Guild Wars 2

Might stacks, full berserker gear, vulnerability on mobs, signet popped.

I just landed a 9.7k maul in a molten facility today.

It’s a pretty rare occurrence, though, when thieves and warriors can burst for similar numbers much more frequently, as can mesmers.

vinceftw.5086:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

There was actually. In a 1v1, you have to interrupt the enemy heal skill if you want to win. There are always certain skills that need to be interrupted. Ele and Engi had the distinct advantage to completely block you from doing this all together. In fact, Engi could do this TWICE (at 25% hp and on demand). Mix this with reduced recharge on elixirs and it’s insanity. I could hold a point from 2-3 people for an entire match with my engi bunker.

Warrior’s Endure Pain, Mesmer’s Distortion. Why didn’t they get the same treatment? Especially Distortion.

Because you can still be cc’d during endure pain, and in order to get the full distortion you need ramp up by summoning 3 clones.

Distortion also does not break stuns, while endure pain can be hampered by snares.

LOL, engineers in particular. At least mesmer confusion duration was shorter. Engineer prybar at 5 stacks for 5 secs was just dumb since they could put another with pistol and it’s a lot of stacks for a lot of time in addition to burning.

I love it when a thief says there are no rewarding stealth openers because the only rewarding one is the one that crits for 8-10k on non-bunkers.

Or that his OP shortbow cluster/1 spam was their only viable role in teamfights. You mean abusing map ledges with infiltrator arrows so nobody can touch you while you pepper entire groups of people with ridiculous ranged damage nobody but the HGH grenadier can do better.

I really hope this is just the beginning. Take a good nerf hammer to all that kitten spike and sheer avoidance, and add in more healing/sustained presence in combat instead. There’s nothing cheesier for classes that are not eles/mesmers than a thief just taking off half their health and spamming heartseeker. If it fails, just shadow refuge or black powder/heartseeker retreat and try again with another backstab once their defensive cd’s are recharging.

But hey, entire teams should coordinate to negate a thief from destroying one of their players. And bunkers should continue to be abundant as every other glass cannon besides thieves or mesmer gets farmed by GC thieves.

Volrath.1473:

Ant.3415:

Your nerfs to the healing of elementalist was too dramatic, considering so many other classes were buffed. Please consider tweaking the healing back up, it’s imbalanced that thieves have more mobility and burst and stealth in a single build, considering you’ve significantly hurt ele mobility & healing.

thieves got what?!

did we read the same patch notes?
Thieves got mug nerfed and a new ability with Sword/Dagger setup. thieves have the same stealth they had before, the same mobility they had before and actually LESS burst than they had before… what are you talking about?!

And more survival, because now you use sword/dagger for the closer and save mug for when you need a 2k+ heal plus the really good steal ability you get on most classes.

You are also not mentioning that the signets thieves run alongside their burst builds got doubled in effectiveness on their passive, so they’ll do more sustained damage until they spike with backstab, which is still as kitten as ever.

Durzlla.6295:

@Zenith, well Rampagers is equal to Berserkers armor in PvE so long as you’re the only condi user (or your condis don’t overlap) in the group.

And I use compassion training when I run Moas… Sometimes, I’ve been taking Commanding Voice and Speed Training now that those aren’t garbage though.

EDIT: keep in mind to me PvE is just a playground and shouldn’t be taken “hard core” so I don’t go for any sort of “competitive” builds there, as you can see by my Magi Ranger going for a BM/Healer build xD.

Rampager is never equal to berserker, not even close. Conditions are flat out inferior in any group environment that wants an efficient run.

The only condition you need in a group is vulnerability stacking, and warriors do that just fine for the group.

Just have pets have 70% aoe damage reduction. Jaguars and birds could use a buff to toughness or vitality still.

Melee pets need to cleave.

Mesmer’s GS1 does crap damage depending on distance, while your bow does the same damage regardless of distance. Your targets also don’t need to be lined up unlike mesmer beam to aoe.

Stop whining about arguably one of the best weapons in game. If this were a complaint about venoms or swords or ambush trap or needle trap, then maybe people wouldn’t be laughing at you.

P.S. Mesmer GS is absolutely terrible defensively, unlike your shortbow #3 spam, and the mesmer greatsword boasts no mobility and has 2 wimpy skills (mindstab and mirrored blade) while your shortbow has every single ability be useful, with maybe the weak link being choking gas but still miles away better as a blasting field for weakness that also pulses poison.

Have you compared it against greatsword? I’ve been doing some testing on berserker gear since greatsword gets better the higher your power and crit damage relative to other weapons. Its auto is subpar baseline so it needs a lot of compensation from how stats stack with it+Maul.

I’d love to see some documentation for these results. If you’re running with warriors who stack vulnerability for you, why would you run warhorn anyways?

I use red moa for group fury, and still I have to be very lucky to f4 switch it in and immediately press f2 for the fury so it doesn’t decide to ignore the command and put the ability in its full cooldown despite not giving fury to anyone.

Drake aoe is still as bad as ever for hitting moving targets. It simply won’t connect.

Pets do better against single mobs, but they still die to aoe unless you take a drake, moa, or bear.

Any pet with less HP dies easily.

So basically, kill your DPS potential to have any pet uptime. Don’t expect to run jaguars or ravens and have them live for long, especially fractals.

This patch changed very little outside drakes and bears.

What the hell, ele signets are great — it’s just cantrips are stupidly better.

Ele fire signet gives a 10 second burn 30 sec cd active, and when in passive grants a whopping 9% extra crit chance. That’s pretty big.

Signet of earth is pretty standard on scepter builds as the root helps land a wallop with Dragon’s Tooth, and it gives them 180 toughness to boot. Signet of water is the same as our signet of renewal except for the active, which is lower cd to compensate for their lesser effect.

The reason eles don’t use their signets is not because their signets are bad — it’s because other combinations are even better. What’s bad on eles is the elementals and the glyphs and some conjures.

But if you run a thor conjure hammer elementalist build, and use signet of fire, you are also the highest sustained class in the game, and that signet of fire is key because you need to crit with the autos to see the big numbers, and in case burning drops off a mob (the build need burning on target for 10% extra damage) you can pop the signet.

Ranger signets on the other hand are complete garbage without 30 points into the crappiest traitline rangers have.

People complain about SoS active, but to have it you’re giving up wilderness survival or pet damage. It’s just not worth it because most BM bunker rangers run condi builds and investment into a power line is just bad.

Ranger power builds in general are terrible because they have no way of dealing with boon abusers besides condition specs.

thefantasticg.3984:

Nope, still ain’t using signets. I lose too much in other skill lines to make the active signets useful… still.

How do y’all that use signets have your traits lined up?

Only time you spec into it is for glass cannon zerker ranger.

30 marksman, 20 skirmish, 20 beastmastery. That’s your best sustained damage build with burst, and the signets make sense for the extra DPS. You substitute signet of the hunt in pve for either guard or sic em.

cafard.8953:

With the new 15s cooldown (12s if traited), that means you get to stealth your pet and give it 10s of protection avery 15s/12s. That’s a lot of survivability and surprise. Not sure how much of a difference it’ll make in dungeons seeing the amount of one-shotting going on, but in wvw (roaming) and spvp, it’s a big buff for beastmaster builds. That jaguar can pretty much spam stealth now.

Protection is nice, but it’s mostly a buffer.

What kills pets is not single hits. It’s the amount of aoe they walk over like idiots. And this aoe is something not even guardians with protection can stand in.

Yup. Anyone who says rangers are fine in pve and wvw compared to ele or guardians or thieves or warriors just loses credibility.

Rangers are very strong in tpvp, and it ends there. Because in tpvp condition builds works, and tankiness is important, and you can use jaguars and ravens freely without them dying in a few seconds and because berserker gear setups are not universally better.

But in pve, where berserker is undeniably better, and guardians/warriors/mesmers/thieves stand at the top of the pve food chain, people have all the right to complain when we got no meaningful change to pet survival vs. aoe spam and spirits are still garbage, as are many of our traits.

I mean, how many of you actually use, for example, the trait that gives your pet 1 second of 1 stack of might everytime you crit? How many people use the trait for might on signet use? (1 measly stack on 30+ second cd signets, really bad compared to HGH trait and elixirs).

How many people even use several of the BM traits, like that garbage compassion training that’s a measly amount of healing power to the pet? Slot that trait and it’s like a 5% healing increase or less to your pet’s healing. Same for the condi damage and duration traits for the pet.

And why are the greatsword traits, a weapon that only gets good the more berserker gear you have, on the kitten toughness line instead of on the more logical crit/critdmg or power lines?

Our traits are spread all over, and the effects of those traits are too diluted. They need to combine several traits. Especially the spirit ones. And the spirit traits should be moved to tier 1 and 2 with the possible exception of walking spirits (which nobody takes because spirits still die to a sneeze).

They buffed pet’s survivability? By what, increasing their hp pools to 15k hp? The only pet that got survival increases were drake with doubled hp and bear with more armor — neither of those are used in pvp.

Daecollo.9578:

Warriors are fine: links a video from beta

Guess what, grenades at me and in 7 seconds my warrior was ALSO downed.

At least 17k hp, endure pain, heal removes conditions. You last more than the pet stop trolling.

luxen.8376:

Kwll.1468:

So a slight buff to pets have made ranger god’s? Beastmaster and Trappers have always been good but no better then a lot of other classes/builds.

Look at signets (:

Are you serious? Trapper and BM builds don’t use signets, and those are the only 2 viable tpvp builds.

Signet of the wild got its cc halved but the duration also got reduced to 8 seconds, so now you have to side strafe even less time to waste pets attempts at attacking you.

Not when you’re fighting over a point, like people do in spvp. If you move off the point he neutralizes it and starts capping.

In wvw he’ll just bring a rifle and kill you while side strafing since the pet will stop to hit him and then have to catch up.

You only really kill a decent warrior if you’re BM bunker with chills. Maybe a trapper works to, but it’s way squishier and more susceptible to his ability to burst you down.

RoRo.8270:

Kwll.1468:

Nerfing mindless aoe is a always a good thing. Hoping for a grenade nerf sometime in the not too distant future.

Gernades are easy to evade unless you immobilize, slow, daze etc. They move slow through the air so you actually have to factor in distance

Not when he’s spamming them from the roof on a point.

Aoe spam in spvp is just dumb.

Eles spam the crap out of their aoe, be it dragon tooth or burning speed. Mesmers at least only get it via a shatter, but it’s pretty silly aoe burst.

Engineers and rangers just crap on points.

Basically, unless you are a guardian you will need to move off that point or you die.

Every kitten team you see people running has at least 2-3 aoe heavy classes like ele or mesmer or engineer.

Caffynated.5713:

They’re harder to kill too. One followed me half way around the map until I got tired of it. I hit it with blade trail, 100b, whirlwind and rush on a zerker warrior, and it was still at ~60% life.

#beastmode

Pure pile of crap. Jaguars now have 15k hp and about 1700 toughness. Ditto for ravens.

So don’t pull that tune about pet survival when last match an engineer just spammed grenades at me and in 7 seconds my pet was downed.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha……..hahahahahahahahahaha!

What rangers wouldn’t give to trade with thief shortbow. Let’s make a trade — you get a shortbow with half the damage your shortbow does, single target, and a crappy ai that can’t stay on target unless they’re camping a point, and we get your shortbow that does double the damage, to 3 targets, a teleport, a shot with built in evade that you can spam 3-4 times, and the best aoe/combo blaster in the game. Anf btw, your aoe poison field is a thousand times better than the garbage poison spread rangers get.

You thieves have got to be some of the most disingenuous people.

Because it’s so hard to spam 3 on a shortbow and evade all attacks against you, soften a target to about 70-60% hp, and then mug_backstab them for a 2-shot.

What you need next is your dumb heartseeker spam to be nerfed by making it directional and aimed instead of homing and cost more initiative. You know, like eles actually have to prep and aim their burning speed.

Do a dungeon.

The only pets I can take to a boss fight that may live through all the aoe spam are a moa or a bear due to the high hp pool. Maybe devourer as well.

Quite frankly all pets except bears should have the baseline hp of a moa. It feels like the pet I feel most balanced in survivability for its use (only the red moa, though — the others have completely weak f2 skills for dungeons — a 4 sec prot on a 45 sec cd is just dumb).

Using a jaguar is a waste — with health regen from Bm, the signet, and health on crit it STILL dies during the 15 second cd of pet switch, and no calling him back doesn’t work when he needs to walk to you through the circles of fire that promptly finish him off.

I’m just annoyed that the pets I could use for competitive DPS are nonstarters in dungeons. And bear DPS is atrocious — at least the moa brought me 15 seconds of group fury and the aoe heal.

The drake is inferior to jaguar for DPS, yet a warrior doesn’t have his starts switched from berserker to knights or soldiers whenever he wants to cleave. He hits hard all the time, but in a dungeon I must use the subpar pet so at least it lives.

Pet survivability on aoe field happy bosses is still bad — its ai still won’t reposition, and if you’re meleeing you can’t f3 it so it repositions.

Well, they’ll just go back to a shatter spec — condition mesmers were garbage anyways in pve while shatter spec is strong in all formats.

Durzlla.6295:

Because it’s not broken? They said back in Beta that drakes are supposed to be the AoE pet, and thus, the only pet to cleave, all the other pets “stab” the enemy so it’s only 1 target.

And this is an inherent disadvantage because drake damage is inferior to jaguar, so this puts melee rangers far below the cleaving output of other melee specs.

I know your ranger is dandy fine in tpvp, because I also faceroll on any ranger in tpvp, but it’s NOT fine in pve.

Chopps.5047:

Well, my man, you dont like slowing enemy for pet to use sick ’em and the cheese build you popularized was nerfed. That sucks. Now go find another build to popularize; clearly, you have the wherewithall to handle it. If not, roll your thief or whatever. Good luck in the future, take care.

It was funny I once thought this guy was serious. Now it’s obvious we’ve got a resident troll.

Still die at the slightest hint of aoe. the new AI for melee pets doesn’t always work and they’ll stand in front of mobs not aggroed to them.

Spirits still die in a sneeze.

Haven’t tested double hp trait for spirits, but if in order to use spirits you need to devote 20 points into nature magic, they’re a garbage utility anyways.

Just remove the kittenec cd on pet death and it wouldn’t be such a pain.

Why hasn’t this been fixed? Every class melee spec besides dagger necro and thief can cleave with melee, and thieves can use swords to cleave.

Pets are an extension of our damage, so melee pets should cleave to keep us competing in dungeons with melee specs.

Daemon.4295:

Zenith.7301:

Daemon.4295:

Pretty good? It’s a fantastic patch, much much better than I hoped for despite the lack of any improvements to the longbow.

Pet no longer grab aggro. Huge improvement in dungeons.
Pets move behind target. Huge improvement in dungeons, they are no longer susceptible to cleave. We have to see how this actually works though, it could be a little buggy at first.
Signet reduction times: Huge improvement across the board, particularly for power ranger builds.
QZ increased by one second: Very nice, although I would have preferred to have that extra second on pet swap with Zephyr’s Speed.
QZ heal effect increased from 0 to 50%: OK, good for regen builds but not so much for a hard heal as you’re unlike to pop a 50% heal rather than wait an extra couple of seconds.
Spirits: another boost to their health and activation chance. Still unappealing for me, but I could well be mistaken.
Pets: Higher health, higher armor, lower cast times. Great! The only very minor disappointment is that I was hoping the cast time would be instant (i.e. at start of animation rather than at end of animation).

Overall it’s an overwhelmingly positive patch, we really shouldn’t be complaining.

PETS DO GRAB AGGRO.

The aggro change just means that a mob won’t attack your pet if you haven’t gotten aggro from it. Once you engage it, like you will in dungeons, they will attack your pet.

And guess what, that lupicus aoe shower will still 1 shot any pet that is not a bear.

Exactly, it’s a huge improvement. Not so much for experienced players, but a lot of newer rangers struggle to not pick up aggro from mobs with their pets as they run through a dungeon. Of course pets grab aggro once you attack, that’s a crucial part of their mechanic.

And they die shortly after because of it. Let’s see how many hits from a silver mob your jaguar takes before biting the dust.

Daemon.4295:

Pretty good? It’s a fantastic patch, much much better than I hoped for despite the lack of any improvements to the longbow.

Pet no longer grab aggro. Huge improvement in dungeons.
Pets move behind target. Huge improvement in dungeons, they are no longer susceptible to cleave. We have to see how this actually works though, it could be a little buggy at first.
Signet reduction times: Huge improvement across the board, particularly for power ranger builds.
QZ increased by one second: Very nice, although I would have preferred to have that extra second on pet swap with Zephyr’s Speed.
QZ heal effect increased from 0 to 50%: OK, good for regen builds but not so much for a hard heal as you’re unlike to pop a 50% heal rather than wait an extra couple of seconds.
Spirits: another boost to their health and activation chance. Still unappealing for me, but I could well be mistaken.
Pets: Higher health, higher armor, lower cast times. Great! The only very minor disappointment is that I was hoping the cast time would be instant (i.e. at start of animation rather than at end of animation).

Overall it’s an overwhelmingly positive patch, we really shouldn’t be complaining.

PETS DO GRAB AGGRO.

The aggro change just means that a mob won’t attack your pet if you haven’t gotten aggro from it. Once you engage it, like you will in dungeons, they will attack your pet.

And guess what, that lupicus aoe shower will still 1 shot any pet that is not a bear.

The signet changes are great. They should have fixed signet of the wild not permitting object interaction to stomp, however.

Giving cats and moas 3-4k more HP isn’t going to do crap in dungeons.

With these changes, pets will remain garbage in WvW and dungeons. You should have removed the 45 sec cd death penalty cooldown from pets in addition to the health increase…

A 0.5 sec reduction on activation times is measly. Why does the wolf need 1.5 seconds casting a howl for regen when the guardian shout is instant, as are most boon application skills from other classes? The pets will still be rooted in place for too long.

And no weapon changes, so mainhand and offhand axe are still garbage in pve due to their damage numbers (and mainhand axe auto), while long bow is still terribleand the greatsword auto is still lower sustained DPS than shortsword auto.

Also, spirits are still garbage. The problem was not the prc chance — it was the ICD of 10 ridiculous seconds on such measly effects.

bomber.1540:

Agree dp is the best counter for sd. Saying that, it’s more like a nill all draw if the sd doesn’t stand in the bp.. A sd can always kite with sb and then switch to sd when the dp is low on ini.. It’s all about tactics and timing..Really difficult fight for sd but still doable
sd is better at beating bunkers or classes who use alot of cc, so it can’t have it all

How is it good against bunkers? You need raw sustained or good spike windows to deal with bunkers.

S/D is a CC spec. It stunlocks certain classes with little access to stability or weaker players who don’t know to dodge cnd or not get hit by the stealth opener daze.

Dagger single target is far superior in output to sword. Sword is mainly for the cleave or mobility.

Either way, a good ele or guardian bunker hardcounter thieves. So do BM bunker rangers.

Thieves are there to cheese other glass cannons/non-bunkers, and that’s pretty much it.

Thieves don’t have meaningful boon removal like well of corruption or corrupt boon or null field — nor should they have it considering their spike.

The function of the thief in tourneys is to soften people with shortbow and finish someone off with his easy spike. Thief with shortbow can abuse teleport spots so easily.

Bas.7406:

Zenith.7301:

They need to nerf the active, is what they need to do.
instant rez on 3 people is absurd, especially if you’re rezzing a bunker guardian or ele that just took full elites/cd’s to bring down.

Buff the passive to 2% life force per ability use. Reduce the active to only rez one person.

That’s ridiculous for three reasons

1) The active is 144 minutes if you take the CD reduction.

2) Until we get better mobility we need something this good.

3) You need to brush up on your skill traits. It’s has a cast time and a ridiculously easy to tell casting animation that makes it easily interruptable.

[

Axe has terrible LF generation because most people know to dodge the channel, and staff is crap generation without soul marks trait since the missiles have a hard time hitting players from being so slow.

In fact, anything that isn’t dagger 1 spam or staff mark spam with soul marks has horrible LF generation.

This sounds a lot like a gameplay issue. If you are 1v1ing a lot as a Necro than you aren’t playing your necro and tournaments right. Besides let them dodge my axe 2 please because dodging my focus 5 is way more annoying. If they dodge my axe 2 the other classes can pepper them with abandon.

To top it all off, Staff 1 is amazing for LF generation in WvWvW and tournament play. Exactly where are you playing that people can openly avoid your staff 1. In tournament play you simply use it while strafing outside the group. Axe 2 is used in the same manner, strafe, wait until he comes out of dodge and boom thank you!.

Granted I still would take dagger over axe in tournament play, but that’s personal preference.

Also spectral grasp and truth be told if you are running Axe you should be running life force on crit.

The signet active is a crutch. It’s simply not good design. Many things have a cast time, like heals or elites. This skill is not unique in being interruptible, but if DS to get stability before using it, I cannot be interrupted quick enough.

This skill is the same reason I hate portal/veil on mesmer in wvw. It becomes a gimmick of the class and pigeonholes it to a particular function only. An extremely strong function.

And I certainly can’t hit a moving thief from the roof on temple of silent storm, or said thief if our positions are switched. On my mesmer or my ranger or my thief or my engineer my projectiles are much quicker and at long distances they are not sidestepped.

And in the offchance that staff auto does connect, it hits like wet tissue for the speed it has.

If I need Life force immediately, I cannot rely on axe 2 to generate it, or the scepter, or staff auto. I will always prefer to take dagger opposed to axe not only because it hits much harder and has supremely better sustained, but the LF generation on dagger auto and staff with trait on marks is just so much better than the rest and I need that LF because despite all my positioning teams will always be gunning for me as priority target.

flow.6043:

infantrydiv.1620:

In my opinion, the Necro trait lines should be swapped something like this:

Spite: Precision and Critical Damage
Curses: Condition Damage and Duration
-
-
Soul Reaping: Power and Life Force Pool

What this would do:

-Enable a full burst Death Shroud Necro (With Spite and Soul Reaping)

-Allow for a true ‘Conditionmancer’

Let’s say your full death shrowd power burst necro goes 30/10/-/-/30 with your new trait lines. The only difference now is that you have 200 more precision. Is this really all that is bothering you? That’s just 10% crit chance, you can easily make up for that with gear. Replacing the 20% condition duration on the other hand is much harder.

You also have to keep in mind that trait lines as they are support the necros utilities and traits a lot better than your proposal. Powermancers also apply all kinds of cc conditions… so having power paired with condition duration does of course make more sense for the necro than it would for a thief.

Also, I wasn’t aware that with the current traits you can’t build a “true conditionmancer”…?

10% extra crit chance is a big deal if you’re not running 5 second fury from death shroud.

Bhawb.7408:

They can’t make it a choice without completely overpowering the passive. A multiple person res is going to turn fights around, LF generation won’t be able to match that.

They need to nerf the active, is what they need to do.
instant rez on 3 people is absurd, especially if you’re rezzing a bunker guardian or ele that just took full elites/cd’s to bring down.

Buff the passive to 2% life force per ability use. Reduce the active to only rez one person.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

I think this is splitting hairs a bit. A minor buff to the passive on Undeath would probably be ok, but better LF generation on the Scepter would be a better fix for builds that struggle with LF generation currently. I don’t think giving too much LF from a passive is a good idea. It would be better to promote more active play generating more LF.

If you aren’t getting enough LF in a build that doesn’t use scepter the majority of the time, then you are probably doing something wrong, because everything else can build up LF with reasonable speed.

Axe has terrible LF generation because most people know to dodge the channel, and staff is crap generation without soul marks trait since the missiles have a hard time hitting players from being so slow.

In fact, anything that isn’t dagger 1 spam or staff mark spam with soul marks has horrible LF generation.

Yeah taking that will end up taking from arcana or water, or you lose zephyr’s boon. It’s pretty nice, but I would run it mainly in a scepter condi bunker build.

The con to that is that if you need to cc with earthquake or blind with dust devil, you end up wasting the stability when you may not need it.

Bas.7406:

Zenith.7301:

Stand Your Ground needs to have the stability changed or only kept for the guardian, make it give aegis to allies instead.

A 30 sec cd 6 sec stability+retal for your group is outrageous for a mere 30 sec cd.

Elementalist get it every 10 seconds 3 seconds of stability if they trait for it. Over 30 seconds when traited you have access to 9 seconds of stability. Guardians are the second most immobile class in the game except they come with no good ranged weapons there by they have a greater need for stability.

Elementalists don’t give it to their group though. And I’m in full agreement that the stability duration of armor of earth from both the cantrip and the trait at 50% hp need to be nerfed, a lot.

The issue is elementalists and guardians have little need for ranged weapons when bunkering. Have a guardian stand on point, use his elite immunity for when wells are dropped on point and heal back up, go back to being a brick wall while making his teammates impossible to peel because honestly you can’t strip boons from EVERYONE reliably — the cooldowns on boon removal are much longer than the cooldowns on granting allies boons.

I just know my enjoyment of the game drops considerably when there are eles or guardians around. I’d rather fight more mesmers or thieves or rangers because at least those are not ridiculously bulky while still doing decent damage.

Stand Your Ground needs to have the stability changed or only kept for the guardian, make it give aegis to allies instead.

A 30 sec cd 6 sec stability+retal for your group is outrageous for a mere 30 sec cd.

Sebrent.3625:

Time Warp was not too good. It was balanced around having to clump your group up under it and its long cooldown. Not to mention people can simply move out of range of your group while you are standing in that timewarp … sadly many were too stupid to do so so they died to 5 people with quickness.

Or, since in spvp people have to fight over a point, time warp is a 10 second “You can’t cap this point or risk getting gibbed”.

That’s what people don’t get in this game.

Scepter eles are not particularly good in wvw or pve, and necromancer wells are not that amazing in dungeons and wvw — but in spvp, these tools become juggernauts, because people can’t just walk out of a circle without consequence. Forcing someone to walk off that circle loses them the game.

Wethospu.6437:

Zenith.7301:

This conversation seems pretty moot given sotg showed devs discussing raising thieves’ base damage numbers. If that happens it will easily be no contests.

I really don’t mind thieves being the top DPS class for the risk they take in playing — eles should follow them behind because the class with 13k hp in berserker should do more damage than the one with 15-17k base hp.

What I do hope is that this game will move to value more things in encounters than how quickly you can burst bosses down. Support/tankier builds are pretty much useless at the moment, as are condition builds.

First I thought you were talking about Thieves but then I realized you just want your main class absurdly buffed.

And that main class is? Feel free to ask guildmates how often I’ve switched classes among the 6 I have at 80. Of course, I made the mistake of leveling warrior and thief last. But at least I enjoy the thief — can’t say the same thing of the warrior class that everyone wants in their speed runs as of late.

What I would give to start a kittened PvP game with something other than 0 life force.

Or to have a kitten teleport or a staff autoattack that actually hits moving people so a shortbow thief can’t just shortbow my powermancer to death while dodging my staff auto.

Spectral Walk should be a teleport in addition to its current effect, and spectral armor should be a 3-block stun breaker in addition to its current effect.

I would love for better life force generation methods rather than being forced into dagger 1 or staff with marks trait. Life force generation baseline outside of dagger 1 is horrendous.

And for goodness’s sake, please look at our puny heals. I wish my heals were half as good as my ranger’s heals or my ele’s heals.

fierotecknics.5961:

First off: Backstab IS the current thief profession. Anyone arguing otherwise simply doesn’t know what they are talking about.

Having said that, and now having practiced some s/d, the mobility is pretty nice. Perhaps we’ll get a mobile sustained damage build out of this. I hate being forced to play a non-face-melting-dps thief but, if A-net must listen to all the whine “thief kills me to fast”… and I must then play this new… whatever it is.. then so be it. Sucks, but so be it.

If you think “thieves kill me too fast” is a whine, then perhaps your posts should be disregarded in the future.

There’s no other class who can spike my necromancer down from 22k hp into 3-4k hp left in that short a time span, not even mesmers.

At least with mesmers you can see the shatters running to you. With the thief it’s all a lottery of whether he will get off the backstab or not.

Sword thieves should be the baseline for their design — highly mobile, but they should not be doing the kitten burst they do. No, you don’t need basilisk venom for your combo.

Mister Mustard.7203:

Gryph.8237:

Once again anet, necromancers are kitten you can get knocked down with stability? in lich form, and in in DS with stability elementalists using air 5 knocked me to the ground. So the weak kitten stability we have is useless. GOOD JOB ANET you are continuing to just lose my patience with your game.

so sick of this clear love for mesmers and ele aoe and knockdowns while giving them so much kitten stability. It is so clear that they dislike necros and are in kitten love with eles, mesmers, and thieves.

play your own kitten game anet.

What a sensational pile of trash.

I like how you toss Mesmers (who get nerfed every patch) in there, who have 1 ability that gives them stability, and it’s hardly ever used. Thieves only get stability from Dagger Storm, which is used much more often but still only 1 ability.

Perhaps if you’re so in love with what the other classes can do, you should just re-roll?

Mesmers have a 30 sec cd stunbreak that takes them out of the CC train. They can also predict the CC and blurred frenzy through it or diversion it.

The same can be said of thieves; escape skills.

On the other hand, if 2 kitten thieves decide to tunnel my necro they will stay on him till he dies 2 seconds later because there’s nothing the necro can do to peel for himself. They will dodge through reaper’s mark and that’s pretty much it for peels.

D/P and shortbow is still the most kitten kitten ever. They don’t need to land a cloak and dagger because a cheap heartseeker does it for them on a blind field, and their shortbow auto and cluster hits like a truck.

This changes nothing.

The problem with eles is the stability and prot uptime from armor of earth+earth’s embrace in tandem with their healing, frost aura, and mist/lightning flash.

Eles are pretty much impossible to CC unless you have a necro around for corrupt boon. And then all they need to do is mist form the duration and put his boons back up after the spike attempt.

Guardians are even more outrageous.

Try playing as a necro with a guardian using you as a pinball bouncing all over the place.

Vanthian.9267:

Zenith.7301:

I heard necros only get 2 dodges and no vigor.

I believe you mean Warriors, which are that way —>
(Because lets be honest, no one is going to bring that useless Warhorn into sPvP).

At least you got your shield and endure pain or balanced stance. Necro just have to eat all that cc and sit for like the 2-3 seconds it takes teams to spike through death shroud to finish gibbing the necro, who can’t even use a GS spin or charge to get out of the way.

The necro pretty much has to walk away from a train, and obviously that doesn’t work very well. You NEED people to peel from you — you can’t do it yourself because you don’t have gap creators.

Leo G.4501:

On the flip-side, how do other professions feel regarding utilitiy skills?

People mentioned Elementalists and their cantrips, well what about their glyphs? Or their signets? Or arcane?

For Warrior, how do their shouts or banners go?

While I can sort of see where the OP is going, I also see the potential with the utilities traited nd untraited.

Signets needing Signet of the Beastmaster…yeah, it feels exactly the same as Written in Stone. The only reason one would bother with 2 or more signets on an Elementalist is because Written in Stone lets you keep the passive regardless of use. and mainly just for Signet of Restoration…

Traps…I use traps just fine and I don’t have traits for it. No, I don’t rely on traps, but they still serve their purpose being drops at my feet.

Shouts are probably the only thing that doesn’t need traits. They are just as they are although decreasing the cooldown takes the bite off of S&R when you use it and it fails.

Spirits are just not very good regardless. So complaining about that is like complaining you got poo on your hand when you go to wipe yourself. They’re a messy utility to use regardless of traits now but they overall serve the same mean.

Ele arcane utilities are stupidly amazing. The popular s/d burst build that dominates a lot of spvp uses these, and in dungeons many eles take arcane wave.

Recently.1043:

Fix is simple. Change it to burst CD reduction instead of burst damage increase.

Most people use burst skills for utility not damage (unless its eviscerate or kill shot, neither of which is super popular weapon types).

Since when is rifle not popular? Warriors I’ve seen run either GS/A+S, or GS/Rifle. Both of which hit for absurd numbers.

Warriors don’t get brought not because they lack damage — they don’t get brought because their absurd damage numbers require more setup to land than that of eles, mesmers, and especially thieves.

It’s very easy to shut down a warrior and wear him down. The same cannot be said of the mesmer and ele, and to a lesser extent thief (thief is just much better of than warrior since their burst is more guaranteed, it’s higher and in single strikes instead of channels, and they don’t lack mobility).

I just came from a game where it was a 4 ele team. It ran a bunker for mid and had 2 roaming s/d burst eles.

Basically, the eles chained updraft and earthquake while forcing you to dodge out of dragon tooths, so you would be out of dodges to counter the cc chain.

I don’t get the complaints about mesmers I’d rather fight them all of them if it meant not having to deal with the absurdity of elementalists and bunker guardians. Guardians will just save their elite immunity for the wells and live through, and then you can’t touch them again.

These classes spamming boons, and bunker rangers just need to be dealt with.

At least thieves die fast when under pressure. Bunkers sacrifice very little damage relative to the huge survivability boosts they gain.

google.3709:

lol you’re funny, i guess CoF P1 farm will do that to your brain, if its not pure damage is worthless.. but you really need to think about balance. if they give back the 1% they will have to take damage away from most skills forcing people into glassier builds, but then again. i wouldn’t mind the warrior being easier to kill js ..

anyways i’m out! not in the mood to deal with a little cry baby QQ haha

Pure damage is not worthless outside cof1. It’s the best attribute in all of PvE, and in WvW zergs your little pvt/valk builds will do nothing.

spvp has the luxury of a critdmg bonus crit cap, so you see really strong bunkers whereas in the other game formats because GC’s will hit MUCH harder they are more widely used.

Foods also add another dimension. 40% extra condi duration is huge, as is 40% extra endurance regen on classes with no access to vigor boons.