Guild Wars 2

MarauderShields.6830:

SlayerSixx.5763:

P/P is actually one of the weakest builds at top tier when considering theif builds.

No one ever claimed it was strong. But it’s kitten funny and since teefs are the court jesters for the real classes, being funny is all we can get out of the game right now.

Idk man, I find my thief still going strong :P.

Run from the reaper army.

kitten.8746:

Nova Stiker.8396:

kitten.8746:

laquito.5269:

Delete vamp, problem solved, it’s noskill casualmode.

Like bursting people down (esp from stealth) or being bursted without a chance to retreat takes much skill

Here is a better argument, learn how not to get bursted. Get on a thief, learn how to properly escape certain death.

Right, on a teef… But if I choose to play something else, then in order to learn how to avoid the burst I should still “get on a teef”?

Right, thief needs MORE nerfs. Why not just superglue SB onto their hands, remove all skills aside from sb5 and call it a day. You have no idea how easily a thief goes down vs a competent opponent.

- burn guards (lolblock). BEFORE the buffs, I saw a condi guard down a thief just by blocking/weapon swapping and dodging around.

- warrior with GSIf they even GRAZE you with 3-5, that’s a half life. If they land their adrenaline skill, that’s a down. Not to mention passive AND active EP giving them the exact same effect as a vamp rune, only they can attack with EP up AND it lasts longer.

- mes is a toss up unless thief feels like camping stealth for a few minutes till the mes runs out.

- engi (see warrior argument), they just come with even more cleave and condi if they so choose.

- ranger needs a rework.

- necro can either get a lucky series of procs and fear you into a wall while they finish you off or get totally rekt.

Idek why people keep asking for thief nerfs x.x

@OP

I share my hate of all passive things as well. I prefer knowing when they’ll proc.

How’s about we make the mistform proc on elite with the same cool down if they use the elite after they’ve been pushed past 50%. That way, as the enemy, you know when its coming. As the user, you know when its coming. More offense oriented builds -cough-rampagewarrs-cough- will find it cumbersome and use something else and bunker builds will find a viable power rune to pick up. It’ll also gives eles a reason to take tornado and make plague look a little more appealing to necros. It would probably make mass invis for mesmers a little over the top (perfect escape) and make bunker guards a little too tanky, but its nothing a coordinated burst can’t deal with quickly.

P/P is actually one of the weakest builds at top tier when considering theif builds.

Been running p/p lately and I find steal to be more of a hinderance than a help. I only use it for chasing down nearly dead targets or when I have shadow step active for sweet juking. It’ll basically be shadow step to one area, kite kite kite, they toss out a range skill or prepare to gapclose, I meet them in the middle, dodge behind them, they turn around to chase again but I’ve already shadow stepped back to my original spot. What with p/p insane damage, most people don’t live longer than that.

Ankle shots ACTUALLY nerfs your damage, but also secretly increases your range to 1050. Either the tool tip is wrong or they need to update this.

Ask again in two weeks.

^Someone sticky this, please.

I don’t choose vigorous recovery at all on my build, I honestly prefer pain response because of the horrendous amounts of condi flying around nowadays. I can’t justify the use of vigorous recovery because I don’t even pop my heal skill most of the time. Fleet shadow, on the other hand, gives P/P some much needed bursts of mobility if you change black powder to a straight up stealth skill (not that I’d still consider it over pain response).

But then again, changing to entirely to something that suits p/P’s needs is also a good idea

^i agree. I suppose that+fleet shadow would also solve our mobility problems.

This sounds very interesting, but I’m not too keen on ramping up our damage any higher than it already is, unless you plan to compensate by nerfing unovercharged damage by 25% and then buffing our overcharged attacks by 50% (so they do 25% more damage than what we’re doing now). There also has to be a form of counterplay for the overcharged attacks, like boon stripping effects it and strips one charge for every boon stripped.

Also, lol@burning bullets. ALL ABOARD THE FLAME TRAIN.

But in all seriousness. This sounds like a great idea, we should refine this more. Might even become another specialization anet will sell for another 50$ x.×....

Remove the smoke field and allow for the SA stealth duration to apply to it to balance it out for d/p. Sounds fair.

You do realize pistols are the only ranged weapon set for thief that can actually put out some serious burst? Hell, build it right and you’ll do 1.5x the damage of a zerk rapid fire with a single unload….

That can be spammed nearly 3 times back to back if you go for broke and blow all of your initiative.

SB is a utility weapon. Poison fields, blast finishers, evades, teleports all in one weapon with a smidge of cleave to clear weaker AI.

Black powder is great for d/p. Hell, its half the reason why thieves have stuck to the meta for so long.

For P/P, on the other hand, what could you honestly do with black powder that justifies the initiative being spent? Blind spam with unload? Blinds don’t stack, so all of that initiative spent for one blind? Securing stomps? Just dodge it like everyone else. If you’re 1v1, you’ll get the stomp anyways. If you’re xvx, you’ll get interrupted regardless. What could you do with it? Vs a warrior, get some blind uptime? Except the warrior wouldn’t be dumb enough to just stand there and take it and would, instead, use that time you’re not hitting him to let his signet get to work or even mount some sort of counter attack. Or avoid an attack, maybe? If you see the attack coming, headshot is a far more efficient means of intercepting the attack. If you don’t see it coming (insert meta mes/thief), you’re probably dead if you stand around for too long.

I honestly believe black powder can be changed for something with more universal utility, but to ask for a teleport? S/D has a 600 range teleport and that stuff, when used right, makes them untouchable. Imagine a S/D thief that can do all of their damage from 600, let alone 900 (or 1050 if you traited for it) range and still teleport all over the place and have a ranged, near instant cast daze for little initiative cost. Sounds ridiculously op, no?

So people using totally different builds from the meta get to farm scrubs all day? That’s no fun.

^this. sPvP is fun and all, but I’m >10 games away from dragon rank and legendary champ. Once I get that, I’m out until they make major changes to balance. Proper matchmaking is nice, but class balance is what matter more in the long run. Besides, if you’re dedicated enough, you should be able to reach a point where skill levels won’t matter because they’d always be equal or lesser than you.

My guess is MMR. If a bunch of solo qers party up, it doesn’t make them better players. A simple fix would be to bump up the MMR of a 3+ pre made by a whole tier so they actually focus on working as a team and face players who’re capable of coordinating themselves on the fly.

Woah guys, relax. Most of these are terrible ideas. Remove the immob? Give them built in teleports? Give us built in leap finishers? Do you guys have any idea how insane these ideas are?

@OP

Personally, I think the p/p kit is fine except for black powder. Wasting the initiative mid fight isn’t worth it and I have SR/shadow step if I REALLY wanna secure a stomp. Let them give d/p their black powder, but give p/p their own #5 that they can actually utilize. How’s about a mini leap backwards the also applies cripple. Wouldn’t be a leap finisher, but it would be a dodge (not as potent as s/d), but gives a ranged spec like this a few options for repositioning because currently, p/p without the necessary utilities cannot work worth a kitten .

The game mode itself is very simple. Back when I was new, I spent a lot of time in duel servers. Give them a try. Being mechanically sound goes a long way until you know what to do.

Why are people still making threads about this? Unless a stealth patch has been sneakily dropped without any notes, then there’s no need for further discussion. Try this thread again after the 23rd.

Well, they’re very few cases which is why they aren’t focused on.

@Dirty

Fair enough, man.

Except the frontloaded power burst builds usually have to deal with clearly telegraphed skills and attacks that can be negated beforehand. A lot of condi builds, with the exception of necro and guardian, get a lot of their condi damage passively (auto attack spam). Necro simply waits for your bullkitten and plays with it and guard just ports onto you from behind a wall and shreds you down.

Burst skills can be blocked, blinded, dodged, interrupted, reflected, etc. Condi can only be cleansed. Of course, a lot of you condi supporters will mention that the same applies to conditions as well since it isn’t as if you’re just throwing down fire fields and just….idk, permeating conditions from your very being. Here’s the deal though, condition builds, in general, rely on constant application of their conditions. Fortunately, Anet made it so that overall condition damage is lower, but they also introduced the ability to spike conditions. Even burn guardian mains can’t deny that them landing their nearly instant burn burst is far too rewarding in terms of damage, even moreso than landing a power burst in many cases. My guardian, who I exclusively run marauder/zerker on, can land about 6-8k whirls, depending on the amount of might I generated. Just activating torch 4 and chains>smite and then whirling with GS and then activating VoJ on the last hit nets me nearly 3-4k+ burn ticks for around kitten . This, generally, isn’t a hard combo to land and can happen VERY quickly if you’re using a rage sigil. If you’ve memorized what stunbreakers your opponent could be carrying and if they’ve been used, usually this would be an instant down.

Erindriel.2351:

“Burst condition”

Do you understand the irony of your statement?

Quote of 2015.

Burning is crazy, but at least the elite specs are going to be crazier.

Have some faith op, Anet will balance this soon™.

Servers are probably a little dodgy ATM. I’m suspecting that one of the reasons they did the HoT beta (especially right after they announce f2p) was because they expected a lot of veterans to return and needed to stress test the server’s capacity. Give it some time, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened :P.

Uh, because thieves would insta end the match….? Portal with mesmer? Why even fight on spirit watch? Turn it into a race mode and create a linear track with obstacles and shielded spawn points. Make it like CTF, but keep the objective in the center.

One and a half minutes per kill. I hope it was worth it, OP :P.

And those classes would love to have your blocks.

Aktium.9506:

Malediktus.9250:

Aktium.9506:

Reaper will get Champion Beyblade for sure.

Really? I hope you are trolling

Of course. I also happen to know that the Dare Devil title will be Champion Shoe.

Don’t forget champion moonman for druid.

D/D ele is weak to chill and poison uptime. If you can range them/avoid their fire, that’ll take you a long way as well. Necro is the weakest class in the game, since they can’t escape, can’t block, can’t invuln. They basically rely on tons of HP to survive, or they get rekt. Warrior, assuming not shoutbow, then they have similar weaknesses to eles, is blind spam. That’s why a properly played thief or guardian will 9/10 shut a power warrior down. Hell, you could even stand toe to toe with a rampage warrior for as long as your cooldowns would allow.

Reaper isn’t OP if you don’t fight them on their terms :P.

Simple tips:
- don’t hit them while they have spectral armor up
- kite them.
- can’t kite them? Burst their life force down and CC the hell out of them when they’re not shrouded. Usually, if you do this right, they’ll pop spectral armor. If that’s the case, refer to tip #1.
- reaper, like every other GS build, suffers from ridiculously telegraphed attacks. Guards, engis and warriors can block their crap. If you don’t have a shield on warr, use some mobility to steer clear. Thieves, mesmers, engis, and eles all have the option of quickly getting the hell out of there.
- bait their gapclosers cuz they’re slow without them.
- if you’re +1ing them, keep some distance so they don’t leech life force off you. If you have no range, drop a burst and make some space, even tag out with your team mate.

…..hold on. Slow and tanky with good DPS. Sounds a lot like another build that’s been around for ages. Wait…..waaaaaaiiit……IT SOUNDS LIKE MEDI GUARD.

tl;dr if you can kill a medi guard, you can kill a reaper.

On a side note, on my P/P thief, I once kited this soldier amulet reaper across half of ToSS before managing to kill him. Fun times, people, fun times.

You know, you dropped a gem I think you almost entirely overlooked. Thief survivability was always all about smart movement and timing. How’s about we introduce a true “duelist” trait line. Before you all explode about how mesmer already has one, that’s all centered around their magical bs. What I’m thinking of is a trait line that’d bolster sword’s capabilities. Imagine if you were to time your auto attack to match the exact moment the enemy’s attack connects with you so that you could parry it. If you successfully parry, the attack (if physical) is blocked. If the attack is magical, the attack glances. If your third attack in your auto chain parries an attack, that attack is reflected with 50% increase in damage (like, you parry a backstab and end up insta killing the enemy thief, or warriors, guardians, and reapers would have to think about when and how the setup their GS bursts).

Just a rough idea.

Path of deception made me lol. Make it drop a translucent wooden training dummy/log for extra keks. Aside from that, I like this suggestion. Only issue is, I’m not sure whether or not this is the right direction, but it makes a little more sense than what we have currently.

Warrior weak. I loled.

@OP

As far as most builds go, the new changes let you have your cake and eat it too. Guardians getting to pick up their medi traits AND all their virtue traits AND still have a whole tree left over. Theives getting everything in one build (not calling it op, relax). Its dumbed down in the sense that one build will give you basically everything you’d want, but to say its limiting would be wrong IMO.

Idk if someone said this already but you have nearly 4x the games spent on ele than you do with the other classes. I can roll a mesmer now and play 1 game and say that my guardian (who I started out with as my first char ever) is my worst when in reality, it isn’t true.

As for the ele hate, roll with it. You know you’re doing it for dailies, so don’t sweat it. If you main it….

-saltsaltsaltsalt-

Easy solution. Have them slam their staff into the ground and have it do all the light pulsing and the noise.

Brother, I’m certain a crapload of guardians would trade dragonhunter’s bs for druid (assuming druid is supporty).

You missed on the fact that a ranger’s long bow has better range.

Rapid fire vs true shot. True shot is a reskin of pin down minus the conditions. On its own, its far too easy to dodge, but its a great baiting tool.

Stealth arrow vs projectile destruction. Stealth, nuff said.

Knockback arrow vs vigor symbol. Now, the knockback arrow is veeeeery potent, but one shouldn’t forget that dragon hunters get that kitten passively too. The aoe vigor makes this one of the most powerful symbols available to guardian (and if traited for) can be both a ridiculously powerful offensive and defensive tool. When you consider all that can be done with the symbol and the fact that guardian still gets to knock people back, the symbol wins by a looooooong shot.

Ranger barrage vs dragonhunter barrage. The ranger barrage is more flexible while less potent and vice versa for the dragonhunter.

Here’s the issue though, you can’t just compare weapon on weapon. I can see that you’re trying to reach a general conclusion because dealing with all of the specifics would make this conversation more complex and harder to deal with, but you don’t actually have to go that deep into it.

Let’s take assumed meta builds when the xpac comes out. You got your usual lb/GS power ranger with their usual setup (I’m hoping a more experienced player could bring up more in depth points on these) and then you have your lb/hammer guardian (some might choose GS, but I feel like hammer is stronger here). The guardian rolls with mediations, valor/virtues/dragon hunter (or could swap virtues out for zeal or honor, but virtues is just too good). What does the guardian have access to? 8k of more or less on demand heals (not counting shelter here because shelter is used for the block primarily) with loads of condition cleansing, three decent gap closing abilities, two decent gap opening abilities, a good chunk of damage mitigation, better armor but less HP. In terms of CC, he’s got that by the kitten (lb 1,2,3 within less than 600 range is a knock back), lb 1 is a cripple, lb 5 is a straight root/ward. Hammer gives you an immobilize, a knock back and another ward. If traited for, if I recall correctly, wings can cripple when you land on an enemy and deal some decent damage, which is a great way to start with your hammer lockdown.

As far as dragonhunter vs lb ranger goes, I’m afraid lb ranger will officially die when the xpac comes out, since hambow dragonhunter is just so much more mechanically rich and can do so much alone and for his party. I’m fairly certain that when the xpac drops, the new specs will dominate the meta not because of sheer power, but rather because of how complete they are as a class. I’m guessing druid will knock bunker guard out entirely, so guardian players may swap to ranger and vice versa, but as you said op, time will tell.

Then I must be wrong. Anyone care to add to my original post to make it right or should I just drop it entirely?

Odd, it works for me.

You aim the shells at yourself or an ally, not an enemy. Why would you try cleansing an enemy? When you need to secure a stomp or cleanse some condis, drop the shell and fire away. The shot cleaves for godsake. Your aim/net can’t be so bad that you can’t land a few shots on yourself/team mates.

Also, I’m not calling anyone out. A lot of new players don’t understand how fields and finishers interact. This was more a PSA than anything, but some people can’t help being condescended kitten at times, right?

Elxdark.9702:

SlayerSixx.5763:

Elxdark.9702:

wut I’m still hunting mesmers and even easier than pre-patch.

The only ones that I hate are those infinite pu stealthed s/t kittens.

Thief complaining about perma stealth? Woah, that’s trippy.

I play s/d, no stealth here.

Also yes thieves do have perma stealth which makes them perma useless too, while mesmers have a lot of stealth and still do a lot of damage with great survivability.

Anyway I won’t even care to discuss with people who are biased about their class, so I will say just one thing. Enjoy while it lasts.

Woah buddy, I don’t even have 5 matches on my mesmer.

You decided between perma stealth or a kittenton of teleports/evades. Seems like its the same thing to me.

I won’t argue the difference in survivability between a mesmer and a thief, but in terms of mobility, thief wins by a long shot. The DPS and CC is exactly the same (in fact, thief is still better at both than mesmer).

People are having trouble vs mesmer and I get thief isn’t where it used to be, but the last class you should have trouble with is mdsmer.

So on mortar4 we get a blind. Now, I was expecting it to be a dark field, but I figured being able to blast tons of team wide stealth from 1500 range would be a little op, but to make matters worse is that its a light field…..

Or is it a bad thing?

Mortar1 is a 100% projectile finish, meaning each shot through a field has a special effect. Since you can manually target your shots and the shots themselves have a sizeable aoe, you can actually a catch a good amount of targets with one shot if you aim it right.

^all this is fine and well. Very common knowledge. Why is this important? I’m sure a couple of you have already caught on, but for the newbies, here it is….

Mortar 1 through mortar 4’s light field cleanses conditions on every. single. shot. How’s that for engi cleansing guys?

Elxdark.9702:

wut I’m still hunting mesmers and even easier than pre-patch.

The only ones that I hate are those infinite pu stealthed s/t kittens.

Thief complaining about perma stealth? Woah, that’s trippy.

Well, the only ranged spec I can imagine the works nicely would probably be GS/Staff mesmer. Their whole shtick revolves around keeping range and and kiting while doing their usual burst. Staff ele would be an option too, but it only really works well with cele and you’d basically be a bunker instead of a DPSer. Engi would fit the bill too, actually.

-resists Isis jokes about bearded norn/humans reking everything-

That said, I think warrior rifle should lean more towards marksmanship rather than spray. Timing a few choice hits since, honestly, warrior feel a smidge more mechanically superior than most classes. The only other class that needed a higher than normal amount of technical skill up until jun23 was mesmer, but then they became face roll.

Have it use a mixture of soft CC and minor, single shot bursts with varying requirements leading into varying outcomes. Basically, play off of kill shot’s vibe. Let there be a skill that allows you to punish a target for creating distance, where the shot grows in power and reduces in CD the further your target is from the shooter. Let there be a skill plays off of fierce shot and other sources of vulnerability that dazes if the target is hit while they’re vulnerable. This shot would last long enough to give the warrior time to set 70-80% of kill shot up and give the target half a second to dodge before getting annihilated. This would also be a great dodge/stun break baiting technique which would pair quite nicely with a bulls charge+100b GS burst. This would also give warrior the ability I believe every class should have, a proper ranged option. Melee doing more damage is all good and well, but you need to have a reliable range DPS option in my opinion. With changes like this, warrior could partially fill ranger’s role (ranger would need some changes too, along with almost the entire game) of off-point DPS and still have some gas in the tank for if they need to tango with someone on the point.

sephiroth.4217:

SlayerSixx.5763:

But if your hiding in stealth all day, you’re not getting kills. If you aren’t getting kills, you aren’t going to win. Camp stealth all day if it makes you happy, but that’s just sad and boring.

Survival mode is survival, not death match lol…

All you would need to do is stealth all day, wait for everyone else to kill eachother and instagib the last one standing to win… Everyone would most likely be thief or mesmer.

Thing is, you aren’t actually scoring points. We could add a snowballing effect that allows a person on a killing streak to generate a minor stat boost each time he kills someone, similar to the animal buffs on niflhel. Make it reward active players of the mode. There are tons of ways you could discourage stealth camping.

Or we could have the map behave like the maze in maze runner and have it rotate every one minute and then basically calling a target on everyone’s head that puts them on the minimap and forces a 10s reveal to keep players from accidentally/purposely avoiding each other. Players who collude will suffer some sort of MMR penalty. Add in a little twist at the end when there are only two people left. Give them some sort of a timer with an auto kill debuff that will proc after a certain amount of time to kill them both at the same time and give the win to the guy in third place if they don’t get the job done in less than half of the time remaining on the clock (could potentially lead to some very close calls if matches drag on and the debuff gives them like 30s to off each other, but then you’d see some serious try hardiness with all of the CDs being popped).

Funny thing is, engineers complain that their rifle feels more like a shotgun than a rifle. If this goes through, “rifle” won’t actually exist and anet should just start tossing new skins around for the two classes.

Also, what happens to volley? Rifle for warrior would basically turn into an ultra rapid fire machine.

On what planet is rapid fire better than w.e a good warrior can put out on his own? Like, lets not talk about rampage for a second. Practically every warrior GS ability can do 5k+ on a crit, while being incredibly mobile when doing it and god forbid they bait your stunbreaks and lock you down with a bulls charge + 100b. When properly done, GS/Hammer is insanity on wheels. Now, that still isn’t stopping warrior from getting rekt by all of the stealthlords and immortal eles, but even without rampage warrior is still a more reliable class than ranger. WITH a properly timed rampage (just got a lil mass invis, or an engi tossed elixir s, or some shadow refuge, or people are focus firing your friendly bunker guardian) lives get rekt. People talk about how easy it is to avoid rampage and you’re right, it is. Thing is though, you can’t kill em in direct combat like you can with some specs vs lich, so that means a cool 20s of points in the warrior’s team’s favoyr.

As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather have a warrior fighting on my team than a ranger.

I’m assuming you’re looking for a general answer, since you didn’t ask in any of the specific sub-forums. If its a general answer, then yes. The games always really nice. If you’re interested in WvW or sPvP, stay the hell away. Unless you’re a mesmer or elementalist, you’re in for heartbreak/rage.

Well you know, if I strike at the hinges or the bonds between the logs, it should technically be considered a crit. Anet should totally allow everything to be crittable, for lols sake.

My suggestion? Ele, as a class, is fine. In fact, as a class, they need some buffs. As has been said a million times, D/D is the only viable spec, and that’s with specific traits too. My suggestion is to scrap celestial entirely. There’s already a bunker power amulet, let there be a bunker condition amulet (settler is good, but the lack of vitality is troubling for low vitality classes). Since D/D ele was all about blasting for might and bunkering, they’ll compensate for their low power and actually still deal decent burn damage from the get go, which would probably make the burn monstrously high, but its one condition to deal with. They’d be able to bunker with a good amount of toughness, vitality and HP. The choice, though, lies in their decision between power and condition damage. They (no one) should be able to choose both AND still bunker.

Tl;Dr make a cvth amulet.

Alright, that isn’t fair. As against conditions as I am (I don’t run them, ever) a BURN guardian isn’t OP. So what if he hits you with 10 stacks instantly? Let it be 50 and, for what its worth, a competent player will STILL be able to cleanse it with ease.

Your thought process should be something along these lines:

You see guardian. You see torch. He starts attacking. You saw radiant fire proc/skill activation. You see he raises his hand. You know what’s coming next.

Two things happen after that point

You either dodge the flame tosses, where in which case, he’s either auto attacking with scepter or swapping to his second weapon set (which usually isn’t a second torch), and he’ll be reduced to trying to burn you with passive VoJ procs and JI for another ten seconds. Does that mean he isn’t dealing damage during that time frame? No, of course not, but you’ve just dodged his burst. When can he retry his burst? In about 10 seconds. What can you do this time? Opening the gap means that he’ll most likely be reduced to his pitiful scepter and his, again, incredibly telegraphed torch attacks.

You didnt dodge and now he’s laying 10+ stacks of burning and you’re suffering 3-5k burn ticks. All you need is quite literally ONE cleanse to mitigate his entire burst. You can’t have honestly built with 0 cleanse. Guard doesn’t have enough hard CC to stall you long enough for the burn to do its work, so what’s your excuse for not cleansing?

There are things that we should be complaining about, but the burn change was more PvE-centric than anything else and all of these short duration burns are actually easier for low cleanse builds/classes (engi/mesmer), because now you can’t just tack the burning onto them and kite and have to actively apply it. The way I see it, burn guardian takes meditation guard’s simple burst combos and gives them range at the cost of having them countered by yet another thing (cleanse) which is available by the bucketload vs any decent comp.