Guild Wars 2

What i really want is a amulet that gives 1050 power 1050 precision 560 toughness 560 ferocity, basically a slightly different marauder amulet. It would be perfect for rangers and engineers.

Also did anyone notice that the wanderer stat combination is different in pvp and pve. In pvp it gives 1050 condition dmg and precision, 560 toughness and expertise, but in pve the stats are power and vitality major and toughness and concentration minor.

There is counterplay, it is called a power outage.

Honestly it seams that every skill that has a animation longer that 3/4 sec gets a evade (almost no revenant skills had evades in the beta).

You can at least interrupt unrelenting assault as he starts to cast it, but surge from the mist is another story tho. Once i got cc’d by it while in plague form (3 stacks of stability that pulse every 3 sec) so idk. Seams balanced according to most revenant posts on the forum.

As a ranger player (with longbow greatsword signet of stone and lightning reflexes) fighting a dh is not a big deal. I do not win every time, some times i get outplayed, other times i have to let him decap my point in order to beat him. But in a team fight, especially with the current amount of particle effects where you cannot see wtf is going on, it is a different story.

If you are on mid in a 3 vs 3 and in the middle of all the mesmer wells elementalist overload effects get snared in a dragon’s maw that you could not see be placed on top of you (that sometimes get a visual bug where the trap disappears before the effect wears off, so you end up trying to move but get kd by a invisible barrier) you get salty.

Dragon hunters on their own are not a issue, it is the sum of the meta that has some op things in it (with needlessly flashy particle effects that can cause an epileptic attack) that make them infuriating to play against. If you go in melee to fight one, refuse to swap to a range option or refuse to move out of a trap you deserve to die.

I have been using them ever since they got in to the game, one of the best runes you can get for characters with 15k base health since they give you enough defensive stats so you can run berzerker amulet and not explode in 2 hits (this is assuming you also run some defensive traits/utilities).

I get what you are saying and would not be offended if the protection got changed to retaliation or ages (3 sec duration). Also note that the rune is bugged and currently gives 25% boon duration instead of 20%.

That 500-0 finish. No one find it strange that almost no non-elite specialized classes were present in the qualifiers? no just me? ok.

On a unrelated note, you too can now be a esport finalist by following 3 easy steps:
1. pick a class that is not warrior or thief
2.slot in the elite specialization
3. follow this easy rotation as demonstrated in this video

Very balanced and fun game arena net good job!

It is a strange situation we are in, some elite specs are a upgrade to the core class without question: herald, tempest, reaper, scraper, chronomancer, daredevil. Thees 6 violate the claim arena net made that the elites are not suppose to be upgrades, because they are just better in every possible way than the core class they belong to.

Druid is strong but what it gives to the ranger does not clash with what the ranger did before. The ranger lacked group support outside of the spirits (most of which are not good), spotter and some group fury and might, and the druid gives them support through healing and some additional cc (not that the core ranger lacked cc). This is a well designed elite spec, one that you do not want to run in every build (i think most ppl run it cos the word elite is slapped to the trait line).

Same for berzerker which is under tuned at the moment. It does not feel like a upgrade but rather a trait line that covers a weakness of the base class which is the obvious and slow high impact skills (earth shaker, back breaker, hundred blades, ect). By going berserk you gain additional attack speed which makes landing those skills easier as well as some more options for cc that further increase your chance to execute those high impact skills.

Same for dragon hunter which might be over tuned. It gives them a good ranged weapon and some heavy cc, all of which the base class lacks.

This is how all elite specialization should be, not the chronomanccer that gets more active defenses (block and a hp/skill reset) when the core class has plenty of those, not the daredevil that gets a extra dodge (gets essentially the pre nerf acrobatics back with a fancy dodge animation, and a staff whose skills resemble the s/p set), not the tempest that gets arcane/water blend 2.0.

Something is very wrong with the balance of the game when almost no one uses non elite specializations. Also change the name to oriented specializations or something along those lines so that people like Bubi do not get confused by what these are suppose to be.

/end rant

Lots of good suggestions here, some are too harsh, but why are some people up in arms against the op?

How about not nerfing the damage of unrelenting assault, but making it give the player 90% reduced incoming damage during the shadowsteping. This way you could still use it to prevent heavy damage but it will have a counter play since you can be cc’d out of it. Same goes for all other weapon skills that make you in to mist, they evade since they have longish animations and it was a bandaid way to make them less clunky. (this seems like a trend for anet, anything that has a cast/animation longer than .5sec gets a evade)

Coalescence of ruin needs to ether get a cd increase or a energy increase, it is simply to rewarding and too spamable.
Also the hammer auto attacks should be a 20% finisher like every other projectile auto attack.

The last thing is surge of the mists. This can be made to hit 1 person multiple times in a single cast, once saw thin thing knockback a rampage warrior (3 stacks of pulsing stability). It is also problematic in pve since this skill alone can destroy a bosses break bar (especially if the boss has a larger hit box). So just make the skill not able to hit 1 person more than 1 time in a single cast, but increase the distance of knockback and the damage per hit (since you can only hit once).
Or make the damage able to hit one enemy multiple times but the knockback can only affect him once (but also increase the knockback distance) .

Cynz.9437:

PvP atm:
- elite or uninstall
- AOE SPAM EVERYWHERE CAN’T SEE ANYTHING
- AOE does more damage than single target spells wth
- CC on CC riding CC
- Dh, rev, scrapper, reaper, druid <- you don’t play one of those? uninstall please
- thieves/wars deleted from pvp
- CAN’T SEE activeTRAPS EFFECTS CUZ LOL VISUAL BUGS

Honestly, apprently balancing went like this for HoT: let’t throw cat on keyboard and see what happens.

We also mustn’t forget:

-Evade frames for EVERY class, you get evade and you and you get some evede. Clunky skill, long animation? Here haz some evade. Also blind and block.

Balance is a cool lad, was suppose to drop in a few month ago but got stunned along the way by a mesmer shield and then chain cc’d by a double gravity well and then got stuck in a dragon’s maw that was invisible for some reason and then got steamroled by a reaper. Now he is traumatized and is crying in the corner chilled by fear, from the reaper ofcourse.

When you have pulsing 3 stacks of stability and STILL get stun locked for ~2 seconds.

Also i recall the devs saying the elite specializations are going to be a sort of subclass that allows classes to fill roles they previously could not, but not be stronger than the core lines. Then why is EVERY necromancer a reaper and EVERY mesmer a chronomancer?!?!?

Also are all the flashy effects necessary? Does the entire kitten screen need to flash when a dragon hunter finishes channeling longbow 5 or when a tempest overloads air??

The game is not fun in this state, everyone has a ton of cc, everyone has evade or blind build in somewhere, some elite specs have a stupid amount of blocks/reflects and the particle effects are so plentiful and in-your-face that a team fight looks like a disco floor.

Why is this stat combination different in pvp and pve?

In pvp wanderer amulet gives condition damage and precision major, toughness and expertise minor. But in pve it is power and vitality major, toughness and concentration minor.

It looks like there is a stat type missing in pvp (the pve version of wanderer) and in pve (the pvp version of wanderer).

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Juvenile_Lynx

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Juvenile_Wolf

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Juvenile_Owl

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Juvenile_Hawk

Thees 4 are the absolute best pets in any game mode really.
Lynx is one of the best and most reliable damage pets we have (the tool tips on the wiki are outdated rending pounce and maul deal over 3k bleeding damage in-game and so doses lacerating slash).

The owl has the most burst on its f2 and it has the best synergy with taunt (since birds will try to get in range before firing off the f2 skill, meaning the taunt will mostly always connect)

Same goes for the hawk, it deals less burst but has some good damage over time (not nearly as good as the lynx), but its f2 is the best with go for the eyes and withering strike because of the 4 sec cooldown.

The woolf has good cc abilities, although with a long cooldown.

Now from the new pets the smoke scale and the tiger are quite good (especially if they synergise with your build) but i find that they are not as amazing as ppl claim. The tiger lack the bleeding pressure of lynx and the radius of fury is small so it can often miss you, the smoke scale looses most of its damage if you fight more than 1 person (so in a full on team fight smoke assault barely does anything).
The bristle back is also quite good but has a totally useless f2 that never hits if the target moves at all of ether one is on a different elevation from the other.

The stat goal you set in unreasonable, there is no way to get 2.600 power withe the other requirements.

That said i mustered the closest stat line i could, but i had to use signet of agility (the base crit chance is 40.57% the keen observer trait is bumping it up to 45%)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVl0MhSnYhTw7Jw/EL7Em3UIKcF2CA1m20cC8BeBB-TVDFABKpMhRVVuf/BsUCCwJAoQVKQSpgTKJSTfABPBgEVDYhDBQVKhCAgAcz2sNvZgzbezbezbeu5Nv5Nv5NDA-w

You have permanent fury which also boosts critical damage (+250 ferocity which equates to +16% crit dmg), have some condition removal and good weakness application from sword auto attacks and w. strikes.

My suggestion is to drop the scrapper rune in favor of rune of durability (+175 power +125 toughness +20% boon duration 25% chance when struck to get 3 sec of regen and protection and 1 sec of resistance) for more raw stats and a better rune bonus since you already get a 10% dmg reduction from unhindered combatant (if you do this then you can drop some vitality and toughness from gear for more power).

EDIT: oh i just re-red your post and ye with food you can easily reach the stat goal:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVl0MhSnYhTw7Jw/EL7Em3UIKcF2CA1m20cC8BeBB-TVDFABKpMhRVVuf/BsUCCwJAoQVKQSpgTKJSTfABPBgEVDYhDBQVKhCAgAcz2sNvZgzbezbezbeu5Nv5Nv5NLFQKDtA-w

I am confident you can do some more stat swapping to get 40% crit without agility signet but i do not have the time to tinker with the build more now (especially if you use rune of durability since it gives more stats).

Found some more bugs with fern hound pet and its f2 interaction with the trait natural healing and healing power stat.

First off the tool tip for this pets f2 tooltip is incorrect, big shocker i know, it states that it heals for 1.000 and applies 10 seconds of regeneration that heals for 1.300 (so that would be a 130 heal per tick).
In actuality it applies 10 seconds of regeneration twice and the bonus healing power the pet gets from the natural healing trait (+450 healing power to pets and 125 hp/sec regen on it) does not effect the regeneration of its f2 (the tool tip updates to reflect the added healing power but the actual skill does not) it does boost the up front heal (goes from 1.000 to 1.450).

But wait, there’s more!!!
The regeneration this pet puts out scales of your healing power. With clerics amulet on the regeneration goes from 130 hp per tick to 280.

Wait there is even more!!!
If you slot a rune that has boon duration on it the regeneration on this pets f2 last longer (tested with rune of sanctuary the regen lasted 21 sec and with rune of durability 25 sec [also the rune of durability gives 25% boon duration instead of 20% so there another bug for you]).

How do you manage to code in such a mess???

TLDR: The natural healing trait is bugged and the healing power it gives to the fern hound doesn’t effect the regeneration the f2 skill puts out. The regeneration from the pet last twice as long as tool tips claims and it scales from the players healing power and benefits from the players boon duration.

Elorna.5329:

From my testing leopard is actually a bit slower than lynx, cause the extra bleeds go a long way. Especially now that cats have 1000 cond damage.

Actually the bonus condition damage pets got from the patch is bugged and only effects the number shown in the tooltips not the actual skills.

For example the lynx rending pounce and maul tooltips state that 4 stacks of bleeds are applied for 10 sec doing 5.200 damage (520 dmg per tick), but they actually do 3.280 damage (so 328 dmg per tick).

Similar thing with the hawk can’t remember the exact numbers since i am not ingame but it should deal 225 dmg per tick, the actual number is ~130 dmg per tick.

This is a big issue that has gone unfixed for 4(?) months.

On the rending pounce and maul tooltip it states that 4 stacks of bleeds are applied for 10 sec doing 5.200 damage (520 dmg per tick), but after testing on the indestructible golem it turns out that they actually do 3.280 damage (so 328 dmg per tick).

This bug is probably caused by the increased condition damage pets received, the pet condition damage got increased but only on the tooltip not the actual skills (at least for the lynx not tested any other pets).

The particle effects really got out of hand with hot. Half the time in pvp i cannot tell wtf is going on from all the skill effects and if i turn on effect lod it straight up prevents some skills from being visible.
Do some of the new skills really have to have such flashy effects? Is it really necessary for the mesmer wells to flash every time they pulls, do the dragon hunter traps really have to have the blue light when they are set on the ground, does dragon’s maw have to take up the entire kitten screen?? Also i noticed that when ever a herald uses a elite skill my fps drops down by alot for a sec, granted my pc is nothing special but still are the wind particles and the crystal tainted ground after the skill is cast really necessary?

And like i said if effect lod is turned it removes some of the skill effects entirely which makes things slightly less hectic, but still leaves a lot of needlessly flashy effects on, and not to mention you can’t tell if you are stood in a ongoing skill such as a well or a field half the time cos they are invisible. Oh you are trying to create some distance from that dragon hunter are you? Well too bad cos you are actually stood inside a dragon’s maw but it is invisible.

This may be a even bigger issue in raids since they are 10 man instances where everyone is nearby to eachother, so the skill effects may end up covering important boss/mob animations.

That moment when you realize power necro is still strongest while in down state.

That moment when you get to cosplay as a golf ball for the enemy guardians with hammers (banish).

That moment when all of your minions die instantly because a engineer threw a elixir x at you.

That moment when the enemy thief died from a heart attack after 2 min of stabbing you (and not noticing you had retaliation).

That moment when you rescue 2 team mates by using transfusion on the roof of clock tower in khylo.

That moment when you rage quit because your flesh worm/ necrotic traversal failed to work and you ended up blinking in place and getting your face beaten in.

Necromancer is a fun class.

I don’t think it needs any changes but if it is going to get nerfed they will do it in all modes. In that case the most fair way to do it would be to make it work exactly like Fortifying Bond where you do not copy the actual duration of the boons but get a preset duration. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fortifying_Bond

Also depending on how difficult the hot pve is gona be nature magic may not be all that bad to spec in to. You can take bountiful hunter for some flat dmg and nature’s vengeance with frost spirit and storm spirit for a pary wide dmg buff and vunrebility application.

Beastly warden is also bugged and when you use f2 the taunt goes of but actual skill does not, so you have to spam the button multiple times to get the skill to work. This is the exact same issue as go for the eyes, why has it been fixed but not b.warden?

New pach new melee build, this one focuses on generating boons while in combat and sherdding everything that is not the same color as your team.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBMhF6kSFolFsfFwWQgrFMwIU+nX6n+/ElQLzh73GAnsklJB-TpRGwAAOBAIOEAHOCAt2fwwDAAaZAA

OK so the main source of dmg is the sword aa and the panther with 15-25 might on both of you. Start a fight with a spider out by using warhorn 5, enter combat, swap pets and use the heal skill, pres f2, the start shredding.

Conditions are a issue so use sor wisely (swap pets immediately after so it does not die), also use the spider with ‘protest me’ in dire situation since it has a good hp pool and against mobile opponents to root them.

You should play a role of a decaper since you got lots of mobility with swords and quick draw, but in team fights you are more or less a brawler depending on how good you are with evades. At your disposal is lots of consistent dmg, ok burst with great sword and lots of mobility.

Skills that are worth shortening cd with quick draw are warhon 5 for more boons, sword 3 for evading or 2 for running/chasing, gsword 3 for the same reason, and 4 for some cc. Special mention is warhorn 4 against thieves or mesmers since you can put it on them and ‘track’ them while they are in stealth.

Also consider swapping spotter for strider’s defense if up against a heavy ranged team.

On the achievement board i can see myself in bold letters on top of the board, but not on the pvp section. When i go to the pvp leaderboards to check my ranking i seem to be invisible on it.

Is this the same for everyone, or is my account somehow bugged? I am not new to the game or anything (got gw2 shortly after it’s launch and gw1 before that) but i never bothered to look at my ranking before today and i can’t find myself.

nagymbear.5280:

We will not have perma protection from guard alone, I’m sure there will be some balancing done to it to avoid that.

I think the boon share will work like Fortifying Bond, so when you use heal as one you will not get the duration of the boons that the pet has (and vice versa) but a set duration for each boon which is then augmented by duration.

I can totally see protection being 3 sec, infact it would not be surprising if the new hao has the exact same boon duration for shared boons as Fortifying Bond.

Now that balance changes are coming in please buff up great sword auto attack chain damage a tad, i know the weapon is mostly about defense but still the aa damage is abysmal. Reduce the evade frames on power stab by half if that is the trade but don’t leave it like it is now.

Also changing the sword auto attack chain so that it doesn’t disable the character from using movement keys would be wonderful. There is a reason everyone turns off auto skill casting for the sword aa, because it gets you murdered and if the new hot challenging content is as hard as Colin is making it up to be no one is gona use sword there because of the aa.

Thees are things that have been asked for a long time from most ranger players who post on the forums, so please adjust them, prettyplz.

Since the d/p meta build with a million passives and draula runes is boring as all hell, i started messing around with other sets and came up with a decently strong build so here it is.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVl0MhSnYvTw4Jw/EH7ElfK2irgfCbQJsDgarNB-TZBFABiXGQm9HI4JAswhAAgTAAA

You do not play it like the standard evade setup but rather go for the tactical strike daze as often as possible, hence why you take shadow arts (and also cos ascro is trash).

The bulk of your damage comes from c&d and auto attacks with haste, flanking strike should be used mainly as a evade and not spammed. Larencious strike is often not worth it unless you want to remove protection, c&d and just autoing will do more damage.
The main thing you need to keep in mind is that you do the most dmg at the start of the fight while your foe is above 50% so this is when you what to use haste.

The neet thing about this setup is that you can actually be somewhat of a bruzer and go toe to toe with annoying meta bs like burn guardians (since you got allot condy clears and condy resistance) and even tho you do not have stability you do just fine vs heavy cc spam too, with 3 stun breakers access to lots of evade skills and a 14 sec heal.

foste.3098:

I propose a location change and rework for some traits in shadow arts line to better synergise with weapons and improve survivability.

Firstly make Shadow’s Embrace the adept minor and Merciful Ambush a adept major. Reason for this is ma is situational and does not benefit you if you are alone (wvw) and se is mandatory and always picked if you go in to shadow arts (this same logic was used to make reaper’s might the adept minor in spite for necromancers and Elemental Attunement a master minor for eles).

Secondly take away the 20% venom recharge from venomous aura and put it in leeching venoms (give venomous aura another functionality apart from sharing). Reason for this is if you run 2 venoms (basilisk and devourer) you might want the reduced recharge, but as it stands it is attached to a trait that is team oriented, so if you are solo (wvw, or spend most of a pvp mach decaping) you have to pick half a trait.

Thirdly merge Cloaked in Shadow with ether the master or grand master minor but reduce its effectiveness. Make it blind on entering stealth (rather than on gaining stealth), reduce the radius to ~140(melee range), make the blind last 3 sec down from 5 and make the max number of targets 3 in stead of 5.
Reason is this trait also follows the reaper’s might logic in that makes d/d and s/d viable (not the flanking strike spaming plays style, but the tactical strike one), and for those sets it is too mandatory.
This would also mean that a new grand master major is needed to fill the empty slot, perhaps something like: blinds you apply can stack up to 3 times. idk get creative

Any thoughts on the suggestions are welcome.

This are some ideas i posted about rebalancing sa about a month ago. Naturally like most my posts it disappeared in to oblivion within hours.

What bothers me here is not that they butchered acrobatics only to re implement it back as a elite spec, but that in doing so they render shadow arts and acrobatics pointless.
Who is going to spec to shadow arts which is underwhelming or acrobatics which is complete kitten, when you can get much more with daredevil.

They needed to make sa and acro not terabad to justify basically giving us a pre nerf line as our elite.

Also is anyone bothered by the fact that the staff looks a lot like s/p. Lets break them down:
the aa on both sets cleaves for 3, both sets have access to weakness, blind, a cc on the stealth skill they both have a channel skill that deals solid dmg (pistol whip vs weakening charge).
So instead of making the weak and useless weapon sets viable, which by the way as of now is everything but d/p, they just made an alternative s/p set…. ingenious design.

p.s.
an alternative but slightly different version of a weapon set we already have is not a bad thing but if AND ONLY IF our other set is good already, not when we have only 1 set viable. We do not need functional copies of broken sets, we need our broken sets made good.

I propose a location change and rework for some traits in shadow arts line to better synergise with weapons and improve survivability.

Firstly make Shadow’s Embrace the adept minor and Merciful Ambush a adept major. Reason for this is ma is situational and does not benefit you if you are alone (wvw) and se is mandatory and always picked if you go in to shadow arts (this same logic was used to make reaper’s might the adept minor in spite for necromancers and Elemental Attunement a master minor for eles).

Secondly take away the 20% venom recharge from venomous aura and put it in leeching venoms (give venomous aura another functionality apart from sharing). Reason for this is if you run 2 venoms (basilisk and devourer) you might want the reduced recharge, but as it stands it is attached to a trait that is team oriented, so if you are solo (wvw, or spend most of a pvp mach decaping) you have to pick half a trait.

Thirdly merge Cloaked in Shadow with ether the master or grand master minor but reduce its effectiveness. Make it blind on entering stealth (rather than on gaining stealth), reduce the radius to ~140(melee range), make the blind last 3 sec down from 5 and make the max number of targets 3 in stead of 5.
Reason is this trait also follows the reaper’s might logic in that makes d/d and s/d viable (not the flanking strike spaming plays style, but the tactical strike one), and for those sets it is too mandatory.
This would also mean that a new grand master major is needed to fill the empty slot, perhaps something like: blinds you apply can stack up to 3 times. idk get creative

Any thoughts on the suggestions are welcome.

Seeing all those mini dragons whirling around made me realize how cool would it be if rangers had snakes for pets.

Snakes type pets could be classified as reptiles and for stat they could be a cross between birds and canines, high precision good power, low vitality and maybe high tougness.

Their basic attack should be very fast and deal moderate dmg (lower than birds), the second skill could be a low cd moderate dmg attack that applies poison, and the third skill could be a evade of some sort maybe functioning like serpent’s strike.

The f2 abilities could simply apply conditions like torment or slow, or they could be more interesting like say an attack where the snake coils itself around the target and pulses immobilize for a few sec (functionally the same as entangle but single target).

This skill seems way outdated, clunky and buggy the way it is now so a slight rework is in order.

First of it prevents capture point contribution while in use, endure pain has the same effect so is protect me so much stronger that it absolutely needs this? No it is a relic from the early days of gw2, get rid of it.

Second the pet damage absorption is canceled when you swap pets, which is fine, but it also cancels if you command your pet to attack or use a f2 skill, or if you use sick’em or guard. This makes it way to clunky and easy to cancel the damage absorption by accident, so why not make it so it cancels only on pet swap and also make your pet act normally while the skill is active – it can fight and use f2.

And lastly most pets apart from bears die to quickly in pvp with this skill, so to make it not murder your pet when yo use it give the pet 50% reduced damage taken from the damage it absorbs for you.
Also maybe change it so that condition dmg you would take while protect me is up is also absorbed by the pet with 50% damage reduction?

2/10 here i made a few adjustments to your build, now you have good survivability against both power and condi builds and you can stand on a point and contest it if need be and are not restricted to just pew pew glass canon that will die in 1 sec if a thief, mesmer, or guardian ports on you.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-Jo-F7;1FFx-d2cDF-0;9V-E;1Y_b;0238147036;4INl6J;1TsW6TsW65p

Quickening zephyr is unnecessary if you have lead the wind traited, you already attack plenty fast, and rune of the scholar is one of the worst choices for pvp. Meandru is a personal choice since it is good vs burn spam and it helps to not get stun locked vs rampage but any power rune other than scholar will work.

I am talking about conditions in general on any build geared towards condi dmg, they are too potent.

There is no fun in fighting someone who has high defensive stats that can run circles on a point and spam conditions that ignore all your defenses, it is just NOT fun to play against. conditions builds are the most passive way to play and are frustrating to play against.

The not fun’nes is even more pronounced in wvw with dire gear and no drawback to siting in stealth while the world bleeds.

NOT FUN!!

Here is an idea: revert back feline grace to what it was before patch, done thieves are now more survivable.
But seriously acrobatics and shadow arts are weak defensive lines that need buffs.

Feline grace is okish, but i do not like how most of the traits are tailored to s/d, it is just stupid. Maybe change some of them to grand their effects on avoiding dmg with blind as well as the current on evade trigger -feline grace: gain vigor when you evade an attack or when a foe you blinded misses you-
This way the line would have more synergy with other sets feline g snd upper hand would be perfect candidates for this change.
Also buff endless stamina to make vigor give 100% regen. At this moment you can get more endurance by just auto attacking with dagger.

In shadow arts change the master minor trait to also extend stealth that you get through combos by 1 sec, since this trait dose nothing if you are using d/p. Also make cloaked in shadows a minor trait and give it a icd, reason for this is the same as mesmers getting illusionary persona baseline, it is to mandatory for many builds.

Fistandanthilus.6824:

It is simply too overpowered
It is the simplest build to play for Thief, no skill needed due to the stupid RANDOM sigil proc and PASIVE trait (panic strike) proc.

Yea true i agree but none of this has anything to do with the actual d/p set. The fire/air sigil burst can be applied to any set on any build on any class and they are as stupid on any other class as they are on thief.

I am scared that anet will read the d/p op posts and nerf the wrong things aka the weapons themselves (that do not need nerfs) rather than the actual culprits that are fire and air.

Panic strike is annoying as hell but every class has passive traits that are powerful, so if anet nerfs thief’s passive annoying trait it is only fair that they do that on every class right? Not gona happen, incendiary powder is still in the game and actually stronger than before, so is reaper’s protection, shared anguish, ect.

I noticed that the backstab tooltip shows lower damage numbers in spvp compared to wvw with the same power. Is this a tooltip bug or is the damage split between pvp and pve/wvw?

edit: in fact all dagger skills do less dmg in spvp compared to pve/wvw, what is up with that i thought the last pach was suppose to remove skill splitting between game modes. Dagger skills in pvp seem to be lacking the 5% dmg bonus to daggers that went from a trait to baseline.

So after testing lots of different setups this build ended as the most promising one yet, so here is it:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-34-_;1kHFH0n33KkJ0;9;478A;0136157147;4Wwl3L;1F-03F-03T0G

The idea is to have good damage mitigation through lots (and i mean LOTS) of armor, while still dishing out respectable damage and giving the enemy team a hard time dealing dmg by spreading weakness.
The damage part is achieved through death shroud as you have 80% crit chance in it or more depending on how much conditions the other guy has on him.

The builds biggest weak spot is lack of healing outside of the actual heal skill so you have to use it often whenever it is off cd, and poor dmg outside of ds.

Note: in to the mists is still buggy and does not display the proper power values with deadly strenght which is 2.229 and 2.408 in ds.
Also traited corrosive poison cloud has a cd of 20 sec with 12 sec duration and a 1/2 cast time, the site is shoving a older version of the skill.

I dislike this trait line allot, but it is so mandatory for power builds. The reason for spiting spite is every single trait is conditioned by the hp of your target. This means that if you are fighting something like a guardian or a elementalist that can burst heal often or a mesmer or thief that can evade and mitigate your slow attacks, you get in situations where the entire trait line never does anything for you (minus the adept minor).

Why is this set up like so? i know spite has really good and traits that you can easily notice when they are on, but still do we need a whole line that can be made to never actually do anything.

Maybe swap path of of corruption with chill of death or something like that to have less hp based traits in one line?

bdw i am referring to the common power traits in spite: close to death, chill of death, the new spiteful renewal (that is a horrible trait), and the new minors siphoned power and death’s embrace.

Or you can go with cavalier. Pick curses blood magic and soul reaping with pack runes.
When you enter shround you have 80% crit chance and ok fury uptime, so you can do good dmg and not explode when a mesmer or a thief jump you. Also the weakness up time is wonderful and plague is good since you can blind spam a rampage warrior or a lich and never get hit.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-34-_;1kHFJ0F4wJkJ0;9;479A;0146246147;4U3m3L;1F-03F-03T0s

Agree on everything the op said. Only thing i would like to add is maybe give power block the mug treatment and make it unable to crit, since it does so much already, in order to reduce the ridiculous burst (although power block may not be the culprit in the instagib shater burst).

Also i know balance is done around pvp but the condi mesmer in wvw (i am starting a petition to rename the mesmer to ‘cancer-mancer’ if they pick pu) is stupid strong, even on my necromancer i have a really hard time beating one.

1. The buffs the class got made it a lot easier to play due to the shear power it now has, so you can mess up rotations and still end up wining but this is also true for most other classes so not a big deal.

2. Power block, because it was one of my favorite skills in gw1.

3. PU is not a fun trait now, it makes fighting mesmers frustrating since they have insane burst, and when they can stealth for 10 sec it becomes a stupid guessing game of when to dodge their 15k shatter combo and if you misjudge you die. This is even worse if the mesmer is running a condition build where he can load you with cancer and just sit in stealth until you melt, again not a fun encounter.

4. Yes it is fun to play, but again if you are on the receiving end it feels not fun and frustrating and cheezy, especially if you are on a class with little to no stability (like that even helps seeing how they can trait to remove boons on shatter). The issue is power block with confounding suggestions, a instant non telegraphed stun that can deal high damage and puts weakness and lengthens a skill cd is to strong. Maybe change confounding suggestions to only stun if you interrupt a skill with a daze, this way a mesmer can’t just spam mod every 5 sec to stun lock.

5. All lines are good, inspiration is strong for sustain and condi clears and chaos is good to if you are a condi mesmer or if you want your interrupts to be even more op.

6. They are fun but i prefer the standard recharge traits

7. No, it will never be arcane echo!! On a more serious note you rarely ever need 2 of the same utility, it would be much better if you could copy healing and elite skills but at a lower potency, say a mimicd heal only heals for 40% or a mimicd elite has shorter duration.

8. No, why would i ever need any of those when i can simply moa someone and then instagib him, or take a traited 10 sec invis.

9. No ,and this is important, when playing a power shatter mesmer with stealth or a power cc shatter mesmer with power lock if i am up agains another zerker class if i get a drop on it he dies, if not i cc spam with mod and power lock until he dies. Even bunker classes die in 1 or 2 shatters.
Mesmer feels over buffed, dealing too much damage and having way to strong instant cast abilities. In fact when on my mesmer i feel like i am playing quake.

Can we get an option to toggle the ground targeting of thees skills? There are wells like well of power and darkness and consecrations such as purging flames and hallowed ground that you want to cast at your location, and having to aim them on you can be clunky in the heat of aoe spam.

The ground target toggle can work like the auto casting aa chain on weapon skills where you would ctrl+rclick the skills to toggle the targeting for individual wells/consecrations.

I am loving the bm changes, have been playing a curses/blood magic/soul reaping sustain power build with wells. The curse line, after all the concern with it being useless outside of condi builds, ended up good since it offers lots of utility and the gm minor lets me forgo some precision for toughness.

Death could use some more improvements, for example the master minor trait is horrible, and unholy sanctuary is not appealing for sustain with blood being as good as it is.
But i am trying a spite/death magic/soul reaping power build with axe/warhorn and staff and it works ok but not as good as the other build. Basically use the fast attacks on axe and locust swarm to quickly build up corrupter’s fervor, with protection and putrid defense face tank while spamming lifeblasts.

My biggest issue with necro now is we still loose our signet passive effects while in death shroud. If they can make siphoning work in ds i imagine they can make signets stay active too. There are so many good signet builds but i really feel bad for running any of them because i lose my passives (2 or 3 slot skills).

Also who ever did the art for the trait lines and the small icons deserves a gold star, the putrid defense and foot in the grave icons are hilarious.

This is a build i am still testing and it seems to be ok so far, so i figured why not pin it up here. It is a wvw roaming build, but it is best with a thief or a mesmer friend for the long stealth to make escapes way easier.

the build

The idea is that you do not need much precision since you have target the weak and fury from curses and the rune (and your roming buddy), so you can take tougnes instead. The passive sustain comes from siphons, blood bond and good weakness uptime as well as protection. You also have perma swiftness thanks to warhorn and it’s trait.
Plague sending somewhat makes up for the lack of consume conditions, and well of power has a ehem ‘’hidden feature’’ where if it hits you (or any allies) with its first pulse you get the entire duration of the well effect regardless if you stay in it so you are not confined to staying in one spot as much.
You can swap wod for wos for more damage if you want, helps with faster camp clears.

Keep in mind that the website is not fully up to date and does not show things like the traited warhorn effects and the dmg numbers on skills are way off.

When you get cc’d this trait does not break it instantly like shared anguish or last stand do (when those 2 traits break a cc you never notice that it was on you), what happens is hard to catch takes 1/4 sec to break the cc (maybe less but it is still noticeable) and this mini cc stops whatever you are doing be it moving or activating a skill.

The trait also gives you 10 sec swiftness on cc.

I did my testings on svanir in heart of the mists.

The minor traits in acrobatics went from very strong (borderline op) to complete and utter trash.

The adept level minor trait is unchanged and is as good as beforehand, useful in giving you extra swiftness to stick to your target. However the other minor impact the effectiveness of this trait, making it less useful as you have less dodges overall and thus less swiftness from this trait.

Feline grace was the reason to go in to acrobatics before patch, giving players free dodges and promoting spamming with little thought. I agree that it had to be changed but what anet did to this is taking a industrial chainsaw and dismembering it.

This trait with its 1 sec icd is heavily tailored to s/d, since it is the weapon set with the most spamable and reliable evade (also shortbow), but s/p d/d get the short end of the stick as their evade skills have a longer animation or a shorter evade time and are not meant to be spamed like flanking strike is.
(side note: you change a trait because it promotes evade spaming, but then tailor the new trait to a skill and make it so that now to get the most out of the new trait you evade spam via said skill?)
Also the vigor you get is so short that you barely notice its effects even tho you have improved vigor.

Endless stamina this trait does not make up for the feline grace massacre, or rather it would have if vigor did not get nerfed by 50% (with the new vigor and this trait you have a whooping 75% endurance regen with vigor on you).
So my suggestion to remedy this is make endless stamina increase vigor effectiveness by 200% (then vigor will increase endurance regeneration by 150%), BUT make it affect only vigor you give to yourself and not any you get from outside sources.

TLDR: lots of thief builds rely on evasion to stay alive and sustain themselves and the new versions of acrobatics minor traits with the vigor nerf just do not do much to help you with that, they need to bee looked at and adjusted.

Also english is not my native language so forgive any horid grammar mistakes

Is there any build editor that is fully up to date with all the changes or will be soon after the pach drops?

Right now in to the mists has the new trait setup but the stats on gear are still not updated.

We need jewels back, putting all the stats in 1 place is a terrible idea.

What if i want some toughness on my thief, i can take the marauder amulet, but then what? Runes are taken primarily for the effect and then stats, and what if i end up with more precision than i need? There is no way to change some of the stats i have too much of in to something i do not.

PLZ give us jewels back make the amulet/jewel stat split 80/20 or 85/15 plz do not make pvp build crafting even more brain dead than it already is!

I think it may work the way empower/spotter work, as in give you and nearby allies a buff while in combat that lets them siphon life. If it works this way then multiple sources of it will not stack, and i am guessing that the most powerful one will be in effect (lets say there are 3 necros with the trait, but one has more healing power and power that the other two – his trait will be the one active for everyone in range)

But this is all a guess, with arena net’s track record with bugs chances are that actually nothing works and we actually heal enemies with each hit

I think that in one of the previous livestreams they mentioned that the base initiative regeneration is going to get buffed? It was the stream that lasted for 4 hours, the one where they first showed all the trait changes.

After taking a look at the notes it looks like opportunist and quick recovery are gone and we get upper hand, that by the looks of it is suppose to replace opportunist and if that is the case why not make it a minor trait?

The way the trait is set up to be makes no sense. You get fury when fighting someone who is below 50% but then your gm minor turns off?? what?? And on top of that it is 10% critical damage not just plain damage like all other damage buffer traits traits.

I hope they take another look at this because this is a really poor minor, and it is in the same line as another poor minor – keen observer.

Why not just make it give you a flat 10% critical dmg buff, just by being a critical dmg modifier rather than a plain dmg one makes it weaker so no need for stupid triggers like when someone is above 50%.

I can see it, a 5 man downstate necro team all with spite/blood magic/soul reaping all full glass. You send 3 mid 2 home, go down on points and never bleed out, never rez up just suck the souls of any who dare to get near.

The meta is changing at an alarming rate