the mitigation ramp from HoT morphed the meta to how it currently is, not conditions or boons
The current boon duration builds are a direct result of HoT and subsequent patches. It was impossible for a single character to roll over 100% boon duration without any outside help prior to these patches.
The condi situation just exploded thanks to HoT. In part due to Shatter Condi Chrono builds, Lotus Trained thieves and a variety of other fast condi application builds.
The meta is very, very poor for competitive play right now. If a skirmish crew is running Durability runes, prepare to send in 3x their numbers or more to bring them down. Add on a Condi Nuke Necro and watch 10+ players melt in a couple seconds because they can stack a load of condi unlike ever before.
Hibergate
There is no Functional difference between having 4 seconds of invulnerability up as you step on my trap over being in stealth for 4 seconds as you step on my trap.
If a player could only go stealth about 10s out every minute in a fight, pretty much nobody would be complaining. If a player was limited to 10s out of very minute stealthed and doing damage, few would complain.
Absolutely nobody on here has justified why someone should be able to damage and remain hidden most of a fight. It is beyond stupid for a competitive mechanic.
Condi chrono is trash, it’s only good for duels. It can’t chase people let alone kill them in the time you can kill with a thief.
All you virtually have to do to a condi chrono is walk away and there’s nothing they can do to keep up with you, sorta like getting ganked by a condi necro, or some other slow class with limited mobility and condi ramp up.
Thiefs are far superior gankers than condi chrono, they can escape outnumbered situations far more easily, and the power of a thief goes up the more thieves are around in gank squads to share stealth and basilisk venoms to reduce enemy response times.
Thieves and scrappers and mongoloid zerker warriors are far better gankers for roaming.
Where does thief shine? Killing other thieves from stealth, killing crappy builds, +1 a fight and catching other players hurt. The class which once upon a time was a fearful 1v1 class has become a vulture. Its main purpose now is to feed on the carrion left over from the work of others.
Most other roaming classes don’t even worry about an even number against thieves any longer. I actually look forward to seeing them close cause I know 99/100 times that fight ends with a dead thief or three. Condi Mesmers/Chronos: Thief runs most of the time and dies if they are not fast on the cleanse (prior to plex nerf that didn’t even save them). Bunker Scrapper: Thief runs or stands around wondering what to do. Bunker/Hybrid Druid: thief might as well pee up wind. Boon Duration Warrior: Just don’t even engage cause that fight will end badly for a thief pretty much every time.
Its not impossible to play well on a thief but it generally requires exceptional skill to be able to deal with decent players on other builds. Same great player running thief, will utterly dominate on a stronger 1v1 class. Seriously the class basically has only one effective weapon set left and it is the same counter play every decent roamer has seen thousands of times. I feel like a pre-cog fighting one now and I am so rarely surprised by their attack pattern.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
It indeed works in WvW. Glad for the fix.
Wtf are you talking about? When you get a heap of conditions on you that means the person just blew half their cooldowns to do it. It’s not instant. The condition build ignorance on these forums is insane. It’s like people think if you’re a condition build you don’t even have to press buttons. You just look at the screen and people die.
I drop 5 stacks confusion, 2 stacks torment, 5 stacks bleed, 6 stacks poison and cripple in less than a second using only one utility. Most of the time that applies before they even see me. The reset for most of that is 20s and that is just the opener.
My Condi Shatter Chrono can apply ridiculous amounts of condi and then reset back so that I have most of my cooldowns reset. It is a continual stream of condi application with hardly any cooldown with a big chunk of the fight completely invisible.
If you don’t think condi is a real problem in small scale, you must either play a very heavy condi removal class, play condi yourself lacking perspective or don’t duel/roam much.
I don’t know why I try in vain to convince people that condition builds really aren’t that amazing but at least some people are experienced enough to agree.
Because direct damage has strong counter play. Condi damage is just a matter of dropping the condi until their cleanse is gone which is ridiculously easy in WvW. It certainly doesn’t hurt that a handful of classes can apply condi without crits allowing them to remain extremely bunker.
Only a few classes can keep up in small scale and they can barely punch their way out of a paper bag. Only the Boon Duration Warrior is an exception and it is broken for this and other reasons.
I agree condi should have better counter play but in the meantime nobody should have 80% or more immunity from condi damage in a fight while maintaining very high DPS.
I reiterate the original point… why should any class be able to deliberately damage another player and remain in stealth? What the kitten purpose does it serve outside of troll BS?
It makes no sense on any level that players can leverage stealth and effectively let minions, traps, etc grind down an opponent while basically only one class has an effective counter.
Me and my guild can find a use for pretty much anything (with limits). Just never found a good enough warrior or rev to run with before, so can’t speak for those.
Boon Duration Warriors with Durability are stupid good right now especially in skirmish. A bunker Tempest with the same Boon Duration along with three stance Warriors will have no fear taking on 3x their numbers.
I don’t think I noticed it in WvW but will check next time I am in.
It does irritate me that we are still seeing numerous changes NOT in the patch notes even if the change is a good one.
The confusion comes in when a skill says 100% or 50% endurance recovery. For a Dare Devil that means 66% or 33% respectively. The percentage gains are fixed numbers behind the scenes and the descriptions are misleading.
So a 50% endurance recovery is really one dodge, 100% two dodges. Makes sense on a non standard thief, somewhat confusing on a Dare Devil.
lol how pathetic, thief counters power shatter mesmer. Stop cluttering advice threats with your whiny pity parties.
Daredevils are among the most popular classes for roaming in WvW. Good luck disengaging from zerglings as a mesmer while trying to roam. Hope your blink and decoy take you far because that’s all you got.
Thief damage also doesn’t vanish into thin air the moment some aoe starts being used since illusions are made of wet toilet paper.
Condi Shatter Chronos nuke most thief builds in duels. It isn’t even close outside of a substantially more skilled player on a thief and even then it is usually a draw. They are nearly impossible to burst or chip down and their condi clear as well as their constant AoE heals are fantastic. They also have fantastic stealth up time… I constantly see players standing around for 10s or more trying to figure out which way I went.
Dare Devils… yeah players like them because they run and kill weak or injured players. There are so few scary thieves left… so very very few. Even in sPvP, we hardly ever see any thieves in upper sPvP or ranked play.
I have played 3k hours in WvW on a thief (over 6k total)… call it QQ if you want but right now the thief is at best a marginal class good for +1, running and killing newbs. The days of utter destruction from the class are well behind us.
Neither… the ICD killed D/D. The AA nerf and ICD on Hook Strike was a blow to Staff as well. Basically D/P is the only weapon set a thief has that is still “meta”. Even it felt the ICD Backstab change pretty hard.
There are variants of condi P/P, non-stealth S/P (lots of practice) and a couple others but they are like the unicorn… often heard about but rarely seen. At this point the best weapon set a thief has is to log out their thief and log in a Mesmer or Warrior.
Take Devourer for example, a 2 second immobilize on a 40 second cooldown. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to slot something like that? It’s like having one less utility slot and a waste of time just pressing the button to activate it. Warriors get a 4 second ranged immobilize on a 16 second cooldown, that’s double the effect and less than half the cooldown, yet still no warrior slots it.
There was a time that some attacks with the venom would apply the venom to every player effected and only count off one stack. Devourer in the right party makeup once upon a time was very powerful in skill groups or well constructed zergs allowing for mass immobilize coupled with mass chills. I do not believe it works that way any longer.
How to master the thief:
Log out, create a new character known as the “mesmer”, find any decent stealth shatter condi build and enjoy face roll kills on typical WvW players.
My point here is that you must be exceptional to be decent on a thief while being average is pretty great on some other classes.
The crappy combat log and the inability to save it to file for analysis has long hid I am sure countless bugs in the damage calculator.
Tried it again… it just killed Backstab and completely crushed anything left of D/D. Even staff took a hit and with their AA nerfs that weapon set is under performing as well.
Not much left in this class aside from killing weak or injured players.
The first boon duration warrior you run into in WvW will likely roll you while you wonder how to even get through their defensive sustain.
Go onto a node with a decent Tempest (or any point bunker) and let me know how well that damage is working for you.
Basically the thief is great against crappy players or injured ones. Run into a decent one and they have seen all your tricks and have answers for all of them. Best you can do is grab your ankles and hope that is enough of a distraction for another player to get the job done.
In addition to the comments above, Warrior (or any class running the Durability, Gnashblade, Commander armor, Concentration) Boon Duration reaching upwards of 100% is problematic as well.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
I believe Anet meant for Resistance to be a short relief to buy time for counter play not an actual shut down ability.
Imagine a 12s Invuln every 20s, followed by a 12s Invuln every 60s then a 2s Invuln every 20s. That is what some Warriors are procing right now with Resistance. If Invulns did that, the nerf outcry would be deafening.
I find it interesting that the 1 second ICD used between leaps in a smoke field to prevent stealth stacking via DP (which is the real issue here) would have done a better job preventing this if used here,. I
The ICD doesn’t effect Heart Seeker only the AA stealth attack (Backstab, Hook Strike, etc). D/P is just as stealthy as ever. Even if it did, they can easily switch to Bound which is actually a cheaper initiative stealth.
Umm, perplexity is 5 stacks, not eight.
Also, it can ONLY be applied to a motionless player. Caltrops on dodge is 90 radius, pulses three times, each pulse is one stack of bleed. You literally have to be afk to get hit with the maximum stacks of bleed here.
If you literally just cleanse twice and dodge once this build does basically no damage.
The steal applies 5 confusion and heal applies 3 all without any reveal. Both of these can be used on a moving player. Needle trap does 3 bleed and poison, they are also immobilized allowing for the utility Caltrops to tack on a minimum of 3 more bleed and if they are in the full immobilize it can easily be 12+ stacks. Then comes the dodge caltrops. Next we add on weapon swap for another 3 bleeds.
I am probably missing some of the rotation here but basically they can apply 20+ stacks of condi without procing a reveal in a couple seconds. The confusion is particularly problematic as removing 8 stacks can deal a considerable amount of damage. Since none of it procs an on hit, passive removals do squat.
Oh and they can rotate that every 24s. If a player doesn’t run, have an immense amount of condi clear or running engi/scrapper build with the right traits/skills their goose is cooked. This also assumes a class can purge them all at once.. many classes simply do not have the capability some have very little without being able to hit something.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
Yes and the hundred or so more items that should be in there but aren’t… since we asking for items we will probably never get… how about the ability to save it out.
Player to combat log: What killed me?
Combat log: I don’t know… why can’t you figure it out?
It would have been best to see YB down there. They would have been winning but not nearly as much at least from what I have seen.
It’s because it only apply the stealth once the heartseeker animation is finished. Bounce on smoke field also have the same effect: you see the thief rolling then vanishing once the roll animation is over. Game mechanics problem I’d say.
It is an order of events. The damage is applied before the field effect is applied. It isn’t a problem just the order the events are applied.
The upside to this is that the thief is actually vulnerable until the end of the skill. This allows for easy interrupts. I cannot tell you how many thieves I kill by interrupt when they are sitting in their smoke field waiting for a “free” hit when I close.
Actually, conditions are WORSE in ZvZ warfare. All it takes is a well placed condi-bomb and you’ve taken out around 3-5 members of the opposing zerg or slowed them down enough to take them out. That adds up fast, this is why you see organized zergs or guild groups having at least 1 Rev on every squad party to deal with conditions on the party using Resistance.
The main problem with Boonshare is that there’s pretty much no hardcap on the timer for boons. Implement hardcaps on the boon timers, you’ve immediately cut off the head of the boonshare beast.
There is no way condi is worse in zergs than small scale. Condis utterly dominate small scale thanks to a few classes that can apply faster than it is cleared. The Plex nerf slowed that down but surely didn’t stop it.
The vast majority of zerg v zerg is still pirate ship from necros, eles and long range attacks. Even the condi deaths that do occur are often from Corrupt Boon which is more an indictment of Boon Sharing than direct condi classes. I hardly ever see a condition I throw on a player survive more than a second or two in zerg.
You didn’t notice warriors locked in the basement for a long time until recently? Nobody has called warriors “Anet’s pet” for a loooooooong time.
Warriors are a feast or famine class. Any time the meta brings external changes that allows them to bridge their sustain downtime, the class becomes a beast. Right now it is probably one of the strongest classes in the game at least certain variations. I was even smacked with 20 stacks of burning from one warrior last night… one tick nearly killed me.
Bunker Tempest with D/W is very viable and in a team nearly unkillable. Ours easily tanks 3v1 and will often drop 20+ stacks of group might before a fight. Stay close to one and conditions are irrelevant.
Warrior
More specifically Boon Duration Stance Warriors with Durability runes and Damage Reduction food. It is stupid OP at the moment. Enjoy the 5 digit Eviscerates while being bunker and supporting your teammates with boons.
The only way you’re getting ticks from conditions from somebody in stealth is if they were already applied before the person entered stealth, or from something that doesn’t cause direct damage that you stepped in. Doesn’t make much sense that a person bleeding would cause somebody to go out of stealth if they were already bleeding before said person went in stealth.
Traps, Caltrops, runes, sigils, clones, pets, on and on. The Perma Stealth Trapper Thief build can torch a player with a ridiculous amount of condi. Now that Plex has changed to an on heal, that build is now effective. It can drop 8 stacks of confusion, dozen stacks of bleed, poison and torment on a player in a couple seconds without them ever seeing the thief.
More to the point it can all be applied to a motionless player. Condi Stealth Mesmers aren’t much better either. Passive damage application is bad enough but when it prevents counter play from most classes it is just a broke mechanic.
uhm
because cleanse existshow is this thread even a thing
I guess condi isn’t unbalanced in small scale. I also guess it is completely fair that entire sets of builds can basically out condi a players cleanses and hardly be seen or not seen at all.
Why should a player be able to damage another player with nearly no options for counter play?
The only way you’re getting ticks from conditions from somebody in stealth is if they were already applied before the person entered stealth, or from something that doesn’t cause direct damage that you stepped in. Doesn’t make much sense that a person bleeding would cause somebody to go out of stealth if they were already bleeding before said person went in stealth.
Traps, Caltrops, runes, sigils, clones, pets, on and on. The Perma Stealth Trapper Thief build can torch a player with a ridiculous amount of condi. Now that Plex has changed to an on heal, that build is now effective. It can drop 8 stacks of confusion, dozen stacks of bleed, poison and torment on a player in a couple seconds without them ever seeing the thief.
More to the point it can all be applied to a motionless player. Condi Stealth Mesmers aren’t much better either. Passive damage application is bad enough but when it prevents counter play from most classes it is just a broke mechanic.
The problem is that conditions are far too powerful, and everybody runs them. In WvW without resistance, you often get 5+ conditions on you. Cleanse them, and you have them back on you in less than 10 seconds.
<…> Resistance IS the counter to conditions.
Conditions in small scale are strong but in skirmish/large scale they are mostly an afterthought. This goes back to the fundamentally flawed all or nothing design of the condi system. In this case two wrongs don’t make a right. Resistance is an “elite” directly accessible by a few and really only one class that can abuse it like no other (Warrior). Creating more all or nothing systems just creates more balance issues… lots more.
Sounds more like boonshare needs to be nerfed.
Boon Duration should have a soft cap like most stats should in an MMO. The higher the amount the less effective each point becomes. No build in the game should be able to double the duration of boons making boon share crazy OP.
Pack runes provide 175 Power and 125 Precision, so the stat gain is the same. They also add Might, Fury and Swiftness and the duration boost is for Swiftness, not Boons in general, and the 4th rune CD just got a 50% increase (20 to 30). The 3 boons granted by the 25% on hit proc last much less time than the ones granted by Pack runes, so the difference in CD seems warranted.
20% boon duration is equivalent to 135 extra stat points. This rune set is giving around 435 stat points and AoE Regen, Prot, Resist. Add on that a warrior can easily gain double the boon duration meaning they sit on 5s of Protection and Regen with 2s of Resist every 20s. That is over 40% dmg reduction for at least a third of a fight. They can get 100% up time on that just being around a couple other bunkers with the same runes.
They nerfed Scrapper runes because it gave 7% dmg reduction at close range. This build runs 6 times that for a large chunk of the fight at any range. Pack which gives lessor boons IMO got a nerf as well. Exuberance might be close in stats on a Vitality build but it doesn’t have any defensive boons much less AoE versions of them.
Durability is one of the most OP runes that has ever entered the game and that includes pre-nerf Plex.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
This age old problem of dps warriors still being tanky has nothing do with durability runes really. It’s the healing signet in combination with passive traits. It’s always been that.
Prior to HoT and post HoT changes, long Resistance wasn’t part of their Heal and they had no easy way to extend Stance boons. Durability, Gnashblade, Concentration and Commander armor effectively double boon duration while keeping a warrior squarely in the bunker category.
My out of the box version typically fights with 20+ stacks of might, vigor, speed, fury and for most of the fight has stab, regen, prot, retal, quickness and resist running. Add on blocks/invulns… it is a beast that only gets better if around another class throwing off boons often from Durability.
No. THat would basically destroy all stealth, period, across all game modes. We may as well not have it then.
How is this any different than doing direct damage from stealth? IMO no player should be able to hit another player with damage without being revealed. It makes zero sense to me that players can basically proxy damage other players and remain hidden.
There will always be meta builds but it does seem the disparity between strong meta builds and average ones are at a near impasse. There are just so many builds now that I completely avoid because I know they are heavy on passive defense and/or AoE spam.
Yep. I have two machines I play on and prior to this latest update they hadn’t crashed in GW2 64bit in months. Now I cannot get through 3 or so hours without a crash.
Resistance should be called Immunity since that is what it is. Given how strong boon duration warriors have become, the up time on resistance is typically 70% or more of a fight.
Resistance should work more like toughness does to power or have it lower the duration. No game should have long running abilities that completely shut down enemy offense… especially ones that can be applied passively. This applies to invulnerability as well. That should never happen passively and IMO it should just stack another 1k or so onto the armor not be a complete invuln.
I dislike nerfs but the Warrior Defensive Sustain with Durability runes is simply OP. Not just a little OP but seriously OP. A big chunk of their sustain is completely passive allowing the build to take high damage armor sets and still be more bunker than most other classes. The damage window on a heavy armor class with relatively high spike damage shouldn’t be a handful seconds between blocks and invulns.
I know Guardians have a similar, even better bunker capability but they trade off damage to get there. The same can be said for Tempests.
This mostly revolves around Stance builds that often have 80% or longer boon duration. This also hits home with just how OP Durability runes are: 175 toughness, 125 vitality, 20% boon duration AND AoE Protection, Resistance, Regeneration. Name ANY other rune set that bumps stats that high or is even close. If Rune of the Scrapper needed a nerf, Durability needs the nuclear option.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
Every decent player with a pet, clone, etc knows they are completely safe when they use them as a buffer to the thieves P/P medium range attacks. This is a fine strategy against long range attacks (many of which have piercing options) or classes that have built in defensive sustain, but a P/P thief has to get position, manage enemy defensive sustain and deal with a horrible AA all while being fairly brittle.
I grow weary of all the nerfs endured on this class but the nuclear nerf on P/P just sucked the life out of the game for me. It has been a year or so since they removed Ricochet and hardly a day goes by where I struggle to understand why they did it or how it improved the game in any way.
Condi damage or application should proc a reveal. No class should be able to continually damage a player without proc’ing a reveal. It is a ridiculously stupid mechanic and how condi gets a pass is beyond me.
Mesmers do it, thieves do it, even Ranger pets do it…
Signed, begging for this change since release.
CnD should be unblockable and cost less if it doesn’t land. That won’t fully fix D/D since it completely lacks utility but it should at the very least perform nearly as well as Shadow Shot.
I haven’t run SA in a long time as I found it lacking particularly since the Acro trait rework. With the new ICD on stealth attack, it is really taking a beating.
I am thankful more thieves haven’t abandoned the line in WvW though. The non-stealth variants are far more dangerous.
Another option is to pair BP back with FA since T3 seems to be well balanced right now. That would boost pop a bit in T2 and reduce some of the CD dominance.
Do any players even exist anymore in t4?
With the cost to transfer to T1 currently being 500 gems to join the “winning team”, I would not be surprised if the only inhabitants there are crickets and tumbleweed.
CD has queues most nights for hours on EBG. This pairing shouldn’t have a chance to move up, they should move up. If they (we) cannot hold their own in T3, they should enjoy being the kitten in that tier for a while.
I don’t think anyone is enjoying the T4 match outside of K-Train players.
That is how I read it but testing is problematic due to the relative rarity of the runes.
Last Refuge is appalling. Shadow Protector is absurd. Nothing in the GM Shadow Arts line feels or plays like a GM trait.
Vigorous Recovery is pointless once a player realizes how underwhelming Vigor is. Quick Pockets is an extra 3 init on a 9s weapon swap… Whopidity Doo!
Dare Devil… the only trait line with absolutely zero waste in it but of course that takes a HoT purchase.
I had hope from post HoT changes that were slowly elevating traits and decent general fixes that ANet was heading the thief to something more than a +1. Whew did this patch put the brakes on that.
Honestly, I don’t think I ever recovered from them gutting P/P. Still the most fun build I have ever played in GW2 and it was a marginal weapon set by most accounts. Oh well, back to Overwatch.
Venom Share builds might be hurting but BV spam is real. I was getting “stoned” all over the place last night. Its like everyone is carrying a pipe now and the thieves are dealing the stuff for free.
it affect staff hook strike too, if I missed on ppl too far away now I have to wait 1 sec and u know the server lag even if u are right next to them u get too far away error.
Been a while since I ran power thief but I dusted off my power gear and took a stroll… wow does that ICD suck. My timing was off and I was surely rusty but I was hurting from Hook Strike and Backstab misses. Evade, block, etc basically negates the attack as stealth quickly runs out particularly with Backstab since it is a positional attack.
Again I do not think it as bad as you suggest> I was toying with this in WvW last night and yes you can get that share on early in a fight but once the fight starts it rare to be able to load up multiple players. The limited range means you have to be very tight to your group.
I got lit up quite a few times last night from BV share. I don’t think a party would build around it but given its utility for a typical thief, I am definitely getting hit by it more often and from classes that normally don’t have access to free a long stun/root.
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