Guild Wars 2

To sort of generally respond to a number of people in this thread:

Warriors are the definition of an easy-to-play class. Every skill works as a standalone ability, every utility has a single, clearly-defined purpose, and, most obviously of all, the class has a huge number of passive benefits, like healing signet and cleansing ire, not to mention adrenaline being the single most simple mechanic any class has, and the only mechanic unique to warriors.

However, this doesn’t mean they should be unviable, even at high level play. Yes, when played perfectly and in ideal situations they should be inferior to a higher-skillcap class. But a low-skill class will still (ideally) be useful in a situation where they make a mistake, or a strategy goes out the window, while with a difficult class things tend to get out of hand really quickly.

That being said, warriors are probably not where they should be on the scale of things, in that very often they will still beat a more difficult class, even if nothing goes wrong. Part of this is conquest. Point combat drastically lowers the skill ceiling for every class, because it limits a number of different tactics available to skilled play (mostly movement-based and LoS-based stuff) while hurting easy play vastly less.
The same sort of goes for zerg combat, because the zerg has a high tendency to reduce the effectiveness of any active defense.

TL;DR: Warriors are undisputedly the easiest class to play, but they shouldn’t be unviable for a number of reasons. They are still somewhat overpowered though, and I attribute a lot of that to point/zerg-based combat in PvP/WvW.

Burnfall.9573:

Warriors have high HP and High Damages+High Bursts already; buffing Thief and Elementalist HP would result them in the same category.

Cause they too have same High Damages+High Bursts…

There’s enough outcry concerning warriors Overpowerd HP, so why add these 2 classes to make it worse?

Seriously,

I don’t get it??

I actually have to agree somewhat, because I’m of the opinion that the single thing that elementalists need to be defined by is their lack of passivity. The game really needs to reward this somewhat more than it does now though, which is where I feel the issue lies, not in the lack of passive defenses. The same goes for the thief in a sense, in that I don’t think adding passive defenses is the way to go. It might be better to give them some more active defense that isn’t stealth, because stealth suffers from the problem that it punishes active defense more than passive defense. There could also be a secondary way to activate stealth skills, like dodges, but that would have to be a different topic.

whyme.3281:

Elementalists and thiefs are fine with their low health.

thief has stealth and high burst potential.

Ele was nerfed, but can be fixed. Passive procs on atunement swap (condi remove on water, protection on earth, swiftness on air and blind on fire) without investing in traits could help to improve their active defense. Diamond skin needs to go or no 100% immunity (maybe 50% lower duration while above 90% health). And then they need slightly higher damage. To compensate their low health.

Nerfing Diamond skin isn’t really an option, seeing as how the trait does absolutely nothing against the vast majority of classes. It needs a complete overhaul. Having a grandmaster trait be completely passive on a class that is supposed to be the ultimate high-skillcap active class is sort of silly to begin with, and making it both random and half as useful as it currently is wouldn’t solve that.

eleshazar.6902:

Guard should be added to this list…. A guard has the same tier of health, and while they have higher armor, when they trait to actually deal damage they can be 1 shot just as easily as an ele….

Not really. Heavy armor reduces direct damage by 30ish percent with no toughness invested, compared to light armor. “Just as easily” is a bit of an overstatement.

silvermember.8941:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

I still want dual pistol…
salivates

Amen.

I do wish the gun welding was a little more elegant.

Yeah, they need to animate it so that, regardless of what attack I use, both weapons are used. Most pistol skills fire one of them exclusively, but looks a little silly.

kokiman.2364:

ThiBash.5634:

What I’m curious about is why people are so keen on greatsword wielding eles…I mean, why greatsword? Is it just because the mesmer has one?

Greatswords are big and they tend to get most of these overly flashy skins that so many people like for some reason.

Dat chainsaw.

Oh dear, I corrupted it.
I’m sorry, please forgive me /cries

Viking Jorun.5413:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Cynz.9437:

stealth isn’t flawed concept…. in fact it is only feature in any game that actually requires you to use brain instead of just random button mash and reliance on armor+ facetank

Well except for the user, he gets to be just as braindead but invisible too.
For some real brain activity, pick up a staff ele, note the lack of stealth, note the lack of any form of button mashing, armor, or facetanking, and then note that you die every time you stop pretending you’re playing chess.

You must die a lot on your thief. The class is all about strategizing and determining your opponent’s next move – just like chess.

Or just stealthing as much as you can and using backstab/heartseeker because it’s pretty darn effective at fulfilling the thief role, which is to pick off anyone who has the nerve to be squishy or low on health, or zipping around the map backcapping as much as you can.
Not to say that there aren’t good thieves out there, but you really don’t have to be all that great to do the above effectively. Being in stealth does not particularly force you to think, which is what I disagreed with, coming from a staff ele perspective where I understand how horribly screwed I am if a thief notices my existence, regardless of whether they can actually play or not.
The same goes with the thief I’m messing around with now (keep in mind it’s not a viable or even particularly interesting spec at all), although it really is much easier to survive even with just that little bit of extra armor because of all the ports and evades/interrupts. It really is stealth that makes the difference, though, seeing as how it makes everything many times more simple.

I still want dual pistol…
salivates

Cynz.9437:

stealth isn’t flawed concept…. in fact it is only feature in any game that actually requires you to use brain instead of just random button mash and reliance on armor+ facetank

Well except for the user, he gets to be just as braindead but invisible too.
For some real brain activity, pick up a staff ele, note the lack of stealth, note the lack of any form of button mashing, armor, or facetanking, and then note that you die every time you stop pretending you’re playing chess.

fellyn.5083:

Terrahero.9358:

I’d start with the root causes. How Warriors beat out everyone in armor, health and healing/sec before traits or utility skills are applied.

Flat out stronger armour, higher health and more healing/sec then my Engineer, and my Engineer actually has either toughness or vit on every piece of gear. My Warrior is full zerker.

Which then execerbates the problem, as my Engineer needs to spend about a third of his itembudget (to still be worst) this gives Warriors 33% more stats to dedicate to damage.
So even if damage was balanced, with so much more to put towards damage they win that game too.

Its like one of those Easy modes you see in some games that just give you flat out higher stats. Thats what a Warrior is right now, play one and you get extra stats.

You do realize high health and armor are not exclusive to warrior right?

People keep trying to use this for the argument in nerfs for warrior but it just makes you look desperate and sad.

Besides that armor is not as effective at mitigating damage as most people seem to believe it is.

Well technically high health and heavy, or even medium armor are exclusive to warrior. The only other class with a high healthpool is necro, and they are light armor.
Also, high armor is a ~31.5% boost at base to damage reduction over light armor at zero toughness (this of course is smaller at higher levels of toughness than zero, but at 2000 toughness that’s still a 10.2% reduction compared to light armor). Don’t really see that as insignificant.
Do the math, base light armor is 967, base heavy armor is 1271.

Or just look here:
(1271-967)/967=.315, a 31.5% increase.
(3271-2967)/967=.102, a 10.2% increase.

This ignores conditions, but anybody who thinks warriors is weak to those needs to get some sleep.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Traits and Runes that improve reviving needs to be looked at. I’ve never known anyone using them. Ever.

Party wide boons, heals and what-not need some better sharing mechanic other than stacking on top of one another within 240 radius or so just to get the boon or heal. It forces ranged support classes (Staff ele) to be in the thick of the battle just to share some boons and heal partymates. 1200 range become kitten for support roles.

I’ve seen mesmers and guardians use their protective ones, and thieves as well to a lesser extent.

Frankly the single worst part about immobilize is that it prevents dodging. If I could still dodge and just not move, I wouldn’t mind it so much, but when having it on you completely removes half of your active defenses, it really hurts. This stuff shouldn’t stack at all. It just a bit less potency than daze (because you can still dodge while dazed so you’re not defenseless), but think of how horrifying daze would be if it stacked eight seconds in duration and you had to use multiple stun breaks just to get rid of it.

1) Elementalist. No single role it is considered viable for in PvP, in WvW it is entirely limited to buff/MS spam in zergs, and in PvE it basically ignores its attunement mechanic because you lose heavy amounts of DPS if you so much as look at any other attunement than fire or Lightning Hammer.
2) Ranger. While it does have viable specs in every game mode, it doesn’t have the option to pick high-skill high-reward builds most of the time due to its reliance on an AI pet. It might be a good idea to give them the option of greater control over their pet, even if that is horribly difficult to play (but is still an option) due to the difficulty of managing both yourself and your pet.
3) Thieves. Overreliance on stealth makes for gimmicky builds that people don’t really enjoy playing with or against.

I’m really confused about people thinking engineers are weak. They are pretty darn good in all areas except PvE speedrun dungeons, where DPS is the only thing that matters anyway.

Vuh.1328:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

I agree for this only for effects that do not directly hinder the opponent, like the ele d/d earth leap and the d/p thief shadowstep.
For things like necro marks, I don’t think having them be able to be unblockable is a good thing in the first place, but that is for another thread. It isn’t really good to remove any amount of counterplay from something that is already lacking in that respect to begin with.

I might be dumb but how is it removing counter play, it adds counter play?

I think it’s completely fine if a d/d ele can immob someone while doing say flanking strike for example.

Also how does this affect shadowstep and d/p in general or did you mean shadowshot?

Evade skills currently have no counter play to them as it is, blocks are very strong but atleast they have counter play to it.

Dodge would still remain as evade.

Unblockable isn’t counterplay. Unblockable removes counterplay. By making defensive mechanics not work, it completely removes the entire element of strategy that is correctly timing blocks/evades. I disagree with the current implementation of a number unblockable attacks because of this, and because it’s not adding a counter to a dodge/evade, it’s just ignoring it. There is a vital difference here. Think of it as the relationship between diamond skin/that engi trait and condition cleanses. They both introduce an element of counterplay, but while diamond skin completely ignores the actions of the opponent (in that it either works or it doesn’t depending on whether the opponent happens to be a dire necro), condition cleanses add counterplay and various strategies for both the player and the opponent.
In the same way, some unblockable attacks are like giving players access to agony.

There are a few unblockable attacks that do not fall in this category. These are the ones that punish a player for taking a certain action, or are necessary for the rest of the set to function. Static field is an example of this, because if you run through it it’s pretty much your fault and there was some opportunity to not take the stun, simply by not walking through. In the same way, the various traps have the same sort of justification. Magnetic grasp needs to hit to mark an enemy, or else the leap doesn’t work, and the same goes for shadow shot.
Marks (traited) are an example of the type that does not really work, because you can just cast them directly on an enemy, offensively, with pretty much no counterplay involved. This is what I mean by certain skills completely removing counterplay, in that well-timed blocks are _not_rewarded.
Besides, evades are fundamentally different from blocks. Most blocks do not limit your movement, while the vast majority of evades control your movement for their duration.

Ryld.1340:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just FYI – We’ll be rolling out another round of Collaborative Development soon. I’ll be working with the balance designers to help get some well-rounded feedback from you all. Start thinking about what 3 things you would change, and keep an eye out for the CDI thread!

1) Attunement Cooldowns removed. All attunement swap effects gain a 10s ICD.

2) Arcane Tree now reduces recharge time of all skills globally instead of Attunement only.

3) Elemental Attunement becomes baseline. The trait to replace it makes the effects AoE. A worthy master trait.

You would need to remove/ICD lingering elements too, but I doubt anyone would care particularly about that anyway.

Vuh.1328:

Change every evade skill in game to not count as evade anymore but block
Normal Dodges would still count as evade, just not evade skills on weapons.
Possibly change the “Evade/Block” message to something else but let the functionality of the skill be counted as block.

This would still give plenty of survivability but more counter play if players chose so.

Unblockable traits would suddenly become more useful again.
Traits like the warrior one that give might when an enemy blocks would be more useful.
Would make it possible for classes like mesmer with fairly slow cast time but that have some unblockable ability to at least hit “evade spamming” thieves for example.

I don’t really see a downside to this besides adding more option for counterplay to a currently really annoying mechanic.

Sure you might say it doesn’t make any sense for skills like flanking strike from a roleplaying perspective but, think of it like you are blocking with your off hand while moving behind the target or pistolwhip the flurry of blows blocks the enemy attacks rather than evading.

This mechanic is already in game for the training NPCs in the mist which evades already count as block, might be true for some pve encounters but i don’t know about them too much tbh.

Would maybe require some rebalance for sigils like guardian runes though.

I agree for this only for effects that do not directly hinder the opponent, like the ele d/d earth leap and the d/p thief shadowstep.
For things like necro marks, I don’t think having them be able to be unblockable is a good thing in the first place, but that is for another thread. It isn’t really good to remove any amount of counterplay from something that is already lacking in that respect to begin with.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

In my opinion it is a rather weak trait, the only way it is effective is is going 10 in one trait and then 15 in the others.

I think it could do with a little improvement

I feel like they could allow it to stack bonuses outside the 5-point ones, so long as they limited it to one holdover element at a time (as in, the last element you attuned to lingers for five seconds). That way you don’t get someone stacking absurd amounts of damage by blowing through all of their attunements during a churning earth, for example, but you also make the trait vastly more effective.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Question: Would this be an automatic cast when you get into that attunement? If so, how would that work with the current 15point traits?

By the sounds of it, some are target skills so dont see it being automatic, where would these skills be placed? Guessing replace the attunement icon for the attunement you are in already?

Like you Press “F1” to go into fire and then Press it again to use the Elemental skill?

That seems to be the gist.

I like it because it is:
1) Skillcap-raising. Careful planning and management will let you use this skills when needed for greater effect, as well as increase the number of available combos and options.
2) It’s in keeping with the elementalist theme. Each attunement has it’s own purpose and set of powers, so why not have a special skill that channels that power to greater effect?
3) It’s not passive. I like the way that for most optimal setups, pretty much nothing an elementalist does is automatic, so you usually have complete control of what your character does at any moment for better or for worse. This contrasts well with other professions that end up doing a lot of things automatically and without player input.

Shockwave.1230:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

As far as I can see, they would have to try pretty hard to make it as bad as our other elites.
My prediction:
Passive: 2 sec, ICD 10 sec (so fresh air abuse doesn’t happen, 2/5sec would be pretty crazy. Matches up with fury on swap.
Active: 30-45 second cooldown. Consistent with other signets. Probably more towards 45 because of written in stone being so powerful.

You raised an interesting point about the fury on swap.

With quickness, it means Churning Earth will be channeled faster, and delivered with fury o.0

kitten .

I can see so many awesome uses for this, especially with rock solid.
Rock solid+signet makes uberstomps.

One of the reasons the skill can’t be released to production in the presented form. Written in Stone + Rock Solid = always stability stomp in 2 seconds.

It also pretty much removes all counterplay from channeled skills for us. Churning earth being an uninterruptable 2 second cast would prevent people from just walking out of it, especially with the cripple, meteor shower would probably be horribly overpowered on a quick cast (you would be able to actually use it during a fight and possibly even on point), ether renewal would be amazing…
That being said, it would be fun.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

As far as I can see, they would have to try pretty hard to make it as bad as our other elites.
My prediction:
Passive: 2 sec, ICD 10 sec (so fresh air abuse doesn’t happen, 2/5sec would be pretty crazy. Matches up with fury on swap.
Active: 30-45 second cooldown. Consistent with other signets. Probably more towards 45 because of written in stone being so powerful.

You raised an interesting point about the fury on swap.

With quickness, it means Churning Earth will be channeled faster, and delivered with fury o.0

kitten .

I can see so many awesome uses for this, especially with rock solid.
Rock solid+signet makes uberstomps.

As far as I can see, they would have to try pretty hard to make it as bad as our other elites.
My prediction:
Passive: 2 sec, ICD 10 sec (so fresh air abuse doesn’t happen, 2/5sec would be pretty crazy. Matches up with fury on swap.
Active: 30-45 second cooldown. Consistent with other signets. Probably more towards 45 because of written in stone being so powerful.

Fuzzion.2504:

I would give Eles a new main hand weapon like a 1h sword or something.

I want dual pistols, because that would be awesome.

Maugetarr.6823:

Swagg.9236:

Maugetarr.6823:

Swagg.9236:

Maugetarr.6823:

I (and others) have already argued the points earlier and I don’t think we’ll come to an agreement with more debate. The combat system in this game is fun, as is, with instant cast from various classes.

Fun is subjective. Balance is not. Instant-cast offensive abilities are imbalanced within the context of GW2.

I disagree. That’s like saying snipers or noob tubes don’t belong in FPS games.

You’ve missed the mark again. We’re not talking about FPS games. We’re talking about a specific kind of MMORPG. Please, guys, if you can’t actually do anything but grasp at straws—well, I guess I don’t mind the bumps.

Also, your analogy is pretty bad.

We’re talking about a game where they didn’t implement the trinity so it’s not exactly following all the formula of all the others. It’s different and unique but you’re trying to change it into a vanilla MMORPG format.

Also I like the analogy of having instant kill headshots versus other classes that have to run around and get kills. If the games were only limited to all assault rifles it would be pretty bland.

As far as I can see it, he’s moving away from a vanilla MMORPG. What those bring to my mind is linear combat decided mostly on stat differences (i.e. investment in grinding) and builds (hard counters/strategy in an organizational sense, i.e. having outcomes decided entirely around what builds face what builds), with individual player capabilities as a secondary or tertiary concern.
For the FPS analogy: I don’t see this as particularly valid, seeing as how in FPSs health is so low that the difference between a sniper killing speed and an assault rifle is pretty low (in terms of time between opening fire to death). If snipers/noobtubes were the only way to remove a target’s health in only a few seconds, while assault rifles took upwards of ten seconds, I think you would start to see the difference.

hihey.1075:

Glyphs are most likely the worst set of utilities of the Elementalist, and most likely the worst utilities in the entire game.
Glyph of Lesser elementals can be used for levelling in PvE. Glyph of Renewal can be used in WvW to rez lords.
Glyph of Storms and Glyph of Elemental Power are just plain terrible.
The only Glyph that COULD be slotted is the healing one, as it is safer than Ether Renewal for zerker eles.
Just forget about their existence in pvp.

Even then, brilliance is better than harmony much of the time.

Thedenofsin.7340:

I have full confidence that, if the ArenaNet developers read this, they will realize the egregious error they have made and increase thief base health by 30%, and nerf elementalist base health by 20%.

Yeah!
They’ll also realize that light armor isn’t really appropriate for elementalists, and move us to a new tier of our own, with roughly 10% less armor!
I mean really, how do you wear cloth while manipulating fire?

Mbelch.9028:

I support the new title. I believe eles are a model class which the game could be balanced around.

I still do not support a great majority of your changes which, I feel, promote WoW play, for the lower end of the skill spectrum.

I do feel like some of his changes are right on, when it comes to making the game more skill vs. skill and less build vs. build.

A lot of major builds right now (warriors in general, mm necros, fresh air uberburst ele, dedicated backstab thief, spirit ranger, phantasm/pu mesmer even though it isn’t so popular anymore, and decap engie. Maybe even bunker guardian, though I don’t really know about that one) seem to be based around reducing overall player input by both sides, as well as having specific, easily engineered situations in which they excel.

What this translates to is attempting to reduce variability in combat situations by making builds that will almost always win/perform it’s function in a given situation, regardless of the skill level of either player. This happens by either making it impossible for the opponent to respond (backstab thief/hammer lockdown warrior, pu mesmer, uberburst ele, minion masters), or making that response meaningless (spirit rangers rely almost exclusively on autoattacks, making most active defense mechanisms nearly useless because all attacks are equally important. Decap engies have so much control and passive defense that it is very difficult for a single, and possibly more players to stop one. Warrior signets/stances remove large portions of counterplay). This essentially turns everything into metagaming for all but the very top level of players who are good enough to overcome these builds.

What Swagg is trying to do, as far as I can see, is reduce this type of play to promote more active combat that is usually not decided by build/class, but rather by the abilities of each player. As part of this, he is pretty much introducing counterplay to everything that doesn’t have it already, like instant hitters. This is why I like the vast majority of his ideas.

Wyrden.4713:

so, how does the trait work?(piercing shards)

it says 20% more dmg to vulnerable foes, so enemys gotta have vulnerability or smth on them? :0

It activates when an enemy has one or more stacks of the condition vulnerability on them and you are in water.

Axelwarrior.9084:

Please don’t come later whining about Thief being too weak, mmk?

Heh, I’m literally setting out to play the class with multiple handicaps. Don’t think you’ll catch me complaining.

@Ninja, thanks for the advice. I’ll try it out.

I like the look of that second build…
Thanks!

frans.8092:

Lol, restart your character when that happens. Stealthless builds can use Shadow Refuge, even when just to rez a downed player – it’s part of the job.

Lies!
After some more hotjoins, I sort of feel like my current build is a somewhat less effective version of my staff ele in terms of how I end up playing it. Any recommendations on trait setups for s/p/p/p?

scerevisiae.1972:

well they should never have nerfed the anti-gravity aspect of RTL, perhaps the most fun thing in the whole game died that day.

As for the CD and distance, it was definitely overnerfed. 25sec 1200range or 15sec 900 range seem like the sweet spot IMO.

Yeah, it was pretty entertaining to get to all those high-up spots you normally couldn’t reach.

Well the nice part about playing stealthless is that I’m used to having essentially all of the same risks on my elementalist, plus a few.
My only cleanse was from healing rain and my water dodge (neither were exactly powerful cleanses), everything else I had to avoid or outheal, so I’m already ahead on cleansing just from shadowstep and sword#2.

Thanks for the warning, though.
P.S. I decided not to go shortbow, because I might accidentally use pistol 5 and then the blast, which would be a tragedy.

Hey all, I have recently started a thiefy (level 36 as of this post), with the resolve to never use stealth in anything outside of select PvE situations (i.e. when I really want that skillpoint but I can’t be bothered to kill the monsters before communing).
Do any of you guys have some moderately good builds for this?

I’m currently running s/p/p/p berserker gear (It’s what I’m used to on an ele) with withdraw, shadowstep, signet of shadows, caltrops, and daggerstorm. I’m using eagle runes as well. My traits are all over the place, though.
Thanks for any help outside of “use stealth”.

Swagg.9236:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Sorry to tell you this, Swagg, but Burnfall agrees with your changes.
I think that means you need to consider a few more buffs in your changes to thief.

If you’ve got an issue with my ideas, you come after me. Don’t down-talk someone else because of how that person feels about what I say—good or bad.

Nah I’m just still kittened at him because he came on to the ele forums claiming that elementalists are overpowered a bit back and started yelling about justice, in addition to saying that everyone thinking that they were underpowered was the result of a conspiracy.
My post was more of a joke than anything else.
The thief I’m levelling now (and have resolved to never use stealth with outside of specific PvE objectives) is only level 35, so I don’t feel like I have anything actually valid to contribute anyway.

Edit: Also, look at his post history with respect to thieves. He sort of… hates them.

dat op 14/14/14/14/14 build needs a big nerf.

caveman.5840:

lol this can go in circles for days
i know exactly how strong mesmers and eles are !
they r both very valuable team based classes as i argued in my earlier post !

lol i have seen elements kill thieves with one ride the lightning in wvw

ens.9854:

If you can’t understand what he means by “drop a thief in 1 rtl” then you are an egocentric moron and should stop posting before you embarrass yourself further

I don’t think you are looking at the original quote, in which he gives no context to whether the thief is at low or full health when being hit, though he does heavily imply that the thief is getting taken from full to none by Ride the Lightning, a skill with a 1.00 coefficient that would quite frankly be nearly impossible to kill someone with.
On the other hand, I doubt that the dude passed secondary school English, so any lack of comprehension is excusable on both sides.

Burnfall.9573:

OP-Swagg,

I’ve been following your work for some time and i want to say, that i’m impressed by your wonderful creativity ideas about class balance. Many times i almost believe you are a undercover Arena.net dev (wish so) who is in the interest of Balancing the classes and the game.

Now it’s the thief class; you are absolutely on point with everything you stated about this Outrageous OP class design, mechanic and its one-direction philosophy.

For the past 1 year+6 months, yet no consideration, accommodation in listening to, in resolving their community concerns.

It it so obvious they will continue to ignore, and take no action toward their community and its player base concerns.

As one told me, “to know the Truth, is to know it’s history”. 1 Year+6months is enough history.

Encouragement+ Blessing

Swagg i encourage you to not give up your wonderful ideas and creativity concerning Class Balance and Bad Class Designs/ OP Class/s.

I’m sure a MMO company who believe in the same ideas, philosophy will be ready to listen and accept you with open arms.

Also,

Good work to the many wonderful minded individuals/players, who share similar/same ideas, philosophy of Balance, for the thief class.

Also,

Good work to those who acknowledge thief class brokenness and unbalance.

" Without balance, is no longer worth… for effort "

There will come a time where all efforts, and hard works… will be Rewarded and Appreciated.

“Life, Time reward and bless those who seek change for the better”

Reality

Too many wonderful wasted ideas, philosophy from wonderful minded players have long been gone, ignored in the threads, posts for far too long; it is time to put them where they belong and well deserve.

Sorry to tell you this, Swagg, but Burnfall agrees with your changes.
I think that means you need to consider a few more buffs in your changes to thief.

I zerk staff. If you play your cards right, you can expect about as much life as celestial or even soldiers with other weapons, but don’t expect for this to happen often.
You pretty much annihilate everything that doesn’t focus you, but die almost instantly unless you play perfectly.
You have a huge repertoire of options available to you at any moment, which all have to be managed as a whole because of the necessity of using multiple skills in conjunction with each other, something any other profession has only in limited quantities (and then it’s mostly for using your own combo fields, which is not always the case for staff).
It’s a little like playing chess, in that you always have to be thinking a few moves ahead but also have to be able to completely change plans at a moment’s notice.

You could always try to predict what moment they will mistform at, then cancel your stomp to start it again right then. If you have immobilize on them, you will still get the stomp, if you don’t you can just teleport to where they will be.
That’s about as much guesswork as you need to stomp a thief on the first try too.

It’s all about telegraphing. The vast majority of conditions are either applied through autos or though poorly telegraphed attacks, which makes dodging them far less effective. This in turn makes them have an edge over direct damage in PvP/WvW, where somewhat greater direct damage is split into several attacks that are telegraphed based on potency while conditions are spread somewhat evenly over less telegraphed attacks.

Before anything else, I want dual pistols on my elementalist. I started a thief yesterday (with the resolution to ignore stealth, I already play a squishier class that doesn’t have it anyway and get along moderately well) and I feel so neglected in kittenery.
I mean really, how awesome would it be to shoot fire/lightning/ice/…rocks i guess out of twin pistols?

About the whole “stealth is a boon” idea, I think it would be a good change. They would have to reduce base duration slightly to compensate for the potential huge increase in uptime through boon duration, but only slightly because there would then be direct counters.
In addition, I think that it would be a good opportunity to boost thief capabilites that don’t rely on stealth, like venoms, to make possible specs that feel more like a highly mobile “duelist” if you get my meaning.

Carighan.6758:

IMO Cleansing Ire needs a more noticeable and more predictable effect. What if, when going above 5 conditions or 10 stacks on a condition, you cleanse all conditions and cause a burn around you (including graphics, so people know it procced). Then it has a X seconds CD.

Too big of a nerf, and promotes greater passivity.
If they were to change cleansing ire, I would support the addition of a second f button that would spend adrenaline purely for cleansing (and would of course be somewhat superior to current cleansing). This would promote better thinking and risk/reward, but it is probably too much work and would never happen.

Ele buffs: not to passive survivability. Give us greater active defense, we’re not warriors.

Ranger change: I get that they’re supposed to be one of the more passive classes, but that whole spirit/overreliance on autoattack thing is a bit overboard and needs to be toned down to make room for more active abilities, which should probably end up as buffs as well to everyone who still has a soul and doesn’t sit in their spirits spamming 1.

Aberrant.6749:

zencow.3651:

runeblade.7514:

zencow.3651:

How to stomp mesmers like a pro: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=56s0toOVCL0

Apply the same to thieves and eles but also use a teleport and you’re sure to get ’em most of the time.

You’re in the wrong thread. This thread is about elementalist vapor form.

It’s a proof of concept. Double tap + teleport does work on eles with you time it right. Eles by norm has to use 3 skills to achieve one effect, it’s perfectly reasonable enough that other classes have to try a little harder stomping them.

Both are based on player error… I wouldn’t consider either a counter because of that.

Why the kitten does eng have such an easily countered downed state when it’s the class that needs the most input to achieve a result? Eng should have the best downed state in the game if that was their criteria. Sounds like very odd criteria for balance btw…

That is entirely untrue. In terms of sheer number of skills to manage, if that’s what you mean, elementalists are at baseline equal to 3-kit engineers, and that is ignoring all conjures and glyphs, as well as attunement changes themselves.
Elementalists are also unequivocally the highest skillcap class in the game, if you happened to mean that instead.
That being said, engi downstate could probably use a buff.

BAEK.8561:

Arpheus.6918:

I found out the same thing lately. It seems eles deal by far the most damage to a zerg – by far. One ele can dish out such insane amounts of damage especially due to the buff to the radius of the hits. I tried one meteorshower on a golem and one golem is being hit 8-9 times usually. That means if not everyone mass zerg on one spot for the 5aoe limit of kittens chances are very high that you will get hit many times by the same ele in a zerg fight. And even if you get hit only 4 times thats sometimes 20k damage being hit for 5k which is rather realistic.
If he uses this trick then you might be simply dead even in a tanky setup. In my opinion they should take a look at this imbalance. No single person should have such a huge effect on an entire zerg.
I will probably make an ele too now because if you think about it – the ele is THE damage dealer in the zerg who damage wise probably outshines every other class by a factor of 5-10 with meteorshower.

You’re more than welcome to roll an Ele and try it out yourself. Just don’t come here and complain about the time you wasted.

As for meteor shower, it is devastating. I’d say probably one of the strongest, if not the strongest AoE spell in the game. But it also has many tradeoffs:
1. 4 seconds of channeling. That’s 4 seconds of not moving, which can be very dangerous if you’re in PvP or WvW where movement is key to survival.
2. Easily avoidable. After you cast it, there’s a 1 second delay before the first meteor hits. Also, since it’s damage over 7 seconds and the location where meteors land is random, you can easily move out of the AoE area and not get hit by a single meteor.

All in all, I don’t see too many complaining about staff Ele’s in WvW. Meteor shower + tornado is another topic, and I personally think should be nerfed (nerf the combo, NOT meteor shower). Also, Ele’s other staff damaging abilities are rather terrible, so I think it’s justified to have one strong skill to make up for our other lackluster skills.

You missed a downside, in that the high number of targets and hits means that a fairly large percentage of the time you are getting five procs of retaliation hit you per meteor. I’ve been killed by this several times today alone.

runeblade.7514:

Curunen.8729:

What?

I agree it’s not the easiest to counter sometimes, but at the moment I’d say there’s nothing wrong with mist form for a downed ele – given the state of the class at the moment I find it hard to read complaints about their downed state.

3 choices with finishing them:
- get very lucky and position/time a tele stomp correctly (of course won’t work on any half decent ele).
- daze/interrupt them to prevent them using mist form when downed.
- just attack them normally to drain their health and don’t bother stomping – ranged attacks, melee, whatever.

When/if eles get buffed back near to the crazy level they were at last year, then I’ll consider this a problem. At the moment it’s a non-issue. (For the record I don’t play ele)

Since interrupt them does not work. The only choice is to attack them.

I prefer that the nerf happens now than later.

Yes, but if you nerf vapor form elementalists suddenly go from an acceptable downstate with one stomp prevention and a small amount of movement, to the worst downstate because their delayed downed skill is the absolute worst in the game.
It does nothing to prevent stomps, and barely deals damage. You absolutely cannot suggest changing the #2 skill if you do not also suggest an appropriate change for the #3.

style.6173:

Zero Day.2594:

So… So far:
Med Guardians
P/P weapon set for Thieves
Rangers
Eles

They don’t have to be UP, just not OP…
Seems like a pretty short list so far…

Melee spirit rangers are certainly OP.

Eles need buffs with the exception of meteor shower which needs a damage nerf and a red ring for the attack.

But it doesn’t need a damage nerf. Assuming you’re talking about high-damage builds, the amount of risk that accompanies using the skill makes it have to deal high damage.
On top of that, it’s really, really easy to move out of the AoE.
Sure you can hit crazy numbers in zergs, but who can’t?

MarzAttakz.9608:

It doesn’t synergise with the name or the concept of earth attunement so let’s look at why we use lightning flash with churning earth…

1) The cast time is too long
2) The ease of avoiding the damage by simply walking or dodging on the count of three

How to make it more reliable without requiring a teleport?

1) Reverting it to a charged skill meaning the enemy no longer counts to three and dodges, power and effects called based on charge duration.

2) Cripple is insufficient cc for this skill, remove the bleed stacks and replace it with
2a) Instant 1 second cripple on trigger, ticking at 0, 1, 2 seconds
2b) Apply a 1 second immobilize at 1.5 second mark
2c) Apply a daze, stun or knockdown on final burst at 3 second mark

The reason for instating cc ticks at those intervals is to punish someone who stays in the AOE. You only get the strong CC components for fully charging and successfully hitting opponents.

The numbers and tick intervals can be tweaked for balance but the underlying concept is to add tools to make avoidance more difficult and to punish targets who don’t react in a timely fashion.

Bleed damage is useless, we don’t run condition builds, and won’t until there are drastic changes made to the class.

The bleeds probably won’t be removed, as they seem to want earth to be mostly condition damage.