Guild Wars 2

Im sorry I still don’t get the spirit ranger hype. Explain to me Qt if you would be so kind. I see it as fairly common at the moment, but unless it’s a double spirit comp, the spirits go down quickly and come back slowly. Tbh main issue I’ve seen is going for the ranger and getting wailed by others but the ranger himself is relatively easy to dispatch.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

DiogoSilva.7089:

ensoriki.5789:

Mesmers, Eles and thieves with no traits?
Sounds like Engineers win.

Maybe, maybe, but it would be interesting to see mesmers with weaker phantasm spam, no clone on dodge spam nor shattering without clones; or elementalists without a buttload of effects each time they press a key to use a cantrip. It wouldn’t be balanced, but it could be worth experimenting.

I imagine that the game is balanced to first order around no traits. It has to be, else all balance would be relative to certain builds. It is most likely beta damage was toned on several builds and such. Because without traits it was still very strong.

I think originally that was the case but no longer. The core 5 skills seem to be at the mercy of traits and utils foremost. Not to nag, but the first clue of this is I can think of Pistol whip + Haste back at launch, when the decision went to the core skill first instead of the util. As well as the Cloak and dagger nerf before Mug for the D/D spike. So it seems to me that they try to preserve traits first because they are general and apply to multiple weapon sets. So to keep ‘diversity’ they’ll nerf the weapon first to try and not cause too many build losses with trait nerfs. Obviously this isn’t a thief exclusive thing.

That and I think they’ve intentially left it so traits are somewhat required in order to “complete” a prof. Eg. Mesmers handling of illusions which don’t come into their own until traited.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Celtus.8456:

The game might be more balanced with no amulets, armor runes, wep sigils etc. But it might feel even more hollow.

I would personally like to see a “no traits” option for custom arena. Not saying the game would be more balanced this way, but it would be interesting to test out how much the gameplay would change without so many passive effects, condition/ boon overload, nor traits that make classes easier-than-intended to play. Would it be funnier?

Mesmers, Eles and thieves with no traits?
Sounds like Engineers win.

It is random in order to upset me. That is the sole reason. Consecutive glances in a row let the RNG dictate that your efforts can dice roll for an actual 50% reduction. Can’t be SRS.

Geff.1930:

ensoriki.5789:

you mean about 80 people give or take 20? Lettuce be serious here.

I don’t expect a PvE’er to understand.

Which would be a valid expectation if it was applicable.

ensoriki.5789:

The rate of glory acquisition whether high or low doesn’t mean much when there is very little to do with your glory. What am I going to do with glory other than throw it on some dyes? You reach a rank, buy a bunch of chests, have glory left over, and sit on it till 10 ranks later.

I thought you meant glory as in the exp. I haven’t even considered the glory currency. There is so much of it I’m practically swimming in it. I guess they could make new skin crafting mats purchasable with glory as I suggested in the original post.

But, we are still left with the dilemma that PvP’ers acquire the (to us) valueless currency of laurels.[/quote]

But its not for us. Which is my point.
That isn’t to say there is zero value you can extract from laurels in pvp if you care about obtaining gold currency. Since you can trade laurels for items and then sell those items on tp for gold, throw in mystic, or merch.

Your opening post was about Laurels, but I’m just pointing out that there isn’t a need to put Laurels in a pvp reward scope when the actual currency for pvp goes so unused. Definitely putting glory to better use makes sense.

Geff.1930:

ensoriki.5789:

As laurel access gives PvE players some benefit for jumping in PvP. It also means PvP players don’t have to worry about grinding in PvE when they jump across. Which is fine in the same way PvP players would like to accumulate some PvE exp but currently cannot. At least pve gearing isn’t as bad for pvp as it used to be.

They need to fix Glory sucking as that is supposed to be for PvP rewards and is underwhelming at it.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that a *vast majority of people who play sPvP competitively *don’t give two cents about PvP and rarely venture out of Heart of the Mists, which is as it should be. As a result PvE exp or gear doesn’t help them.

you mean about 80 people give or take 20? Lettuce be serious here.

pve gear in pvp? What are you talking about? You can’t use pve gear in spvp.

I mean specifically that Laurels are created for PvE benefit. Their only in here in PvP to encourage them to come in here. It’s really not about pvp rewards, but incentive to pvp if you play pve. If you already PvP Laurels mean nothing to for you, but they were brought in so we have people to play with. There is no need for time-gated progression in the same vein of pve when PvP rank is such a huge grind that accomplishes that goal in the first place. So any pvp rewards they want to give can be freely tossed into the glory system or tournament wins.

I think the rate of glory acquisition is fine. It is supposed to be slow so that it increases the novelty of skins that can only be acquired at high rank.

The rate of glory acquisition whether high or low doesn’t mean much when there is very little to do with your glory. What am I going to do with glory other than throw it on some dyes? You reach a rank, buy a bunch of chests, have glory left over, and sit on it till 10 ranks later.

As laurel access gives PvE players some benefit for jumping in PvP. It also means PvP players don’t have to worry about grinding in PvE when they jump across. Which is fine in the same way PvP players would like to accumulate some PvE exp but currently cannot. At least pve gearing isn’t as bad for pvp as it used to be.

They need to fix Glory sucking as that is supposed to be for PvP rewards and is underwhelming at it.

Dear Anet when no one is looking at the office revert Fs to its original state add the new tracking and put tactical strike to 2 seconds again. Increase the velocity of dancing dagger 10% so we can get some use out of it. If S/D is in a bad state after this change 2 weeks later change boon removal on the original 1st hit to boon steal or add boon steal to the second hit.

Given that
1) reveal is 4s here so the original “daze lock” is not possible
2) prime complaints with fs were tracking and 2nd hit reward
3) its commonly accepted that telegraphs are a better direction for the game and the original fs was well telegraphed. Still S/D was powerful.
4) you literally have a discrepancy between what S/d can do in PVR/wvw with their 2s daze vs PvP. I thought skill splits were not to be alienating.
5) Many loved the original S/D before it was nerfed with no closure as to why.
6) you have already nerfed shadow return, haste and mug which for main hand sword means that previous S/D won’t return in the same capacity. However this is a better position for slow and steady development.
7) The gameplay made sense. FS turns down defenses to allow tactical strikes which with our snares and weakness leave enemies vulnerable for the team.
8) Dancing daggers velocity is shameful.

Try that out when no one is looking and see if the feel isn’t good.
Inb4 current S/D support.

They broke it so the necro doesn’t kill as fast.

If you don’t kill that spirit they will use it to revive themself. In addition to it passive heal that will also increase the other spirits longevity.

Hit pistol whip on ranger. He stops moving spirits get cleaved as pet goes behind you. Literally they die after two of them or 1 and some auto. Brb no damage since evade frames. Get lazy spam auto. We are on foe fire abuse los on waterfall and quarry. I still think spirits need better range so you can place them away from the fight and not take the unbound trait which forces them to die in cleave. Maybe the ranger takes flame trap as well or that was bonfire barely pay attention because it doesn’t even matter.

Its literally AI that never leaves their side it is cleave heaven. If necros weren’t such a priority target this would be even more obvious for everyone. Unlike minions and illusions spirits don’t seperate from their master, every time you nuke the ranger the spirits get nuked.
You don’t have to aim for the spirits just take them out simultaneously not like they’ll dodge.

Acrobatics has plenty of damage potential cannot agree with you there. Its utility stuff like fleet of foot sins reward and sins retreat that fall short.

Archer Henchman.2534:

Wait, eles’ burst can be mitigated with certainty?
Melee shatters off mirror images can be mitigated?
Melee range whirlwind hitting 4 times can be mitigated with certainty?

Okay.

Don’t waste your time.

I miss my phoenix and white tiger.

Somewhere down the road when we’re in a better position to mix things up ideas like this should come in. It’s cool in other games.
Even better if in a year we saw the Dervish come back.

Imo spirit ranger wouldn’t be much of anything is melee wasn’t discouraged so much by all the opposition it faces outside of that ranger. You can cleave spirits easily to turn a Spirit ranger into a handi-capped ranger but then you go mid or a necro pops up or anything alone those lines and now you’re melee choice has to wade into aoe territory that it likely wont come back from. That or be poorly matched up against all the other crap in this game.

And now we’re trying to smash S/P more in the face for the sake of S/D? Like wot.

This set came into glory same way as Necro’s. An update gone too far, that fed the set hard. Literally because of a slot 3 adjustment we’ve now raised the cost of the skill, removed the stun break, changed the range, presumably we’ll soon end up hitting the vigor a thief has, maybe even their dodge return trait, quick pockets, Lyssa runes, etc.
If you don’t think it’s the amount of dodge then the obvious other place to look is what made it come to prominence in the first place.

Preach brother.

The necro state is mind-boggling.
At the cost of getting shot if someone from Anet sees this please remove the RNG from weakness. 6 glances in a row is enough for me to get vexed. If you’re going to remove my damage, a flat reduction please.

Can’t even tell if something really may be viable because Necro’s are such a heavy deterrence.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

He does’t run to replenish..he defeats them both. watch until end of video. If you feel this is not a good example head to youtube and search gw2 high evasion builds. You can choose any number of builds designed around this very mechanic. They are easy vids to find, most of them have the word “Troll” in them.

Im pretty sure of the vid you’re talking about. He literally leaves the point maybe 3 4 times if not more and then comes back and spams more distracting shots. Had he simply stayed on the point they would’ve killed him. Which is beside the point, sigil of energy is allowing a lot of extra staying power relative to every other defensive sigil.

How long are we going to exaggerate the warriors position?

DXIEdge.2789:

This is my Ele, I’m working on pimping my ranger as well

It’s Seer Mask, Orrian Shoulders, Orrian Chest, Dry Bones Gloves, Conjurer’s Pants and Drybones Shoes with Dragon Wings. I have the staff cuz it looks cool but I run with Super Scepter and looking for a good dagger to match it

Did you take that picture through a potato? Why is it so grainy?

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I’m not drunk on anything…but the video shows evasion builds can get high on the taste of their own…i’ll let you insert the last word.

I particularly like the taunt at the start, “Both of you try and get me. 2 vs 1 in under a minute.” Knowing full well it is not going to be possible. So tell me again with a serious face are watching that vid that evade is currently fine..seriously.

Evade is fine. Replenishing dodges becomes an issue multiple people have spoken out on. Im guessing this is the video of the SB thief spamming distracting shot and they can’t finish the last 10% of his hp when he runs off point to maintain himself.
Turning evades into glancing hits? Yeah laughed out loud.

We still can’t figure out wtf to do with Celestial Amulet.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Change evaded to 33% chance of taking glancing blow.
Drastically reduce vigor.
Reassign 50% more vigor on critical hit taken on 10 second cool down.
Up the cool down of sigils that give 50% vigor on swap.
Remove “Does more damage on low vigor.” Skills.

Watch Thief troll spec video that is in the forums currently. One thief dueling 2 warriors with shortbow and owning both due to massive and persisent evade mechanics. The first comment on the video is a engineer laughing at him for only taking on 2 warriors. The engi also left a video of them self solo downing 3 players on a node via spamming large AoE/grenades and constant evade spamming for invinci frames.

You’ve gone drunk on power.

cymerdown.4103:

I’m not trying to nerf thief into the ground or anything. All I’m saying is that it makes zero sense. “I just blocked your close range, single target melee attack! No clue where you are, though.” That has never made any sense and never will, to the point where I was kinda mad the first time I found out that’s how the game worked. I personally would like to see a return to 3s reveal, but have block and evade apply reveal. It would make infinitely more sense that way.

3s reveal literally means nothing to the actual performance drop that is going to happen. People dodge nilly willy, even before sensible block, blinds and evasions are put into the equation.

Zelulose.8695:

ensoriki.5789:

RaynStargaze.6510:

10K BS vs 2.6K armor

just sayin – pretty hard to counter an invisble player who opens for 65% of my hp pool

Ele Burst is strong as well

stop qq about condis – downed burst with power is way better anyway

Ele burst is shocking.
Power still works but condi’s wreck face better.

Thanks to the ice bow frozen glitch you can hit a 20k spike before they can move

or 16k+ as soon as you lightning flash to them
As if they need the bow.

Swim.6830:

Actually it’s been stated before that it’s working as intended. Stunbreakers are STUNbreakers. Want to avoid all CC – get stability…

Word let me get that 10s stability on 90s Cooldown Elite. Not I’m not taking the elite for its effects I’ll take it so I can stow weapon so basically an Elite 10s stability. No thanks jefferson.
You can’t be cereal.

RaynStargaze.6510:

10K BS vs 2.6K armor

just sayin – pretty hard to counter an invisble player who opens for 65% of my hp pool

Ele Burst is strong as well

stop qq about condis – downed burst with power is way better anyway

Ele burst is shocking.
Power still works but condi’s wreck face better.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

EvilSardine.9635:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

This would actually break the class. No more burst combos from stealth, I am honestly trying to figure out how many people actually play thief. You could say that is “counter-play” to stealth look at it realistically, and avoid try to avoid the damage.

Just as much as you guys are saying thief is spamming, you want this one thing to keep you safe, against damage that is 100% avoidable.

You’re not making sense.

This won’t break the class. It will only break those who spam backstab and don’t watch for the warrior blocking, or the guardian being SMART and using aegis on his dying teammate to save him from a backstab. The other players in this scenario are “learning to play” but the game favors the broken thief and let’s him spam an attack to clear aegis which won’t even reveal him. It’s quite stupid.

How is a backstab 100% avoidable if you can’t see it coming or block it? Really? 100% avoidable?

P.S. I main a thief. I think it’s absurd that I can spam my backstab like this.

EDIT: I am still all for making backstab unblockable, this might be good for everyone. The thief would then have to get the right angle of attack and a backstab, because it will always hit through aegis.

Unblockable sounds nice.

but serious, stealth ending on a failed hit isn’t a matter of balance. The thief isn’t in any position within the game where its a matter of balance, it’s just design, one thats going to upset the prof even more. Given the relatively slow pace of updates it would really suck to do atm.

If I recall gw1 was purposefully unbalanced.

residual venoms would give 1 ini on venom use
and body shot would be 5s.

Jesiah.2457:

Elegant Avenger.8042:

I 100% agree that thieves should be revealed when you block something, however there are other things that would need to be balanced in order for this to work.

Currently, with the way aegis/blind/blocks work, this change would make thieves unplayable without additional balancing. Because most aegis and blind last way too long, and lack skill to use well.

ArenaNet needs to make these defensive abilities way more reactionary. You shouldn’t be able to just spam blinds/blocks in order to avoid damage. You should have to react to what other players are doing. Putting up a 30 second Aegis when you see a thief stealth would make it way too easy to counter them. Therefore, I believe the durations and recharges of these abilities need to be changed to allow for more skillful play.

The core issue, however, is that thieves need to start being changed from ultra stealth/evade/gimmick burst into a more well rounded class. I think ArenaNet should turn thieves into a high APM, highly mobile, highly reactionary class to play.

Make it so that thieves cant simply spam one skill in order to be successful. Maybe they could introduce skill chains within weapon skills that provide high risk/reward scenarios (similar to gw1 assassins). And get rid of ridiculous stealth durations! Stealth just isn’t a good mechanic for serious PvP. Make it so that stealth is easy to get, but is a very short duration (1-2 seconds) and unstackable (with tweaking of the revealed buff). That too would make stealth play more reactionary for skillful thieves.

Anyways, I think it is apparent that thieves need to be reworked to turn them into a better designed class. Just my 2 cents.

Unstackable … at 2 seconds max duration … would completely ruin Shadow Refuge utility, as it lasts three. I think when you mention unstackable you’re most likely referring to the infinite stealth duration thieves can get using D/P along with the trait infusion of shadow. #5 against a wall, then 2 until field is gone. Possible to stealth permanently, and I understand where the frustration comes from, as this is pretty stupid IMO.

Very very simple fix to this stealth stacking problem. Give infusion of shadow trait a 5 second CD, problem solved (at least in tpvp). Furthermore this will stop thieves from playing ridiculously stupid in conquest mode, perma stealth does nothing but hurt your team while they simply try to insta gib someone then run away and spend 1-2 minutes preparing to try again! -.-

I tend to use Shadow Refuge to revive allies. I see the possibility that I’m going to get knocked back? Basilisk venom is often ready at a 45 sec CD with runeset of lyssa, pop that for 5-6 seconds of stability while I refuge and revive an ally, or at least try. If your suggested changes would come in, it would successfully pigeonhole thieves even further back into nothing but glass cannons but with a different weapon set because there would be no room to even try to play any kind of remotely supporting role.

Just have stealth not stack in duration.

Mithfir.1038:

Kodiak.3281:

Mithfir.1038:

@Kodiak.3281

Well currently one can summon the fire axe drop a fire field and go into a blast finisher chain if they wanted to. I have actually used it like this before as well. I have also slotted fire axe and used it to get a killing blow. How ever increasing the cooldowns of more powerful skills so they can only be used 2-3 times for the duration that conjure is up in my mind keeps it balanced.

Having the ability to add charges to the weapon you currently have will still cause the same issue of using it for 1 skill and then dropping it. While I realise that it will be a very close idea to that of engineers kits the draw back would be the charges and the long cooldown on skills. Engineers kits have no charges and ideally would have significantly shorter cooldowns even when our conjures are traited.

That picture is EPIC had me in stitches.

Simply increasing the recast timers (and you also mentioned duration) is really just a lateral shift of the current scenario. All conjured weapons have a 60s recast currently. Most of their stronger abilities are on a 20-30s cool down. The more you increase the cool downs the closer you get to using the ability once every 60s which is no different than the current model. The farther away you get from that and the closer you get to it not being balanced because not only will you still have access to those abilities quicker than once every 60s but for the remainder of the time while the conjure abilities you wanted to use are on cool down you now have full access to your normal abilities.

By giving people access to the Conjured Weapon abilities and allowing them to return to their normal abilities you’re undermining that balance aspect to conjured weapons. Your method of balancing it doesn’t really change anything in the current scenario let alone balance it.

I agree with your analysis but lets keep in mind not only the original way conjures were made but also the way Elementalists function at their core. A 1 use non instant weapon will almost never be picked over a instant utility except in a very specific set of circumstances. So really there is no change in the current form that you or I could agree on. In your ideal situation how exactly would you like to see them? I’m genuinely intrigued.

I feel like I should also point out that Anet obviously intended for all the charges to get used, but in their current form that won’t happen in most builds bar a few.

It being instant or not doesn’t really make itself a problem.
The skill recharges are so high that straight up charges basically end up solely on the auto attack. Which is fine if the auto attack is beastly (Lightning Hammer & FGS), but otherwise yeah no. Even then FGS skills outside of the auto are all on relatively short CD’s which just shows why thats a good conjure.

uberkingkong.8041:

hharry.1967:

PS: Just compare all the new pve content with the spvp one =(

PS compare PvP to WvW.

PvP 4 new maps since launch, including game modes capture the orb, using skyhammer.
WvW 0 new maps since launch, 0 new modes.

…why would WvW get a new mode…wait..wtf. WvW is a pvp mode thats gear gated. Brb Mode of a mode.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Everyone who does not think this is a legitimate change has simply not played against good thieves.

It is. You know how common it is for thieves of all skill levels to eat the dodge or an egis? It’s a significance change to performance overall and you’re well aware of that. However given how the quickness nerf was handled and the time it took to remedy that. You think the profession can afford a design fix atm?

Rance Webster.2635:

Also, I may not be playing a thief in PvP because I don’t like to rely on stealth too much, I had my fair share of battles against them in Tpvp, and I know how hard it is to try and dodge something you can’t see coming, but to only go and dodge when you feel like he is about to strike.

Then Play P/P, S/P, Or Shortbow cheeky thing you.

Marduh.4603:

Trickery Master
Confusion attack
5 sec confusion(5stac) on crit/ 10 sec cd.

Something in this mind set.

It is not reasonable to do such a change with the current state of the thief. Plain and simple. Given how changes are done, it probably never will be.

No thanks jefferson. Get more off the 8 Flame procs I can do under forty-five seconds (censor). Not that I don’t like Rage but what happened to modifying it after the quickness nerf like they did the util skills guess it got pushed back with this sigil update?

Also I tried Fleshreaver, couldn’t even tell if it did damage, died so fast. You had to get 25 stacks and then an additional kill so basically 30 stacks worth for this thing to die in about 3 seconds. Don’t know if it hits hard or not, very hard to tell that thing needs a crazy life buff and to actually pop up at 25 stacks not 25 + 1 more kill.

You trying to kick us while we’re down?
Thats a low blow.

….but…I …kind of actually agree. The thing is however the Thief is not in a place where we can tbh really take these sort of hits. That’s just real tea. If things were improved and reworked simultaneously no problem but no offense to Anet their style of updating so far doesn’t really show that as a possible option. With the thief in this state, I have to ask if there’s actually a practical balance reason for this change or is it just in the name of design. As far as I can tell there is no beneficial balance reason for this given the thiefs current state, so it’s just a “feel good” idea.

It makes sense for the game to play like this, just like it makes sense for channeled attacks to gtfo when you enter stealth. But well if you look at stealth in spvp this makes sense, but isn’t anything necessary for balance. Maybe long term, but given that nerfing quickness was a good idea long term in September and bringing back quickness skills took about two months. S/D buff took something like 4/5 months after it fell into disuse. Eh colour me disinterested in the idea.

I think that was two months ago with Caed? Or something like that?
Looks like they’ll have to a pve/pvp split on sigils.
Stuff like Sigil of restoration needs to heal significantly more given the frequency of a kill and why you would take it in the first place.

I literally don’t even know wtf Fleshreaver really does never felt it to be worth taking. Guess that is my test for tonight.

It seems to proc even when you aren’t under a condition I assume Sigil of Nullification has the same issue. Combined with that high ICD it be nice for these two sigils to be better options.

While I am on the topic, Sigil of Water is really bad, and Rage has been practically deleted from the game. Hard to justify using quite a few of these sigils when you can take Energy,Flame or an on-kill stackable. By the way Think I’ve seen Fleshreaver once in pvp since launch and I may just be confusing that with a minion.

Littlefeather.8623:

So your saying you would kill yourself by auto attacking a guardian with retaliation on, and the guardian just standing there…

Seems legit.

Your missing the entire point though I don’t think he factors in burning.
Sharp said Retal was foe aoes.
Lettuce be real tea right now. Who thinks Necro Marks or stuff like Phoenix/Dragon, Tooth, engi bombs, get deterred anywhere near say Engi grenades, barrage, flame jet, firestorm, melee cleave in HB, PW, BF, Whirling axe/wrath, etc.
It doesn’t. Retaliation deters more than anything multi-hit aoe, which always deals its damage over an extended time frame and allows you to walk the hell out or break LOS during its time frame.

The things broken, nerf it or rework it.

Bring. Back. Deadly Arts. Assassin.

Khisanth.2948:

A fractal is too short to provide much lore. Much better for covering what happened at the reactor than the fall of Abaddon. Doubtful there is any relation to the dragons. There aren’t any corrupt creatures anywhere near or in the reactor.

Something that covers the fall of Abaddon should at least be the length of Eye of the North. Doing it as a fractal is pretty much begging to have gaping holes in your lore. Anthony’s post also makes it sound like it will just cover the final battle where Abaddon gets imprisoned and none of the interesting stuff that happened before.

Got to agree with this.
The Fall of Abaddon is a huge event far larger in importance than the reactor. He gave magic to the world, so much that it was begged to be restricted. Apparently turned evil and sealed. The guy behind Orr’s destruction, Cantha’s jade sea, meaning he’s also why Togo (R.I.P). He’s why Zhaiten had an undead supply source ready to create his army when he woke up. Why would this event be done in some small fractal?

To be honest a fractal most certainly could not do it justice.

The Reactor is nothing, we know pretty much no importance of it, we don’t witness anything important coming from it other than the fluctuations at the site. Abaddon’s legacies have shaped the world.

Dual.8953:

Siric.3589:

Phantaram.1265:

Stealth – This is the biggest one for me and I talked about this a long time ago in the SOTG and it’s just gotten more and more out of control. If you have two sources of long stealths in your teams line up your options at any point in the game and especially at the beginning are limitless.

There HAS to be a limit on how much stealth you can get. 6-7 seconds sounds reasonable to me but even then with two sources of stealth that is 12-14 seconds which will still give you tons of options and advantages over the other team. Stealth is a REALLY tough one to balance. As it is now people are walking around the map all leisure like for 30 seconds just talking amongst themselves like “Well I dunno who do you wanna 1 shot? We’ll 1 shot jimmy, no… bob! Well actually lets not even attack this node, onward to the enemy close point! Okay we are all here? Roger Roger. 3 2 4.. I can’t count… go! success! that other team can’t counter our amazing strat lol!”

Another solution is to give stealth some sort of counter.

I agree with this in its entirety. There needs to be some kind of heavy diminishing returns on chained stealths. Some sort of stacking reveal debuff would be good – every time you restealth within 10(?) seconds of your last stealth that stealth last 33% less, stacks until 100% so you are forced to not stealth for 10 seconds. Its a rough idea, but something that should be looked at.

Now, before every thief gets out their keyboards and start to send me death threats let me say this. The thief class needs to be moved away from stealth abusing and given alternate forms of utility and survivability. Most of the recent changes have been good, even the broken shadow trap was a good start at giving thieves more utility as they get nerfed. Stealth is hard to balance in nearly every game, and GW2 has one of the strongest stealths yet (doesn’t break on damage, is a true stealth, can’t see outline ala Sc2, instant stealth, doesn’t fade to stealth). I think changing stealth to anything I listed above (particularly a fade to stealth and non-perfect stealth so you can see someone standing next to you in it to dodge burst) would be a great start. On top of that, missing a backstab shouldn’t keep you stealthed and a heart seaker that hits SOULDN’T stealth you when using out of a smoke field… they just did damage to you kitten .

Shadow refuge is elite status good. This post is getting longer that I expected so I won’t go into a lot of details but the duration it last should be less, the CD should be longer, and it shouldn’t give nearly as long of an AoE stealth… or make it an elite (the better option IMO) to make thieves chose between utility and offense (basilisk venom).

Sorry this got a big longer than I expected so I will wrap it up with 1 last thought.

Many of this builds have counters and builds that work well at countering how they play. The problem is that these counters are not strong enough to be viable when put up against other builds. The only things I feel need to be nerfed are necromancers and stealth mechanics – other things are manageable with continued buffs to weaker builds. To list some off: offensive guardians, warriors, mantra mesmers, non-stealth thief builds, engis (make elixer C a break stun for the love of god); I could go on and on.

Sorry for the long posts. Ill add more after some more talk happens

I’m against this because it ruins S/D Control completely. S/D Control and P/D Condi thrive off spamming thier stealth skill as often as possible, so any nerf to the frequency they can stealth at ruins their viability at their role, along with nerfing their survivability.

(Also, Shadow Refuge would be way more useful as an elite. Moving SR to the elite slot would leave thieves free to carry an extra utility.)

S/D Control? Could’ve sworn that ceased to exist in tpvp in December. Can’t ruin whats dead. But would crush it in WvW. Oh and P/D is mentally kittened and needs to get revisited anyways.

Anyways suggestion is weird for nothing.
Stealth shouldn’t stack in Duration it is simple as hell.

I like Conjures and I like the charges.
I wish Conjures were more like the Initiative System and so that Skills had Low Cooldown time justified by the use of Charges.
Actually wtf.

Rework conjure skills to consume different charges and lower the cooldown time.
Auto attack would consume 1 charge. Most of the 2’s could consume 2 but have 3/4s CD’s. Deep freeze could take 6 or 7 charges and be on 10/12s…

One thing I’d like to see is the conjure weapon Not disappear when you drop it.

Littlefeather.8623:

Manuhell.2759:

sorrow.2364:

There is no team perma-retaliation in reality.
Even if there was perma retaliation, you still have 4 other skills on your bar (even more in the case of engineer) that you can use without wiping your whole HP bar.

It’s your fault if you use a single skill which is capable to kill you. It’s your fault because you didn’t noticed that the whole enemy team had retaliation on.

You don’t need perma retaliation. 5 seconds can be enough to make an engineer kill himself. Also, people may get retaliation while we are attacking, or just some enemy could have it – and you can’t just see every single boon on every enemy to do a single attack.
And so no one even tries to use that autoattack, even if it is supposed to be used versus multiple enemies. We are supposed to stay in that kit for prolonged times if we get the juggernaut trait, yet we can’t even use the autoattack cause it is more harmful for us than the enemies.

If any one in GW2 dies from 5 seconds of Retaliation hits, there is something wrong with the player…

You mean to tell the PvP community that 200-300 per hit of retaliation over 5 seconds is going to kill you?

GG

No they’re just keeping it real I can’t recall if Flame jet is 5 targets but even against 3 a full hit would be 10 ticks of retal. PW 25, HB, 24, Firestorm 45. Multiple the hits by 232 or so.
I presume it’s not that most of these guys go and kill themself. More like simply because of the threat of it they just don’t use the skill. Which can be annoying because that skill may be the one of the main purposes of bringing the weapon in the first place, and with it being “soft” CC’d by the threat of retal who is it really helping? Everyone gets that conquest pushes you to clump up more than makes sense to do normally in our head, but some of these just don’t make sense. How many multi-hit attacks have the radius of a Mark? What Meteor Storm? Generally the majority of these are easy to kite, and because they’re multi-hit you reduce the damage by just moving out of the way. Group Retal then says “This is a multi-hit, multi-target attack, perfect for group situations, Heavily refrain from using it in a group or eat 5+k dmg”. Lol wot?

jmatb.6307:

Velron.3729:

jmatb.6307:

You could try reading the fifth paragraph again the everyone bit was about necros not the healing power builds ^^

If you’re implying you run higher HP has it worked for you, assuming you bring good cleanses?

Every time I have experimented with running significantly more vitality than normal (meaning trading my toughness for it) I have had poor results. Conditions still just eat through it with the limited condition removal available (without going into a spec I think is trash just to have removal) and I become exponentially more vulnerable to burst and lose sustain in longer fights.

If they have a burst player on their team of course they are going to have their way with a low toughness target. I have never said trading vit for toughness is the way to go, or that we need to go all out with vitality.

For example, what if we used Wurm runes, which give 6% crit damage and 3% more damage, instead of more power? What if on our bunkers we used Soldiers with clerics jewel and Dwayna runes with 2 Monk if you use Signet of Restoration on Ele?

I’m just thinking that Toughness and Vit are more important than Toughness and Healing Power, now that conditions are so brutal.

I’ve used Wurm runes, there is really nothing wrong with them….but for a different environment. 1.7k health is a nice buffer for any single condi/stack now when multiple are on you, that 1.7k health is basically a 1s buffer if that then disappears vs the 3+s it’ll buy you against an ele/war/guardian. Sure any little bit helps but taking Divinity over Scholar has felt like the more practical trade.

Direct damage is still very strong. Condi damage itself isn’t even “all” that, if it wasn’t for auxillary crap like Weakness doing some RNG madness making 4 hits in a row Glance + worrying about retal + Protection + Cripple + Chill this wouldn’t really be an issue. Necro’s are getting toned down but this weakness change is kitten ing on everyone. Which as a thief you’d consider Fleet of Foot or Pain Response as counter actions if their ICD’s were low enough to actually be relevant to the issues at hand.

If you look at Condi -war, Condi Ele, Condi guardian, Condi thief, condi Mesmer even condi Ranger Conditions aren’t all that and a bag of chips until they are thrown out like crazy with auxillary conditions on top of it.

But…. Condi classes can still be dealt with, you throw back strong pressure on them and they have to take the defensive no different from you. If I was playing thief and took all the condi removal I could, I wouldn’t even force him into a defensive position because he’d simply not have enough threat to him to justify it.

But what I really want to say is: Bring back + damage and deep wound.