great and who doesn’t .

Dagger did not need cleave, its a singletarget DPS weapon, nn for cleave .

And the poison changes are so crappy, you’ll have to spend all your traitpoints to make them usefull – great …. Not one traitline, no TWO !
Tell me of any profession that needs to do that ?

Dude, Venoms were like that before. The only change is that now you get a bit more reward out of that same investment that you already had to make.

Venoms before suggested changes: 2/10
Venoms after suggested changes: 2.1/10

Venomous aura using your own stats doesn’t change much, venoms are a majority control conditions. Only ONE venom has anything to do with a could be condition build.

Turamarth.3248:

They already nerfed healing signet, hammer damage as well as the damage and radius of combustion shot.
They are going to nerf burst skills.

Ha, nerfed healing signet. Still the most commonly used healing skill. Has a little to do with alternative options and a lot to do with the fact that it never has to be pressed.

Also hammer damage isn’t the issue as much as putting it together with 15+ self might stacks and int sigil. Self might stacking is broken on many professions, it gives them the option to just use might for their damage instead of gearing/traiting for it which puts heavy damage on builds that really shouldn’t be having it.

Hammer damage is ok, what you’re seeing is 15+ stacks of might and constant fury with int sigils.

Maugetarr.6823:

Yeah, I guess those could be considered passive. The idea was to give thief coubterplayable control, designed to push the other player into a corner. I get your point though. At least we can agree that traps are underwhelming at best right now.

Indeed they do, and the traits don’t even do much. I feel like traps along with many traits for thief were part of the list of things the dev’s rushed for release just to fill the void. Still curious as to what they were thinking by making downed damage increase traits, do they honestly want people to trait for being downed?

coglin.1867:

A. They never did a “nerf”. We all now they fixed a bug, and it makes perfect sense to be required to have a a close to swap with.

B. The fact that the clone could be killed so easily was indeed problematic.

C. Comical that the first 2 post are thieves complaining that another profession has a skill they feel isn’t strongly telegraphed enough. What telegraph do we see from stealth ed thieves?

D. With rush, bull charge, swoop, leap of faith, and other gap closers, it makes sense that a melee weapon for the mesmer exist.

E. The immobilization is over powered at the end considering the fact that it open one up to entirely too much burst with one single condition.

A. No argument there, need something there to swap to for it to make sense.

B. Yes it was, but the pathing was a majority of the issue tied to the occasional wall teleport.

C. You have stealth too, tell me what is telegraphed about your stealth combos? Don’t look at similar skills so plainly, there is more to ileap→ swap and the Mesmer in general for it being telegraphed.

D. Don’t really see where this applies except wvw where you get the occasional critter to target. Even then its only a 600 range cast. For pvp, a fleeing target is a victory for you since there are no points for narrow escapes.

E. And that is why I find it unfair if they go ahead with the skill bar changes. Its a 2 second base AoE immobilize, swap is a stun breaker (funny how Mesmer retained their #2 stun breaker on sword and thief’s was removed and given a cast time).

What they should do is for the sake of a band aid, keep the clone porting near the target but give it some distance and disable swap unless the clone has hit a target. That way you can spot the finger being pointed at you and expect an incoming leaping clone to dodge it, and therefore avoid a rather nasty burst which comes out on a rather short cooldown.

+1

Traps working more as a prerequisite debuff would be unique, but it falls into the line of passive play if you compare it to a lot of the current mechanics in this game.

What do you do with 10+ stacks of confusion? Avoid using skills for that time.
What do you do against zerker stance on a condi build? Run or kite for your life.
What do you do against SR or a group which recently entered mass invis? Run and wait it out.

With those suggested changes it would just add to the list.

What do you do against trip wire? Don’t dodge roll without stability.
What do you do against needle trap? Not that strong but the idea is “don’t heal for the next 15 seconds”.
etc.

Thief should be all about quick execution which a lot of skills fit into that. Traps should change to something that falls more in line with what thief builds do, act on the fly. It’s high risk high reward and then g2g which is what drew me to thief from the start, I’d hate to change it up to a build that sits around and waits for things to happen (I strongly dislike “perma” stealth). Ambush and shadow trap are nice but they can easily be turned into something different with 2 new skills and give us some new toys to enjoy. Venoms could use a rework to better fit a support skill type (both offensive and defensive depending on the venom and traits), deception works great for self or group defense, signets are mostly great, and tricks are kind of unique but some feel underwhelming. Traps just flat out suck :/

BrunoBRS.5178:

nickxnickx.5401:

BrunoBRS.5178:

i wouldn’t say throw traps away entirely, but thief has a lot of utilities and traits in dire need of an overhaul.

I would…

Rangers have traps. Give thief something else.

and warriors and guardians both have shouts.

thief traps already cover a vastly different role from ranger traps. the problem is thief traps are clunky and kinda crappy, especially when you consider that we can’t really survive without bringing certain key utilities simply because we were designed to be super squishy and evasive, and it just so happens that we need those utilities to be like that.

The problem is traps are something you set up and wait on, now thief is all about mobility and focusing a target. Traps don’t fit into any variant of that. Both from the actual trap effects and a generic trap, it just doesn’t fit into the thief kit. There is no purpose of them being there, and that is a wasted utility and traits.

I won’t suggest a replacement as I do enough suggestions, but the fact that they ignore these traps functionality means they either don’t know what to do with them (start from scatch please) or think they are fine (which is heart breaking).

This patch could of opened some doors so that builds stop looking like small variants but nothing really changed. Where is the anet sponsor for thief?

-traps are aweful both in practice and in theme for thief. Give us something different entirely.

-Many traits don’t help which is odd. I can understand a trait being underwhelming but when it has the potential to hurt you it needs rethinking.

-poor stun breaking options.

-lack of real build diversity due to weak traits and utility skills. Multiple weapon skills underperform and stay kitten because they can be “spammed”.

Are there any doors opening up this year for thief or should I show myself out and change my main? I’ve sulked in these nerfs and “buffs” and really have seen nothing new or inviting to thief. Its fun, but stale as kitten and I’m just losing interest in this class and game.

-

Linnael.1069:

Supply drop and thieves guild are two of the best elites in the game. Try to be considerate to others and not post on this forum if you’re just going to mislead people.

Thieves guild? You mean the highly predictable AI that dies in seconds and has a 180 second cooldown? The best thing they do is scare in a 1v1. Try not to mislead people into such lies.

zaxon.6819:

counter play to imob is condi cleanse.. its a condition

Yes, except its 2 seconds (base) which covers the entire duration of blurred frenzy which is a very threatening skill.

The fact that the clone just appears now with a split second delay for the swap just means a free pass to blurred frenzy now. Really nothing to counter against this except retaliation or teleports or massive condition removal because I highly doubt immobilze will be the only condition you are suffering from.

Blinding blade/infiltrator’s strike/judges intervention don’t stun break, or fit into a perfect combo like rooting your foe for a heavy cleave. Infi strike → pw immobilize combo doesn’t hit as reliably (immobilize wears off quick unless you invest into it) nor does it guarantee a full hitting channel because the stun is only 33% of the channel vs 100%. Please try again.

(P.S. retaliation effects pistol whip too so quit the Q.Q against “downing yourself”. Quit pretending your the special child that only gets nerfs, its pathetic.)

Necro your own insanity, nice.

You need to stop crying wolf, anet doesn’t need anymore distractions from their 6 month balance patches.

BobbyT.7192:

I rather scrap it too, your idea, my idea, any idea really, not really picky when it comes to changing this trait

Might as well create a void in that case, just have X in acrobatics do nothing.

warriorjrd.8695:

NinjaEd.3946:

I don’t see this patch making ranger op, since the pet still is going to drag us down. It helps a lot by making power ranger viable. Yes viable, just not optimal or best in slot for group comp.

The pet only drags us down in certain scenarios, in others the pet is invaluable. Obviously if you’re zerging and it’s impossible for your pet to dodge all the AOE, it will slow you down. But roaming, or small scare 5v5 etc, the pet is far from a liability.

The damage and boons/conditions it applies is nowhere near as impactful as others have it, even if they have some decent F2 ability. In pve the pet messes up and dies from environmental hazards more than anything, in wvw its either a liability or background noise, and in pvp its still either a liability or background noise. Half the time the pet will chase the enemy and miss because the simplest of terrain can throw them off.

Atleast with the suggested changes ranger is getting, power builds can be a force in a fight sniping people for focus fire or help their pet better with the might on axe auto attack + fortifying bond and companions might (easy 25 stacks) for a high damaging pet. Still a majority of the pet mechanic is going to anchor ranger down from really going anywhere.

I’d rather they scrap the current idea. You can’t control the direction you are ported, it does nothing to deal with the actual cc, and still proc’s even if you have stability.

To stay with the theme of the trait and trait line, I’d rather it be something like an actual break stun but instead of porting you gain 100% endurance (same ICD) plus a few smaller things considering it is a master trait and has to compete with some rather solid options both adept and master.

Hard to catch: Regain endurance and break stun on incoming disable. Increase your shadow stepping range.
-Endurance gain: 100
-Shadow step range increase: 100 units
-ICD on break stun/endurance gain: 30 seconds.

Elidath.5679:

NinjaEd.3946:

My point is this skill was complained about before they “fixed” it. So when people are saying to revert the change as opposed to actually making the skill function without second guessing pressing the swap button it annoys me.

The skill was complained about, so they made it worse. Now, mesmers still complain, go figures.
Making it function without second guessing would need a revert, since the function being dependant on the continued existence of the clone makes it highly inconsistent.
It was a bugfix ? Ok. Now, make a functionnality change, that do the same the bug did. Wouldn’t be a bug anymore, and would actually makes the skill usable.

And as was stated, the passing is an overarching problem not specific to the mesmer. Everyone would like it fixed, ANet included, but they openly stated it would be very hard to do. So mesmers make do and ask for something actually doable.

It doesn’t seem like anet as a team really wants it fixed. Maybe a few dev’s feel the pain but would they honestly let bugs like this persist while trying to sell gw2 to the pvp audience and opening in china? They have a lot of tools which combined in various ways would fix a lot of bugs across all the professions. The platforms are there, its just putting them to work and aggressively testing them before releasing them. For example:

-The ability to summon a clone right next to the target is already possible (izerker for instance).
-Using a “leap” skill to go up the y axis is already possible (savage leap, swoop, leap of faith, etc).
-actual teleports that don’t use LoS are already possible (portal)
-evade frames are already possible on numerous skills (swoop(incoming), whirlwind attack, etc).

So as far as addressing the ability for the leaping clone to both reach the enemy and not die in fractions of a second its possible. The only thing that appears unavoidable is the occasional rock teleport because all teleports near certain walls sometimes pass through. A lot of the things that would help are already in place in various forms, its questionable why they would take so long to address these kinds of bugs especially recent ones that are constantly submitted and never addressed.

Atherakhia.4086:

I imagine the changes coming to PvP with the ‘same model’ approach will resolve a lot of these problems. Won’t help for WvW obviously, but I rarely see Warriors with longbows there but could be tier specific etc.

In some tiers they use rifles, it’s quite funny.

Advent.6193:

Folk ask for a reversion, because they’re rather convinced that ANet can’t fix the actual pathing issues, NinjaEd. Hell, can you blame ‘em, with some of the wackiness that happens on Shadowstep pathing? Basically, the LoS/Pathing in this game should’ve never been greenlighted as it currently is. It’s one thing to have LoS that allows you to zone-control the enemy’s attack to miss you, it’s another entire to have to mentally calculate whether your next “pathed” skill will even work >_<

My point is this skill was complained about before they “fixed” it. So when people are saying to revert the change as opposed to actually making the skill function without second guessing pressing the swap button it annoys me.

I almost bet if every one of you’re bugs (think someone said its like 40+) were fixed Mesmer players who Q.Q would quickly realize they were strong as kitten all along. I say this because even with all those bugs you face, I still see Mesmer’s wrecking others and they are in all 3 parts of the game. If they were as horrible as some people state then finding a Mesmer would be like finding an exotic and this is just not true.

I don’t see this patch making ranger op, since the pet still is going to drag us down. It helps a lot by making power ranger viable. Yes viable, just not optimal or best in slot for group comp.

The whole pet thing just kind of bummed me out when I made my ranger. Its a portion of my damage, (even now) many pets just don’t do anything exciting or powerful, and acquiring a pet (outside pvp) just requires me to walk up and be like “hey, I own you now. Wana join me on the shelf?”

I’d much prefer some sort of say in how much damage they are there for (i.e change BM to further their portion of our total dps instead of a stat increase while lowering the base percentage of dps they have), buff many pet skills while also removing F3 and F4 to allow us to use their other 2 skills (or leave them on A.I activation if you want to), and give us some quests to look for unique pets for cosmetic purposes but also have some pets function like legendary weapons in the sense that you can have skin X but use skill selection B instead of A.

BrunoBRS.5178:

NinjaEd.3946:

Platanos.8107:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

style.6173:

@OP:

There will always be complaints about thiefs. That said, the two biggest PvP specs, S/D and D/P both took a big nerf. I think it is much more likely that you will see fewer teams running a thief in tournament play as time goes on.

Are you kidding? Venom Aura and lite-cleave of dagger AA is something we’ve always wanted. Applying venom to twice as many per stack is godsend.

Yay for ArenaNet for knowing what is good for the Thieves!!!

First, I’m not that good at detecting sarcasm, so if that is sarcasm, then oops.

Venoms don’t work that way. If you auto 3 enemies at once, that venom stack is going to decrease by 3 not just one. You can try it out and see if you can petrify multiple people with basilisk venom.

Would be nice if they made it work that way ya know? The thing that sucks is if you “cleave” and some of the targets block or evade you you still consume the charge(s).

you know how they could make it work that way? if venoms worked for a time frame like the new warrior signet of strength, instead of charges ;P

Ehh same issue as before DV and BV would be impossible to balance. For some venoms I agree especially with spider for the sake of leeching venom sustain but imagine a cluster bomb +skale nuke?

Not that I like to suggest this, but can’t you turn down the graphics to limit their particle effects? I know playing with blocks ain’t fun but same with the upcoming player model changes (to deal with asuran) it’s all about changing the settings.

shimmerless.4560:

Has there been any word on reverting this terrible change?

You are more focused on reverting an actual bug rather than making ileap actually work as intended, which makes me sad.

Wouldn’t it be wiser to ask for it to successfully make it to your target and not have swap place you inside rocks?

silentnight warrior.2714:

“Spammable Spells
I think OP is missing the point that due to repeatable nature of the thief weapon spells, those spells are kept very weak in comparison to weapon sets of other classes. That is why thieves are often forced to chain few skills just to do anything meaningful.”

My sugestions will not deny thiefs to spaming skills. It will punish them from abusing some skills. And thiefs can do as other professions do, use other movement spells to negate the iniciative penality.
The only class you can “compare” in movement spells are Guardians with their ports, they do port, blind and then they have a CD.
In every other class their movements are not instant and they are affected with chill / criple (except mesmer with ports but even those have CD and necro in DS but that skill have a good tell and a CD).

“Ability to reset
You complain that they can go in fight and out? What else should they do with tools Anet gave them? They can’t stand mid fight like guards or wars due lack of survival, they can’t really do much dmg from far like engis or eles (cmon sb is so beaten it is a joke of weapon set now, literary only reason to use it is IA and pp was never viable, tnks anet).”

I didn´t complain about this. In fact the penality should only exist in combat mode. Out of combat thiefs should spam what they want.

“Ability to stay on target
You have issue with their “stickiness” to the target? Well, their most dmg comes from melee(and is SINGLE target), they have positioning requirements unlike other classes”

Actually thief can deny good positioning to other classes with ports (again one more strength with thiefs ports) and they will be buffed to deal damage to two targets at once and they dont said anything about decreasing damage on attacks so its a win for thiefs.

“Steal is an issue? Can be dodged, is very predictable if you have some exp with/vs thief and is actually a CD that can be completely wasted unlike some other spells (sup combustive shot).”

Steal is very strong but have a CD. I dont have problems with steal. (And traited steal is amazing)

There are no skills that can be abused on thief. Have you seen the nerfs they’ve done over the past few months including the upcoming ones?

-Sb #3 spam? Gone, disco took over.
-Sword/dagger #3 spam? Won’t be gone, but won’t be executed as much after the sept patch.
-Heartseeker spam? You shouldn’t be dying to this, and if they have to run away using this then take it as a win.
-Pistol whip spam? Costs 6 initiative and has a very obvious wind up animation. Additionally for this skill to do anything they have to be pretty glassy which means if they miss it simple cc or conditions and they will either run or die trying.
-cluster bomb spam? Umm… you can’t hit them?
-Choking gas spam? Nuff said.
-Unload spam? Terrible damage and also, you can’t hit them?
-Death blossom spam? See above.
-CnD spam? What game mode can you do this in?
-Shadow strike spam? How about don’t run at them like a kitten.
-etc.

You really think you’re doing justice by nerfing our combat by saying it won’t effect us ooc? In that case if a warrior uses rush or whirling attack in combat to escape they are instead ported directly to jail and fined 100 gold.

The 2 target cap on dagger is not by any means a buff thief wanted or needs. It will not effect backstab, nor should it and from what I’m seeing it won’t effect our endurance gain so it does just about nothing but help deal with aa. Ever see a thief just hitting 1 and succeed? We can’t cycle our aa chain for long without completely exposing ourselves, it’s only for a little pressure and then we bounce.

You’re not thinking your nerfs through and its only making more people angry with you making this discussion go no where.

Cufufalating.8479:

Probably already been said, but Vemons can never be really nicely balanced for solo use as long as Vemon Share is in the game in it’s current form, because if you take a set of perfetly good skills they will clearly be OP as kitten when you (litterally) make them 5x better with a single trait.

So either they have to remain pretty poor for solo use, or Vemon Share needs to be reworked (something like shared vemons only have one use, or maybe just a tiny share radius to make it hard to use) to allow them to be properly buffed.

It depends on what the venom does. For example, increase the number of hits on spider venom to help leeching venoms. The venom itself wouldn’t be exciting but for self sustain (which could be translated to group sustain) and it helps both without actually putting out some nasty DoT. Same with skelk venom, it should be smaller heals but a lot of them so being evaded or blocked or blinded doesn’t cut out a significant portion of a could be heal especially considering how long of a cooldown it is and requiring a cast time. I’d much prefer a longer sustaining venom than the quick burst that all of them share. DV, BV are the only 2 that I think should remain a burst because they are CC realated, ice drake needs to be changed because it just can’t work without being incredibly OP or incredibly weak (as it is now).

Platanos.8107:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

style.6173:

@OP:

There will always be complaints about thiefs. That said, the two biggest PvP specs, S/D and D/P both took a big nerf. I think it is much more likely that you will see fewer teams running a thief in tournament play as time goes on.

Are you kidding? Venom Aura and lite-cleave of dagger AA is something we’ve always wanted. Applying venom to twice as many per stack is godsend.

Yay for ArenaNet for knowing what is good for the Thieves!!!

First, I’m not that good at detecting sarcasm, so if that is sarcasm, then oops.

Venoms don’t work that way. If you auto 3 enemies at once, that venom stack is going to decrease by 3 not just one. You can try it out and see if you can petrify multiple people with basilisk venom.

Would be nice if they made it work that way ya know? The thing that sucks is if you “cleave” and some of the targets block or evade you you still consume the charge(s).

unlucky.9285:

sick of thieves trying to justify the ini system by saying other classes can cast more skills per minute then they can. it means nothing

I can press 2 and hit you with a hard hitting skill
you can press 2 and hit me with a hard hitting skill
I cant press 2 but I can cast this weak aoe field
you can press 2 and hit me with a hard hitting skill
I still cant press 2 but I can cast this slow moving projectile blind
you can press 2 and hit me with a hard hitting skill
I can swap weapons and press 2 and hit you with a hard hitting skill
you can press 2 and hit me with a hard hitting skill
I cant press 2 but I can cast a boon rip that does low damage
you can press 2 and hit me with a hard hitting skill

you get the picture? now take cast times into account and it gets even worse.

So you figure your weapon of choice is just buttons that don’t need to be pressed in any order? Man that hambow mentality is spreading, what’s even more pathetic is people still dying to heartseeker spam XD

I have the perfect solution and it came from the critically acclaimed genius Hitman, chill will now lower the movement speed by 100% for thieves and thieves only. Everyone else just suffers the cooldown and mobility reduction. Next we plan to make any form of shadow step port you directly to jail.

Wouldn’t it better to improve on the dozen or so pets that are pointless rather than add new ones? Unless you mean cosmetic pets then yes please but otherwise, no need to add to the trash bin.

Force being the “go-to”? Idk, air or fire alone cover that 5% and then some on hit-n-run builds such as d/x, generosity helps our poor condi cleanse.

Just pick whichever satisfies your build the most, there are several good options. For example, if I was using hidden killer (GM trait in CS trait line) I wouldn’t bother with accuracy.

Zero Day.2594:

it will happen guys… just you watch…

You’re trying to add to the list aren’t ya? Choking gas crits will show up soon enough

Yeah, it amazes me that they don’t understand their own design. Its as if the thief designers were fired after the Q.Q hit the forums and since then they have just been guessing. None of the thief changes are great but hey, at least they didn’t break us

More like 90% of warriors are afraid to move away from the easy to play builds. There are viable alternatives, you just aren’t comfortable stepping outside your face-roll zone. I don’t even use shouts+soldier runes or CI and my warrior build brushes conditions off like its nothing. Swap a few things around and I could make it an offense build I just don’t play my warrior much anymore because of my disgust towards it’s design.

Build: Power

Runes: Eagle for dungeons(easy dps), traveler for roaming (25% is still nice and I’m too lazy to buy anything new), altruism for blobbing(can’t post build, but trust me it is good), hoelbrak/rage/pack for pvp (usually these 3 give me something on a build I need, rarely do I need raw damage such as ogre or scholar or eagle).

Build: Condition

Runes: Krait, undead sometimes.

Build: Healing power

Runes: uhh……

Do people completely forget the power aspect of venom share (leeching venoms)?

Venoms are NOT strictly for condition builds, they are a majority utility (poison is for healing reduction). Sure your condition damage will be meh translated to 5 sources of skale venom but your condition duration will apply to DV, your power/healing power will apply to leeching venoms. It doesn’t solve venoms to the slightest but people keep looking at venoms like they are meant to fill your enemy up with DoT when that isn’t their intention. Just look at the conditions they do apply and you will see.

D/D only has 2 issues, death blossom and dancing dagger. The rest fits perfectly into the kit and has no reason to change.

Got your endurance gain AA with poison to hinder their healing, got a gap closer/opener (if need to escape and don’t wish to risk a CnD), and stealth access for your stealth attack (ummm backstab! yeah that’s it.).

Death blossom fits the kit but the numbers are terrible. The evade frame isn’t for either power or condi, all it really does is help a condition build. I can only imagine it was released this way (very few changes, initiative related anyhow) because it has X3 10 second bleeds.

-Make the evade frame cover the full animation and maintain the small aftercast (0.25 seconds? Not even?) to prevent both perma-evading (only to prevent 100% evasion uptime if spammed) and allow it to function as an evasion technique, and lower the bleed duration to 6 seconds. Lastly increase the distance it travels so it has a better chance to connect to enemies (it moves like ~300 units so increase to ~400). Gain some, lose some. As a spam skill it will simply drain you while still having a window to be hit in, but for timed uses it will be reliable.

Dancing dagger conflicts with both p/d and d/d. P/d has body shot which is much better for both catching up and landing a CnD (can’t evade while immobilized) and as a projectile finisher that hits reliably. D/D has heartseeker which is a leap (already stronger than any projectile finisher) and is a suitable gap closer with far more damage tied to it.

-Remove the bounce, increase the projectile speed to hit reliably (but not shoot like a missile) and add poison (3 seconds) to the mix in addition to the short cripple. This helps p/d with condition coverage, it helps d/d condition with both aiding in successfully landing death blossom and adding a condition that you may not of kept on them since cycling an auto attack is risky on any thief build. If need be increase the initiative cost by 1 as well since atm it can be quite frequently tossed but I guarantee that making it hit reliably and adding poison to mix would help out in many ways.

Prysin.8542:

kiwituatara.6053:

Warrior can reach 1,300hps self heal while pumping out perma total outgoing heal of 9,100hps in a 20+ group. Although it only works best when defending or sieging since banners aren’t very mobile.

Rangers are better in smaller group fights but cannot handle series of fights with short breaks in between as they have long CDs on the spirit elite (and are killable). They are unable to maintain the same stableness as warrior heals.

TLDR: For healing only, pick warriors for zergs, pick rangers for small groups.

its not 9100 hp/s. its 9100 hp IN a sec. HOWEVER all these skills go on CD which lasts 23 seconds (around average since 2x 20, 1x 24, 1×29 trait). so 9100 /23 = 395.65 hp/second
Which is strong, it is respectable. But it is NOT better then ranger.

Warrior self heal is also WRONG. because you are miscalculating adrenal health, which is once every 3 sec, not every sec (tool tip is wrong).
Warrior at full cleric, full life stacks, %healing power from toughness and vitality, banner boosting healing power is clocking in at 2119 healing power.
healing signet (self): 468 + adrenal health 678/3 = 226 – total = 674 hp/sec.

Max warrior heal/sec (2x shout + shout trait + signet + banner buff) = 437.59 (group) + 469 (signet self) + 227 (Adrenal health max adren self) = 1133.59 hp/second MAXIMUM OUTPUT WHAT SO EVER.
Arguably, you could get slightly more hp/sec with an extra shout. But it would not raise it by astronomical amounts.

And now for the same build for rangers
Spirit heal (60 sec lifespan, group): 320/second
Regeneration from shouts (group): 361.103/second
Troll unguent (Healing skill, self, 10 sec duration 25 sec CD): 1084/second
Natural healing (trait passive self): 125/3 second = 41.66/second
Signet of the Wild (signet passive, self): 179 /second

Ranger group heal (per second): 681.103
Ranger self spike heal (per second): 1985.76 hp/sec for 10 sec
Ranger permanent self regen: 581.763 hp/sec

However, warrior will have more armor, BUT ranger will have MUCH more protection uptime and evades. Therefore, through sheer mitigation, ranger self heal, while less, will do more effect. Another thing to mention is, if ranger chooses to drop some self sustain for healing spring, the group “healing” ability far outdoes whatever guardian or warrior can produce simply because 10 second waterfield with condi cleanse can be blasted so many times for 1350hp/blast AOE that its not even comparable to what the others can produce.
It should also be noted that when investing 5(25) points or more into BM, 10% of healing power is returned to the ranger as power. This further enhances power builds, allowing a ranger to far outdamage (remember BM pet is nothing to scoff at damage wise) a warrior.

I run healshout myself, warrior is an excellent healer, but much like healway guardian, it cannot SUSTAIN its allies, merely “drag em back up” from low HP.
While we are at it; Aquatic Benevolence + monk rune ele is VERY high up there with its group healing. Although, spike wise it is strong, CD drags it down a little.

For group sustain (10 man havoc in WvW)
1x Celestial staff ele with aquatic benevolence trait and monk runes (+35% increased healing to allies)
2x shout regen rangers running spirit and 30 into BM.
1x healshout warrior or healway guardian.
rest is whatever.

Setups used in comparison:
Ranger: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQFARnEqQvg2rCWsARLGQToaFAvnhS9UdnsbwDD-TlRDABGqEEq9HuU9nsU+BwDAQPdAkC4blRA-w

Warrior: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQFABjMd0CalHeeG4HoQTOYKASPFJeVA-TlRDABGqEEq9HuU9nsU+BwDAQPdAkC4blRA-w

Any reason you’re comparing shout heals with a slotted banner to regen ranger? I know regen can be fairly easy to interrupt from unintended sources but between the #2 on the banner and within 60 seconds you can get ~29k healing regen to allies AoE indefintly with a regen banner warrior. Ranger you get 20560 + 19200 within 60 seconds assuming that spirit isn’t killed and otherwise being put on a 180 second cooldown.

Regen should be equated into your math before you put warrior under a dim light. Also you can’t remove warrior regen as easy as ranger because ranger is every ~12 seconds with a cast time while warrior is every 3 seconds with 0 cast time. Also if someone throws a water field warrior has multiple methods of blasting it (banner as well) and is overall more tank-like.

I don’t deny ranger doesn’t have a strong hps for allies but I’d argue that it isn’t far superior to warrior as far as group healing goes. Talk about self healing and idk, I still feel like the adrenal health (even being every 3 seconds) + healing signet and the stronger regen would win. Not by numbers but by effect, since its all passive and they also have more healing power due to the banner effect.

Torch #4 is fine, although it’d be nice if it was a projectile (don’t tell me throwing doesn’t work because dancing dagger is a projectile).

Torch #5 could just use a bigger field and a little more damage per tick. The condition portion of it is very strong it just needs a radius increase which making off-hand mastery cover that would be more than enough of a buff.

The long cast time ain’t bad, although some are a little too long. The problem is they don’t even help out that much. It’d be nice counterplay if the pet had some heavy heal or AoE spike but could be interrupted having a noticeable cast time from the enemy. That way if the pet gets it off its actually rewarding, instead of pretending 1000 is a noticeable heal (2982 if fully traited) from the fern hound.

@OP

1. the posted changes aren’t set in stone and they are not all the changes ranger is getting. Just the highlighted ones.

2. granted these balance patches take ~6 months to arrive, they will never fully fix anything especially ranger’s position in the game. Pets have been addressed in the past and they still are kitten, but this change was a good step for ranger believe it or not.

So, do they deserve more? Yes, but it won’t come all in one packaged deal. I only hope that 1 of the 2 last sections of the September feature pack have some dedication to fixing all the bugs.

Liewec.2896:

yaaaay another AI build.

at what point can we stop calling players watching their AI fight eachother “PVP”?

I think the game was called pokemon if I’m not mistaken.

Like Bruno said, hopefully its a pve change that doesn’t end up helping pvp.

This guy again?

Whats next? Can we get a forecast?!

Harper.4173:

No thank you.

Some of the suggestions are really, really bad.

Can you point out the “some” and clarify what is bad about them(op, lame, still bad, wth is this)? Maybe I can revise, didn’t feel like scrapping any runes/sigils from scratch with so many feeling like repeats anways. Tried to work within what the rune was aiming for to make it flashy but I’m open to revisions.

Hitman.5829:

NinjaEd.3946:

Hitman.5829:

NinjaEd.3946:

Roxx.8713:

Hitman.5829:

Quakeman.9378:

LaronX.8079:

Dodge, move and play the game. Are you kittened or do you only play thief and are blind? Thief s if any class already have a lot of active defenses . You got a kitten load of blinds and jumps and you still moan how to survive. What the hell. UHHH … QQ I actually had to COMMIT to an action like every other class. QQ I can’t kitten up and be instantly gone again. QQ my mistakes actually stick to me QQ .
Seriously. Stop. You clearly don’t know how this game works.

I really am awe struck by the stupidity of this entire statement. I usually try my best to stray away from such statements on the forums, but I’m really getting fed up with unjustified thief QQ. A bad thief will not survive at all period. if my CnDs dont connect due to an extremely wide range of possibilities, I am beyond vulnerable. And mistakes are very noticeable on thief. if I mess up in a fight, there’s a very good chance that it’s going to bite me in the kitten unless I can work around my mistake. Same with other classes, although classes such as warrior and guardian and much more forgiving. And a 10s revealed would completely destroy thief. period. There’s nothing we could do for 10 whole seconds to stay alive w/o stealth like other classes can. it is our means of survival, with he exemption of Evade builds, but people complain about those too.. Seriously, is there anything we can do for you guys to not hate us?

This post is not about stealth, this post is about how thieves have semi-immunity to chill. We want to discuss how thieves should be penalize by this condition. There are various ways that the thief could be penalized for example:

• if the thief is chilled make him deal -xx% damage (if initiative regeneration is not slowed down).
• root the thief and freeze him and make his movement slow down to 100%.
• chill should stop utility skill recharge to +90% or even 100% to compensate for the semi immunity.

Nobody will disagree that there is a problem with chill affecting thieves. Now, consider this hypothetical scenario:

• imagine for a moment if warriors were semi-immune to blind. What if warriors could connect a hit 50/50 even when blinded?

I can think of lots of ways to fix the chill problem; one of the easiest solutions I think would be to get rid off the -xx% skill cool down for ALL classes. That way everyone would be affected by just -66% speed.

Maybe they should take 2000000% more dmg under the effect of chill?

Nah that’d be generous. Although being rooted on chill basically would equal something like that. Going from evading hits altogether to soaking them all up as if chill can’t get to a high duration. Maybe confusion should backstab ourselves?

That is not a bad idea, considering how many back stab spammers are there.

Sarcasm OP, please give up. You and no other supporter of yours has provided any evidence that thieves are op in this matter. Idk what BWE was like for gw2 but if it did have chill effect thieves initiative pool and it was removed before release, that speaks for itself.

And who claimed thieves are OP on that manner? All i said was that thieves should be penalized for being chilled like everyone else is penalized.

Really no point in repeating myself, since the post is there if you scroll up. You need to stop looking at things so plainly and look at how such a suggestion affects the overall balance.

I’m shocked you haven’t suggested engineer to be op for having potentially 20 skills and ele for always having 20 skills. Seems unfair for the others right? >.>

Fortus.6175:

JusticarArkiel.1564:

the fire isn’t touching you, therefore it can’t really cleanse conditions from you. it does however touch the allies it removes the conditions from. simple reason there. real reason is probably because anet figured guards have enough condition cleanse for themselves with utilities and heals that they didn’t need a weapon skill that does it too.

None of the heals of guardians remove conditions, not even traited.

Smite condition
Signet of resolve
Purity
Sigil of generosity/purity
Hoelbrak runes (reduces their duration anyways)

You could have all of those on a dps guard if you wish, or some. Dps guard may not be incredible at removing conditions but it does have the ability to withstand them.

Often the medi spam is enough to keep me afloat so I rarely even use signet active unless im real low. While it is up however conditions just brush off.

As for allowing it to remove conditions off self, I don’t think it is needed. Even if they halved the effect, it just fits into a more support feel anyways requiring positioning. Even on engi elixir gun (fumigate or w/e) idc if people move out of the spray while im trying to cleanse them, its such a short cooldown anyways I’m more impressed when people are drowning in bleeds and poison and rather dodge my cleanse. I use #5 on torch for damage anyways, the condi clear is just a bonus to me.