Guild Wars 2

Khristophoros.7194:

Well maybe people in zergs should spread out.

This.

Giant stacks of people clustered together is what makes wvw boring in its current implementation. Since they’ve said they can’t add player collision, spreading more hard hitting but narrow AoE around to all classes is the next best thing.

I’d like to actually want to play WvW on high tier servers again without being instantly bored to death by all battles being a contest of who can stand the most people inside a fire or water field.

The current “STACK STACK STACK” WvW meta needs to die.

Gabriell.4856:

If for a second the Warrior GS don’t have CD but uses Init, GS is a lot better than staff.

This isn’t a fair comparison at all as warrios GS is specifically designed around cooldowns, not init. It you took any weapon from any other class and made it init based it would be better than any current thief weapon too.

Gabriell.4856:

Suggestion:

AA – They need to increase the AA damage (Dagger AA does 40% more damage) and reduce the cast time on 3rd chain to 3/4 sec. Looking at the 3rd chain, it looks like a mini Guardian Whirling Wrath w/o the damage 1.3/4 ish coef vs guardian 2.8 coef. The guardian WW is awesome since they have field on their weapon to combo with. Staff doesn’t.

Dagger AA also only cleaves 2 targets, not 3. There’s a reason when they gave it cleave they didn’t give it full cleave.

Gabriell.4856:

Stealth Attack – As it is currently, we cannot gain stealth via weaponskills. Add smoke field to Dust Strike. Reduce Stealth Attack KD duration to 1 sec.

We’re not supposed to gain stealth via weapon skills with this weapon, as this weapon’s playstyle isn’t intended to revolve around chaining stealth. That’s exactly why the KD is 2 seconds. it’s intended to be used less frequently because you have to dervice your stealth from CDs or outside sources.

Gabriell.4856:

Weakening Charge – Make it an evade and it will be a solid skill

The lack of an evade is a tradeoff for the fact we can spam a 450 range mobility skill for only 3 init. Giving it an evade would be drastically overpowered, especially when combined with our new trait line. This is intended to enable it to work with the new dodge traits to form chains of dodge back>whirl forward, not to make up for a lack of evades like the ranger and warrior skills do.

Gabriell.4856:

Debilitating Arc – No complaint

I need to see the animation on this one. I don’t want to see another skill where the evade is only useful in pve like death blossom due to aftercast. That said if the animation matches the evade time it’s pretty solid.

Gabriell.4856:

Dust Strike – This doesn’t seem to be AOE but COE. Got to see it in action. If it is COE, suggest they make it smoke field so we can combo.

Again, I think you’re missing the part where they don’t actually want us to self-combo stealth with this weapon, as it’s designed to be an acrobatic weapon in stead of a stealth weapon

Gabriell.4856:

Vault – Can combo with Dust Strike to gain stealth. Reduce cast time to 3/4.

Again, you’re missing the point here. It’s not supposed to be a stealth-centric weapon

Vault is a heavy hitting leap AoE, and is really costly because it typifies what’s different about staff. It doesn’t actually need extra utility because it is what is supposed to be special about staff in stead of heavy hitting stealth attacks

They didn’t design the spec all around staff for a reason. They actually want you to keep using the dagger sets if you’re using a chain stealth attack style build. Staff is supposed to add a heavy hitting multitarget weapon that combos well with its specialization traits and utilities

It’s never going to be comparable, or better than the existing sets for 1v1, or 1vx because that’s not the point of the weapon

It’s supposed to be better in group fights and blob warfare, and it actually is, even as written. It’s meant to do something the other weapons can’t: deal substantial aoe pressure to groups of mobs or players. It’s a weapon meant to allow you to play a thief and not be forced in to a roaming or scouting role. Literally every single skill is obviously designed around that ideal. You’re meant to me highly mobile and dish out nasty damage to multiple targets without getting locked down and killed.

Stop looking at staff as a thing to be used with SA to chain stealth attacks. Staff is not meant to replace existing weapons for existing playstyles. It’s meant to enable a different playstyle that is inacessible to the class without it

The first question on everyone’s lips should be:

“What cool new thing are you changing acrobatics in to now that you’ve replaced it?”

Mrbig.8019:

PopeUrban.2578:

AA – It’s built more for making pve viable with the spec as it does a 3 sec weakness.

Stealth attack – The fact that the weapon doesn’t have built in stealth is probably why they made it so powerful (2 sec KD stealth opener would be broken if you could chain stealth like */d)

Weakening charge – It’s actually death blossom with weakness and direct damage in stead of bleed/evade. Makes the weapon viable to use with SoM as a white damage weapon.

Debilitating Arc – Breaks immob, allowing you greater flexibility in util choices.

Dust Strike – emergency blind if you’re out of end, same cost as Debilitating Arc so probably intended to be a situational/tactical choice between the two

Vault – Probably intended more as a gap closer/support trait proc opener for team fights. Seems a little expensive for what it does. Leap finisher does allow it to set up as a stealth combo so could have interesting team play interactions with the stealth attack?

Channeled Vigor – Any way you slice it it’s a lame heal. If you’re so low on end you need to use it, you’re not in a position where using it is actually safe. Reduce the healing ratio and give it something else. Pulsing blind or projectile reflect or something, IDK.

Reflexive strike – Traited, it’s an 8s recharge stun break as well as a block/reflexive knockdown. Looks like a really solid overall defense panic button.

Fist flurry – Super situational, but it’s unblockable, be a good CC follow up against anybody that runs passive block. Might be mechanically interesting if you can hold palm strike for a while. Good way to force the target to blow a dodge so you can exploit your advantage of extra dodges maybe?

Distracting Dagger – Looks intended for breaking heals to secure kills.

Impairing daggers – Slow makes it easier to exploit interrupt traits/gear and time dodges. Seems better as an opener than a gap closer.

Elite – Solid finisher. Means you don’t have to worry about stomping if you start the chain at the end of the opponent’s HP bar. If the chain times like autoattacks you could down the target with hit 1, miss hit 2 due to downed knockback, blind, etc, and still have time to run in and do hit 3 and finish them. Great roamer/skirmisher elite to full-kill targets and GTFO fast.

Overall staff seems like it’s got good bones, but testing needs to be done on those damage values they might be a little low, or they might be perfect when combined with the traits as a lesser damage/more durable melee set. It’s nice to see that the utilities/elite synergize well with existing sets and add real options as alternatives to deception utils.

It’s definately a better PvE set for non-condi builds just on virtue of spamming 2 and built in mobility, but it might need some cost/damage tweaks to be attractive for pvp.

Staff is garbage.

heal is garbage.

Some U-skills are really solid and powerful, elite is very good.

Tbh i don’t see staff replacing nor primary sets ( D/X, S/X) neither sbow, mostly cuz it’s nor more powerful than current sets neither has more tactical uses ( no poison, bad auto, slow skills and backward evade LOL).

Even if some skills damage are very high, their utility is terrible ( D/P has blinds and dazes and stealth combos, S/D has stealth, dazes and inf strike, forward evade which can be also used backward) while staff has nothing aside some combo finishers u can’t combo with cuz u have no fields LOL.

it may seem very cool at first sight but damage isn’t everything, not even in PvE, mind it in PvP where staff will be garbage if released this way.

The idea behind it is very cool, but weap skills needs to be better than this.

I can see S/D, S/P and D/P being very strong with daredevil elite spec instead of shadow arts/acro and 3rd u-skill and elite as physicals.

TBH it occurs to me that they may have designed it as a PvE weapon considering that the utils and elite are all very PvP oriented, and the trait line seems geared to go either way. Like, staff is to thieves what GS is to warriors?

Gabriell.4856:

Regarding the elite its on a 40 sec CD meaing you get one attempt at it. I’m assuming if you miss the chain will end.

Why?

It’s already an extremely situational elite useful basically only for PvP. I can’t think of any good reason to assume missing 2 would fizzle it as its sole purpose seems to be turning a low HP player in to a dead player, and if it fizzles on a missed 2 then it would be absolutely useless as a skill against several classes.

I mean unless you’re just assuming it’ll suck because it’s a thief elite. Which, TBH, could be a fair assumption up to this point so who knows.

Tarkan.5609:

PopeUrban.2578:

Tarkan.5609:

GrandHaven.1052:

Zero Day.2594:

Not happening man.

There’s been traits data-mined that indicate we’re getting physical skills and our “elite” mechanic will be an extra dodge (150 endurance, instead of 100).

THIS IS COOL!!!

Chronomancer: gets a unique F5
Dragonhunter: gets a new set of active F1-F3
Reaper: gets a new F1 with 5 Skills
Berserker: gets a new Primal Burst Skill for each weapon
Tempest: (honestly have no idea what exactly Overcharge is, just heard it sucks)

Thief-Dev: oh lol i have no ideas and no motivation, lets slap another 50 endurance on them and ignore the reasons why we justified nerfing acro (too many dodges… then they gives us DD)

While it may be kinda cool it’s by no means a new class mechanic and mostly one thing: LAZY

Basically, it’s what acrobatics should have always been.

You got a point but 2 problems:

• doesn’t seem to be much dmg increase in that trait line and when you’re dodging you don’t deal a lot of damage
• now Acrobatics is not only a bad trait line, but also overshadowed by another trait line that does everything Acro does… just better

It’s not supposed to be an aggressive trait line. It’s a bunker line that allows you to actually use dodge more often, and get a lot of benefit from it. Think of it as allowing you to use dodges the way you use stealth, as a stalling measure to recharge init, clear conditions, and heal a little. Only with new new traits you can actually apply a little condition pressure while you do it in stead of being invisible while you do it. The up side is you can’t exactly by revealed and have it switched off by your target. The down side is that they can see you. It’s basically adding the old S/D playstyle to every weapon set (including p/p, which might be pvp viable with this) in a way.

Yes, Acro needs a massive buff, or some of this needs moved to acro and they can invent some new traits. The only conceivable use for acro now is assassin’s reward for SoM builds, and even then with all the extra defenses in the new line SoM builds might not even need Assassin’s reward any more due to taking less overall damage anyway. I think the new stuff is solid, but it’s definately not cool that acro got sacrificed to the god of nerfs to make it that way.

AA – It’s built more for making pve viable with the spec as it does a 3 sec weakness.

Stealth attack – The fact that the weapon doesn’t have built in stealth is probably why they made it so powerful (2 sec KD stealth opener would be broken if you could chain stealth like */d)

Weakening charge – It’s actually death blossom with weakness and direct damage in stead of bleed/evade. Makes the weapon viable to use with SoM as a white damage weapon.

Debilitating Arc – Breaks immob, allowing you greater flexibility in util choices.

Dust Strike – emergency blind if you’re out of end, same cost as Debilitating Arc so probably intended to be a situational/tactical choice between the two

Vault – Probably intended more as a gap closer/support trait proc opener for team fights. Seems a little expensive for what it does. Leap finisher does allow it to set up as a stealth combo so could have interesting team play interactions with the stealth attack?

Channeled Vigor – Any way you slice it it’s a lame heal. If you’re so low on end you need to use it, you’re not in a position where using it is actually safe. Reduce the healing ratio and give it something else. Pulsing blind or projectile reflect or something, IDK.

Reflexive strike – Traited, it’s an 8s recharge stun break as well as a block/reflexive knockdown. Looks like a really solid overall defense panic button.

Fist flurry – Super situational, but it’s unblockable, be a good CC follow up against anybody that runs passive block. Might be mechanically interesting if you can hold palm strike for a while. Good way to force the target to blow a dodge so you can exploit your advantage of extra dodges maybe?

Distracting Dagger – Looks intended for breaking heals to secure kills.

Impairing daggers – Slow makes it easier to exploit interrupt traits/gear and time dodges. Seems better as an opener than a gap closer.

Elite – Solid finisher. Means you don’t have to worry about stomping if you start the chain at the end of the opponent’s HP bar. If the chain times like autoattacks you could down the target with hit 1, miss hit 2 due to downed knockback, blind, etc, and still have time to run in and do hit 3 and finish them. Great roamer/skirmisher elite to full-kill targets and GTFO fast.

Overall staff seems like it’s got good bones, but testing needs to be done on those damage values they might be a little low, or they might be perfect when combined with the traits as a lesser damage/more durable melee set. It’s nice to see that the utilities/elite synergize well with existing sets and add real options as alternatives to deception utils.

It’s definately a better PvE set for non-condi builds just on virtue of spamming 2 and built in mobility, but it might need some cost/damage tweaks to be attractive for pvp.

Halan.7931:

Looks interesting. But I’d like some stability and resistance.

The point is that your defenses are active rather than passive. Stability and resistance are passive forms of defense used to make up for not being able to dodge or stunbreak enough.

The new traits allow steal to refill end, give us a 3 dodge bar, and grant 10 end for using physical skills while reducing the CD of them. That means that 10 second recharge stunbreak/block/reactive knockdown is actually an 8 second recharge stunbreak/block/reactive knockdown that gives you 10 endurance, not to mention your dodges clear both cripple and frozen and add swiftness.

They setup is intended for you to not actually need stability and resistance because you have the ability to dodge or counter those problem attacks.

Riranor.6315:

There is a problem no one considered with kits. Engineer has no weapon swap. Thief does. Will ninja remove thief weapon swap? Will thief kits be mediocre and not as good to compensate weapon swap? Well they have cooldowns which would effectively make it more like a conjured weapon for one player? For those reasons alone I can’t ever see kids happening For another class. try to argue that they should be just like engineer and engineers would be at a disadvantage.

They’d actually make the most sense on thieves because thieves don’t benefit from weapon swaps the same way other classes do due to initiative. In terms of resources used, thieves would actually get no additional potential DPS from using a kit, and they’d lose access to a util slot, which is a far larger portion of a thief’s total skill bar because thieves, unlike engis, don’t have toolbelt skills.

In fact, I’d say that thieves are probably the only non-engi class that would actually not be a balance problem to add kits to. Every other class would essentially gain a massive power increase from having another set of 1-5 cooldowns.

Tarkan.5609:

GrandHaven.1052:

Zero Day.2594:

Not happening man.

There’s been traits data-mined that indicate we’re getting physical skills and our “elite” mechanic will be an extra dodge (150 endurance, instead of 100).

THIS IS COOL!!!

Chronomancer: gets a unique F5
Dragonhunter: gets a new set of active F1-F3
Reaper: gets a new F1 with 5 Skills
Berserker: gets a new Primal Burst Skill for each weapon
Tempest: (honestly have no idea what exactly Overcharge is, just heard it sucks)

Thief-Dev: oh lol i have no ideas and no motivation, lets slap another 50 endurance on them and ignore the reasons why we justified nerfing acro (too many dodges… then they gives us DD)

While it may be kinda cool it’s by no means a new class mechanic and mostly one thing: LAZY

To be fair, what’s new about it is it spec allows traiting dodge with effects that are far stronger than those avaliabble to every other class in a way that stacks with our existing dodge traits. That’s what’s new, mechanically, about it. Not that we get three dodges, but that we get three dodges and they can fire ranged condi attacks, grant swiftness, remove cripple/chill, grant might, and drop caltrops while simultaneously allowing us to have a 3 dodge bar, refill endurance by using a stun break/block with a 8s cooldown and on every steal, and increase the range of our dodges.

It puts thief in a very unique mechanical place actually, in that our dodges can be used twice as often and do four times as much as every other class, and that makes them viable as a core defense rather than an emergency defense the way other classes use dodge.

Basically, it’s what acrobatics should have always been.

I like this idea. just make sure swap traits have an ICD similar to sigils and I can’t see any reason why we need swap cooldowns at all.

Then again, swap reduction is sort of a core warrior mechanic, so they might want to keep it unique to warriors.

Pretty sure the base spec is already the ninja spec.

Just saying.

Chapell.1346:

Stupid people who does not main thief think; thief elite spec is the solution of its brokenness without fixing its own core Mechanic given how they gave other class a skill which totally Shutdown the Core. people need to stop datamining and should start play the game with their multiple alts.
Staff? really people? Pathetic.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting this spec “fixes thief”

It is, however, pretty good in its own right at doing what it’s supposed to do, which is add the option of a reliable bunker style spec to the class.

This doesn’t make the rest of our broken stuff okay, and it’s definately not okay that they had to hose acro for this (honestly, this should just be acro) but in and of itself it’s a kitten good set of skills and a weapon that compliments that playstyle.

That heal is super lame though.

I don’t see staff replacing d/d for my life on hit tank (I can get far more than 3 heal ticks with death blossom) for pve, but for pvp? This is pretty much dead on for what I wanted in a pvp set. Mobility and survivability with a stealth based disable.

Even for the deathblossom PvE condi spec though, the new heal on evade trait and the one that tosses condi daggers on dodge increases both the condition DPS and surviability of that spec, and bandit’s defense is just pure win shadowstep just got fired as my pve stunbreak.

Still not happy acro had to be gutted for this to exist, but what I’m seeing here is a solid weaponset and supporting traits/utils for a melee control pvp spec that takes some skill to pull off, and solid traits/utils that make existing pve specs a lot better.

The only sad part is I’ll probably have to drop deadly arts for it, and I’ve gotten to like the double steals from improvisation

That elite though? That’s insanely meta changing in a really good way. It gives thieves a much better “special thing” than just dropping stealth as they can function as top tier stompers now and really shift fights meaningfully in that role.

My guess is that they figured out that thing was a giant bad guy magnet

Think about it. Every time someone attacked LA, what was the first casualty?

Also, personal story instances now redirect to old LA. I was quite suprised leveling an alt the other day to meet destiny’s edge in pre-war LA. I think maybe they should add some sort of text to tell players that those instances are historical. I could see how a new player would get really confused.

Bandit.3856:

I know this is just gonna come across as sour grapes. But I really feel like this is a dishonest move on the part of Areanet. It’s not only that we’re missing out on loot and achievement points and collections and stuff. We’re missing out on lore that is a vital bridge to HoT. For this to be gated behind a paywall as punishment for not logging in at a certain point is not what I thought the Guild Wars 2 ethos was.

On a related note, I would really like it noted on the collections achievements that they cannot be gained without accessing content that is currently disabled to you, like it does with other achievements you have to unlock by doing something else first.

It does in fact come across as sour grapes.

Arenanet is a business. It cost time and money to develop those LS episodes, and the financial model that supports the LS is that it encourages users to log in regularly, as users that remain engaged are more likely to purchase gems when items are on sale.

Nearly every other game that releases “seasonal” content doesn’t release it for free at all. Take a look at DCUO, or LOTR, or a multitude of other games. When their “episodes” release, they’re paid content on the day of release.

No one at arenanet every promised all content would be free forever. What they said was that participating in the ongoing living story would be free.

Also note that in the time you were not logging in to get your free LS episodes, they also added daily login rewards that hand out free black lion items once a week, achievements that grant items otherwise obtainable only with gems, and added permanent open world content alongside those releases that requires no payment at all to access.

Simply put: You could have taped the show (LS) when it aired with advertising support (gem store sales), and you didn’t. Thus, they’re asking you to buy the DVD.

Iason Evan.3806:

Well said. Ele is now the only profession with only a single two-handed weapon. They have 3 off-hands. It’s a bummer.

To be fair, an ele offhand grants 8 skills compared to the 3-5 granted by adding a MH or 2h to any other profession.

Not only that, the weapon choices for the elite specs seem chosen more for the thematic synergy with the spec’s mechanics or flavor than being concerned with being able to say “we added exactly # skills to every profession” and having to come up with a bunch of filler or try to justify why adding mainhand sword was an appropriate choice for an AoE battle commander style specialization.

Eventually you’ll see specs supporting every weapon for every profession. Next round of specs, I’d expect to see those that got offhands get new MH or 2H weapons, and those that got 2H get offhands.

It’s a balancing mechanism intended more for ongoing use of the system in a world where classes have more than 1 e-spec than its current introductory one.

Basically, it allows them to design elite specs in a bubble, so that they only have to balance their skill and trait synergies against the base class. This lets them avoid the balance hell of the GW1 system, in which every time they added skills they had to balance those skills against every other skill in the game, which got harder and harder to do as time went on because the list of skills they had to balance against got exponentially bigger.

The e-spec system means that they can continue to add e-specs without ever worrying that, say, the mechanic from 1 e-spec would make the utilities from another overpowered, or combining the utilities from two separate e-specs would be overpowered, etc.

This makes it much easier to balance and update, and allows them to make the unique skills and mechanics of each spec much more impactful.

This conversation again! I remember having the same argument in regards to fractals, so I’ll posit the same opinion:

Functional rewards should never be content gated. They aren’t. Mastery tracks and all forms of mechanical advancement should remain accessible to those simply willing to put time in.

Cosmetic rewards on the other hand absolutely should be uniquely offered for unique and challenging content. Those cosmetic rewards do not create the dreaded gear treadmill and remain optional, but add tangible rewards for completing said content.

GW2s largest problem is currently that there is little incentive or reward for tackling difficult content (and that there is precious little, if zero difficult content)

There is nothing wrong with giving out unique skins for winning a wvw season, or completing a particularly hard boss fight or instance. Those items are trophies to signify an accomplishment, and without the trophy those accomplishments feel hollow in a game where the primary reward model is loot.

Simply put, loot in GW2 is boring. This is a bad thing in a loot focused game. Loot in GW1 was interesting because loot, while still cosmetic, was all tied to specific pieces of content, be they world regions, specific instances, bosses, or quests.

Nobody wants to see a gear treadmill raid progression style system. Nobody wants to be forced in to doing content they don’t like just to access other content they might love.

Cosmetics are the reward model of GW2 for this very reason, and they were the reward model in GW1 as well. What contributed to the longevity of the first game were those rare, difficult to acquire skins that could only be acquired by tackling challenging content.

As long as the entry barrier is fair there’s no reason to expect everyone to be entitled to every reward avaliable just because they’re willing to put the time in. Everyone can easily acquire, with simply an investment of time, a full set of stat-appropriate ascended gear. That is the top of the mechanical gear limit, and that shouldn’t change.

Asking for a game in which everything is acquirable just by doing the equivalent of farming silverwastes leads to a ton of wasted and useless content. Expect that some rewards will be more geared toward collecting a large number of open world tokens over time, and some rewards will be geared toward mastering particularly challenging content.

The content is all still very much optional. You’ll never require to tackle a piece of content you hate to access other content you enjoy. You will, however have to tackle the content appropriate for the individual rewards you desire.

Consider that if such a skill were the case, it’s not a weapon skill, but an F skill, meaning it likely has its own cooldown. That makes it pretty darn easy to balance.

Of course with the talk of deception, it could very well be some sort of taunting clone generator or who knows what. guess we wait for the reveal this week and find out!

Xaylin.1860:

PopeUrban.2578:

I’d say it’s probably not a shatter, as that would be rather redundant. A clone swap though, that would be novel, especially if it also functioned with thieves guild and ambush, and didn’t have a cooldown.

“Wait, no cooldown? That’s totally OP!”

A shatter wouldn’t be more redundant than a clone swap. The only thing we have to remember is: The new F1 – if there is one – will have to work with existing traits. This would be the case for a clone swap. But it could also work with a shatter-type skill.

That being said: It is rather likely it would have a cooldown. They won’t let you use, for example, Bountiful Theft or Mug without a cooldown. They’re currently gated by the F1 cooldown. If the new F1 won’t have one, the traits will most certainly gain one. Even then, it is also pretty likely that F1 will have a 0.5s – 1s internal cooldown to prevent abuse.

My theory here is based around the spec gaining an f3 similar to the mesmer’s extra shatter, and 1 or 2 new henchman generating utilities, perhaps to generate henchies that use fear or the new taunt condition.

So, unlike the “glass clones” of the mesmer, the idea is that you don’t have any weapon skills that actively generate the hirelings, and unlike the mesmer skills it’s not a “one and done” ability with an additional AoE/oneshot effect.

So, for instance, you pop f3 at a cost of 4 init. The f3 button swaps from “call henchman” to “swap” now that you have a henchie up. As a thief you don’t really have methods to heal the henchie, but you can hit f3 without a real cooldown (.5 sec ICD or whatever it takes to make sure there’s time to hit you one good time with a stun or whatever) to swap places with it. You run in, blow some init, then hit f3 to swap places with the henchie. From back there you can steal right back in to end up next to the henchie, steal to another guy, swap to a ranged weapon, or just hit f3 and swap back in.

This creates a different counterplay than going against a mesmer. Mesmers cycle through their clones, and detonate them for beneficial effects, so it’s never good counterplay to attack the clones. The mesmer wants you to do that so it’s easier to detonate them in your face.

Thief henchies on the other hand add far less damage to the fight, and can be spawned far less frequently, but when they’re up they make it far harder to nail down the thief, so the counterplay in this case is to nail the henchies first as the thief can’t reliably replace them. This increases the thief’s survivability indirectly by making him a constantly shifting but somewhat predictable target. He doesn’t look like his henchies, but he could swap places with them at a moment’s notice, so nailing him down means either traditional disables to keep him from using the skill, or nuking his henchies.

The button would change to swap any time you’ve got a henchie out, no matter how you generated it, so henchies from thieve’s guild, ambush trap, or new utilities that generate a henchie would also cause the flip, and the init cost prevents the thief from spamming out henchies constantly as if he were a mesmer. If he does that, he can’t really deal damage as he’s blowing all his init on henchies.

Let’s say you’ve run ambush trap and thieves guild as well, and managed to get a lucky proc on Improvisation, so you’ve got like 6 henchies running about. Hit f3, swap to the nearest one. Hit f3 again, swap to the next one, f3 again, swap to the next, and so on. the button cycles through all of them, but the thief can’t really control which he switches to so more henchies would generally be better survivability, but come at the cost of damage. The henchies themselves can’t really be traited for extra damage, don’t explode in useful effects, etc. but you may have traited for stuff like self heal on swap, + damage reduction for each henchie present, or other thematic bunkering style traits as befitting the spec.

Basically, mesmer’s clones primarily exist to deal effects/damage and then rapidly die and get replaced. Even the sword swap exists for that purpose, and the mesmer limit of 3 is a control mechanism to offset the rapid pace at which they are able to generate them. Thief henchies on the other hand are spawned far less frequently, and never by freebie weapon skills. Having one die is never really beneficial, while having them alive is what you’d be aiming for as they’d all provide shadowstep anchors.

Combine that with an elite that basically reverse-shatters them, drawing them all to you rather than the target to gain boons, health, init or something else beneficial for each, and it’s a very different than how mesmers handle clones. Thief henchies end up being a precious, useful, but quite limited resource compared to the mesmer’s plentiful, cheap, and expendable illusions/phantasms.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dancing_Dagger

As a thief, I can assure you it is very rarely worth using.

I’d also wager that all of the new staff skins in HoT that you’d get from normal loot, dungeons, and other sources are more melee-look friendly since but us and the rev now use them as melee weapons, and there are already a large number of “heavy headed” staff skins in the game.

Volrath.1473:

I just hope they don’t give us cool downs on staff abilities i stead of using init…

That would be highly, highly irregular. I figure if they were going to throw out init in the name of balance they would have done it a long time ago as it would have been the simplest way to balance us. They seem pretty committed to init regardless of any other design mistakes they’ve made in our balance patches.

Maybe even a sort of reverse shatter. In stead of continually spawning npcs, and detonating them for damage/defense, we continually generate a form of non-boon defensive buff that we lose when we generate a clone, kind of like a more selfish version of guardian virtues combined with mesmer clones.

I’d say it’s probably not a shatter, as that would be rather redundant. A clone swap though, that would be novel, especially if it also functioned with thieves guild and ambush, and didn’t have a cooldown.

“Wait, no cooldown? That’s totally OP!”

Not really. We’re not mesmers, right? We can call in some extra thieves, but we don’t poop them out constantly like mesmers do. Thus, the cooldown for the ability would be more implicit in the HP of the clones and their particular cooldowns. I’d also imagine that unlike mesmers our henchmen don’t look like us or share our names.

Thus, we’d get this ability to swap around the battlefield, which seems pretty thiefy, but it would be a bit less controllable than shadowsteps and have a pretty easy to understand natural counter.

Right, but using f3 wouldn’t proc the steal traits, removing the potential balance issues of letting some of them influence a disengage-style ability.

Sure, you could still trait steal with mug, stealth, daze, etc. but you wouldn’t be able to apply all that without using steal as it exists currently, as a gap closer, meaning that it wouldn’t cause balance headaches when paired with a disengage style ability assuming they shared a cooldown.

Amante.8109:

PopeUrban.2578:

To the rifle/1200 range camp:

I see and acknowledge your points on the matter. To me, the question is whether those tradeoffs are worth it; judging by the current state of the profession, I’m not so sure they are. It seems like the combination of initiative, stealth, and mobility ultimately handicaps what can be done with Thief on a design level.

I would easily give up most/all of our stealth—as well as Shortbow #5—if it meant we could have proper ranged weapons and increased durability. Initiative is a little thornier, and probably the bigger sticking point. It is also a large portion of what makes Thief unique, so it’s likely to remain (for better or worse).

Even accounting for initiative, I feel like our weapon choices could be better. A lot of them lack proper initiative dumps, and even within our limited range of engagement, our ranged options are poor (before anyone says Shortbow, keep in mind that it has a SINGLE damaging ability that doesn’t require being at near melee range to use effectively).

Overhauling mainhand Pistol would be a good start. It’s a weapon split between power and condition damage, but that doesn’t succeed at either. Body Shot in particular is just awful… but don’t get me started on how poor our access to Vulnerability is when we should be one of the best at it.

It’s worth pointing out that elite specs do alter profession mechanics at a core level, so it is conceivable (if unlikely) that a future spec could fundamentally alter the way initiative works as a balancing lever. I doubt it would happen though, as that raises so many conflicts with base spec weapons, traits, and other such stuff.

Another route they could go with is some sort of fulcrum shift built in to a minor trait. e.g. a ranged spec minor could read something like “when you stealth, you remain visible and become a smoke field. You do not cause yourself to become revealed.” and build the range increases in to the minors in the same line so that you’d have to take the line to achieve max range.

You guys bring up some pretty good points, and I’ll admit I never would have thought to see guardians with a longbow spec either so I could be way off.

That said we know at least this time around it’s staff, and hopefully the BWE feedback will also cause an overall critical look at our existing issues.

You make an excellent point!

Personally I’m pretty happy with staff, under the assumption that it’s a better multihit weapon for life on hit style builds. I run a LoH build and it’s a lot of fun but lacks the staying power of similar bunkerish options for other classes.

Going forward, I could see thief rifle as potentially being like a reverse mesmer GS style weapon and being closer to what anet considers thief balance. Consider that they never really nerfed shortbow 2 spam despite it making a ranged weapon much more effective at closer ranges.

In fact, just look at the mesmer’s GS line and basically reverse it and change boons to conditions (since thief support is primarily condition rather than boon based) and I could see a 1200 range rifle.

Skrimisher/Commando (Gained from charr/kralk expansion. Themes of expansion are largely charr engineering/machinery intensive, engis would probably get a perma-golem suit line, eles get a proper enchanted weapon melee line, rangers get a “build your own pet robot that combines both pet slots” line, guards get fortification summons, etc.)

1 – stealth – Aim – This ability deals no damage, in stead it reveals the user, who gains the “Aim” buff, allowing the next two attacks to ignore range penalties.
1 – chain – hit/hit/cripple – deals greater damage the closer you are to your target, max damage at 600 range

2 – Spray and pray – fire several shots from your rifle, crippling and dealing an additional random condition to up to 5 targets. Number of targets decreases at longer range

3 – Suppressing fire (charge skill) – root yourself in place, and fire several low damage piercing shots. Enemies hit by these shots are blinded. This skill has a cost of 1 init per shot and can be held down until out of initiative.

4 – Tactical Retreat – strike up to 3 targets in melee range, dazing them for 2 seconds, and tumble backward, evading attacks.

5 – Reload – Reload your weapon, dealing no damage, but refilling your endurance.

To the rifle/1200 range camp:

Dude, you still don’t get it do you? They are never (never) going to give us a max ranged spec due to our extremely high disengage ability. A 1200 range thief is never happenning. Combining max range with our ability to easily chain withdraw/shadowstep/stealth is a literal get out of jail free card for both PvE and PvP.

It’s the same reason they changed mob behavior to remember you exist when you stealth, and it’s the same reason they didn’t give us a 1200 range weapon to begin with. They consider stealth, our evade utils, and shadowstepping to be balanced for mid range ranged use, but potentially game breaking for long range use.

If we had a 1200 range weapon we could quite literally kite everything in any game mode with nearly zero risk.

If we see a rifle spec in a future expansion, you can bet that it’s not going to be sniping focused, and in stead it’ll take on a carbine style mechanic and be used as a control weapon at shorbow range.

Thief ranged builds will always be equal parts mobility and range due to the way our class mechanics work. There’s simply not another balanced alternative that wouldn’t allow us to trivialize content by blowing all out init at max range then stealthing/teleporting away until it recharges.

Thief mechanics are not well suited for a max range class. They need to fix P/P, I agree, but our ranged builds will always be far more about mobility/disables, and mid range fighting than they will be about long range fighting. It’s simply the cost we pay for having initiative in stead of cooldowns and having our combination of reliable on-demand stealth combined with reliable on-demand teleports and evasion.

stof.9341:

PopeUrban.2578:

Assuming Daredevil and the staff are legit, I’m guessing we’d be trading steal (an engagement skill that potentially sets up the target) for some sort of disengagement skill that doesn’t grant stealth.

Impossible. First, F1 doesn’t grant stealth (without a trait). Second, no matter what happens to our F1 skill, it’ll still count as using “Steal” for all the existing traits. So no matter what the elite spec gets, you will still be able to trait your F1 to stealth on usage.

I meant, specifically, it doesn’t grant stealth on its own.

Also, it’s not a long shot to suspect that any steal traits (if steal is replaced) could simply be altered. There’s no real technical reason that a trait that grants stealth on steal couldn’t also say “Grants stealth on steal, blinds nearby targets on disengage” etc. Similar to how several ele traits/skills proc different effects based upon attunement.

Or hey, perhaps the whole thing is set up to simply add an f3 similar to how the chronomancers got an f5.

In that case it’s entirely possible that steal traits simply wouldn’t function with the f3. You’ll notice that the only minor traits that effect steal are in the trickery line, which is essentially the “steal and tricks line” it’s not a long stretch of the imagination to assume that the new line would be the “disengage and X skill line” with a similar design to trickery. Buffs the mechanic and its associated skill category. That would allow people to build around utilizing both, or throw out trickery and simply not trait for steal in favor of using the new line to get similar style buffs from using the new mechanic.

We can stack a lot of lifesteal and spam multihit attacks on large groups of enemies, then easily disengage when out brief godmode wad is spent. I can confidently say i can solo large groups of silver+ trash better on my thief than I can on any other class, at the cost of damage and single target ability.

I mean that’s pretty fun, just like venomshare and ninja-nursing to save a wipe is pretty fun. It’s a shame I can’t do all of that at one time in the same build.

And what kind of build do they use? What kind of content do they play? I’m interested in seeing some more developer playthroughs with the thief!

To the people who keep saking for “assassin” and other “sneaky” specs.

I don’t think you understand the point of elite specs.

The base spec is already “the sneaky assassin spec” complete with teleport-to-gank-target utilities and f1, and near total reliance on stealth.

Asking for more of the same would be like asking for the Forge to be just another engineer that poops out stationary turrets and uses ranged attacks.

To the people looking for a more ranged focused/rifle spec:

I agree, but I think in terms of build diversity a melee sustain build is a bigger priority than a ranged DPS build given the current number of melee options versus ranged. A rifle build wouldn’t offer nearly as much build diversity in that small package, while holding off a ranged focused spekittenil next expansion where, say, they add another ranged option (throwing spears?) that also works on the base spec, would be better simply because at that point “commando” or “sniper” or “deadeye” would actually have multiple viable weapon choices in stead of being stuck with “use the spec weapon or suck”

Remember that elite specs aren’t about adding “one build” as much as they are about adding or reinforcing a playstyle. A melee sustain class, in the current game, actually adds a playstyle that can be used with multiple weapons, while a rifle-focused spec would possibly be too reliant on the player using rifle and only rifle.

Assuming Daredevil and the staff are legit, I’m guessing we’d be trading steal (an engagement skill that potentially sets up the target) for some sort of disengagement skill that doesn’t grant stealth.

Staff seems like it would be a melee AoE weapon, and the name daredevil seems like a flavor less focused on stealthy stabby and more focused of showy things like firearms/blunt damage/explosives that the base thief spec has a little of, but doesn’t really build around.

Concussive retreat – Explode a concussion grenade at your location, blasting nearby enemies forward 600, and launching yourself backward 800.

or, possibly f1-f4 versions of the skill with different conditions (f1 for knockback, f2 for a long cripple, f3 for fear, etc.)

I also wouldn’t be suprised if ricochet was moved to the spec, as p/p seems a bit more “daredevil” than “thief” and of course various traits added to buff the new F1 with some CDR, additional conditions, heal, damage, etc.

Finally, I’d assume our new utilities are flavored around sustain/lifesteal based melee so they’d naturally synergize with thief builds that stack lifesteal for sustain. Melee lifesteal sustain is pretty unique to the thief, we have a heal skill (well two, but the venom sucks because venoms) two traits for it, and our initiative mechanic allows us to spam multi-hit skills to use it more efficiently than other classes. Additionally, lifesteal sustain requires you to stay in combat and hit people, which seems in keeping with the “daredevil” theme. I’d assume some sort of timed +lifesteal aura, something that grants protection, and probably a condition purge with no extra benefits so it’s more powerful than shadowstep, and an elite that does for melee what daggerstorm does for ranged. +Stability, short range Melee aoe damage, and close PBAoE pulsing blind in stead of reflect.

Basically, a lot of thing that flip the thief from being more effective versus single targets and less against mobs to being more effective at multiple targets and less against singles due to the nature of lifesteal.

Having played a lifesteal build (in open world content, and certain instanced content where it’s actually viable) I can say that the biggest thing you need when your lifesteal tank starts breaking is a quick and reliable disengage so you can blow a stealth or otherwise retreat to avoid death in the middle of the massive group of mobs you rounded up and nail them with ranged shortbow attacks to heal back up enough to dive back in. To get that currently you have to give up SoM for withdraw (which kills the build) or a use shadowstep/roll for initiative in a somewhat unintuitive manner.

Also, the only weapons that can currently play such a build are d/d deathblossom spam, or s/p pistol whip spam, both of which are kind of one trick ponies when used this way. A melee AoE focused staff bar, on the other hand, would be a perfect alternative for enabling that playstyle in a way that wouldn’t also require anet to nerf the single target potential of dagger or sword.

Putting that disengage on the f1 slot would allow that playstyle without requiring the player to take specific utilities, and would allow it to be used more frequently without needing to nerf the powerful secondary effects of the disengage tools thieves already have.

Due to the nature of p/p it would also make sense to move pistol traits there as p/p would play a lot better with a f1 disengage than a f1 shadowstep.

I hear you, but what I’m saying is that as you’ve laid it out it still experiences some pretty massive balance problems, or the same problem it already has.

Version 1
The trait only recharges skills that are on cooldown.
Now, you have the ability to selectively double-use any utility, elite or heal. as i noted in my previous post, this creates the “Venom Conundrum” as all skills now must be balanced around an effective cooldown of trickery traited steal. In this case several thief skills are just plain too good to remain in their current state, and many of them are otherwise perfectly fine skills. You couldn’t let shadowstep, daggerstorm, withdraw, or a bunch of other useful skills in the wild with that kind of power.

Version 2
The trait randomly selects a skill on your bar, whether it is on cooldown or not.
In this interpretation of your idea it has the same problem. The trait has a pretty high (but controllable) chance of doing nothing unless you blow literally every cooldown. Again, this doesn’t really address the fundamental issue: Sometimes the trait just doesn’t do anything beneficial. While it’s true you would now have more control over WHEN it does nothing, you’re effectively penalizing people for being judicious and tactical about their skill use, or you’re effectively preventing them from taking advantage of the other half of the trait. In this case the player is incentizived to either blow all CDs as often as possible in order to ensure the trait works, or they’re incentivized to avoid stealing until all of their stuff is on CD, effectively nullifying the benefits of having two stolen items. This interpretation makes the trait fight with itself.

To reiterate
The trait can be buffed and can keep it’s signature “wow moment” of recharging two or three key skills at one time, and I laid out some options that would do that and retain balance. My personal favorite is my option 3, add a catch effect that triggers when nothing gets recharged. That effect could be random, or totally predictable, and as its only “ideal use” scenario is using it when nothing is on CD can be balanced internally without effecting the operative power levels of other skills, or overly penalizing reactive and tactical use of steal and the rest of the player’s cooldowns.

Thieves can really be built two separate ways for PvE. You’re either built to be very good at delivering single target DPS, or very good at surviving/debuffing multiple targets due to stacking and scaling health steals and the ability to reliably inflict multiple debilitating conditions while also keeping melee range to enemies so they stay where your party wants them.

My PvE build runs d/d condition unicorn as the deathblossom evade is actually pretty good in pve at maintaining survivability and stacking bleeds. (doubly so now that bleed caps aren’t really a thing to worry about) While Dorian’s build focuses on blind/direct damage, mine focuses on bleed/poison/cripple to accomplish the same sort of pve debuff/tank.

As others have noted, you’re also usually the go-to-guy for in-combat rezzing and anything requiring stealth due to shadow refuge, and for regular groups you’re also usually utilized for your spammable burst finisher on the shortbow, which is used coordinated with others to create massive aoe combo effects for healing or condi/boon spam.

If anything you’ll find that a skilled thief in PvE is especially good at fixing bad situations. Built properly it’s the only class that really has all the tools to both tank a boss or room and reliably rez another player without requiring outside help.

You’re not godlike, but your self sufficiency and mobility goes a long way towards fixing other people’s mistakes, and you’re a solid add for damage or holding aggro depending on how you’re built. It is, however, a bit more difficult to play than other classes in PvE, as the sustain builds are more active than passive defense, and the damage builds require you to keep track of initiative and revealed.

It’s not acceptable to nerf a core defensive line just so that a new spec will be viable.

If acro isn’t a valid alternative to shadow arts, then it’s simply not a valid line.

I’m sure the new spec will have some cool stuff, but I can’t simply say it’s okay that acro sucks because it’ll synergize well with one new line.

Acro didn’t even work well before the nerf from a balance standpoint. Did it synergise well with S/D? Yeah. Was it useful when not using S/D? No.

The big problem is that out trait lines are designed differently than other classes. Most classes have “weapon lines” that are a combination of specific universal weapon buffs and utility traits. This allows those lines to be used effectively without their associated weapon.

Thief, however, has things designed around a more nebulous concept of “damage and defense styles” and doesn’t really have any core weapon lines.

On the one hand, this is good. Not feeling forced to take a specific line for a specific weapon is in line with how our weapon skills are designed (swapping is of lesser use for us, and our offhand choice is more impactful than that of other classes due to dual skills and init)

On the other hand, it means looking at balance from a different perspective.

Acro simply being good with sword and okay with everything else was always a problem. Weapon choice should never dictate trait choice for a class that is encouraged to use weapons situationally rather than on a firm rotation.

Acro needs, at minimum, the return of the old endurance refill mechanic, and a minor with a 25% base move speed increase to actually function as an alternative to SA. Past that, it needs to take a hard look at why SA is so useful. SA, in its purest form, is about straight buffs to stealth. It then follows that acro should be about straight buffs to dodge. yes, every class has some “blah happens on dodge” traits, but as thieves with a trait line literally called “Acrobatics” it follows that the trait line would naturally be about stacking several powerful defensive effects on to dodge, and simply allowing us to dodge more in stead of being loaded with tons of passive trigger traits.

I mean isn’t that what acrobatics is? It’s active defense by moving out of the way rather than armor, magical shielding, or modifying other properties of armor, devices, or skills right?

I played improv before the buff, then I had to ditch it when they did the first trait rebalance due to critical healing. I run a pve unicorn lifesteal “scaling tank” build with mad king runes.

The double stolen item use is a massive buff to the trait, but the fact remains that stolen items are a very mixed bag in both PvE and PvP.

I think the random category recharge is fine as is now that it’s bundled with a reliable and useful function. Improv, even the old version, had a certain character. It encourages strange variant builds (For instance, actively building around taking as many categories as possible, or making sure to take all one category for the ultimate gamble with the ultimate payoff) and that’s a good thing.

Improv is all about the name of the trait. It’s not meant for you to have control, it’s meant to create additional ways for you to exploit factors beyond your control. The 2x stolen item feature it has now is a good expression of this. You don’t get to pick stolen items, but improv will ensure that that thing you can’t control is ALWAYS more powerful than it would have been right?

So there are a few options here, if we want to keep the flavor and intent of the trait intact and still achieve something resembling balance.

1: Leave the recharge mechanic alone, and buff stolen items.
Basically, in addition to double use, increase the effectiveness of stolen items. Have it increase the damage (condition or white) of said items by 50% and double any duration they may have.

2: Leave the stolen items alone, and give it a reliable effect on utilities that doesn’t kill its weird-bar-enabling characteristics.
Making it always recharge a skill is simply too powerful. There, I said it. Considering that we can decrease steal to ~20 second cooldown, allowing improv to work in this manner would effectively create the “Venoms conundrum” for every single thief utility as they’d all have to be balanced around being reliably triggered on a 20s CD. I don’t want to see more utilities sit forever in balance limbo like venoms do simply because one trait could make them overpowered.

In stead, you could keep its current functionality, which functions to create a bit of build diversity, and simply give it a flat, non-stacking, 10% CDR on all skills. In this way you reinforce its random recharge by encouraging people to use it in the most optimal fashion (dump all skills then steal, then improvise!) by allowing people to dump their skills more often, at the cost of a GM trait.

3: Create a “catch effect” for when it fails to recharge anything.
Let’s say the recharge mechanic stays the same, but in stead of nothing at all happenning when it rolls a skill recharge, it actually does something less spectacular, but still useful. What if it gave you some boon love, or a small heal, or triggered a random less powerful (and not potentially harmful to you, so no stealth, push, or pull skills)version of a skill in that category, or granted some endurance, or kicked you a little init, or could do any of the above?

This is my favorite option as it maintains the random nature and overall flavor of the trait and reinforces its namesake. You stole, a thing happenned, and that thing is always better than nothing happenning, but is going to require you to recognize what happenned, and react quickly to play it well. In short, it makes you improvise

Not great, obviously, but the trick is volume. The runes and sigils are basically worthless, even to a vendor, so unlike mfing rares there’s not really much of an opportunity cost to chuck ’em in there.

Occasionally you end up with a free dungeon rune (soulbound, which is kinda annoying) or valuable meta rune/sigil you can sell.

It resulted in a pretty large bank bage of exotics after a year or so that I eventually liquidated on the AH for around 240 gold, and a savings on runes for guild members of maybe twice that based on what people kept to use for themselves.

Not great, but in my opinion a better fate for all those spare runes and sigils than the vendor, and if I did the math I probably made more money than vendoring them. On you get used to doing it maybe once a week, with stacks of runes from your entire guild the law of averages starts to kick in and you end up with a little treasure for your time sifting all that thrash.

Ayrilana.1396:

PopeUrban.2578:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Would be nice if the bioluminescent set were available through PVP tracks. That would be another cool way to get the set.

It would be consistant with how anet treats PvP reward tracks for sure.

I’m not a huge fan of the PvP reward track system in general, but I do believe it is consistant with anet’s hard split between pvp/pve and their design goal of allowing pvp enthusiasts to never touch pve if they don’t want to.

This is wholly different from currency farming in PvE as PvP is inherantly challenging simply due to the intelligence of the foes encountered (players) which makes it virtually impossible to effortlessly farm with no real risk or challenge.

You can join a custom arenas, there are some dedicated for dailies, and farm your daily two tiers. You’ll then be able to farm while being semi AFK as credit for reward track points is based on being in a match for at least 7 minutes and scoring at least one point.

I don’t ever really play customs, but I was under the impression they turned off progression in customs a while back. If this is allowed it’s pretty broken and should be fixed.

Mamatereza.1709:

PopeUrban.2578:

We already have fishing. Get weapons, jump in water, kill giant fish, receive loot.

What we’ve done away with is the boring poles, lures, waiting, and small fish.

Once again…
I m talking about fishing and you are talking about underwater combat…Plus as i mentioned already, it can be implemented as a very fun, challenging and rewarding activity, where you can spend your time by unlocking achievements & records, participate in contests and tournaments, unlock underwater gear/weapon/fishing pole skins, obtain aquatic miniatures etc.
Btw where is the problem? Its not about mats, gear, progression or anything like that. Its only about fun. If someone doesn’t like fishing just skip it. Let those who likes it have fun.

Was half joking, but really, fishing would be as central to the experience as any other side activity if it were to have any depth. If it were used as a resource collection mechanic, it would end up iplemented in the quick and dirty “click here with tool” approach to achieve parity with other resource gathering.

It’s not a slight against fishing as much as it is a fact about what sort of game GW2 is. It’s not a variant activity sandbox. It’s a game about beating stuff up, and all content revolves around beating stuff up and occasionally talking to NPCs in one way or another.

If we were talking about a game with existing deep resource collection mechanics (surveying for minerals, planting crops, etc.) then I could see fishing working how people seem to like it, but I can’t see it as an actual minigame unless confined to the space of an actual minigame, like keg toss and the like. It would make acquiring fish unreasonably difficult compared to other materials.

Can I just have an endlessly looping deathblossom animation for the thief?

Thiefcoptering. That’s the ticket!

I imagine specs would have their “core mechanic” trait line replaced with one related to the spec (e.g. trickery for thief, arcane for ele, etc.) and all trait effects in other lines related to a lost mechanic will be updated to be more universal (e.g. if thief loses steal, mug is updated to add its effects to the replacement mechanic as well)

I’d also assume that for each utility granted, a non-synergetic utility, or a utility that would cause massive balance problems is removed.

I’d also assume that one or more weapons are lost in the process, if those weapons would be problematic for balance. (E.G. if rifle is a balance problem with the new engi spec, they’d lose rifle when speccing that way in return for hammer, and pistol/shield would remain the same.)

This is the closest to how secondary classes worked in GW1, and specializations are essentially the GW2 replacement for the secondary class mechanic. What is lost cuts off some option while replacing them with an equal number of new options, though certain builds could be played in either spec, differing only by some low level passive mechanics (stat points in GW1, traits in GW2)

I think a quest it best. Nothing too fancy, but maybe a matter of “find trainer, complete a rite of passage style instance”

The instanced approach would serve as a basic tutorial to whatever mechanical changes come with the spec and perhaps provide the player with a blue or rare weapon that is granted by the spec to get them started.

Keep in mind, for those concerned about solo play, that the overall value of the bar, and possibly the recharge (is the recharge a flat value or percentage of the total buffer?) should mirror the existing defiance mechanics.

Thus, if you’re soloing a champion, your burst CC should theoretically be sufficient since there’s less bar to run through, but the regenerating behavior doesn’t require/allow pre-stunning to interrupt with a single skill.

In this light, lesser CCs like blind spamming might be a lot more useful when soloing these kinds of encounters just to keep the bar down to a level where you can finish it off.

I usually mystic forge them. Given the extremely high number acquired from salvaging, it’s probably one of the best regular uses of the mystic forge’s RNG.

What we started doing is just putting them on a bank page and every once in a while people would run stuff through the forge. Whoever is inclined to do all the forging is generally entitled to keep the results, and leftover 3-sets go back in the bank to help others MF their runes/sigils.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Would be nice if the bioluminescent set were available through PVP tracks. That would be another cool way to get the set.

It would be consistant with how anet treats PvP reward tracks for sure.

I’m not a huge fan of the PvP reward track system in general, but I do believe it is consistant with anet’s hard split between pvp/pve and their design goal of allowing pvp enthusiasts to never touch pve if they don’t want to.

This is wholly different from currency farming in PvE as PvP is inherantly challenging simply due to the intelligence of the foes encountered (players) which makes it virtually impossible to effortlessly farm with no real risk or challenge.

Daunt.8239:

PopeUrban.2578
I greatly appreciate the time and care you spent on your post, and /(9) was in fact added. However on a personal level I feel as though it balances to delicately from being greatly underpowered to greatly overpowered.

AM traits can be fairly strong. Additionally LR was meant to be a fairly powerful drop of a dime savior that could cover a large range of circumstances as well as be easily turned around into a sudden offensive burst when everything else was exhausted on your last thread of life. However… it was with the nature of the beast that it’s unpredicted… immense… failure came to light. As such the replacement needs to be up to par with what it was meant to be and what all other AM traits are.

To give an example of my initial statement, to delicately to strong or to weak. Some cross roads with your idea which many others have had, are things such as double stealth attacks. Which when we work around that it is either:

1. The duration is either appalling to short and hardly an impact on the fight and much more situational rather than being just as good in a wide variety of builds and circumstances.(which is how you had it)
2. Leaving us unable to do stealth attacks at all.

It’s as if no matter which road we end up taking it’s going to be either much to weak or much to strong based on the unavoidable nature of the beast alone. For that, I personally dislike /(9) and nothing will sway me from this simply because this is how it is. However I’m not here to silence people. I also don’t wish for arguements. So /(9) was in fact added… I’m simply saying I protest.

I appreciate that, but to be frank if getting your face beat in down to a 25% hp threshold on a thief means the ability to double stealth attack, that doesn’t seem too absurd to me, as it is an outcome that isn’t really within the thief’s control, given the short duration of the native stealth in the proposal. You’d have to make a huge gamble to pull it off, attacking from stealth with low enough HP to hit the threshold>purposely take damage to the threshold while hoping the target’s burst doesn’t finish you right then and there> have favorable combat position to deliver a second stalth attack within a .6 second window> continue to not die.

You could prolong that planned attack chain with a stealth skill, sure, but in order to get real value for a double-stealth attack as such you’d have to effectively pull it off within what is a normal revealed timeframe anyway (2 stealth attacks in 4 seconds) which doesn’t leave you a lot of room to abuse it without taking serious risks. In addition, you’d be affected by revealed after you blew your second skill, and presumably were still under 25% HP anyway, effectively putting you in the same combat disadvantage as the trait already does at random intervals now.

The exception to this rule is HiS, which would both heal and re-stealth the user, but in terms of PvP HiS is one of the easiest heals to interrupt, and is generally a bad play when in range for any of the melee stealth attacks (the only ones where double application is particularly worth the risk)

This would place you in a slightly stronger position, but incur even greater risk by wasting follow-up time to heal within melee range, and giving your target in creased time and opportunity to react and counter your burst.

We already have fishing. Get weapons, jump in water, kill giant fish, receive loot.

What we’ve done away with is the boring poles, lures, waiting, and small fish.