Guild Wars 2

They are not.
Every point of vital gets multiplied by 10 and added to base
Every point of power gets multiplied by a skill specific number.
So normally every point of vitality is worth more than 1 power if your taking only 1 attack. Eg. 798 vitality will increase you 7980 health and 798 power ammy would only have kill shot do 5570 if it ignored armor.

Reality though is crits exist, crit DMG exists, dmg modifier traits and you are going to take more then 1 hit. Unlike toughness their is no effective health synergy with heals against power dmg.

Tl;Dr vitality is a weaker stat but is worth more than power only momentarily (start of fight). If I recall vitals true worth is in combination with toughness and otherwise both are pretty balls.

Think you already knew it anyways but yeah some amulets don’t compute.
One thing to consider is their is an intentional offensive bias so defensive amulets aren’t supposed to be effective against an offensive one.

Short duration pets that create temporary advantages may be better for your game then 1 minute+ abominations that might as well be ranger pets given how long they last.

With your primary objective being capture points which require players stand on them to oppose and defend they shouldn’t be small enough for aoe attacks to cover the entire thing. Unless there is a negligible enough effect to warrant ignoring the aoe or it’s some channeled ability that gave sufficient enough time (earthquake) to deny it.

Healing signet need not actually heal more health over time than other Heals in a moment through its passive.

A consistent cooldown on stealth regardless of a successful attack like you originally suggested prior to the 4s reveal addition would likely be a good fit for the game just as reducing quickness from 100% to 50% was a better fit in the long run.

D/P and D/D both stealthing puts them into confliction with each other that S/D vs S/P and P/D vs P/P do not have because the off-hands don’t offer any similarities.

Elementalist Fire attunement with a focus is mediocre to the point of leaving a bad taste.
Adding an additional evade to the Ele who’s defense was once said to be “burst healing” with the same main-hand seems to forget about building on class identity, as much as my D/F would love it.

A year later after the talk about seeing our ICD’s. Still can’t tell if I have my Panic strike or tempest defense available or not and when I will.

Timed queues should be a better fit for a smaller playerbase.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel for game modes.

Could have sworn P/P’s thing is single target ranged burst. That’s what it wants to excel at and finds itself impractical at. Defensive options aren’t great and offensive presence is lacking.

It’s because they have condition damage for the purpose of bypassing toughness and want to keep things simplistic relative to say GW1 which had armor pen, armor reduction and armor ignoring damage, as well as elemental damages.

/P sets shouldn’t have stealth, that should be /D’s domain.
While S/P and S/D have significant differences in what they bring.
D/D and D/P butt heads, and D/D without the damage advantage it used to have loses out in 2/3 formats generally. Increasing D/D’s damage further outside of Death blossom isn’t really attractive either. If D/P didn’t have stealth D/D would actually have a niche out of the D/’s to capitalize on.

Turn the blinking thing into a dark field and buff D/P afterwards from the fallout.

Are you working on something in the back end for Elementalist focus fire attunement.
Unfortunately while the focus is strong for the most part the fire attunement is widely accepted as abhorrent. I do believe a classes weapon set as their core should be their strongest base aspects above utilities which are extensions and traits which are for specializations.

Their is an absence of D/D and P/P to this date in PvP have you reconsidered the direction of these sets?

How would blurred frenzy be the only comparable skill
Hundred Blades, Zealots Defense, Pistol WHip and Blurred Frenzy are practically copy & pastes of each other with different effects. Pure damage, reflection, CC & Evasion, Full evasion. Far as Im concerned PW isn’t really suited to being a “dodge”. It’s an offensive skill that allows you more staying power when you jump on an enemy. It’s not an impenetrable defense, and for the damage it does and given it temporarily stuns an opponent it certainly shouldn’t be.
Aoe fields only go through the vulnerability frames, and are still subject to the evade frames.

This is so silly. PW gives a moment of vulnerability in exchange it does strong damage, and some defensive stronghold. It is not perfect defense nor does it need to be.
Skills are allowed to be interrupted the “Counter-play to your counterplay” is to force out their interrupts earlier, Shadowstep into a pistolwhip to leave immediately into the stun from range, or throw up a dagger storm/Lyssa boosted Basilisk into PW with stability supporting you.

You don’t need to have PW to readily evade a Eviscerate on the dime. They already gave you a stun you could time for that, and if timing the stun is impractical you have headshot which is what a .25s cast time on 4 ini to use instead of PW’s .5s. on 5 ini.
The skill is fine as it is, it’s strong and isn’t a shortfalling of the kit. The notion that they even want to split it when it’s in such a strong state as it is and “fix” what isn’t broken for no reason that I can see is baffling. PW isn’t holding some other weapon set back nor is it a detriment to S/P in its current state with the buffs it has recieved. It needs no buff.
S/P has some inherit weakness with ranged attackers due to inability to target break unlike /D’s and D/P, which are fine to keep but even reducing that slightly wouldn’t be about PW. It be about Headshot or Black Powder. Which probably won’t be changed due to D/P.

tl;dr. PW is fine wtf bro.

Lol @ PTR. Any feedback from that would more than likely be ignored.
Frequency is their problem.

There should be an on-swap version of purity and water (inb4 eles).
Far as Im concerned Water is a group oriented sigil even if its not that great, and putting that as a proc, on a crit makes it doubly unreliable and something you don’t really work around even if it was stronger. If Im trying to heal all my allies, having it on swap would be consistent enough that I could drop a quick 1000 or whatever it comes out to reliably.

+1 phaeton. inb4 mods come at me.

squeezebag.4618:

bad for PvP still.

I lol’d. Pistol whip is performing admirably after multiple revisions. The shortcomings of S/P aren’t even tied to it.

compensation for what?
lol wtf.

Burning speed evade?
Just means more damage negation for D/F muahahahahahahahaa.
Frozen Burst blast?
Just means something to do with my flame wall.
Muahhahaha
….Focus fire attunement still mediocre :p.

The evade frames work.
The evade frames do not start immediately which leaves vulnerability time which has always been the case. The effects of latency also have to be considered given that latency can have you thinking you are safe in a dodge, and you end up dying in your dodge roll.

The only weapon set that’s not “spam” based (though some may say otherwise) is d/p and that’s only because 4/5 skills in the weapon set have their situational purposes. You can auto-attack for sustain, you can place BP down for blinds and defense. You can then leap out of it with heartseeker to setup backstab, and you can shadowshot as a immediate gap closer. Even headshot which is utter horrid right now has it’s purpose. It’s just a smooth and complete set because every skill has it’s use.

All the /P sets use the offhand. However since none of them really have combo finishers of significant worth to use with Black powder, they have little reason to use it other than for stomp/team set up and the ocassional niche situation. Black Powder defensively isn’t that strong given that it doesn’t target break for S/P and P/P which are inherently stealthless weapon sets, in contrast to D/P which can decide it has enough of ranger 1111111 spam and break target. Yes headshots daze reduction makes it defensively and offensively more strained for the 3 kits but again D/P get’s the least effect of this.
The other two /P kits always felt strain to use the offhand, for D/P it enables extra damage via combo, for S/P and P/P it’s a complete dps drop for the sake of defense which it frankly is mediocre at given any sort of ranged offense. It’s not simply redundant on S/P it feels impractical the majority of the time on 2/3 /P’s. Especially Given P/P can’t afford to actually hope someone sits in BP even for 2 blinds due to that massive DPS drop per ini, and any guaranteed projectile finish costing an arm and a leg as well.

Of course no one is going to buff Black Powder to be a more practical defensive tool to S/P and P/P, since that Combo leap finisher exists. Maybe if Black powder wasn’t a smoke field Most D/P’s would say “this isn’t cutting it”.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I don’t like it. Pistol whip is in a good place right now.

This.
I’ve enjoyed PW excluding that October break, changing the feel of PW is no bueno. I’ve yet to see options on the other sets (excluding SB) change in a way that is attractive. No S/P, no thanks thief.

If it wasn’t that I still like to explore Ele and Engi when im not playing S/P, I’d just delete the game come next patch. GW1 made many skill changes and not all I agreed with, but this rubs me the wrong way.

798 Power.
569 healing
569 Precision.

and a buff off maybe 42 stat points to Celestial

roamzero.9486:

What’s ironic is that they are nerfing two sources of poison by about 40% for thief/engineer, poison being the only real counter to the signet :/ And by possibly changing the active the net result will probably be a buff for Warriors…

The actual counter to the signet is realizing that Heal over times need…as their description suggests time to live up to their full potential. Burst is compacting damage in a small time frame. The actual counter play to HoT’s is burst. Hence if a Thief is using signet of malice, if you focus him the signet automatically goes to garbage tier, Signet of Resto is in the same boat even with Written in Stone.

My prime issue with anet is their follow-up to a balance change which is often long and doesn’t actually occur until another balance change.
If Anet closely monitors their changes and is willing to make prompt tweaks and decide not everything needs to be monitored for a month, everything will be all good.

I’d like it as a dark field in all seriousness and was thinking about it. But stealth projectile? Wot. Maybe it’s because I’ve become jaded about D/P.

The passive signets aren’t supposed to be in line with the Burst heals or the condi removal heals. They’re supposed to dwarf them in healing over time, but be lackluster when healing is needed in an instant, which the signet heals are.
I think a bit more hps could’ve been taken off healing signet but I certainly see why they didn’t go further then that. its 392, at about what 328 it’s dead even with A-surge for healing in a 30s timeframe. At 362 it still has its niche but is easier to pressure. Encouraging more use of an active which is subject to interrupt.

Pistol whips issues were remedied with the Dec 10 patch.
Played S/P consistently and primarily since Jan 2012, the skill is strong enough as it is now and I came into this thread half expecting a nerf call.

Volrath.1473:

Josh Davis.6015:

Cynz.9437:

I actually ended up playing with dev in soloq… he was playing an ele and was doing fine O.o

Were you playing with Powerr? We won our first match-up in the 2v2 tournament last weekend with him playing D/D ele. He’s a great player.

As for elementalists, we’re not scared to talk about them, we just haven’t talked about any profession really (in regards to the next update). There are a bunch of changes coming down the pike for the entire game in general. I mentioned on the ele forums before the holidays that we think the main problem with elementalist is sustain – and that’s what we’re focusing on addressing. I mentioned on the ESL livestream today that our first step towards rectifying this is making Signet of Restoration function the same in PvP as it does in PvE.

err…. what does Signet of Restoration has to do with sustain?!

SoRs entire purpose is to outheal glyph, renewal and brilliance. Whichmakes the ele stay atoundaround longer so long as the situation doesn’t require the niche of another heal (burst/condi mitigation/ utility)

Dervish Monument armor.
Without doubt.
#BringbacktheDervish

Critical damage changes

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Mash Hog.5672:

vanensang.1389:

Inconsequent classdesign is the biggest weakness of the elementalist.

There is absolutely nothing which balances the lack of survivability, low health pool, low damage, too situational weaponskills and the weakness of several weapons (focus having too big cooldowns, is not direct enough; staff – WAY too slow or too little damage).

There must be something which balances weakness in general. I just see one thing which “kinda” tries to balance the whole situation as far as I understood ArenaNet by reading patch after patch: 4 elements instead of 2 weaponsets.

Sadly all of those elements are just weaker than usual weaponskills of other professions.

Those are all covered in the main post.
Which mechanic do you think Elementalists should capitalize on as their main “source” of survivability?

IMHO auras should be rebalanced to function as true active defenses for elementalists. Shocking Aura already does that for melee attackers, the problem is conditions and ranged attackers coupled with the fact that the only anti-range aura is staff exclusive.

I don’t understand why we have no glyph that simply gives us an aura depending on attunement, opening up all auras for all weapon choices.

Focus contains two skills for projectile defense an invulnerability and a ranged knocked down. The only way to actually have no projectile defense is to play /D.

You can interrupt troll ungent.

Shouldn’t Stealth on steal be the 5 point trait? Since it can reliably proc 15 SA and 25 SA.
Granted it changes playstyles like BP – Headshot steal, and CnD steal but there’s no question of reliability.

Short:
- Healing ripple naturally in water attunement with 0 investment in water magic, create a new 15 trait, freezing gust/regen or x duration frost aura. “Burst healing” should exist to some extent on a base level.
- Replace diamond skin, maybe something like 2s Magnetic Aura when switching to Earth attunement, 20% reduction to earth attunement cd.
- Replace Fresh air, maybe bonus crit and a reduction on air attunement cd it emphasizes instant cast distastefully atm.
- Denerf signet of Resto? Or have written in stone improve signet passives as well?
- Focus Fire attunement needs a touch up.
- Improve glyphs.
- Make Arcane wave Pbaoe again, Some kind of tell would be nice.

I don’t use the other venoms because they suck at a base level and have 45 second cooldowns as if they are remotely as powerful as Dev or basilisk when they aren’t when those two are strong enough to use untraited.

Outside of the cleansing Wave of evasive Arcana I don’t find the trait to be a big deal. If Cleansing wave was frozen burst how much would you really value that trait.

Im guessing this is a pve environment? Basilisk venom is very strong in the other two.
In PvE it’s not all that and I don’t really recall hearing about it used all that often as venom share support in pve either. Otherwise it’s a really strong elite.

I can’t see the rationale behind quite a few ele changes, and as for others they seem overdone.

For instance playing primarily thief I’ve dodged many arcane blasts. That skill isn’t particularly troublesome being positioning widens the reaction time. The projectile itself has a slower velocity than say an arrow or bullet so you can react. It becomes really instant in melee range. Honestly I’d leave it as it is.

Arcane wave however with that instant ground target gives you jack flipping squat to react to in any circumstance whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong it’s alright for some skills not to be very telegraphed and even alright for a few to have none but Wave isn’t one of them and so I agree on giving it a delay, but it’s not really looking on something like a 1s. Even a 1/4 or 1/2s cast makes it no problem given aftercast takes care of the rest. If you just want it evadable, given you have it hitting the location 3/4th cast generally take care of that given a proper indicator.

Also don’t see why you’d think making Dragon’s tooth ground targetted would warrant a damage reduction. The reality is it’s going to drop the successful hitrate on a general level even further giving the same delay and radius. That’s just reality. I also don’t see why scepter 3 would need any sort of change, or a chain skill to make its use clunky at what it wants to do which is immediately stop an attack.

Focus is a more defensive/supportive weapon set so the freezing gust change really doesn’t compute and comes off as an anomaly. While this Flame wall chain skill is interesting and certainly something I’d refrain from judging, I just don’t see the point of the rest of the changes, what is the direction, what is the purpose? To increase the damage of the focus? High cast time skills/channels seem counter productive to that. While a channel skill with a CC at the end has it’s place, I don’t see where it fits in on the focus with its emphasis on range skills with defensive options when it isn’t ranged. Freezing gust seems completely out of tune with D/F.

I wont be text walling over everything but these stood out.

You wouldn’t need Melandru for it to be effective.
20% cc reduction is considerably beneficial on a base level, significantly more and consistently more than some cheesey warp. I’m just consciously considering the benefits of stacking. Though I suppose a trait should blatantly slap someone in the face for it to be considered effective.

Hard to catch won’t ever be a reasonable pick with its implementation.
When you take these anti-CC traits its to aid you when CC’d. Most of them do this. Mes mirroring the CC, ranger transfering it, Necros fear blasting, Warriors get stability. Engineers if I recall get a smoke field which is mediocre though.

I’d take 20% CC reduction and gain swiftness when stunned over current implementation. Simplistic and effective. Throw a rune of Melandru on myself and see how things work out.

^ you would figure possibly because a) Eles can burst their health up (which the don’t really do without healing ripple) or b) because they have other base sources of heals (but cone of cold sucks, yes i am whining), c) Eles aren’t supposed to have the highest sustain given “jack of all trade” type and are supposed to be flexible (but aren’t all that flexible).

Drop passive to 329-335.
Active 4000- 4400? heal. Doubles your armor for 10(?) seconds.
Reasoning: Doubling your armor reduces damage about 50%. Given how effective healing works, reducing damage 50% should make any healing you receive 50% stronger. However since the damage reduction is only 10s, that effective healing is only temporary.
Since Armor does absolutely nothing against conditions the damage reduction wouldn’t apply and as such the Active would basically be heal 4000 health against conditions.
So Active = Weaker against conditions than Mending.
Passive = Barely stronger than healing surge, a couple of seconds of poison and it will straight heal less over a 30s period.
Active = Really strong against power damage, but doesn’t have the same potential against burst as Defiant stance, but works harder long term given the 10s duration and is 1s cast vs 1/4th.
Tldr a sustain skill, less general than surge, less specific than Mending and with less potential than Defiant stance.
I don’t think protection would work as well as doubled armor/toughness.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

ensoriki.5789:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

ensoriki.5789:

JonPeters.5630:

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.

Jon

This has been mentioned before and I don’t disagree that the active is weak.
Signet of Malice active fits it because unlike Healing Signet the passive isn’t entirely passive given the hit requirement. Since their is that requirement whether Thieves like it or not they’ll end up using the active because multiple circumstances will arise where they do not have the leisure to attack to heal themself.

The enemy of a HoT is a burst that doesn’t give them time to heal. The active could play off that and let the Warrior heal back the damage they take in say the next 2 seconds.
Eg.
Active: Base heal 800. This skill does nothing for 2 seconds, after 2 seconds you heal for 110% of the damage you took in those 2 seconds.
Or make a reverse situation of GW1 where using Healing Signet increases your defenses temporarily and heals. Eg. Gain protection or gain 300 toughness for 5s. Something pre-emptively done to dissuade being bursted.

Whatever happened to classes having weaknesses (besides ele)?

Elaborate?

A year ago Johnathan Sharp posted an updated class description guide on this forum. How the developers see the classes and where they want them to be. Warrior was about hitting hard and stuff, and having trouble with condition and having to go to allies to get condition removal or otherwise simply facetank through them with their high HP pool.

Then it all changed when the fire nation the condition meta attacked.

Those were odd when they were started.
Thief master of stealth and single target burst. Which feels odd given P/D even at that time really didn’t have a burst for anything unless you were standing in caltrops. S/D didn’t really burst either at all, even before the tactical, dancing dagger and cnd nerf it recieved. Then again Quickness could make anything at the time a burst so…

Ele’s “burst healing” was pretty much all in traits which left a lot to be questionable given this sort of defense mechanism they have pretty much didn’t exist without traiting, where other aspects they defined did exist on a level on the classes. Even now it’s pretty much all in traits especially dat dere healing ripple. Cone of Cold doesn’t burst heal for anything.

Power of Inertia is a fairly respectable trait as it is. It is also an adept trait and not supposed to be particularly defining of a style like Grandmaster traits are to be. A 20s duration in Spvp over 15 might be nice but again it’s a respectable already trait. It’s on decent footing relative to Vigorous recovery, much more practical and desirable than assassin’s retreat, master trapper (cus traps are mediocre) and Fleeting shadows.

If we’re talking supporting say non-stealth wouldn’t you be looking at well defensive opportunities given part of the issue with a thief being visible is a lack of appropriate defense against targetted skills and smoke screen very often not being a practical remedy to this. There’s two defensive boons thrown on your Power of Inertia suggestion but again, I don’t see where this trait comes into the discussion.
Pain response is unreliable in its condition removal for 1, Assassin’s Reward is very questionable. Fleet of Foot just doesn’t address defensive qualms, and Hard to Catch is unwieldy as far as the Shadow arts line goes. In Trickery you have hastened Replenishment which isnt bad at all, and other powerful traits.
Even then as far as Acrobatic adepts go other than Power of Inertia is Vigorous recovery right there.

reikken.4961:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

JonPeters.5630:

I was simply stating that the problem is we are not going to address the issues that the passive sustain is creating until we make the active use have a place in combat so even if it is not THE PROBLEM, it is the blocking issue.

Jon

Then why were you so swift almost a year ago in nerfing ele healing signet passive? Eles didn’t get anything to make up for that. And why are you still not undoing those nerfs?

it’s because of Written in Stone
Ele can have both the active and passive, so of course the signet needs to be terrible to balance

Have you played a Written in stone ele?
It wasnt nerfed for WiS when SoR was run notably on bunker eles who were investing in water and Arcane.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

No. Healing Signet in itself is bad designed and needs to be taken into a new direction completely

I disagree. Again looking at Som, Sor and HS.
SoM ~ Successful attacks reward health
SoR – Using a skill gives health
HS – Existing gives health.
Imo between these 3 there should be a decreasing amount in the level of sustain they benefit, partially because Warrior is bulkier than both Ele and Thief so it has higher effective healing via armor against power damage than the 392 base indicates then the other two do. Partially because Ele also has Written in stone that maybe one day will be a more considerable pick if Ele signets sucked a little less.
Healing signet heals for a lot passively but the goal isn’t to get rid of that. A reliable heal out of the three is fine, so long as it’s proportionate to well the realities of damage a War takes & the level of effort (none) that healing signet’s passive demands. I don’t think it is. On the other hand Jon is right because the active sucks especially for a warrior who is generally in the middle of things more than either of them outside of a D/F ele.

Should be
Thief ~ Being able to keep your passive means you are doing great
Ele ~ Either one is fine, in Written in Stone you should be capitalizing on your active
War ~ Capitalize on the active.

Focus fire attunement is horrible.
Freezing gust doesn’t really bring much to the table.
Everything else on the focus is great. Everything.
My suggestions

Fire attunement:
Drop Fire shield to 20s cooldown.
Make flamewall unevadable like a ward. Increase the burn duration to 2s and it would give a boon to allies who pass through it on a 8s ICD. Probably might as you mentioned, Regen wouldn’t be bad either.

Then there is freezing Gust. I think the cast should move up to 1/2s and it should do more damage, with an extra damage boost if it hits a foe suffering from chill, which would give some inherit bonus to D/F.

Imagi.4561:

The crux of my issue with the Elementalist is on dagger mainhand, particularly in PvP, you are putting yourself at a very vulnerable distance from your target and it feels like you have neither the damage output nor the healing capacity to compensate for the risk.

I feel these sentiments. Cone of Cold isn’t all that give it’s a channel. It seems the majority of survivalbility is thrown into traits as while the heals of Soothing Mist, Healing ripple, Evasive Arcana and the regen traits add up to something potent, without the 3 the Ele kind of falls off pretty hard.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

ensoriki.5789:

JonPeters.5630:

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.

Jon

This has been mentioned before and I don’t disagree that the active is weak.
Signet of Malice active fits it because unlike Healing Signet the passive isn’t entirely passive given the hit requirement. Since their is that requirement whether Thieves like it or not they’ll end up using the active because multiple circumstances will arise where they do not have the leisure to attack to heal themself.

The enemy of a HoT is a burst that doesn’t give them time to heal. The active could play off that and let the Warrior heal back the damage they take in say the next 2 seconds.
Eg.
Active: Base heal 800. This skill does nothing for 2 seconds, after 2 seconds you heal for 110% of the damage you took in those 2 seconds.
Or make a reverse situation of GW1 where using Healing Signet increases your defenses temporarily and heals. Eg. Gain protection or gain 300 toughness for 5s. Something pre-emptively done to dissuade being bursted.

Whatever happened to classes having weaknesses (besides ele)?

Elaborate?

JonPeters.5630:

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.

Jon

A couple of other individuals mentioned exactly what you were saying over the past months.
SoM requires active participation to reap its passive, which makes the active of SoM necessary because the situation doesn’t always allow you to attack to heal. SoR is like a hybrid between the two considering you just need to spam a skill and not necessarily hit but considering its nerfed status it’s not ideal anyways.

The enemy of a HoT is a burst that doesn’t give them time to heal. The active could play off that and let the Warrior heal back the damage they take in say the next 2 seconds.
Eg.
Active: Base heal 800. This skill does nothing for 3 seconds, after 3 seconds you heal for 110% of the damage you took in those 3 seconds.
Where the active of healing signet is a pre-preemptive deterrent like Berzerker stance/endure pain to attacking the Warrior, but by easing off they’ll only get a small heal.
Or make a reverse situation of GW1 where using Healing Signet increases your defenses temporarily and heals. Eg. Gain protection or gain 300 toughness for 5s. Something pre-emptively done to dissuade being bursted.

ens.9854:

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!?!?

The unreliability is why I think they have to be nudged into a more accurate direction. Can’t reliably hit with dodge roll around unless they ignore that. Can’t just have undefendable utilities unless they are visible either.

As far as removal goes I find that well pointless. It’s been quite some time since I’ve slotted a trap so I figure I’d say exactly what irks them around me.
Even Shadow trap only really became useful because it got a guaranteed effect which was the teleport on deconstruct. Unless every Trap skill is going to get some kind of Chain skill to increase reliability, which may not be a poor route to go either.

Healing Ripple, Electric Discharge and Arcane wave need to take a hit.
Cone of Cold is a crappy heal and needs its scaling improved.
Bringing a couple of other things down will make the atmosphere easier for the ele, but yeah CoC sucks, Freezing gust still mediocre, Fire Shield has a cooldown that makes no sense as if it is even half the skill Shocking aura is. Whether D/F or S/F, Focus Fire attunement has so much burn it doesn’t know wtf to do with it.
Glyph of renewal has a cast time longer than the planets orbit.
There’s so much 0.5s or less cast time aoes Glyph of Storms feels redundant and that cooldown..

I don’t feel that Arcane is mandatory at all, but there’s a lot of crap options there that make it feel that way because you can’t get any juice out of an attunement.
Also aquamancers alacricity being Master tier makes me cry.

Too much condi clear causes situations where even if you aren’t condition reliant you can’t get some base level conditions like cripple, or a small insignificant 0 condi power amount of bleeds to stick and are just having effectivity drop.

Eg. You are playing elementalist and have a heap load of burning but the second you are out of fire attunment you’ve got no burning, your weakness from air is gone, the chill that already lasts for near nothing is gone because they have more condi clear than you have condi variety and frequency. That’s all cool if they spec for it, but if it’s too easy to grab it’s just going to invalidate certain aspects. Elementalists do have condition damage but 1) they never live to see it out 2) it always gets cleared. An Elementalist can easily put out 30+ seconds of burning on someone in 3 seconds, and get something like 11k damage out of that burn for it’s entire duration, but who can’t clear that? Throw in bleeding and it still gets cleared. Throw in cripple/weakness/chill and it still won’t matter. The Warrior before they got some buffs had trouble with their Sword/X specs keeping any bleeds on a target because it was so easy to cleanse. Which is kind of the problem, some condi clear options are just so strong, they invalidate a lot of things except for absolute whirlwinds of conditions. Some condi cleanse are so weak they’re almost worthless especially in front of condition nukes.

Oh and the Randomish condi proc traits are so lame.
I can take pain response but have it proc on the most useless crap ever and then suddenly find a necro and get condi bombed. Won’t even bother with that trait with the experience I’ve had with it, unreliable to a fault

Then there is being on an Ele, and without Ether renewal its easy to find a wall of conditions on yourself that frequently reapplied due to random procs + extra condi’s on the weapon swap skills or tool kits.

chungiee.8764:

ensoriki.5789:

There are certain aspects of professions that are weak, and certain aspects that are too strong. However bringing things to the level of “too strong” doesn’t make for a better game.
If I create a skill that one shots everyone, I could give everyone a one shot skill as well, but then the game just turns into 1 shots and is boring. Or I could acknowledge that something is stronger than it should be and tone it down not just so that things are equal but so that overall you have a better experience playing the game.

Sure, I understand that argument but skills don’t “one-shot” everyone.

However, taking your example – if everyone was given a “one-shot kill” button but was also given a “prevent one-shot kill” button, wouldn’t that promote more active play ?

Do you really want to play a game where its over in one button press all the time? A stalemate of "I have my 1-shot protection " vs “I have my one shot”. Balancing something doesn’t mean that the situation will be attractive. If I made two people step on nails it would be equal but they’d probably both hate it.

There aren’t one-shots running around but the whole thing of power creep is that it heads towards being out of reason until it finally is.

Suggestions for Thief traps on a couple points.
1. Thief traps are visible to enemies
Visible traps means a conscious level of zoning, the idea is not to make thief traps blatantly stand out, but however for an indicator to be there for one paying attention. The exception to this idea is shadow trap, that trap would stay invisible but give a visual que when triggered. Now making the remaining three traps is a necessity in order for point two to work.

2.Thief traps are unevadable and unblockable
With traps being visible, their activation is on the opponent. Dodge roll is especially powerful and invalidating needle trap and tripwire with a dodge roll if made visible greatly removes their threat, by being unevadable and undodgable they must specifically be avoided through positioning. Ambush trap already cares not if the opponent is evading which makes it reliable.

3. Thief traps can have more than one instance of themself on the field
Not all traps are created “equally” and a certain level of flexibility is needed for what the thieves traps ideally do. Unlike Ranger traps, thieves would not be invisible (with 1 exception), as of current they lack the point assault potential of ranger traps both when traited and untraited. A trap like Shadow trap, needs only to have one instance of itself on the field. However Needle trap could have say two or three instances on the field as a maximum instead of the current one. The quantity increases success and the zoning potential.

An example of how Traps could function as a result
Current:
Needle trap
30s cooldown 1/2s cast.
Damage: 81
Immobilized: 3 s
Poison: 6 s
Range: 900
Unblockable

Template:
Trap
20s Cooldown 3/4s cast. 3 initiative cost
Damage: 81
Immobilize: 2s Does not trigger if foe is already immobilized.
Poison: 5s
Amount: 3
Unblockable
Unevadable.
———————-
On discussion playing with traps the frequent issues I find are.
1. Needle trap and Tripwire are* often evaded*, by well random dodges out of nowhere. There are enough on dodge traits, and hell just ADD random dodging that invalidates these skills.
2. Thieves generally are not point defenders, traps don’t make them as such but allow them to assist in point defense and set-up situations for them to weaken/down threats. That only works if they hit though. Their shape isn’t in tune with the nodes of conquest. Which makes them to an extent less reliable than ranger traps again.
3. Layering traps (Trap procs, and your trap already off CD, you plant again while the current ones effects are present) are a bit of a worry, and it’s just how it is given that the effects will directly stack given the chance, and the cast times to make them considerable within combat even if they are generally unwieldy.

There are certain aspects of professions that are weak, and certain aspects that are too strong. However bringing things to the level of “too strong” doesn’t make for a better game.
If I create a skill that one shots everyone, I could give everyone a one shot skill as well, but then the game just turns into 1 shots and is boring. Or I could acknowledge that something is stronger than it should be and tone it down not just so that things are equal but so that overall you have a better experience playing the game.

I don’t disagree however I highly doubt procs will ever go away.
It may be because I’m biased against them , so to be optimistic instead I’ll say toning them down and promoting other aspects is feasible and reasonable
Say if Certain on-crits only triggered on auto attack or slot 2’s -3’s. Like Thieves First strikes only randomly giving ini on auto attacks.