Guild Wars 2

Sifu.6527:

Zenith.7301:

Sifu.6527:

Hype.8032:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

Phent.9350:

PU build is good only for WvW roaming, in pvp it is troll build nothing more

Not even for roaming. Roaming classes need to be able to kill quickly before someone else interferes or the zerg arrives. PU mesmers kill slowly.

The spec is just a bunker survival spec. It’s hard for you to die, but you also won’t be killing much if the opponent wants to retreat.

PU mesmer can’t chase at all.

Dueling build fits better I think. We probably all seen it in WvW you know the lone mesmer sitting around ruins like he is afk waiting for people to engage him.

I just ignore them and chuckles when they are chasing you spamming winds of chaos like it’s gonna hit anybody moving.

I hate you Sin.

Hype.8032:

Funny how chaining 5+ stealth abilities in quick succession isn’t considered spamming stealth

Utility:
Decoy (40s CD)
Viel (90s CD)
Mass Invis (elite) (90s CD)

Weapon
Torch 4 (30/24s CD)

At most Mesmers have 4 stealth skills, which using all 4 means you blew your elite, two utility skill and have to have a torch equipped – which means the phantasm you take is pathetically weak. Also those utility skills won’t be back up for a long time. As this isn’t likely in phantasm builds, I can’t see people doing this unless they need to escape (which other classes can do without having to blow so much, hi GS warriors) or if they have 3 staff clones up and are trolling, which is easy to deal with.

The only addition is a trait which makes you stealth on 25% health, but taking that means your giving up something actually useful, also it suffers from the same problem as thieves Last Refuge (ie you can’t control it and can accidentally proc revealed).

Right, and with all those abilities to stealth you’re essentially making a phantasm, dodging once or twice, stealthing, and repeating. It is spamming stealth.. the whole point is to stay visible as little as possible. I’m not passing judgement on it being OP or UP but it’s a incredibly lame way to play. No worse than MM necros , stealth spam thieves, and spirit rangers but is it really much of a consolation to say you’re no worse than that garbage?

No, PU is different! Because uh, we use it solely for defense unlike the stealth spamming thieves! Psh, you know I have to stay in stealth for the full duration to get my aegis, 8-10 secs of protection, and regen.

Well…I could summon a phant and it doesn’t break stealth but so what! You think its fun running around a circle while your Iduelist and Izerker do the job for you?

You just don’t understand how hard it is sitting down while your AI does the work for you.

Also, you know how hard it is to cast a Phast behind you? It’s hard work. And if you block or dodge my phant , it goes on full CD! My phant has to wait a full 6 secs to attack again leaving me at a huge disadvantage.

So please L2Play.

The best part is this guy saying PU use izerker phantasms.

When I fart out aegis, protection, and regen, it really doesn’t matter what weapon set I use. I even use scepter in my power PU build!

Yeah, you’re killing any decent person on a power PU build, I’m sure lol

What are they? Not even Dulfy seems to have them.

It takes much longer to finish the meta achievement than to farm these materials by their conventional means.

My male human needs it! Tier 2 norn cultural light armor without the norn male’s hideous body would be so sexy!

I despise zerg content with a passion, so I hope dragonite ore can drop from the fractals, at least the bosses.

Maybe the mindless aoe spam entertains you, but it doesn’t in my case.

Sifu.6527:

Hype.8032:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

Phent.9350:

PU build is good only for WvW roaming, in pvp it is troll build nothing more

Not even for roaming. Roaming classes need to be able to kill quickly before someone else interferes or the zerg arrives. PU mesmers kill slowly.

The spec is just a bunker survival spec. It’s hard for you to die, but you also won’t be killing much if the opponent wants to retreat.

PU mesmer can’t chase at all.

Dueling build fits better I think. We probably all seen it in WvW you know the lone mesmer sitting around ruins like he is afk waiting for people to engage him.

I just ignore them and chuckles when they are chasing you spamming winds of chaos like it’s gonna hit anybody moving.

I hate you Sin.

Hype.8032:

Funny how chaining 5+ stealth abilities in quick succession isn’t considered spamming stealth

Utility:
Decoy (40s CD)
Viel (90s CD)
Mass Invis (elite) (90s CD)

Weapon
Torch 4 (30/24s CD)

At most Mesmers have 4 stealth skills, which using all 4 means you blew your elite, two utility skill and have to have a torch equipped – which means the phantasm you take is pathetically weak. Also those utility skills won’t be back up for a long time. As this isn’t likely in phantasm builds, I can’t see people doing this unless they need to escape (which other classes can do without having to blow so much, hi GS warriors) or if they have 3 staff clones up and are trolling, which is easy to deal with.

The only addition is a trait which makes you stealth on 25% health, but taking that means your giving up something actually useful, also it suffers from the same problem as thieves Last Refuge (ie you can’t control it and can accidentally proc revealed).

Right, and with all those abilities to stealth you’re essentially making a phantasm, dodging once or twice, stealthing, and repeating. It is spamming stealth.. the whole point is to stay visible as little as possible. I’m not passing judgement on it being OP or UP but it’s a incredibly lame way to play. No worse than MM necros , stealth spam thieves, and spirit rangers but is it really much of a consolation to say you’re no worse than that garbage?

No, PU is different! Because uh, we use it solely for defense unlike the stealth spamming thieves! Psh, you know I have to stay in stealth for the full duration to get my aegis, 8-10 secs of protection, and regen.

Well…I could summon a phant and it doesn’t break stealth but so what! You think its fun running around a circle while your Iduelist and Izerker do the job for you?

You just don’t understand how hard it is sitting down while your AI does the work for you.

Also, you know how hard it is to cast a Phast behind you? It’s hard work. And if you block or dodge my phant , it goes on full CD! My phant has to wait a full 6 secs to attack again leaving me at a huge disadvantage.

So please L2Play.

The best part is this guy saying PU use izerker phantasms.

Sube Dai.8496:

Fomby.4295:

It’s an interesting build and I tried something similar to it before. But I was unimpressed when compared to heavy class frontliners and decided to stick with max range backline on my ranger.

What was disappointing, the damage or the survivability, or both?

The damage. Survival is fine.

Basically, you do half the damage of other melee, and only the drake cleaves (but up to 3 targets only). And in the zerg scenario your drake is dead in a couple of seconds.

Jackums.3496:

Fluffball.8307:

Jackums.3496:

Chokolata.1870:

actually i would argue LB is better then SB vs mesmers and thieves due to RF tracking into stealth

As a mesmer, I’d take a LB ranger over a SB one, any day. A LB ranger is one of the easiest targets in the game for a shatter mesmer. Very little weapon mobility. Terrible close-range DPS. Slow moving projectiles. Easy-to-interrupt AoE. Etc. The SB evade alone makes it a better suited weapon to counter the burst of mesmers and thieves.

You’re talking about people that ONLY use a longbow and don’t have anything on switch. Proper use of a LB in a 1v1 is for the KB, stealth, and stealth tracking. Or for the extreme long range; you’d be surprised how many mesmers let me kill them from long range with 3 or 4 autoattacks.

Taking LB is like having only one weapon set (whichever other set you have). In a 1v1 against any player of equal skill that’s built for dueling, the tracking through stealth alone is hardly worth taking an all-around bad weapon. Its DPS is terrible outside of Rapid Fire (channeled, easy to interrupt) and an AoE that’s also channeled, easy to interrupt, and slow enough that you can simply dodge or blink out of its area of effect. Unless you’re at max range for the entirety of a fight (ie. never), you’re losing so much damage solely from the auto-attack, none of the LB’s utility makes up for it.

As a shatter mesmer, I have daze and invulnerability on demand (Chaos Storm, Diversion, Distortion), a stun (Magic Bullet), and a short CD weapon evade (Blurred Frenzy). If I take off-hand sword, I have a daze there, too (Counter Blade). If I take GS, I have a knock-back (Illusionary Wave). Rapid Fire can be so easily interrupted, it’s not an issue. 50% of its damage can be mitigated through Blurred Frenzy. This is all without putting into consideration line of sight. The fact that it’s channeled and fairly slow means that simply obstructing its path will negate it completely. The LB is simply too slow and clunky a weapon to be an effective choice for dueling against any competent player with a good build. How many LB rangers do you see in tPvP? It’s viable and excels in large groups, and can certainly be used to effect by a good player in small fights, but it is objectively inferior to certain other ranger weapons for dueling, assuming your opponent is competent.

tpvp is claustrophobic. You don’t have much room to kite.

Standard LB build in WvW is far superior to shortbow. You got a shorter cd interrupt to shut down heals with point blank shot. You got stealth for another offensive shutdown to gain positioning.

You pair that with sword mainhand and axe offhand. Use monarch’s leap and do the jump chain the opposite direction. Boom, easy 1200 range on a low cd.

Shortbow is garbage for the very simple reason that it has no meaningful utility besides the daze whatsoever. Stealth is a much more powerful defense against a group of people than a mere evade.

You can’t interrupt rapid fire when the ranger is rampaging as one or has stability from signet of the wild, and if the ranger allowed you as a shatter mesmer to get within 600 range, then he is a fool.

Everybody knows you gotta preemptively kite shatter mesmers to deny them illusionary leap range. You either force them to waste a blink and nail them after with a wolf fear/knockdown/spider root and pointblank shot,m or you simply negate that blink with monarch double leap backwards.

Another neglected fact is why wvw works better in wvw, and that’s the crit dmg cap. Both the longbow and greatsword get progressively better the higher crit dmg you have. Those two weapons outscale their alternatives (only reason mainhand sword still stays is because the autoattack gap is still too big between mainhand and greatsword to be overcome by scaling on the current item levels available).

The only tweaks longbow needs is a slight reduction in RF cast time, removing the short range autoattack damage range and keeping the medium/long while just straight out buffing Barrage’s Damage. Barrage needs something on the scale of a 50-60% damage increase and it needs to not trigger retal on all targets per wave.

And they’re inferior runesets for obvious reasons.

Again, 2 long cd sources of interrupts. That’s it. It’s a complete waste.

Yargesh.4965:

Crysto.7089:

zenleto.6179:

Crysto.7089:

There should have never been levels in the first place.

What should they have done?

You simply gain skill points as you fill the bar with your traits already unlocked and all areas are of the same “level.”

They tried it early beta testing, it was changed to levels because people did not like it.

Those people were wrong, as evidenced by the game’s mostly empty maps outside orr and metaboss spawning grounds.

This is what you get when you introduce levels: wasted assets.

Soldier amulet ele does virtually no damage whatsoever, so it’s not like the necro would be under pressure.

Rob.1039:

Imo PU mesmers are rather WvW specs, where equiped with perplexity runes can wear down any other class in 1v1. In tpvp they aren’t a big threat, cause they can’t conquest points in stealth. However they usually wreak havock in hot-join, where hardly anyone cares about capping nodes. Always funny to confuse the kitten out of hambow war, make him cry or rage quit^^

PU mesmers don’t use perplexity runes.

You have diversion and magic bullet as your only real interrupts, and those are at 20 and 45 sec cd’s respectively.

The big time abusers of perplexity in WvW are engineers, warriors, and thieves — the only classes with considerable CC.

Taku.6352:

Just as i expected, aether laser room and Molten Firestorms AoE spam renders the whole class ability useless. Even with agony not affecting pets they will get destroyed by the direct damage of these attacks/mechanics.

In the molten facility you’ll most likely be forced to only use drakes for their large HP pools and use Guard.

My big pet peeve for that was the Aetherblade one. That dungeon was pure anti-ranger design. I wouldn’t even say anti-ranger, because I actually suspect they didn’t even consider rangers when designing that dungeon, much like how they completely neglected rangers with Liadri.

I found it kinda funny that it was portrayed as casual friendly, yet the test character had one of those crafted ascended backpieces that is like 70g to craft.

Solution:

Wait for a nightcapping session in WvW. Everybody’s gone to sleep mostly except for the hardcore WvW imsomniacs, so you get easily about 7 levels per night just by constantly capping all of EB.

During the day do the dungeons you normally do, except switch in your alt at the end for 1.5 levels.

On this entire thread I haven’t read anything about calling melee/stacking exploits. People sure love their imaginary arguments.

In fact, what I’ve seen is moaning about the developer who had the temerity to livestream with a diabolical P/P thief build. As if you’ve never seen a dev livestream (when they did molten facility, the dev playing a ranger just did shortbow auto, who cares it’s just showcasing content — unless you wanted the livestream cut by 2/3 because that’s the clear time when done on an organized melee stack).

Play a ranger. Usually you should have a pre-coppied text saying " Berzerk spotter/spirits/sword+warhorn! Don’t kick!" as soon as you join a group.

Bagel.4598:

Such a joke that your pet will no longer share AR with it’s owner.
That pet is a part of you, a part of your class.
Also brings it down with spirit weapons for guardian.
If a boss gets an unlucky shot of AR off on a weapon the weapon is gone prematurely.
Anet’s dev team need a serious wakeup call.
Bring back GW1’s crew.
They had a vision and made a very happy fanbase.

Pets will no longer be affected by agony.

Oxxy.7068:

Zenith.7301:

God forbid ranged weapons be made at some point viable. The horror for all the people who think playing melee in this game makes them stand out against actually difficult games.

This game is casual anyway you cut it on the PvE side, so please drop this crap.

If this were a serious game, you’d see different mechanisms applied to several ranges so that the difference is not damage, but playstyle preference.

But I guess LoS’ing into a corner and stacking boons/reflect makes you so special.

And what would be your point?
I mean, if you think this game is “easy” then i guess you can surely solo arah, l48 bloomhungers and archdiviners and so on, but my guess is, you can’t, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of, because i can’t either. I’m pretty casual when it comes to GW2, but just because i don’t care about it doesn’t means it is easy, all i see here is someone hating on player skill, which is funny because in all games i’ve been in skilled players were praised both at PvE and PvP, meanwhile people in here avoid skill like a plague.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

inb4: “i-i wasn’t talking about solos!”

If you can’t solo 48 bloomhunger, you don’t belong in fractal 48.

It’s possibly the most obviously scripted encounter in the game.

I’ve soloed archdiviner. It just wasn’t full melee as I would like unless it’s on a DD ele and you can use the larger melee radius to not trigger his swings. You’d be surprised how much soloing people had to do when there was no ascended accessories and you found yourself in bad pugs where within the first 10 seconds of a fight people went down to agony because in 48 you had to learn to dodge it, and you’d spend the next 10-15 minutes soloing a boss.

I don’t hate on player skill. I admire it on many games. It’s just funny seeing people be petty toward those who use ranged weapons under the assumption that they’re so much more skilled. People from real PvE endgame MMO’s would laugh themselves to the grave just looking at these people.

It’s like the college football guy trash talking high school atheletes.

Can you please fix the crap where pets were getting instantly downed by laser? It was kind of a joke to have a pet class in that encounter.

God forbid ranged weapons be made at some point viable. The horror for all the people who think playing melee in this game makes them stand out against actually difficult games.

This game is casual anyway you cut it on the PvE side, so please drop this crap.

If this were a serious game, you’d see different mechanisms applied to several ranges so that the difference is not damage, but playstyle preference.

But I guess LoS’ing into a corner and stacking boons/reflect makes you so special.

roamzero.9486:

I think the new diamond skin should just be a zerker stance copy-paste that triggers from taking a hit at above 90% HP, with a reasonable long CD (60s+)

No. A 8 sec condi immunity cd is so grossly broken, it doesn’t need to be copied. The warrior source just needs to be brought down.

Stop with the immunities. Thief stealth (targeted attack immunity), zerker stance, ele broken cleanse chains, sword evade spams. All those are awful.

Reduce overall damage (bring down crit damage bonus cap to 30% in all game formats — tweak the damage of burning in pvp), reduce the effectiveness of prot and stability alongside self heals.

That way there will be room for more balanced stat spreads and builds than just the current extremes of damage/CC/bunker.

Ryan.9387:

I disagree. Two outcomes only.

1) screw up Ranger and become super OP
2) screw up Ranger and become super UP

This won’t be balanced, I guarantee it.

It isn’t balanced already. Pets are kinda garbage.

Caffynated.5713:

Wintel.4873:

The same is not true for Ele. Going 30 Earth to pick up Diamond Skin leaves the Ele in a VERY awkward place. 30 Arcana is still mandatory, leaving 10 free points and a mess of a build that will deal pathetic damage…because all the power/damage traits are sitting in Air. What’s the point?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQM9A5LGSpM

All arcane traits and no stun breaker. That build you showed on the video will go down faster than a prom dress, especially to a warrior with the CC chains.

You also act like targets will just sit there and eat the burning speed and fire grab, some of the most telegraphed skills in the game.

Rarnark.5623:

Does anybody else think this build is grossly overpowered and lame?

Why does this exist?

It’s kind of a gimmick spec. It doesn’t have the sustained condi application of other classes like necro or engineer, but it frontloads condition stacks quickly with a couple of skills, and the base damage of the weapons themselves is still high.

It may feel too strong if you’re not a class with strong condi cleanse, but I don’t think it’s the most exaggerated of the warrior builds.

If only anet ever gave leatherwearers pants for a change instead of the annoying trenchcoat floods, this pic would be perfect.

Good use of shoulders!

NargofWoV.4267:

Actually warriors are getting hit pretty hard with some nerfage. We understand it, don’t like it, but what can you do?

Pretty simple really, the gods have said, thou shalt not do damage and stun targets together in one individual so effectively. Therefore, you must choose. Do 1 or the other.

Only nerf is to some hammer skills, and the weapon’s cc spam and high sustained damage still remains. Healing Signet remains the most OP heal in the game.

Everything else they buffed.

Pets will have to scale at some point as rangers were already behind in PvE because the pets can’t achieve the 110% crit damage bonus other classes can, and with the introduction of ascended items meaning a 15% difference in stats, the pets will keep falling behind.

It’s one of the things really holding ranger glass cannon specs back.

Archaon.6245:

pet stats should match ranger’s…tanky pets for tough\vit specs and dps\cond for dps\cond ones…bunker’s pet must not crit for 5k, whatever you use it should have stats related to yours…otherwise you’re basically going around with a bunker coupled with a pocket warrior all the time. Again if you spec dps your pet must be dps (Not condition or tanky) and if you go bunker your pet is gonna be hard to kill but hitting like a bunker..

So you’re saying that rangers, who are designed with base weapon damage numbers well over half of what other classes do, be assigned useless pets?

Because I’m pretty sure you would get a chuckle out of the idea of a ranger coming into a pvp match with a bear or moa.

If pets are gonna be made tanks with no damage, then rangers better get a “place here” command and make them contest points as well because tank pets are of no use whatsoever.

P.S. Have you even seen the damage richochet does? I mean, come on. The warrior mace autoattacks even outdamage the ranger greatsword autos.

coglin.1867:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Legendaries – why on earth can you sell them on the trading post?

Why shouldn’t you ?

You put the time and effort into it, why shouldn’t you be able to sell it for a gold injection into your account as a monetary value of the time and effort spent?

Because the guy who spent a week flipping to make enough gold to buy one or just bought gold (from anet or 3rd party) gets it while the guy actually playing the game will take months if not nearly a year to get one.

Oblivion.8307:

Zenith.7301:

Oblivion.8307:

Zenith.7301:

cymerdown.4103:

Zenith.7301:

Um……

15000-16000 average health with water traitline.

10% is 1500-1600 damage. Your minions will do that much in less than 2 secs.

It’s a useless trait. No ele will take it. An ele still needs 20 in water and 20 in arcana at the very least, not leaving enough for diamond skin.

First of all, “Your minions”??? What game are you playing where MM Necro is viable?

But anyway, that’s exactly the problem with the trait. Either it won’t be good enough and nobody will take it, or it will be pretty OP and everyone will take it. With complete immunity traits like that, there is not much middle ground (outside of meta shifts, but meta shifts due to a single OP trait are not very natural types of shifts).

Lastly, with the words you just said, I don’t think you’ve really thought carefully about how to min-max the trait. I won’t post the exact builds here, but use that noggin.

because it’d be nice to get something different like glass cannon daggers

glass cannon daggers is actually fun and in my opinion a balanced build. Are you sure you just don’t suck at playing glass cannons or do you want it to be op as kitten?

edit ontopic: fresh air ele with diamond skin is gonna be kittened, same with bunker builds.

You think glass cannon dagger ele without traits in arcana or water is balanced in the current context?

I usually like to run 10 points in arcana, but yea, it’s a fun build. It kills kitten and is prone to die, what a zerker should be.

What it should be, but what zerker mesmers, thieves, and warriors are not.

I’m all for knocking all those down to the same peg, but do you think that’s gonna happen?

Hype.8032:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

Phent.9350:

PU build is good only for WvW roaming, in pvp it is troll build nothing more

Not even for roaming. Roaming classes need to be able to kill quickly before someone else interferes or the zerg arrives. PU mesmers kill slowly.

The spec is just a bunker survival spec. It’s hard for you to die, but you also won’t be killing much if the opponent wants to retreat.

PU mesmer can’t chase at all.

Dueling build fits better I think. We probably all seen it in WvW you know the lone mesmer sitting around ruins like he is afk waiting for people to engage him.

I just ignore them and chuckles when they are chasing you spamming winds of chaos like it’s gonna hit anybody moving.

I hate you Sin.

Hype.8032:

Funny how chaining 5+ stealth abilities in quick succession isn’t considered spamming stealth

Utility:
Decoy (40s CD)
Viel (90s CD)
Mass Invis (elite) (90s CD)

Weapon
Torch 4 (30/24s CD)

At most Mesmers have 4 stealth skills, which using all 4 means you blew your elite, two utility skill and have to have a torch equipped – which means the phantasm you take is pathetically weak. Also those utility skills won’t be back up for a long time. As this isn’t likely in phantasm builds, I can’t see people doing this unless they need to escape (which other classes can do without having to blow so much, hi GS warriors) or if they have 3 staff clones up and are trolling, which is easy to deal with.

The only addition is a trait which makes you stealth on 25% health, but taking that means your giving up something actually useful, also it suffers from the same problem as thieves Last Refuge (ie you can’t control it and can accidentally proc revealed).

Right, and with all those abilities to stealth you’re essentially making a phantasm, dodging once or twice, stealthing, and repeating. It is spamming stealth.. the whole point is to stay visible as little as possible. I’m not passing judgement on it being OP or UP but it’s a incredibly lame way to play. No worse than MM necros , stealth spam thieves, and spirit rangers but is it really much of a consolation to say you’re no worse than that garbage?

The difference is that against the other classes you mention, those can chase.

And in case of stealth spam thieves, kill anyone who isn’t a bunker spec. Especially in WvW where you can run -condi duration food and keep 16k hp while having 70% crit damage bonus.

The fact is that lyssa runes+shadow step (2 stunbreaks+ teleport+condi cleanse, talk about way overbudget skill)blinding powdershadow refuge make any decent thief untouchable.

They simply cannot die if they don’t want to.

But unlike all high survival condi bunker builds, thieves have real spike and the best chasing power of all classes. No class can outrun a thief except maybe a greatsword warrior or double sword ranger.

If a backstab is critting my 2k toughness mesmer for 5-6k, then that backstab is hitting glass cannons easily for 8-9k. And that’s not OK for a skill you can do about every 6-7 seconds, while invisible.

CptAurellian.9537:

Kimyrielle.3826:

I can’t comment on sPvP for I don’t play that content, but in the open world, melee combat is in theory just as superior to range as in dungeons, because the same combat mechanics apply. The only difference is that people are less concerned with maximizing damage output and minimizing the time spent playing the game there. Also, people don’t run this type of content in organized groups -that- often, so boon stacking has less of an impact there.

Yeah, in theory, melee is always better. In practice, virtually all open world bosses are so clouded in particle effects that seeing their attack animations in melee range is close to impossible when more than five people are around -.-

Don’t need to. Because of the water fields and guardians in the frontline, you’re actually safer in melee because of all the mass aoe healing effects.

I was a berk ranger in balthazar, but because of all the guardian water field blasting and healing effects, I could take a hit that reduced me to 5-10% HP and be back up to 100% in a couple of seconds.

Phent.9350:

PU build is good only for WvW roaming, in pvp it is troll build nothing more

Not even for roaming. Roaming classes need to be able to kill quickly before someone else interferes or the zerg arrives. PU mesmers kill slowly.

The spec is just a bunker survival spec. It’s hard for you to die, but you also won’t be killing much if the opponent wants to retreat.

PU mesmer can’t chase at all.

Sustained as in survival, or sustained damage? Because dagger outdamages sword in sustained by a considerable amount.

People used sword because it made you impervious to focus fire, and you could pepper people with 3k crits, steal their boons, and have high evade uptime.

I don’t even know why thieves hated s/d. I found it fun, it just needed less spam. They should have made it so that instead of stealing all those boons, just steal one boon, but when flanking strike connects it should grant the thief 5 secs of prot and regen.

Less spamming, but more tanking ability. Also, what they could do with thief for sustained should be leeching HP, and not just from some crappy venom trait. Reduce backstab, but make the weapon chains steal some HP.

Oblivion.8307:

Zenith.7301:

cymerdown.4103:

Zenith.7301:

Um……

15000-16000 average health with water traitline.

10% is 1500-1600 damage. Your minions will do that much in less than 2 secs.

It’s a useless trait. No ele will take it. An ele still needs 20 in water and 20 in arcana at the very least, not leaving enough for diamond skin.

First of all, “Your minions”??? What game are you playing where MM Necro is viable?

But anyway, that’s exactly the problem with the trait. Either it won’t be good enough and nobody will take it, or it will be pretty OP and everyone will take it. With complete immunity traits like that, there is not much middle ground (outside of meta shifts, but meta shifts due to a single OP trait are not very natural types of shifts).

Lastly, with the words you just said, I don’t think you’ve really thought carefully about how to min-max the trait. I won’t post the exact builds here, but use that noggin.

because it’d be nice to get something different like glass cannon daggers

glass cannon daggers is actually fun and in my opinion a balanced build. Are you sure you just don’t suck at playing glass cannons or do you want it to be op as kitten?

edit ontopic: fresh air ele with diamond skin is gonna be kittened, same with bunker builds.

You think glass cannon dagger ele without traits in arcana or water is balanced in the current context?

More annoying is when you cast it, get CC’d, it descends and does no damage because it’s treated like a channel while a skill like arcing shot will still hit even if you are CC’d.

cymerdown.4103:

Zenith.7301:

cymerdown.4103:

This game isn’t about killing, it’s about point capture. It doesn’t need to kill to be OP.

If you can’t threaten someone off a point, you’re not going to be successful. You don’t have the CC of the engineer/warrior, or the sheer evasiveness/upkeep of a ranger.

If you own the point, you can stall out 1v1s by being really tough to kill. And if you don’t own it, maybe you’re a tornado.

Diamond Skin doesn’t make you immune to CC, and in the case of engineers who have a decent direct damage component they’ll have little issue knocking you off. Your tornado will also do nothing against warriors given their stability uptimes.

It’s mostly necro (without golem) and mesmer condi builds that would be affected by it.

cymerdown.4103:

This game isn’t about killing, it’s about point capture. It doesn’t need to kill to be OP.

If you can’t threaten someone off a point, you’re not going to be successful. You don’t have the CC of the engineer/warrior, or the sheer evasiveness/upkeep of a ranger.

cymerdown.4103:

Zenith.7301:

Um……

15000-16000 average health with water traitline.

10% is 1500-1600 damage. Your minions will do that much in less than 2 secs.

It’s a useless trait. No ele will take it. An ele still needs 20 in water and 20 in arcana at the very least, not leaving enough for diamond skin.

First of all, “Your minions”??? What game are you playing where MM Necro is viable?

But anyway, that’s exactly the problem with the trait. Either it won’t be good enough and nobody will take it, or it will be pretty OP and everyone will take it. With complete immunity traits like that, there is not much middle ground (outside of meta shifts, but meta shifts due to a single OP trait are not very natural types of shifts).

Lastly, with the words you just said, I don’t think you’ve really thought carefully about how to min-max the trait. I won’t post the exact builds here, but use that noggin.

Aren’t you special.

It’s pretty obvious what some people would build like, and it’s nothing different from the usual ele bunker builds that need to go DIAF, because it’d be nice to get something different like glass cannon daggers (with no investment on 20 water/arcana) or a viable condition build, be it staff or scepter.

Good luck killing anybody in any reasonable amount of time when you’ve specced into Diamond Skin btw.

1) Glacial balancing pace.

2) Bait and switch from token rewards system to RNG commercialized system of reward acquisition. You need to play the economy to gain the prestige rewards, not the game.

3) No regard whatsoever for build variety/state of PvE. Warriors, guardians, and zerker gear in general has reigned supreme for more than a year and they’ve done nothing.

4) Pointlessness of multiple races/lore. They give you many races, yet by the end the story and approaches is the same for all of them. Orders don’t matter.

5) No real content updates. 1+ year later and high end PvE content is largely the same.

Um……

15000-16000 average health with water traitline.

10% is 1500-1600 damage. Your minions will do that much in less than 2 secs.

It’s a useless trait. No ele will take it. An ele still needs 20 in water and 20 in arcana at the very least, not leaving enough for diamond skin.

When you encounter a PU mesmer, just kite. You can reliably outrun winds of chaos since it’s a stupidly slow projectile. Keep the clones chasing after you and they will cast at you much less often.

PU is most efefctive against builds that need to stay close since the mesmer does most of his damage when he has you surrounded by clones stacking condis on you.

Otherwise grab your engineer or necro and murder them. All mesmer specs are pathetically weak to strong condi pressure, especially aoe condi spam builds like engi and necro.

Necro is easily the hardcounter to any mesmer.

Yeah, I was playing on my alts but these 2 thieves in WvW ran stealth utility and shadow refuge. They were out of stealth only until revealed wore off then went back into it.

On my 2k hp, 16k health mesmer a backstab was still critting me for about 6k. That’s 1/3 my health. I could get away with my stealths and run, but there was no chance in hell of killing a thief with shadowstep and blackpowder+HS and lyssa runes and blinding powder.

If one thief was close to going down the other thief would just position shadow refuge for an easy rez. Since the shadow refuged thief could then port out of shadow refuge, the other thief would have stealth and provide a guaranteed rez.

I can do the same on my thief. It’s pretty guaranteed. To those who say interrupt BP>HS, count the godkitten interrupts and how many classes have them in the game. Not that many. And standing on the smoke field does not work. I stood on it all the time and an experienced thief just knows to HS out from the edge not from the center as to avoid hitting someone.

The two just went about killing anyone who wasn’t condi bunker spec, and as the bunker spec yourself there was nothing you could do to save those glassier people. It’s not like you can peel stealthed opponents.

To compare them to warriors is a pointless exercize, since warriors are broken as well, but at least roots work on them and they don’t have all the teleports.

Either way they went and nerfed ride the lightning into oblivion with a 40 sec cd while warrior can rush/whirlwind out much better for half the cooldown assuming no reduction on GS cd’s.

If warrior doesn’t want GS he can sword+shield and shield block+zerker stance+balanced stance and leap his way out alongside earthshaker leaps.

Yeah, well that’s the case always. They nerf BM via nerfing pets, all rangers get crappier pets now.

They nerf quickness on pet switch by switching it with a worthless pet haste on downed that isn’t even used because when the pet is switched it stands kitten ing for like a second before it does anything. All rangers nerfed.

And now they will nerf ranger dodges so once again power spec rangers will have to make do with supposed buffs that are way overshadowed by the blanket nerfs considering already that power spec ranger survival is pretty low.

Heinel.6548:

Don’t let the traits dictate your playstyle. This is not Soviet Russia. The game doesn’t play you.

First determine what you enjoy doing, then add traits that compliment it. As long as you have feedback on the bar most groups won’t say anything about your build.

No.

Mesmer damage is low to begin with. You don’t bring it down even further by going into a 48 fractal and putting out no DPS.

Cynz.9437:

Zenith.7301:

By the way, you can have backstab prioritize the player the day you stop getting free cloak and daggers off pets that can’t dodge.

Pets have benefits and drawbacks.

when was last time you saw d/d backstab thief in tpvp?

When was he last time you saw a dagger mainhand thief compared to s/d?

By the way, you can have backstab prioritize the player the day you stop getting free cloak and daggers off pets that can’t dodge.

Pets have benefits and drawbacks.

Disenchanter is really bad. Null Field is so much better.

Well, so would the ranger longbow if its damage didn’t get gutted at less than 900 range for whatever arbitrary reason and Barrage wasn’t such garbage compared to warrior’s arcing shot, longbow 5, and the burst skill.

In fact most bows get worse the less close you are as arrows can be easily sidestepped by 900 range.

Warrior weapons just happen to outclass all the other classes’ weapons, in base damage and cooldown timers (much smaller base recharge times than other classes).