Using kit refinement with either the elixir gun or tool kit can help too. I’ve made some decent use of those before (tool kit also has the caltrops Jr. ability). You can also try dropping bombs behind you (smoke bomb and glue bomb can be helpful), and the freeze grenade can be effective in slowing a cluster of people down.
Blocks are also useful too from tool kit and shield, and elixir S can be a very useful tool for getting away.
I’d say rocket boots as well, but they can be rather unreliable.
There’s also the automated response traits that lets you be immune to conditions when you’re at low HP. Combined with high toughness, it can make it hard for people to get rid of that last portion of your health, especially if you have persistent regen. You’re also immune to cripple, chill, fear, and immobilize at that point.
Slick shoes is one I haven’t played around with a lot, but it can be a very useful skill for leaving you opponents in the dust, especially since the oil slick doesn’t put you in combat by itself. The 5 seconds of super speed on the tool belt skill can also be very handy for escapes. You can get 7 seconds of super speed if you do tool kit with kit refinement as well.
You can also go for some stealth with smoke bomb and toss elixir S. You can have a number of blast finishers available that will let you be a thief for a short time.
In any case, if you want to be an engg roamer, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect to handle zergs well. It’s just not something that those builds are inherently good at. You need to pick your battles as a roamer, and picking them against zergs isn’t going to be in your best interest most of the time. If zergs really want to catch you, they will. So you just need to be constantly aware of where they are and try to get out of the way.
I’ve had decent success in 1vZerg, but it was with a highly defensive build (i.e. similar to tankcat). The problem with this build is that it can be underwhelming for roaming since it will be harder to kill things in 1v1.
As for other professions, thieves and eles tend to be the best at 1vZerg, although I wouldn’t discount mesmers. Guardians and rangers might also be able to do well with the right build, although they would have to rely on raw survivability more than escaping.
FYI, I don’t know if this is a forum they primarily look at for bug reports, so you might also want to post it in the suggestions or bug report forums as well.
One thing to keep in mind is that it will likely be tough to find a build that will work in all 1v1 scenarios, which is something you will just have to accept.
It also depends on what you want the build to do. For instance, you could design the build for capping points from the a bunker opponent, or create a bunker build to handle mobile individuals who might come by the node for a quick cap.
I’d question whether designing a build with 1v1 in mind is really the best way to go from a tPvP perspective, but if it’s just hotjoin stuff then you’re probably fine.
My favourites tend to be either dual pistol condi builds or a power focused rifle build with grenades. Both make use of HGH.
I actually dislike both the websites I have those bookmarked on… should port them over to a different one.
In general, I usually find necros and rangers to be the most trouble, followed by thieves and mesmers.
I’ve never, ever seen the projectile absorb fail me, and the damage is dealt much faster than the #1 chain. I really have no issues with Zealot’s Defense. It’s one of my favorite skills.
This is my observation as well. I have seen no evidence of the projectile absorb failing.
Some ranged attacks are not actually projectiles. For instance, mesmer greatsword and necro scepter do not fire projectiles, they simply hit at range. As such, it would make sense for them not to be absorbed by ZD.
Additionally, some ranged attacks may be projectiles but not hit as projectiles. For instance, if an engg uses exploding shot (pistol 1), this is a projectile. However, if the projectile does not hit but the exploding AoE portion of the skill does, it would make sense not be be absorbed by ZD. Similar to fireball. This could happen if an adjacent ally is attacked, the vector of the projectile was skewed slightly since you were moving just before using ZD, or if the ability is used untargetted (although this is uncommon).
I’m not sure if bouncing projectiles come into play at all in terms of circumventing the absorption. One would assume they are absorbed, but I’ve never explicitly tested that.
One of the things I had to come to terms with concerning thieves is that a draw is sometimes the best that can be hoped for. It can be a similar case for d/d eles and mesmers as well, even warriors if they have a highly mobile spec (i.e. sword and greatsword).
Such classes can have numerous abilities that allow them to choose when the fight ends, so it can be difficult to get around that unless you play your cards exactly right. Engg has arguably the worst micro-mobility in the game (although necros are a solid contender for that title), so professions/builds that can easily end a fight in such a manner can be tough to deal with.
This may not always be a “draw” though. For instance, if the scenario you described occurred in sPvP on a capture node, you would have actually one since you would now capture the node and thief was unable to gain their team points. The thief would possibly also be compelled to return to the fight to not lose the point and could possibly be killed since he didn’t run away.
However, this sounds like it was in WvW, so this is just something you will have to come to terms with. I guess if you were fighting over the supply camp you maybe would’ve “won”, but that scenario would be extremely rare (at least in the mid-upper tiers).
At the very least, thieves don’t have their infinite distance infiltrator’s strike anymore, and ele’s RTL is not as powerful, so they can’t just re-engage you for free non-stop like they used to be able to.
Careful with those turrets too, thieves can just CnD off them until they decide they’re ready to fight again.
It gives 3 seconds of Fury/5 Might/Swiftness every 3 seconds for 30 seconds.
This way its harder to steal.
Or you could simply NOT pop it against a S/D Thief. There is always that.
People need to stop using this argument. WVW isn’t a duel arena. More often than not the thief will surprise you when you’re already fighting or something similar to that.
Then this proposed change is to do what? Help against being ambushed by a thief in WvW? The suggested change seems to have been considered very much in a 1v1 scenario, and should thus be responded to considering such a scenario. If you want to talk about it in the context of WvW, then it doesn’t apply at all since the play has so many other environmental factors and is very much a numbers-based format (i.e. bigger zerg is more likely to win against smaller zerg).
Signet of Rage does have a passive effect, it’s not like it’s a complete waste if you don’t pop it. It’s not boat loads of extra adrenaline, but would you rather have extra adrenaline or giving your opponents your boons? I would assume the former given the proposed suggestion, but I think the answer that would be given is “neither”.
You could always use a different elite, like battle standard. That has a mechanic very similar to the one being described here, with periodic application of boons. If that elite still seems unpalatable to you, it must mean there’s a characteristic of SoR that you prefer over battle standard. But then you should also recognize that there can be some disadvantageous situations to using SoR, such as when fighting a S/D thief of boon conversion necro.
You can also take traits to take advantage of this. For instance, you can take the Deep Strike trait to gain extra precision from unused signets, which would give you improved crit chance without popping the signet (would obviously be better with more signets on your utilities).
If you want to get crazy, you could even take Destruction of the Empowered. This way you could pop you signet, purposely let the thief steal your boons, and instantly gain a 9% damage boost against him. If forum posts are to be believed, that single trait is supposed to completely invalidate almost all other professions anyways, so maybe you should consider taking it for general useage as it is.
Of course, I don’t think the intent of this proposed change was to implement some kind of tactical mechanism to use against boon stealing thieves/mesmers, but to compensate for inherent weaknesses in one or more player’s preferred build so they could possibly win an additional fight or two without changing playstyles.
As awesome as that is, we don’t need anymore reasons to run elixirs.
Well, it would be nice to have some kind of direct crossover with elixirs in the explosives tree. Although technically it already doesn’t have a crossover since no one takes that trait.
Someone made a suggestion some time back to have elixir tosses create a random combo field of short duraiton, which I thought sounded ok. But there’d be a few fiddly things to figure out with that, such as radius considerations and how it works with toss elixir U.
As NevirSayDie mentioned, combat doesn’t end till the golems are dead. And if you kill the heavy but some aoe hits the medium golem, you’re still in combat till the medium dies too. Haven’t tested distance from target til I’m out of combat; it’s faster to just nuke the golem down than run.
The golem doesn’t have to die if you get far enough away. Sometimes it’s easier to just kill the golems though. I find you usually will be out of combat if you run back to the road an a bit of the ways up the hill towards the dodge trainer.
To she’d some light, once a change requires text, the minimum turnaround is 4 weeks on translation alone.
Jon – could you please shed some light on why this trait has been broken for so long? There have been numerous threads on this topic that have had devs involved, including the Stickied Engineer Bugs Compilation thread since September 16, 2012!
It is very disappointing that a clearly broken (not simply bugged) trait has been completely ignored for so long.
As mentioned, they either didn’t know, or it was noted and simply got buried for whatever reason. The latter is probably more likely.
In software development, you basically pile up every item of work into a gaping hole known as the “backlog”, and then it’s a matter of survival of the fittest for the individual items. Some items will survive and rise to the top, and will subsequently be addressed in a timely manner. Other items will be consumed by the bottomless pit that is the backlog, being lost and forgotten in a sea of many other lost and forgotten things. Every now and again, someone adventurous soul delves deep into the bowels of the backlog, risking their sanity to uncover these lost and forgotten artifacts. Either that, or a janitor (AKA intern) gets hired to sift through it. In any case, some of the items are sometimes given another chance at survival, although some are still doomed to be consumed once more by the backlog.
I think one of the devs said they looked at the script and thought it looked ok, so they maybe weren’t as thorough as their testing as they needed to be. Whatever the case though, it is good news to hear that a fix is definitely on its way.
It kind of sounds like they may be changing how the trait functions rather than just letting it take the effect it is supposed to change. The translation concerns for this change imply the tooltip will be different, so maybe the actual trait effect will also be different. I guess we’ll have to see though.
I’ve also never had to deal with localization and translation issues, but I’m pretty sure it would be a hair loss inducing beast if I did.
Very cool to see some quasi-real time updates on the status of these issues though. I wish there could be more.
(edited by Yamsandjams.3267)
I didn’t fully agree with the tourney rules, especially with allowing the thief to have infinite elites while I was just limited to one
Those are crappy rules. I guess the intent behind them is to account for elites with long cooldowns vs. elites with short cooldowns. That is, a thief could use basilisk venom several times in the time it would take your supply crate to come off cooldown, so in a way it’s unfair to use it in every round because it could effectively mean you have a lower cooldown on it. But the way it was done in that tourney heavily favours the thief, especially since it allows him to completely capitalize on Lyssa runes. Your elite had been off cooldown for a very long time in the third match anyways, so the rules actually imposed an arbitrarily long cooldown on your elite. You easily would have won if the rules didn’t screw you over.
You won the first match by using your elite, but that thief made a really bad move by running into your turrets, especially after you had actually chased after him when he backed off. It’s fair to say supply crate could determine the way the match goes, but the same can be said about basilisk venom.
When I have casual duels, we usually just wait until all skills are off cooldown, so everything can be used in every match. I can understand why they wouldn’t want that in the tournament, but that was a really unfair way to manage it.
It was also a bit weird that there were no starting positions. He started the third match right at your gate, which gave him a significant positional advantage. There should have been some sort of neutral start at least. Was there even a moderator for this? I didn’t hear anyone saying or see anyone typing “Go” or anything like that.
Maybe if they had said the thief can only use basilisk venom once or twice per round that would have made it more balanced, since they could still use theirs more frequently than yours, but still have a similar restriction that you face to even out the playing field. But I doubt that would fly well with thief players. Or maybe they could have given you two uses for the tournament to mimic the longer cooldown without completely screwing you over.
An even better way would be have it so that you can’t use your elite on the next round if you won the previous round, which means your opponent is afforded an advantage but you’re still not completely screwed over if your opponent starts winning. They have a similar system in fighting game tournaments where the loser is generally allowed the option to repick their character(s) while the winner has to play the next round with the exact same setup. Thus, the loser is not put into an entirely disadvantageous situation against the winner.
I guess the main problem is that GW2 simply has no support whatsoever for 1v1 duels of this format, so everything is a bit ad hoc. If they had a dedicated 1v1 format, a lot of things would just be enforced by the engine.
Well, hopefully any other tournaments you play in will have more well-designed rules.
I have to give that thief lots of credit though. I don’t find many thieves that play so effectively without relying on stealth. He flew like a butterfly and stung like a bee.
I don’t agree with the removal of rooting on zealot’s defense though. People would use it primarily for escaping. That is, you’d have your back turned to a zerg, running back to your tower while not being affected by any projectiles for 3 seconds. If it couldn’t be used to attack people, then that would probably be fine (would work exactly like a shield block in that sense), but I don’t think they can remove the rooting without some other kind of tradeoff.
Zealot’s Defense is arguably the highest DPS ability to single targets that a Guardian has. I don’t see the concern of using it has an escape as it’s still susceptible to non-travel time abilities. Or it works in a frontal cone (if it doesn’t already). If I recall, Ranger greatsword 4 ability (counterattack, 15s cd), rooted them in place and they eventually lifted that. Sword has no cc associated with it so it’s really easy to get out of range and evade ZD. I’m just not seeing any negative impact of removing the root and turning it into a must have weapon.
The opposite is also true though. You can charge at people using it, having no fear of incoming projectiles while attacking at the same time, meaning it could be used as another tool to charge through zergs into a gate or something similar (guardian definitely does not need more of those).
As for the ranger, counterattack cannot attack while blocking. If you commit to the block, you will halt your offence unless the counterattack triggers.
If it is used on the move against ranged attacks, there is no counter portion of the skill and it is simply used as a block.
You can cancel your block into the crippling throw attack, but then you are foregoing the block for the attack. Additionally, the crippling throw roots you in place, although it is not for that long (does less damage than ZD as well though).
You can give a similar argument as to why giving mesmers the ability to move around in blurred frenzy would be too much.
This is just a case of the tooltips having very bad descriptions.
Since regeneration stacks in duration, the stacks occur one after the other.
So… 10 regen stacks over 4 seconds means that 1 stack is applied every 4 seconds, for a total of 10 stacks over 40 seconds.
So time 1-4s is the 1st stack, 5-8 is the 2nd stack, 9-12 is the 3rd stack, up until the 10th stack which will finish at 40s.
It really is an awful description though. No one would truly have any idea what it means until they got to try it out (i.e. the above posters).
It gives 3 seconds of Fury/5 Might/Swiftness every 3 seconds for 30 seconds.
This way its harder to steal.
If you’re going to do that, you’re going to have to do similar things for Rampage As One and Dagger Storm.
Which brings me to me second point: Look at those two. I think we have it easy, considering that it’s a set of 3 buffs for 30s on a 60s cooldown.
And my only question: How would boon duration affect it? Would it affect the 3s pulses or the 30s duration? In the former case, it would cause some issues if you stacked lots of Boon Duration and Might Duration.
Do this for all engg elixirs too!
I think not. They’re not elites, so then you would have to make all boons function that way. Which would make the boon stealing mechanic useless.
But the pillar my build relies on is countered by one ability of another class. It has a glaring weakness that can be exploited. This must be rectified!
It does work.
It doesn’t work for me, for whatever reason. I think just having it on my bar is like a security blanket, without which I am less confident in my play. Very useful in some group scenarios too since it can literally be the difference between half an enemy zerg rallying or not.
My thief is completely fraudulent though, so take that for what you will.
In WvW, it’s usually one of three things:
1. Because they are simply beating me and there’s not point in me simply letting them have a free kill.
2. Even if I fight them, their amount of survival utility and mobility is simply too high, and it is not worth it to waste my time trying to squash an annoying gnat instead of doing something useful.
3. They are part of a highly coordinated strike team which will simply get me killed unless I bring my own strike team to counter them.
I often play engg in WvW, so I don’t have a ton of micro-mobility and have to be particularly careful about positioning, especially against builds that can close gaps within a few seconds and deliver high burst damage.
I don’t run away as a general principle though, only when I feel it is in my advantage to do so (or if I have to catch up to my zerg).
Infiltrator’s Strike Nerfed, Next up Flanking Strike!
Just delete the thief class.
That nerf was more than called for, although they could maybe have extended the range a bit as some sort of compromise.
In any case, the changes to infiltrator’s strike have convinced me that FS-LS is perfectly fine as is and does not need any adjustment whatsoever.
It gives 3 seconds of Fury/5 Might/Swiftness every 3 seconds for 30 seconds.
This way its harder to steal.
If you’re going to do that, you’re going to have to do similar things for Rampage As One and Dagger Storm.
Which brings me to me second point: Look at those two. I think we have it easy, considering that it’s a set of 3 buffs for 30s on a 60s cooldown.
And my only question: How would boon duration affect it? Would it affect the 3s pulses or the 30s duration? In the former case, it would cause some issues if you stacked lots of Boon Duration and Might Duration.
Do this for all engg elixirs too!
New patch still nothing.
I’m starting to believe they’re just trolling us with the continued broken state that is the Scope perk.
It will stay broken so that it can be used as an Easter egg in GW3.
Every now and then, in WvW, I get to a point where I just will not regen. I run away from battle and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait…. and nothing.
Maybe a thief was following you >.>
I have had a weird thing like this occur for me in PvE… had to run pretty far away from the place I was previously fighting to get out of combat. Haven’t noticed it otherwise though, will try and pay attention to it.
Ha, I was kind of hoping to see myself in that video (on EBay), but oh well XD
Nice to see some roaming in EBG as well, most roaming videos feature the borderlands exclusively.
Hopefully this doesn’t sound critical and negative, but I didn’t feel you were making the best use of the elixir gun in the video, mainly due to two things:
1. I’m not sure I saw super elixir used at all. Even if you don’t stay in the field, it can be good for an extra condition cure and a small immediate heal. It can be worthwhile saving it until you need to escape, but you probably have better tools than that. You won’t be very mobile with this build anyways, so it’s not as likely it will save you from an escape to begin with. It can naturally work well with a build that utilizes things like turrets since it makes your control over a localized area even stronger.
2. I also don’t think I saw you use healing mist (elixir toolbelt) at all. It has a fairly nice duration regen buff, so it can be handy to use it once you’ve taken some damage (i.e. when you’re at ~75-80% HP) to give you more sustain. There’s no point in leaving it until you’re low since it’s not a burst heal and has no water field. It will overlap with the regen from your turret, but healing mist doesn’t require you to pop your heal skill cooldown or confine you to an area. This skill is also instant cast and can be used while stunned/disabled, so you can use it in the middle of your attacks or in a reactionary fashion. I’m not sure I recall you using regenerating mist either (healing turret toolbelt), but that one functions a bit different in that it can be a useful burst heal source, and may be worth saving for later. Healing mist is something you should probably pop fairly early in the fight unless you’re concerned about boon removal/stripping. I was a bit surprised you didn’t use it during that ranger fight following that warrior that ran away in snow leopard form.
One last thing, be careful of using static shot as an opener on an opponent if you can’t capitalize on the blind and confusion. For instance, that one necro was running away from you, and you opened with static shot on him. By the time he turned and started fighting, the blind and confusion had expired, and the ability couldn’t be used to counter any of his attacks since it was on cooldown (although he died easily anyways). It can be a great opener in some situations, but not all. I only point this out because I am actively trying to remove this bad habit from my own gameplay as well.
In any case, it was a good showcase of a non-HGH, multi-kit build (even though it uses grenades XD). Also like seeing the racial skills used, some of them are probably a bit underrated.
What got nerfed with it? All they did was make a change they should have done last patch so you can’t block things like treb shots and other things you weren’t already supposed to be absorbing. It doesn’t change a thing with it in 99% of cases.
Performing a targetless teleport would be a good buff for the sword.
I don’t agree with the removal of rooting on zealot’s defense though. People would use it primarily for escaping. That is, you’d have your back turned to a zerg, running back to your tower while not being affected by any projectiles for 3 seconds. If it couldn’t be used to attack people, then that would probably be fine (would work exactly like a shield block in that sense), but I don’t think they can remove the rooting without some other kind of tradeoff.
As an alternative buff to zealot’s defense would be to make it actually block attacks to proc on-block effects, or perhaps increase the range or hitbox of the projectiles… can’t recall how good it is at tracking targets off the top of my head.
Not to mention you can’t move during 100b, do not evade attacks, and steal no boons.
yo are you crazy? delete this thread, before any developers find out.
If forum rantings are to be believe, no dev has ever ventured here (at least not without leaving with deep emotional scars), so yeah.
Might as well milk it while it’s available, if for no other reason to show how “skilled” the other players using OP/broken abilities are.
Realistically how far can you run in 10 seconds?
You can get pretty far in this time, actually, especially on thief.
I’m surprised they never made this change earlier. Some people have been complaining about FS-LS, but IMO this has been the only problematic sword ability… well, aside from the initial version of pistol whip, but that’s not a thing anymore.
This is the one I’ve used before: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcEQFAUl0pqdH5STF17IxoHkuzbGMD763vHYLA;ToAg0Cno4ywlgLLXOukcNoYSA
As for its competitive value, it’s probably best in a hotjoin scenario. Works nicely in general PvE though, and can be useful at times in WvW.
I took liked having veil as an option.
Back in beta, we used to be able to get line of warding from toss elixir U as well.
It’s a bit odd that they’ve built randomness as a core part of elixirs and have been gradually reducing some randomness over time, but I guess having the reliable projectile defence can be pretty handy.
I don’t get that much use out of it because I’m more one of those “sit on the adrenaline” type warriors, but it could be useful if you burst quite often.
The idea is good but the numbers are too high.
You can’t expect to destroy several builds by using one trait (even if it’s a Grandmaster trait).
Well, you can expect it, but it doesn’t mean it’s a good expectation.
And base healing of 69?
Considering the options, you’re luckier if they only get stolen. ;P
Though I’ve honestly never tried converting the stability that comes with some transform skills… I assume it doesn’t reapply, but I rarely see people using the things in the first place. It would be hilariously disappointing though… transform, gain stability -> suddenly, fear!
Works on dagger storm too. I usually rip it off thieves with my mesmer and then someone CCs them out of dagger storm. Necros could have an even funner time with it.
If clicking skills works for you, all the power too you.
It is especially demoralizing for your opponents if they know they are being beaten by a clicker, so it can be an advantage in a way (although I don’t know how you’d get people to know that in WvW aside from whispering them directly.).
Yeah, FS-LS does slightly more DPS (roughly 15%) than AA chain, which is to be expected from skills that cost Init.
That’s my point though. Not all skills that cost init need to have superior damage if they provide something else. You’re already paying init for evasion and boon stealing, but you’re also getting superior (or at the very least, comparable) damage on top of it.
Infiltrator’s strike does not offer superior damage because of the utility it provides.
Dancing dagger does not provide superior damage because of the utility it provides.
Cloak and dagger does not provide superior damage because of the utility it provides.
Other skills are that way (i.e. heartseeker, unload), but they also don’t provide the same level of utility (at least by themselves).
So FS-LS does not need to have superior damage to the auto-attack chain just because it costs initiative, and especially because it provides some unique utility.
Does this make the skills unbalanced? I don’t know. However, if FS-LS does need balancing, it’s probably best to hit it with a damage reduction instead of a utility reduction (i.e. less damage, not kitten ons stolen), because the utility is the core of the skill, not the damage.
no toolbelt skills share cooldown, underwater or not, elixir tosses or not.
as for tossr H not cleansing, I haven’t noticed, but I’ll check some footage I have.
Is that the case? I run elixirs so often that I just never end up checking.
I wonder if you can apply 2 sets of incendiary ammo that way… mehehehehe…
EDIT: Just remembered flamethrower doesn’t fly underwater DX
It has the same damage as sword auto-attack.
Actually, I think it’s a bit more, although I am only comparing actual damage instead of DPS.
And that is my entire point. The skill is supposed to provide evasion and boon stealing, which is what the initiative cost is for. However, it will still give decent damage output at the same time. If it didn’t have quite as much damage, you could still rely on it just as much for utility, but you’d have to switch it up more often to ensure you killed someone.
As such, I’d say any balancing done to the skill (not that it warrants a ton of balancing anyways) is much better as a damage reduction instead of a utility reduction (i.e. only stealing one boon, evading for 1/4s instead of 1/2).
S/D has 2 swings that do anything close to decent damage – Crippling Stike (Sword AA chain finisher), and LS. Both are highly telegraphed, .5s activation time swings. Every other attack does sub-par damage. While these 2 attacks do alot of damage, they have pre-requisites, and as such bring the overall DPS of S/D up to acceptable.
If LS is doing too much damage, FS and both AA swings preceding the finisher need a damage buff.
As a point of reference – with 2119 power, against a Heavy Target Dummy
-Slash and Slice do 622 damage, no additional effects, and have .5s activation times. They are both part of the AA chain that leads to Crippling Strike.
-Infiltrators strike does 582 damage.
-Flanking strike does 582 damage, and is a 3init pre-req for LS.
-DD does 388 damage (It’s not intended as a direct damage ability, but since it’s part of S/D’s weaponset, we should look at it)
-CnD does 778 damage, and costs 6 init.
I was comparing the entire auto-attack chain to the FS-LS chain, not just LS itself.
Does FS not still do 2 hits? I was under the impression that it did, although I haven’t bothered to watch in game, just assumed that it still did. Wiki had it listed as two hits as well.
Also, with that sort of damage on the auto-attack, you’ll probably be hitting for about 900-1k DPS on 2600 armor before crits or any other bonuses. That doesn’t sound that bad… mind you I’m used to playing lower DPS builds.
In comparison, in order to have the recharge time of 60s skill dropped to 12s, the trait would need to be “skill recharges 80% faster”.
It has the same damage as sword auto-attack.
Actually, I think it’s a bit more, although I am only comparing actual damage instead of DPS.
And that is my entire point. The skill is supposed to provide evasion and boon stealing, which is what the initiative cost is for. However, it will still give decent damage output at the same time. If it didn’t have quite as much damage, you could still rely on it just as much for utility, but you’d have to switch it up more often to ensure you killed someone.
As such, I’d say any balancing done to the skill (not that it warrants a ton of balancing anyways) is much better as a damage reduction instead of a utility reduction (i.e. only stealing one boon, evading for 1/4s instead of 1/2).
I have been playing rifle for a bit again, Imo it would really help if blunderbuss with this problem was instant cast. The half a second delay before shooting makes it very awkward to use, considering how close you have to be to get full damage and how fast other classes are, that half a second delay means that by the time you shoot someone has already moved, maybe out of view, and the skill just goes on cd.
The way I usually use it is to charge it up while I’m getting close. So don’t get up close and then activate it. Use the ability slightly before being in the proper range, so that the half second cast time is used up during the last few steps towards the target.
I think think everyone’s always been confused about the 100 range thing though.
Oh, now that u mention it, in fact I always tried underwater, and it didn’t cured any condition there, could be only an issue in water fight…
Yeah, I recall the land ones work properly with 409, and the underwater ones don’t. I’d have to double check them all though.
I guess it might be worth posting a bug about it in some other forum. But the underwater toss elixirs already have the bug with not sharing cooldowns already (think there’s some other bugs too), so I don’t think they’re going to bother fixing anything to do with underwater for quite some time.
HAven’t noticed this yet, but I can try it out.
I think the toss elixir condition cures might be bugged underwater, although I’d have to double check… they work really weird underwater because it’s like their a completely separate skill from their land counterparts. Don’t even share the same cooldown.
Can you steal a guardian’s 24 hour aegis? The attack is unblockable, although I don’t know if it still pops aegis.
I don’t know that any boon is useless, per se.
If I were to change something about flanking strike, it would just be toning the damage down. The skill is supposed to be an evade/boon steal utility-type skill, but you can still do fairly decent damage with it as well. I feel that’s a bit too much rolled into one package. It’s no backstab or anything, but backstab doesn’t evade and steal boons.
I think infiltrator’s strike is a much better candidate for being OP though.
Make sure to post/link this in other forums too, I don’t think this is their primary “bug report” thread.
I use hammer and longbow on my build fairly often, although I might be switch to hammer rifle. The longbow can be nice since you can give yourself extra might stacks when using a blast finisher in the fire field from the burst skill, and the immobilize can really help you out against kiters when using the hammer. Arcing arrow can also hit fairly hard.
I’d be a bit wary with unsuspecting foe. It’s 50% crit chance on stunned foes, but only earthshaker is a stun skill. The other skills on hammer are knockbacks and knockdowns, which I don’t think count for the purposes of that skills (haven’t tested this myself though).
This differs from the merciless hammer trait, which gives it’s bonus when an enemy is “disabled”, meaning knockback, knockdown, stun, launch, &c. Since unsuspecting foe explicitly refers to stun instead of disabled, I believe it will only work with earthshaker on hammer.
Mace has much more options for actual stuns, so that trait is probably better with mace.
It’s an elite that is merely a performance increase. Aside from it being the most boring elite in the game, thieves can experience it too with Larcenous Strike! Sharing is caring.
But wait, that’s not all! Switch to the Rampage elite NOW and grace your thief opponents with the gift of 20s stability! Nullify all your CC with a single skill! Hurry now, this offer is available only for a limited* time!
*limited may mean endless
I’ve never specced too much for vulnerability, but a convenient way of looking at it is a reduction in the target’s effective health.
For instance, a target with 10 stacks of vulnerability will take 10% more damage from direct attacks, meaning you’ve effectively reduced their effective HP by 10% (effective HP being a combination of actual HP with damage reduction from armor factored in).
This is, of course, only temporary, but it can cause an opponent to be pressured harder, causing them to use up more of their survivability tools faster. Since those tools get spent earlier, it effectively helps you outlast them.
It can also be very useful for burst setup. Mesmers often do this with their shatters. They will sometimes use diversion initially, which has the primary function of dazing the target. However, you can spec so that the shatters will apply vulnerability, thus using diversion will put a high number of vulnerability stacks on the target. After that, they will follow up with a mind wrack (commonly with blurred frenzy) to push the potential damage of their burst even higher.
So if you can apply a high number of vulnerability stacks prior to a set up for a large burst combo (i.e. tremor into eviscerate), you can make fairly effective use of it.
I usually just treat it as a side benefit to other skills that I use rather than speccing into vulnerability, which is probably how most people do it. The reason is that it doesn’t directly kill your foe, so it doesn’t matter how much vulnerability you apply if you still can’t burst them down.
It can be more useful in group play though since it indirectly benefits your allies as well as yourself.
So, if I’m reading in between the lines correctly, the underlying point of this is to bring dervishes into the game?
I’m not the foremost authority on warrior builds, but I think it will do all right. I have three suggestions you can consider though.
1. You might look at swapping signet of stamina in for signet of fury. You would lose out on some crit chance and te option to fill your adrenaline bar, but the extra stamina regen and especially the full condition curing could be really helpful. It might not be as necessary since you have some condition duration mitigation, but I’ve found that it can be a bad idea to solely rely on that alone. If you do a lot of group play, then you’re probably fine with signet of fury, but signet of stamina would likely be better for solo roaming.
2. You might consider using dogged march as one of your defense line traits instead of missile deflection, especially if you have the longbow equipped (that website seems out of date and still has the turtle’s defence trait). Coupled with the soup and runes, this makes you nearly immune to cripples, chills, and immobilizes, which can be very handy in WvW. Not to mention you have no way of blocking if you use the hammer and longbow. You can maybe interchange this depending on whether you are using the shield or longbow.
3. I would not take the warrior’s sprint trait in the discipline line. The 10% really does not amount to that much. Instead, you should take signet mastery in that slot. This will reduce the cooldown on your utility signet (signet of fury or whichever other one you decide to use) as well as signet of rage. Since you will be able to pop signet of rage more often, this gives you fairly easy access to swiftness, and warrior’s sprint will not stack with a swiftness boon.
As a side tip, you can swap to and from warhorn to give yourself extra swiftness. If you take the signet mastery trait, this will allow you to essentially have perma-swiftness outside of combat by popping your signet of rage and using the warhorn.
I use the physical skills…
Except for kick… just can’t fit it on my bar, else I’d probably take it.
Keep in mind that the elixir cooldown also takes 5 seconds off your heal. That can be really valuable. I’ve tried dropping that trait as well, but I can’t find a way to do it in which I’ve been satisfied with yet.
How do you cancel attacks besides dodging? Esc is very inconvenient to hit a lot.
Sheath your weapon. I don’t know if this action is bound to anything by default, so you might have to do so in the options menu.