Guild Wars 2

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

That #5 stun is the most absurd thing ever if they fail to dodge it in a 1v1, and stone heart lets you counterburst with it (3542).

Who is going to get hit by the stun in a 1 Vs 1 though? It is rather easy to dodge. I don’t think i have ever been hit with it but i think that is the case for pretty much everything else has when it comes to projectiles (staff for example)

Soooooooo many warriors lol.

You underestimate how much people feel like they can “tank” damage and stuns.

LightningBlaze.4913:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Lol what a lame logic to consider burst cheesy. Must be coming from players that are too afraid to die easily and thus spec more towards defense than offense. Instead on relying in their players skills to survive more with fewer defense no they rely heavily in their traits, utilities and defensive stats. Being a punching bag is even more lame.

I consider fresh air burst to be cheesy, mostly because of how much using it disadvantages you in anything other than a prearranged 1v1, but also because it is a burst with a pretty big amount of instant damage.
Staff burst is better, because it has so many built in tools and requires a bit more effort to set up, while being less of a one-and-done build.
Dagger burst is rare because of melee.

I consider builds that evolve around the arcana, water tree and on defensive stats to be cheesy too because they require no effort to stay alive even without dodging and predicting your opponent next move right. Any build disadvantages you on anything other than 1v1 against 2 or more GOOD players by yourself. Group/zerg it is easy and require a bit of thinking instead of mindlessly jumping in the front line to get hammered. Against bad players winning outnumbered (by yourself) is always possible regardless of what build you use.

You misunderstand me. By “anything other than a prearranged 1v1” I mean any situation where-

You are surprised.
Teamfights (because you take down one person, maybe, then immediately die or just have nothing left).
Any time relatively close to a fight (because of the high CD of the burst).
Any time something exists that can take your burst and live (so pretty much any condi build and any bunker).

It’s a spec designed to win one 1v1 every 40+ seconds if you get the drop on the other guy, which is why it isn’t particularly amazing in any form of the game, but it will always win that 1v1 unless the other guy times a dodge.
That’s why I consider it cheesy. The enemy dodges once and you lose, if they outlive it you lose, if they don’t do either you win.

Technically, zerker isn’t the easiest way to run dungeons. I remember a video at the start of this whole “nerf zerker because healing isn’t viable (however much of a non sequitur that is to begin with)” where the group actually did stack tanking stats, and went through some arah without ever dodging once. They all just facerolled everything. There were even eles in the group, and they didn’t die either.

T raw.4658:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

T raw.4658:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

T raw.4658:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

T raw.4658:

OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

I am the OP.
I think you may be talking about someone else, I certainly don’t spam anti-thief stuff, and while I do play my mesmer occasionally, I main ele because they killed all of the mesmer gameplay I enjoyed (that is, not spamming stealth and not letting AI carry me).

Mesmer/Ele are the biggest thief haters atm

Play a thief and learn

Or be like me and just fight em enough to learn. Either way this post is full of bad ideas and continual unfounded thief hate

Ad hominem (an argumentative fallacy that relies on attacking elements of the opposition’s person that do not directly pertain to the argument at hand).
Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

Yet you supported the whole BS to cost initiative movement a lil while back. You’ve also made other posts in that area as well….then you just happen to main ele/mesmer who are the leading complainers about thieves in PvP.

O don’t get me wrong you’ve tried your hand at a stealthless thief…whether you finished it and actually fought anything other than AI remains to be seen.

I’ll be staying in this thread to provide a voice of reason among the ideas that would break a class I immensely enjoy fighting against…..because I actually took the time and L2p like they told me too

More ad hominem. I think you either don’t understand the concept, or are a follower of Nietzsche (who believed that ad hominem arguments were the only valid ones). I could think that the president is an alien frog from the center of the earth and it wouldn’t make any other argument I make more or less valid.

I did support the BS initiative cost a while ago, it is true, but I no longer do because frankly this is just a lot more fair to everyone as far as I can see, especially good players of both classes. Frankly, a BS initiative cost wouldn’t really change anything for the bads who just spam it through dodges (because whatever the cost is it would still be worth it), and it would hurt the good players who put thought into it.

Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

@Icyflame:
Your idea would probably be a viable solution as well, and it has the additional benefit of punishing heartseeker spam as well (which is less an issue of how powerful it is than of how obnoxious it is) though I think thieves would have to be compensated somewhere else in order to compensate for the total power loss (for those who don’t know the logic behind thief skill spam, there tends to be a single skill that just flat out has the best damage/utility ratio, so most of the time there’s just no reason to use anything else).
I also agree that certain defenses are would be abusable (evade thieves would probably be the most frustrating things to fight ever even more than now, and guardian’s OOC aegis would certainly be a place where both of our ideas would tend to fall through, though yours slightly less in terms of cost), but I still feel like that should be weighed against the current lack of effect of good use of those.

I demand more discussion.

P.S. There is a marked distinction between intoxicated snarky me and normal me, please take less offense from the former if at all possible.

Can’t claim ad homien when your card gets pulled because of your previous posts. If all you had to do was throw in a new Latin phrase on the same BS biased argument to pretend like you’re not a hater then Burnfall would be a developer right now…

Screw it, you entirely don’t understand the concept of an argumentative fallacy.

You don’t even seem to understand ad hominem, despite my repeated efforts. What I’m saying is that, while I resent being called a hater and being lumped in with that whole crowd, whether I am or not is irrelevant to the argument at hand. If you don’t understand that you don’t understand debating and I suggest you brush up on the topic, because what we are doing here is debating and I would rather we all do it well.

If you continue to post in this thread, I ask that you consider this idea in isolation from everything else I have said.

Edit: I’m not throwing out a new Latin phrase, ad hominem is the technical term for the described argumentative fallacy, which you could have figured out yourself if you so much as searched it on google.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Taking frost bow (the only conjure that I like to ever use in PvP) with stone heart solves all the problems of both, I find. It’s hard to stay in earth because of bad skills, and frost bow solves that. It’s hard to use frost bow skills because the root makes you take a ton of damage, stone heart solves that.

Not really. You ain’t going to use the bow for its whole duration so you would be pretty much using it as a 60second cool down AoE….Not really worth it now is it. Plus then you would have to sacrifice something.

I currently run Arcane Shield (amazing against Thief and melee) Armor of Earth (Counter Hammer noobs) and Signet of Earth (Added Toughness) So i would be giving up defense for a 60 second cool down AoE that would have like a 3second cast time – 1/4second to summon Bow and 2 3/4 Ice Storm Cast time.

Could you really make use of that in say a 1 Vs 1? Maybe in zerg fights and keep/tower defense/attack but that is about it. Useless in 1 Vs 1, slight use i guess in small groups but that is about it and that would require you being able to summon it and cast it while they are still in the same area without getting attacked knocked back or anything…

That #5 stun is the most absurd thing ever if they fail to dodge it in a 1v1, and stone heart lets you counterburst with it (3542).

MightyMicah.7451:

Mbelch.9028:

I watched enough. Specifically his most viewed ones. My point stands. People here make him out to be a hero. He isn’t, and he hasn’t played in over a year.

Other people advanced D/D, and even more fleshed out the true power/utility of each skill in the set.

Fresh air is good for kicks, but I create builds that cover me in every duel, every scenerio.

So no, I don’t think I’m misrepresenting him. He runs away in his videos, and rarely if ever does he kill someone on his own with daggers.

First of all, you haven’t watched enough. Otherwise you wouldn’t have claimed, “rarely if ever does he kill someone on his own with daggers.” You also neglected the fact that his dagger build was a Zerg chasing build as I already stated.

We aren’t trying to praise him as a hero, but he should be respected because he somewhat laid the foundation for dagger tank builds to this day. Evolutionists still praise Charles Darwin for his discovery, even though that theory has since been further developed.

Lastly, discrediting fresh air does no service to you or Daphoenix. I mentioned Fresh Air as an alternative to dagger/dagger. That wasn’t the only alternative that Daphoenix recommended. As a matter of fact, in his blog, and in one of his original videos he discussed several variations of builds, as well as giving advice and helping others develop their own builds.

Try as you may to discredit Daphoenix, he was a very smart, and very good player. He knew well what the capabilities of an elementalist were and he mastered all forms of that class almost to perfection.

Daphoenix is love, Daphoenix is life.

“This video is private”
I can’t watch it

LightningBlaze.4913:

Lol what a lame logic to consider burst cheesy. Must be coming from players that are too afraid to die easily and thus spec more towards defense than offense. Instead on relying in their players skills to survive more with fewer defense no they rely heavily in their traits, utilities and defensive stats. Being a punching bag is even more lame.

I consider fresh air burst to be cheesy, mostly because of how much using it disadvantages you in anything other than a prearranged 1v1, but also because it is a burst with a pretty big amount of instant damage.
Staff burst is better, because it has so many built in tools and requires a bit more effort to set up, while being less of a one-and-done build.
Dagger burst is rare because of melee.

Taking frost bow (the only conjure that I like to ever use in PvP) with stone heart solves all the problems of both, I find. It’s hard to stay in earth because of bad skills, and frost bow solves that. It’s hard to use frost bow skills because the root makes you take a ton of damage, stone heart solves that.

Ele technically has the highest burst of any class, though the build is frankly terrible. You basically take all of your damage boost traits and fresh air, then macro your keyboard to press about 10 buttons instantly and can do upwards of 22k damage in under two seconds. This is on a 40+ second cooldown, however, requires one dodge to completely destroy, and consumes your entire build. If the other guy isn’t dead, or someone else is there, you have nothing to even defend yourself with.

Prolly guardian, maybe elementalist with stone heart (if you don’t use stone heart and want passive damage mitigation stay the hell away from ele at any cost).

dancingmonkey.4902:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Knockback, blowout, daze, and stun do not stack in duration, a new one applied overwrites the previous. I would liken immobilize to them more (as a sort of counterpart to daze, especially because it stops dodges) than to chill and cripple, despite immobilize being in the same category as the latter two.

If I was knocked down, my body can receive a a blow out, and knock back consecutively, disallowing one to break out of the chain of stun until the enemies knock backs and blow outs are exhausted. Such as a group of all hammer warriors and guardians.

Yes, but they still don’t stack duration. The second interrupts the first, the third interrupts the second and so you don’t end up getting double mace-stunned and being there for a full 7.8 seconds. I would have immobilize work the same way as stuns, so that consecutive casts replace the previous (i.e. if you cast a one-second immobilize, and then a second one after half a second, you get a total of 1.5 seconds of immobilize, instead of the current two).

dancingmonkey.4902:

Care to define and explain why it is “unskillful” play?

Why should immobilize be treated differently then any knock back, blow outs, daze, stun, cripple, and chill?

I think it should be treated the same as the first four and differently from the last two.

Knockback, blowout, daze, and stun do not stack in duration, a new one applied overwrites the previous. I would liken immobilize to them more (as a sort of counterpart to daze, especially because it stops dodges) than to chill and cripple, despite immobilize being in the same category as the latter two.

T raw.4658:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

T raw.4658:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

T raw.4658:

OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

I am the OP.
I think you may be talking about someone else, I certainly don’t spam anti-thief stuff, and while I do play my mesmer occasionally, I main ele because they killed all of the mesmer gameplay I enjoyed (that is, not spamming stealth and not letting AI carry me).

Mesmer/Ele are the biggest thief haters atm

Play a thief and learn

Or be like me and just fight em enough to learn. Either way this post is full of bad ideas and continual unfounded thief hate

Ad hominem (an argumentative fallacy that relies on attacking elements of the opposition’s person that do not directly pertain to the argument at hand).
Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

Yet you supported the whole BS to cost initiative movement a lil while back. You’ve also made other posts in that area as well….then you just happen to main ele/mesmer who are the leading complainers about thieves in PvP.

O don’t get me wrong you’ve tried your hand at a stealthless thief…whether you finished it and actually fought anything other than AI remains to be seen.

I’ll be staying in this thread to provide a voice of reason among the ideas that would break a class I immensely enjoy fighting against…..because I actually took the time and L2p like they told me too

More ad hominem. I think you either don’t understand the concept, or are a follower of Nietzsche (who believed that ad hominem arguments were the only valid ones). I could think that the president is an alien frog from the center of the earth and it wouldn’t make any other argument I make more or less valid.

I did support the BS initiative cost a while ago, it is true, but I no longer do because frankly this is just a lot more fair to everyone as far as I can see, especially good players of both classes. Frankly, a BS initiative cost wouldn’t really change anything for the bads who just spam it through dodges (because whatever the cost is it would still be worth it), and it would hurt the good players who put thought into it.

Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

@Icyflame:
Your idea would probably be a viable solution as well, and it has the additional benefit of punishing heartseeker spam as well (which is less an issue of how powerful it is than of how obnoxious it is) though I think thieves would have to be compensated somewhere else in order to compensate for the total power loss (for those who don’t know the logic behind thief skill spam, there tends to be a single skill that just flat out has the best damage/utility ratio, so most of the time there’s just no reason to use anything else).
I also agree that certain defenses are would be abusable (evade thieves would probably be the most frustrating things to fight ever even more than now, and guardian’s OOC aegis would certainly be a place where both of our ideas would tend to fall through, though yours slightly less in terms of cost), but I still feel like that should be weighed against the current lack of effect of good use of those.

I demand more discussion.

P.S. There is a marked distinction between intoxicated snarky me and normal me, please take less offense from the former if at all possible.

Coldtart.4785:

Big Tower.5423:

stone HEARTH not heart.

It is most assuredly Stone Heart.

Seconded.
For all the people disliking this trait, it is probably the single strongest defense any class has against direct damage currently. I wouldn’t be so quick to get it removed. It just needs a little bit of getting used to, because you have to manage it in addition to your attunements and measure the comparative value you get for being in or out of earth.

Not a problem, IMO. There needs to be some drawbacks to having AI and other passive mechanics, or else passivity become vastly better by virtue of reliability.
Someone posted the idea off a shared healthpool. That would be the biggest nerf in the history of nerfs, considering how terrible AI is at avoiding damage. You could literally just drop some AoE/condis on the pet and walk away, and there would be nothing the Ranger could do about it.

IcyFlame.9705:

I think this is a really bad idea. Against skilled players it is kinda hard to land a proper backstab. And with this idea you would just have to wait +/- 5 seconds to attempt another backstab, while each time your initiative drains.

What about a mesmer with scepter? He can block 90% of the backstabs is he uses his stealths when thief stealths and dodges when the thief is stealthed. No way for a a thief to kill him then, heal is recharged before you can land a backstab.

I think you should try thief yourself before you make any suggestions, because vs newbs thief is superior in anyway, because they don’t know what to do vs a vanished target. But if against skilled players i think stealth is pretty balanced as it is now.

I do agree that Shadow refugee noobs are pretty annoying, but there are also plenty ways to push or pull them out.

I have an idea to stop spamming skills like heartseeker and it might work for BS too. The idea is that each time you use the same skill, the initiative cost goes up by 1. So it you heartseeker 3 times in a row it would cost 3+4+5 ini. But when you do another skill in between or do an autoattack then it will be reset to the original cost. This could apply for BS aswell that the cost goes up from 0->1->2 each time you try to backstab. Simply giving BS an initiative cost goes against the idea of stealth and is just too initiative intensive.

I didn’t suggest an initiative cost for backstab, to clear that up. I was purely talking about making a stealth attack a 1/stealth deal, so that skilled counterplays aren’t mostly ignored. It really shouldn’t affect anyone that times their backstabs to avoid dodges (which you really should be doing for such an important skill) already.

I really just want to get rid of the whole, “Oh, you timed your dodge/blind/aegis perfectly so that when I got to you and backstabbed I would whiff? That’s cute. (presses 1 again)”.

Thank you for making a constructive counterargument, by the way. It’s nice to see something other than “lol L2P n00b”.

Yeah, most people that I’ve seen post on here agree that immobilize stacking should never have been added. It’s the strongest control condition, yet it’s available in moderately high amounts, so I feel like it needs that limitation.

Shockwave.1230:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Eh, not really. I think it’s pretty fair to preemptively cast stealth to potentially counter a stomp, especially because most of the time this will only last, what, three seconds after being downed, during which the vast majority of classes will lose that stealth if they do anything.

Ranger and Engi can precast skills to rez too. Must be a medium armor thing

You killed me? Nope, Chuck Testa.

Now I really want a troll build that focuses on popping in and out of downstate.

Preferably on my ele so that I can have lava tombs everywhere.

Lol @ the OP wanting a three second stun every ~10ish seconds from hammer burst. The thing’s good enough in PvP/WvW already, and no amount of buffing will make a control weapon optimal in PvE.

I sort of want to try this out just to kitten off people who are stupid enough to continue spamming skills while walking into unsteady ground repeatedly. Could do a ton of free damage on people not paying attention.

Eh, not really. I think it’s pretty fair to preemptively cast stealth to potentially counter a stomp, especially because most of the time this will only last, what, three seconds after being downed, during which the vast majority of classes will lose that stealth if they do anything.

T raw.4658:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

T raw.4658:

OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

I am the OP.
I think you may be talking about someone else, I certainly don’t spam anti-thief stuff, and while I do play my mesmer occasionally, I main ele because they killed all of the mesmer gameplay I enjoyed (that is, not spamming stealth and not letting AI carry me).

Mesmer/Ele are the biggest thief haters atm

Play a thief and learn

Or be like me and just fight em enough to learn. Either way this post is full of bad ideas and continual unfounded thief hate

Ad hominem (an argumentative fallacy that relies on attacking elements of the opposition’s person that do not directly pertain to the argument at hand).
Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

I like the aristocracy.

You’re right, OP, let’s just get rid of the whole kitten idea and give eles something useful instead that isn’t a passive hardcounter.

Super Riceman.8702:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Frankly your changes make the vast majority of traits much worse, so no. Especially the “when critically hit” or even worse “take x damage from 2 or more enemies in 1s”, which pretty much make any trait automatically trash.
Seriously, as an example, the arcane retribution change. You doubled the CD, and made it so it would just pretty much never proc. Doesn’t sound like you’re getting rid of any useless traits there.
You pretty much also made all of the traits you changed about five times more passive.

I didn’t realize that 50s is double 45 seconds or that taking crits in a team fight is rarer than mr clean with hair
And its not like #dmg cant change

You’re right actually, I misread the description.
Still, the trait is already weak enough already without a sort of silly proc chance. On the off chance that I am being focused enough to take three critical hits within two seconds and somehow survive, the last thing I would want is a guaranteed five critical hits, whereas the current proc, while still passive and mediocre, lets you get the effect at a point in time where you could actually use it, and even lets you have some degree of control over when you get it.
Making traits more passive on the class that is supposed to be the most active doesn’t make very much sense to me.

Jelzouki.4128:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Eloquence.5207:

- “If you nerf stealth, we will be left with no defence!!11!!”
- “Why don’t you fix Warriors first or PU Mesmers first!”
- “L2P”
- “Stealth is working as intended… L2P”
- “Stealth trap”
- “Stack toughness” <—— HAHAHHAHHAHA

Pick one, or of them.

It’s hard to when none of them actually answer my post, silly. It’s not about the damage, or even stealth in any way. Literally, the only thing that it affects is being able to use stealth skills without paying attention to any active defense. Even then, the only thing you have to do is use your lowest cost ability once, or wait out a dodge, but at least you can’t just backstab twice at no cost to ignore both blind and aegis.

Attacking from stealth while blinded doesn’t ignore the blind or aegis; they are still working as intended, you just aren’t revealed. Why should a thief be revealed after he/she MISSES an attack (therefore an attack did not land)? And most thieves will try to steal aegis rather than to get rid of it.

…You quite obviously didn’t read the OP. If you can’t be bothered to even read my TL;DR, I will condense it further: Stealth attacks can be used once per stealth, whiffing doesn’t have any other effect other than being unable to stealth attack again until you receive another stealth effect.
Learn2readn00b

T raw.4658:

OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

I am the OP.
I think you may be talking about someone else, I certainly don’t spam anti-thief stuff, and while I do play my mesmer occasionally, I main ele because they killed all of the mesmer gameplay I enjoyed (that is, not spamming stealth and not letting AI carry me).

Xavi.6591:

Swim.6830:

Mesmer and Necros stack tons of conditions and remove boons left and right – no one bats an eye.

Ele gets 25 might stacks and everyone loses their minds…

Mind you, with the current rune setup, almost any class can do the 25 might stack and be more effective than Ele, especially vs a Necro.

Since when has a mesmer ever removed a ton of conditions?

Lol. He didn’t say they removed a ton, he said they stacked a ton. Learn to read n00b.

Frankly your changes make the vast majority of traits much worse, so no. Especially the “when critically hit” or even worse “take x damage from 2 or more enemies in 1s”, which pretty much make any trait automatically trash.
Seriously, as an example, the arcane retribution change. You doubled the CD, and made it so it would just pretty much never proc. Doesn’t sound like you’re getting rid of any useless traits there.
You pretty much also made all of the traits you changed about five times more passive.

Tim.6450:

I’m not sure if it’s a great idea, I mean in order to remove aegis/block/… they would have to sacrifice extra initiative or use a unfavorable move (I’m especially thinking about shortbow) so perhaps we can shift the stealth skill to F2 with a one time activation per stealth.

You’re imagining using your auto once to clear blind/aegis, right?
Ironically, the first skill in the dagger auto chain hits twice, so this wouldn’t actually work, though with shortbow it would because bouncing attacks don’t bounce if the initial hit is blocked (I think).
I don’t think this would be good, though, even if it did work. There needs to be some risk/reward system in place for anticipating a stealth attack (you can’t see it, so even more so), even if that cost is just three initiative. With your solution, blind/aegis would sort of work if autos were available, if you could manage to time them well enough to stop a 1/4 cast time ability, but I wouldn’t really consider that a matter of counterplay and intelligent choices because it would really just be about luck.
A major portion of this, for me, is that stealth already screws over active defenses far more than it does passive ones, which in my opinion is very different from what is healthy, because they rely on a certain amount of reaction time which stealth removes entirely. This way, active defenses would become vastly better at dealing with stealth than they are now, but not to the point that stealth is just reduced to spamming of another sort (unless someone blows all of their active defenses during the duration of your stealth, in which case it still isn’t a problem because that assures your victory).

Envy.1679:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Envy.1679:

MercilessLemurs.7459:

Envy.1679:

nicknamenick.2437:

Spicyhash.7605:

Is that the spawned weapon? Does ANet even have the letters Q and A in their alphabet?

yes its the spawned weapon and it must be broken or something..
a single skill that hits for 8k on heavy armor in PVP where you don’t have food/buffs etc etc and low ferocity.. something is wrong with that skill..
The guardian did not want to tell but he even says it hits 12k on most classes.
that’s insane for a PET!!!

heavy armor/light armor/medium armor makes absolutely zero difference when it comes to how much damage you take. Its about which amulet you are using, not what armor you have that determines how resilient you are.

Class weight does effect base armor.

A light armor with a soldiers amulet will be a loooooooot tankier than a heavy armor with zerker. The difference between the base armor is so small its irrelevant.

It’s roughly 300 stat points actually.

base lvl 80 exotic armor coat (draconic) 363
Equivalent lvl 80 exotic light armor coat(exalted)314

the base armor difference is exactly 49

Not even close to 300 difference. And not even close to make a meaningful difference in any situation.

…So when did we start just randomly picking a single piece of armor instead of comparing sets as a whole? Forgive me if I sound rude, but what the actual kitten.

To your later post, here is the wiki on base total armor stats.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor#Defense_rating
The base difference between an exotic light armor set and an exotic heavy armor set is exactly 291 (1211-920), if you can’t be bothered to click the link. The difference in total armor between a heavy armor class with a zerker ammy and a light armor class with a soldier ammy is exactly 278. 278<291.

Congratulations on failing basic arithmetic.

Edit: Oh, in case you don’t know what a PvP soldier’s amulet actually is and can’t be bothered to look it up: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Soldier%27s_Amulet
The stats: 798 power, 569 toughness and vitality, in case you can’t be bothered to click that link either

Fortus.6175:

Great suggestion! I was brainstorming myself on some fix for it but this might just do! Backstab wouldnt be much of an issue this way, although some tuning down of the skill could be done given that it is too much upfront damage.

Eloquence.5207:

- “If you nerf stealth, we will be left with no defence!!11!!”
- “Why don’t you fix Warriors first or PU Mesmers first!”
- “L2P”
- “Stealth is working as intended… L2P”
- “Stealth trap”
- “Stack toughness” <—— HAHAHHAHHAHA

Pick one, or of them.

lmao! +1. Thief players in a nutshell.

Actually, while this might end up affecting backstab more than other stealth skills, it’s not particularly aimed at toning down the power of anything at all. I don’t really want to comment on that. This is entirely aimed at making important skills require thoughtful use on the part if both the defender and the attacker, without just screwing anyone over unless they are actually just stupid and waste their skills, in which case they deserve to lose..
Ideas like losing stealth even when missing, or even revealed on a whiff, seem as toxic to me as entirely ignoring aegis and blind as well as other active defenses to a lesser degree. I want to make both players have to be thoughtful about their skill usage, so it doesn’t just end up like, “oh, he entered stealth? Better use aegis because it is a hard counter with no opportunity for retaliation!”, and doesn’t stay like, “Oh, he used aegis/blind? Better just continually use my #1 skill until it hits because it has a 1/4 cast time and has no cost!”.

Ele is the highest skill class, mes is both the second highest skilled class and one of the lowest, depending on how you build it.
Shatter mesmer can be an amazing build in the right hands, while PU phantasm mesmers tend to be of the “press x to win” variety. For an example of the truly godly skilled builds, check some of osicat’s videos. She (I think it’s she) made me love mesmers by showing off what a truly skilled player can do.
Pick whatever feels better to you. People can’t really judge you for playing either (unless you decide on a PU phantasm troll spec), and I play both myself because, as you said, they’re kittening awesome.

a t s e.9614:

Overpowered classes/ builds can stack . Before nerfs people were running triple hambow like 4 months ago.

And stacking thieves was never effective . Thief haters are either incredibly bad or don’t understand how this game works.

Yes, because however overpowered a bursty roamer may be it will most likely never make a good support or bunker, both of which are necessary. It doesn’t necessarily follow that thief is not overpowered, just like how thieves being able to one-shot squishies doesn’t necessarily imply that it is.

What you’re basically doing here in your argument is saying that if something is not at an extreme then it isn’t true, which is a somewhat silly premise that I take issue with. I’m not saying that thieves are overpowered, I’m not saying they aren’t; I’m saying that your argument is flawed and needs reexamination.

To top it off, your final statement in your last post is an ad hominem argument, characterized by switching the focus of a counterargument to the character of the person arguing and effectively ignoring the argument itself. Ex: Everyone who supports a minimum wage is a communist, communism is bad, therefore we should not have a minimum wage.
In fact, the initial statement in the above example could be true, and it wouldn’t necessarily imply that a minimum wage is bad.

I beg of you, refrain from argumentative fallacies. While they may be somewhat easier than reasoned debate, they do not, in the long run, help your cause.

Envy.1679:

MercilessLemurs.7459:

Envy.1679:

nicknamenick.2437:

Spicyhash.7605:

Is that the spawned weapon? Does ANet even have the letters Q and A in their alphabet?

yes its the spawned weapon and it must be broken or something..
a single skill that hits for 8k on heavy armor in PVP where you don’t have food/buffs etc etc and low ferocity.. something is wrong with that skill..
The guardian did not want to tell but he even says it hits 12k on most classes.
that’s insane for a PET!!!

heavy armor/light armor/medium armor makes absolutely zero difference when it comes to how much damage you take. Its about which amulet you are using, not what armor you have that determines how resilient you are.

Class weight does effect base armor.

A light armor with a soldiers amulet will be a loooooooot tankier than a heavy armor with zerker. The difference between the base armor is so small its irrelevant.

It’s roughly 300 stat points actually. As much as you get to one stat from full investment in a traitline, for comparison. Not particularly irrelevant, especially considering that by your comparison it’s actually more than the total armor difference between zerker amulet on a heavy and soldiers amulet on a light class (291 base difference compared to 269 difference after stats). People always underestimate base armor differences.

Is it okay that the first thing I did after reading the title was mentally change it to, “If thief overpowered, then how me, a dog, learn English?”

More on-topic, I think the OP doesn’t quite understand how overpowered works (whether or not thief is overpowered I won’t comment).
Something being overpowered does not mean it excels overwhelmingly at every area of the game to the point that it pushes all other professions out, though that would certainly be overpowered. I don’t think there is a single mainstream game out right now where that is the case, because for that to happen the developers would have to be very stupid indeed. Generally, when someone says something is overpowered, they mean that it is too good at what it is supposed to do.
For example, lets say the developers were to give warriors infinite invulnerability to conditions as part of one of their five point minor traits in their most-used line, with no conditions on its use. You would be hard-pressed to say that wouldn’t be overpowered, but it wouldn’t displace anyone from PvE, and it wouldn’t change WvW all that much. The place where it would really hurt would be PvP, but even there other classes would still be viable and 5-warrior teams still wouldn’t be the best.

For a less extreme example, look at league of legends or any other MOBA. Each champ is specialized into a single area, and overbuffing any one of them would almost never mean pushing other roles out.

As Swagg indicated, people run one thief because once you have your thief, that role is filled. It has no bearing on whether the thief is too good at that role.

Eloquence.5207:

- “If you nerf stealth, we will be left with no defence!!11!!”
- “Why don’t you fix Warriors first or PU Mesmers first!”
- “L2P”
- “Stealth is working as intended… L2P”
- “Stealth trap”
- “Stack toughness” <—— HAHAHHAHHAHA

Pick one, or of them.

It’s hard to when none of them actually answer my post, silly. It’s not about the damage, or even stealth in any way. Literally, the only thing that it affects is being able to use stealth skills without paying attention to any active defense. Even then, the only thing you have to do is use your lowest cost ability once, or wait out a dodge, but at least you can’t just backstab twice at no cost to ignore both blind and aegis.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Truthfully the stuff I find so off about Ranger Longbow as a sniping-style weapon is way more core than something some trait-able distance could hope to fix.

For example,
As much as RPG fans view ranged attacks as a kind of easy mode, in the FPS world Snipers are actually among the more high skillfloor/ceiling characters. So the fact Ranger longbow delivers damage in such an automatic and brainless way drives me straight up the wall.

The only skills on that weapon that require some aiming or timing or predictive capabilities from the player is the bloody control skills. No matter how much damage that thing does, it’s always going to feel like a control/utility weapon if that’s all I ever think about when using it. The gameplay is focused on the wrong thing.

Maybe rangers should get a proper skilled sniper skill, like a 2000 range arrow-aimed projectile?

TL;DR: After you use your stealth attack once, your #1 skill reverts to auto regardless of whether you left stealth or not. No stealth break, no reveal.

How about stealth skills can only be used once per stealth use?
What would happen upon a missed skill is not reveal or loss of stealth, but the stealth skill would just be replaced by the normal autoattack chain.
Active defenses still get some use but doesn’t horribly screw over stealthing because you could use a heartseeker or the like to clear off a blind/aegis, or even hard to catch. Literally the only thing this prevents is spamming the stealth skill until it hits, because after the first use you would be doing autos until another stealth effect was applied.
Sounds pretty fair to me honestly, it makes aegis, blind, dodging and other active defenses not entirely useless while not making them hardcounter stealth in any way, shape or form.

How do other people feel about this?

They’re the perfect example of a balanced class.
They aren’t underpowered in any sense, can effectively spec for whatever they want (except conditions but honestly condi guard would be weird anyway), have clear telegraphs, and make acceptable but notable sacrifices in order to specialize.
The only reason they don’t excel in certain roles (like burst DPS) is that the classes in those roles are so perfectly fitted to them that competing with them for it is unthinkable (as in, a thief makes a far better burst DPSer because stealth and unlimited teleports as well as huge low-telegraph spike skills is every GC’s wet dream).

Squishy.2135:

I propose Stone Heart be able to negate crits in all attunements. I feel it would help give the Ele a little more variety and niche in pvp, helping it in the long run.

Lol. That wouldn’t even be fun anymore.

Such trait
So movement
very regen
wow

Overkillengine.6084:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Thinking on DPS tests for dire vs. soldiers, there is one small problem of debatable importance, which is the existence of poison and burning. DPS tests assume that all dodges affect all damage equally and are thus negligible, which is perfectly true in the case of stack conditions, but potentially incorrect for conditions that stack in duration. Depending on the method of applications, burning and poison can be maintained perfectly regardless of dodges, so long as it is reapplied every once in a while or has sufficient duration. For example, while dodging an engineer’s bleed or confusion stacks will reduce his DPS with those conditions by an equivalent amount to power attacks, it will not affect his DPS with burning at all so long as he can proc incendiary ammo soon enough to keep it up.

Not sure how much that would actually affect condi DPS tests at all, but something to think about for sure, as is the fact that I got a Dire ascended chest from a PvP chest and now have to make my engi condi regardless of my feelings on the matter.
On the bright side I’m going to be doing a lot more PvP.

It will absolutely affect the Engi’s DPS if you happen to avoid/nullify the attack the Burn proc was riding on; thus putting the proc back on cooldown with no applied effect. (depending on duration vs cooldown)

If the duration/CD ratio is stacked enough the burning DPS won’t be affected at all. For example, Drake’s breath can inflict twelve seconds of burning every 7.25 seconds with no CDR or added duration. With as little as 21% bonus duration, a full drake’s breath could be avoided with no loss in burning damage so long as every odd-numbered drake’s breath hits.
Again, probably negligible but still something to consider.

In case people are ignorant of this, the devs decided to keep crit damage untouched in PvP, so if you are seeing damage changes there you may be hallucinating and might want to visit your doctor, or at the very least take a break from playing with all the new skins you got from town clothing conversion (my devil horns are awesome, ty anet) and get some sleep.

I think people don’t understand that they have to practice a new playstyle with the new traits, and think that better traits should just make them automatically good.
To be fair I will never use Contingency or Benevolence, because I can already spell out several thousand reasons why I dislike both (I mean honestly, did they not realize that people would even prefer to use their gm slot for Elemental Attunement over Contingency?), but the other three certainly are keystone traits that are build and playstyle defining and thus need some time to get used to. Blinding Ashes may be slightly underpowered in groups, but the smaller the combat the better it is, and we definitely need to be less reliant on blowing all of our cooldowns simultaneously for a near-untelegraphed burst to be okay in a small group. Stone heart is just a great trait for the game in general, not being a hard counter or underpowered in any way, and the air one looks like it might be fun even if it seems to be on the wrong class. Both involve changing how you play, so you can’t just slap them on and expect to be good with them.

Thinking on DPS tests for dire vs. soldiers, there is one small problem of debatable importance, which is the existence of poison and burning. DPS tests assume that all dodges affect all damage equally and are thus negligible, which is perfectly true in the case of stack conditions, but potentially incorrect for conditions that stack in duration. Depending on the method of applications, burning and poison can be maintained perfectly regardless of dodges, so long as it is reapplied every once in a while or has sufficient duration. For example, while dodging an engineer’s bleed or confusion stacks will reduce his DPS with those conditions by an equivalent amount to power attacks, it will not affect his DPS with burning at all so long as he can proc incendiary ammo soon enough to keep it up.

Not sure how much that would actually affect condi DPS tests at all, but something to think about for sure, as is the fact that I got a Dire ascended chest from a PvP chest and now have to make my engi condi regardless of my feelings on the matter.
On the bright side I’m going to be doing a lot more PvP.

I believe it is a 5% chance of 150% damage, which is the universal base if I am correct. So no, not worth at all.

Edit: If you want numbers, you will reduce average incoming damage by 2.5%.

Apparition.1576:

Firstly, the individual might not be using axe as his alternative build. So should any greatsword build be deemed useless if not combined with another weapon?

To that I will only reply, is there a single build in the entire game that only has a single weapon and manages to be good?

There isn’t. Every single weapon has weaknesses that can be compensated for by using another weapon (except for eles and engineers because they have extra built-in weaponsets).

It’s hard for me to really discern your argument. You seem to want the greatsword to, in addition to having a ton of utility, also have a ton of damage. I mean really, weapons are sorted into different roles for a reason. DD shatter mesmers take staff for its utility and don’t kitten about how it can’t burst people down, does that sound familiar at all?

It’s just nonsensical.

serapheles.5409:

To the best of my knowledge, Gust, Static Field, Shocking Aura (proc), Updraft, Earthquake, Comet, and Gale, plus a couple underwater/conjured skills, all interrupt. I would actually really like to use this a bit, for a change if nothing else, but since almost all I do is wvw group support, I’d need to shave off trait points from somewhere else, and be less effective at what I do now. Don’t forget the weakness, btw. That’s probably what will make or break this.

I also feel like Unsteady Ground interrupts if they run into it, but I’m not sure.

It does.