Guild Wars 2

Gimme something to replace traps! They are terrible. Such potential gone :/

TrOtskY.5927:

NinjaEd.3946:

Quick question on guardian, what kind of healing do they pump out (numbers, frequency, etc) on their healway or altruistic builds? Video or build link would be helpful (up to date).

I wrote a big post above outlining exactly this, check it out. The healing is quite high but not as high as is made out, and a lot of it is situational as well.

Link to such post? I can’t find it in your post history.

Flumek.9043:

Do i smell another 8% ? maybe 9 ? :O maybe even this year?!!!

jokes aside, Im mainly hoping for:
-warior stance & heal sig trim, sword#4 nerf/rebalance whatever..
-Thief shorter might on doge, less doge, potential mobility or trickery nerfs (like seperate daze & CD reduction on steal)
-Anet listening to feedback and giving that they gave themselves 2months, that the changes come shortly after

They should do these kinds of changes once every 2 months until things look like their settling. Then do little changes every 2 months or so until it is all about monitoring. But hey, we might get this upcoming change before 6 months so that is progress I’d say!

Depends on the thief you fight. They all play differently but all have weaknesses if you locate them.

D/D- can cnd off your clones, so its difficult to determine where they are. However they also are heavily punished if they miss the cnd. A blind or 2, some cripple and stay away from them. If they resort to only blasting your clones while you kite them you’re golden but if you let them get ahead of that it will end quickly for you.

D/p- Depends if they’re using high stealth up time. If not, it’s just about evading the backstab which is much easier than CnD because they kind of give away their position with the leap. Either interrupt the leap and just focus on surviving to let your clones nuke them or if the leap gets through dodge and face the location they landed while straffing. This will keep your front on them to lower their heavy hit and waste their effort to spike you (frontstab don’t do that much). On d/p I often see Mesmer’s bounce around with teleport and stealth since they are constantly blinded or guessing but the clones don’t face that trouble.

P/D- same deal as d/d. Their access to stealth which leads into their strong attack (sneak attack) is what will end up killing you. Their bleed duration isn’t that strong so its all about a rapid application and with richochet it makes your clones a paper defense. Unless they have BV you can usually spot the first bullet trail, let it hit you atleast once and dodge the rest (hard to time, often you’ll soak up 2-3). The goal is to again lower their burst (of bleeds in this case). Don’t approach one without caution because they can just hit 3 and put out even more damage. A swap with blurred frenzy wastes that effort as do shatters.

P/p- Just point and laugh

S/X- its all about playing into their open spots. On s/d its the 2nd part of their evade (that doesn’t evade), on s/p its while they are readying pw which roots them once the first part is executed. They do have escape methods still so don’t just throw everything and hope one will connect, save some sort of cc that’s fast acting and prepare your burst once you see that it has. You can’t escape from these guys and you can’t really chase them too well but the time they spend near you slashing away is the time you get to trap them.

Sb- not really there for damage, just let them run or use terrain to block their efforts.

All they need is to allow it to actually leap up the y axis or just visually leap and literally teleport. The porting to a dead clone fix was actually a fix, its just they entirely disregarded the bugs it has atm.

The izerker ports right next to the target on command, so the teleport effect is already there it’s just about making the clone look like it is leaping without actually being there to intercept AoE and die before swap can be activated.

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?

Hope to hear some doors open for thief^^ If there is ever a new mechanic to disable minor traits it would be because of thief

Dawdler.8521:

Remove the clone mechanic from iLeap. Its the only kitten thing that’s ever going to work.

Redesign it to work exactly like Shadow Shot. Press the button, poop out a clone at your starting location, appear in a flash of butterflies at your target and immobilize.

Why on earth it would “need” a counter is a mystery. A Thief has instant skills with no cooldowns and no counters. Oh the horrors that a Mesmer would actually have a working skill on one of his weapons (the melee weapon on a light armor class no less).

They would need to lower the immobilize duration if it were to work like infiltrator’s strike. A 2 second near-instant cast immobilize followed by a heavy cleave would be devastating. It’s not like the cooldown of blurred frenzy is weaker than pw, you know, the one that costs 7 initiative and basically starves the thief from all other skills.

It’d be better if it showed an animation of a clone leaping but the physical clone spawns at the target’s location. Even if the animation looks buggy (it doesn’t make it) it would still appear there at the end of the “leap”. It makes the skill reliable both by contact and likelihood your clone won’t melt just on the way to the target, and maintains the counter aspect (still see the leap). Mesmer happy, target happy.

Obtena.7952:

NinjaEd.3946:

Obtena.7952:

Chrispy.5641:

What about the professions that have no access to poison?

What about not running solo in group content, then wondering why a class is dificient in poison?

Can still end up not having poison in group content. Just sayin, its not on every build let alone every profession (4/8 if they even use it).

So, we nerf healing then? I don’t think so.

Where did I say nerf their healing? Just said you can’t just assume there will be constant poison application from your team because not every class on every build has high poison up time. Also there are a lot of skills that remove conditions prior to their healing effects so it does its work most of the time, not all the time.

Quick question on guardian, what kind of healing do they pump out (numbers, frequency, etc) on their healway or altruistic builds? Video or build link would be helpful (up to date).

Lifestealer.4910:

While im sure there alot of senseless complaining. There are some complaints that a valid against thieves, for instance steal has little to no counterplay. Top players would agree that this spell is the main reason why thieves continues to push other classes who tries to run dps spec out of meta for pvp. An instant gap closer that has no LOS, does massive damage and also CC’s and poisons + get a stolen ability.

How good is steal without traits though? Ask yourself that question, and you may see the problem most builds are pigeon held into. Every other profession can make good use of their profession mechanic on any build without having to spec into it(except maybe ele because they don’t have a choice no matter the trait line). Thief gets a neat feature but it really doesn’t amount to anything unless you have traits tied to it.

Azawrath.7304:

NinjaEd.3946:

IMO shadow shot is fine, its the stealth spam that’s an issue allowing to many screw ups and letting you reset on demand. I don’t know any thief using d/p in wvw that doesn’t have a heavy investment into their initiative, so they always keep it on hand to escape if need be or reposition. It comes down to chain stealth where it becomes a time out which isn’t fun or fair game play. I believe it should come down to a nerf in the way combo finishers work off of combo fields.

1. Allow meld in shadows to effect combo skills (leap or blast on smoke field in this case)
2. Change the mechanic of combo finishers/fields to apply a lesser effect each time if used on the same field. For example: BPS->Leap(4 sec)->Leap(3 sec)->Leap(1 sec). So the DR doubles each time until its basically non existent. Between the time it took to turn around and leap, the old set up granted about ~7 seconds of stealth? (correct me if I’m wrong). This new set up would only get about ~5 seconds.

For those using 2/6/0/0/6 with dp they didn’t sit in stealth for very long anyways. They actually used it just to reposition and land a BS immediately so it doesn’t effect them. For those using x/x/6/x/x with dp they would have a better start but they would need to fuel a new BPS rapidly to fund their stealth up time which would mean a heavier investment into their initiative which means they just get weaker and weaker somewhere else. Even if they decide to carry smoke bomb and drop it on the smoke field, that field still applies DR towards them (although the skill itself would still grant 3-4 seconds depending on traits).

I do not think nerfing combo finishers and combo fields will fix anything, it will end up doing more harm than good to this game. Many class and many guilds rely on might stacking, retaliation, stealth, and healing from combo fields, not just thieves.

They could make it only effect smoke combo fields, because that’s the culprit for high stealth up time and leave all other fields alone unless something comes up along the way. Smoke field itself isn’t broken, its the ability to combo it endlessly with no drawback. Granted it’s about 8 trait points and a utility slot but you can get perma stealth quite easily.

For low-moderate stealth users this will actually effect them in no way, it may even help since meld with shadows will grant 4 seconds instead of 3. For high-perma stealth users this will hurt them in the sense that they have to invest deeper into its cost to maintain it while losing other options.

@ Azo

I watched a few videos of mesmers, its not what my source of them is from when I say “watch”. I mean watch like I’ll stumble near a 1v1 in pvp and let them go at it or literally spectate them watching their rotation, positioning etc. Then in wvw when I roamed I ran thief so if I was in stealth I could spectate for a few seconds and watch him destroy a fleeing target or set up a trap for some passer by and watch them implode.

Maybe a few things outside of their common builds could use a buff for some diversity, but I’m talking more about when they ask for the un-nerf to null field or want their clones to survive a zerg. The clones aren’t meant for large scale encounters, if they could survive a zerg imagine what a 1vX for the Mesmer would end up doing. It would be broken as kitten. Its really no different from engi/thief/ranger being excluded from zergs atm yet I constantly see posts saying Mesmer isn’t viable anywhere or Mesmer is subpar to every other profession in their strengths. It’s just ridiculous to see that kitten getting around.

Azawrath.7304:

NinjaEd.3946:

Rework our healing power scaling (healing power = less damage, I think that alone is a sacrafise that should be rewarding for heals)

Could you explain this? I don’t understand what you mean.

Most of our healing power coefficients are incredibly low. This is even for big heals or low up time heals(shadow refuge, leeching venoms, HiS). Basically if you go heavy into healing power you are missing out on either damage or another defensive stat. So you would think your heals get a noticeable bump for all that investment but that’s not the case for thief. Its a poor stat for thief which is upsetting and I’d hope they address it for the skills/traits that have no use in healing power.

I don’t expect mega heals like a guardian or ele but if I’m investing into a defensive stat I’d expect some pay off. Considering how squishy we naturally are the few hundred health bump isn’t worth using over the few thousand extra damage or hundreds extra DoT.

Rework venoms
Rework our healing power scaling (healing power = less damage, I think that alone is a sacrafise that should be rewarding for heals)
Buff p/p power
Give more support options
Fix bugs
Remove Last refuge (I’ll take no minor trait tyvm)
Remove traps (next to useless on a train to nowhere)
Fix disabling shot (sb 3)
Rework invigorating precision (5% isn’t noticeable without training dummy targets).
Remove the ability to perma stealth (boring to watch and deal with, fight goes nowhere).

Oh and realize Hard to catch is aweful and rework it.

Curunen.8729:

NinjaEd.3946:

I never understood how this skill bugs exactly. It performs what looks like [Savage Leap] which does go up the y axis. How it gets stuck on a stone or step beats me, but any bug fixing helps.

I’d hope the skill bar for Mesmer focuses on fixing bugs so that the whining stops like that they aren’t powerful enough when really its just bug fixes that would alone buff them a lot for a smooth QoL. To this day, a well played Mesmer either doesn’t like to die(stale mate) or scares the hell out of me and forces me to retreat or crawl into my grave so I’m not so sure they need a buff, just bug fixes so their other kitten works. Even when I spectate I watch them destroy people, or watch my guildies roam in wvw and let them melt people.

I’m curious – have you personally played mesmer for any significant period of time?

I could equally say thieves qq over nothing and don’t need buffs to anything other than p/p from what I experience fighting against them – but I am aware my viewpoint is severely restricted by not actively playing a thief to high level or for any significant amount of time, so I cannot make that judgement.

Certain things on mesmer do need buffing, many things need fixing and a few things could be nerfed. I won’t write a long wall of text because posting from phone and I cba.

I watch, I ask in game, and I read their builds (not all but a good amount) and look up how their skills behave. I’m not saying I play Mesmer, I’m saying I still see them wreck faces and that’s with all the glorious bugs they have. So from that I can say, fix the bugs and they can live with some peace.

Just like when the ileap was “fixed” people kittened and moaned that anet was just further breaking Mesmer when only a handful were upset that the skill still performed like a trashcan drum. Its bug problems Mesmer is facing, I bet there would be a fraction of the complaints from the Mesmer community if the bugs were fixed vs buffing them and still having all the bugs to deal with. That’s my problem, Mesmer players saying they’re weak rather than bugged. Two totally different things.

Obtena.7952:

Chrispy.5641:

What about the professions that have no access to poison?

What about not running solo in group content, then wondering why a class is dificient in poison?

Can still end up not having poison in group content. Just sayin, its not on every build let alone every profession (4/8 if they even use it).

On a side note, sigil of doom has to be the poorest excuse for poison access. Why would any suggest you give up a sigil slot for 1 poison application every 10 seconds which has this obvious icon attached to the player once it is prepared? Dat sigil of doom guardian must really melt people… Total counter built into 1 sigil who’d of known?

I never understood how this skill bugs exactly. It performs what looks like [Savage Leap] which does go up the y axis. How it gets stuck on a stone or step beats me, but any bug fixing helps.

I’d hope the skill bar for Mesmer focuses on fixing bugs so that the whining stops like that they aren’t powerful enough when really its just bug fixes that would alone buff them a lot for a smooth QoL. To this day, a well played Mesmer either doesn’t like to die(stale mate) or scares the hell out of me and forces me to retreat or crawl into my grave so I’m not so sure they need a buff, just bug fixes so their other kitten works. Even when I spectate I watch them destroy people, or watch my guildies roam in wvw and let them melt people.

Nothing you can do Zachary but keep goin. I’ve been suspended a time or two from here trying to fix misinterpretations . Can’t say I help or hurt the community, I just try to correct people’s thinking when they accuse profession X of something with no counters (and throw an almost unnecessary amount of suggestions in the air).

I don’t see you making personal attacks at people, just at their thoughts which is what a debate is. There aren’t many people who make sense in defending mechanic x or y or z, but you do, imo, so keep it up.

Hitman.5829:

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.

Seriously, you want chill to root the thief in place? Please stop, you’re only gana derail your own thread by asking for LOL posts against your ridiculous suggestions.

Hitman, what is going on with your posts? You seem to just target a class and rage against them without providing any evidence or experience with the topic. The lack of merit in your posts makes it near impossible to take you seriously, even though I agree the passive damage of some Mesmer builds is pathetic. That falls more into all the AI builds though, its more than a Mesmer problem.

Carighan.6758:

spoj.9672:

Using wvw as a reference to balance is kind of pointless.

Why?
This gets spewed around a lot, and no one ever says anything about why that’d be.

See, I can do the same thing: Using sPvP as a reference to balance is kind of pointless.

Wvw is a poor judgement of balance because it has pve stats, which aren’t balanced for pvp encounters. When you also get things like consumables (foods, oils, stones, crystals) and various stat combinations exclusive to pve gear and exclusive rune sets (perplexity, tormenting, etc) and exclusive sigils, yeah. Also there is ascended gear which is not a huge difference, but compare a non-asc player to a fully asc player and it is noticeable which I’d be willing to bet a lot of players have not bothered getting full asc just yet. Also it’s just a food war in there with kitten like, “Oh, he has 40% condi duration food, I should counter it on the fly with my -40% condi duration food”. It’s pathetic.

S/Tpvp is the better judge because things are “better” controlled in there. I’m not saying its balanced in there, just they have a better fix on things without ridiculous stat combinations like 100+ % condi duration or 230%+ critical damage.

IMO shadow shot is fine, its the stealth spam that’s an issue allowing to many screw ups and letting you reset on demand. I don’t know any thief using d/p in wvw that doesn’t have a heavy investment into their initiative, so they always keep it on hand to escape if need be or reposition. It comes down to chain stealth where it becomes a time out which isn’t fun or fair game play. I believe it should come down to a nerf in the way combo finishers work off of combo fields.

1. Allow meld in shadows to effect combo skills (leap or blast on smoke field in this case)
2. Change the mechanic of combo finishers/fields to apply a lesser effect each time if used on the same field. For example: BPS→Leap(4 sec)→Leap(3 sec)→Leap(1 sec). So the DR doubles each time until its basically non existent. Between the time it took to turn around and leap, the old set up granted about ~7 seconds of stealth? (correct me if I’m wrong). This new set up would only get about ~5 seconds.

For those using 2/6/0/0/6 with dp they didn’t sit in stealth for very long anyways. They actually used it just to reposition and land a BS immediately so it doesn’t effect them. For those using x/x/6/x/x with dp they would have a better start but they would need to fuel a new BPS rapidly to fund their stealth up time which would mean a heavier investment into their initiative which means they just get weaker and weaker somewhere else. Even if they decide to carry smoke bomb and drop it on the smoke field, that field still applies DR towards them (although the skill itself would still grant 3-4 seconds depending on traits).

Clownmug.8357:

How about chill reduces intiative regen to what it was before the Dec. 10, 2013 patch? I think this would be fair since thieves played fine like that for over a year.

We also had stronger traits to aid in our regen, which were nerfed when our base initiative regeneration rate was increased.

Even the slightest reduction in regen is a big nerf for thief and a big buff for chill. Not all builds have a high supply of initiative, the few “t-word” SA builds with d/p in wvw have no place in this discussion because many people are aware its kitten (even thieves themselves). All this does is pigeohold people to invest more into their initiative from fear that chill will shut them down.

People need to understand that just about every weapon kit thief has available to them atm, has built in defenses that are essential to staying alive. S/X is up front, they need something to help with the AoE spam so they have evasion and a 2 step condition removal with 1 set having stealth access and the other having a blind field. Then you got D/X which its AA helps them dodge more, cnd(6) for stealth or BPS+HS (9 ini) for stealth. SB has a (now crappy) evasion and teleport if they’re warded or immobilized. P/p just sucks unfortunately, but even it has bps for its defense.

Bottom line, you can’t spam the skills without opening yourself up to attack. It’s a global resource with essential defensive skills, it’s already weaker than cooldowns it just has the advantage of allowing quick thinking. Only suggestion worth taking is allowing interrupts to work on all weapon skills because a few of them (PW for example) don’t spend the initiative until the pistol is swung. The majority of them do however, and that 3 or 4 initiative loss effects every weapon skill, not just the one you interrupted.

I’d like to actually take this time to put my full suggestion of healing signet as well as a buff to some adrenaline sources so that it doesn’t seem like a stand alone nerf with 0 compensation.

Healing Signet
-Passive: Heal every second while consuming adrenaline.
Healing- 315(.25 healing power coefficient) per second.
Adrenaline cost- 1 per second. no cost if you are full health
-Active: Break stun to heal. Heal for more if you broke stun this way.
Healing- 3650(.35), 7300(.7) if you broke stun.
Cast time 1 second.
Cooldown 20 seconds.

[Notes]
-The healing per second passive is disabled if you do not have the adrenaline to support it.
-To help with stage 3 adrenaline, there is now a buffer of 10 strikes of adrenaline so that you do not constantly fight to maintain stage 3. This does not act as actual adrenaline towards a “Stage 4”, this is primarily to not have healing signet’s cost interfere with stage 3 burst skills.
-The active breaks stun to start the healing, if you are interrupted during this it goes on a full cooldown. This is meant to work towards a high rish high reward effort. Tied with stability however this would be rather hard to interrupt.

Adrenaline gain

-Adrenaline rush (mace and sword): Gain 3 strikes of adrenaline at the end if you did not execute a counter attack, gain 6 strikes of adrenaline if you successfully executed and hit with a counter attack. If you counter attack and miss, gain 2 adrenaline.
-Berserker’s might: Increase to 4 strikes of adrenaline per 3 seconds.
-Short temper: Increase to 2 strikes of adrenaline per block.
Furious: Remain at 1 strike per critical hit with 1h weapons, increase to 2 strikes of adrenaline per critical with 2h weapons.
-Inspiring Shouts: now effects other warriors with the adrenaline gain.
-Powerful banners: Added effect now grants 1 strike of adrenaline per pulse (pulses every second). This effects other warriors as well.

Its not a full solution to the problem, it’s simply addressing the common one many builds have. Almost all run CI (a crutch imo), it makes adrenaline gain incredibly easy and gives them a strong condi clear. To make adrenaline management more relevant and also add a bit of thought to HS would hopefully take warrior out of the “passive” play style they get ridiculed for so much. This is with an assumption that mending and healing surge and defiant stance will be looked at to be more promising which has been talked about in the past.

There are other viable options to adrenaline gain, CI is most definitely not the only good one it’s just the easiest one to use. If you’ve ever used inspiring shouts with a good cleaving weapon or sharpened axes adrenaline gain is incredibly easy.

I never stated physical skills to be op, not sure where you got that from. In my suggestion I actually put fourth buffs with them just tied a small adrenaline cost to them. I put a cost of adrenaline vs an effect on adrenaline stage because it seemed like a lot more work to adjust numbers that are low already.

There are ways to gain adrenaline ooc so you can still use bulls charge to initiate. The daze on immobile targets is to put fourth a DR on chain cc with bulls charge. Almost always targets are mobile anyways, a small counterplay to a 35 second recharge (which can go lower with traits) means quicker potential combos with say eviscerate or 100b but also rewards enemies for having a little knowledge on its effects. If need be increase the daze duration to 4 seconds but leave the knock down at 2.

I’d argue against flat out removing it as opposed to redesign certain parts of it (like reveal and chain stealth).

Stealth in itself isn’t broken, its the long uptime on it that some builds can achieve that make it frustrating but not at all impossible to defeat. It’s more so a lousy mechanic than an unbalanced one, because letting someone mess up and freely disengage time after time isn’t fun to watch or use.

Also stealth does very little in pvp aside from annoy people. You can’t cap a point in stealth and most stealth based builds can’t go anywhere near a group fight without being focused and often melted.

Anton.1769:

mantra build at wvw? He decided to be not utility bot, not berserk for dd(he was easy at front), so… what he actually did?

He was an aura of support. He wasn’t the core of our front, no one was. I won’t link any builds but our set up was a wide variety of odd end heals and constant stability. With his mantra build we got a little extra of both so he was a support “bot”. I dunno his weapon choice but again he wasn’t there to spike someone more so control with support. It worked fairly well, otherwise he would of not brought it numerous times and just brought his guardian instead.

No clue if he was having fun on the build but sometimes group comp isn’t about having a blast :/

Curunen.8729:

NinjaEd.3946:

Curunen.8729:

NinjaEd.3946:

Prysin.8542:

The moment watchwork portal device works in all modes, the mesmer class itself will be obsolete, i know this even though i never played mesmer beyond level 23

It’s sad when people like you think all Mesmer is capable of is porting. What’s even more sad is that there are a lot of people like you spreading these sob stories. Mesmer is not drowning in misery, it’s just the overreactions to the little stuff like the ileap update as if that was the issue with ileap.

Ask for bug fixes and trait merges, quit whining because you can’t spot the retaliation boon and mysteriously down yourself or that null field isn’t good enough. Its amusing to look at for only so long when Mesmer’s believe they aren’t viable in any part of the game.

Please explain all the viable build diversity available to us in the different game modes (stuff that actually works and is not either hard countered by something in pvp/wvw or totally replaceable by something in pve), because obviously I can’t see it.

You act like viable means its best in slot or something. It means it works, and does its job. I don’t fret about guardians being able to face tank pve content and still deal great damage compared to my thief but I don’t shelf my thief from fractals or any pve content. Same way I can make a venomshare build for wvw be viable however it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m having a blast and doing a better job than the rest (although mine does a good job for the most part).

You need to stop looking at other people’s unbalanced builds and look at what you can make viable.

-There are builds that can hold point for days in pvp even in outnumbered situations, there are builds that can roam between points and blow others up in pvp.

-there are builds in wvw either power or condi (usually condi) that melt people, and there are builds in wvw that can safely stand with the front line and dish out great support and moderate damage.

-As for pve, Time warp is hella nice sword ain’t half bad for stacking especially if its dredge, mass invis to skip parts, temp curtain to fix a stack, you have feedback on a utility and on raise which is great for numerous boss fights, you can trait for temp curtain to also reflect, etc. There is a lot of utility to Mesmer in pve content, a lot of it being very strong. Sure you can’t spawn a fgs and melt a boss in less than 10 seconds but you do have time warp which is pretty nice in comparison.

Oh I have always made and discovered my own builds, even if they turn out similar to other builds – never blindly copying other peoples.

Anyway, yes you’re right – it’s not about being best in slot, just being good enough not to feel either a burden or ineffective in any particular situation.

I’ve played shatter in pug dungeons for example – while nowhere near the most effective way to play, you can say it still functions. Because pve enemies are not other players, you can argue anything functions – just some more effective than others.

Mainly it’s bugs that prevent a lot of things from working correctly – focus for example. And that does cover a lot of problems – the reason why different weapons, skills and trait setups are not commonly used.

But I must say – in any large fight in wvw options are extremely limited and nowhere near as effective as they should be. When you say great front line support and moderate damage – can you give a build example? I am not aware of anything half decent in this department, since glamour confusion got demolished. I’m assuming run mimic, null field, feedback, staff or something (and have very little in the way of personal survival).

Then Mesmer’s need shouldn’t be complaining about nerfs directly, it should be about bugs. After the ileap “fix” it was just a flare of Q.Q threads as opposed to asking htem to unbug the illusion’s leap.

I’d have to ask my guildie what the build was but it was based on mantras. He was up front with us, constantly staying afloat and still swinging with the ethereal field here and there. Sure he wasn’t bragging how he spiked someone for 7k+ but he was up front and those with him were noticing a nice little hps.

Curunen.8729:

NinjaEd.3946:

Prysin.8542:

The moment watchwork portal device works in all modes, the mesmer class itself will be obsolete, i know this even though i never played mesmer beyond level 23

It’s sad when people like you think all Mesmer is capable of is porting. What’s even more sad is that there are a lot of people like you spreading these sob stories. Mesmer is not drowning in misery, it’s just the overreactions to the little stuff like the ileap update as if that was the issue with ileap.

Ask for bug fixes and trait merges, quit whining because you can’t spot the retaliation boon and mysteriously down yourself or that null field isn’t good enough. Its amusing to look at for only so long when Mesmer’s believe they aren’t viable in any part of the game.

Please explain all the viable build diversity available to us in the different game modes (stuff that actually works and is not either hard countered by something in pvp/wvw or totally replaceable by something in pve), because obviously I can’t see it.

You act like viable means its best in slot or something. It means it works, and does its job. I don’t fret about guardians being able to face tank pve content and still deal great damage compared to my thief but I don’t shelf my thief from fractals or any pve content. Same way I can make a venomshare build for wvw be viable however it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m having a blast and doing a better job than the rest (although mine does a good job for the most part).

You need to stop looking at other people’s unbalanced builds and look at what you can make viable.

-There are builds that can hold point for days in pvp even in outnumbered situations, there are builds that can roam between points and blow others up in pvp.

-there are builds in wvw either power or condi (usually condi) that melt people, and there are builds in wvw that can safely stand with the front line and dish out great support and moderate damage.

-As for pve, Time warp is hella nice sword ain’t half bad for stacking especially if its dredge, mass invis to skip parts, temp curtain to fix a stack, you have feedback on a utility and on raise which is great for numerous boss fights, you can trait for temp curtain to also reflect, etc. There is a lot of utility to Mesmer in pve content, a lot of it being very strong. Sure you can’t spawn a fgs and melt a boss in less than 10 seconds but you do have time warp which is pretty nice in comparison.

Hitman.5829:

Kiba.9701:

You havent stopped to think how this would affect the Thief, it would solve the problem? how many classes have access to chill and interrupts? how would this affect the gameplay of the thief? how could the thief counter this? would remain the thief still playable?. And there are much more questions that a balance team has to respond and your topic doesnt adress.

Your topic is driven by ignorance and personal taste.

The thief can remove conditions upon entering stealth and more conditions every 3 seconds. Chill can easily be removed because thief can enter stealth every 3 seconds. I see no problem with making thief drain initiative if he gets chilled, it would be more of an annoyance to the thief than a problem. Just like chill is an annoyance to any other class whose skills are affected by this condition.

1. Chill is not the only condition in the game. Also it is no prioritized when removed, damaging conditions are.

2. Not everyone is running shadow’s embrace. In fact a lot of people have moved away from Shadow arts so please elaborate on our other methods of rapid condition removal?

3. “I see no problem with making thief drain initiative if he gets chilled, it would be more of an annoyance to the thief than a problem.” no it would destroy the thief. We can’t enter stealth freely without d/p which is back to #2, not everyone runs d/p. Also its 9 initiative right there, so chill would down right remove their defenses.

4. Our skills are affected by chill. Our evades/leaps are shortened in distance, F1 and 6-0 are all affected by the cooldown recharge, and when we swap weapon we don’t have a 2nd resource pool. When we swap weapons at 2 initiative, we still have 2 initiative. Instead of individual skill cooldown we have a global cooldown which often plays as our offense and defense.

So please, just stop with this kitten. There is no debate with allowing chill to affect initiative. Interrupts should affect it but that’s more than likely a bug issue because some skills do spend the cost when you interrupt it and some don’t. Unless you know more about thief than the youtube videos don’t suggest such radical nerfs.

Prysin.8542:

The moment watchwork portal device works in all modes, the mesmer class itself will be obsolete, i know this even though i never played mesmer beyond level 23

It’s sad when people like you think all Mesmer is capable of is porting. What’s even more sad is that there are a lot of people like you spreading these sob stories. Mesmer is not drowning in misery, it’s just the overreactions to the little stuff like the ileap update as if that was the issue with ileap.

Ask for bug fixes and trait merges, quit whining because you can’t spot the retaliation boon and mysteriously down yourself or that null field isn’t good enough. Its amusing to look at for only so long when Mesmer’s believe they aren’t viable in any part of the game.

Hitman.5829:

Auesis.7301:

During beta, they actually WERE affected by chill. It was a slaughterhouse. They couldn’t fight anything that had any amount of chill. This was reverted for a reason.

Same applies to the initiative, too.

I see no problem now that thieves can remove 2 conditions every 3 seconds while on stealth. Maybe it is time to reintroduce it.

It’s actually 1 condition at the start, and 1 for every 3 seconds they remain in stealth. That’s our only good condition removal btw, which is tried to SA which is stuck with last refuge, the trait that kills the thief themselves.

xbutcherx.3861:

And the funny part Warrio and guards are the least profession I see playing sPvP, there are more Eles and Thieves than anything else followed by Necros and Mesmers.

What game are you playing that you don’t see warriors?

@OP, No idea why they are moaning. They want the best of both worlds and even after all their “class breaking nerfs” they can still be played well. The majority of their complaints come from bugs relating to their core skills which I can understand, but when they ask for full out buffs on skills that don’t need them its questionable and often laughable.

Even more so, when you list their strengths almost always someone replies with, “Yeah and that’s all we got” and then go on about how they need more. ><

Warrior being predictable? Non-sense. They just want us to dodge the 5 or so skills that hurt like kitten.

Zerker stance takes incredible skill, you have to extend a finger to locate this secret combination of buttons and gain immunity to conditions. Same with healing signet, if they don’t solve some complex math equations every second they lose its effect (ex. 2+2=?).

All advise I can give you is focus on hit and run tactics. You already know Mesmer if you’ve had it as a main to the fullest, with a zerker thief (assuming since you have dagger/pistol) you can’t sit around for too long or they can lead you into a trap.

Pretty sure a ranger with s/d and the right vigor set up can dodge for days too. Do you really want to nerf ranger, after they just got good news?

Also, could not be a more obvious “nerf thief” thread. If you want to effectively kill 33% of their defense mechanic I dare you justify the reason besides it being “unfair”. It’s not hard to play into their evades and/or AoE or in some cases ward.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Hammerguard.9834:

I really want condi guardians to become a thing. Guardians can make alot of condi build but all are underwhelming.

well if you go for a burning spec, you don’t even need long ticks, you just need constant application (which is REALLY easy for a guard), since your burns can tick to upwards of 1k. a power/condi guardian is probably a pain to handle, but i haven’t tried building around it.

It hurts but they are basically all-in to make those kinds of builds. I’ve made a few and fought against a lot more. Yes their burn application hurts A LOT but they are incredibly squishy. Many other professions can make rather tanky builds with a wide variety of conditions and still down people, which I think is what people want on guardian to some degree.

babazhook.6805:

The larger issue is not a single reveal of 6 seconds. I do believe those survivable.

The issue is one being chained after another as more classes gain access to the skill. An engineer and ranger in a party can chain reveals so there no stealth for 12 seconds.

The counter balance of a long cool down on said skill becomes less important in a party setting where it just chained.

Suggesting few rangers or engineers would use it as it compromises their builds in other ways does NOT apply as much to group settings. Three people in a party of 20 with this skill can chain 18 seconds of no stealth. This will not compromise the damage output of the party to any great extent while totally neutralizing stealth and back stabs as a tool.

They can just not let reveal stack at all. It would just take up the highest duration applied.

You have to keep in mind that although rapid fire will occur faster, that also means if you dodge you dodge more attacks. Rapid fire gains its damage from all the arrows hitting, if you dodge you will likely dodge 2-3 hits right there and if they have quickness likely 5 or so. So yes face tanking it will not be your best option but it still has to connect a lot of arrows to amount to any big numbers. There is also always LoS.

BrunoBRS.5178:

the benefit i see from the change is being able to use steal as a shadowstep without spending time throwing skills you don’t want away.

it keeps everything essentially the same, but it speeds up the “discarding” process, meaning if you’re the kind that doesn’t care about stolen items, you can just stick to stealing, and the game will throw away your old item when you steal again.

basically i’m asking for an improvement that virtually changes nothing balance-wise/strategy-wise.

Neither one effects balance, it just gives thieves the option to discard their stolen item on their own terms, rather than having steal be in the way. I feel like we’re on the same page as far as splitting steal from stolen items, but if you have something in F2 already and the it is replaced by the next stolen item it really isn’t fixing the problem to the fullest. My aim is to solve it 100%, give thieves the choice on when they want to use up a stolen item.

There are no buffs being suggested to steal traits or stolen items or anything but giving us the option to use stolen items on our terms and let steal do its thing on its terms. It still comes with its share of trade offs because often the skills we get from stealing are meant to deal with that profession. Like I said though, skill A may not be what we want atm but knowing what lies ahead may be what we need at that time. If we choose to hold onto that stolen item, that means no other stolen abilities are being used up so it comes down to how they want to utilize them.

Unless eagle eye granted a 4th stage for the auto attack on longbow auto attack (damage at 1200+ range), its not all that necessary. I’d gladly take piercing arrows over this because in a pvp setting, 1500 range isn’t practical. Most arrow attacks even with read the wind will miss especially against fast moving targets.

BrunoBRS.5178:

i don’t know, i always saw the skill thing as a tradeoff. you can either teleport, or you can keep your plasma for when that hammer warrior shows up. having both would eliminate that tradeoff (“i have to use my plasma beforehand, thus losing a few precious seconds of stability”).

it feels like the thread started asking for a hand, and then tried to go for the whole arm.

Whether F2 is replaced by the next steal or is not, it’s still a trade off. The original suggestion was aimed to split steal and the skill you steal to use them independently. That has not changed, I tossed the F3 idea because that was asking for the arm I was just thinking of pre fights instead of what the result would end up being with X2 stolen items and steal being separate. So ignoring that idea, this is just about splitting the activation of steal and the stolen item you gain.

If they steal knowing they already have an item in the F2 slot, then that’s their choice and the trade off is that stolen item might be handy for their current situation but they rather hold onto their current stolen item for the big moment. If F2 was replaced each successful steal then they might as well change nothing because you aren’t using steal as much as the traits associated with it. It doesn’t fix the issue where more times than not people are tossing the stolen skill out because it isn’t helpful at the time.

Galandil.9641:

Magische Boek.2530:

all the times ive seen this happen lol.

anyway, why does SR apply revealed when you exit it to soon? it should just give you less stealth time.

Bug. Never addressed. Never will be.

Doubt its a bug. The duration of stealth it grants if you manage to stay in it is rather high. Not complaining, just saying it has a counter because of that. A really, really easy counter….

Cufufalating.8479:

Merging would be nice, but really the new trait is not required for LB.

10% damage is nice on any weapon, but it doesnt offer anything specifically to the LB, nor does it fix any pre-existing issue the LB has. Frankly it’s probably better suited to other weapons such as Axe or Sword, as they have better access to Soft CC.

So I cant say I agree.. it’s a cool trait, but by no means is it one of the “must have” traits, for LB or for any other build.

Couldn’t word it better. Although the new GM trait is nice for longbow, it isn’t LB themed in any way. It’s just an alternate bonus in damage, read the wind and remorseless however are quite competing.

Regardless, they couldn’t of gotten to that point without stealing from target X prior. It’s not a hat trick, its just saving the skill for the right time. Its no different from having a skill like skull fear but now you’re up against a warrior who has stability. You still may want to hold onto the skull fear until after his stability expires but you are also sitting there with steal off cooldown and maybe you need to steal(mug) to stay afloat or teleport to an outsider to avoid a hammer cc chain.

It’s a QoL buff at best. It’s not buffing any stolen skill or steal, it’s just letting the thief hold the stolen skill they have for when they need it while still having access to steal. I understand the it can be seen as a buff by giving them more options but right now we just toss most stolen skills because the situational effect is less attractive than the steal traits. Even if skill A is really good at a certain point, the time between getting skill A and then can often be long and you may not get option A for when you need it most. I still can’t pull skill A out of nowhere though, it did come from a previous encounter.

Although a large victory for ranger (at last), I still feel like the opening strike mechanic deserves a rework. Like the signet of the beast master, you can’t take the full effect of opening strike without going to the GM trait (in this case, remorseless).

Hopefully they work on this soon as well as more active condition cleansing, but I’m definitely excited for the changes to power ranger.

I thought we were waiting for the upcoming thief changes before we tune our tin foil hats? Was I the only one who read Eugenides post? Seemed the most logical answer to follow :/

Remove: Points on kill in pvp.

Reason I suggest this is with how the game is being played and has been for a long time now. No matter if it’s tournament matches or hotjoin, the time it takes to decap, then cap a point behind the full team blobbing from point to point getting 5 points a kill is just not reasonable. Even worse is when they run 4:1 squads with the 1 being an incredibly high sustain class whose only goal is to kite until the 4 man squad arrives. Being that the maps are so small, it isn’t difficult to hold 1 point, send 4 to another point, get some points on kill and turn around.

Pvp matches should be only about captures and side objectives. All killing should reward is knocking that player out of the ring for a short time so you have the upper hand. Bum rushing mid over and over gets incredibly boring very quickly to watch and play.

Redesign : The Skyhammer

Allow the laser to be blocked and evaded. Since it cannot be destroyed like battle of kyhlo trebuchets and holding that room just requires some well coordinated cc build, the laser has far to much of an impact on the map. If need be reduce the time needed to turn the laser for aiming so it can adjust quickly but there needs to be a more reasonable counter than “take the laser for your team”.

Most times I just see people camp out in there with a buddy and the laser is stronger than having those 2 allies out on the point. Teams can set themselves up to only need 2 people contesting a point, 1 capping and back capping, and 2 holding the laser room covering both. There is just too much cc related to this map with the laser and the breaking platforms.