Guild Wars 2

Kuju.2153:

Wouldn’t conjures work better if they became a weapon that the ele could “swap” to once activated? I know I would probably use Earth Shield in Spvp then (and test out others, probably use the elite too). So, I could equip the conjure earth shield as a utility… and once activated the 5 earth shield skills would be available, but I could still “swap” back to my attunement skills to use those (and swap between attunements) then “swap” back to the shield as I wanted to as long as it had charges remaining and the timer had not run out – I don’t know if that would need a 5-10 sec cooldown or not? However, the conjure would still work the same as is for anybody else that picks it up off the ground, even other elementalists.

We wouldn’t want to offend engies you know they are the kings of pvp and all that.
This would make them a lot better I agree, maybe too good because you only care about 2 attacks on ice bow, then you can pocket it for later instead of being stuck with it.

Maybe it’s just me but the difference between dagger and scepter feels nothing like the difference between guardians scepter/sword/mace or warriors sword/axe/mace which have real identity. If anything the scepter and dagger should have an even more extreme difference because they are the only two options for 1 handers.

They are both just damage based with the exception of shocking aura. Dagger used to feel a bit different when you could heal and attack simultaneously but that’s been nerfed now too

Not sure what build they are balancing assassins reward around. Cleric s/d boon stripping? Shaman d/d deathblossom signet of malice(explains move to g.master at least)? I mean come on lol

Sword 2 got massive nerf bat and no longer stun breaks. Pistol whip got a massive buff and is now useable. S/d setup is acrobatics (at least 15 pts) with energy sigils and endurance signet, and spams dodges/evades, or spams boon stripping, or spams auto attacks, whatever is most beneficial at the time. It is a bit different that normal thief because it takes a lot of pressure off your teammates b/c it doesn’t need to hide very much, just evade evade evade

Hopefully they are not shifting the best gear set to something different but rewarding parties for running a variety of stat distributions instead of just one

The problem is definitely on the reward side. It is much better to use a smaller heal early and get it on cooldown then to heal at the last possible moment and still have a full cooldown til you can do it again.

IMO the greatest thing about healing signet is that it has no activation (ie. the warrior is always fighting not healing). Perhaps to keep this theme the active should be made instant cast and the base heal increased to a useful level.

I slotted jelly beans in my upgrade slots. Rotted my teeth AND brain playing. Still got top score!

All is vain.

I agree that ele feels like it has terrible sustain and only mediocre burst. Even when I win vs HS warrior it takes forever and usually many rotations through water to stay alive

Looking at the other professions I play the most (thief guard war) I see many more options.

Thief builds are mainly defined by weapon set and then somewhat by whether they take shadow arts or not (deadly/trickery/acro don’t change a whole lot in how a build plays). Even being locked into a few utilities they still have a variety of play.

Guard builds are overwhelmingly characterized by what grandmaster trait they use (AH, meditations, RHS) and to a lesser extent their amulet—weapons are chosen entirely based on utility.

Warrior builds are sort of a mix(traits mainly just for increasing offense or defense passively) but their weapons have definite identity as to what they accomplish

What is ele lacking here? Are their weapons too samey(do they need another?), are their traits not able to be built around like guard(cept fresh air)? Is their damage so poor that they are forced to one end of the spectrum or they other (either zerk to out DPS healing or bunker and 0 DPS)?

And how many of you are able to recognize a block skill so fast that you can cancel your first attack before it lands, not even going to mention asura(oops) or the million random sources of aegis that could apply at any given instant in a team fight.

What is the thief supposed to do in this situation if the target activates a blind or block? You say you want skillful play but offer nothing they can do in this situation besides stand around til stealth wears off and try it again

I can’t make glyph of elemental power perform in pvp for some reason… I think that all the skills you would like to use for it (fast hitting) are not the skills you want to use in general… Plus it has a per target icd to ensure poor uptime on top of it

Cynz.9437:

I personally think every single trap needs to be removed and turned into aoe team utility skill that thieves lack.

I agree, I actually used traps as an example of skills that simply could not be balanced without being totally reimagined because they have such strong effects only kept in check by being completely unreliable.

Or maybe we remove them and give thieves their own thief petting zoo!?!?

Or thiefs would never be able to land a backstab ever is the more likely outcome. Many classes easily counter with a patient activation of block skills, aoe blinds, invulns, etc or at the very least force a face stab instead while dishing out their own DPS.

Hitting a backstab does not win them the fight, it is more like missing one loses them the fight the majority of the time.

I’m mixed here. The last thing we need is high retal uptime again, but the traits ARE useless. Protection is too strong… aegis is probably also too strong, I’m not sure what to replace them with.

Like you said, retal is flawed.. it was supposed to be a DPS source for non DPS specs but has been nerfed because of aoe attacks and low hp builds.

Maybe it’s time to give guardian some more chill instead?

Ancient Ranger.3276:

I would like to start with Lingering Elements. First off to get the full effect you need to go 5/5/5/5/15 which is a total of 35 trait points. As being a master minor trait I do not believe I should have to waste half of my trait points to get the full effect. Also on another note lets say you just pick up Lingering Elements (0/0/0/0/15) as it not being a full build (yes I know this) but this trait has no effect what so ever by it self. It has to be paired with other traits to be effective.

I agree that the 5pt minor traits should be both reworked and given for free to attunements. My suggestions before were something like follows

Fire: reduce condition duration by 25-33%
Air: +33% move speed (giving all eles some mobility)
Earth: Toughness and bleed procs when struck
Water: regenerate health (slight increase possibly)

The idea is for it to actually matter what attunement an elementalist is currently in and give them some innate defenses to counter their weak hp/armor.

How does the mesmer already have the portal at the repair kit? It only lasts 60 seconds and they have to drop it and then run to treb? The chance that the treb will get destroyed in time for them to use that portal is absurdly low.

Usually mesmers will drop portal at the treb when it is being destroyed and run to the repair kit so they can portal back when it dies. This is easily countered.

It seems like you are trying to turn this into an argument that, when left alone, mesmers can repair faster than any other class (well thief now has trap so that’s not true either). But this is just a benefit of running portal mesmer on your team, and it has much greater abuses than just repairing a treb in half the time.

Kharr.5746:

Until Heartseeker gets tweaked (maybe +1 initiative cost?) there will be a ton of bad thieves running around in full glass spec pressing 2222222222 thinking they are ninjas or something.

It’s been said 1000 times but ill say it again. If any spec exists that cannot counter 222222 then either the player is awful or the spec needs buffed by anet.

Tachii.3506:

It is dodgeable. Idk if it actually goes through aegis, I don’t think it does.

Lol my point was that he is comparing it to other skills and not looking at it in a thief contentext.

I use mug and bountiful theft. Bountiful theft ALWAYS strips stability/aegis first, so they do not matter. Mug will proc venom and it is instant cast, so I simply only use it when they are not dodging, ie. instant cast skills cannot be dodged either.

Bas venom is plenty good enough already

Interceptor.2653:

^ Who has one of those? Aegis, evade etc can eat a Basilisk application.

That’s what my thief has idk what you a playing

Aoe options are worse than single target(edit: on a skill by skill basis) for most examples. Problem is classes can spam nothing BUT aoe for an entire fight instead of just getting good value from a couple well placed aoe skills.

It’s the difference between elementalists and engineer; eles have great aoe balance, they do high damage but are hard to land or have long cooldowns while engi can 12345 all day and have no worries.

Don’t completely kill it when they portal and run away then?

Undodgeable unstability-able un-aegisable stun on a class that can burst in under 1 second seems fine to me idk what to tell you trav.

I think thieves guild is only strong with venoms, otherwise the cooldown is not justified

Renny.6571:

Severe lack of power Necro in “S Tier” makes me think some people haven’t played tpvp since release.

Power necro was only strong AT release when quickness was full strength. They are just too counterable(by either focusing them or ignoring them completely) to be S tier.

Anyway for the thread, if there was one class I wouldn’t mind seeing 3-4 of on my team it is definitely engi, so play that if you came to this thread looking for what to play. They can seemingly ignore the meta and just always be strong.

chungiee.8764:

ens.9854:

Buffing underpowered utilities to be equal to the ones being played is not power creep by definition—characters are not potentially any more powerful than they were before, they just have more options

Well this is the type of “power creep” i am suggesting. Keep the “upper limit” the same but bring other options up to it without nerfing that “upper limit”.

I think they are just extremely careful about it. Case in point is thief venoms; they know they are borderline viable and have been giving them the tiniest nudges in power for the last few patches. They are trying to the creep that would come from accidentally making them too strong.

Other utilities are so poor that they become very hard to buff “slightly”. Nearly anything you do to, say, thief traps would potentially break them—they are not meant for damage and their CC effects are already some of the longest in the game (well venoms now have the longest immob), plus they have the benefit of being able to pre place them so the cd’s can recharge. If they suddenly became useable they would certainly be too strong.

Tl;dr anet is doing what you suggest but slowly

Stop telling ppl how to make more OP engies they are wrecking hotjoin

It’s funny cause OP thinks ther haven’t been any threads saying nerf warrior

Buffing underpowered utilities to be equal to the ones being played is not power creep by definition—characters are not potentially any more powerful than they were before, they just have more options

This just in

Teleports are strong in yet another game

Thank you

All conquest modes feel the same to me

That tiny reduction is huge, lets the evade start sooner(increased evade uptime also), increases overall DPS and actually lets you get hits in on a non CC’d player even with a “shorter” stun. It turned a situational skill with worse DPS than aa into one that I have no hesitation to spam even when being attacked.

It is pretty obviously massively better than it was, and even top players talk about/are running it now.

Dahkeus.8243:

The meta is so funny…almost nothing changes to make S/P better, but suddenly, everyone thinks it’s awesome now.

But pwhip just got massively buffed and is spammable now?

I’ve gotten some hilarious 1shot pwhip kills with 25/30/0/0/15 and passive assassin signet, so that’s a thing other builds can’t really do.

It’s too bad haste sucks now

I’m…. not sure I see anything special here?

Ofc he survived well, he was never in range for you to spam bombs on and you didn’t have cc. He had the trait that removes condi while stealthed too. Ranged + condi removal is pretty good vs engi -_-

Edit2: kitten of course its p/d not p/p, his bleeds were pretty weak though, and he wasn’t spamming 3, so not sure must be using defensive stats

I’m more annoyed by the downed warriors that occasionally ignore my blind field sometimes!

Jakkson.4076:

30 in CS is a waste IMO in TPVP…you get more out of putting pts in the acrobatics line…compensate with gear and runes and you wont miss the crit chance and dmg loss much…and you will be much better at tsaying alive and slippery…you want to max out your boon efficiency you get from the trickery line and initiative management is key…

Better overall for you and your team…

Don’t listen to this guy, Dee Jay hit on the the two main builds, those should be your starting point. I disagree that s/d is easier though, it is very easy and effective to burst people from out of sight/range using d/p before they can do anything. In general the burstier builds are easier because fights should end quicker and you don’t have to worry about accruing value slowly for a long time.

Both builds have quirks/techniques that are probably better to be shown than explained… Just drop in a 1v1 server I’m sure some1 will help you.

Edit: sword pistol is fine, even excellent in some situations, but it just feels awful when somebody has a build that countered it (stability, blind, block, daze or stun when hit, protection when disabled…. Etc etc)

Dahkeus.8243:

The sPvP community is funny…

Before Dec 10th, thieves were put on the bottom tier by most everyone, but in this thread, there’s a lot of people saying that thieves are one of the most powerful when the most powerful thief build (S/D evasion spam) got nerfed and very little changed for other specs.

People seem to put focus on class so much, but I think a lot of people fail to realize just how arbitrary that factor really is, especially compared to just about any other MMO out there.

Thieves have always been OP, so OP that they forced absolutely everybody to build into survival. That’s what created the pre Dec 10 meta and led thieves to be unfavored in tpvp; even just the threat of running into a thief at this time kept other fragile builds in check.

Now post dec 10 we have a lot of new players that are not adhering to the old meta—they are running glassy burst builds that are getting mopped up left and right by thieves. Are they just ‘bad’ for trying to play burst builds? Or is thief(teleporting, really) so strong that builds which should be reasonable have become unplayable?

Thieves negate nearly all positional advantage besides stacking (wvw style); there is very little counterplay that will keep them off of your face when they have so many teleports to spam.

Lightsbane clearly an epic necro why u complaining about thiefs?

Well when new players make up 90%+ of the current player pool what do you want, 15 minute queue times instead?

CachoDm.4639:

What would they have to implement for you to come tpvp?

The best thing they could do is to start giving pvp players some attention; treat them like real competitors by giving them the limelight (figuratively and with streamed tourneys) so they stop feeling like an underclass and get a real, visible, place in the community.

It’s great to spew rewards to get new players into the mists, and we are still getting record numbers from the recent changes, but it does nothing to address the hemorrhaging of good players and the severe lack of dedication to raising the level of play.

in pve there is only 1 attunement anyway

lightning hammer

I can say with confidence that +7.5% dmg per dagger equipped is way over the top (ESP since passive signet buff). The fact that it would also buff power p/d which would also become too strong (#3 already hits like a truck) doesn’t help. Also think of pve man :p

Agreed on trap damage, have to remember they are spammable if they come off cooldown before being triggered, and need balanced for that.

Not sure if sleight nerf is warranted or not considering I often swap it out for long reach anyway(stupid engis).

Overall increasing initiative costs seems good with new über regen

+1’d for fido health boost

style.6173:

ens.9854:

Here is a list that ranks professions/specs according to how much influence they have in creating the meta.

S tier—huge impact on both builds and strategies
Burst thief (locks out all other glass builds)
Condi necro (only major player that forces cleansing to be in every build and can aoe pressure)

A tier
Bunker guardian (requires some countering/consideration but not from every player on a team)
Bomb/nade engineer (combo of CC and condi spam, but can generally be focused out so has less impact)

B tier
Hambow warriors (like a mini engi but cannot be focused)
Spirit ranger/tank warrior (when has anyone said “but how do we handle their spirit rangers!?” You don’t change much when facing them but they have become a benchmark for viability)

C tier—minimal influence on meta
Zerk warrior/necro/guard (aoe burst making a comeback as players are running a little less defense. Lich form keeping people honest since beta)
Elementalist (same as above, plus have team healing, cannot overcome thief barrier however)
Mesmer

D tier—non meta builds have little to no influence

Seriously? You really must be kidding with this list.

Like I said, they are in order of influence.
Literally no class can run glass besides thief because of thief being so efficient at killing them. Nothing else has such influence over what people can play. Necro is the second biggest consideration, if it weren’t for necro, teams/players would not have to prioritize condition removal above basically everything else (except classes that never see melee ie. mesmer).

And so on. Spirit rangers could easily be swapped out by other bunkerish builds 90% of the time and it would hardly change anything. Hambow warriors do not require your team to build around defeating them. Just because they are strong does not mean they are forcing every other profession out of potential builds the way that thief/necro do.

Here is a list that ranks professions/specs according to how much influence they have in creating the meta.

S tier—huge impact on both builds and strategies
Burst thief (locks out all other glass builds)
Condi necro (only major player that forces cleansing to be in every build and can aoe pressure)

A tier
Bunker guardian (requires some countering/consideration but not from every player on a team)
Bomb/nade engineer (combo of CC and condi spam, but can generally be focused out so has less impact)

B tier
Hambow warriors (like a mini engi but cannot be focused)
Spirit ranger/tank warrior (when has anyone said “but how do we handle their spirit rangers!?” You don’t change much when facing them but they have become a benchmark for viability)

C tier—minimal influence on meta
Zerk warrior/necro/guard (aoe burst making a comeback as players are running a little less defense. Lich form keeping people honest since beta)
Elementalist (same as above, plus have team healing, cannot overcome thief barrier however)
Mesmer

D tier—non meta builds have little to no influence

4 signets is definitely cheese mode not man mode lol. Even a man thief keeps a shadowstep handy to really kitten with his opponents

IMO 25/30/0/0/15 sword/dagger with assassin signet for max power is the most manly to play. No blindness safety net just an evade every other #3 and dodges. Hits like a truck because you can get an instant auto attack after every #3 press. Just ride em til they die and skill dodge anything important.

Cause high level thiefs are playing tourney builds not dueling builds (even to practice their 1on1)

/thread

Edit: maybe it’s unclear but roamers don’t need sustain, if they fight for a long time it’s just with shortbow

Just letting you know that power d/d is a pretty painful build for leveling, either use 3 a lot or go d/p and black powder => heartseeker for backstabs.

It is better DPS at 80 when geared

LightningBlaze.4913:

ens.9854:

Damage was not that high

If you are running a build that dies to this, then it also dies to burst thief and is therefore not a viable build (unless you know other team has no reach).

Pretty basics tbh

All ele builds will die to a good burst thief player then that means there is no viable build? The only difference some builds will give you that extra second or two to react and recover while a skillful thief can easily repeat his burst on 1v1 with the broken constant stealth mechanic if you don’t burst him down first. Seriously, there are a lot of builds that are “viable” for each profession in wvw roaming as long as the player is good. Finally a good mesmer will never die within 1 sec time window on 1v1 unless he just finished a hard battle and has all his utilities on cd or got completely ambushed from his blind spot by a bursty player.

not saying in 1v1
dies to thief in teamfight with teammates around = not viable
and yes if you think there are no builds that can survive focus in the current meta then there are no viable builds in the current meta

smoke screen and blinding powder are virtually equivalent abilities, since you just hearseeker to gain stealth anyhow. Blinding powder has the benefit of being instant, a blast finisher, and stealthing teammates to stop stomps; so I think it is all around a better ability.

I’d run it; we got our init regen buffed not long ago, so feel free to play with the shadow arts trait (don’t get me wrong, +2 init is still very useful). In particular, deception cooldown with blinding powder/shadowstep can substitute well for both extra stealth and infiltrator signet, while offering much greater versatility. This is VERY minor, just don’t feel locked in and test a few traits out.

I have not tested critical haste, but I think it varies from insane when it procs on your first hit to useless when it procs on your 5th, it has a 30sec cooldown also, I usually run side strikes or signet use there, but keep it til you have a chance to evaluate it.

As a tip, you can fire off steal at any time with no target to give your team swiftness, this is pretty useful with such a low cooldown.

I would be hesitant to drop signet of shadows, but if your mates have swiftness then you should drop it 100%. The reason is that heartseeker(untargetted) is your main escape, and its distance is based off your out of combat movement speed. It is a giant beating to be missing move speed when you need to retreat.