Guild Wars 2

I don’t follow your logic. How does the Healing Signet keep warriors from getting kited? My suggestion is to change the signet to heal when you deal damage.

^^100% agreement.

This is exactly what the PvP balance team should be doing.

My concern with purely passive regeneration is that it has no counter play: there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Poison slows it down, but that also works on normal heals, and normal heals can be interrupted. The signet cannot.

I believe that if you remove the existing counter play with a passive regeneration signet, you need to replace it with a different kind of counter play. It makes the game more interesting.

Additionally, CC such as stuns are rewarding enough in themselves: the idea that while you’ve incapacitated your opponent you are passively healing for 400hp/sec seems downright broken.

However a warrior getting 400hp/sec in regen because he’s doing a great job of sticking on someone and smacking the holy heck out of him/her sounds more balanced. The better the warrior is at staying on target and damaging, the better his healing gets.

This is why I’m partial to the heal-while-dealing-damage signet: teamwork and coordination will help the warrior stay on target, which helps keep the warrior healed. Conversely, dodging and CC can act as good counter play to the signet.

For example, look at the Necromancer’s Blood Fiend. You can CC it, dodge it or kill it to counteract the Necromancer’s passive regen. That’s good counter play. The Healing Signet needs its own counter play outside of just ‘poison’.

teogeos.1364:

Sensotix.4106:

Blind: make the skills that apply a blind instant (like we see on ele) but decrease the blind duration
Poison: remove damage
Chill: remove that it slows down enemies
Cripple: let it stack in intensity
Torment: change the skill so it does double dmg while the target is not moving (in a game where good positioning and movement is a key to win a fight moving should not be punished) it also can lead to nice combinations with stun and immobilise
Immobilise: max duration 5 sec
Fear: move the “terror” trait on necro to grandmaster
Weakness: let it stack in intensity and reduce the duration of weakness applied by skills a little bit
Vulnerability: Increases damage the target takes by 2% instead of 1% stacks in intensity.

How will that affect the Game:
Conditions will be used more carefully and we don’t see the spam we all hate

I think this deserves more arguments if you want it to be constructive and promote a discussion about it. You can’t just say “change this and that” and justify it with a non so obvious consequence. The torment change is the only argued one.
.

The blind change is clearly intended to make Blind a reflexive trait to avoid incoming damage. In other words, you see an attack coming and use blind to avoid it: rewards timing and counterplay. Good idea.

The poison change is an attempt to dial down condition damage overall and reduce it to a smaller set of sources. Removing the damage component could open avenues to increase its duration, which would make it better counterplay against heavy regen/healing classes. Good idea.

Removing slow from chill is another way to tone down the effects of condition spam. I’m not 100% sold on this yet.

Cripple change is married to the slow change.

Fear – we all understand the Terror argument.

Weakness – it’s insanely powerful (and undervalued by many). This is an attempt to tone it down but at the same time make coordinated use of it more potent.

hotfix needed ASAP

Requiem.8769:

Actually, just charging the Mantra will give you the heal effect, and proc the centaur runes swiftness. You don’t need to actually use the heal.
In this way, you don’t really ever need to “waste” the heal for swiftness.

Yes, this is how I use it. I charge it at the start of the fight. After finishing at a capture point, I’ll discharge all the remaining casts and leave for the next point. By the time I get there, I’ve recharged it fully.

Plus Lyssa Runes of OPness are awesome with this mantra. Countless times I Lyssa has given me protection, regen or Aegis after casting a heal and it’s amazeballs.

glaphen.5230:

You mean just like the thief signet but better? I guess that’s one way to fix the off hand axe and break the meta further. Healing signet is fine as it is, nerfing it to please whiners should only come with huge buffs to the other heals.

Yes, exactly like the thief signet. The thief signet is really more warrior-like than it is thief-like. Signet of Malice doesn’t really fit well with the thief style of play.

And no, the Healing Signet is overpowered. Necromancers are supposed to be the ‘sustain’ class and they have a healing pet that is supposed to do just that. Yet HS is even more powerful than the necro pet. And the pet can be killed!

ronpierce.2760:

I’d prefer them to get hp for doing something

funny you should say that

Excalibur.9748:

some of the stuff here is decent, but the bias for mesmer is too obvious. basically wants to nerf thief, warrior, ranger, engineer, and ele but mesmer is apparently fine and balanced? kinda seems to me like rock is fine, nerf scissors when you’re paper kind of thing here.

Actually I think he’s saying nerf mesmers, thieves and warriors, buff ele, change ranger to be more rewarding to players who are more skilled, and change engineer’s Automated Response to not be such a hard counter.

Those all sound like good ideas to me.

I could think of alternatives to Automated Response that would be more engaging:
New Automated Response: while under 25% health, all damage taken is reduced by 15% and you are immune to blind, weakness, bleeds, fear and cripple.

This is still a very strong talent, but still leaves room for some condition play: torment, confusion, poison and burning all can do damage, chill can still slow, immobilization still works, and you can still stack vulnerability.

Healing Signet

Signet of Bloodthirst
Passive: Your damaging attacks which gain adrenaline heal you.
Active: Heal yourself

The effective rate of healing would the same as it is today and it’d be balanced.

In order to maintain that level of healing, the warrior would need to continually dish out damage.

It’s very warrior-like, to boot: the more damage he does, the more he sustains.

CC and damage avoidance are hard counters, and running away for 10 seconds to regen 4khp is no longer an option.

If the warrior needs to disengage and heal, he now has a reason to use the active ability on the signet.

Ta-da! I’m on a roll today. OK guys, what part of sPvP should I fix next? :-P

Dawdler.8521:

Centaur runes is great in theory, in practice however it means that you must pop your heal on every cooldown to maintain speed (it work without mantra mastery as well btw). While it works fine running alone across a warm summer field with fluffy unicorns flying through the air farting rainbows, in a combat situation with Warrior axes flying all over the place and sweaty men in 100kg armour jumping like a bunny on crack over your head, it doesnt really work . You need your heal to be available on demand and use the proper moment to charge the mantra – especially if you traited it to do other things, such as condition removal (oh I need to remove 10s immobilize, nope I used it to get 10s swiftness, good trade!). Missing a beat in small scale against perma-speed classes is almost certain death.

I used them a long, long time before I switched to Traveller runes… Not going back. Usually the team has at least one warrior with a warhorn, which is better perma-speed.

In the solo queues I have been in, I have found it rare to get someone to drop group swiftness. So I’ve used Centaur Runes and find them to be quite useful in practice. If you are spamming your heal all the time to get swiftness, well, then you’re just stupid.

However, when you take some damage in a fight and pop your heal, suddenly you have swiftness too which really helps your mobility and positioning.

The reason why I mention Mantra Mastery is because it gives you a heal on an 8 second cooldown. This means if you need to run between capture points you can blow both heals and have it fully recharged by the time you reach the next node.

As a Mesmer, one of your roles is to support the team fights while either backcapping or back support. Centaur Runes go a long way to help support that role.

And Traveler Runes are not available in PvP.

I disagree on Halting Strike.

With the game filled with peanut-sized heroes and more explosions and spell effects than a coven of witches with diarrhea, seeing a person casting an ability can be very challenging (it is significantly easier in duels). Halting Strike does good damage only if you manage to land the interrupt.

Right now I think that anything which encourages active gameplay and good timing should be rewarded, and rewarded heavily!

Besides, most Mesmers don’t take Halting Strike; they instead opt for the Mind Wrack damage increase talent, Mental Torment.

A 4k damage Halting Strike is very high – most likely against a light armor player in zerker gear.

Come on guys, this isn’t hard. We don’t need the 100% solution. The 90% solution will be fine.

Here’s the rules for solo/team queue:

1. Players rank 1-12 will have a reduced effective MMR when matched.
2. The match will not start unless there are 5 players on each team present in the arena. If 5 players are not present on each team within 30 seconds after the scheduled match start time, the match is abandoned, the players are sent back to the front of the queue and the missing players are given dishonor.
3. Players leaving the match must return within 30 seconds or receive dishonor. Departing a second time is an automatic kick with dishonor.
4. Teams with missing players/leavers/etc will not lose MMR
5. Solo Queue only: Each team may have no more than one pair of players with the same profession. This eliminates “triple warrior”/“double warrior double guardian”/etc teams.

Also, make 5v5 hot join the standard. 8v8 is available but is not an option in “play now”.

Players that are given dishonor should have this appear over their character’s head for 1 hour of game time:
http://www.lisforloser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Im-a-LOSER-yellow.png

The system should also shame players who leave or no-show by calling them out in an overlay. And it should play this sound: https://archive.org/download/SoundEffectLoser/Sfx-PriceIsRightLoser.mp3

In terms of ‘how long is long enough’ in terms of waiting for a match: compute the average time of a single hot-join match and multiply it by ~1.3. That’s your wait time. (one full hot-join match, with some slack) Anything longer is too long.

There’s your solution. It does not handle malicious cases where someone swaps out a character and creates a ‘triple warrior’ team, but it’s the 90% solution and that’s probably good enough. Let players report the guy/girl that toon swaps to violate the rules.

If you want you can hire me and I’ll come over and code it, too.

Dahkeus.8243:

Sensotix.4106:

Dahkeus.8243:

I stopped reading when you said that Diamond Skin will be passive.

On the most technical level, it does provide a passive benefit, but it requires active attention to use defensive cooldowns early and to watch your health so that it stays above 90%. This is why it’s different than something like Signet of Renewal which is basically an excuse to ignore one of your utility skill slots.

okay lets put it like this its a passive trait that requires active play happy now? read the rest please and don’t QQ about things we both know you knew how i meant it
Edit: changed the description

Your logic still doesn’t add up. In that “perfect moment” you outline, the player still has to be active in how they play since they have to be especially aware of physical attacks. They have to be active in watching their health to know exactly when that 90% threshold is broken.

I mean, if you think that this isn’t active enough play, let’s complain about flanking doing extra damage for rangers. I mean, sure they have to be aware of when they are to the side of their enemy, but they aren’t hitting any extra buttons! And what about Heartseeker. It gives extra bonus to low health players, so thieves have to watch enemy health and adjust what abilities they use accordingly, but they’re not hitting additional buttons!

The point here is that you’re getting caught up in thinking that active play has to involve pressing buttons, but in truth, active play is what makes players have to think and consider additional factors which drive the choice of their action. This is exactly what Diamond Skin does.

Your logic doesn’t add up. By your definition every passive ability is an active one. Healing Signet is active because if you don’t pay attention you will take more damage than it heals you for. Endure Pain is active because you have to try to avoid condition damage. Automated Response and Berserker Stance are active because you have to avoid direct damage. Hell, toughness is an active stat because you need play actively to avoid condition damage.

Good post Sensotix. I’ve watched most of your videos and you play extremely well. The poison idea is actually quite interesting. I like the idea of removing the damage component of poison, and potentially increasing its duration in general when applied. It would make the condition more effective against classes that spam regen.

I agree very strongly with your comments regarding passive play: it’s becoming a disturbing trend in the game.

Healing Signet is simply overpowered and scales too well. You should record a quick video of a Zerker Phantasm hitting a Warrior with HS, and watch as the HS fully regens his health in between attacks! (This happened to me and I had a phantasm build at the time). It’s insane.

hooma.9642:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Why not just put this in the patch notes today:

- Healing signet passive heal reduced by 5%

Is it really so hard to do?

thats what i ask myself the whole time.. “shaving” is the word jonathan sharp likes to use. but only on a 6monlthy frequenty to let things “settle”…

well they could change 2-3 little things and see how it affect the game.. but no, hey lets wait xxx months and throw a big bunch of all possible changes and then live with the outcome for several months.

Shaving is something you do on a daily basis.
If you doing it every 6 months, you better be shearing, not shaving.

Healing Signet is fine? Hahaha!

I ran a full beserker Mesmer, specced for Phantasm damage. In other words, full glass cannon. I launched my Phantasmal Beserker (2nd hardest hitting Phantasm in the game) and hit a warrior with HS.

His HS fully healed him for the damage done by the Phantasm in between the Phantasm’s attacks. He didn’t have to kill it, dodge it or anything. The HS simply outhealed its damage.

That’s simply absurd.

ShadowAce.5432:

@Thedenofsin W/e man, pre-reset and pre-matchmaking fix, a lot of us who weren’t lucky enough to ride the initial high rank wave (MMR) constantly got teamed up with lowbies vs top ranked teams.

If each team has a low rank, so be it at least it is essentially a 4v4 (fair game).

If each team has 1 player of low rank, then that would probably be true, but there is no logic in the matchmaking code that does this.

Justin ODell.9517:

Everyone’s MMR was just reset. In the eyes of the matchmaker, you’re all newbies now.

A casual observer would recognize that someone who is rank 1 is not as skilled as someone who is rank 50 (I’m not rank 50). This statement holds true for the overwhelming majority of cases. Knowing this, I am at a loss why one would institute an MMR reset with such a logic error.

Is there a plan to fix the matchmaking logic to prevent this in the future, accompanied with another MMR reset?

Laserbolt.6731:

Do you recall if there were any 1s or 3s on the opposing team?

1 Rank 7, some rank 40 and 20+.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hello fellow PvPers,

This is a friendly reminder that we’ll be resetting the leaderboard for Solo Arena and Team Arena with tomorrow’s updates.

We decided to reset the leaderboards because of the matchmaking changes we put in on November 12th. Those changes, along with the leaderboard reset, should allow for a much more competitive environment going forward. Because the matches will be more competitive, players should also be placed in their correct rating much more accurately. I’d like to make it very clear that this reset does not mark the end of an official ‘season’, and as such, we will not be rewarding players for leaderboard placement. I know that this may be a tough pill to swallow for our more hardcore players, but we hope you understand our reasoning behind this.

That said, we’re not opposed to giving players rewards based on ladder placement in the future. Next week we’ll be able to give more details on our plans for the leaderboards, rewards, and beyond.

Let me translate this based upon experience:

• if you are serious about PvP, this reset will put you in teams with players that are rank 1. So don’t play for a while.

I think that even a casual observer would see the fault with this implementation.

Thanks ArenaNet – I’ll not be playing your PvP for a while.

So my first match in solo arena and I get teamed up with a Rank 1 and a Rank 3.

This is ArenaNet’s idea of a reasonable reset? Placing players with hundreds of hours of playtime on the same team as people with none?

The only logical takeaway from this is that ArenaNet wants PvP’ers to not play right now.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Enemies explode if killed
Enemies have frost aura
Enemies leave a poison field when killed
Enemy attacks also cause Torment
Enemies deal 15% more damage
Enemies have permanent Quickness
Enemies stealth at 15% health
Enemies gain chaos armor at 20% health
Enemies have magnetic aura
Enemies have fury
Downed Players pulse AoE Torment on nearby players
Players cannot gain vigor
Players have 1 dodge bar
Players have 15% reduced damage
Player elite abilities are disabled
Players gain a stacking bleed when close to each other
Players gain a random condition every 5 seconds
Players have 15% reduced health
Player abilities have a 20% increased recharge time

Where did you find this?!? I think I just fell in love with fractals all over again.

I made it up based upon what would be fun.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Sounds like we want devs to pick topics based on a short vote during the CDI process evolution phase.

I vote at this time that we discuss Commander functionality next as it also impacts PVE. This topic however would be discussed in the WvW forums.

Regarding your question Cactus i will ask DC to do a summary of valuable points garnered from the discussion. He is however away for the holiday so we should be patient in that regard in terms of a reply.

Chris

Can part of this discussion be about how the commander functionality could also be used in sPvP (providing direction / commands / etc) ?

I’d go the power route. If you’re looking into Fractals, I’d change around your build to provide more support. Like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQJAWRl4zSqHRTgGaNJhJF9G5nZAdnTShqTdZBA-jwBBIgAUEA5PFRjtMsIasqapWjETBTICA-e

This build gives you lots of tools, especially for fractals:
* you can group heal by spamming mantra of pain
* Phantasmal Defender takes 50% of everyone’s damage (not just you)
* group regen
* Time Warp

Plus, it’s hella flexible so you can change your support on the fly:
* Swap GS for Sword + Focus, Warden’s Feedback and Feedback for strong projectile reflects
* Swap Mantra of Pain for Disenchanter, Shattered Concentration for condi cleansing + boon stripping
* Pick up Bountiful Interruption for huge might sharing

I like the choice of Signet of Inspiration. When I get in a dungeon run, I’ll often shout out ‘GIVE ME MIGHT’ to get some group might stacks. Then I share it right back and double everyone’s might stack, then hit time warp = very powerful.

Stabbath, have you experimented with using an ‘on-heal’ proc Runeset with your Mantra? Lyssa (cough, cough OP) has a great proc and Centaur is really awesome for group mobility.
Mantra Mastery + Centaur is perma-swiftness for your team (and it’s quite underrated in combat too)

Xenn.3809:

Qaelyn.7612:

I ran with mantras all the time while leveling. The problem with them in PvP (of any type) is that they take too long to charge, and during that time I can’t do anything else except move. Am I using them incorrectly?

You can use any instant skill while channeling the mantra – like activating other mantra charges, shatters, phase retreat, chaos armour, prestige…

…Spatial Surge…

Enemies explode if killed
Enemies have frost aura
Enemies leave a poison field when killed
Enemy attacks also cause Torment
Enemies deal 15% more damage
Enemies have permanent Quickness
Enemies stealth at 15% health
Enemies gain chaos armor at 20% health
Enemies have magnetic aura
Enemies have fury
Downed Players pulse AoE Torment on nearby players
Players cannot gain vigor
Players have 1 dodge bar
Players have 15% reduced damage
Player elite abilities are disabled
Players gain a stacking bleed when close to each other
Players gain a random condition every 5 seconds
Players have 15% reduced health
Player abilities have a 20% increased recharge time

kidding!

LordByron.8369:

nice but….
what about writing some lines on how to play it….
or just a vid would be enough.

Spam Phantasms and run around! :-)

Seriously though, here’s Taugrim’s Phantasm build from back in the day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NaGcm8jTy4&list=SP69AEEF06799051EB&index=16

BlackStabbath.9780:

Thanks for the suggestions. All great points. I believe this build is flexible enough you could certainly swap some traits around without losing the main functions of the build.

However, I’m not sold on making the phantasms have more life traits. 20% of nothing is still nothing. I mean, they may last one more hit but that’s not a given.

Fair enough. Perhaps then try running with Defender one of your utility slots. He has around 20k base health and takes 50% damage for your team, Phantasms included. :-)

I usually look at the opposition and make a determination on what to slot. If I see I need more condi removal or boon stripping, I’ll put on Disenchanter. If I see I need more pew-pew reduction, I’ll put on Defender.

I’m liking the build more and more, mainly because I can spike almost as effectively as a shatter mesmer, but with a little less risk. GS4->Decoy->S5->S4->S3->swap->S2+shatter->GS5 can do around 10k damage and leaves your opponent on the ground.

I’ve been running 20/30/0/20/0 for a while now with GS+S/S and find it to be very effective.

You have no talents or utilities which give your Phantasms more HP. Since this is a phantasm-heavy build, you may want to consider such an investment. Without more hp, your phantasms will die with 1 crit, or a couple of hits.

Consider placing only 20 into Inspiration and 10 into either Dueling or Domination. For example, if you put 30 into Dueling instead and pick up Empowering Mantras, you’ll lose 15% Phantasm damage, but gain 5% critical strike chance and 10% critical strike damage, and 8% damage for having 2 Mantras charged. That’s a loss of somewhere south of 5% overall phantasm damage in exchange for ~11% personal damage and bigger spike damage.

If you want to keep Deceptive Evasion, you may want to consider dropping greatsword training in favor of Shattered Concentration. Going into a teamfight, dropping a couple of clones and shattering can strip strong boons like protection, which will give you a huge boost to your phantasm damage.

I’d drop Mantra of Resolve for the Disenchanter. Disenchanter is totally underrated. He drops easily in an AoE fight situation, but aside from that he does substantial condi cleaning and boon stripping.

Edit: Also, I prefer Swordsman over Duelist for this build because of the crazy spike damage he does. If he’s left alone, the Swordsman will hit almost as hard as the Beserker. Plus the Swordsman typically eats thieves alive.

agree with OP

/15char

garethh.3518:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Is ArenaNet listening? Do they have an opinion?
If they believe it’s imbalanced, do they have a plan on fixing it?
If they believe it’s balanced, I’d like to understand their rationale, because I cannot come up with one.

garethh.3518:

The question is never about ‘OP’, its whether or not the thing is hurting gameplay.

GW2 condi’s hurt gameplay… Lyssa staves off condis… Lyssa helps gameplay.
QED

I think you misunderstood, I was looking for a rationale forged with reason and logic, not one based upon invalid premises and faulty conclusions.

Zenith.7301:

faeral.1840:

if the icd was 120, you would still run Lyssa over any other runeset?

As a warrior or thief, of course.

It;s still like an extra mini elite on top of your current elite. Nothing will match that.

Nothing will match 5 sec stability+ full condi drop.

I’d argue it’s more powerful than many elite ablities in-game.

Is ArenaNet listening? Do they have an opinion?
If they believe it’s imbalanced, do they have a plan on fixing it?
If they believe it’s balanced, I’d like to understand their rationale, because I cannot come up with one.

I agree with the OP: diamond skin is the poster boy for one of the major problems with the PvP in this game.

It is really important. However I think people don’t really care for how it cannot be dodged and that it’s basically a 7k+ 600m aoe cleave.

Chicago Jack.5647:

garethh.3518:

lyssa, shadowstep, hide in shadows.
A kitten ton of condi removal if used well.

No. Just no. There is a reason why we do not see this junk in sPvP as a backstab thief. Primarily because these builds are easily countered and way too predictable. Way too much QQ’ing going on in this thread. If people are losing to this? L2P.

How to fight a Thief

Note, the warrior isn’t running drool-on-keyboard ham/bow zerker stance spec.

No but he is running OP 400+/sec regen signet and has heavy armor and I’m guessing is stacking toughness too. Is that all it takes to kill a thief? Just an OP warrior?

silvermember.8941:

Thieves shouldn’t have perma stealth.
Thieves shouldn’t do a lot of damage from stealth.
Thieves should be more durable.
thieve should not have cheap teleports.
Thieves should have to make a choice between mobility and stealth.

or stealth should have some type of counterplay and giving rangers a stupid skill on a long CD is not one of them.

Stealth requires some kind of counterplay, I agree completely. In WoW DoTs could break stealth as well as warrior’s shout (aka ‘Fear Me’) and Hunter’s Flare could reveal stealthed opponents.

It’s been over a year and ANet still really hasn’t made progress in that area. Warhammer got it right – they didn’t put it in the game in the first place.

SuperHaze.4210:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Put more tools into custom arenas:
Turn nodes on/off
Change point rewards
Change gravity
Add/remove buffs and conditions
Mapvote
Randomize weapons/traits
Change skyhammer damage
Profession limits
Disable/enable weapons/gear
Enable costume brawl
Place in game weapons (e.g. Deathmatch plankfight)

I feel that custom arenas as a way to monetize pvp didn’t work. Aside from the lack of options for customizing arenas, most people don’t want to pay for the ability to design a map when a game like Starcraft provides that for free. GW2 custom arenas should have all of the above but for free. On top of that, to have to pay to keep it active doesn’t make sense.

I’m not interested in the monetary aspect of it. I’m interested in putting some basic tools in gameplay variety into the hands of the gamer.

For example: if I had a custom server with all kinds of knobs specified above, I could create a ‘team deathmatch’ server, where I could turn off capture points. Then I could make some observations and tweak the teamsize to get it right. Then I could enable/disable certain buffs or what-not to balance it out.

Think of it as ‘distributed processing’ for a pvp solution: if you have a few hundred people creating custom servers with differing game modes, you will quickly iterate and separate the viable solutions from the chaff.

Also, you could create fun stuff, like the ‘wooden plank deathmatch’ server. That kind of variety would make the game fun without requiring any long-term maintenance of game modes on ANet’s part.

Hype.8032:

The only builds that are viable now and will be viable after the patch put 30 points into CS. THEREFOR there is no buff to initiative regen due to the big nerf to opportunist. Anyone talking about the initiative changes to thief should know that. There are further nerfs such as the trait that gives 2 initiative on signet use going to 1 and 2 per 10 sec going to 1/10. I am not speculating, you are just not thinking critically.

Simply because you have not theorycrafted a new viable thief build does not imply one will not exist. You must allow for the possibility that your incredible knowledge and foresight into these upcoming changes may not be all-seeing and that viable builds may exist that you have not considered.

Hype.8032:

EDIT: Let’s continue this a bit further. S/D is widely viewed as the most viable thief spec in spvp. S/D is getting nerfed from several different angles: IR cast time, nerf to acro vigor traits, losing trait effectiveness that add initiative (more than makes up for the 33% passive init gain). Ready to follow logic? If S/D is currently the best spec and it is getting nerfed, then thief as a whole is becoming less viable unless another build is coming to replace it. If you can think up a new top thief build I’d be happy to listen to you talk about it.

If your assertion is consistent with ArenaNet’s line of thinking (i.e. thieves are becoming less viable), then that furthers my argument: Thieves are the Apex Predator for their role currently. The December 10th changes are there to alter the state of the game.

I still assert that the upcoming changes are insufficient to disrupt that status.

Hype.8032:

I’m sure other people posted it already but you know the initiative changes for thief is pretty much a wash if not a slight nerf don’t you? Sorry but not knowing this shows you’re unqualified to pass judgement on this subject. Mesmer is getting buffed and thief is only seeing nerfs, what are you complaining about again?

This is untrue. Initiative buff is across the board, meaning all thief builds will see the benefit. Only certain builds are getting slightly nerfed.

Also, you assert you know thieves are getting nerfed overall as though it was a fact. However, you do not know this: you are speculating. I don’t believe you are qualified to pass judgement in this matter if you are not sufficiently qualified to differentiate between speculation and fact.

My suggestion:

• Move the entire map on the ground.
• Remove all the glass panels on the base floor.
• Change Skyhammer weapon and give it 3 abilities: 1) AoE reticule that removes stability, inflicts 3 seconds of weakness, chill and revealed and imparts a substantial aoe knockback (i.e. 1200m), 2) AoE reticule that removes stability, inflicts 3 seconds of poison, 5 stacks of confusion for 10 seconds and stuns for 2 seconds, 3) small AoE reticle that does a lot of damage (this ability would have a substantially longer cooldown than abilities 1 and 2, a substantially smaller reticule and would do more damage than the current Skyhammer does – effectively a 1-hit kill)
• Skyhammer abilities 1 and 2 are dodgeable. Skyhammer ability 3 is not
• Relocate Skyhammer control room above the central node in the main map
• Lower the height of the Skyhammer control room such that players knocked off the control room take a non-fatal amount of falling damage (~50% hp). Leave the panels, but widen the area a little.
• Increase the size of the far and near capture points.

This accomplishes a few things:

1. Removes the cheese and de-emphasizes knockbacks, fears and stability
2. Makes Skyhammer an important tactical weapon
3. Retains the Skyhammer ‘insta-gib’ mechanic, but only rewards teams that can coordinate their movement and controls well
4. Keeps knockbacks important, as well as gives some reason to spec into falling damage reduction.

Let’s say you are a map designer. Your manager has told you that 80% of the player base hates Skyhammer and that it needs to be redesigned to be more fun. What would you do (short of scrapping it)?

Fury of Balthazar.2694:

Acandis.3250:

With so many unbalanced features in the current SPvP system, I don’t understand why you devote so much of your time to new maps when the current ones are not in a good state.

I totally agree with this statement.

Before considering the conception of new PvP maps, it is imperative to know the general public feedback from the previous installed maps.

Skyhammer: The general reception of this map is very negative. Skyhammer is a fun map to play but not in a competitive setting.
Problems:

• It greatly favors builds that do not focus on actual PvP combat. People take advantage of the map layout to win fights through Crowd Control utilities and skills, which to many, do not consider being skillful play.
• Players can take great advantage of line of sight to avoid many offensive abilities and again shows little skillful play as compared to open field combat of other maps.
• Secondary mechanic is not balanced. Cannon room fights favor classes with CC utilities over classes that focus on actual combat. The Skyhammer cannot be dodged and thus requires you to run away from combat rather than engaging it.
• And personally, I do not enjoy secondary mechanics that can determine PvP fights (trebuchet, Skyhammer)

Spirit Watch: The general reception of this map is pretty negative. Many consider this map to be “the tunnel vision” map as teammates would rather fight over the secondary objective rather than the primary one. But this is a circumstantial point of view. The main issue on this map is a question of balance.

• The secondary objective favors classes with many defensive utilities (guardian) or with many leap skills (warrior) as they can reliably carry the orb for a good distance. Classes that depend on teleports/stealth/invulnerabilities to travel long distances safely are denied of this opportunity by restrictions laid out by carrying the orb. I understand that this was made to be balanced but it is not. A suggestion: Upon picking up the orb, replace everyone’s HP and toughness with a flat value, remove all traits, and replace all their skills with something like an attack, a short leap, an evade, and a heal to normalize the orb carrier’s ability, so that some classes aren’t blatantly better at it.

The main issue with these maps it that they cater to specific classes, traits and builds as compared to Forest of Nifhel or Legacy of the Foefire, where every class can equally participate in team fights and in secondary mechanics. With this in mind, the suggestions I can put forth for creating new maps are:

• Map layout should not entice players to play specific builds to gain advantage; builds should be focused for combat and combat only.
• Map layout should mainly be open field where players cannot gain significant advantage of line of sight.
• Secondary mechanic should not be a weapon or a tool that helps teams win PvP fights, but rather help them get total points (Chieftain, Svanir, Lord, Tranquility, Stillness)

Very well said! If Skyhammer is the kind of map that ArenaNet believes should be more commonplace, they need to rebalance the professions such that all professions have relatively equal access to knockbacks/fears/pulls and stability. Otherwise, it’s simply a poorly designed map.

I have a question:
Was the team that designed Skyhammer and/or Spirit Watch the same team that designed Foefire or Niflhel?

Yuki.1765:

Well, against 4 condi necro you can win ! If no one defend points it’s easy

You could by either having far: having far superior group movement speed, or stacking tons of condition removal, or by stacking tons of stuns. However, that requires more group composition (and coordination) than what you can expect from solo queue.

Lyssa runes have no counter.

Demonts.4593:

Mesmers are completely OP when it comes to teamfight damage considering the mobility they have as well. Eles can as well have way mroe AOE damage than thieves and they can sustain more damage as well. Burst theives have very little effect on a teamfight. Mesmer’s should really stop complaining. especially with how easy their class is… 90% of damage comes from AI lol!

Watch the ESL finals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC1MPUxaYP0

That tells a different story. It’s a mirror match of teams, except one team has a mesmer and the other a thief. The thief completely hard counters the Mesmer. The shoutcasters even comment on how hard a counter that matchup is.

Nice match. Good example of how hard a counter thieves are to mesmers.

There are a lot of inexperienced players and lack of coordination on these teams. I’d like to offer a suggestion that has proven to be very effective in other games.

Assign a team leader for each team. That leader can push on-screen messages (i.e. overlay on-screen and not in chat box) to provide direction for the team.

How this works: if you are familiar with ‘raid leaders’ in WoW, it works exactly like that. The lead can use raid warnings to communicate important messages to the team. The lead can also hand over the reigns to someone else.

This can be a very effective method of helping pull together a team as well act as a hands-on teaching tool for new players.

As far as who gets assigned the raid lead: just give it to the player with highest rank. He/she may not be the ‘best’ person to get the lead hat, but odds are that a high ranking person will, at the very least, know when they should hand the lead over to someone else (and know how to).

TLDR:
* copy WoW’s “Raid Leader” and “Raid Warning” mechanics. Assign each team a Raid Leader