Guild Wars 2

babazhook.6805:

I went out on my own power build thief last night and roamed various BLs’ against the TC and JQ. As I tend to fight small groups I kept a record of peoples I encountered in the time I was on.

3 Necros 2 condi 1 pwer
5 warriors 5 power.
2 mesmers condi
1 engineer power
3 rangers all power
6 thieves 4 power 2 condi
2 DH power
No revs.
1 ele power

Obviously this just a small sample size and on a certain time of night and on particular servers , but I can not conclude that power builds are “extinct”

I will not comment on the zerg fights as I did not roam with the group.

This is quite representative of what I see in most of my matchups now. I am starting to see a lot more Ghost Thieves but for the most part it’s power Warriors and power Thieves. I don’t really consider a roaming condi build much of a threat now as my condi clear on my Mesmer, Ranger and now my Thief is really very good without much sacrifice. Still need to be careful around condi Necros though due to all the condi transfers (including an automatic transfer) and those crazy bleed bursts now, but just need to be vigilant and CC it more.

babazhook.6805:

It would not help to put damage component onto BA.

Ghost thief specs hidden thief. Hidden thief applies damage then hides by design. That is the PURPOSE of the skill. It also how the CnD pre-load and steal combo work when using DA (applying the poison , damage and then stealthing) which is a staple of the d/d power sets and has already been nerfed enough.

So in essence you would break a bunch of other builds and in fact make ghost thief arguably stronger.

How so? Load Basi as an elite as it will now proc off BA and throw a venom on your utility bar to use those added procs to apply that venom. Ghost thief will now be able to garner an interrupt on steal which they can not do now. With hidden thief they still be stealthed after the steal.

Good point. I completely forgot about Hidden Thief and it’s interaction change. As you can tell, I haven’t used Shadow Arts since early 2014

But putting damage on the traps won’t fully resolve this as you don’t really need traps to keep ghost thief going. Anet need to put a small amount of damage on Bewildering Ambush and possibly Pain Inverter too. I’m not sure damage on caltrops is a good thing bearing in mind that Uncatchable would screw you over if you dodged in stealth. Although, if I dodge in stealth using Bounding Dodger and hit someone I get revealed, so maybe condi Thief shouldn’t be getting such a free ride and Anet should put some actual risk into this build.

I guess the weapon swap thing is some sort of technical limitation we just have to live with, but other than that I’m not experiencing the problems you report unless there’s some weird terrain issues.

I agree it’s time for a rework. Reduce the condition damage reduction of resistance to ~33% then make it as ubiquitous as Protection. Give some skills (such as Berserker’s Stance) their own unique condition immunity effects again.

I feel your pain Gutter. Power Mesmer just feels so irrelevant, especially in WvW. The relative effort it takes to do meaningful damage makes it an unappealing choice (I just play power Thief now or Ranger if I’m feeling ultra lazy). Condi is just so much better. But even then, our method of landing condi burst is similar to power, so it also quickly becomes irrelevant as more people get involved in a fight in WvW…unlike Necro that can just vomit marks on people and now do some extraordinary bleed stacks. This has always been a problem for Mesmer, but it feels like it’s only getting worse.

This covers things nicely. Although Ghost Thief has got to go because it’s basically just clone death Mesmer again, only it can gap close and has actual burst. It’s not good for the game and fundamentally breaks a rule for stealth. But it’s only an issue for WvW so it will likely remain….until someone at Anet gets ruined by it and then they will nuke Ghost Thief (and ruin condi thief in general probably).

I agree with you on PI. In a world without Headshot, PI would be absolutely fine. But it’s just an obscene amount of extra damage for D/P. It feels wrong when I use it because my dagger auto-attack chain already does around the same damage as a crit backstab (actually more sometimes) and then I get easy interrupt damage on top of that and it just obliterates people…especially in WvW with all kinds of ridiculous added stuff.

Although to be fair I can press Unload once to do 10-12K from ranged or Vault once to get 9-13K so it’s probably in keeping with what Thief has become.

Link.1049:

I run dagger/pistol…. currently metabuild but with the free slot I run impairing daggers for the immob/slow/damage. I’ve been dueling in private arenas a bit, and what most have been doing is they’ll when I do my initial burst, they’ll immediately pop dodge and mass invis, then throw a billion clones at me that I didn’t see a second before. If I make it past that initial burst, I have a chance, but I’m struggling to keep target as they pop clones and stealth as often as available.

Be patient. D/P can out stealth a Mesmer with relative ease. If they Mass invis, just go into stealth and stay there. They will likely try to burst your black powder if they are going to come out of stealth before you, but they won’t have a target for optimal GS burst so this works in your favour and you can immediately retaliate. When they swap to their defensive set (S/Sh most likely) you can sit comfortably out of melee range wait out the inevitable Blurred Frenzy first and basilisk the shield block which will get a free trigger of pulmonary impact and will likely be the end of the Mesmer if they’ve already popped Distortion.

Garfried.7295:

BLAST
LIGHT FIELDS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj9WbKSfbao
BLAST THEM

SURVIVE

/15survives

Blades Of Fatalis.1279:

This is another one of my favorites, when the stars aligned oh so well.
The fact that they were super clumped and spamming skills probably helped as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3WuA7mTHK0

It’s the randomness of Mistrust that makes it so entertaining at times. However, Mantra of Distraction on a downed player is a reliable way to get ~20 stacks of confusion on ressers from range whilst minimising the actual CC time. And obviously Tides of Time with its no target limit just creates utter chaos at times…as you you show in your videos.

Blades Of Fatalis.1279:

admittedly this is pre patch but… If only this guy had had a light field, maybe then he would of been saved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmfp92Y_UtU&feature=youtu.be

Oh my. Those few times where the stars align and Mistrust goes absolutely mad…

The condition removal buff to Signet of Agility is great and the nerf to the endurance gain was well needed. However, removing three conditions AND still getting 100 endurance in WvW is a bit ridiculous if I’m honest. Quite surprised they did that (maybe I shouldn’t be).

Then you’ve got weird things like the Body Shot buff for PvP only when main-hand pistol was already rather irrelevant in WvW with the craziness of D/P and now that condi Thief is basically just Ghost Thief now anyway. I also don’t think buffing traps was a particularly wise decision.

Infiltrator’s Strike change is great but the change to CnD still isn’t enough to warrant more use of off-hand dagger.

“Arcane Thievery: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 35 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP only.”

Why not in the rest of the game?

It’s a truly hilarious build and actually very good for “tanking” 10-15 people in large fights if they take the bait easily.

I do wonder if Anet wanted us to be able to constantly evade indefinitely. They might as well just revert the Well of Precognition nerf and increase the evade duration, so we can just sit in Mesmer wells, not really doing anything….ever.

I do love Impacting Disruption because it allows me to play an interrupt build that is actually viable (unlike interrupt Mesmer which is ineffective for the amount of effort required). But I will admit that it’s probably too much damage on top of the baseline damage of my Thief and between Headshot spam, basilisk and sleight of hand it’s very easy to achieve consecutive pulmonary impacts. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if this trait gets changed at some point.

Most of these suggestions are pretty decent, but I think the 1 second CD on stealth skills was a fair change….even though it’s only really important for preventing backstab spam.

I do think Vault needs to be addressed. I would actually prefer for the evade duration to be reduced 1/4 – giving players more opportunity to interrupt this massively damaging AoE skill whilst also making it a bit more of a high risk/high reward skill for my Thief. It would just make things more interesting for everyone involved.

I would also put a cast time on Signet of Agility as I’m generally finding that being able to regain dodges whilst dodging is a bit silly. I find it quite abusive but I don’t think this suggestion will be very popular

There are so many things on Thief that need to be brought up to date to improve build diversity and viability – such as the fact that I actually do as much damage with a simple auto-attack chain on dagger as I do when using Pistol Whip. This really shouldn’t be the case.

Pre-perplexity change, I did manage to get 42 stacks of confusion on someone in WvW. Most without perplexity has been 38 which is pretty good really. Mistrust is quite potent at times, but all you really need is a bit of stability and a single cleanse to make the trait redundant.

I did get 26 stacks on a Ranger yesterday by just chaining interrupts between the Ranger and pet in combination with shatters and confusion images. They didn’t last 10 seconds…more like 4 seconds. If I had been on power shatter they probably would have died in 2 seconds.

I’ve always thought that resistance should only reduce condition damage by 33-50% but it should be as ubiquitous as protection.

Story was decent for the most part but there’s so many characters coming and going all the time that I’m starting to lose track of character motivations. There’s still so many loose ends to be tied up and I spotted some continuity errors. I only hope that the next episode starts to finalise and focus the story.

The new map has a great meta-event chain but the heart events are very uninteresting, plus some of them take far too long to complete as you end up competing with other players to put out fires or feed hungry soldiers. I think maybe the heart events should complete quicker.

That last boss fight has interesting mechanics, but the arena you’re fighting in is inappropriate. The camera kept on colliding with the wall or the ceiling and I often couldn’t see what I was doing. Such limited camera movement actually began to give me a headache especially as my view is constantly full of chaotic effects. I did like what was trying to be done with this fight, but the environment was all wrong.

Extra: I did like that there were class specific actions during the final quest. I really hope we see more of those.

Once I found an appropriate keybind for the special action key it was fine. A bit miserable before hand. The Jade Armour is the real threat for the most part.

I just use condition cleanse utilities, condition cleanse traits, cleansing sigils and dodge the attacks that apply conditions.

It’s not really Epidemic that’s the problem though and nerfing it will just make it redundant. The issue is that Burning does too much damage now with minimal stacks so the ramp up time to get enough to spread around is tiny. But this is all just a balance consequence of PvE+sPvP>WvW so it is not something that will ever be solved. So your best bet is just some well timed burst cleanses or resistance spam with Rev.

babazhook.6805:

People should focus on what the real problem is and it neither dire or TB. It is the amount of raw damage being pumped out. This has increased significantly since day one while total health has remained at the same value. This extra damage is not exclusive to conditions. It across the board . The reality is that pre changes the power builds were much further ahead in damage output then were condition builds and even as they too gained more damage output, the percentage output that Condition builds saw increased , having started at a lower level , was greater.

This does not mean condition builds do more damage then power builds. It means they can now do enough while maintaining the margin of safety that dire offers which is needed in any condition build.

Power users CAN sacrifice the things dire equivalent offers to pump even more damage . Very few condition type builds have this option. I suggest that if they could suddenly doube condition damage output by giving up toughness and vitality they would.

Very well put. Damage output across the board has escalated wildly since specialisations and HoT were introduced. I too am constantly in shock at the damage I do now. Pre-specialisations I used to have to run full zerk to get the damage numbers I can get on my Knight’s/Marauder’s/Captain’s/Zerk mixtures I use now. It’s pretty mad, but then none of the grand changes that have been made to the game since 2015 have ever taken into account the impact it will have on WvW.

This happens more often than people realise. It’s a very poorly designed skill.

That’s numberwang!

We have a healthy roaming scene here on Gandara. I moved to Gandara to get access to this. Plenty of people promoting solo and small group roaming.

However, I’d say it might be in your interest to join maybe Piken so you can fight the roamers on Gandara.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Blurred frenzy for sure needs a cd nerf to add counter play. Something jeeds to be done to stop these unkillable mesmers with their high passive pressure

That makes no sense. How does Blurred Frenzy = high passive pressure? What IS “high passive pressure”?

No degree of anonymity will prevent commander sniping. It is a player created problem in need of a player created solution. There are ways to reduce the risk of this occurring…but that would be giving too much away now

1) A rooted evade every ~12 seconds is hardly an issue these days. Has already had it’s CD increased.
2) Moa is only 6 seconds now. Flee and double dodge is all you need to survive.
3) Portal is one of the few mechanics left that make the game interesting to play. Why would you want to reduce this?
4) CS is pretty broken but not because of its short cooldown.

Most likely a stack of DH and Ranger traps. I have been instantly downed by a stack of Dragonhunter traps before and there was no damage recorded in the combat log and no DH around to stomp me. I could only tell that it was traps because I saw the blue glow of the traps after I had gone down.

Xenesis.6389:

Meh happened to me months ago, no one cared and it won’t change. Was down before I could react, basically only an auto skill would have saved me. Wasn’t even full zerk either.
Good luck with the balance crusade, I don’t see anet giving two figs about it.

I mean that steal>CnD>backstab burst is a miserable thing to eat, but I find the dagger auto-attack numbers kind of funny. That Thief did over 15K damage in one dagger auto-attack chain. It’s funny what 15-20 stacks of might can do to one’s ability to…auto attack.

The signet build certainly feels a bit easier to pull off now that Daredevil exists. But all it takes is one auto-CC proc to force you to shortbow away.

Lordrosicky.5813:

All the other classes are fine.

There are skills and traits available across all classes that are negatively impacting the combat in this game. To claim that these belong to just three classes is simply erroneous.

Not much you can do to actually fight them as Mesmer. Just slot inspiration and ignore them. Can try a stealth trap if you must. A well timed Gravity Well works nicely, but you need someone else to burst the well to actually kill the Thief.

Edit: Oh wait you said match as in sPvP. I’’m really surprised to see anyone use that there.

Justine.6351:

sad…

“be aware of surroundings”

as he just chain spams evades lol…

I had a similar reaction.

What has Thief this game become.

Now that the cast animation has been fixed and the duration has been reduced to 6 seconds, it’s pretty easy to deal with in a non-chaotic fight. It still has a 3 minute cooldown so it’s only really viable if you split it with Chrono (giving it an even bigger tell), which means it will likely never be used when everyone switches to the next elite spec. It is a single target cast which makes it a pretty darn risky choice of elite, especially in WvW where a random aegis could completely waste your elite.

I think a lot of people just panic when Moa’d which only works in the Mesmer’s favour. If you keep calm and just use Flee to create some distance, then double dodge when the Mesmer pursues and then Kick again to make some more distance, the 6 second transformation will be over. If it’s used as part of a coordinated gank then you’re generally rather kittened, but there are far more reliable tools for ensuring a successful gank anyway…

Lexander.4579:

Simonoly.4352:

I remember when Thief countered Mesmer so hard that it was often just a hinderance to have Mesmers with you during a team fight as they basically just served as boon bot for the enemy Thieves

yeah right because there was a time when thieves were a meta must have class that can be stacked

Weird response. But nice to know.

Overloaded skills. Overloaded traits.

Less is more.

eye floater.7140:

Aside from the rant, my questions are:
How come the thief was cloaked after he hit me? I couldn’t even see their name.
When did mesmers acquire the ability to produce more than 3 clones at a time?

The Thief can ‘cloak’ again 3 seconds after inflicting damage on you. However, the ghost Thief build can apply condition bursts without becoming visible, so maybe it was that you came up against. The ghost Thief is rather abusive but you can ignore it for the most part.

As for Mesmer illusions, it’s the same now as it’s always been. What you’re seeing is just active illusions Vs shattered illusions. If a target is far enough away but still in range, you can get >6 illusions up by using subsequent shatters.

The class has always attracted a certain type of….edge master. They get rather emotional when they’re outplayed or when you just turn on them as a group and obliterate them… and boy do they want you to know about it! Pre-HoT I’d say 90% of my angry whispers came from other Thieves. However, post-HoT it’s just a minefield of mad people now across every single class. I think it’s because the game is so much easer to play now that quite a lot of players assume success and aren’t used to having their kitten handed to them on a shiny silver platter

I don’t think conditions account for much in the wider scheme of things in WvW so a condition damage nerf is quite unlikely.

Tormenting runes give you 15% more duration increase whereas Perplexity has the 3 stack passive proc. The passive proc of perplexity runes is better so go for that for maximum cancer.

Warning: since perplexity runes had the interrupt bonus removed it’s now as boring to use as every other rune set. You might fall asleep at your computer.

I remember when Thief countered Mesmer so hard that it was often just a hinderance to have Mesmers with you during a team fight as they basically just served as boon bot for the enemy Thieves

I wonder if Anet are still working on that big WvW overhaul. Or has that already come about?

I think it’s likely on Anet’s radar for many of the reasons people have gone over many times before. A cast time increase/slower chain velocity would allow for some better counterplay before chain attachment. Making it like Binding Blade where you can still pull a target mid-dodge but only a small distance could also help. I don’t think they should remove the evade interruption though – it’s nice to have something like this in the game.

Bearing in mind what a Dragonhunter is pulling the target into…Spear of Justice should just be a bit harder to land and have some more prominent tells.

If the Chrono isn’t using Inspiration – burn guard melts its face off.
If the Chrono is using inspiration – stalemate until someone gets bored and leaves or lets themself die.

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

So much this. Even though WvW has always suffered from a flawed population system, the battles used to be awesome enough to make participation in WvW desirable even when you had no chance of winning a matchup because you had less people/coverage. But when Specialisations were introduced and then with the release of HoT, the battles in WvW became a horror to participate in. Too much easily deliverable damage, too many active sustain options, traits with too many effects, skills with too many effects and far too many entirely passive traits with massive effects. I understand that WvW is supposed to be PvP with PvE, but I don’t think they realise how integral the PvP experience in WvW is for player enjoyment.

So what’s the point in participating in WvW now? Matchups are almost entirely decided on population/coverage disparity so there’s not much point trying to win and the battles are a frustrating mess so there’s no point bothering with those. The new upgrade system is completely automated now so there’s nothing for players to do other than…escort dolyaks – so not much point playing for that either. It’s only real draw now is siege weaponry use which is still fun (except arrowcarts – they’re still boring).

It’s just the most useful class in WvW currently alongside base Guardian. Zerging, roaming, duelling, GvG – it’s important for all of these. Fantastic condi clear, stability share, massive damage from traps, strong ranged pressure with bow, protection share, Shield of Courage and great CC options – it’s a great package for WvW. It’s also pretty straight forward to play and be effective with which is appealing to players that want to get into WvW and immediately see results and be helpful.

Soothsayer.9206:

…CS is not a guarantee of anything and has to be used judiciously in order to make it effective while in combat.

CS isn’t going to be nerfed because of this very point. There’s so many variables to have to consider for a successful split period in PvP/WvW that nerfing CS would just makes it even more unappealing to the average player who could just roll a Dragonhunter instead.

Just a signet burst thief using signets to, well, erm….burst. This sort of thing has existed since forever and is so far down the list of horrible things in WvW.

And yes in general, damage in WvW is hilariously broken now. But Anet are making no attempt to fix it so it’s obviously intended…

The map still needs a lot of work – especially the Air and Fire keeps. But I get the impression that Anet are pretty much done with the map now. Still no replacement for the central map event either – which was actually a really great idea but just not implemented well. It feels like a half finished map so it’s not particularly fun.