Guild Wars 2

Have you notice that using Life Transfer against 1 target or multiple targets never raises your Life Force? At best it will stay the same. I figured I’d report this as a bug because a skill called Life Transfer not transferring life must be a bug.

This skill should be restoring our life force by some amount. It has a 40s cooldown.

I needed 2 gold so I bought 800 gems. lol

1 of the big problems with Necros are the cast times. They are stupidly out of place. It takes like 3 seconds to cast Spinal Shivers (rofl? This should be AOE if it takes that long to cast) and staff #1 skill is almost out-runnable. Lich form attacks take a long time to cast. Dark Path takes a long time to cast.

It goes on.

What my Power Necro looks like. (Eventually :P)

It isn’t ridiculous. It should be classed as a signet or a spectral skill simply as that. Every other healing skill is like that.

Can you stop attempting to sound smart? If you actually have a real answer for me then show me. Although the wording is correct it’s one of those cases in the English language where it’s also not correct.

“Refill Endurance and cure a condition for each nearby ally.”
-I activate the signet and cure conditions for my nearby allies.

You can also interpret it as refilling your allies endurance. The way your are putting it wouldn’t even be correct if it was written that way.

The wording should be: “Refill your endurance and cure a condition on yourself for each nearby ally.” (If that’s how it works)

So it does what I originally thought? Removes only 1 of yours but also removes 1 from nearby allies?

I’d just like to say that anyone saying Barbed precision is weak is a moron. Necro has a lot of AOE no matter what build you have. And a condition build always has increased precision so it’s very powerful to do an extra ~100 damage for almost every hit you make. Life Transfer is ridiculously powerful with this trait because almost every hit will bleed nearby enemies effectively doing ~1000 damage. Precision is actually good for condition builds and I find it funny that people don’t understand that. Precision means your attacks do more damage and your conditions do more damage because that’s the way Necro was made.

Can anyone confirm this? I played the Thief for a month and never even thought about how it worked. I always assumed that the Signet removed 1 of your conditions and 1 condition on nearby allies. But then I saw a post saying that it removes 1 of your condition plus MORE conditions for each nearby ally you have. I never even thought about this so is it true? o.0

Yeah life force drains way too fast even in 1v1. And then when it’s drained you WILL lose because of how difficult it is to regenerate it. A Necro with no death shroud means a loss.

DS should start at 100%.

Drain while not in combat. Regenerate while in combat.

Does this bother anyone else? It seems rather pointless to try getting good looking armor when the place you use it just forces it into either full blue or full red of ugliness.

The entire game is based around your characters appearance so why can’t they change it so we keep the colours we choose? Can we not just have a red or blue circle underneath our characters like when we target someone? Or a toggle option? Or just have our enemies appear their team colour and our allies appear with their chosen colour?

I kind of hate SPvP because of this. In WvW we can look however we want… so… why not in SPvP? I know who the enemy is just fine in WvW.

You need to show videos when you make threads like these. Let it be known.

What I get from your post is that you would like runes of Svanir and vampiric runes if they actually procced under 20% life force while in Death Shroud.

Them proccing on your 1st hit in Death Shroud must be a bug, yes. But removing all of these effects from Death Shroud would be a mistake. Barely anyone uses effects under xx% health as it is because they suck in comparison to others. Death Shroud is currently the only exception. With Sanctuary Runes and Foot in the Grave trait your entire Death Shroud might as well be considered Stability Shroud.

These effects are really useful if they weren’t bugged and if they are used properly in Death Shroud.

Except that good players actually know how to use Death Shroud properly.

If you get bursted down so fast that your Death Shroud falls below 25% (It should never fall below 25%) then you most likely need the effect anyway. Getting Locust Swarm when it falls below 25% means that since you will most likely have no Life Force left, you can escape because of the Swiftness and Cripple.

You would prefer to get this when your actual health bar is below 25%? You are dead anyway. Would you prefer to get Stability below 20% health? That is just useless. In Death Shroud you need it so you don’t waste your life force.

Do you like getting Might below 25% actual health from Siphoned Power? LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Might below 25% in your actual health bar? How useless. You get hit one time below 25% health and you are dead. Boy that 1 Might was sure useful huh. What are you going to do with that Might? Let it run out? Getting might when your life force falls below 25% while in Death Shroud is actually useful. You can actually USE the Might.

So if Jon wants people to use Death Shroud properly then they had better not nerf it. Because removing these abilities from life force would be a huge nerf to the Necromancer. Some should be removed like turning into a block of ice because it’s useless. But for the rest, if you don’t like them activating in Death Shroud then use a different rune/trait.

There are WAY more options than there are for under % health effects. So use a different one. And I mean hey, if you are using the rune where you turn into a block of ice or stability for your actual health bar? Then GTFO Necromancer because you are doing something seriously wrong.

Why are effects that trigger under 20% HP (Or 50%, 25% etc.) listed in the bug notes?

Yes, some of these are bad like turning into a block of ice while in Death Shroud, but I use Runes of Sanctuary. I like getting my Stability in Death Shroud when it goes below 20% life force. I like getting my Locust Swarm when my Death Shroud goes under 25% life force. I like getting Might when my Death Shroud goes under 25% life force.

If useful effects like the above ever change I may very well switch classes because, if anything, there needs to be MORE effects like the above.

Most survivable is Sword/Dagger with 30 in Shadow Arts and Acrobatics and spec into Stealth and Healing. You probably won’t kill anyone 1v1 though. Not quickly anyway.

Only build I’ve ever liked with S/D is 30 in Shadow Arts and Acrobatics because that suits it the best. You can survive forever even in AOE but it’s weak. IMO Flanking Strike needs to be AOE or remove a Boon on EACH strike or something. It just isn’t very good.

Classes have tons of Boons and it should be viable to have a boon removal build.

The only thing they will change (because their history suggests it) is damage, durations and little tweaks for various things. There will be nothing major, unfortunately.

I’d like to see lower initiative costs for some skills like Death Blossom and have things nerfed that make it overpowered if traited correctly. Like traits that combo’d together give almost never ending initiative for ultimate unicorn-noob spam of skills that shouldn’t be spammed. Roll for Initiative is a big culprit in spammable Death Blossom. I’d like to see Roll for Initiative actually be… a ROLL where it’s a random chance for initiative restored. Minimum being 1 and maximum being all. Like dice. In exchange, make Roll for Initiative also restore 50% Endurance. Fair.

The nerf needed was Quickness. However… Pistol Whip with with Immobilize was still pretty overpowered.

Infiltrator’s Strike was an Immobilize and any condition removal you try to use would be interrupted by the following Stun from PistolWhip. So any stun breakers you used to get out of the original burst they started with would be on cooldown.

My weakness is OP classes like Guardians who have 100K total HP by the time a fight is done.

Sort of. But it’s not really a passive ability like Hard to Catch trait is. You have to cast that one. But it’s on a way shorter cooldown so ya I guess.

The thing that’s ironic about backstab builds like that is that the Thief is actually the only class who DOES have a counter to that. (But it takes 30 points in acrobatics for hard to catch)

Guardians Aegis won’t do it because of the double stun from Steal & Cloak and Dagger.

3rd party programs lol!

Enemy running away? Is he an annoying kitten elementalist who just got half way across the map? No problem. Infiltrators Signet → Steal → Cloak & Dagger and Backstab. 1800 range covered and noob pwned.

Yep these builds are all annoying mainly because they come along during a fight and woop your kitten and you don’t have a chance. Fun. And every class has an annoying glass cannon build I think.

Aga.8641:

Absolutely 100% NO. It is an 8vs8 map, why on earth would you want the points so close together, it would be catastrophic if they did.

The best change they could make is making the ruins point an island, as in above water, but you still need to swim there.

The ship is almost in the exact same spot as the ruins. If the point was on top of the ship, it would be the same distance. And NO one likes underwater combat compared to real combat. The simply shouldn’t be a point under water.

And the entire ship is a giant waste of pixels because it’s currently used for nothing.

It just makes sense.

Suggestion
• Move the node from the Ruins and place it on the ship instead.
• Move Liquid Courage (Invulnerability potions) from the ship to the ruins.
• Get rid of shark control. Make sharks aggressive towards everyone. Buff them a bit.

The ship contains the cannonballs to man the cannon so this would essentially cause a struggle over cannon control. There is normally almost no struggle over cannon control because players are either at the Dock, the Beach or the Ruins (under water = cannon useless). The ship and the cannon are very uncontested areas as it stands because there is little reason to go there. A player manning the cannon just means that team has 1 less player for contesting points and is completely useless for the node in the Ruins because it’s underwater. Cannonballs can also be avoided and you only have 5 shots per load which is a lot of downtime.

If the node is on the ship instead of the ruins and the sharks are aggressive towards everyone, that makes it more difficult/strategic for players crossing the water to the Dock or the Beach because they can be attacked by sharks. This also adds even more strategy to the map because Liquid Courage (Invulnerability potions) will be in the Ruins so there is significant risk vs reward in that.

This also makes the ship more strategic because you can fall off of it many different ways and it would become strategy to knock players off and let the sharks deal with them. (Walk the plank!) (Some tweaks to sharks spawn areas would need to be adjusted to make water more dangerous) This helps make the cannon a useful tool because it can be used to attack all 3 nodes on the map.

Summary
• There will no longer be a node in the ruins to capture.
• There will now be a node on the ship to capture.
• Liquid Courage (Invulnerability potions) will now be located in the Ruins.
• Sharks are aggressive towards everyone and have had their damage boosted.
• The cannon is more useful in that it can now attack all 3 nodes on the map and the cannon itself is capable of knocking players into the water.
*• Water will no longer be a “Safe Zone” for players to retreat when they are losing! *

LOL! "They gave Necromancer a 2nd life bar so he can die twice.

TR0L0L

Not everyone seems to be aware of it. I’m pretty sick of SPvP because of it. This is just one example but not the best of it being abused.

The worst case scenarios (which are the most common) is a Thief stealthing, backstabbing, and then continuing to attack while stealthed with his daggers. They usually stay in stealth for another 2-3 seconds and in those seconds they can easily continue to attack and shadowstep right up to wherever you try to get away to. There is nothing you can really do because they are still invisible so you have no way of countering. Even if you Shadowstep away and do a dodge roll they can still be right on your kitten

This needs fixed.

Shintai.5618:

Ruufio.1496:

Sounds like you meant Infiiltrators signet. It is probably the most under-estimated utility we have. Knocked off of a height? Just use it to get right back up again. It also penetrates floors and walls so you can recover and get right back in. And againt a Warrior who stuns you because he uses quickness for 100 blades you can use the stunbreaker and attack him while he takes 50% more dmg from his quickness.

Many uses for it. Also, the Shadowstep utility is the best utility the Thief has.

Nor the signet infiltrator, steal or shadowsteps can pass walls or floors.

Oh I guess I am just imagining things when I run down the ramps in clock tower to recover below and then use Infiltrators Signet to instantly get back up to my target.

Sounds like you meant Infiiltrators signet. It is probably the most under-estimated utility we have. Knocked off of a height? Just use it to get right back up again. It also penetrates floors and walls so you can recover and get right back in. And againt a Warrior who stuns you because he uses quickness for 100 blades you can use the stunbreaker and attack him while he takes 50% more dmg from his quickness.

Many uses for it. Also, the Shadowstep utility is the best utility the Thief has.

I’m no PvE expert (or PvP lol) but I do know that Thief loses way too much damage when going for Toughness. IMO your best bet is to go for Vitality and have regeneration aspects instead of Toughness such as Signet of Malice, Assassins Reward and Sigil of Blood. Chances are you will end up with around +100 Toughness which is good enough with health regeneration.

Anyway, whatever you do I’d say regeneration is better than Toughness for Thief.

IMO I think Thieves are actually underpowered compared to other other professions when the players have the same skill level. But as far as stuns, knockdowns etc. go, if your stunbreaker is on cooldown and another class comes along then it’s GG for you.

Simple as that.

Steal can already be used regardless of your current state so it should break Stun as well. Although Steal is better than it used to be, it is still a little bit lacking. Making it a stun-breaker will help improve our mechanic to be up to par to others.

Steal can only be used every 45 seconds (depending on traits) so it’s not like this would make us overpowered. There is a lot of CC in this game and very few stun-breakers.

Plus you can’t use Steal to break Stun if you have a stolen item in your slot. So there is a risk VS reward in that.

Sundering Strikes – 40% chance to cause vulnerability for 5 seconds on a critical hit (1 second cooldown).

Are you kittening kidding me? You’ll have on average 2 Vulnerability up from this which is a 2% damage increase. Mug does 1500+ damage. Do you know how much you have to attack to deal 1500+ damage with a 2% damage increase from that Vulnerability? And it lasts 5 seconds and has a 1 second cooldown? lol.

Even if you had 10 people do 2% extra damage from the Vulnerability and their average damage was somehow 2000 and they all attacked 5 times within 5 seconds somehow, that would only be 2000 extra damage. And these were all impossible numbers I pulled out of my kitten randomly because I knew no matter how ridiculous those numbers I thought of they would be weaker than Mug.

FIX IT

Mug is the only worthwhile trait in the Adept skill tree of Deadly Arts. It does damage. A lot of it. The other adept traits do damage. Barely any of it.

Why does Sundering Strikes even HAVE a cooldown? It lasts for 5 frigging seconds. Mug shouldn’t be the only good trait there. Sundering Strikes would be perfect trait for sustained critical builds if it wasn’t garbage.

Either make the vulnerability last longer or remove the cooldown. Or make Vulnerability not suck.
Thanks.

In the case of D/D that skill is at least not as kittenome make it out to be. Taking Rampagers Amulet raises condition damage and Critical chance a lot but has less Critical damage than Berserkers. But it’s actually a decent trade-off because with higher critical chance you still do increased damage anyway but you get the condition damage to boot. That’s what I use anyway.

Idiot alert. The tree is one of the most powerful things you can steal.

With Cluster Bomb’s blast finisher you can literally jump in the middle of a zerg and spam your attack while healing like kitten. (Depending on build anyway. I use Signet of Malice and Assassin’s Reward Trait)

The tree actually helps you as a Thief to bunker a point, as a thief… which is kinda unusual.

If you don’t like the tree and you don’t find it useful, then don’t steal from Rangers? Steal from a different class which you prefer. You don’t even need to fight that class. Just steal from them and run away so you have the item you want for later.

33% boost durations need to be upped to 35% because you will never get an exact number like 45% duration or 50% duration. You will only get 48% duration or 43% duration.

For some conditions, like Bleed, this is a wasted trait because damage doesn’t tick unless it’s a full second. The same is for Poison. Although it may last longer it won’t do another tick.

Just make them 35% duration boosts. That is all.

Okay thanks for the tips. Guardians and Eles are 2 classes I haven’t looked at whatsoever. (But I have no problems against eles anyway lol)

I am a Thief and I had a really good fight with a Guardian earlier in which I was able to survive for about 4 minutes (yes it was a long fight lol) but he never dropped below 50% once. I have 65% crit chance, 38% crit damage and 836 condition damage and run D/D with some healing aspects to it.

It was a pretty fun fight but what makes them so hard to kill? Is it boons? Would it help me as a Thief to take a sigil that has a 60% chance to remove 1 boon? I also use Divinity Runes but if anything else would work well against Guardians I’d be willing to change it up a bit.

Signet of Malice & Cluster Bomb = many HPs. I use it with Sigil of Superior Fire for even more Health gain & damage.

Elred is right. I’m sick of forumers saying that Pistol Whip spam and Backstab gank is fine and only bad players die from it. Almost every single match in spvp when there is a fight going on I’ll be killing someone… oh what’s that? I’m dead instantly for no reason? Must have been a pistol whip or backstab thief.

Yep it was.
And the Thief can unbreakable stun with Baslisk. So no, it isn’t fine.

But honestly, the only thing that really needs the nerf is: QUICKNESS That is the most overpowered thing in the game and IMO should just get completely removed.

I have this too

You people do realize that you can make Smoke Bomb blind your opponents by taking 10 points into Shadow Arts right? I always take blind upon stealth because I always have off-hand dagger.

It is pretty hilarious to be able to dodge 2 finishers in a row… and then some. But I haven’t really tried it in pve.

Only reason I play Thief is because it doesn’t use cooldowns. Cooldowns are an uglykitten flaw that ruins every MMO. Cooldowns should have been eliminated a LONG time ago. I can’t stand them. It’s so… pre-defined for what you’re going to do. “I just used this skill so in 20 seconds I can use this skill.”

It’s stupid and I wish Anet would have made every class like the Thief. (However a “Stamina” bar makes more sense) “It should be, I just used this skill but now I can’t use this skill because my stamina is too low, so I’ll use this skill instead.” That’s more realistic.

Anyway… yeah. The game kind of seems like a beta still but it’s understandable.

Don’t buy into speccing full condition damage. The only build that is useful for is P/D. If you spec condition for D/D because of Death Blossom then all that does is make 1 of your skills strong(ish) but the other 4 weak. 500 is good enough.

Mange.8324:

are you kidding me? only one hit? only one time stealth?
you are one of those guys who only know to spam hearseaker aren’t you?
its the best thing for backstap build and dont need any change

- werewolf

Are you kidding me? Why would you make such a ignorant reply and it’s almost like you didn’t read past the first sentence. Yes, news flash when you hit with a physical attack it breaks stealth and you are revealed for 3 seconds. ONE hit from stealth before you use it again, you don’t get to unleash a fury of attacks with your 100% crit chance and fact is if you’re specced crit you’re most likely at a 50% chance to crit already.
If you are getting this feat rather than the 20% damage boost then you are doing it wrong.

I’m one of those thieves that actually knows how to play the game, im sure you are busy pistol whipping since the heartseeker nerf so you need to cut it out.

Mange is right, sorry werewolf. Hidden Killer sucks because you will be at 50% Critical chance by the time you have 30 points into Critical Strikes. It is a waste of a trait to choose Hidden Killer over Executioner when your Backstab already has 50/50 chance to critical. If it does critical, then your opponent probably be below 50% health which is where Executioner kicks in for your 20% damage boost.

Hidden Killer needs to grant Frenzy as well IMO.

It IS fundamentally flawed. No traits or skills should affect initiative gain unless it’s on a completely even play field. It is flawed and won’t be changed unfortunately.

You just said that Pistol/Pistol suggestions are bad and said there’s plenty reason to use it in WvW, but then went on to say how much Pistol/Pistol sucks…

But anyway, as long as it’s known that Pistol/Pistol sucks then whatever. I don’t care if they use those exact suggestions but Pistol/Pistol does suck unfortunately. I love the aesthetics of it at least.

I actually don’t mind Black Powder though. The issue I do have with Unload is that projectiles are only a 20% chance for combo finisher. There’s no good reason for it not to be 100% chance. This would alone would make Unload not suck because for 12 (ALL [Black Powder & Unload)) of your initiative you get to apply Blind 8 separate times. I don’t see how that’s overpowered to completely use all of your initiative for something like that. Unload should be 100% chance for projectiles.

Now let’s look at current skills and how to fix them for each weapon set:
Cloak & Dagger and why it’s bad
Cast time, high cost, self-condition Revealed, Vulnerability insists offensive playstyle.
Problems: The inflicted Vulnerability and gained in-Stealth skill insists on this being an offensive tool, but the traits for being in stealth insist on it being a defensive tool. And for a skill that takes half of your initiative with a cast time that can miss, this should work defensively and offensively.
Fixing it: Remove the Vulnerability. Make Cloak & Dagger steal 1 Boon from the opponent instead. This then makes Cloak & Dagger a strategic skill which can be used offensively or defensively depending on the situation. Cloak & Dagger isn’t spammable and it’s a unique skill, so let’s fix it.

Flanking Strike and why it’s bad
Slow, misses, weak compared to other dual skills, bad effect for it being your main attack.
Problems: This skill downright sucks. But to fix it, all it needs is better path-finding (or an entirely new animation) and a better effect. This is your main attack. Removing 1 boon from the opponent is useless when other dual skills do way better.
Fixing it: Fix the animation or path-finding. Get rid of the 1 boon removal that was tacked on. Instead, grant 2s of Quickness if you successfully Evade. Make each hit Siphon Health from the opponent and grant it to yourself. The Sword/Dagger is a survival set so let’s fix it.

Shadow Shot and why it’s bad
Weak compared to other dual skills, blind usually blinds weak attacks, strike roots you
Problems: The problems are very easy to fix. Nothing needs to be changed, only added.
Fixing it: Keep the Blind. Slow down the dagger strike so it won’t be overpowered. Make it cost 5 initiative instead of 4. Stun the opponent for 1s if you hit them with the dagger strike. The Dagger/Pistol was once famed as the best 1v1 set so let’s bring it back to life again.

Unload and why it’s bad
Channelled, high cost, reflection decimates you, Pistol/Pistol is weak for 1v1.
Problems: Unload hits 8 different times but all it does is damage. This skill is not unique. Pistol/Pistol should be made into a viable set to be used instead of the Shortbow if one chooses.
Fixing it: Make each hit of Unload have a 25% chance to bounce to additional targets. Improve the Ricochet Trait by making it add an additional 25% bounce chance to all pistol main-hand skills (Sneak Attack, Vital Shot, Body Shot, Unload) which would make Unload be a total of 50% bounce chance and the other skills (Sneak Attack, Vital Shot, Body Shot, Unload) a 25% bounce chance.

Body Shot and why it’s bad
Pistols #1 skill applies Bleeding. Needs synergy for pistol skills, needs to be more useful.
Problems: All it does is apply Vulnerability which is more of a support condition than anything. Pistols, however, are not really a support weapon and reflection owns you. Body shot needs to do more.
Fixing it: Keep the Vulnerability. Make it cost 4 initiative. Make it remove 1 Boon from the opponent. (Opponents if it bounces) Improving Body Short will improve the entire Pistol-Pistol set immensely.

Shadow Strike and why it’s bad
Weak, all skills with this set are weak.
Problems: This set is weak
Fixing it: Make it cost 4 initiative. Make it transfer 1 of your conditions to your opponent. This gives fantastic synergy with the new Cloak & Dagger and Body Shot. Now you will have a strategic choice as well as a much needed condition removal.

There isn’t actually that much wrong with the Thief, but this will solve a lot of it.