Guild Wars 2

Kobi Beef.3895:

Hi, my thief is about to hit 80 in a couple days and I’m wondering what the recommended armor build for a dual dagger and dual pistol should ideally be. I want damage to be my primary role but I also want to be able to survive dungeons without teammates constantly having to pick me up. I’ve been looking at berserkers and rampage armor and I wonder what experienced thieves consider to deal more damage. I’m also wondering whether its a good idea to plug in some knights or something that gives a greater chance of surviving the big hits.

When I first started running dungeons on my thief I used Knights gear with valkyrie upgrades. I also traited into Acrobatics for an extra dodge. That made the transition from my guardian a lot easier and I still did quite good damage, now I run usually with a full berserker setup.

Personally although I use the shortbow a lot, pure melee D/P, S/P, or S/D is a lot of fun to play as

Dual.8953:

I agree. Would be awsome for venom builds.

Thanks for the support.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

infantrydiv.1620:

4. Dunno what Gun-kata is, but it sounds like dividing the skill could be interesting

Do yourself a huge favor and go watch Equilibrium right now. It’s a little over the top, but quite an amazing movie. The gun-kata stuff we’re talking about is a the style of gun-fighting they use in the movie. It combines martial arts movements with calculated positioning in a fire-fight to inflict max damage on multiple targets while evading most attacks, even at point-blank range.

It’ll change the way you feel about playing p/p thief.

Lol I watched the video SeeBeyond posted. Pretty hilariously over the top xd

I hope you are trolling. Do you even realize how much extra health 50% life force is? And giving that to a skill that already does significant ranged damage on a low cooldown? You must know nothing about this class.

RogueTigeR.3160:

(10.0.30.0.30)

Who am I supposed to be watching who has a similar build? :
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoa6alUmiP3ey3E/5EB3Dmi0m69Asj1saFoJA-T4Ag0CmIKSVkrITRyisFNKYZxGjTBzLeEA

D/p+P/p… Steal spamming and stealth into backstabs…
plz check my build and suggest maybe someone I can talk to/look at to tweak my own build and ask advice.

Thanks for Your Help,
RogueTigeR

If you go 30 into trickery instead of critical strikes on a power based build, you aren’t gonna be able to do anything. Steal isn’t very important on a D/P build because you have shadowshot. If you had 30 in CS your damage would be way, way higher and you could have either hidden killer or executioner trait further boosting it.

Grimwolf.7163:

Heiltdo.2891:

Stealth is killing this class.

Well, specifically, CnD and BP > HS are killing the class.

In some ways I agree, although these mechanics do add a unique feel to the thief. Before these mechanics can be toned down, thief’s other weapon sets and neglected utilities need to be brought up. Only then could we start discussing whether to do things like turn Heartseeker into a whirl finisher or nerf black powder. Sure, D/P thieves are good, but they aren’t enough to warrant a nerf, even in WvW.

SeeBeyond.1486:

[P/P] –
1 .Body shot applies 5s weakness instead of 3s Vulnerability
2. Ricochet either made to be 100% on first bounce, 50% on second, or move it to adept trait.
3. Black powder has a small AOE anyway, have it place the pulsing blind AOE on yourself and any enemy hit by it (might make D/P too strong tho)
4. Change Unload to be 2 staged like FS/LS, first stage is the same as it is now, second is a dancing AOE attack (Gun-kata like) with an evade and does more damage based on how many conditions the target has. Only 1s allotted time after Unload stage 1 is completed to activate stage 2 before it reverts to stage 1 on the bar

I think P/P should look something like this (just not as OP) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2KJHysK6k8

[Signet of Shadow]
Activate: Gain Swiftness for 15s and blind nearby enemies
Passive: Ignore combat speed reduction

[Withdraw] + [ Roll for init]
1. Increase dodge distance (basically reverting a nerf)

[Signet of Agility]
1. Breaks stuns on activation
2. Removes a set 3 conditions on activation
3. Passive increases the length of all evade frames (on abilities) by 1/2s (or 1/4s if that is too OP) instead of precision

1. I like the body shot suggestion, although it would be pretty powerful, and the damage would need to be nerfed.
2. I agree that ricochet isn’t quite as good as it needs to be.
3. I don’t understand what you are trying to say xd a self blind?
4. Dunno what Gun-kata is, but it sounds like dividing the skill could be interesting

I think for Signet of Shadow I prefer it as it is now, just with a stunbreak added due to the weak active ability. Even if it meant a 45 second cooldown I’d take the stunbreak.

I think maybe a good fix for Signet of agility would be: stunbreak, remove cripple, weakness and chill, and give 50% initiative on a 60 sec CD, even though it’s a bit complicated. It would be perfect for disentangling as a burst build, and I don’t see it as OP. Increasing the evade frames on skills would be unfortunately incredibly OP and the tears of QQ would drown us all.

Softspoken.2410:

My major concern is that often, with Mantra of Recovery / Mantra of Pain it’s just annoying to mash the button again and again when you really just want to use all the charges immediately. Now imagine instead of hitting it twice, you’re using spider venom.

The problem is that this makes venoms an easy cleanse… 35 seconds of poison from spider venom? cleansed. 5 different applications over time during the fight would have a real impact and would promote skilled use of the skill, as well as make it actually worth taking in some instances.

jonwar.4186:

This is why venoms are a bit of a problem and underwhelming, you’re giving up much, much better utilities to make any use of them consistently.

I 100% agree.

Thoughts?

If you don’t know what mantras are, because mesmers are too purple, and you don’t like purple, its basically a chargeable spell that gives you 2-3 uses of a certain ability.

So, for example a redone Skale venom might look like this:

90 second cooldown
2 second cast time

after cast, activating the skill again will give you 1 application of the venom on your next attack, causing 3 stacks of torment and 5 stacks of vulnerability

Taking P/P in a dungeon or in wvw when you could be using Shortbow doesn’t make sense. Cluster bomb blast finisher is very good in dungeons as well as in an organized wvw/pvp group. Shortbow has extra mobility and evades, and hits multiple targets.

If you are doing dungeons with an ele, try cluster bombing whenever they drop a fire field on the boss, giving your whole team multiple stacks of might. Or area healing on water fields. Same goes for anywhere else.

Smo.6520:

We have Is, Shadowstep, and shadowtrap as stun breakers. One Signet, one trap, one deception. It’s a pattern. One stun break in each utility category, except for venoms of course. To add a stun break to another signet would have to remove an ability from it to prevent it from being OP. Can you imagine signer of agility breaking stun refilling endurance and curing multiple conditions? Just wow

Haste and Roll for Initiative are both tricks and both are stunbreakers. Shadowtrap is not a stunbreaker, it shadowsteps you to the target, stunned or not. And last I heard Anet is considering adding a cast time to the shadowstep as well.

I do agree that if a stunbreak was added to signet of agility it might make it OP unless there was some balancing done.

It would probably work better with Signet of Shadows because thief already has many mobility options available making the 25% worse than it would be on other classes, as well as the fact that 1 blind isn’t that great of a signet active

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

I feel Signet of Agility should also be made into a stun-breaker, or at least have an additional condition cleanse since it’s one of the few condition removals thieves have that are not tied to the stealth mechanic.

Also… as much as I would love it, you DO NOT want to give me 1200 range on my P/P thief.

I agree that Signet of Agility should have a stunbreak, and I’ll add that to the changes. Although, that should probably raise the cooldown by 15-30 seconds. I also think that a stunbreak would be appropriate on Signet of Shadows since the signet active is very weak.

P/P is a difficult set to know where to begin with. For starters, in PvE, shortbow is by far a better option in my opinion due to the fact that cluster bomb is AoE as well as a blast finisher, which works great with eles and guards in dungeons. P/P #3 is really not that great because it uses a lot of initiative on easily evaded damage which also can be thrown back easily by retaliation. Pistol #2 is ok in PvE, and not worth it in PvP. Then in addition, the autoattack is most often used as a condition based attack. Pistol offhand is good, just for #5 and #4 is useful if you know what to interrupt. P/P also has no mobility which is something that cant be said of any other thief weapon combination. Sure, if you go glass cannon and try to gun down other glass builds with Unload, you will get lucky every once in a while, but the point is that P/P as it stands is the weakest Thief weapon set and needs to be buffed to see competitive play.

wish.1027:

I dont like your threads name, stop copying me unless youre going to post a lot of math.

Ah, I just saw your thread. I’ll change my title.

Anelyn.4593:

“Sword/Pistol has a very high skill floor due to the lack of evades and stealth”.

Usually you have 15s vigor out of 21s (steal with 30 trickery), swiftness, might and fury 10s out of 21s, coupled with IS, PW, Disabling shot on SB and IA (which can be used very good offensively providing you a teleport + aoe blind), with the base evades and Withdraw 15s I think that’s plenty to build on.

Regarding stealth for S/P & SB, my basic slots are Blinding powder, ShadowStep and Shadow Refuge. So I have 2 stealths on demand plus BPs+CB for another aoe stealth (which I can cut short or push to 9s depending on situation). Not counting stealing options.

S/D with SB doesn’t have same staying power / evade frames like double S/D (check Jumper-x), and even then, you are not invulnerable, there are breaks between evade frames when CC / conditions / burst can come in, is really not that hard to land stuff on a S/D if you learn the patterns, but yes is frustrating for spammers / new players to get evaded evaded

Thanks for the input, I use primarily D/P for PvP. I have fought against a few good Pistol whip thieves who were very hard to beat, but in general the weapon set up seems to be used by a small minority. Jumper is really the only thief I’ve ever seen play extremely well with S/D, even though apparently many thieves have success with it.

Smo.6520:

IS is a signet that is a stun breaker. Seems you don’t know that.

Yes, I’m aware. The other three are not.

Deadly Arts

5 Lotus Poison: Weaken targets when you poison them
15 Exposed Weakness: Deal 10% more damage if your target has a condition
25 Serpent’s Touch: Stealing applies poison and torment for 10 seconds

I Back Fighting
II Corrosive Traps: Traps apply 10 stacks of vulnerability (8 seconds) when triggered
III Mug
IV Venomous Strength: When applied, venoms grant 2 stacks of might for 10 seconds
V Potent Poison
VI Quick Venoms: Venoms recharge 20% faster and last an extra strike
VII Improvisation
VIII Sundering Strikes: 66% chance to cause vulnerability on critical hits (1s cooldown)
IX ~Dagger Training
X ~Combined Training
XI Panic Strike: ICD changed to 20 seconds
XII ()

Critical Strikes

Minor Traits
5 Keen Observer
15 Opportunist
25 First Strikes

I Furious Retaliation
II Signets of Power
III Side Strike
IV New Trait Marksman: Pistol range is increased to 1200
V Pistol Mastery
VI ~Practiced Tolerance
VII Ankle Shots Critical hits with a pistol have a 50% chance to cripple foes for 4 secs (10 second CD)
VIII Signet Use
IX ~Combo Critical Chance
X New trait Critical Urgency Gain 2 seconds of quickness when health drops under 25% (60 second CD)
XI Hidden Killer
XII Executioner

Shadow Arts

Minor Traits
5 Last Refuge
15 Meld with Shadows
25 Hidden Assassin

I Master of Deception
II Slowed Pulse
III Shadow Protector: Change regeneration to protection
IV Shadow’s Embrace
V Infusion of Shadow
VI Cloaked in Shadow
VII Power shots: Shortbow and harpoon gun damage is increased by 10%, shortbow range is increased by 100.
VIII Hidden Thief
XI -New Trait- Shadow Venom: Every strike of venom has a 33% chance to blind for 2 seconds
X Patience
XI Shadow’s Rejuvenation
XII Venomous Aura

Acrobatics

Minor Traits
5 Expeditious Dodger
15 Feline Grace
25 Fluid Strikes

I Descent of Shadows
II Power of Inertia
III Vigorous Recovery
IV Assassin’s Retreat: Gain swiftness whenever your health drops below 50%, 10 second cooldown
V Master Trapper
VI Fleet Shadow: This trait is broken and needs to be fixed
VII Fleet of Foot
VIII Pain Response: Add 1 stack of might for every condition removed in addition to regeneration
IX Quick Recovery
X Assassin’s Reward
XI Hard to Catch
XII ()

Trickery

Minor Traits
5 Kleptomaniac
15 Preparedness
25 Lead Attacks

I Merciful Ambush
II Trickster: Moved from Master Tier
III Uncatchable
IV Flanking Strikes
V Thrill of the Crime
VI Long Reach
VII Bountiful Theft
VIII Instinctual Response: Reduce ICD to 30 seconds, moved from Adept tier
XI ~Initial Strike
X Ricochet
XI ~Hastened Replenishment
XII Sleight of Hand

Heal Changes:

Signet of Malice: Increase passive healing by 15%

Utility Changes:

Spider Venom: CD reduced to 30 seconds
Skale Venom: CD reduced to 35 seconds, Vulnerability increased to 5 stacks
Ice Drake Venom: CD reduced to 35 seconds
Devourer Venom: CD reduced to 35 seconds
Needle Trap: CD reduced to 20 seconds
Tripwire: CD reduced to 25 seconds
Signet of Shadows: Add stunbreaker
Infiltrator’s Signet: 2 initiative every 10 seconds

Weapon Changes:

Pistol
Vital Shot: Increase speed by 10%
Body Shot: Vulnerability lasts an extra second
Headshot: Reduce iniative cost to 3

Dagger
Dancing Dagger: Change initiative to 4, add 1 stack of torment for 3 seconds

This list of changes comes from my own personal experience as a thief. I’m open to suggestions and so anything constructive anyone has to say is most welcome.

Currently, I feel that the thief has two viable center weapon sets: Sword/Dagger, and Dagger/Pistol, while Shortbow does provide good utility and situational AoE. Sword/Pistol has a very high skill floor due to the lack of evades and stealth. Pistol/Dagger is decent for condition application, Dagger/Dagger is gimmicky, and Pistol/Pistol is a broken weapon combination (it just doesn’t work).

Thief’s utilities are in a worse place than its weapons: Deceptions and Tricks are the most useful and are in the best place generally. Signets are decent, but lack stunbreaks meaning that they are really most useful for the cheesy instagib basilisk build. Traps (other than shadow trap) hardly ever see use in competitive play due to the fact that they are not stunbreakers, and simply do not give enough for the valuable space they take up. Finally, venoms other than Devourer and Basilisk are incredibly weak in both PvE and PvP.

What my changes aim to do:

-Reduce the amount of ‘trash traits’
-Increase the ability of the thief to stack vulnerability (thereby increasing its ability to set up burst mid-fight, and not just at the beginning)
-Increase thief’s ability to apply condition pressure through the use of torment and poison as well as venom usage
-Bring the Pistol/Pistol weapon set to a better place
-Help the thief’s kiting potential through venoms, traps, and traitable range on pistol and shortbow.
-Give the thief access to strategies that rely on midfight tactics, not on how the fight is initiated

My thoughts on proposed nerfs to D/P and S/D: In its current state, most thieves are absolutely forced to rely on stealth spamming or perma evade to stay alive, and that’s why these weapon sets are chosen. If the thief was changed to making kiting as well as a more upfront style of fighting viable, then nerfs to these weapons would be more acceptable to the thief community.

And finally, my list of changes:

*Traits with ~ in front of them means I do not like them and I want people to suggest changes, both to the boring names, and to their general ineffectiveness
*Some grandmaster traits have been removed, so I also appreciate suggestions for new grandmaster traits.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Black Lion Keys… that would be awesome. They would destroy their Gem-store income through the keys though :-/

(is there actually someone who buys BL-keys from the gemstore? O_o)

If it’s in the gem store, chances are there is some addict out there getting his money taken, yes.

Virtual gambling among minors should be taken more seriously in my opinion. I understand that real money would be motivation for Anet to design cool new armor skins and the like, but do they really need to RNG gate it and make people who already love their game spend so much money to get these skins (such as the rich dragon coffers and aetherblade weapons)? I’ve seen people spend upwards of $50 to get enough claim scraps.

Back on topic, karma vendors need to give out unique skinned gear such as the Jotun greatsword. It would increase the rewards for exploring the map and map doing the heart quests more enjoyable, seeing what new karma skin you unlocked. Right now, all the skins are repeated over and over again and it’s really, really boring.

renss.5764:

so everyone knows we will soon be able to lvl up to 90 or even higher, how will this affect our armor, will lvl 80 remain the highest level for armor? and how about ascended jewelry, will we need to get new, lvl 90 ones of those?

No, everyone does not know that.

And the level cap will not be raised, obviously.

Champion farming will cease as soon as people stop paying ridiculous prices for Genesis, Entropy, and Lord Taeres’ sword. If you look on the trading post you’ll be hard pressed to find non-crafted exotics that are worth over 10g. The drop rates on these hammers are quite common (my guild has gotten over 15 in total while farming champs so far).

Stooperdale.3560:

There is a balance issue coming across from PvP. Players will cure conditions applied to them so conditions are expected not to provide full effect. In PvE the mobs do not use cures and players expect conditions to have full effect, which might make them overpowered. Defiant and the condition limit are still clumsy ways of dealing with the problems.

You have a point that players have access to condition removal and bosses do not. However, a hard cap at 25 on a boss makes bleed and torment both very weak for any group larger than 3 people. I mean, plenty of warriors deal 40k damage on their hundred blades attack in CoF. That’s the equivalent of 100 stacks of bleeds for 3 seconds. If Anet wanted damage conditions to be purely complimentary to vanilla damage, I don’t believe they would design weapons like scepter for necromancer that relies so heavily on condition application.

wintermute.4096:

Olba.5376:

You are right about the damage though. However, I think that your perspective is a big misguided. You look at how conditions fare in open world PvE or organized dungeons and conclude that they’re crap. Well, those are extreme circumstances, not the average setting.

So, how exactly are both open world pve and dungeons/fractals “extreme situations”? What exactly would a normal situation look like then?

Olba.5376:

You also completely ignore the good sides of conditions. Since they’re damage over time, there’s tons of scenarios where conditions deal damage where direct damage fails to do so. For example, a condition build is basically guaranteed to keep dealing damage even if they’re CC’ed. Similarly, condition builds allow for much better kiting due to being damage-over-time.

Nope. Over a longer time period it doesn’t really matter whether your pause applying fresh bleed stacks or you pause doing direct damage; the dps loss will be the same. Unless you assume that the direct damage build would deal it’s damage only from auto attacks while the bleed build only builds from high cooldown, short activation utility skills and doesn’t need to do anything inbetween, but that doesn’t really look realistic to me at least.

On the other hand, there are numerous downsides inherent to condition mechanics (no vulnerability, no bonus from crits, no +x% traits/sigils, worse party buffs etc.) even if you ignore the cap for a moment.

Anet have kept quiet about the issue for so long that it’s probably feasible to assume that at some point they probably went through their options to adress the issue, figured it was not worth the effort and decided to sweep it under the rug as good as possible.

^
My response would be the same as wintermute’s.

Ashen.2907:

I would love to see a system wherein the act of applying a condition to a mob who already has max stacks of that condition causes the character applying the condition to receive a buff of some sort.

It could be the same buff for all conditions, but would be more interesting (IMO) if the buff was different for each condition.

That could be interesting, but I think the idea is too complex for where Anet wants to go with boons/conditions.

Nretep.2564:

There are multiple valid suggestions in the … suggestion section. At least Cpt. Obvious said so.

All you guys said “increase the cap”, “make everyone to deal their own stacks” and “the cap is a bad design”. The cap is not a design choice but a technical. Increasing it is not possible without changes.

And I guess this already answers the topic.

25 stacks is an arbitrary number and therefore it could be increased or decreased if Anet chose to do so. The cap, as well as how weak 25 stacks of bleeding is on a boss, is clearly a design choice. Also the fact that games like WoW handled conditions differently and didn’t penalize condition builds while using less developed technology points to the fact that this is design choice.

Faction.4013:

What they need to do is give each player his / her own individual Bleed & Poison Stack. Just like some other games with their DoT effects.

Take WoW for example: Each Warlock player had their own Corruption, Immolate and Unstable Affliction slot on the boss, as well as other classes. Each Hunter had their own Serpent Sting, etc.

It really is nuts how restrictive it is for a Condition-Based spec. Especially for me, as I’ve put a TON of time and effort to getting my Necromancer geared with Ascended items and whatnot. even moreso when you break down the time needed to do optimal damage in Dungeons and Fractals.

It’ll take about 7-10 seconds to get my Bleeds rolling, I can score 25 stacks in about 10-15 seconds on my own. Imagine what damage a Warrior or even an Engineer can do in that time. THEN you have to take away from your overall damage based on other players and their bleeds: Warriors & Engineers bleed-on-crit, Rangers, Mesmers, etc…So I’d be cut down to maybe 15-18 stacks of bleed, which is pretty terrible damage when you’re decked out in BiS items and the Zerk’ Warrior in your group does over 12.000 damage with Hundred Blades in a fraction of that time.

It’s just insane, frankly. But with Anet, I’m not expecting anything special for quite some time.

The personal slot idea definitely could be a good fix if Anet implemented it properly. And yep, the condition cap is one of the main reasons warriors continue to dominate PvE DPS

Erasculio.2914:

infantrydiv.1620:

Ah ok, that makes sense.

Does anyone actually agree with the condition cap/ think it’s a good thing?

It’s great!

…In sPvP.

I think one of the reasons why the condition cap has not been changed is due to how it would require technical changes to a single aspect of the game. sPvP players are already complaining that conditions are too strong as they are right now; increasing the condition cap there would be a very bad move. Increasing the condition cap in WvW also wouldn’t be a good idea, considering the zergs there would literally melt people with conditions in a second.

We have, then, a situation in which ArenaNet would need to make a somewhat difficult technical change due to PvE only, and nothing else. While I’m sure they are working on it, I think it’s comprehensible that it has not been their priority.

I actually tend to disagree, I don’t see a need for a condition cap in PvP either. If you have 25 stacks of bleeds on you, chances are you are out of condition cleanses and are going to die anyway. In fact, I could probably count the number of times I’ve suffered from a full stack of bleed in pvp on one hand. The current complaint about the PvP meta is how easily engineers and necros can hit people with a number of different conditions, not just bleed or torment.

Again in WvW, I don’t see a need for the cap on conditions. Why put conditions at a disadvantage especially when they already do not deal damage as fast as vanilla attacks.

Hickeroar.9734:

wolfpaq.7354:

Hickeroar.9734:

In a five man group, it’s not really a problem.

Uh, no. In a five man group it’s a huge problem the minute you’ve got more than 1 condition build present. Several builds can maintain 20+ stacks of bleeds indefinitely.

And then there’s the whole condition damage is way less dps than power damage problem.

If you happen to have that sort of group, you’re correct. I’ve rarely seen that kind of thing happen though.

Rampagers gear is great though. Lots of Power/Prec AND Cond. Best of both worlds, if you are skilled enough to not die.

The reason why you rarely see a dungeon group with multiple condi builds is precisely because of the hard cap on conditions, everyone runs vanilla zerker builds so that there is no damage cap

On a ranger I can easily stack 25 bleeds on a golem in PvP without food, meaning that if I was to run this build in a dungeon with other people also running condition builds we would completely cancel each other out.

If anet removed the cap, or made it say, 100 stacks, it would instantly make condition builds far more viable in dungeons.

My guild on SoR opens Balth almost every day, sometimes multiple times.

face palm

Hickeroar.9734:

I think it’s more of a limitation because 50 players hitting a single boss would stack up well over 100 stacks of bleed. Maybe 200. That would kill it outright far faster than the regular damage by all the players.

It’s a gameplay decision. I also don’t agree with it because we should be able to stack as much damage on as we can, but I suppose I understand why they did it.

I don’t believe for a second it’s a “technical” limitation. The smallest of WvW zerg fights have far more conditions flying to far more targets than any 50v1 fight against a world boss. They’re tracking hundreds of stacks of bleeds and other condition in those cases. I hardly think they “technically” can’t handle more than 25 on one mob in PvE.

I know what you mean, but why should vanilla damage based builds be more effective against bosses than condition based builds? It doesn’t make sense

Ah ok, that makes sense.

Does anyone actually agree with the condition cap/ think it’s a good thing?

I’d like to know if anyone has heard Arenanet’s logic for keeping the condition cap of 25 on bosses in PvE, especially for bleed and torment (and possibly vulnerability).

If a group manages to place 35 stacks of bleed on a target in a dungeon, should they be penalized for that by having the damage not count? I do not see the logic behind this, and it really hurts build variety as well as class variety in dungeons. If they removed the bleed cap on dungeons, rampager ranger builds would be able to melt bosses as fast as warriors. If they removed the vulnerability cap, again, it would promote team tactics trying to stack vulnerability as high as possible. I also feel like they should redesign the way bosses interact with CC, such as blind (maybe make blind give the boss a 25% chance to miss its next attack).

What do you guys think about this? I feel like the current system of conditions on bosses is really dumbing down a lot of PvE and causing certain classes to be imbalanced.

I agree OP, Panic Strike should not be a grandmaster trait. It’s a decent trait, but if you look at the thief’s other grandmaster traits they are things which can really define a build, like executioner or hidden killer. I’d like to see Panic Strike moved to X, and have a completely new possibly condition focused trait in the GM tier

Balth currently open on Sanctum of Rall, opened 10 minutes ago

Good ideas, and mainhand torch would be interesting and a perfect fit for ranger actually.

I’d really like to see crossbows introduced and added to ranger and a few other classes.

Personally I’d like to be able to give my ranger a hammer xd but I know that doesn’t really fit haha

The sheer amount of QQ that making pistol #2 a blast finisher would be hard to take.

Pistol stealth attack would be pretty hard to counter as well on condi builds using black powder+ pistol #2 and then stealth shot for 5 stacks of bleeds. (And then doing it again) That’s 10 stacks of bleeds while stealthing and also standing in a blind field. Traited with 2 ini back on stealth you could perform that 3 times in a row most likely, and unlike backstab it would connect most of the time

Although it would make P/P instantly viable, it would almost certainly be seen as overpowered.

Rather than making another spammable blast finisher, it would probably be better to give pistol 2 a new condition, or a high damage effect that only works if the opponent has ‘x’. It might be interesting if pistol 2 did extra damage based off of how many conditions the enemy had (similar to necromancer scepter 3 but more powerful) This would encourage the use of venoms and synergize well with pistol trait that causes cripple as well as torment from p/d #3, as well as black powder.

I’d like to see thieve’s #3 skill for mainhand weapons when not using an offhand be turned into something cool/useful.

Currently the attacks (Stab, Repeater, and Twisting Fangs) are just plain useless. It would be nice to see them either be turned into heavy damage skills or interesting utilities at the expense of not equipping an offhand.

Necromancer and ranger are both nice choices for getting familiar with pvp settings. Ranged classes are typically easier to start with.

I like the suggested Dhuumfire change. Burning doesn’t need to be a part of the necros arsenal, the necro community didn’t ask for it either, and torment is a better fit for an attrition class.

I’ve tried S/D thief before and to be honest, I get totally wrecked with it compared to D/P, or just about any build I run on necro (I main thief/necro).

Jumper certainly plays well with it but unless I’m just not getting it, I’d say the skill cap on S/D is already a lot higher than D/P or D/D. In my opinion the thing about thieves is that if you do get successfully CC chained, you are almost certainly going to be dead by the end. And that’s not the case for other classes which are more survivable.

tangatalaga.5943:

I feel like for now, that’s the sad fact of queuing solo. People dont get reprimanded for akitteng a queue and/or leaving.

And honestly, I think ANet focuses too much on creating worthless maps and invests little to no effort on new game modes.

I just don’t understand why such a common sense provision such as not starting a tournament if all players don’t show is something Anet chooses to completely ignore.

And I agree, I find Skyhammer to be pretty much complete trolling. The underwater map is a complete farce unless they bother balancing underwater combat, such as rangers being completely invulnerable 1v1 due to pet res underwater.

Another funny thing is that game modes such as 1v1, GvG, and other scenarios would automatically help balance the game because currently, trying to defend a point in tpvp means generally having to stay on point and get spammed by conditions. A mode like GvG would encourage people to deviate from the bunker/burst stereotypes and really make use of support trait and abilities

So it’s been my unfortunate experience in the last couple of tournaments that after the 2 minutes waiting period my fifth teammate never arrived, and yet the tournament started anyway.

If the people don’t show up, the tournament shouldnt start. Even the Call of Duty match making system gets that right. Also, the people who join a tourney queue and then don’t bother showing up should be -punished- for doing so if they do it often enough.

And what exactly is the problem with making a simple solo queue only system for tournaments again?

Also, for anyone reading… does anyone have an answer for why Anet won’t give us other match modes like team deathmatch, 1v1 ladder tournaments or GvG? Are they just lazy or do they have an excuse?

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

rager.4963:

Took a break since release, came back to see what is up. Was in the mood for a necro. Use to love them in EQ and other games.. Come to the forum to check out pet builds and stuff.

Holy kittens batman. The aura in this forum makes me want to cry. Is necromacers really that bad?

How bad are pets? I mean I see people saying they are bugged, but they got to be useful for something right? I don’t see them leaving them worthless for this long.

Necromancer is incredibly strong. Don’t listen to most of the nay-saying nancies on the forums. We were severely overbuffed on the dhuumfire patch, and are currently the strongest condition class in the game.

^This. I do not know what these people are smoking. Necromancer is probably the strongest class in the game. They are certainly among the strongest. This forum is full of the most pathetic whiners I’ve seen anywhere…I don’t understand it

I played necromancer primarily before the patch and did fine with it in pvp.

The real problem with necro in my opinion now is not chain fearing or conditions (these are class mechanics that give the necromancer it’s unique appeal) …it’s the fact that it can do these things with a large health pool and amazing condition cleansing and transfers.

If you think about a necro with full life force and 25k HP as well as plague form, consume conditions and staff 4, it’s a huge counter to both condition and power builds (That’s basically the equivalent of a 90k effective health pool I believe). And all these things come at no sacrifice to burst potential.

In addition to that, so many of the necromancer’s abilities are AoE as well as being loaded with conditions as well as being on relatively low cooldowns. This makes necromancers easy to use spam tactics with and win.

S Tier
+ Necromancer

• A Tier
  +Guardian
  +Engineer
  =Mesmer
  -Elementailist

• B Tier
  =Thief
  - Warrior

YES———————-

The reason I enjoy Guild Wars 2 is the combat system. It’s more dynamic and fun than any other MMO I’ve tried and feels like a more skillful version of fast paced hack and slash gameplay. I love the dodge system and how every weapon on every class is unique.

My two most played classes are thief and necromancer, and I consider them polar opposites in terms of gameplay.

Since the major necro buff my experience in t/spvp has been mostly negative and I was thinking what is causing this.

Here’s my list:

-AoE: The availability of AoE on certain classes promotes stagnant, non-tactical gameplay. For example, on my necromancer I can have literally a full bar of AoE skills with staff and wells and plague form. Not only does this mean every skill I have is incredibly easy to aim and connect on, it means I don’t need to worry about moving, camera rotation, or even dodging a large part of the time. AoE continually plays an imbalancing role in spvp, tpvp and wvw.

-Artificial intelligence: If you want to find what builds are easiest to play, look no farther than the ones that rely on AI. The fact is that the incentive for using AI remains too high in pvp and not high enough in pve.

-Defensive mitigation: Aegis, invulnerability and stealth simply aren’t fun to play against and are currently too spammable. On my thief, if I’m losing I can simply run away and no one will catch me with the combination of stealth+ mobility. I’d be willing to trade an increase in survivability or damage for that, and it would be more enjoyable for both me and the person I’m fighting.

-Conditions: Simply put, certain builds have out of control condition application currently. Conditions are a nice mechanic, but in the end I’d like to see them toned down especially on ranged attacks and AoE skills.

-Ranged attacks: I’d personally like to see the pay off for using melee weapons in this game be slightly larger, especially on certain warrior weapons. I’ve always found it far more difficult to stay on a dodging/moving target with a melee weapon than spam ranged attacks and I’m sure most people feel this way

Creating an environment which promotes tactical, well timed gameplay should be of paramount importance to Arenanet if they wish to have a successful tpvp community.

The main problem with p/p in my opinion is that mainhand pistol is kind of a mixed bag. Pistol #2 is just not really worth it in most situations. Pistol #1 is pretty weak compared to say, Necromancer Scepter #1 which both bleeds faster and poisons.

The first thing that would help would be to increase the autoattack speed by 10-20%. Then I’d like to see the trait “Ankle Shots” a 60% chance to cripple for 3 seconds/10 sec CD, buffed to 4 seconds. Pistol #2 is kind of a toss up, it could be used to add burning into the thief’s lineup. It could also have weakness added to it which would make it a lot better. Also, if the vulnerability duration could be increased to 5-6 seconds making it easier to cash in on that by swapping to a melee weapon and hitting for big damage then it might become viable. Unload is a decent damage skill and I don’t really think it needs to be changed. Pistol #4 is probably good, I just have trouble timing it.

In response to your response, I basically agree with this thread. However I think the necro buff showed that Anet’s policy towards necros is going to be “a good offense is the best defense”. That means necros need to expect being focused by enemy teams and trait accordingly with the options they have available.

Other than 1v1, I do not agree that stealth is overpowered. It isn’t great in tPvp since you’ll lose points simply by entering it. It’s also basically useless for pve except as a means of mob/aggro avoidance. And as for 1v1, stealth on thieves is confusing but the classes it is placed on rely on being confusing in the first place. I’m glad anet is willing to make mechanics like this that add a lot of flavor to individual classes.

Necro does have options for defensive mitigation, it’s easy to trait a necro with a huge percent of stability uptime if you so desire. Another point is that the necro’s health pool is huge which means they don’t need as much defensive mitigation. Imagine a bunker guardian with 30k health, it would be impossible to kill. Not to mention that necro’s condition transfering/cleansing is pretty amazing.

All that being said, your proposed changes to necro seem reasonable. A well that had stability and weakness pulsing on a relatively short cool down (kind of an AoE drain ability I’d imagine would be fitting for a lich) would be very cool and could solve some problems.

I would like to see defensive mitigation nerfed on some other classes. I feel like Anet has so far created a game that places more emphasis on defensive play in tournaments than offensive, and that’s just not very fun.