Guild Wars 2

You can land arcing shot if you land the root first, however. A long duration root paired with 5 stacks of bleed.

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.

redslion.9675:

Michael.7382:

“Yeah right, lets totally buff the most unfun and OP 1on1 spec there is to play against.”
And it will affect what? a 1v1 servers? Coz if u play seriously soloQ/tpvp u wouldn’t run PU mesmer. What for? running around (slowly) and 1v1ing? U can’t hold/contest point properly with this. And the most unfun and no-skiller 1v1 spec is ofc s/d thief.

If ANet wants to introduce some sort of Deathmatch, they can’t afford OP 1v1 builds.

Engineers crap on PU mesmers all day. So do necros for that matter.

PU mesmer will NEVER kill a warrior played decently in this current game state.

Jackums.3496:

I don’t support any of these suggestions.

It’s already been said, but PU condition specs are already some of the most durable and cheese builds in the game. Their damage is not lacking whatsoever.

They’re not seen often in tPvP because they rely so heavily on stealth, just like a lot of Thief builds, not because their damage is bad. They’re attrition builds. They’re meant to be slow, just like, say, a P/D Thief. Not every build needs to be viable in tPvP.

Yeah, instead a class should sit with a single build. No phantasms, no condi. Just shatter.

I’m sure P/D thieves love not being able to play their spec in tpvp, or d/d thieves for that matter.

Account.9832:

Axe – Ricochet – 700 DPS

Depends on what you reflect…

Ricochet is the axe mainhand autoattack, not Whirling Defense.

The ICD will change little in that warriors will be able to immune conditions for 8 seconds, you can chain cleansing ire shortly after, and THEN get a full condi cleanse.

The problem isn’t only how often it’s used, but how it allows classes like the warrior to become impervious to condi pressure for vast amounts of time not available to other classes.

Cultural armor available at earlier ranks. As a sylvari the only appropriate armor for me is my cultural armor, so it bothers me that when I bring my toon in I must use hideous human centric armor that doesn’t fit them.

Nothing will change. CC spam+good aoe damage will still be silly when paired with adrenal health and healing signet.

If you want more cleave just go LB+GS.

It’s kinda sad how much better warrior bow is compared to ranger bows.

Warriors are still going to be as stupid as ever. All their weaponskills do craptons of damage on top of having rather low cooldowns relative to other classes, and now that is paired with stance immunities and healing signet sustain.

If you think a 20% damage nerf to two hammer skills is going to do anything when their hammer auto will still hit like a truck, you don’t know what puts warriors over the top.

My 2k toughness toons still get crit for 4k by incredibly tanky (read: 1v1 immortal) warriors.

The fact is no other class besides the necro can be as tanky and deal that much damage, except the necro can be tunneled to the ground and chain cc’d while doing the same to a warrior is not nearly as viable.

Warrior sustain is broken, and either it or their damage needs to come down. I’d prefer it’d be the damage so they don’t lose the possibility of having bunker options.

Warrior build for WvW if you don’t want longbow:

Sword/Shield+Hammer. Signet of Rage+Lyssa runes+dolyak signet+2 stance.

Lyssa runes, cleansing ire, condi duration -% food. Healing Signet.

Basically a class built immune to conditions.

People complain about engineer condi immunity, but warrior has it as well and while being tanky as hell crits my 2k toughness toons for 4-5k hits still.

Near permanent swiftness and 2 low cd gap closers that make you unkiteable by most classes and builds.

Darnis.4056:

Zenith.7301:

Pyroatheist.9031:

A PU condie mesmer is already an incredibly strong build. If all of those changes you mentioned were introduced, I could probably win a 3v1 against competent players without breaking a sweat.

Also, if you think the ramp-up on condie mesmer is too long, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re facing an aggressive opponent, the ramp up from 0 to 6+ bleed, 5 torment, burn, cripple, vuln, weakness, 5 confusion is roughly 5-7 seconds.

Really? Please list me the amount of condi mesmers in tournament teams, let alone top leaderboards.

I don’t care about what you can 1v3 given that PU build is a stealth spam build and cannot hold or debunk a point.

I don’t see this as a reason to buff an unwanted Skillcap=Skillceiling cheesy playstyle.
No one runs 1v1 builds in high end tpvp period.

Just stop. You don’t get to sit mesmers on shatter power specs for 1+ years because you dislike how a spec plays in duels.

Pyroatheist.9031:

A PU condie mesmer is already an incredibly strong build. If all of those changes you mentioned were introduced, I could probably win a 3v1 against competent players without breaking a sweat.

Also, if you think the ramp-up on condie mesmer is too long, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re facing an aggressive opponent, the ramp up from 0 to 6+ bleed, 5 torment, burn, cripple, vuln, weakness, 5 confusion is roughly 5-7 seconds.

Really? Please list me the amount of condi mesmers in tournament teams, let alone top leaderboards.

I don’t care about what you can 1v3 given that PU build is a stealth spam build and cannot hold or debunk a point.

WvW: Condi mesmer is useless in group fights. It is merely a duel spec, which has little to no impact on the outcome of WvW matches.

tpvp: Useless build, no burst or frontloading of damage, an inferior necro that’s only better defensively at the cost of stealth being no good for holding points.

PvE: Like any condition build, useless, but especially so since it deals less condi damage than necro or engineer and its AI dependent which gets aoe’d to hell.

Scepter chain. 1 stack of bleed (4 secs), 1 stack of torment 2nd, 1 stack of confusion (3rd chain).

Reduce windup time of scepter skill 3, and put a cripple on it when channeling.

For staff, buff wind of chaos bleed application to 2 stacks instead of one, just for the mesmer. Take out the useless vulnerability and put 1-2 stacks of torment instead. Chaos Storm’s periodic damage could use a damage increase.

For torch offhand, reduce The Prestige to a 20 sec cd. Reduce Backfire phantasm to a 15 sec cd, buff confusion stack to 6 (even at 6 stackjs of confusion the phantasm on average will do way less damage than an izerker or duelist; it’s just a really bad phantasm).

Make torch trait remove 2 condis per skill use instead of 1.

Make both Crippling Dissipation and Debilitating dissipation apply their respective conditions on SHATTER as well as their current function.

Change Cry of Frustration by increasing the confusion duration up to 5 seconds, and put in 2 stacks of torment applied as well. This shatter is really without identity at the moment, and making it the condition/punish shatter would give condi mesmers real options for shatter pressure, as they currently rarely want to shatter as staff clones are their only source of reasonable condi application.

For the Cry of Frustration trait on illusions, make it apply 2 secs of weakness per illusion shattered as well as the retal.

Change Arcane Thievery to a 25 sec cd.

The problem with condi mesmers is their ramp up is too kitten long to start doing damage at the rate of condi cleanse in the game. In order to currently even approach 7-9 stacks of bleeds, you need to have 3 staff clones up. During the ramp up, at best you’ll apply 3 stacks of bleeding.

We don’t want to push the mesmer to necro condi application, so we want to aim for something like 6-7 stacks of bleeding while constantly attacking, and having some real condition coverage in order to keep pressure.

It’s fine if the necro is better at applying offensive conditions, because I see the condi mesmer as a hybrid of boon provision for the team via staff and some other utility like null field, but at their current state condi specs for mesmers are on the weak side due to how much setup is required.

Your premises are lacking imo. It’s not just scepter. All ele AA’s are terrible.

You look at fireball, critting for 3-3.5k at best for its considerable cast time is not that great given my guardian is critting for 3-4k on his greatsword, and that’s a guardian.

Ele are forced to use conjure weapon because their sustained damage is garbage since the autoattacks suck.

And no, anet may think increasing a cooldown skill by 20% may fix it, but it won’t because the amount they would have to increase cooldown abilities to make up for the deficit in autoattack damage would break ele’s in pvp.

The ele autoattacks, especially in water attunement, need a serious buff.

And god Flamestrike is just bad. The scepter autos in particular have really bad aftercast issues on top of the bad auto damage.

But the concept stays the same if you go daggers. Dragon claw even at point blank does less damage than all other melee weapons ingame.

Eles also suffer from scaling because a lot of their autos and skills are hybrids of condition and power, meaning the numbers for each aspect are low, and it only gets worse because only a fraction of your attack sees an upgrade whereas a necromancer has the bulk of his offensive stat going to most of his condition damage skills, as the warrior gets the full benefit of his high base damage, 100% power based skills scaling from what stats he does have.

Caffynated.5713:

Zenith.7301:

Darnis.4056:

They released a new heal skill for PVE.

That nobody uses because

a) 25 skill points is BS when you could turn that into gold.

b) The heal is terrible. It’s pretty much a consume conditions with a 30 sec cd and lower health return. It’s really bad.

It’s a group heal.

Healing Spring heals more than it does. So does shout heal warrior for that matter or engineer turret.

lollasaurus.1457:

Darnis.4056:

lollasaurus.1457:

Your right guys, these runes that have been in the game since launch are the true source of disbalance in this game.

There is some seriously disbalanced stuff in this game, Lyssa runes is not one of them. People only started using them because of the need for massive cleansing, condispam is the culprit here.

No Having a full cleanse / full boons on 35 second ICD is OP and must be nerfed. Lyssa needs an ICD of 90s or atleast 60s

Having a full cleanse every 35 seconds isnt OP when I can stack a full load of condis back on you within 15 seconds on an engi/necro. And the only class that has an elite up that soon is a thief with venoms traited, pretty terrible example.

L2P

Yeah, and meanwhile condi mesmer/ranger/thief can’t do crap because they can’t just spam higher bleed stacks with tons of cover condis.

The ramp up on a condi mesmer is huge, basically a signet warrior will outheal you unless you have 3 illusions up.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

it was 10 seconds before they changed it to 5 seconds right?

i remember it was 10 seconds all boons and not 5 seconds.

Used to be, yes. Still broken as hell.

Condi immunity+ cleansing ire+ full condi clear creates a huge gap of time where you can just wail on an opponent.

Play an axe/mace+hammer build and see how nobody can kite you for long. They either eat mace 5 ranged knockdown or waste a dodge on it and get cc’d to death by hammer’s gap closers.

If the warrior wants to be trollish he could even run Fear Me instead of one of the utilities and gain 3 free seconds of damage on a target.

In WvW it’s even more broke. Warriors run sword/shield+greatsword with the signet and some stances and if they don’t want to die they won’t. Just whirlwind/rush the hell out and good luck with anyone that wants to catch you because you can become immune to anything that could kill you.

Stability needs to go. At least the long duration ones.

Stability availability if it stays should be more like mantra of concentration’s 2 sec stability trigger.

CC should have DR.

Giving warriors stability with lyssa, on top of endure pain and berk stance/balanced stance is so ridiculously stupid.

I don’t even care about sword thieves, at least those get pressured off, but a signet heal warrior can just go " lalala for the next 8 seconds I’m gonna do the highest damage in the game by far on top of ridiculous CC and you can’t do anything about it".

Darnis.4056:

They released a new heal skill for PVE.

That nobody uses because

a) 25 skill points is BS when you could turn that into gold.

b) The heal is terrible. It’s pretty much a consume conditions with a 30 sec cd and lower health return. It’s really bad.

mini.6018:

Nabbo.2845:

Excalibur.9748:

most of the devs play war. it’s evident based on the footage they show us. it’s always a war with healing signet.

meanwhile in the warrior section, they still think they’re the weakest class…

I was watching a dev play a warrior during the Edge of the Mists release and MAN that damage (sometimes nearly 20k with #2 on GS) is absurd. It reminds me of Mages in World of Warcraft – no matter the expansion you’d be okay playing them since most devs did as well.

100 blades OP / facepalm.A self rooting melee range 4 second casting time skill reminds you of ranged autotargetting instant nukes?

Impossible to continue reading these “opinons”.They speak volumes about the average forum poster.

What you seemed to miss is the fact that in WvW, you have much more CC rolling out, making the landing of 100b much easier.

Or the fact that in PvE mobs don’t move out.

Besides, the axe’s autoattack pretty closely matches 100b in DPS. It’s just most people in spvp want the greatsword because getting to a point quick is more valued than eviscerate.

Something tells me pvpers in MMO’s will never be satisfied until only someone of the same class and spec they like to play is the only candidate who can challenge them.

You are gutting the spirit for no reason. It’s a 180 sec cd elite requiring full 30 points in Nature Magic to be viable.

BM bunker rangers can’t use it. Power spec rangers can’t use it.

The rest of the ranger elites suck.

Pretty much. They’re releasing ascended stuff but not updating pets/minions, unfortunately….

The projectiles the Archdiviner shoots when he swirls around hit like a truck and inflict confusion.

Eurantien.4632:

Fortus.6175:

Because unlike thieves, as a guard, most of them time you choose to engage, you remain there, and judge ntervention doesnt hit you for 80% of your health. Sure you can use focus 5 but if I see a guard running around with focus 5 on I will count and dodge for the definitely-coming judge focus combo, with a thief you never know. That is the difference.

If you’ve played the game enough you should be able to know how long it takes for a target to walk up to you without swiftness. You should also know that most thief stealth lasts about 3 seconds 10 if SR. So those two things coupled with the ability to count (which you’ve shown you can do) leaves me wondering why can you not count against a thief the same way you count against a zerker guard? I mean, you can’t say it’s not possible because it definitely is. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve blocked a backstab on ranger, I’ve even blocked backstabs out of shadow refuge 3s block vs 10s stealth. It’s not that hard to predict. I’ve even blocked backstabs as they are happening with GS 4. This is simply a l2p issue. That is a fact. Which you will undoubtedly argue against…

Because focus 5 goes off without random intervals. In those 1-3 seconds the thief can choose when to land the backstab. You also seem to be forgeting shadowstep signet and steal backstab combo, and because they’re stealthed you can’t even tell when they’ve arrived at your location.

And if that guardian focus 5 fails? He’s gotta wait for, oh, 40 seconds. The thief can repeat his crap far more often.

Moreover, while the guardian has to deal with guaranteed retaliation as he approaches, the thief can close distance without fear from getting whittled by ranged weapons (most ranged weapons need a target), and in melee the only option for most characters is autoattack as many skills require targeting.

You don’t seem to understand the difference between guesswork and actually being skilled by telling animations apart.

cymerdown.4103:

Zenith.7301:

Says the bunker guardian. Play something that isn’t bunker like a power spec ranger or engi and see how “balanced” D/P thieves are then.

True, in 64 ranks of pvp I’ve never played any other classes or builds than bunker guardian. Voted most boring player NA 9 months in a row.

And those classes and builds were obviously power ranger/necro/engineer, I bet.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Fortus.6175:

People argue that scepter ele has more burst…

It does have more burst, and is instantaneous damage. The amount of setup required for a thief to even get into the same general area as an ele is ridiculously obvious to the point that only the completely oblivious are able to get hit with it. It isn’t, by any means, stronger than an ele.

What a load of crap.

The only instantaneous skill you can’t dodge is their air skill which crits for about 3k.

Phoenix is telegraphed, every single attunement switch is telegraphed. Fire grab is not only telegraphed, but buggy as hell to land, and arcane missile is an obvious projectile.

You can backstab every 6-7 seconds. The cooldown on fire grab is 45 seconds. The cooldown on arcane missile is 20 seconds. The cooldown on arcane wave is 30. If he sits in air for lightning strike it’s a 5 sec cd, and all ele autoattacks suck.

The thief dagger auto and warrior auto can do so much more sustained damage in addition to the burst they do with a single skill.

Meanwhile the ele blows his 20+ sec cd burst sequence and then sits doing garbage sustained damage on anyone who didn’t die to the burst.

How hard is it for them to implement diminishing returns for CC. They refuse to do it on spvp where it would solve so many problems instead of using the bandaid of Stand Your Ground guardians, it would be immensely healthy for the WvW composition as you would no longer need to stack guardians for melee trains, and it would be great in pvp to give other specs more use.

I have no idea what made them think making necro’s fear be affected by Defiant was a good design decision.

JMar.3254:

Zenith.7301:

Agree to disagree tbh. HotW is just HotW.

Agreed. Real elites run the hardest content with bad builds and bad class composition.

Quit being efficient and organizing what you do.

whoosh

Agree to disagree tbh. HotW is just HotW.

Did you not read my post? I said warriors and guardians both. You for some reason felt like nitpicking when we both know a party made of engineers and necros and rangers and elementalists and thieves by themselves, without the support of warriors or guardians would be a much rougher party.

At no point in my first post did I ever leave guardians out. I said specifically they trivialized content.

There is a very real difference in the impact guardians and warriors have on a group compared to other classes, and I’m tired of people playing it down.

haviz.1340:

Zenith.7301:

Which is somewhat mitigated by the necro’s and wars. You’re still aoe bursting the kitten out of groups with those two warriors in it whenever you can’t use FGS.

Drop the warriors and see how smooth the run becomes for the caster/leather.

Bursting mobs at level 80? I didn’t know necro could aoe burst. I guess we were waiting for fgs every time when pulling mobs.

Are you serious?

The necros and warriors are damage sponges. What’s so hard to understand about the fact that without 2 warriors, having 2 other non-warrior classes instead, your run wouldn’t go so well?

haviz.1340:

Zenith.7301:

Moreover, you can’t say dredge and ascalon got ridiculous for non plate stacking groups.

I know most “hardcore” groups can’t appreciate this as they have rarely had any qualms about using guardians and warriors to trivialize content, but doing dredge at 48 as berk ele or even ascalon without a guardian for perma reflects or the burst aoe of 100b is just dumb.

It was gimmicky balancing. Hopefully the newly introduced challenges don’t take the usual game balance design of “Hard = more HP more damage done”.

I’ve got to 80 using this composition: 2 war/nec/2 ele. You know what do you need the most in fractals? Reflections. Do you know what this group lacks?

Which is somewhat mitigated by the necro’s and wars. You’re still aoe bursting the kitten out of groups with those two warriors in it whenever you can’t use FGS.

Drop the warriors and see how smooth the run becomes for the caster/leather.

Relativity.3264:

islarose.7356:

Fact is, they’re increasing the difficulty of 30+

Lie

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.

Read, please. After 30 you get the new challenging features. The curve he’s talking about if you had any clue was jumping from 20 to 40 prior to people being able to stack agony up their kitten with the ascended accessories.

Back then your only option was to actually learn to reliably dodge all agony attacks.

Moreover, you can’t say dredge and ascalon got ridiculous for non plate stacking groups.

I know most “hardcore” groups can’t appreciate this as they have rarely had any qualms about using guardians and warriors to trivialize content, but doing dredge at 48 as berk ele or even ascalon without a guardian for perma reflects or the burst aoe of 100b is just dumb.

It was gimmicky balancing. Hopefully the newly introduced challenges don’t take the usual game balance design of “Hard = more HP more damage done”.

Cynz.9437:

ronpierce.2760:

Well, in a sense they don’t. And by fixing this it TECHNICALLY would be dumbing down the game, as purposefully using minions to body block is a skillful tactic, as many single target melee and ranged attacks hit what is closest to you, it has nothing to do with them being pets versus players. That said; I see why its annoying/frustrating. But my point is fixing this would leave classes like MMs even more vulnerable then they already are with their lack of defensive tools, and thus would likely need to be compensated.

you honestly think spirit rangers lack defensive mechanics?
and i personally think there is nothing skillfull of standing on top of the pet and spam your abilities because you know for fact pet will take all beatings for you

Play a warrior and spirit rangers have no defensive mechanics as warriors cleave with every skill they do.

You as a thief just happen to suffer the issue necros also face with dagger mainhands for some reason not cleaving like all the other weapons.

There must be some bug where my male norn’s footfalls are the same size of that of an asura, and it makes the footfalls kinda small for a norn scale.

Thank you for making it account bound. You have no idea how tedious it was that if I wanted to use my alts, I had to switch to my main at the end and pray a stealth update wasn’t deployed, preventing me from getting back into the instance.

I have some reservations, though. Will you be improving fractal weapon drops rates and making it so when a fractal skin drops it’s a box with a weapon you pick? Making the daily chest account bound nerfs the acquisition rate of pristine relics and ring drops if you don’t fix the drop rates of the items themselves.

Lighter.5631:

idk about you, but a thief with black powder gives god-like survibility to the team at fotm 48. as a zerker thief with 30ar on fotm48, i rarely die myself, too many dodges and disengages. at shaman, my thief clearly have easier time then my 80% time played warrior. in fact, my thief survive better at shaman then my warrior. both full zerker, ofc

and thief is generally more fun to play.

btw my zerker thief can face tank mobs in fotm48, can my zerker warrior do that? no lol

Oh also a thing i’ve always wanted to complain about when i was a zerker war
you don’t freaking save the team, your teams bad, you are done. with my thief i can quick engage burst kill or sr for revive or skip, bp for god like group survibility.

i still don’t know why people keep saying that thieves are bad in pve, i guess all they do is faceroll low level npcs in open world.

And then you get the dredge fractal and your blinds are useless lol.

Incurafy.6329:

ahuba.6430:

brannigan.9810:

One of the dumbest ideas ever.

And I play thief so don’t come with that “hurr you just hate thief” argument.
D/D can perma stealth.
D/P can stealth for like 30 seconds even without shadow arts. So no, it will never happen.

Uhhh no, D/P pseudo-permastealth is being nerfed next patch and D/D can’t get it unless they’re fighting someone who doesn’t know how to dodge or fighting a pet build. Even so, a Thief chaining CnD on a point isn’t capping it because their opponent will be on the point anyway.

I’m still waiting to hear a good reason why Thieves shkuldnt be able to contest in stealth besides “lol fief char in stelth is op day r invuln cos u cant kill somethin u cant c!!!”

That’s OK. We can allow stealth to cap point but personally bar you from playing thief and be on the receiving end of the changes. We’ll see how it goes then

My only problem with staff in WvW is how much you need to be babysat because you have zero mobility/defense tools in it.

Whether you live or die when focused depends not a single bit on what you do, but what your teammates must do for you.

P.S. Just like thief’s black powder, experienced melee know that they can stand just outside of lava font and still hit you with melee.

Taku.6352:

Zenith.7301:

Shaman is Toughness primary, healing power+condi damage.

It wouldn’t be so terrible if it didn’t have the healing power, which is a completely useless stat for any condi build that isn’t a BM bunker ranger.

Basically my only real option is to use it on a spec that’s only somewhat good for roaming on WvW, terrible for team GvG WvW activity, and outside that has no use whatsoever.

I’m not sure that prismatic understanding WvW stealth prot spam mesmers run shaman, I think they just go for rabid since most condi builds rely on it. Even the mesmer prefers rabid because Sharpened Images means more bleed uptime.

Anyways, it’s just outright depressing that on a very small chance jackpot, the game spits in your eye by giving you an obsolete item.

I left it in its box hoping someday Anet will start using their head within the next decade and make anything non-berserk, let alone healing power builds, be useful.

But I played ele in GW1, so I know what the odds of that are happening, let alone when.

In PvE shaman stats are Vitality as main then condi dmg and healing power as minors whereas in sPvP shaman stats are Toughness as major and healing/condi dmg as minors.

The PvE equivalent of sPvP shaman stats are Settlers gear.

Silly how they can’t name them the same way in both game modes.

Oh, yeah, thanks for catching that. I’m just used to the amulet name for my ranger in spvp.

Whether it’s vit or toughness I don’t really mind. What really stings is the useless healing power on it because only a niche ranger build can make use of that stat in a condition build that only works for roaming in WvW.

Healing Power is just a terrible stat and I doubt it’ll ever be good as it only affects relatively few sources compared to the other stats which affect most of your other skills. I can go as far as saying it will likely get no change as they don’t want cleric guardians gaining any more survival.

Healing signet is the highest heal in the game. In terms of HPS it outpaces every other heal out there. Even if you used every class’s heal on cooldown whether you need it at that moment or not, Healing Signet would be higher health returns.

It’s a completely broken heal and it’s kinda hilarious how they took a sledgehammer to signet of restoration for the ele’s yet turned the warrior signet into a much better version of it.

Warriors and guardians and rangers are not the glass builds I was talking about and you know it. Try playing a power spec ranger or necro or engineer and see how well you fare against any thief with half a brain.

Yes, I run stealth spam thief build. It’s not made for tournaments, but it’s ridiculously effective in the department of 1v1, and it’s especially broken when I take my thief to WvW, where my 4-5k tpvp backstabs suddenly turn into 7-8k backstabs.

I play a thief, and there’s no other class bar a signet warrior with greatsword disengage who can just peace out of a fight whenever he messes up and try again shortly after he’s reset.

Next patch is a good step in fixing that. Infiltrator strike made me pretty much immune to CC spikes, and my D/P was just absurd against melee reliant specs.

I know for a fact that I pay very dearly with my engineer or zerker elementalist if I don’t land what I need to land. There’s no return from screwing up on many classes.

Star Ace.5207:

Awe.1096:

coglin.1867:

Awe.1096:

Good players will manage to stay alive in zerker.

And this is where the problem begins. For starters there are not near as many “good” players as everyone likes to think there are. Secondly, there are too many players that “think” they are good players. Whats worse, is they act as if every time they go down, that it is a rare fluke. Funny think is, I see 3 posters here who I know for a fact i have played with, who are not good players, but are making the “good players” argument.

Well, since you are from Jade Quarry you didnt played with me for sure since I am in EU :p. Anyway, I didnt even claimed that I am an awesome player or anything. Above average probably. Good enough to stay alive on zerker warrior in places like new TA. But there are players better from me and they can stay alive on zerker thieves while I probably could not. On the other hand I have a cleric guardian and I did new TA 2-3 times with him. And TBH cleric guard was overtanked for my standards. I could managed to stay alive with way lower defenses which means my tank stats were pretty much wasted after certain treshold. The point of what I said earlier is not that people who cant stay alive as zerkers should L2P. In fact I dont have anything against running a dungeon with a mixed party as long as whatever people are wearing is working out for them. On the other hand I also have to admit that some of the best parties I had in dungeons while playing GW2 were mostly full zerker or almost. It is becouse if you have enough “good” players in your team, high damage will always be the best solution as player “skill” will compensate for lower defenses. It is not elitism by any means. This is a design flaw of the GW2’s no-trinity system.

I disagree (though that’s OK, no offense intended), because no MMO Trinity doesn’t necessarily means “only DPS role”, which is what you take for granted. It is a flaw only because the current system could better highlight control and support roles (meaning true support, not “Zerk” Guardian using his/her natural supportive abilities.) As of now-although ANet seems to be working on this with newer content-many Dungeons and encounter favor high damage, stacked melee, but that doesn’t mean that “DPS way” was what ANet really intended by getting rid of hard trinity roles.

Additionally, they would need to add more Dungeon paths (or new ones altogether) so they could fix this DPS is king attitude in the game. At the same time, Berserker’s players shouldn’t be penalized for using the gear, but the risk involved should be higher so players feel actual pressure from using high risk, high reward gear (on my Guardian I rarely feel this pressure, making more offensive gear all the more tempting and rewarding.) I am sure they realize that the Dungeon meta is too DPS heavy, and they could probably design better Dungeons at the moment, despite your ideas that it’s the game’s “no trinity” design flaw.

Damage will always be a premium in every format. They can’t change that.

The fact is every character can heal himself, and the design of the mobs in this game is that they either hit consistently like a truck so you can’t outlast them and must kill them first, or if they were to nerf that damage mobs do, then zerkers would only get easier.

The only reason in trinity games why tanks and healers exist is because the dependency is created by game design. If warlocks could heal themselves in WoW, and nobody would need to worry about tanking because you can either dodge it or one of the classes could negate most damage for the group, there’d be no use for tanks or healers. They’d be extinct.

Furthermore, zerkers will always dominate on this game for the mere fact that this game is a grindfest when it comes to skins. You don’t get rewarded appropriately for clearing the content. In fact, in order to pay for a legendary you’re looking at running a dungeon about 1000 times.

Convert that to the best case scenario of 5-6 min clears for the easy dungeons. That’s 3.47-4.16 days of nonstop dungeon spam.

And guess what? You only get the gold reward once a day, so you can’t even do that. So you want to finish the dungeons as fast as possible to start doing activities in the game which actually net you reasonable profit to progress at a non-glacial pace toward expensive skins.

Have you looked at all the recently introduced skins to the game? None of them bought by tokens or obtained for clearing a dungeon. All of them either cash shop items or really low RNG drop rates making the skins cost large amounts of gold so people grind for them, or as Anet would like convert RL money to gems to trade them in for gold to reduce their grind.

And that’s why zerkers will always dominate. Zerker gear is what mitigates the grind the most.

It’s not irrelevant. It’s guaranteed spike opportunity or a reset. There’s no resetting a fight for most other classes. He can keep baiting out cd’s till you’re out of cd’s and he can do lasting damage.

And this is talking only of bunkers. Non condi bunker builds are free kills to a D/P thief with guild up.

I love how all thieves sit here and pretend like aoe is not only spammable, but that all classes have aoe with no targeting requirements.

Hype.8032:

Zenith.7301:

A class worse than thief at contesting points? Are you serious? You have tons of great 1v1 match ups. If anything you’re one of the classes that can force the diversion of manpower.

Yes, I am serious. Take a thief defending a point against say a far point assaulter… an engi or warrior perhaps. What class would hold the point for less time than a thief in that scenario?

The thief should not be defending, any more than a power spec ranger or s/d ele would be trying to defend against a warrior or engi of all things. Think a little please.

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Levetty.1279:

I don’t know where this myth that SPVP players are talented has come from considering the SPvP meta seems to be ‘go on forums and complain about all classes that aren’t yours, doubly so if class has pets’. Though they are very skilled at that I guess.

PvP players tend to be better than PvE players because if you kitten up in PvP, even just a tiny little bit like missing your cripple, it can be the difference between victory and defeat so PvPers tend to be a little better at the game as a whole.

Granted, this is only for competitive PvP players that are doing tournies regularly and are in it to win it, a hot join hero is gonna be about as good as your average zergling, and then there’s also some REALLY good PvE players too and etc.

Just by and large most PvPers tend to be better than most PvErs, but again there’s A LOT of different factors that play into it so don’t worry about it too much (like there being significantly less PvPers than PvE players).

You come to high level fractals or Arah/Aetherblade achiev/seed runs and manage not to get kicked within the first 10 minutes. Then you get to say PvP’ers are better.

It’s completely different skillsets.

I got every single Aether blade retreat achievement on a lv 40-50 staff ele in the equivalent of that levels zerker gear, I’ve almost finished everything in Arah (one path left more of a time commitment than everything, so far only boss we’ve wiped on was Melandru and even then it was stupid easy once I kited the gorillas around in another room), and speed clears are hardly a testament to skill, usually just builds that take advantage of the mechanics.

PS: I also killed Liadri

Are you serious? Because all I needed to do to kill Liadri was burst her down on my gimmick warrior build, and for the 7 lights achievement you could just abuse an acrobatics thief with shortbow to dodge spam and clear weakness/cripple on dodge for easymode achievements.

Those achievements you have mean nothing. It’s easy to get carried. I invite you to come to a fractal 48 run. I’d like to see you perform a full melee on the hierophant or mossman without going down. And no, I won’t provide you with two guardians.

sPvP is a den of gimmicks. You can’t seriously look at warriors or necromancers or at their previous incarnation bunker eles and tell me it wasn’t all a set of gimmick builds being abused.

A class worse than thief at contesting points? Are you serious? You have tons of great 1v1 match ups. If anything you’re one of the classes that can force the diversion of manpower.

Shaman is Toughness primary, healing power+condi damage.

It wouldn’t be so terrible if it didn’t have the healing power, which is a completely useless stat for any condi build that isn’t a BM bunker ranger.

Basically my only real option is to use it on a spec that’s only somewhat good for roaming on WvW, terrible for team GvG WvW activity, and outside that has no use whatsoever.

I’m not sure that prismatic understanding WvW stealth prot spam mesmers run shaman, I think they just go for rabid since most condi builds rely on it. Even the mesmer prefers rabid because Sharpened Images means more bleed uptime.

Anyways, it’s just outright depressing that on a very small chance jackpot, the game spits in your eye by giving you an obsolete item.

I left it in its box hoping someday Anet will start using their head within the next decade and make anything non-berserk, let alone healing power builds, be useful.

But I played ele in GW1, so I know what the odds of that are happening, let alone when.

Warrior/guardian are easymode and selfsufficient. You don’t need group support to perform.

The casters need proper group composition for the run not to be painful.

The differences in health pools are vast, and what the guardian doesn’t have in health he makes up with prot uptime and passive regen+the most reflects/projectile absorbs in game and blinds.

And to top it off despite the survivability/sustainability gap, warriors match or surpass most casters in damage dealt. Thieves beat warriors single target, but warrior cleave is much better than thief, and warriors bring might, fury, and vuln stacking along banners which have exclusive benefits only the warrior can bring (primary stat boost, the best boost in the game).

Guardians bring somewhat less damage than a thor ele, but their utility is so strong it trivializes most encounters (group block, group heals, aoe blind, the highest reflect uptimes in the game, and CC+prot+regen).

Basically, you bring a thief once you have no warrior/guardian slots to fill. Guardians and warriors are the backbone of a group. The other classes are side dressing. Thor ele is nice, but it won’t match the impact of a guardian or warrior in a group besides the occassional FGS cheese.

In terms of group damage/support boosts, the warrior and guardian are unmatched, on top of their ease of use. A Thor ele must be way more careful about how he plays. You’ll literally get one shot in some cases if you don’t have the proper support from your group.

Cynz.9437:

Zenith.7301:

How are dagger tanks being gutted next patch? With the 33% increase on ini regen troll LDS evasion tanks will only be stronger, and unlike stealth builds they can hold points while evading.

they nerfed every trait that gave ini by quite a lot

They only nerfed a weaponswitch trait and the ini on stealth. Which a tank LDB build would never use.