Guild Wars 2

Benjamin.8237:

EDIT: Looking at my posts it appears as if I come across as a whiner and someone who loses to every thief I fight, this is not true. But In a 1v1 arena I struggle vs competent thieves more than any other class, so of course i’d like to learn what they dislike about me.

1. Mesmer’s can continue direct damage in stealth, thief simply cannot. (clones)
2. Mesmer’s are as deceptive as thieves, with several methods of “confusing” the enemy. Most mesmer’s can’t really pull this off unless the enemy is using single target skills, but even while stealthed their clones can hit quite hard.
3. As bursty as a thief. I wouldn’t go as far to say they can out dps a thief although they very well may be able to in pvp, but if you talk about nuking your target a Mesmer can do the job and then some. Both thief and Mesmer have stealth so an ambush is certainly a possibility.
4. Group utility without even trying. Thief can focus fire or poke at people with sb but otherwise they aren’t helping the group all that much, and venom share is sadly not all that great. Of all the power or condi builds I see, Mesmer always has some group utility that helps them too. Maybe this is by accident or maybe on purpose but either way, it works for their set up. SB is our best group set but it still doesn’t bring a whole lot.

Just the few off the top of my head. Wish I had multiple AI smacking my enemy for 3-6k while I /dance in the background.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Fire

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Hoelbrak

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Pirate

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Strength

I reckon the latest patch was rushed and they just ended up copy pasting a bunch of runes.

Anywho, strength runes may need a nerf, may need to buff other runes to be closer on par with what they offer. Hoelbrak does this well by providing a defensive form of strength runes, but still some runes need to be further distinguished and worked on. Too many runes still just full out suck, and sigils.

Also “when hit” rune effects are terrible. Too much gameplay is passively done with no thought, and many of those effects are have terrible duration settings (perma might, but ~22% uptime on regen from dwayna as if regen is that strong).

Krait works on some builds more than others when compared to perplexity. Sure confusion hurts but if you can’t cover it up and have some other heavy DoT to put out it’s meaningless. Between the heavy bleed duration increase and dropping a bunch of conditions off with your elite (thief has 1 every 45 seconds btw) you can swarm them with DoT plus it’s AoE.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Dagger Storm and Thieves Guild have really long cool downs for what they do, and I don’t like long cool downs.

Basilisk Venom is a good elite, with a few exceptions but one that really sticks out to me: why does it have a windup? Why isn’t it instant? There’s been so many times that I needed it right away but have to wait on the activate time. I could see it being reasonable if the duration was longer, but we’re only talking about a little over 1 second here.

(Disclaimer: Newbie Thief).

GC thieves only need a few seconds to burst someone, if they had an instant 1.5 second stun with no means to counter it, there would be no doubt in a near future nerf.

BV is great for “on-elite” runes however the lyssa nerf kind of screwed us out of that option and most seemed to of moved onto other runes. TG is good for 1v1 especially if you activate it in stealth to really surprise them but they do die really easy. Dagger storm is great in almost all situations whether you need stability (can dodge roll out of it to maintain) or against projectiles or just in general to cause mayhem.

Signet of malice + dagger storm in a zerg is quite fun ^^

Business is one thing, when they don’t play the class and take 5+ months each balance update by listening to the whiners nothing is getting done. They had a ranger discussion and from the aftermath of threads, I can see the ranger community is not at all pleased. That thread had by far the most posts and views on that sub forum and it doesn’t seem like it took anywhere near the expected approach. Same with guardian, they got 2 condition specific GM traits that did nothing to make condi guard viable.

They listen to the community but they don’t seem to value things that make sense, and for how long these balance patches take to come around, I don’t feel like they take any real time on them as it appears. Why else would we have 4 runes that have near the exact same 1-5 effects (fire, pirate, strength, hoelbrak), or put no effort into balancing strength runes (if there is a hive of players using this, it’s likely because its a “best in slot” which is the opposite of balance), shave hambow yet its still the plague that it as before, ignore decap engi, etc. The list goes on with crap that is viewed horribly and not dealt with.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvX-Balance-Iteration-Wrongdoing/page/6#post4033813

Basically sums up how many players feel.

Depends on the build. Overall, conditions give me troubles. I can clear them as they come but if I get shotgunned with a bunch I have to usually pull off and recover.

Mesmer, the life a thief would like but can never have.

(goes to corner to cry)

Wish they would bring back the unique advantages to bow use, like extra damage if you’re at a much higher elevation than your target, different missile paths for different bows, etc. That and ranger traits/skills seem a little out of whack with how spread out some are and how pathetic others are and how some are almost essential to function.

I blame being pet bound :/

I wouldn’t expect or even want toughness to deal with conditions in any way. All that would do is flip the tables on stat relevance and solve nothing. However I dont see much of a balance when vitality has dual applications and toughness has only 1. There are 3 types of attacks ,cc reduction being the only practical choice both for balance and theme to add onto toughness.

Condition removal is its own issue with some people being forced into certain traits/skills to deal with them and others having an abundance of it. Ill admit I did point a finger at conditions but thats not the entirety of this topic.

frans.8092:

NinjaEd.3946:

The point is stat choice, and toughness buffs hps and defense against raw dps, it does nothing against conditions however. Vitality on the other hand handles both. Unless said class has efficient condition removal toughness becomes nearly obsolete.

While toughness may not protect from condition damage, neither does vitality, character health pool determines how much time you have to counteract damage, it does nothing against conditions (or direct damage) but buy you some extra time. Choosing vitality over toughness will require you to heal more, but at a later time. Whichever is ‘better’ depends on the situation, the longer you stay in combat, the more you benefit from toughness.

Thats the point I’m trying to make, vitality gives you time regardless of the incoming damage source. If class A has a ton of condition removal and high hps then yeah, toughness wins but toughness doesn’t have any real affect against high power builds until you invest a lot into it. You still lose a large chunk of health which means you hit lower health thresholds quickly which is bad for people with effects against enemies below x% health.

You need fairly high toughness to do anything against high power builds, you don’t need a whole lot of extra vitality to make an impression.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

However, you do need to not think “armor=toughness” and “health=vitality”. Toughness gives armor. It does not equal it. Same thing with vitality and health.

How does that apply to anything? The point is stat choice, and toughness buffs hps and defense against raw dps, it does nothing against conditions however. Vitality on the other hand handles both. Unless said class has efficient condition removal toughness becomes nearly obsolete.

The statement of condition attacks carrying direct damage is also true for the opposite. Even without condition damage some DD attacks can pull a nasty DoT, in which toughness does not soften.

A good way to express this is take a low health tier profession and decide between knights or barbarian amulet. Same power, same prec, but 1 works as a universal defense. I’d wish there was some other benefit to toughness because low tier professions have to invest into vitality some shape or form otherwise they melt from anything.

They don’t need some global system of skills for being downed, the function of it is all that needs changing. Granted both being downed and planting are both highly unbalanced (stability stomping/stealth stomping/invuln stomping/ele downed/thief downed/etc) they should work on the core 2 skills which are meant to avoid being planted.

Whether it is an aoe cc, or movment, or stealth w/e. The #2 should help avoiding a stomp against a simple situation, and the #3 can serve as a punishment towards the enemy for failing to stomp you in time. Some have it, others don’t.

If you take into consideration the condition meta and the drastic differences in health tiers (think its 11k/15k/18k), is there a point to toughness? Vitality works against raw dps and conditions, while toughness only works on raw dps. Sure eating a 7-9k backstab or eviscerate is nasty but being melted in seconds from DoT is far less avoidable. The huge differences in health tiers makes certain amulet choices in pvp useless, and the inability to pick jewels anymore (so much for build diversity….) furthers that statement while some people don’t even need a certain stat because they got so much of it naturally.

To open diversity and give some cushion space for 1v2+ (a.k.a zerging or “focus fire”);

1. Change the health tiers a bit to be more narrow. Instead of ~11k/15k/18k change to ~13k/16k/18k. Smaller range means more stat choices. Doesn’t necessarily mean easier build’s, because the health tier is still very much present (5k difference as opposed to 7k) but those in lower tiers have some room to relocate stats elsewhere instead of worrying how fast they might melt.

2. Add secondary attribute to armor where every 100 points = 1% less stun duration. Reason I say armor is heavy armor professions should stand stronger than the rest, but atleast those who get a large sum of toughness will have some measurable counter to more than just raw dps. Also with no current DR on stun locking toughness would be a nice option for those who can’t get stability but want some means to counter it. If vitality works against raw dps and conditions, I see no reason in not giving toughness dual functions.

3. Return the jewels to pvp. I can’t recall anyone being against them, and adding 3(?) new amulets didn’t suddenly make builds simpler to choose. Giving us 1 amulet + 1 jewel was a sweet spot for anyone who was “missing something” and should return imho. There is no reason to make pvp easier to get into for new people by limiting build choice.

Crovax.7854:

If it’s not backed by Anet, why do you call it ‘official’?

Official Community CDI. Although threads get buried quite quick here so best of luck!

P.S as a main thief, I envy this thread.

With such a low frequency of balance patches, they sure do a good job of avoiding the elephant in the room. The downed state is pretty sad atm, with some clear victors and no effort to address them.

(Looked for thread discussing this, seems to of been swallowed by the flood).

Downed skills drastically suck. Most are very easily avoided, few are near impossible to avoid. I don’t think the point of the downed system is to “fight back” as much as “hold out” for someone to rez you or for a rally. B+ for doing something different from other pvp systems, C- for giving no attention towards it’s balance.

Carighan.6758:

Swagger.1459:

*wonders where all the money goes because it certainly isn’t being reinvested here.

Which is a good thing. Last I want them to do is listen to this forum community. Balance is wonky enough as it is, if they start listening to the ideas on these forums it’s going to get absolutely terrible.

Listening to ideas and acting on them are two entirely different things.

They are simply taking far to long to do anything. You don’t get balance by throwing some new toys in and seeing how it plays out for the next few months. Montioring is good only if something is at risk of spinning out of control. When you see nothing but strength runes for power builds, repetititive builds in tournaments and in general matches, then work on fixing it. They say they don’t want a wac-a-mole approach but they seem to of taken that stance to the absolute extreme and wait months before trying anything. Balance isn’t something you can just let soak in over time, balance patches need to drastically increase their frequency if anything is to ever get done.

Warcry.1596:

I don’t see how its a problem. Don’t trait into Shadow Arts :p I don’t

While we’re at it lets just disable any trait points from going into SA. Tell the community it’s down for maintenance.

Seriously though this trait should be reworked, have it drop a black powder shot to aoe blind and give you something to work off of. At least it would work as a defense and have literally no draw backs. Even if a trait “sometimes” gets you killed, that’s more than enough of a reason to rework it. Traits are meant to be bonuses, in no way should they have a “well if this occurs you’re SoL” moment.

-Crowd control spam. No risk high reward, although they don’t stack they do reset which means they can be chained to technically maintain the overall effect. I think the term to balance this would be diminishing returns….. considering they apply that to pve dungeons already I know this isn’t a stranger to anet. Stability is not a counter to this, only a few professions have any stability at all and requiring someone to invest into stability is not opening doors to build diversity at all.

-Condition damage auto attacks. Low risk, moderate reward. Auto attacks should have some sustained damage but should not be the lethality of a weapon set. From what I see, 2-5 are to cover up the auto attack in condition builds or give it a little extra punching power but the auto attack just amounts to far too much and lets you kite people with heavy DoT. Not a huge issue in pvp although it certainly is present, pretty big issue in wvw where condition duration is easily accessed.

-universally passive condition clears. Low risk, high reward. Granted some professions absolutely need them, having no thought behind it with such a grand defense is terrible for class diversity. Look at warrior cleansing ire, great trait but try running without it in today’s meta. Ranger with empathetic bond, I’m sure there are a couple others that are stapeled onto most classes. There should be more active condition clearing across the professions who don’t deal with them all that well as well as to the trait lines and utility skills that don’t work well in that department. Not suggesting put heavy condition clearing traits in every tree, but some people go to those trait lines specifically because no other trait line comes close to dealing with their build weakness. Everyone needs condition clearing and everyone needs some form of stun breaking.

End result with conditions? It’s kitten. Give a bunch of condi clearing now condi builds are irrelevant, buff conditions and we’re back where we started. Bottom line conditions need to be looked at to stay relevant but not be overwhelming with such high reward. This comes down to 3 parts only, condition duration, condition stacking, condition removal.

Dunno what the current topic of discussion is, but I’d like to drop in a few cents down the wishing well (literal “wishing” well).

- Stealth should last longer, have a longer revealed duration accordingly as in if you add 3 seconds stealth it doesn’t technically mean add 3 seconds reveal. This would mean also rebalancing the stealth related traits to be more suiting and relevant. In-combat stealth is a lot of fun but many people just waste time in it which is boring on both ends.

-Revealed should have 2 stages. Stage 1 reveal you happens when you attack and are blocked, evaded, countered, etc by another player (so wall skills would not cause reveal). Stage 1 reveal doesn’t apply any revealed effects and still maintains the inability to be targeted but a heavily blurred outline radiates around you. Stage 2 revealed would be the full on reveal as usual. Goal being to give some counter play and rewards to those who aren’t all familiar with stealth or those who are familiar but not rewarded for good timing.

-Fix the dozens of traits that just plain suck or don’t work anywhere.

Guess that third one applies to basically everyone though O.o

Any future to these sigils? Considering their only place is pve why are they placed as sigils?

To combat their useless place on the search engine for sigils on the tp and interfering with mystic forge results can these be removed in place of something pve quest related?

Such as doing specific events/dungeons respective to the enemy type or adding some small side bosses unique to these quests that only allow a max of 5 people to combat. The reward being small bonuses to each enemy damage type on the account amounting to the 10% in the end. I’d personally suggest no “quest” be repeatable so it doesn’t feel like a grind for those who do work towards this but mainly I just want these sigils out of zommorros excuse list to not give me good loots.

I don’t think the system in which you raise healing power should change at all, especially if it involves RNG (weak heal, or I can crit and get a high heal.. hmmm).

The point is you either spec for healing power in various amounts, or you don’t. When you do, you are sacrificing another stat (healing power doesn’t have it’s own column) and that alone should be an incentive to rework the scaling of healing power on various classes.

They need to re evaluate each healing skill, trait, or rune/sigil and figure if it deserves a buff to the healing power ratio. The base heals are fairly solid imo with only a handful needing any attention because if you’re given a huge heal with no reason to invest into healing power (cough healing signet) it leads to unbalanced build choice and passive play. If you want to heal, you should get some degree of healing power to make use of it end of story.

-[Side note] Ranger has a GM trait that AoE heals for roughly 1600 with a minimum cd of 20 seconds or thief gets an adept trait that heals for roughly 2k on a 35 second cooldown along with damage. Not saying that mug is a culprit, if you’re in a healing power trait line and your Grandmaster trait is as weak as a 1.6k heal something is wrong. AoE or not that’s a sad heal especially when not many pets have skills that fire off reliably or have a ~20 second cooldown. Things like that need looking into not just at face value but where they can be applied in each setting and what is used to get there.

mrauls.6519:

Supposedly it’s guardian, hence the reason no buffs are ever given to them q_q

You kidding? Burn dealing 50% more damage, and retaliation scaling off condition damage?! BORKEN!

Jokes aside I think the dev’s have ignored guardian for a long time now and when they say they feel guardian is fairly balanced it really means “We have no idea what to give them”. If only they could discover why burn alone is not a sufficient condition build…

If the goal here is diversity it would behoove you all to talk about buffing the traits that no one takes, vs discussing the traits that are worth taking and making them a core mechanic. Can you imagine how horrible balance would become if the stapled traits became core mechanics of every profession? (ranger would still probably fall behind ><)

To answer the bolded question, warrior. It’s sad but until they design some inventive pve mechanics that don’t rely on heavy armor classes using zerker-like builds warrior will remain on top. Ranger dps ranger might compete but effectively warrior would win because they can bring defenses in and still pull off high damage with rifle. It feels like all the pve content is balanced on anet’s favorite class :/

FT1- Allow free aiming of it. Dunno why you can only aim at ground level, people can jump up a rock or two and avoid a lot of skills.

FT2- Would be nice to add a blast finisher on the detonation to synergize with the fire field.

FT3- Pretty good imo. No need to make cc on engi any stronger than it already is.

FT4- it’s ok but aside from being a fire field on a fire based weapon, it doesn’t do much else. Could add the functionality that FT1 through napalm amplifies the burn at the end (3 seconds vs 1). Having the skills in a kit work with one another would greatly attract players who are looking for well rounded weapons.

FT5- I’d suggest changing this to creating a smoke field on your location for 2 seconds, blinding once at the start and every second after (total of 3 blinds). I’d be fine with a small decrease in blind duration (2 seconds per pulse) but a single blind with such a small radius is hard to work with other than stomping.

Other than that I enjoy Flamethrower, it certainly is scary to go up against and conceals the battlefield a bit. I don’t think the traits need a fix as much as the kit’s skills need synergy.

I’d be all for more diversity, assuming warrior wasn’t so far ahead to begin with. If anet would stop shaving their favorite class and treat it like a real balance change should, I doubt we would see even half the complaints against warriors that we do now. Ya’ll can blame anet’s inability to let go on that.

They only slapped the community in the face by naming the warrior trainer in HoTM Hamflr the Bowyer. It would be funny if hambow was a joke…..

Necro- Good condition application, good power build, scary to go up against on thief and doesn’t rely on mobility to smite people. Also has much better support than thief. Highest tier health, light armor, light armor has some cool looks.

Thief- 1 of the best duelers, high mobility, good deception from stealth and teleports, best if you like high risk high reward playstyles. Moderate support but overall a lone wolf on the field and works best as an assassin.

If you like bouncing around and dueling I’d suggest trying thief although don’t be surprised if you see strange nerfs. If you prefer being a beackon of hate that strikes fear into other players (literally) and relies on offensive defense I’d suggest trying necromancer.

Lowest health tier, medium armor, not that many “rouge” looks, but here’s hoping for more.

1 day perhaps, 1 day. My thoughts

(Pistol/sword)#3 Misdirection: Raise your sword in a defensive stance. Counter the next attack by firing a shot that transfers 1 condition you are suffering from to your foe. Stance duration 2 seconds. 4 initiative. Range 900 units.

(Dagger/sword)#3 Dagger wound: Stab your foe with your dagger and evade backwards 300 units. (only evade backwards if you hit a target) 3 initiative →Lunge Attack: Dart forward with your sword, dealing critical damage if your foe is suffering from vulnerability. Rush range 450 units. 2 initiative. 3 seconds before recycle.

(Sword/sword)#3 Duelist strikes: Slash your foe with both swords causing vulnerability. 2 stacks for 8 seconds per hit (if they had aegis, they would block 1 hit and get hit by the 2nd causing 2 stacks). 4 initiative.

Sword #4 Focused Blade: Fuse your sword strength to gain fury. Drain 1 initiative every 2 seconds while active. 2 seconds of fury every 2 seconds it is active. (to prevent abuse, costs 1 initiative to activate, then 1 initiative every 2 seconds afterwards, so people can’t toggle/retoggle to gain fury without the cost).

Sword #5 Berserker Strike: Swing your blade in a forward arc releasing a force, dealing more damage to enemies closer to you. Cleave melee range 130 units, cone range 450 units. 1/2 second wind up, 1/2 second rooted swing. Max targets 5. Initiative 6.

So let reddit go crazy, anet has done it before with a blog discussing future plans. They didn’t give dates, they just discussed what would be worked on and completed by a time frame (“rest of the year”). If reddit wants to interoperate that as “tomorrow” let them, at least anet can just link the fools what their actual words were and not feel guilty if people cry because they have to wait a week or month for those features to be shipped out.

The point is communication, something they aren’t all that good at it seems. Too much is done behind closed doors where we don’t know what’s being worked on or any small details on it. Don’t need a blue print, just something like ," hey, we will be dedicating another patch to profession balance this summer, etc etc".

Hopefully, putting together a blog to discuss their plans for class balance. Or on vacation, tis the (wvw) season.

Lightsbane.9012:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

No it does not.

well then. that would mean that half of the chill effect does not affect the thief class. other than utility skills. maybe anet should address this?

Ahh, I see this was a rhetorical question. Good for you, Bhawb said it perfectly though. Thief needs mobility or they die quick. Sure chill on a necro is no fun but they don’t melt from that, they have a large amount of sustain even with such little evasion/teleports. It doesn’t affect initiative because thief already has a much smaller skill rotation than anyone who has cool downs, no reason to cut that even shorter.

Try not to be so blind in thinking the mobility reduction on any other profession is even half as troublesome as applying it to a thief. There is a reason why we can bounce around so quickly, and it isn’t to look cool.

I just think the core of this problem is the time frame between each patch. They give us a bunch of new toys for <insert winter holiday here>, many of which we didn’t ask for so we fake a smile and say," Gee, thanks! ~.~" and then they go out of town for months on end.

Even with this season going on, I can understand to not continue the next segment of LS (needs to deliver, have an impact, not be all about temp content, etc) but that doesn’t mean pvp is all gravy. I mean pvp should have the most attention, it IS end game. That’s not to say when you hit 80 go do some kitten pvp, but aside from getting skins and ascended there is no more progression except pvp or wvw rank.

Pvp balance imho should have at the very least 1 patch every month. It’s only wac-a-mole if you smite a build and throw X^X power on a skill, giving little attention every month to bring things in line and tone other things down is what is needed. Take s/d thief atm, its pretty broken in the right hands with little risk but does that mean thief is op? No. Look at the runes/sigils that are used, look at what the ferocity change did to critical damage trait lines, kudos to dedicating a patch to runes and sigils as it certainly opened many doors but it also closed a large number and did little to add to diversity. Look at constant complaints against traits/skills that are down right useless or backfire (last refuge, self-regulating defenses, etc).

Its time the pvp balance team went into overdrive and brought in some more bodies to fix or rework the hundreds of trait/weapon/armor/rune/sigil/utility/healing/elite skills that are far from rewarding. Its time to listen to the sane people on the forums, and not give in to the whiners who don’t back their statements up with any experience. It’s time to quit ignoring the elephant in the room. Are you guys up to it or is it safe to move to another game? I’d like to stay if that’s ok but I need something enjoyable and pvp right now is not enjoyable, pve is even less exciting.

Sarrs.4831:

NinjaEd.3946:

Then the line to separate the 2 sets, increase the bleed duration of sneak attack from 4-8 seconds base, lower the bleed duration of the aa from 4-2 seconds, and increase the direct damage base as well as power coefficient slightly. Lastly, each shot from unload should apply a 1 second 1 stack of vulnerability to help out with its channeled damage. This makes the power portion, p/p, have more direct damage and gives the condition portion, sneak attack, to do what it does.

Not sure about this; Unload applying Vuln could mean that Body Shot’s pushed even further into the Weird Box for PP. At the moment, you might go “yeah throw out body shot for vulnerability stacks and help my buddies” in a groupfight, but now Unload just does that too.

I think a straight 3-5% damage boost for Unload would probably be better just because it’s less messy. It ends up being about the same.

NinjaEd.3946:

This would help p/p have a strong single target impact, it wouldn’t nerf p/d hybrid because the heavy bleeds would still be there just relocated to a more appropriate position, and p/d conditions would get the same treatment. Only build that would suffer would be p/p hybrid if that even exists outside of a gimmick but if you’re gaining one build at the expense of another that behaves very similar, why care?

The only build which suffers is PP hybrid, but there are two builds which benefit here; P/P power (the intended target) and PD power. That’s what I’m mainly worried about when you buff Vital Shot to better supplement Unload, even when you move around the condition application; PD power could just take over completely from PP.

Well I also mentioned changing body shot completely to something that isn’t so awkward. Right now even as a short vuln stack it leaves no impact.

P/d hybrid wouldn’t be affected negatively by this, the bleeds would still be present and the power portion would be getting a slight buff. The point of reworking the aa is to fit what p/p and p/d has access to in terms of stealth. P/p can’t stealth on its own, p/d can, so it would be logical to relocate the the condition portion to the build that has a use for it in order to buff the power portion. A flat buff to the aa does no good as far as distinguishing p/p and p/d, there has to be an adjustment as to where the damage buff comes from.

This change would likely raise the skill level to play p/d also, since they can’t use the aa for 8+ second bleeds (wvw, pvp its more like 6-7). Actively working to enter stealth and get those bleeds on you and using the aa as sort of a balance in the mean time, also giving you the choice to focus on other skills. It also gives some counter play to those up against p/d, as they will have a better idea of how to avoid the burst of bleeds (get hit once, dodge being the most practical, the bullets are visible even if the enemy is in stealth).

I don’t get the idea behind torment. Staying immobile is asinine, so the double damage while moving is essentially guaranteed. Why even have this “situational” extra damage when its nearly 100% unless immobilized or stunned which will actually cut the dps of it.

In any case, I don’t think necro axe should have torment on the aa, axe is a power weapon and a pretty good one. I’d rather have more combo finishers on necro before more torment, like making unholy feast a blast finisher.

Now I know how it feels to watch people bicker :/ Sorry.

Anywho, p/x is hybrid set, because p/d favors condition application (access to stealth for sneak attack, #3 applies torment, etc) while p/p favors more of a power/hybrid spec. That’s the issue, p/p isn’t viable in either way and if you’re aiming for sustain with the power/conditions p/d does it better by being able to kite and put out some nasty hits. A complete rework of the #2 is unquestionable imho, this skill is just far to strange for anyone to have and has seen some drastic changes in its life span.

Then the line to separate the 2 sets, increase the bleed duration of sneak attack from 4-8 seconds base, lower the bleed duration of the aa from 4-2 seconds, and increase the direct damage base as well as power coefficient slightly. Lastly, each shot from unload should apply a 1 second 1 stack of vulnerability to help out with its channeled damage. This makes the power portion, p/p, have more direct damage and gives the condition portion, sneak attack, to do what it does.

This would help p/p have a strong single target impact, it wouldn’t nerf p/d hybrid because the heavy bleeds would still be there just relocated to a more appropriate position, and p/d conditions would get the same treatment. Only build that would suffer would be p/p hybrid if that even exists outside of a gimmick but if you’re gaining one build at the expense of another that behaves very similar, why care?

Well if you’re condition, I’d take Deadly arts. Not only does poison add another condition to cover up, it hinders their healing and by going 10 into DA you get 10% condition duration.

Soap.6124:

As a long time Thief aficionado, some criticisms I have for the class would be:

• Steal: I don’t really see the Steal mechanic as successful in terms of gameplay; it’s powerful in usage, without a doubt. However, it’s used as a mobility & set-up tool more than anything; the actual stealing portion of the ability (acquiring the single use item/skill from your target) is probably the last reason anyone uses Steal. For a mechanic that’s supposed to define the class, it really fails to deliver when it comes to a rewarding gameplay experience.

The mechanic works well in when playing alone or in small-scale PvE excursions, but in larger-scale PvE, as well as sPvP, tPvP, and WvW, the entire concept behind mechanic is completely lost.

My two cents: I believe it would make more sense if Steal worked more along the lines of “stealing” a unique buff/boon from your target, based on what they are, rather than an item or skill. It would be more universally useful for its intended purposes in all gameplay outlets, easier to balance, and probably more fun for the player, while not necessarily being any more or less powerful in gameplay.

• Venom: Venoms, with the exception of Basilisk Venom, are all pretty lackluster outside being used to give yourself Might stacks via Venomous Strength. The conditions they cause are usually just overridden by classes who are more apt at applying conditions (or in the case of Spider’s Venom, the Thief itself) and their effect goes unnoticed. As result, they’re not very fun in usage for the Thief and not very useful in multiplayer situations. On top of this, they lack any animations whatsoever.

My two cents: Venoms suffer in functionality as well as failing to grant a rewarding gameplay experience to the player. Perhaps Venoms should be unique debuffs or effects that work better in the presence of other conditions, or entirely new mechanics.

Ex: This venom makes your target more susceptible to poison. Poison causes an additional X% damage to the afflicted target for Y seconds.

Couldn’t agree more on the steal. I’ve argued its lackluster rewards in posts before, the results are not universal and being the only F skill, doesn’t bring enough to the table.

As for venoms, they could probably make it something along the lines of virtues/signets, where it has a passive effect either on X number of strikes or a % chance on strike, then using it as an active has an amplified effect. In addition, I agree some venoms are simply overridden either by another player or the thief themselves. In the event of ice drake venom, why chill for ~3 seconds when you can immobilize for 4? I think having a sitting duck is better then letting them dodge or leap away from an attack. I’d change ice drake to some sort of karka venom, 2 attacks transfer a condition on hit. Give some defensive approach for venom share as well as a much needed help in the remove-condition department for thief. For Basilik Venom, I’d simply have it ignore stability. It’s a cast time, has a very clear marker on who has it ready, seems easily ignored by most professions. Let stun breakers still remove it but it should have some kick for applying petrify instead of stun.

What: Combo critical chance or combined training
Suggestion: scrap for a sword trait (critical chance with sword?)
Why:It just seems odd not to have one, i mean there are plenty of useless traits that can be replaced with one —-No one would mind if combined training or combo critical chance where removed for a sword trait, and it would make sense too for it to be in deadly arts or critical strikes

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Why-no-sword-trait

The thing I did is got used to a slightly high mouse sensitivity and just kept my screen locked. I didn’t wana add more to my multi tasking especially playing a profession which has many risks with pressing the wrong button. If I plan to withdraw forward, I just wip the camera around and use it with my mouse button (G700 Logitech gaming mouse) and presto, takes no more than a split second. When immobilized though, I kinda wish there was some sort of method to aiming where you roll, would require the ability to turn when immobilized though which I don’t see happening anytime soon.

Deniara Devious.3948:

I do not see any point in buffing greatsword as it is already the most popular mesmer weapon by far.

Even if a weapon set is popular, doesn’t mean that the good skills negate the need to improve the weak skills. All weapon skills should serve a purpose, and I’ve never been nuked by any combo from this skill. It’s pretty easy to avoid too given the height they raise the sword to begin with. As long as there is some visual queue to greatly effective skills, I don’t see any problems buffing them (which btw, thank you for the pin down change!) The pulsing boon stripping AoE sounds neat, it certainly has the down side of turning you into a sitting duck to keep it up.

However I really wish the damage of certain phantasms were slightly reduced. Being kited and having phantasms do heavy damage is not fun to play against; Not fun being described as “zzzzzzzz, oh you did something different?”. I rarely find fun dueling mesmers, it’s just chasing butterflies all day and being slowly melted in the meantime by AI. Finding them is cake once they exit stealth, what’s kitten is the amount of damage you take while they are stealthed.

I’m going to guess that the OP is hambow and upset that someone has the means to counter their passive play. GG other players, gg.

Comparing balanced stance to necromancer life force or the invuln skills engi and ele have. It has a shorter cooldown and lasts atleast 8 seconds, and more importantly its a utility skill. Necro life force IS a part of them, stances are not a forced mechanic for warriors. Only thing that upsets me is that most of anet plays warrior so asking to buff them is actually possible… sigh

Einlanzer.1627:

P/P does indeed tend to work better as a hybrid set rather than a full power set like most people try to use it as, but you’re still trading off damage for versatility more than you should have to.

Building around Power at least gives the set reasonable burst potential, which gives it a specific niche, while building in a hybridized way makes it overall more functional but at the expense of just being kinda all-around lackluster in damage pressure. No matter how you dice it, the set is weaker than it should be.

It has potential as a power set, but not so much hybrid. If you mix in the aa with some unload the bleeds are not worth cleansing as they will never stack to dangerous numbers. It basically comes down to scaring the enemy mentally by showing "I’ve got bleeds on me, and vulnerability, “click” panic button" and throwing a 3-5k unload here and there assuming even decent conditions (enemy soaks up each hit, each hit critting, etc).

It’s still not practical and goes on a full offensive approach which on a thief weapon set is not good. Compare the defensive and offensive power of the other weapon sets and try to put p/p with them, it falls short on both ends. I’m not saying its unplayable, I’m saying it is below average and this is displayed by the lack of its use, the fact that we have a 10% damage bonus trait towards pistols in an adept trait line, and the lack of nerf requests towards it. If it was anything above average it would be complained about, because every single other weapon set has been thus far.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

NinjaEd.3946:

Here’s what I’ve concluded on p/p.

1. Very obvious. They rely on 1 skill for dps, and that skill is rather easy to negate if the enemy has even a little awareness of their surroundings. I tested this by making a spec for p/p that solely focused on spamming 3, evading, maybe interrupt a heal here and there and evasion. Since the aa is a hybrid and the remaining 3 skills are utility you’re left with #3 for a majority of your damage which is either expensive, weak, or little of both. The lack of a suitable #2 and low dps on #3 I was only slapping people and killing people who still use A and D to turn in pvp.

You need to use it more often before you conclude because your conclusion is not representative of how P/P is actually used.

The common misconception is that P/P is mainly to spam skill #3. You can’t be anymore wrong.

Think about it, what does P/D uses as their main source of damage? Got that?

Now look at D/P and S/P on how they are using skill #4 and #5. Got that?

Knowing that, look at on how you’re building around P/P — sad right? You got the wrong idea about P/P.

If you put any points into CS or SA, then you’ve already failed at P/P. Might as well use other build.

2. The utility from #2/4/5 doesn’t do much good to the thief defense. #2 has a long aftercast, #4 doesnt’ last you in the long run, #5 only affects those who aren’t aware you can melee outside the circle or range. Other weapon sets have strong evasion or can reposition themselves either from teleports or stealth.

Then you’re using it wrong. Whoever said that you have to remain at a far distance using P/P? This set is effective either at far range or close range.

Also, I never seen a Thief who insist on standing on the smoke zone while enemy melee them from the outside the zone. That’s has L2P issue written all over it.

As fun as it can be, it’s not practical for a thief in any pvp enviroment. If they just changed the #2 to something useful then maybe it can partake in competitive play but right now its just not comparable to the rest.

I don’t know about that. Where ever P/D is viable, so is P/P. You really just have to learn how to use the weapon set starting with a (6/x/x/x/6) build.

On p/d that bleed is likely 5-7 or more seconds, so they just need to hit them and a bunch more DoT is tied to it. There is no reason for a condi build to choose p/p over p/d with no access to stealth and without an effective kite ability.

The 4 is for interrupts, which does no good to the p/p other than interrupt and won’t last you long to call it sustain. Same with the #5, it can be easily avoided by standing outside the circle, and it is expensive to throw down to begin with so it helps you in neither melee or ranged. Even if you throw bps down and kite them into it over and over, you really going to aa them to death? Doubt it, or that screams L2P.

I entirely disagree with p/p being a close ranged set, the skills are far to unreliable to use at close range without missing or being canceled, I just dance around thieves that use p/p and keep the harassment up so they can’t hit me reliably.

P/p lacks sufficient ranged damage and sustain. If you’re going to sit on the sideline and “snipe” people, you’d be better off with sb which is AoE and has far more utility in a group. Even single target p/p may hit a little harder but nothing significantly higher than sb. Dagger→ sword has the system down with dagger having high single target and sword having good AoE, sadly pistol→ shortbow doesn’t share that relationship.

I see many problems with initiative, but none of them are worthy of a total rework or make the mechanic broken or unfulfilling.

1- For starters, all 2-5 weapon skills on a thief are technically spammable, some with higher rewards than others.

2- Some weapon sets don’t have use of all those skills, so you just see the same rotation which is not all that enjoyable to use or fight against.

3- a majority of these skills have drastically reduced effects compared to other professions’ durations or power coeficients because they’re technically spammable. So unfortunately they have to suffer shorter effects and some of them aren’t suitable to the weapon set to begin with which ties to the 2nd issue. Body shot would a prime example of “wtf is this doing here?”

My problem with initiative is the mix of good and bad weapon skills having no DR. Without DR I can’t see them every buffing any of our weapon skills, or thief woulld get a bunch of op builds. I don’t have a problem with initiative as much as our weapon kits.

I actually bought them just before I saw the changes towards it. Still using it however, simply because it free’s up a slot. After the ferocity change I don’t see an appeal to crit dmg runes :/

Zacchary.6183:

NinjaEd you are starting to have idearrhea. Keep the skill floor high so we can laugh at everyone behind the cheese label they place on us.

It outa be a nice change of pace from, “NERF TEEF!” followed by, “I don’t play much pvp”. Rather have idearrhea than pop a blood vessel in my eye from reading such misinformed kittens who paint thief on a white horse in a colonel’s uniform :/

Many topics on this, really hope a moderator condenses it soon :/

Anywho, this rune set is a problem imo. Why? Because its way to passive and doesn’t require thinking to get many of the bonuses. The 6th bonus is naturally permanent from this rune unless the enemy never hits you. Granted boon stealing/ripping can counter this, not everyone is going to have that (mesmers would be the only one who would have it from either null field or sword or gs which all mesmers seem to have atleast 1 of). I don’t think this rune set should be nerfed to oblivion but there should be some tweaking done so that it leans on certain builds like

(1): 25 power
(2): 5% might duration
(3): 50 power
(4): 15% might duration; gain might for 10 seconds if you take more than 10% of your health from a single attack (5 second ICD)
(5): 100 power
(6): 20% might duration; +7% damage when over 6 stacks of might.

Simply being hit by anything to gain a boon is like saying “here, just have it”. Atleast this would focus more on specific builds who have to maintain stacks of might and not reward people for something they never have to think about.

What: Initiative loss on interrupt
Type: Initiative
Suggestion: Interuption removes the initiative spent on the skill. This applies to only a few skills that do not spend the initiative until after the effect takes place (pw for example).
Why: No cooldowns on weapon skills, interruption isn’t rewarded properly against thieves (on certain skills).

Threads: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Suggestion-Initiative-lost-on-Interrupt

What: GM trait for acrobatics, [Blinding Wrath]
Type: Acrobatics tree, (new trait?)
Suggestion: Everytime you blind a foe, gain might for 10 seconds. No ICD.
Why: N/A (possibly to open up more heavy investment options to this trait line?)

Threads: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Idea-for-new-trait

Mystogan.4157:

Yea i run 2/0/6/0/6 i get 2k hp and poison every 19 secs plus a daze plus a gap closer worth it for my build

I don’t think the OP was asking if steal spec’s are needed, but if putting 10 into DA for mug was better than 10 into SA for SE.

On a steal spec, having a 2k heal every 21 seconds is good, on a 35 second cooldown I’d still say its good. Better to give some extra utility to the most underwhelming F skill than to use it for nothing more than a gap closer and potentially useless skill.