Guild Wars 2

Plus that only works if there’s only one of them, and it does nothing besides force them to hit f a second time, literally.

I think this change, not unlike the recent elementalist change, would easily improve the Engineer down state tremendously.

It would give us the defensive option right away same as other professions, and the current #2 would later come off recharge so you could pull them to you and use your explosion offensively if they don’t try hard enough to finish you quickly.

I think this would be fitting in every way, from ease of implementation & balancing to lore etc. Thoughts?

You get to drink a potion and turn into Mr. Hyde withg a flamethrower.

I hold a Doctorate in MMO balance, a Master’s in sneaky classes, and I played the original punch card computer mmo and I say thieves need a couple tweaks.

Your move.

True Xyrm, but you said nothing about what he’s streaming. So while there’s no reason to assume he IS pro regardless of the title, there’s no reason to assume he’s not either.

Sarelm.8317:

Scepter does an okay job. Better than that is to take a sword/GS and go with “Condition on crit” traits/sigils though. Those’ll usually get a lot of bleeds down quite quickly.

I’m confused, wouldn’t the scepter crit just as often as sword/gs to apply the conditions? It wouldn’t have as high direct damage, but you don’t have the power for that anyway and scepter provides the confusing images skill. iirc sword & gs have no skills that directly cause damaging conditions.

I remember starting my mesmer, it was early on and I was all about clones clones clones. I have since discovered you can choose from a pretty good range of niches (though you can’t be all at once ofc). I personally have settled down with condition/confusion & loads of clones, with very low vit but lots of healing power and toughness.

There’s a certain feeling I get from watching enemy players attacking my clones while I stand still and wear them down. Those moments are scattered between teleporting dodging stealhing and all the tricks of course, but they do exist (when I use the +50% clone hp signet). It’s just something I haven’t experienced before online, being able to actually trick the other players.

… well, after he was done being a doosh bag, i heard him mention in his pretentious manner that he’s going straight for lord..

I honestly thought you meant like ‘going straight for the lord’ kind of homosexuality/religion thing or something at first.

If you ever buy me flowers…..

PvE or PvP, it doesn’t matter. I don’t even run a condition build. Death Blossom ties together my defense. It allows me to alternate between using initiative, endurance, and cooldowns for staying out of harms way. Several times throughout my thief I’ve wanted to like other setups, but I always come back to d/d (with shortbow swap).

Does anyone feel the same? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thief is the only class that has no weapon or utility skills related to his profession (stealing)

I think you’re splitting hairs here.

Guardians have no weapon or utility skills called guarding. They have skills that a guard would use. Pretty sure a thief has use for the deception, disappearing, blinding, subtle small weapons, acrobatics, smoke screens and blasts, trickery, precision in movements goes with slight of hand, and general sneakiness. Besides, if all that doesn’t count as flavor because it’s not specifically thieving or stealing from someone, then I think the profession skill STEAL, utility or weapon skill or not, should kind of cover it.

That’s my spew on the hairs splitting.

There is no thief class, you’re thinking of the misnamed ‘assassin’ class

Name a single weapon skill or utility that involves ‘stealing’

The thief profession skill: Steal doesn’t count? (since it’s not a weapon or utility as you specified)

I’m pretty confused by the precision love here. Have I misunderstood it? Can conditions crit? I have a couple traits that trigger on criticals but they aren’t nearly that vital.

I didn’t think precision mattered that much either way tbh, especially since I have ~1200 from my duelist traiting alone. I personally go for condition damage – toughness – healing power. I recently realized how unbelievably better ether feast is when you’re loaded with toughness, healing power, and no vitality. I heal over half my health with a 20s cooldown and it takes a lot to bring me down that far in the first place (not to mention the time I buy pumping out clones and teleporting). This is with a pvp perspective btw.

Blackout.3247:

My fault here, i had no idea how many they could have out (Thought it was just unlimited), it seems much more for me because i will always quickly take down one of the purple ones if i’m near it, meaning the Mesmer just throws out some more.

A mesmer’s supply of clones is very dependent on their weapon and utilities. Personally I love the trait that produces a clone every time I dodge in combat. I run with bountiful ways to produce clones and confuse enemies (literally and the condition).

Blackout.3247:

Wut? If you think the purple illusions don’t do much damage, you’re playing a different game.

It’s very true some builds have terrific phantasm damage, but not all. For me phantasms are more of a side show and little damage (since you can’t know whether I’m traited for phantasm damage, people will often attack them, which makes them just as useful as a clone for that).

Blackout.3247:

Offhand? Practically every Mesmer i see is a greatsword one – thats not going to help.

Ah, well good news then. The clones a greatsword skill produces will spawn right next to you, and the mesmer with a GS gets much more damage by being far away. So ANY greatsword mesmer standing right next to you is a fake, scan the horizon for the one far away shooting a beam at you. I’m not certain how it works with utility skill clones from a GS user though, those might be near the mesmer but they’re far less frequent.

As for Moa, I actually haven’t used it in pvp yet on my mesmer, but I have been moa’d before. I don’t see many players honing their focus on mesmers so hard they can see a moa coming and be certain they can avoid it. If your enemy runs with moa it’ll probably happen to you eventually, even if you are great at dodging it. I figure it’s more important what you do once you’re moa’d, since there’s lots of other things to avoid before he uses that.

Personally, I run behind stuff, buy time however, and that usually keeps me safe from new attacks for the duration. If you’re unlucky enough to run into a condition mesmer who isn’t heavy on confusion, AND you’re trying to defend a point solo, god help you. But that’s pretty niche.

Personally I pick up Duelist through creating a clone when you dodge, chaos up to staff 20% cd, and always 5 into illusions to take 20% off all clone creating skills.

Basically I like to be able to raise my clones and disappear among them ASAP when defending and play the pretend-I’m-a-clone game. If the enemy is that kitten knowledgable about mesmers and focusing hard, decoy will still get me back on track. If they’re just lucky in picking which one of us to attack, I can just shatter and restart easily.

I run this with ~1800 toughness and vitality. Sure sometimes I somehow just get creamed by a couple attackers, but other times I’ve defended from 2 attackers without backup just by successfully fooling them and watching them attack my clones while my staff whittles them down.

ps I recommend the signet for +50% clone health if you try to play the hide in clones game.

Wait so you as an elementalist were attacking a door in open WvW, seemed to be hit and lagged solid for 3 seconds, then suddenly you were at 10% health and a phantasm was nearby, therefore you were nearly 1 shot by an iB?

The recharge on my warlock increased from 18s to 20s (11%), and there was a net change in my chaos causing skills of 0. Time to demand the firstborn sons of everyone at Anet.

LaronX, I can understand that, it’s just in my experience it can also achieve much more than other downed options.

About the engineer move, makes sense and I think I’ve pulled that off once or twice, but I almost never see #3 come off cooldown between being downed and getting stomped, and there’s absolutely no way to buy time as the engi.

I’m rather surprised by the dislike for #2 in this thread. From the perspective of being downed as a mesmer and being one of my other characters trying to stomp, it’s one of the more useful downed abilities.

Yeah, if you get downed solo in a 2v1 and they’re skilled enemies and backup doesn’t show, you’re doomed. But in that situation the enemy is not NEARLY as confused as you can make them.

I, knowing exactly the #2 skill, in a group setting don’t even go for the stomp on a mesmer right away, I let some other guy do it and keep my eyes open for one to pop up, but due to the random nature of it I don’t always spot him immediately. Then I’ll get targetted by his teammates (once again, group setting) if I go for the stomp, but if I don’t IMMEDIATELY go for it, #2 will come off cooldown before I can finish and then I feel like an idiot.

Sure you can accidently go into an AoE, but it’s very fitting for the class and much better than some other downed class skills. Elementalist single target roots, which is occasionally useful.

My Engineer is extraordinary in versatility and power, the downed state for him I HATE, it pulls the enemy on top of me…. kitten how is that buying me time exactly?

One of the toughest things for many to learn is admitting to yourself, and you went ahead and admitted to everyone! Well done.

In the future if the thief does become overpowered, you’ll know the difference between random encounters and something being ridiculous hopefully.