Guild Wars 2

Utility skills
[Arcane Blast]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 20 seconds
• Build up an orb arcane energy above you for 1 second before sending it at your foe. It blasts your target for critical damage.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage: 363
• Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (100%)
• Range: 1500
  • The delay represents how long the orb remains above the player before flying toward the target.
  • Current projectile size increased by 100%.

[Arcane Wave]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Conjure a ring of arcane energy around target area. After 1 second, the ring explodes, blasting foes in the area for critical damage.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage: 628
• Combo Finisher: Blast
• Radius: 360
• Range: 900
  • The ring floats just off the ground and highlights the area targeted by [Arcane Wave].
  • Delay ring shares its coloration with [Arcane Blast]’s projectile.

[Arcane Shield]

• Recharge lowered from 75 to 50 seconds.
• Duration lowered from 5 to 2 seconds.

[Glyph of Renewal]

• Cast-time reduced from 3¼ to 2½ seconds.
• Recharge reduced from 165 to 150 seconds.

[Glyph of Storms]

• Recharge reduced from 60 to 45 seconds.

[Mist Form]

• Recharge reduced from 75 to 60 seconds.
• Duration reduced from 3 to 2 seconds.
• Invulnerability reduced from 3 to 2 seconds.
• Now also cures immobilize, crippled and chill upon activation.
  • Now chains into another skill upon use: [Cold Front].

[Cold Front]

• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 5 seconds
• Dash in a target direction, chilling foes that you strike along the way.
• Damage: 33 (0.2)
• Chill: 2 seconds
• Evasion: ¾ seconds
• Range: 450
  • Warrior [Whirlwind Attack].

[Armor of Earth]

• Recharged reduced from 90 to 50 seconds.
• Stability reduced from 6 to 4 seconds.
• Protection reduced from 6 to 4 seconds.
• Duration reduced from 6 to 4 seconds.

[Lightning Flash]

• Recharge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.

[Cleansing Fire]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Recharge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.
• Cast-time increased from 0 to 1½ seconds.
• Channel a cleansing fire that pulses around you three times, damaging and burning nearby foes while cleansing 1 condition from yourself and nearby allies with each pulse. The final pulse knocks back nearby enemies.
• Damage (3x): 333 (0.3)
• Burning (3): 1 second
• Knock back: 240
• Radius: 240

Dagger main-hand skills
[Lightning Touch]

• Now attacks foes in a cone pattern in front of the player.
• Now hits up to 5 targets.

[Frozen Burst]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Detonate a chilling burst of ice at target location.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage: 140 (0.5)
• Chilled: 3 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Range: 600
  • The target area is coated with the [Frozen Ground] AoE model for 1 second before the [Frozen Burst] animation goes off.

Dagger off-hand skills
[Ride the Lightning]

• Recharge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.
• Recharge reduction on hit reduced from 50% to 33%.

[Updraft]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1½ seconds
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Gain swiftness and evade backwards on a gust of wind. The longer that you channel this skill, the more powerful your wind gust is when you release it.
• Swiftness: 10 seconds
• No channel: Cripple: 2 seconds: Radius: 180
• Full channel: Cripple: 4 seconds; Launch: 200 range; Radius: 180
• Evasion: 1 second
  • Base evasion distance increased from 180(?) to 600 range.
  • The evasion will trigger immediately upon skill activation if the button is not held down to channel. This makes the evasion similar to [Burning Retreat] in that it has a 0-second (instant) activation time.

Staff skills
[Lava Font]

• Tool-tip added: Delay: 1 second.

[Flame Burst]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 10 seconds
• Conjure an orb of flame at target location. After 1 second, the orb explodes, damaging and burning nearby foes.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage: 85 (0.3)
• Burning: 5 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Range: 1200

[Ice Spike]

• Tool-tip added: Delay: 2 seconds.
• Now inflicts 1 second of immobilize if it strikes a chilled foe.

[Lightning Surge]

• A ring of electricity appears around the target during the casting period.
• Cast-time reduced from 1½ seconds to 1¼ seconds.

[Gust]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Channel a gust of wind that strikes foes two times in rapid succession. The first gust strike rips up to 2 boons from foes that it hits. The second gust strike knocks back foes.
• Boons removed: 2
• Knock-back: 400
• Range: 600
  • [Healing Breeze] cone.
  • Hits up to 5 targets.

[Windborne Speed]

• Now also grants Super Speed for 2 seconds.

[Eruption]

• Tool-tip added: Delay: 3 seconds.

[Unsteady Ground]

• Now uses the same hit-detection as Guardian [Line of Warding].
  • As it stands, casting a [Line of Warding] over top of an enemy will immediately knock that enemy off of its area. This is not the case with [Unsteady Ground] and the two should be normalized.

[Shockwave]

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ to ½ second.
• Bleed stacks changed from 1 stack for 20 seconds to 3 stacks for 12 seconds.

ELEMENTALIST CHANGES
Scepter main-hand skills
[Lightning Strike] – named changed to Lightning Bolt (to diminish combat log confusion)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 6 seconds
• Strike foes at the target location with a lightning bolt.
• Damage: 403 (1.2)
• Delay: 1 second
• Radius: 120
• Range: 900
  • Now creates a red circle on the ground.
  • [Lightning Strike]’s original functionality remains the same for passive triggers such as swapping to Air Attunement with 15 into Air Magic or the RNG proc on Runes of Air (6/6).

NEW SKILL: [Lightning Orb] (scepter; air 3)

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Conjure a lightning orb at target location that periodically strikes foes in the area with an electrical burst.
• Damage: 279 (1.0)
• Damage pulse: 2 seconds
• Damage radius: 180
• Duration: 8 seconds
• Range: 900
  • This skill pulses 4 times total: the first pulse occurs 2 seconds after the lightning orb is cast and then again at each 2 second interval after that until its duration ends.
  • This skill chains into another skill upon completion: [Blinding Flash].

[Blinding Flash]

• Cast-time: 0
• Detonate your lightning orb in a blinding flash that briefly reveals stealthed foes.
• Blind: 5 seconds
• Revealed: 1 second
• Radius: 180
  • This skill prematurely ends [Lightning Orb]’s duration.

[Flamestrike]

• Now uses a projectile: bolt of orange fire that uses the Elementalist [Chain Lightning] projectile pathing and speed.

[Dragon’s Tooth]

• Now uses ground-targeting.
• Damage reduced from 756 (2.25) to 686 (2.25).
• Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds

[Phoenix]

• Cast-time increased from ¼ to ¾ second.
• This skill’s audio cue now also plays when the player first begins casting it in addition to when the projectile explodes and turns around.
• Now creates a red circle on the ground where the Phoenix projectile is targeted to explode and turn around back towards the caster.

[Shatterstone]

• Damage increased from 252 to 336 (1.2).
• Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds
• Now counts as an Ice Field (Duration: 2 seconds).

[Water Trident]

• Casting animation increased in size by 50%.
• Now counts as a Blast Finisher.

Focus off-hand
[Flamewall]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 20 seconds
• Create a wall of flame at target area that damages and burns foes that cross it.
• Damage: 111 (0.3)
• Burning: 2 seconds
• Duration: 8 seconds
  • Now chains into another skill: [Breath of Fire].

[Breath of Fire]

• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Cause your flamewall to rile up into a tall barrier of flames that foes cannot cross.
• Duration: 3 seconds
  • While this skill is active, the Flamewall riles into a tall wall of fire that acts similarly to the Guardian [Line of Warding].
  • This chain skill remains active for 8 seconds.
  • This chain skill has a cool-down completely separate from that of [Flamewall]. [Flamewall] will begin recharging the second that it is activated rather than after this chain skill chains back into [Flamewall].

[Fire Shield]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Envelop yourself in a shield of fire that burns foes and grants might each time you are struck (cool-down of 1 second per attacker). If you combo this skill within a fire field, you gain aegis and create a [Lava Font] at your location.
• Fire Shield duration: 5 seconds
• Burning: 1 second
• Might (1): 10 seconds
• Aegis: 5 seconds
• Combo Finisher: Whirl

[Freezing Gust]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 3¾ seconds
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Conjure gusts of freezing wind over target area that inflict chill and vulnerability. If a gust strikes a foe with more than 10 stacks of vulnerability, it immobilizes that foe.
• Damage per gust: 229 (1.0)
• Gust radius: 180
• Chill: 1 second
• Vulnerability (3): 8 seconds
• Immobilize: 1 second
• Spell duration: 4 seconds
• Radius: 360
• Range: 1200
  • This skill functions similarly to [Meteor Shower] in how it produces the wind gusts.
  • Wind gust models are circular whirls of air. They produce red circles and they have a 1-second delay period upon appearing before they deal damage and their effects.
  • Level 1 channel: 4 gusts (1 per second)
  • Level 2 channel: 8 gusts (2 per second)
  • Level 3 channel: 12 gusts (3 per second)

[Comet]

• Now uses ground-targeting.
• Damage increased from 239 (0.8) to 314 (1.0).

[Gale]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1½ seconds
• Recharge: 40 seconds
• Channel a cone of biting wind in front of you that blinds and cripples foes before knocking them down.
• Damage (4x): 320 (0.5)
• Blind (4): 1 second
• Cripple (4): 1 second
• Knock-down: 2 seconds
• Range: 600
  • This skill hits up to 3 targets.
  • The final damage tick is the tick that inflicts knock-down.
  • [Healing Breeze] cone

Staff skills
[Mark of Blood]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 8 seconds
• Inscribe a mark that pulses when triggered by a foe, bleeding foes and granting regeneration to allies.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage (3x): 333 (0.3)
• Regeneration (3): 2 seconds
• Bleeding (1 stack per pulse; 3 pulses total): 6 seconds
• Duration: 2 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Range: 1200
  • Now uses a ½-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while disabled or while activating another skill). This is similar to how [Lava Font] functions.
• Added delay: 1 second
  • Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle), emitting a red mist (same particle effect as the dust created from Elementalist [Eruption]), and then lingers for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, the mist will fade, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically as it does now.

[Chilblains]

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
• Now uses a ½-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while disabled or while activating another skill). This is similar to how [Lava Font] functions.
• Added delay: 1 second
  • Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle), emitting a blue mist (same particle effect as the dust created from Elementalist [Eruption]), and then lingers for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, the mist will fade, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically as it does now.

[Putrid Mark]

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
• Now uses a ½-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while disabled or while activating another skill). This is similar to how [Lava Font] functions.
• Added delay: 1 second
  • Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle), emitting a green mist (same particle effect as the dust created from Elementalist [Eruption]), and then lingers for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, the mist will fade, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically as it does now.

[Reaper’s Mark]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 2¼ seconds
• Recharge: 35 seconds
• Etch a mark into the ground at target location to trigger later. The longer you charge this skill, the more powerful it becomes.
• ¾ second channel: Damage: 92 (0.25); Fear: ½ second; Radius: 120
• 1½ second channel: Damage: 211 (0.5); Fear: 1 second; Radius: 180
• Full channel: Damage: 318 (1.0); Fear: 1 second; Radius: 240
• Range: 1200
  • While this skill does not display a red circle while channeling, its symbol is present on the ground and glows a violent, bright green.
  • After this skill finishes channeling, the mark appears on the ground with a red circle indicating its size according to how long it was channeled.
  • This skill chains into another skill upon completion: [Reaper’s Wrath].

[Reaper’s Wrath]

• Cast-time: 1 second
• Trigger your Reaper’s Mark.
  • The mark’s edges glow bright green when this skill is being activated.

Utility skills
[Signet of Spite]

• Cast-time increased from ¾ to 1 second.
• Active ability now uses a projectile: gold-tinted [Life Blast].

Traits
Dhuumfire (Spite – XI)

• This trait now triggers off of [Life Blast].
• Recharge increased from 10 to 15 seconds.
• Burning adjusted to 3-second duration in both PvE and PvP.

NECROMANCER CHANGES
Axe main-hand skills
[Rending Claws]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Cast out a whirling blade that inflicts vulnerability and returns to you.
• Damage: 159 (0.5)
• Vulnerability (1): 6 seconds
• Range: 900
  • Bright green-tinted [Vapor Blade] animation.

[Ghastly Claws]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 3¼ seconds
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Channel a cone of biting energy that slashes foes in a quick flurry of strikes. You gain life force with each strike. The final pulse removes up to 1 boon from foes that it strikes.
• Damage (9x): 909 (2.7)
• Duration: 3 seconds
• Strikes per second: 3
• Life Force per strike: 2%
• Range: 600
  • Strikes up to 5 foes.

Focus off-hand skills
[Spinal Shivers]: name changed to [Shivers of Dread].

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 3¼ seconds
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Cast a chill over target area before unleashing a powerful curse that rips boons and lingers based how long you channeled it.
• Chill (4): 1 second
• Curse damage per pulse: 279 (0.75)
• Curse boon rip per pulse: 1
• Curse pulse: 1 second
• ¾ second channel: Curse duration: 1 second
• 1½ second channel: Curse duration: 2 seconds
• 2¼ second channel: Curse duration: 3 seconds
• Full channel: Curse duration: 4 seconds
• Radius: 240
• Range: 900
  • While channeling this skill, the area pulses chill (1 second) on the same schedule as Elementalist [Churning Earth].
  • [Shivers of Dread] shares the same pulse schedule as Elementalist [Lava Font].

Dagger main-hand skills
[Life Siphon]

• Now strikes foes in a cone.
• Now strikes up to 5 foes.
• Cast-time increased from 12 to 15 seconds.
• The final pulse now steals up to 1 boon from foes that it strikes.
• The final pulse now grants the Necromancer 2% life force for each foe that it strikes.

[Dark Pact]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Cast out spectral bonds toward your foe that immobilize and cripple foes in a line.
• Damage: 252 (0.75)
• Immobilized: 2 seconds
• Crippled: 3 seconds
• Range: 900
  • Now uses a bright green recolor of the Guardian [Zealot’s Embrace] projectile.
  • Piercing projectile.

Scepter main-hand skills
[Blood Curse]: Name changed to [Putrid Strike]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED; AUTO-ATTACK CHAIN REMOVED
• Cast-time: 1 second
• Cast out a bolt of energy that explodes over your target and adjacent foes, inflicting bleeding. If you strike a bleeding foe, you inflict torment. If you strike a tormented foe, you inflict vulnerability and gain life force.
• Damage: 279 (0.75)
• Damage radius: 120
• Bleeding (1): 3 seconds
• Torment (1): 3 seconds
• Vulnerability (1): 3 seconds
• Life force gained: 5%
• Range: 1200
  • [Putrid Strike] uses the Elementalist [Fireball] projectile speed and arc.
  • After-cast adjusted to 0.15 second.

[Grasping Dead]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Raise skeletal hands from the ground to cripple foes at the target location.
• Damage: 235 (0.7)
• Cripple: 5 seconds
• Bleeding (3): 5 seconds
• Delay: 1 second
• Duration: 2 seconds
• Radius: 240
• Range: 900
  • Uses a ¾-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while activating another skill).
  • For the first second, nothing happens. [Grasping Dead] produces a red circle with skeletal hands dotting the ground after the cast. After one second, the animated arms then trigger the grabbing animation, applying the skill’s damage and its conditions.

[Feast of Corruption]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 2¼ seconds
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Damage and hex your foe with feast of corruption. Whenever a foe under the effects of feast of corruption gains a condition, that foe is poisoned and allies near that foe are healed.
• Damage: (4x): 260 (0.2)
• Feast of Corruption (4): 10 seconds
• Poison: 2 seconds
• Healing: 84 (0.25)
• Range: 900
  • This skill applies 1 stack of a unique debuff called Feast of Corruption once every ½ second over its 1½-second channel. Each debuff lasts up to 10 seconds and cannot be removed with condition removal skills.
  • The effects of Feast of Corruption trigger whenever a foe suffers from a condition.
  • This skill chains into another skill upon cast activation: [Foul Feast].

[Foul Feast]

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Conjure teeth above target area. After 2 seconds, the teeth crash into he ground, damaging foes. This attack deals to a foe for unique each condition on that foe. You gain life force for each foe that you strike that is suffering from a condition.
• Delay: 2 seconds
• Damage: 386 (1.0)
• Life Force gained: 2%
• Additional damage per condition: 8%
• Radius: 240
• Range: 900
  • This skill hits up to 5 foes.

NEW TOOL-TIP: Delay

• Delay represents how long a skill takes affect after the initial cast-time is completed. Several skills already have post-cast delay periods between the end of a skill’s cast-time and when its effect actually takes place on the battlefield. Adding such a tool-tip to those skills would make it clearer how they work and legitimize the mechanic’s presence in-game. Furthermore, adding delays and visual cues to instant-activation skills that are already instant-activation and/or ranged skills that don’t use projectiles would make them more fair in terms of game-play by providing more counter-playability to opponents.

FACTORS THAT BALANCE RANGED COMBAT IN GW2:
Guild Wars 2 is a game that was designed to have players read their opponent’s skill cues. To this effect, ANet has designed several manners of reading an opponent such as:

• Instant-cast
• Post-cast delay
• Red circle
• Projectile
• On-caster visual cue
• Projectile that can be blocked, reflected or destroyed
• Gap-closer skill that requires the player to run or leap to a target/target area

However, despite these various cues, there are a many slew of skills in GW2 that forego 2 or more of the above balancing principles. These skills should be looked at critically and probably nerfed or functionally changed in order to bring them into line with how combat should appear in-game. Giving certain weapon sets or play-styles free hits for certain skill usage in a game where the “holy trinity” is absent is asking for trouble. Overpowered ranged skills in this game need to be wrangled back into obedience governed by the balancing principles listed above.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF “ENERGY” IN GW2
Cast-time is mana or “energy” in GW2. Longer cast-times on many powerful skills would clear up a lot of the generally messy combat that players often encounter in PvP and also cull the general tendency to spam skills on cool-down (or whenever you have enough initiative) which really is the biggest plague on GW2 PvP. Moreover, by removing spam skills from the game, clutch dodges and positioning would come back into the limelight as means of mitigating damage.

WHAT IS ATTRITION GAME-PLAY?
In the current meta-game, power is at a disadvantage because it has to actually hit a target while conditions just sort of float about thanks to spammy AoE skills, short cast-times, the ranged nature of most condition skills and passive procs. None of those have to constantly hit, the condition player just gets to use skills willy-nilly and all the while get in damage for free because of conditions. The system is flawed and should really be looked at critically.

Power-based damage should be king with conditions being a supplement. Conditions should only be a viable means of killing an opponent if the skills that apply those conditions are well telegraphed, have appropriately long activation times and long recharges. Attrition combat should be attained through movement control.

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If you could please refrain from posting for a bit, I’d appreciate it. I’m going to need a lot of space for this.

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They should have balanced the game from pvp from the start. Then pve encounters wouldn’t be so horribly brain-dead and mind-numbingly boring.

Oh boy! Balance Suggestion forum!

“Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!”

GOOD LUCK EVER BALANCING THIS GAME, THEN. THERE IS A LOT TO DISCUSS.

Jzaku.9765:

Additionally, I feel it is the combination of a lot of small things that make warrior so strong. An easy fix to bring warrior back down to normal levels without making it obsolete would be to implement:

• Combustive Shot now fails to create a Fire Field and thus spend adrenaline if used while blinded.

While this is yet another nerf to a base warrior weapon skill (which I strongly dislike because it affects all builds using said weapon), making Combustive Shot work like that now standardizes every burst skill’s interaction with Cleansing Ire. I.E., it’s now completely counter-played by blind (accessible in spades on Thief and Guard, moderately on Ele and Engi, and rarely on Warrior and Necro).

I actually just thought that it could be given a post-cast explosion delay that creates the field and that the field could shrink in size considerably. It’s a real shame that nobody ever has to aim that skill. I’m serious when I say that a 120 – 150 – 180 radius with more raw damage and a duration adjustment would be more balanced than it is now.

Jzaku.9765:

Also yes, the banner itself grants constant regeneration (the boon) to everyone in it’s radius. Really though, the banner condi regen build is only disgusting because condition damage is disgusting and the game allows you to stack both optimal damage and defense when you go condi.

It is a shame. It really does require 3 stats to make power viable and yet condition damage only needs 1. There’s just almost no way to fix that without completely redoing how conditions deal damage. The most that anyone could do to fix it would be to make condition skills less spammy, reduce the total amount of condition skills in general and make the remaining condition skills deal more conditions and also give them well-cued animations.

Stand The Wall.6987:

The guardian block bot sounds annoying, but they wouldnt be doing any damage while using all of those defensive skills so I dont see what the problem is.

I just think that the one-sided nature of those skills is the issue. It’s a very boring design. Even though, it stymies their DPS, invulnerability-spam (even if the long, drawn out chain is on a cool-down) just seems out-of-place for GW2.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Your defiant stacking stability might work but Anet doesnt have the balls to test it out.

A shame. I’ll still push it.

Stand The Wall.6987:

The thing I hate most is a kittening condi warrior with banner regen. Its a kitten disgrace.

Yeah, OK, here’s a question: does the banner itself grant regeneration? Because if it does, that needs to go.

[/quote]

ensoriki.5789:

I don’t disagree however I highly doubt procs will ever go away.
It may be because I’m biased against them , so to be optimistic instead I’ll say toning them down and promoting other aspects is feasible and reasonable
Say if Certain on-crits only triggered on auto attack or slot 2’s -3’s. Like Thieves First strikes only randomly giving ini on auto attacks.

Yes, the only real way to integrate passive, instant-activation procs into the game fairly would be by tying them to specific, well-cued attacks—preferably attacks with cool-downs. For instance, we have the Engineer which is often seen relying on many, many passive procs from traits and sigils. While sigils I could argue need to be re-done entirely, at least with traits we can tie them to specific activated skills.

Things like Shrapnel (Explosives – II) could be reworked into something more like Incendiary Powder and then tied to [Shrapnel Grenade] and [Concussion Bomb] respectively with a shared global cool-down. (now if only there were a way to discern a concussion bomb from any other bomb).

Zirith.6429:

Swagg.9236:

Lachanche.6859:

just spam dodges because they’re spamming attacks

Do you have ANY idea how awful that sounds? Do you have ANY idea how awful it is that your advice is actually remotely valid in a game like GW2? Also, your dodges come back slower than an enemy’s condition spam recharges because condition spam just doesn’t stop.

GW2 PvP suffers from horrendous balance issues and bad design decisions.

Sarcasm…

You can’t rely on sarcasm in a text-based discussion. Unless you just got wrecked and changed to “I was only pretending.” Your post did seem pretty specific.

ensoriki.5789:

However that’s all application Conditions themself are seemingly fine of their own accord. Anet does have to go through traits/sigils/runes/amulets/skills because their is a lot of gap between options and ones that are too strong and not strong enough.

The way conditions are applied is not fair for how GW2 combat was designed. Because the source of conditions are most often low-recharge, super-short-cast-time, throwaway skills or even auto-attacks combined with low-recharge, instant-activation passive procs on sigils and traits, conditions arguably go completely in the contrary of how GW2 combat was fundamentally designed. GW2 was supposed to be a game of reading your opponent. Conditions don’t give the opponent that option. The opponent simply eats whatever spam isn’t mitigated by the opponent’s dodges/defensive skills, bleeds out and then eats everything again when condition-applying skills, runes, traits and sigils come off (their very short) cool-down. They’re completely counter-intuitive to how GW2 combat should work.

There is nothing inherit to conditions though that makes it that way. As you can block any attack whether it is 100% power or causes 3 bleeds so long as it’s not of unblockable class. Yes Random procs make knowing when to dodge/block/invuln unpredictable and a game of chance. That is the thing with RNG. After all Sigil of Air/blood/Flame are all power based random damage procs, that no one can predict. Ideally random procs get tuned down a bit.

Except effective power skills typically come on a much longer cool-down, have actual animations and punish players for poor use. Condition-centric builds don’t rely on skills that do that. Condition-centric skills rely on throwaway skills that just keep wracking up the conditions for free. The sheer amount of condition-centric throwaway skills completely nullifies what a player should be able to do with dodges or even a few well-timed single blocks.

ensoriki.5789:

Yes Random procs make knowing when to dodge/block/invuln unpredictable and a game of chance. That is the thing with RNG. After all Sigil of Air/blood/Flame are all power based random damage procs, that no one can predict. Ideally random procs get tuned down a bit.

Ideally, random, passive, instant-activation procs would be removed from the game. They’re counter-intuitive to the “read and counter-play” design of GW2 combat.

Lachanche.6859:

just spam dodges because they’re spamming attacks

Do you have ANY idea how awful that sounds? Do you have ANY idea how awful it is that your advice is actually remotely valid in a game like GW2? Also, your dodges come back slower than an enemy’s condition spam recharges because condition spam just doesn’t stop.

GW2 PvP suffers from horrendous balance issues and bad design decisions.

garethh.3518:

The class desperately needed some secondary mechanic on top of initiative, like all of its attacks where in the form of infiltrator’s strike, they had a chained second ability. The first ability would typically cost little if any initiative and then pop up the second ability for 7-20~ seconds and that ability would cost a fair deal of initiative.
It’d be a psuedo CD system.

You could buy an ability off CD or specific perc (the second ability in the chain) by spending the 3-5~ initiative. It’d make initiative regen traits a playstyle choice instead of necessity for every thief short of hardcore burst ones. It’d give plenty of room for depth and numerous ways to focus on building a thief, without requiring cheesy spam.

That’s actually a pretty clever solution. Honestly, with the effort that it would take to fix the thief in GW2, it would be much easier—and arguably more logical given how the thief just tends to break all of the fundamental rules that govern how GW2 combat should work—to just delete it from the game. Even so, doing something like that could really make the thief into a class that would have a better defined role in combat outside of “HAHA, I’M DOING DAMAGE/OH NO, I’M DEAD.” By just loading up thief weapon sets with chain skills, one could find more clever ways of allowing the thief to contribute to a fight aside from just doing damage while being effectively invulnerable. The thief could gain interesting new skills to influence how a battle develops and as a result could drop its damage level and its invulnerabilities. It would be a far more balanced class.

ensoriki.5789:

Why is my name quoted in the above post?

Whoops. I just ctrl+v so I can keep replying to specific parts of posts. I just goofed and used your name instead of the guy to whom I was actually replying. My bad.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I see your point with adding new skills to blocks, but the last thing we need is more cc.

Well, it might actually be better to see more movement-related CC. Knock-downs, stuns and dazes are really tired out.

Stand The Wall.6987:

If you are bothered by rampant condis, why the hell would you modify poison volley to that extent? Do you realize that you are adding a crapton more condi application?

The way that I balanced it would turn the skill into a skill that would require timing and aim with its arcing projectile and the range limiter. Furthermore, the actually poison durations caused by the clouds wouldn’t necessarily be constant. I was actually thinking of lengthening the recharge time as well to 15 seconds.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Again, reapers mark would never trigger if it had an obvious skill activation plus a long cast time. Teamplay you say? What about 1v1s?

I can use a [Meteor Shower] in a 1v1s vs melee opponents, it’s just a risky gambit that I set up before the guy actually gets into melee range. The same could work for a charge-up [Reaper’s Mark] except it would be even more effective since the Necromancer could charge it in his/her free time and trigger it later. If it were on the fly, it’s also possible to set it up with proper positioning and timing so long as your opponent starts out of range.

Stand The Wall.6987:

What about classes at range that can shoot rupts out their kitten like mesmer and thief while having the most evasive type skills? I would love to see a video of you using this new reapers mark in a team (think pug) environment against a decent opponent.

Thieves are broken and Mesmers are literally the dueling class. Fighting them in a 1v1 is always a headache.

Stand The Wall.6987:

“Working with teammates to distract foes” sounds fine but most of us are not distracted easily. The added after cast delay is watering the game down for newbies to the extent of stale gameplay.

It’s making AoE-centric combat fair in a conquest-style pvp mode. It even works outside of points, it just requires more clever positioning and timing.

Stand The Wall.6987:

“Invulnerability and blocking would quickly run rampant”. What? With the cd’s they have now?

I’ve already discussed how power should be the primary way of dealing damage in GW2. Well, it is possible to bring conditions into the limelight so long as high-condition-inflicting skills had longer cool-downs and were as well-cued as something like [Earthshaker] and we had removed the vast majority of traits that inflict conditions by passive proc.

The point is, by balancing the game properly by making shifting the meta into a risk-filled, big-hitter meta based around landing powerful skill shots, invulnerabilities and blocks would be a nuisance in how they would be able to just wave off a lot potential game-shifting attacks. Play a power class and fight a bunker guardian for an experience in it. You have to get through their Aegis, their Shelter, their Focus 5 triple-block, their elite Invulnerability and their Aegis again on top of their blinds and even another block if they’re carrying mace main-hand. It’s nothing but block spam that stagnates combat. They don’t have to position themselves, they aren’t timing anything, they’re just spamming buttons that make them invulnerable until somebody goes away.

Although, this might just be a complaint for the conquest game-mode in general. It’s pretty bad the way GW2 has it set up right now.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Stability. I dont want a bigger gap in the way skills behave in pvp vs wvw,

I never said that the stability change would be split between any game-types.

Stand The Wall.6987:

if stability was reworked it would kitten wvw up.

Good, that mess of a game-mode needs some serious overhaul to make it anything that actually resembles a balanced pvp game-mode that rewards active play.

Sure [stability] can be removed, but most classes dont have that ability.[/quote]
That’s why it should stack in intensity like defiant. CC would actually pose a threat to a stability-user even if that player got a reprieve from a few instances of CC.

Winning strategies

• passive play
• spam conditions
• roll s/p thief

Losing strategies

• using power
• timing dodges (it doesn’t matter anymore because the spam doesn’t stop)

Welcome back.

ensoriki.5789:

Conditions in GW2 are not the same as Degen in GW1.

You have missed my point entirely.

ensoriki.5789:

Conditions are a necessity for the health of GW2 given that it makes no other distinction in damage types other than Life steal which is almost non-existent in the grand scheme of GW2.

Except that the current GW2 pvp metagame is condition-spam. It’s full of no-risk, low-recharge, no/low-cast-time procs and skills that just gives everybody conditions for free and almost constantly. It turns team-fights into cluttered nonsense and 1v1s into “Who presses the most buttons the fastest?” It’s by far the least healthy thing that you could do for GW2. It takes all of the risk and counter-play out of a pvp encounter.

Power is completely outclassed by Condition Damage at this point in GW2’s life. This is unhealthy because Condition Damage spam pretty much just lets you face-roll across the keyboard and get free damage on somebody. It negates the importance of dodging, blocks or invulnerability frames (not that the latter 2 are really healthy at all for GW2 given the prevalence at which they exist in the game) thus effectively turning combat into:

• 1) I’M GONNA EAT THIS GUY’S ATTACKS.
• 2) I’M GONNA BLOW ALL MY COOL-DOWNS TO GET MY HP BACK.
• 3) I’M GONNA EAT THIS GUY’S ATTACKS.
• 4) I’M GONNA DIE.

Welcome to GW2. Now it’s time to fix it.

I don’t know what to say.

I can’t even ask "What happened to the GW1 ANet?" because I know that they all jumped ship.

It’s honestly saddest because if GW2 were actually better handled over its lifetime, people would probably try to laugh this off or honestly react in a calm, but concerned manner. Instead, everyone is just going to curse ANet into the ground, kick dirt on its face and trod off laughing "Good riddance," because it’s believable. GW2 has fallen so low that we honestly believe that this leak could be a legitimate reality.

It’s just sad.

CONDITION DAMAGE SHOULD BE SUPPLEMENT TO POWER DAMAGE

So? GW1 had tons of lame Teambuilds as well – it was part of the game.

If there’s no possibility of making insane Lamerbuilds like NecroSpike, IWAY, Rangespike and stuff like that, I think theres something missing. Yes; we all hated those builds in GW1 and being a Player that always wanted to win “the right way”, I’ve almost pulled out my hair a couple of times cuz of those builds; but it made the Meta interesting and forced ppl to be creative and come up with new strategies etc.

• In GW1, degen alone wasn’t necessarily a viable way to kill an opponent most of the time (either via hexes, conditions or a combination of the two).
• In GW1, there weren’t instant-activation passive procs everywhere. Players could actually see everything happening and triggering.
• In GW1, we had the “holy trinity” to deal with gimmicky spike team compositions like R-spike or even condition spam. IWAY and SWAY were nerfed. Necroway was sort of bandaid-nerfed with that weird update to protection prayers (although, that took ages). The reason R-spike stayed around for so long was because it was more fair than the others. R-spike required line-of-sight, it could be mitigated through protection prayers and blocks, and it also had a distinct cool-down on the spike around which the opposing team could play. There really wasn’t anything anyone could do most of the time against the other three gimmick comps. That’s the trick: in GW1, you actually had to land spells/attacks consistently and in a timely fashion in order to bring down an opponent.

• GW2 doesn’t have the “holy trinity” to deal with skills/skill spam that not only deals damage but that may also render an opponent helpless to either defend or retaliate with damage.
• The current GW2 condition-meta promotes mindless, ranged skill-spam that front-loads conditions onto low-recharge, fast-activating throwaway skills and rewards the condition player for spamming skills and then running around while auto-attacking for the rest of the encounter. Since there’s no one to remove conditions for you and condition players get conditions for free almost instantly and on incredibly short cool-downs, it just burns players out far more effectively than if the condition player just invested into power.

GW2 has made power less effective than condition damage. By doing so, ANet has undermined the usefulness of dodging, positioning and timing that was supposed to be the fundamental base of GW2 combat.

The only way to heal this game’s pvp as it stands right now is to make risky, position-and-timing-based, power damage king.

Stand The Wall.6987:

A 1 second delay combined with after cast is a long time for experienced players. Adding more obvious skill indicators on top of the delay would be too much.

This is where leading a target comes into play as well as working with teammates to distract foes from watching their surroundings. This game needs more risk to skill-use. Post-cast effect delays is the best way to go about this with AoE skills.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Against classes that can interrupt at range often (thieves, mesmers) it would never trigger.

This is where teamwork comes into play again.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I think that a bigger active heal with a slightly less passive heal would do the trick.

I suppose that could work too.

Stand The Wall.6987:

They really dont. Its all some classes have to survive in drawn out fights. If you say blocks need to be culled then I could argue that stealth, clones, and basically any other defensive mechanism should suffer the same fate.

This comes back to my argument against a condition-meta. All of the invulnerability and blocking may almost be justified given the spam-centric, low-recharge nature of a condition-meta in GW2, but since GW2 should be balanced around risky, clearly cued, power-based attacks, invulnerability and blocking would quickly run rampant as a means to just slow all combat down to a crawl if it isn’t culled properly.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I suggest that condition duration be reduced while in Berserkers Stance but not to the point of invulnerability (when coupled with food and runes).

Eh, I guess that could be viable. Again, if we didn’t have a condition-meta, a nerf to [Berserker Stance] wouldn’t be that big of a deal, I guess.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I think that this new stability idea should have its own thread. I will say that the biggest problem to this would be stacking stability before a fight begins and waiting for cooldowns to recharge. If anything this would be a huge buff, and it will definitely be abused in places like wvw.

If the intensity stacking limit for stability was maybe 10, most stability durations were short, and any “long” durations of stability that came from utility skills only dolled out 1 or maybe 2 stacks of stability, it would be an overall nerf for the boon—which should be the goal if this game is to really see CC as a strong component to combat in pvp.

Also, you’re thinking of WvW. I steer away from WvW because it takes everything that makes PvP even remotely balanced, throws it out the window and laughs at it when it hits the street curb. The inflated stats, buffs everywhere and wildly fluctuation numbers in fights completely undermine any possibility of balance. It’s why we have zergs. The only way for any balance patch to actually have an effect on WvW would be if that balance patch also reduced the overall area of a WvW map by something like 66% and limited each server to 30 players per map instance.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I mean that looking at this from a mathematical standpoint (and it seems you do) it makes no sense to add a new variable into the equation that still has unknown values. Examples include reapers wrath, shield slam, shoelace tangle, and poison volley. While all sound ideas I think its cheap to add them because a. one could argue that adding these skills was your goal from the beginning

Shield Slam and Shoelace Tangle
The Engineer off-hand shield is a really good example of how block/invulnerability skills should work. Engineer off-hand shield has both offensive and defensive capabilities. Not only can an Engineer use off-hand shield as a means to slow an opponent’s offensive, the Engineer can get in someone’s face with it. This turns what would otherwise be just a “Haha, I’m going to stand here and be invincible” set-up into a set-up that can actually influence the direction of combat instead of just stop it for a few seconds.

If invulnerability skills weren’t so much invulnerability skills as they were very powerful re-positioning or CC skills, the game’s combat would feel a little more lively outside of “I’M GONNA HIT YOU,” and “OK, THEN I’M GONNA BE INVULNERABLE.”

Poison Volley
Conditions are out of control in this game. I’ll repost my summary of it that currently resides in another thread here later, but until then, effectively what I’m doing with a lot of condition-centric skills and procs is greatly reducing their spammability and adding more timing/position requirements to using such skills. This puts more risk into condition builds and helps rebalance the relationship between power and condition. The change to [Poison Volley] reflects this effort.

Reaper’s Mark
This is just to help [Reaper’s Mark] keep its nature as a mark while also giving the Necromancer more control on how to use it in a fight. The cast-time and animation also help to make the powerful skill fair for opponents.

Class: Elementalist

Worst enemy:
1. S/P thief
2. Tanky condition engineer (grenades implied)
3. Ranger, maybe? I dunno.

Zietlogik.6208:

Remember Derv train?! <.<;

And then Onslaught got wrecked. Also Avatar of Grenth, but I guess that happened before Onslaught, thank goodness.

Sars.8792:

should have dodged

I wish that argument was still applicable. I really do.

PowerBottom.5796:

So? GW1 had tons of lame Teambuilds as well – it was part of the game.

If there’s no possibility of making insane Lamerbuilds like NecroSpike, IWAY, Rangespike and stuff like that, I think theres something missing. Yes; we all hated those builds in GW1 and being a Player that always wanted to win “the right way”, I’ve almost pulled out my hair a couple of times cuz of those builds; but it made the Meta interesting and forced ppl to be creative and come up with new strategies etc.

• In GW1, degen alone wasn’t necessarily a viable way to kill an opponent most of the time (either via hexes, conditions or a combination of the two).
• In GW1, there weren’t instant-activation passive procs everywhere. Players could actually see everything happening and triggering.
• In GW1, we had the “holy trinity” to deal with gimmicky spike team compositions like R-spike or even condition spam. IWAY and SWAY were nerfed. Necroway was sort of bandaid-nerfed with that weird update to protection prayers (although, that took ages). The reason R-spike stayed around for so long was because it was more fair than the others. R-spike required line-of-sight, it could be mitigated through protection prayers and blocks, and it also had a distinct cool-down on the spike around which the opposing team could play. There really wasn’t anything anyone could do most of the time against the other three gimmick comps. That’s the trick: in GW1, you actually had to land spells/attacks consistently and in a timely fashion in order to bring down an opponent.

• GW2 doesn’t have the “holy trinity” to deal with skills/skill spam that not only deals damage but that may also render an opponent helpless to either defend or retaliate with damage.
• The current GW2 condition-meta promotes mindless, ranged skill-spam that front-loads conditions onto low-recharge, fast-activating throwaway skills and rewards the condition player for spamming skills and then running around while auto-attacking for the rest of the encounter. Since there’s no one to remove conditions for you and condition players get conditions for free almost instantly and on incredibly short cool-downs, it just burns players out far more effectively than if the condition player just invested into power.

GW2 has made power less effective than condition damage. By doing so, ANet has undermined the usefulness of dodging, positioning and timing that was supposed to be the fundamental base of GW2 combat.

ANet needs to make power-based damage king in GW2. It’s the only way to heal this game’s pvp as it stands right now.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Swagg.9236:

Nova Stiker.8396:

There are absolutely 0 reasons to go 30 into Fire,

Thirty into Fire for Persisting Flames is actually what I run in pvp on a zerker staff spec. That extra [Lava Font] duration really defines an encounter and a play-style. The extra fury is also nice if I actually bother to waste a blast on it in mid-combat.

Persisting Flames should be in Master Fire Magic, not Grandmaster. Hell, replace it with Burning Rage and make it a minor Grandmaster trait.

Given how much damage a full zerker [Lava Font] does, Persisting Flames is fine as a grandmaster trait.

Nova Stiker.8396:

You’re right about the Fury being pointless, 3 stacks of might plus 10 seconds of fury is nice but last time I checked blasting water fields with staff is nicer.

If I can get an [Eruption] and [Arcane Wave] going before an encounter starts, it’s definitely worth it to give myself and any nearby teammates 20 seconds of fury and 6 might. However, since I typically roam between points with the zerker DPS staff ele spec, I mostly just show up mid-fight for healing support and then start throwing out damage.

Zerker staff ele is really just there for swinging fights. It’s not really going to sit around on a point and wait for people to come to it.

Added skill changes for Engineer rifle and pistol.

Nova Stiker.8396:

There are absolutely 0 reasons to go 30 into Fire,

Thirty into Fire for Persisting Flames is actually what I run in pvp on a zerker staff spec. That extra [Lava Font] duration really defines an encounter and a play-style. The extra fury is also nice if I actually bother to waste a blast on it in mid-combat.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I understand the basics of your post and agree for the most part.

>Trying to sneak new skills in a balance post is cheap and counter productive.

What do you mean by that? What are some examples?

Stand The Wall.6987:

>Most of the longer cooldown skills should have 1/2 sec delay instead of 1 sec.

A 1-second delay is rather short. It’s a fair risk to apply to those skills since they’re all AoEs and can still hit with proper leading of a target.

Stand The Wall.6987:

>Reapers mark: like the idea. Interrupt should not trigger full cd.

Well, I think that it still would. Since the goal would be for it to chain into a skill that actually triggers it the second that you “finish” channeling, I’m not sure that it could be possible to make it so that the skill just restarted from the beginning if it were interrupted. That’s where positioning, timing and battlefield awareness comes in.

Stand The Wall.6987:

>Absolutely disagree on warrior heal sig. 3 sec of prot every 12 sec. 9 sec of regen every 12sec. Worst idea in your post.

I guess that I didn’t even think about the signet cool-down trait. The goal for that suggestion was to get Warriors to actually use the [Healing Signet] active ability. It would automatically be worse than the passive when it comes to sustainable hp regen, but at least there would be a bit of burst healing. Dunno, what would you suggest?

Stand The Wall.6987:

>Warrior shield is fine.

Blocks and invulnerabilities (which are effectively blocks) need to be greatly culled in GW2.

Stand The Wall.6987:

>Giving a warrior more fury and might via Berserkers stance is a bad idea. They have such easy access to it already, and that is a problem.

Could be. What would you suggest?

Stand The Wall.6987:

>Engi elixir s is fine.

See my reply to your shield comment.

Stand The Wall.6987:

>I see nothing wrong with stability as it is now. However, I think that some boons and conditons (namely stability, protection, poison, and burning) should have a duration stacking cap.

A duration stacking cap could be interesting, but what I’m trying to do with the intensity stacking paradigm is give CC a chance even if a player is using stability. CC is supposed to be such a big part of this game, but stability just says “Haha, nope,” every time. Even if there was a duration stacking limit to stability, that limit would still give the player complete movement impunity on the battlefield. If stability stacked in intensity, the player would still have to be a little careful about CC currently present on a battlefield instead of just skipping through everything and not giving any care.

darkfiremew.5937:

Indeed you are right good sir. Here is where I want to see this man’s plan for a Ritualist profession regardless of it’s scions. I want to see his plans of making it viable in a Guild Wars 2 environment. I want to see his opinion on this matter, even if a lot of techniques are inherited by other classes.

Well, if I want my “plan” for the Ritualist, the goal was to make the Ritualist a sort of attrition/control/support class with its normal skills and then have either a strong power-attack mode and/or an even stronger support role in Channeler Mode depending on which Soulbound Spirit and weapons that the Ritualist slots for combat.

ANet defines the Necromancer as the attrition class of GW2. However, Necromancer (with little control outside of fear spam and the occasional chill), was never really a solid attrition class. Condition spam isn’t really attrition game-play, it’s just a more unfair version of power DPS because the player inflicted with massive amounts of conditions can’t time a dodge or damage-mitigation skill to deal with it. It goes against the fundamental design of GW2. Now, with patches over the past several months, Necromancer has fallen even further from “the GW2 attrition class” title and into a full DPS class because you can now burst people with conditions. I’ve already made plenty of points on the sPvP forums about why conditions as a viable way to kill an opponent in pvp was a poor design choice from the get-go, but I won’t bore you guys with that here.

Instead, GW2 attrition is being able to control your opponent’s movement, deny them damage while still being able to get damage out on them yourself. It’s easy to do this by just front-loading condition skills and passive condition procs and then running away while they bleed out incredibly quickly, but as I’ve said before, that’s a poor design that makes power obsolete. Instead, I designed the Ritualist to be more like the staff Elementalist in how it handles attrition combat. The Ritualist will be able to control battlefield movement with rifts and slow abilities while still laying down field hazards as damage both inflicting damage to an opponent and denying them direct damage on the Ritualist or his/her allies.

Then, in order to finish or really contribute to a fight, the Ritualist has Channeler Mode which will offer him/her high damage abilities, powerful support abilities or even both if the Ritualist chooses the right combination of weapons and Soulbound Spirit.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Swagg.9236:

It was a poor design decision to make conditions alone a viable way of killing an opponent in PvP anyway.

I disagree. The damage aspect of some conditions is a very good DoT for attrition builds. Howerever, due to scaling and the ability to dump almost all kinds of damaging conditions of high stacks high duration and most of the time randomly together with non damaging but crippling conditions, condi-builds becomes less strategic and becomes all about AOE spam.

Attrition Game-play
Attrition combat is being able to deal damage to an opponent while presenting an encounter that an enemy only realizes too late that it can’t win. In GW2, the most powerful thing that a player can do to an opponent (that isn’t stunning them) while still dealing damage to them is controlling that opponent’s movement. Staff elementalist is a good example of GW2 attrition game-play in all honesty. You have a lot of ground-targeted CC that obstructs or slows movement while the elementalist continues to litter the ground with deadly attacks on delay timers.

Necromancer was designed as “the attrition class.” However, with past updates, ANet has simply turned the Necromancer into a burst DPS class. Necromancers simply rotate very quickly through spam-centric, fast-activating skills and vomit conditions onto a target. Then they kite and spam 1 until it dies from condition DPS. That’s not attrition, that’s a DPS class. ANet goofed.

Moreover, condition-centric builds in general go in contrary to the fundamental designs of GW2 because they often rely on passive procs (which have no counter-play). Condition builds simply front-load a long series of attacks that an opponent would have to unload every possible dodge and damage-mitigating skill in order to avoid lest they simply bleed out while the condition player runs around spamming throw-away skills like an auto-attack. After that first salvo, the condition player is done playing. They don’t have to hit their opponent anymore, they just let them bleed out. Even if that opponent somehow cleanses a mountain of conditions, the condition player just gets them all back again 10-20 seconds later because of the short cool-downs. Then, because there aren’t any real cast-times to hold them back, they just spam the same rotation with relative impunity.

Combat in this game would be a lot easier to follow if power skills (supplemented by mild condition damage) with hefty cast-times and strong animation cues were the primary way to deal damage, players would have to keep up sustained hits on an opponent while positioning and CC’ing properly in order to take it down instead of just front-loading an attack, follow up by kiting and spamming 1, and wait for the enemy to bleed out or for your cool-downs to come back up so you can front-load an attack again.

In the current meta-game, power is at a disadvantage because it has to actually hit a target while conditions just sort of float about thanks to spammy AoE skills, short cast-times, the ranged nature of most condition skills and passive procs. None of those have to constantly hit, the condition player just gets to use skills willy-nilly and all the while get in damage for free because of conditions. The system is flawed and should really be looked at critically.

Power should be king with conditions being a supplement. Attrition combat should be attained through movement control.

Amaterasu.6280:

Swagg.9236:

Furthermore, it’s never really a “one bad dodge and you’re dead” scenario—especially in a 1v1 match-up. Even the glassiest of set-ups can take a few good hits.

Really? Not sure what kind of thief you play or have played against but thieves are the squishiest next to zerk eles. Take a few good hits? Really not really.

As a guy who plays a zerker elementalist, I can say that I can take a few good hits from full hp. However, I have ranged abilities to make up for it. This is what I’m saying about Thief not fitting into GW2 combat.

Because the Thief is so squishy, they’ll blow up in a typical melee bout if they just spam 1. So, instead of re-thinking how a Thief could or should contribute to a battle, instead ANet just gives the Thief gets loads of teleports and invulnerability frames tacked on to many skills to sort of circumvent the typical dangers of encountering and pressing an enemy into melee combat. I mean, I just look at it and stare. It’s the worst design in this game by far.

The Thief needs a complete functional make-over as some sort of combat support de-buffer that can actually do battle normally with quick, passing melee strikes without having to resort to excessive invulnerability frames, or it needs to be struck from the game.

I can understand ANet’s initiative to want to make some sort of unique class that isn’t necessarily defined by cool-downs like the rest of them, but it really backfired on them with the Thief.

Cynz.9437:

Swagg.9236:

Thieves are OK for the most part outside of [Pistol Whip]. The only thing that needs to be addressed are their spammable teleports and teleports in general. The real issue with Thieves with regards to balance is how they just don’t know the meaning of overextending or being in bad position. Their skills instantly forgive them for over committing every time.

It’s really hard not to suggest that the entire class just gets cool-downs, charge skills and longer cast-times and we scrap initiative, or just removing the class entirely. The way that Thief plays now simply put just doesn’t fit well with how GW2 combat was initially conceived.

I can say exactly the same with any other class: they “don’t know the meaning of overextending or being in bad position” due to 2 HP bars, due to stability, due to crazy tankiness etc etc. I have a warrior as well and i can screw up so much on him and still not die where my thief would have died 10 times at least. Same goes for my necro.

I won’t argue against you there. However, you shouldn’t exclude the Thief from that group. They’re all broken. Invulnerability, stability, blocking and teleporting should be culled back in this game.

The problem most people have is when someone brings up “class x” as having issues, someone who plays class x cries “BUT CLASS Y, Z, F, AND Q ARE BROKEN TOO!!” Yes. They’re all broken. They all need to be fixed. That’s why my thread about the topic is so long.

Cynz.9437:

1 bad dodge on thief, you are dead; 1 bad dodge on warrior, w/e i can face tank it.

Except that Thieves get to spam dodges when running full cheese—rather, the meta. It’s not a very unforgiving class when there are teleports and spammable evasion skills available. Furthermore, it’s never really a “one bad dodge and you’re dead” scenario—especially in a 1v1 match-up. Even the glassiest of set-ups can take a few good hits.

In any case, these conversations only solidify my reasoning as to why Thieves just don’t really fit properly into the fundamental combat design of GW2.

Thieves are OK for the most part outside of [Pistol Whip]. The only thing that needs to be addressed are their spammable teleports and teleports in general. The real issue with Thieves with regards to balance is how they just don’t know the meaning of overextending or being in bad position. Their skills instantly forgive them for over committing every time.

It’s really hard not to suggest that the entire class just gets cool-downs, charge skills and longer cast-times and we scrap initiative, or just removing the class entirely. The way that Thief plays now simply put just doesn’t fit well with how GW2 combat was initially conceived.

Updated several Thief-related skill changes, particularly to what is currently [Pistol Whip].

It’s difficult. It isn’t OK to just Smiter’s Boon a skill anymore because we don’t have a plethora of slottable skills from which to choose when it comes to weapon skills. So when we come up to a skill-set that seems to break all the rules that are supposed to define GW2 combat, the only real option is to re-make the skills into something different but still functional.