Guild Wars 2

Post 6/23 patch, on the surface, and having not played the client build that is going to be deployed I see only one specialization setup being meta and only two trait variations off that setup.

Those are:
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgcBqAXYA_g~
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgcBqAXYA-w~

The patch notes by the way:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/June-23-Specialization-Changes

This opinion is derived not because these two trait setups are too strong (Deadly Arts could result in some variation once live, because it has potential), it’s derived because these are the only two setups that have the potential to compete with the power creep introduced into other professions.

Critical Strikes and Acrobatics are severely lacking in terms of utility and/or potency compared to specializations across all the professions.

I won’t suggest adding more power creep to these specializations, but I will say that it will take heavy nerfs to Deadly Arts, Shadow Arts, or Trickery to push people away from those lines (again, just my opinion).

One other thing I’m expecting to happen, is that when nerfs to come out across the board to all professions, assuming nerfs happen simultaneously, because of the disparity in the quantity of quality specializations and traits across all professions (basically I’m trying to point out that thief has less meta level stuff than everything else, again my opinion), once shadow arts, trickery, and deadly arts receive nerfs it’ll probably be tough times for thieves. This is due to the potential that exists within more than 3 specializations of other professions.

Strictly due to quantities of quality avaiable to other professions, it’s likely they’ll have a much easier time enduring nerfs as they swap between the large number of options available. There may even be a time where thief is out performed in the mobile roamer role given the unknowns remaining with the expansion, and since mobile roamer is the only role thief can play in PvP, if it is ever noticeably outclassed in that role it effectively has no role in PvP.

I’m not saying these things will happen, I’m just saying they seem likely to happen given my past experiences and observations with the game. The goal here is simply to raise awareness for caution in the future.

Watched a VOD of some Stronghold, and noticed that when there are base races going on it’s very hard to get an idea of who’s actually winning the race since stomps can happen at any point in time.

Not sure what to do about this other than suggest adding a split screen option for spectate mode.

Also there’s no good static camera position outside the second gate.

Melanion.4892:

Josh Davis.6015:

I don’t think this is intended, but I’ll need to follow-up with the skills team in the morning to be sure. Either way, I started an email chain about this. Thanks for the reports.

I dont understand how you can’t know for certain whether this is a bug… Either it’s a nerf or it’s a bug. Either way I won’t be playing my mesmer until it’s fixed. It’s not even stealth ending resulting in a reveal. That would be one thing, but you can’t even stack stealth or properly use refuge.

It’s still absolutely ridiculous that a dev response is “I don’t know if this MAJOR bug is a bug or a nerf” with something this major.

Nah it makes perfect sense that Josh wouldn’t know if it’s intentional. He’s not part of the balance team for one, and the company is reworking a lot of things in the game so there’s uncertainty until things are finalized. Josh simply doesn’t know if the potential stealth changes have been finalized or not.

Based on the behavior of stealth stacking, I think we all know it’s a bug (Josh might not have realized the behavior of stealth stacking before responding), but Josh just popped in to assure us they have this as priority conversation topic to discuss in the morning.

I don’t appreciate when our devs get chewed out for communicating with us after hours with the intent of making sure we know they know, so please choose different rhetoric to communicate through.

Hopefully these revealed changes after stealth wears off aren’t an actual thing. If someone get’s downed in stealth and revealed once it wears off, the ability to reliably restealth them for a reposition or stomp denial is nearly completely hindered.

There’s also the bugs with mesmer stealths, decoy and mass invisibility not stacking to normal stealth, which would mess things up.

Worse case scenario is you wasting cooldowns/initiative if you try to extend your stealth and it reveals you right before extending it. That’d be devestating. Like The Prestige coming off of cooldown right as your Decoy ends and you blow the cooldown on nothing. It could be a critical penalty for just using your skills, even if it’s off by milliseconds. It’s got the potential to have just as bad or worse results as port bugs, except this would be a penalty designed into the game.

Laraley.7695:

so thief is unplayable? Lol

Nope, expect to see S/D all over until this is fixed

Josh Davis.6015:

I don’t think this is intended, but I’ll need to follow-up with the skills team in the morning to be sure. Either way, I started an email chain about this. Thanks for the reports.

Use shadow refuge, I lol’ed

It seems Anet slipped this one in there with their Sleight of Hand.

I’m sure they’ve Stolen the heart of every mesmer with this Exposed Weakness of thief.

Such Improvisation could not go unnotticed by a Keen Observer.

We’ve yet to see a Furious Retaliation from this Crippling Strike of an Ankle Shot to thieves’ achilles’ heel of which is Revealed.

It’s weird, revealed is applied when any stack of stealth ends and seems to remove 2 seconds of stealth as well?

Looks like ANet has been playing with stealth changes for HoT.

Sadface

It’s affecting matches too

Revealed is applied upon exiting stealth in HotM, haven’t jumped in a match yet.

But just an fyi

It’s a 2 second reveal that doesn’t seem to prevent stealth if you’re activating it

I’m experiencing frequent lag in PvP.

My instant activation skills take anywhere from .25 to .5 seconds to activate, and intermittantly at least once per match I’m having lag spikes that rubberband me back and forth between where I’m running and where a was running from.

I’ve made sure I don’t have any packet loss or high ping by doing various tests on servers around me.

Is this your problem or is it mine?

This conversation arises from the reaper live stream today.

Currently, there’s two skills in the game that have a cast time with a stun break.

Stomp and Destroy Shadow Trap

These two skills go on full cooldown if cancelled, but I’m not sure if it’s because the activation of these skills have other mechanics at play besides the stun break.

Stomp grant’s stability upon activation, not cast completion, so becuase a boon is triggering on activiation this could be why it goes on full cooldown even if cancelled.

Destroy Shadow Trap is a chain skill and the chain flips back causing it to go on full cooldown even if cancelled.

It wasn’t shown in the live stream, but it was mentioned stability might be added to Reaper shouts, which would in effect make it like stomp, so theoretically cancelling it shouldn’t put it on 5 second cooldown. However, if stability is not added to the skill’s activation I am curious if, given no chain and no activation effect, if the skill would stun break and go on 5 second cooldown if cancelled.

Given available themes for a rogue profession I’d lean towards one of the following types:

• Stance
• Survival
• Symbol
• Physical
• Marks

Less likely but still potential candidates if they go a bit out of character like with the Dragon Hunter:

• Meditation
• Mantra
• Manipulation
• Glyph

I don’t know exactly what’s causing the bug, but..

Is there anyway you (ANet) can simply unlock the vertical (y) movement axis while disabling jump and keeping the x and z axis locked?

There’s a bug where if you detonate a cluster bomb too close to it impacting the ground nothing happens.

I’m not sure why, but I’d guess is because the 3 cluster bombs spawn below the collision layer of the terrain

Grandmaster Traits
The grandmasters don’t really feel build defining to me, except for quick pockets. I’d like to see either a standout utility option or a standout offensive option.

• Assassin’s Reward – The effect is unchanged. Turn initiative into health, this has a potency issue. It could be given higher numbers or maybe given a small passive benefit of to the effect of gain 5-7 health per second per initiative you have. Maybe merge it with Don’t Stop, I don’t know, but it feels weak and not build defining.
• Quick Pockets – This is solid. I’d like to see how thief would play if it had a reduce recharge on weapon swap by 2 to 3 seconds, and this seems like the appropriate place to try that, though I’d say reduce the initiative gain on weapon swap to 2 if that were implemented. Reduced weapon swap recharge feels very build defining in my opinion.
• Don’t Stop – I’m not a fan of this one. It feels too unreliable and passive for a grandmaster even though you can kind of control it if you don’t already have swiftness on you. I’d change this or replace this.

Acrobatics has some really interesting ideas that are being floated around in it. As of the AMA though I’d say this is clearly the 2nd weakest specialization, but numbers can be adjusted to change that. The concepts they are going for in acro feel right thematically, once specializations get to more of a balancing stage I think this will be a strong choice, especially if Long Reach is integrated into here.

I’ll be doing a thread with my opinions on each Specializaiton line:

• RU AMA Initial thoughts: Deadly Arts
• RU AMA Initial thoughts: Critical Strikes
• RU AMA Initial thoughts: Shadow Arts

High Level Thoughts:

• Screen shots of the traits
  The set previewed appears to be perfectly themed for Acrobatics. There’s a lot of stamina like traits that play off of endurance and initiative and there’s also damage avoidance traits. There’s far less power creep in this line and I’m a bit surprised to see no Stability here.

Minor Traits
The biggest change in the Minor traits is Feline Grace. Even with Endless Stamina to play off of, it’s nowhere near as powerful. Currently FG instantly returns 3 seconds of endurance regeneration or 1.5 seconds of vigor endurance regen and that’s on top of the current regen rate you have. The new Acro line will give you back 1 second of Endurance every 5 seconds you have vigor on you. This means you can get one dodge almost every 4.25 seconds, but only if you have vigor on you, so you still get 1 dodge every 10 seconds without it. Whereas currently without vigor you get one dodge every 7 seconds, and with vigor you get one dodge every 3.5 seconds. Without vigor this is a 43% nerf, and with vigor it’s a 21% nerf.

I would really like to acrobatics naturally have Long Reach when you pick the specialization. I feel like a longer range steal would go a long way in setting Acro apart from other specializations.

• Expeditious Dodger – Unchanged.
• Feline Grace – It’s been heavily reduced in potency. Instead of Granting vigor, I’d like to see dodges and other evades simply grant 5 to 8 endurance per attack avoided. Having it provide 2 seconds of vigor is technically stronger, but the issue I see is that even if you’re skillfully evading, because vigor is a DoT effect you have to wait for the benefit.
• Endless Stamina – This is interesting in concept. I feel like it might have a potency issue at this spot, so I would think moving this to the Minor adept slot and merging Expeditious Dodger’s effect into here. I’d then put Long Reach in this spot, and if need be merge some other effect into Long Reach.

Adept Traits
The adept line lacks an offensive option in my opinion. I would like to see a Building Momentum like effect implemented in here.

• Fleet Shadow – This trait feels slightly out of place. That aside though this trait feels challenging to make use of with certain weapons as well, builds using Main-hand or offhand dagger could get a lot of use out of it, but I think you’re hamstrung to having a dagger if you’re going to pick this trait. Maybe it could be right at home in this if it also had an ICD effect that applied stealth when you successfully evade, maybe start ICD as 30 seconds and move it up or down from there, I don’t know.
• Vigorous Recovery – Unchanged. I’d consider replacing this with Build Momentum or maybe merging this into Building Momentum, I’d also adjust building momentum to behave more like Feline Grace where you a couple stacks of might when you evade an attack and put it on a 2 second ICD. I’m looking for an offensive option in this set.
• Pain Response – Unchanged. As of the AMA though it’s probably the only adept I’d take.

Master Traits
The master traits are all interesting. I’m especially excited about having a trait that provides benefits to achieving a first trike. I’m really disappointed though that there’s a weapon specific trait here, I’m not a fan of weapon specific traits as they kill the options you have.

• Guarded Initiation – This is really exciting to me. Getting first strikes is often strong and this is an interesting way of making a first strike strong without adding offence. I’d open up the trigger threshold to be at 90% like other first strike effects. It does only benefit vs condition’s though, I’d experiment with 3 seconds of Protection too.
• Swindler’s Equilibrium – I don’t like this trait’s trigger. It sounded like this trait specifically exists for Flanking Strike and Pistol Whip. However the effect of recharge steal by 1 second on evade is interesting, my fear is that if you’re running an acrobatics build that people won’t want to target you because they’d give you steal more frequently.
• Hard to Catch – I like the changes here, no more random teleport straight into the fray and you can double dodge immediately after stun breaking. A strong defensive option.

BFMV.3198:

Dude if you are going to do an overview please make sure you read the traits carefully

You stated “Descent of Shadows – Unchanged. Fall damage trait, I guess these have to be somewhere.”

Well descent has been changed because it now applies stealth on steal to

Yup I definitely missed that. This would be interesting either way they implement it, with it triggering before the teleport or after the teleport and Mug.

If it triggers before people will drop mug and have the option to land easy stealth needle traps via healing; the efffect being blinding powder makes it unclear if it’s the slot skill, the minor adept triggering, or steal. If it triggers after the teleport, you land a blind on Steal, which would further make the current Cloaked in Shadow less needed.

The process by which playstyle decisions are made is unknown, it’s unfair to jump to conclusions about that.

If you have specific playstyles you feel should be in the game, then present an argument for them. However critizing the design process without knowing much about it or what it takes to get ideas (that are in heavy flux) ultimately approved seems rash.

I’ll be doing a thread with my opinions on each Specializaiton line:

• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Deadly Arts
• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Critical Strikes
• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Acrobatics

High Level thoughts:

• Screen shots of the traits
  Initially the community at large will hate thieves running SA. People don’t like fighting what they can’t see, we get complaints as thieves for non-shadow arts builds already, so understand that people will be complaining. Even seasoned PvPers will be complaining until they get their internal stealth timers adjusted, fighting 4 second stealths instead of 3 second stealths requires a timing adjustment. I don’t know how everything is going to shake out with all the power creep everywhere so it’s hard to gauge how OP SA is as of the AMA, but I can with certainty say this is another mandatory line in the state they showed everything in.

Minor Traits
The minor traits are all useful. I like that they fit with the theme of stealth. There are some changes that do seem warranted though.

• Last Refuge – Unchanged. I’d consider moving this off minor as people want the option to play without this triggering.
• Meld with Shadows – Unchanged. This in the meta is going to ramp up the rage levels on thief haters.
• Resilience of Shadows – This is now gained for using SA. It’s a great support concept. The numbers will need lessened play around with 30 and adjust from there.

Adept Traits
At first glance I saw to take Shadow’s Embrace. I get that you could combo Merciful Ambush off Resilience of Shadows and that could be a thing, but I don’t know. This set lacks an offensive option in my opinion, but that doesn’t mean it has to have one.

• Merciful Ambush – I’ll take this if the combo with Resilience of Shadows is worth it. Condi damage not being reduced could be a deal breaker for this trait depending on the meta.
• Concealed Defeat – I don’t think anyone will ever touch this. Maybe merge it with Merciful Ambush or some other trait or junk it and put something else here.
• Shadow’s Embrace – Unchanged. This will be the go to currently in my opinion.

Master Traits
The master traits seem solid. There’s a support and offensive option.

• Shadow Protector – Unchanged. You get regen, unless you already have it. I’d rather see the duration shortened and guarantee regen, but no big deal.
• Descent of Shadows – Unchanged. Fall damage trait, I guess these have to be somewhere.
• Leeching Venoms – Unchanged. The core venom power creep I’d move to this trait honestly, give this the +1 venom charges don’t make it core. Maybe adding life steal thief burst could become a thing with this and leeching sigil procs.

Grandmaster Traits
I think there’s a lot of mixing and matching that can be done between the Blind on Stealth, Initiative Gain Interval on Stealth, Healing during stealth, damage Reduction in Stealth, boon gain in stealth, and Condition removal upon stealth effects. Maybe merge more of these effects into two traits, a selfish and support version when stealthing and make them compete in the Grandmaster row. As it stands right now, you can spec to get all the benefits.

• Cloaked in Shadow – This doesn’t feel like a Grandmaster. Lots of stealthing involves blinding anyway, so it’s not build defining. I’d consider moving this to master or adept or a minor trait or merge it somewhere (an option could be Resilience of Shadows with a reduction to the Damage Reduction and move it to a Grandmaster option).
• Shadow’s Rejuvenation – This is the other thing that will have the thief haters raging. It’s too potent currently, but maybe I’m wrong given all the other power creep.
• Venomous Aura – This seems appropriately placed. You’re either a stealth buffed thief or a venom thief. The problem with making venoms a compelling choice though is that you miss out on a lot of defense. I don’t know if you’ve played with having venom’s break stun or give stability, but this could be a trait to put that on if it can be balanced.

I like the idea of choosing between being a venom thief or stealth buff thief in this line, with the stealth buffs having the additional choice of choosing between supportive damage reduction or selfish stealth choices. I just think competitively venoms need some survivability options, otherwise everyone is going to take the stealth path. The numbers obviously need to be addressed with Resilience of Shadows; I’m sure others will need tweaked as well.

Softspoken.2410:

Shockwave.1230:

Invigorating Precision – The design of this trait is not happy for a thief. You don’t want to take hits. This trait’s design is low potency all the time and fits a warrior better as they can trade blows. A thief plays hit and run, so allow this trait to play more like mug so you can turn a fight around on someone. Give it an ICD and maybe make it static heal on crit plus a percentage the critical damage inflicted retuned as well, seems more build defining this way.

Invigorating Precision heals based on outgoing crits, aka crits that you do to other people.

Yup, I would never use it at the current potency because it won’t trigger for enough healing reliably, and Thief doesn’t have the sustain to stand in fights to make the most of it, you don’t want to trade hits because of the lack of sustain and that 1500 health you might gain from dealing 10000 critical damage isn’t worth it as a grandmaster trait. You’d be better off taking Practiced Tolerance in my opinion.

I think it’d be more interesting to make this trait’s healing spike with an ICD creating vulnerability Windows and allowing you to turn a fight around or combo this heal off other Heals to get high health bonus effects like Scholar runes.

That’s just my opinion though.

Maugetarr.6823:

Don’t know how cloaked in shadow is a major and resilience is a minor. Maybe they’ll swap them before the release.

Honestly adept, master, and grandmaster don’t have to mean anything anymore. You always get all three of them.

Really it comes down to putting traits in the correct tier to create compelling choice. There could be 4 grandmaster level traits, but if they are in each tier with 1 tier having two of them then you only have choice in one tier.

If you have two in a tier and two in another tier you have two compelling choices. If you have 3 in one tier and 1 in other, you again only have 1 compelling choice.

Numbers can change to bring things into balance.

I think a big problem is that Critical Strikes has no additional functions to it that make people want to take it.

Acro has some interesting traits, the numbers between Shadow arts and Acrobatics traits aren’t quite right to make me want to take Acro over SA, but that can be tweaked.

Numbers will change, start worrying about the numbers after functionality has been decided upon.

They won’t be able to balance the numbers until they have the core trait functionalities set in stone.

Don’t get too caught up in the numbers of some of these traits. Also don’t worry about the placement of Adept, Master, and GrandMaster yet. It will all be changing.

I’ll be doing a thread with my opinions on each Specializaiton line:

• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Deadly Arts
• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Shadow Arts
• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Acrobatics

High Level thoughts:

• Screen shots of the traits
  This line is the weakest line currently. It doesn’t have a role, besides grabbing certain traits for pistol and minor damage. An important thing to remember is that this line was taken originally for its Grandmaster damage modifiers and the stats from trait points.

Minor Traits

• Keen Observer – Unchanged. Basically do 1 more crit out of every 20 hits while you have high health. It’s pretty RNG, so you never notice it. Maybe numbers get tweaked or change this to have a decent ICD and guarantee 1 crit upon recharge.
• Unrelenting Strikes – This one confused me a bit, the description says one thing while the tool tip indicates another. Executioner fulfills this role already.
• First Strikes – Unchanged. Still a good damage modifier.

Adept Traits
Currently these are subpar due to potency, but numbers can change. Basically your only option is the situation to do more damage, it feels like they all have the same role.

• Side Strike – It’s an okay trait. 1 more crit while flanking out of every 15 hits.
• Signets of Power – An okay trait. You get some more damage when you Infiltrator’s Signet. Works with the signet burst build, though not viable in competitive play. Maybe merge with Signet Use and move to Master.
• Combo Critical Chance – This translates to one out of every 20 skill three hits does a crit. Maybe junk this.

Master Traits
Currently you only take Critical Haste or Signet Use from this line. Both of those are gone, but as I mentioned Signet Use can be merged. Here we have another potency issue for the AMA traits. I’d bring back Critical Haste.

Weapons Traits aside
In my opinion weapons traits being specific to one weapon is not something anyone would want unless it’s very potent. Even then you’re only ever going to take that trait if you use that weapon, so these traits limit build diversityheavily by existing. Since Weapon traits are build defining, if they are going to stay, they should be put into Grandmaster, which means they should also be extremely potent in their effects and should compete in the same specialization so that you aren’t stuck as stongly with weapons defining your specialization used.

• Sundering Strikes – Unchanged. Weak. The overall effect is an average of 3-4 vulnerability for melee and only works out for Pistol Whip and Unload. Maybe look into giving this an internal cooldown and giving 5+ stacks of burst vulnerability like the domination line.
• Practiced Tolerance – More health is always a nice choice, depending on how the final set of Master and Adept traits shakes out, I’d considering moving this back to adept.
• Ankle Shots – The Pistol Traits need to be either one trait or core in my opinion. Weapon trait aside this again has another potency issue for the Master Line.

Grandmaster Traits
2/3 I like in concept. There’s a weapon trait here, weapon traits sadden me. I like the idea of guaranteeing crits or getting benefits from them though.

• Ricochet – Unchanged. Please put the range as core to pistols. If I got rid of this trait and I’d add the bounce as core to unload.
• Hidden Killer – Unchanged. I like the concept, but the potency isn’t build defining. I’d change this to "Gain bonus critical-hit chance while in stealth or revealed. Maybe keep the 100% for stealth but do 30% for revealed. This helps Pistol Whip builds and Unload builds benefit. Also revealed training synergy.
• Invigorating Precision – The design of this trait is not happy for a thief. You don’t want to take hits. This trait’s design is low potency all the time and fits a warrior better as they can trade blows. A thief plays hit and run, so allow this trait to play more like mug so you can turn a fight around on someone. Give it an ICD and maybe make it static heal on crit plus a percentage the critical damage inflicted retuned as well, seems more build defining this way.

Currently Crit strikes is by far the weakest line. It only does low potency damage. I’d like to see some other objective added to the critical strikes line, offensive utility, incoming critical hit counters, trigger self revealed removal.. something.

It seems most appropriatefor Moa to be a Mantra and it’d be fun to listen to Mesmers chant something while turning players into Poultry.

I’ll be doing a thread with my opinions on each Specializaiton line:

• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Critical Strikes
• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Shadow Arts
• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Acrobatics

High Level thoughts:

• Screen shots of the traits
  In summary this line is so offensive currently that it is simply mandatory for PvP. This is partly because crit strikes is so weak, but mostly because the DA line is so strong. Multiple immobilize sources make this line a must have, it has strong damage modifiers, and utility options are stong.

Minor Traits
There’s familiarity here, which is fine, but even though these are familiar they create interesting play.

• Serpent’s Touch – It’s the same, plus more downstate damage. Not much to say
• Lotus Poison – Weakness for some short term staying power in 1v1 or some peeling power on enemies training allies
• Exposed Weakness – Still a damage modifier

Adept Traits
I like the choices for these traits. There’s condi, power, and utility opitions here.

• Dagger Training – Per the Ready Up, this will be RNG poison apply. Not sure what the poison stacking changes will mean, but maybe it’ll result in P/D like effects coming from D/P, I guess we can expect hybrid bursts of damage.
• Mug – Mug is mug, It’s good. Stealing will still be usable as a way of turning a situation around on enemies.
• Needle Trap – This one really excites me, but it might be too good with Withdraw and unusable with HiS due to reveal.

Master Traits
The master traits at first glance seem like there’s no choice. But the traits seem like interesting choices.

• Resourceful Trapper – More traps sounds like it could be interesting for area control, but traps are too easily countered by AI procs, blinds, and dodges for this to be used in PvP.
• Panic Strike – Seems mandatory in this line at first glance. It’s strong, it’s a current grandmaster that’s now a master for some reason.
• Revealed Training – This seems like an appropriate master trait, but Panic strike.. With quickness and Trappers Respite though revealed training could allow for really strong bursts.

Grandmaster Traits
These grandmasters really feel like grandmasters and are each interesting.

• Potent Poison – I feel like you’ll only take this if you take the assumed version of Dagger Training, but even still it feels like these combined traits will be useful for adding to your burst and countering out some sustain on targets.
• Improvisation – With the changes to unclassified skills, IE Withdraw and HiS, this feels like it’s going to be super good. Either you’re RNGesus and recharging a deception heavy build or you’re running the standard panic strike D/P slot skills Kit and getting an 80% chance to recharge one of your skills. On top of that though you get a bonus use of your steal skill. Honestly even though a lot of whatI’ve seen in the AMA seems OP, this seems boarderline OP squared if Improve gives you 4 slot skills recharged and 1 more bonus steal skill.
• Executioner – Still strong. This plus Panic Strike or Revealed Training seem like good combos. There’s a crit strikes trait too where you can pretty much guarantee when you crit something a 1/3 health it will die, not it will take a lot of damage.. it will DIE.

Obviously numbers on everything will change, so I’m trying not to focus on that too much. Overall though this line will currently be mandatory. More importantly though it feels like an offensive line with lots of utility. Whether you are a condition build or a power build or a hybrid build, you’ll be taking this specialization, because of what immobilize, poison, weakness, and more damage or extra recharges allows you to do for your team.

Disclaimer: Trolls are real

If these changes were implemented tomorrow I’d be scared of mesmers Instantly 1 shotting anything with Domination, Dueling, and Illusions builds.

Vulnerability Stacks, Quickness, Mind Wrack 50% more damage vs CC’ed foes alone is scary.

Will the base 1000 stat change result in a higher default crit chance or will the base crit percent be adjusted to start at 1000 leaving it the crit chance at 4% by default.

I ask to figure out what the changes are net favoring, offense or defense.

The proposed changes effectively make turrets die faster and conditionally deal less damage.

I’m going to operate under the assumption that there’s some semblance of wanting to turret build to still be usable.

There’s various crit procs that will probably make turrets die faster than the nerf intends. Due to this I’d also experiment with simply reducing turret health by 1/3 while maintaining crit immunity.

I’d also experiment internally with limiting what conditions can be applied to turrets. Perhaps just Burning, Blind, Weakness, Terror and chill.

Also please fix the floating turrets bug.

So, fear, taunt, chill, cripple, and weakness. Can we get a breakdown on what the expected effects on turrets will be?

Confusion and Torment questions too?

Will fear cause interrupts and prevent a turret from firing during the condition?
Taunt won’t cause some infinite fire rate glitch due to no recharge on the turret attack skills right? Purely speculation
Is cripple going to be useless or do something like half distance on attacks?
Is chill going to slow the firing rate? Reduce attack range?
Will weakness cause fumble on turrets?

Will confusion apply PvE damage to turrets?
Will torment only apply the min damage, while turrets are rotating will it apply extra damage?

Sunfish actually did the the most efficient thing since proving a negative is kind of hard.

You’re asking him to prove that something doesn’t happen within a timespan. The only feasible way to present evidence of that is to provide video evidence with a timer in between air procs.

Even then he can’t prove it’s not happening, he can only provide a body of evidence that favors his claim. He is bringing it up on the forums for others and the devs to verify if it’s accurate, he could just have filled out a bug report, but this is more efficient in getting turn around since the forums have higher visibility.

Whether it’s actually an issue or not is irrelevant when reality is that this is one of the best ways to deliver the message if it is an issue since you can’t prove a negative and having other players back up your claim is the best kind of evidence you could provide unless you are capable of spending time to produce a video.

DeWolfe.2174:

SobeSoul.6910:

Lol. style doesn’t want to simply balance a class he wants to kill it.

Of course, it’s not their profession so they want it killed off. Most of the complaints on here are from players with little to no experience as an Engi. They get rolled by a better player on an Engi and instantly blame the profession and build. Since the alternative is a realization that bruises their ego.

btw, for the healing turret complaint, please learn math! Healing per second on an Engi is far lower that other professions.

Clearing up some misinformation really quickly

5500(pickup no finishers)-8500(leap and blast finishers) on either a 15 or 20 second cooldown.

The healing turret healing per second ranges from 367 – 425 healing per second, not including the tool belt.

Healing signet on warrior is 362-385ish per second

Withdraw on thief is 290 per second

Ether Feast on Mesmer is 275-375 per second

Troll Unguent on ranger is 340 healing per second

Shelter is 151 healing per second

Signet of restoration is 240ish per skill activation, it’s probably at least that per second too, likely higher.

Consume conditions removing 3 conditions is 300 health per second.

Direct comparisions between some of these healing skills is a b|t challenging to quantify due to various effects, but I think the math shows that engineers quite possibly have the best meta healing skill in terms of raw healing.

The damage from crit strikes is fun, but in the current meta it doesn’t consistently allow for doing enough damage to make up for its weaknesses.

Panic strike having more survivability means you can be more involved in certain fights, plus there’s more team friendly aspects to it.

Crit strike’s lack of staying power combined with the amount of staying power builds current have are really the biggest reason it doesn’t fit as well in the meta at the moment in my opinion.

It’s more out of curtousy to other players that I swapped to Panic Strike. The extra damage on crit strikes is nice for me, but Panic Strikes allows allies in fights to make up and surpass the damage you would have applied with crit strikes. Also the extra weakness that can be applied is useful in supporting allies. Then of course anytime you get those extra recharges means one more stun, stun break, or refuge which is only helpful to your team.

I feel like players prefer playing along side a Panic Strike thief because they are bit more team centric than Crit Strikes thieves.

Is the build a problem? I couldn’t say honestly. It feels like it’s come into the limelight out of necessity to deal with meta comps involving the three celestial builds. At this point though we probably won’t see this meta shift much until the expansion shifts it for us.

The only options seem to be to suck it up or do what others and I have, who are just taking a break until they do some updates to change the meta.

Hi ANet,

I don’t like all the AIDS in the meta. Too much AI doing stuff instead of players playing. So because I don’t like the meta, I’m not playing in it.

I’ll keep an eye out for updates,

Until then
/wave

Hi ANet,

Suggestion for y’all.

You might considering making the first Episode of Living story season 2 free upon completing the personal story. This will help get some people interested in going through the story and converting their gold/dollars to gems to get the other Episodes.

That should help more people understand the story up to the start of the expansion.

Please make a trait that makes clusterbomb move and activate 25% faster.

Please don’t let things like this happen ANet.

You matched up a thief with group having a thief vs 4 turret engineers.

Completely one sided matchup in this situation, because you can’t have 2 thieves on the same team.

I’ve been running into a lot of matchups where there’s players on one side or the other that simply out comped.

Typically this entails one side having more Celestial’s and DPS guards than the other. Not a big deal if you can coordinate, but in non-premade situations it causes heavily skewed matches.

Especially when you throw a build like a condi ranger on the side that doesn’t have the celestials.

Basically what I’m getting at is it’s okay to have a comp with a lot of sustain builds, but whether these are premade or not don’t pit those vs non-premade comps with noticeably less sustain in the comp.

If y’all could sift through some of your higher MMR data and look at matches (even by profession) just look at the comps and can guess who’s going to win by comp and are right, there’s probably something that can be changed in the matchmaking.

Hi ANet,

You might be able to find some interesting data from my matches tonight. I had an aweful streak sadly, all loses tonight while solo and duo queuing in ranked.

I’m not sure what the backend matchmaking thought about how favorable the matchups were.

I did have 3 matches where I was paired up as a thief with another thief.

Also I was paired up with a multiple rangers at least once.

I was also paired up with multiple shoutbow warriors a couple of times, one time of which was versus a CC heavy comp, which was painful for them I’m sure.

I was versus multiple necros at least once and multiple engineers numerous times.

Hopefully tonight is a good case study of data for y’all.

MightyMicah.7451:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Thieves can’t 1 shot you from stealth. Mesmers can. I have a bigger problem with that.

Tell us more about this Mesmer one shot from stealth.

Mirror Blade + Dodge + Shatter + Mind Stab is the combo. It’s 7 hits packed into less than a 1/2 second time frame mind Stab hits a quarter second after. Each hit will crit for around 2k on squishy targets. You’ll usually see this combo hit for around 10k, but if everything crits it can deal 15k+ to squishy targets. Might stacks on the Mesmer will vary and cause some damage variance as well. Vulnerability will vary on the target as well and cause damage variance.

Can’t the abusers of the current system completely circumvent it via…

1) using multiple accounts
2) converting gold into items

Are you talking about Infusion of Shadow perhaps? I’ve heard it used to give 2 initiative everytime you performed a stealth finisher regardless of whether you were in stealth or not. Currently it only gives initiative if you aren’t already stealthed.

In beta weekend 2 I think

It sounds like you don’t like the limitations of Dagger thief.

Try S/D, it allows you to play more freely with your positioning.

Ping is supposed to be the latency in between you sending commands from your client to ANet’s servers.

They’ve added what appears to be the current ping and an average ping, though I have no context as to what average means.

Try comparing the ping ANet shows to a site like pingtest.net

I believe their EU servers are somewhere in Germany so pick a server there to test against.

You’ll also get info on your jitter which could be impacting your delay.

You might also want to try a trace route to an ANet IP, the windows command is “tracert” to get more info to figure out where along the line the connection could be delayed

Please fix soon for tournament steams.

This doesn’t mesh well with the vertical camera setting unfortunately

If you look at the screenshots you can clearly see how the realism of 1st person mode is lost. This very “important” issue should clearly be addressed. The issue being that the vertical placement of the camera is off.

Thanks to all models involved in “properly” communicating this bug.