Guild Wars 2

With the most recent content patch they fixed legendary aura stacking, which is honestly a pretty lame thing for them to go out of their way to fix, especially with the amount of other bugs actually affecting gameplay. However, it is arguably understandable with people fps bombing other players and what not. BUT, fixing this by removing the ability to use legendary auras in tonics is a bit too far. I mean surely there is some other way to prevent this without breaking the auras more. Using auras in tonics was largely my motivation for making my legendaries and the only real reason I collected my infinite tonics.

TLDR: Legendary auras dont work in tonics any more to fix aura stacking, and that is a bummer imo.

The aftercast is upsetting to say the least. I dont understand why they needed to break the functionality of the skill so that people can have a bigger tell than they already had.

Might as well just revert it back to the old animation and tack on the “On My Mark” target to the end of the cast if they want people to know when to mash buttons at us…

I feel like cluster bomb (and blast finishers in general) should still stealth you if they deal damage. At the moment, the damage is dealt after the stealth buff is gained, so it immediately gives revealed. This same interaction does not happen with leaps, where the damage is dealt before the stealth buff is gained so as to not break the stealth.

I can see why it is not that way for balancing engineers, but I doubt it would affect balance any more than letting leaps function as they do.

Yeah you are right, for some reason I thought mark of blood had a pulse effect. So yes it does work the same for necro marks as it does for traps and shouts.

Yeah haha Im like the only person who uses them. It has been a concern of mine for awhile but It never really bothered me till recently when the updates to servers made them start failing completely somewhat often, so now I have to work with occasional failures due to server timings and the blind failures.

But yeah, they do in fact not work like all the necro marks, since its only one attack for thieves the entire thing misses, while for necro some of the marks having pulse effects that continue after the first attack misses. However, If it is a single attack mark, it will miss for all targets if the necro is blinded. (Something that also makes no sense, necro marks should totally not be blindable if you walk into them)

Something else to note, ranger traps also miss when blinded. As do all the offensive shouts in the game. How Either traps and shouts missing from lack of eyesight makes any sense is beyond me.

Just pointing out that thief traps miss when the thief is blinded. I feel that makes absolutely no sense from a logical point of view and hardly any sense from a balance point of view. I was wondering if this is intentional decision or simply an oversight. Thanks for any feed back.

Just reporting a bug Ive observed reliably now in which my own runes of perplexity give me the 5 confusion on interrupt if I am interrupted by a petrification ability (IE Thief Basilisk Venom, Box O’ Fun, Or various Monster petrification abilities). Each time I noticed this happening I made sure to double check that there was not an additional source of confusion.

Hope this gets straightened out, thanks!

In short, If you have perplexity runes and are interrupted by something like basilisk venom that petrifies you, your own runes give you 5 confusion if they are not on cooldown.

The upcoming change preview for Pistol Whip was listed as this

Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.

Initially I agreed that this was a needed change and a step in the right direction for buffing pistol whip. However, I recently have been playing more sword pistol and have found that the after cast duration following the stun, while somewhat clunky at first, is my primary source of real-time positioning. Basically, I did not realize how much pistol whip relies on being able to stun and reliably take a few steps to better position the followup flurry. With that said, I am beginning to worry that this change will ultimately be a nerf to the play style of sword pistol. Yes it will buff the flat spammability of pistol whip, it will nerf the skillful aspect of landing the entire flurry. Furthermore, I feel this will further worse the “Root” aspect that people so common complain is the worst feature of pistol whip. (All that said, I am emphasizing this for really all fields of game play, but it has the most implications arguably in spvp).

While I still agree that pistol whip will likely need some form of buff to make it more viable to the general community, I do not feel this will work out very well. Just an idea, Let me know what you all think about this. Mind you I understand that a few steps may not seem like much of anything, but I ensure you that a few steps could be crucial to make this viable.

TL;DR
The after cast reduction purposed will effectively nerf pistol whip because the after cast allows for alot of the set up that is needed to make pistol whip viable damage, especially in pvp. Something else, or NO change at all would be much better in my opinion.

Thanks

Thief Changes Feedback:

*Shadow Return – I understand the direction you are heading, but would suggest not implementing this specific nerf as I feel it will frustrate the majority of the sword community. I feel that sword could get away with not having this specific nerf at least until the follow up balance patch following this one, if the need for it still persists. Additionally, Id stress that this nerf requires it be castable while stunned otherwise it will be too severe of an adjustment. Also, losing the ability to cast abilities while shadow returning will be greatly missed and resented for being changed.

*Pistol Whip- While this is definitely a step in the right direction, I feel it needs some additional function to make it more usable, as it is often not reliable damage. Something to consider is maybe adding a vulnerability application or possibly a light bleed, with the majority of said application being done toward the end of the flurry, so as to add incentive for properly landing the end of the pistol whip. It wouldnt have to be much and would synergize better for trait lines then pistol whip currently does.

*Sundering Strikes- Decent change overall, however id suggest possibly making it an 8second vuln as 6 will not really generate more then 3-4 stacks (I know condi duration is being taken into account but still feel it is nessessary) With that, you could also move it to master tier and leave it at ~8 – ~10s duration, as the master tier of deadly arts does not have all that much to chose from generally. However, if some form of vulnerability was added to current weapon sets it would alleviate this problem for the most part.

*Opportunist – While I see the purpose of this change, I feel it is too drastic of a change. With that trait line already lacking in minor trait quality, that is that the 5% crit while above 90% hp is inadequate compared to many other minors, I feel this change is a tad over done. Possibly just reducing the cool down to 3s instead of 5, or even 4, would greatly improve its usability. Though i understand why this change was made, some compensation needs to be done, either to this minor or the adept tier minor, either way.

*Signet Use- While this trait will surely still be usable, I feel that this is more due to the lackluster quality of other master tier traits in the critical strikes line. Overall I feel this will hurt signet builds more then promote diversity in the trait line. With that said, it is certainly more reasonable a change then the Quick Recovery change.

*Critical Haste – I feel this trait still need at least 1 second increase to its haste duration. This has been needed since the initial haste change when all haste durations were increase except this one. 1s of haste per 15s of cooldown is unreasonable for being a master trait.

*Infusion of Shadow- Respectable change, agree fully.

*Vigorous Recovery and Bountiful Theft Vigor reduction – I agree that these need to be reduced by I do not agree with a 50% reduction, 33% or 25% would be more reasonable in my opinion, as there is not much incentive for picking either of these up if you do not have boon duration at 4s and 8s, especially since bountiful doesnt buff you if you do not make contact with an enemy and that Vigorous recovery can limit your heal options. I feel these changes, as they are now, will make these two traits unused for the most part.

*Quick Recovery – With the mentality you all are taking toward initiative changes, I fully understand this change, however it needs some compensation for losing 50% of its effectiveness. Should that be done, this would likely be completely fine.

*Assassin’s Reward – I cant see many people making the devotion to the acrobatics line to pick this up as there are simply better options for healing. That and the acro grandmaster is not as flexible as the other said healing options.

*Kleptomaniac – This change is understandable, however I feel it will hurt the trickery trait line as a whole. This was a large part of the incentive of going trickery tree despite its lackluster trait linked stats, at least for builds that aren’t pure condition damage (IE Sword).

The most important changes to me are the shadow return change, the opportunity change, and the active skills that give initiative (steal with klepto and signets).

Sorry for the length, I appreciate any consideration.

P.S. – Can you all PLEASE change the shot animation for Body Shot. The beautiful effect the old body shot was wonderful and fitting of the Thief profession. These new Bolas we fire are ridiculous, unsuited, and frankly seem like a place holder. Thank you!