I dont think Thief is in a bad spot, just some minor tweaks would be nice.
Buffs:
Traps should be buffed, behave more like Ranger traps and perhaps traitable to transfer conditions.
Death Blossom needs a minor rework.
Venom based builds could use a slight buff (personally I think Venomous Aura trait should give venom activation 900 range ground targeting, letting you shadowstep to where you want to share).
Traits should be added/tweaked to increase the power viability and utility of Pistol/Pistol set.
Nerfs:
Slightly less access to blind (maybe remove the projectile on Black Powder, or make it cause vulnerability, possibly give Cloaked in Shadow a CD)
Shave down Feline Grace trait and vigor access slightly.
Equalize CnD damage between sPvP and PvE (buff it in sPvP slightly and nerf it slightly in PVE)
Consider changing Infiltrator’s Strike to a cripple instead of immobilize.
That’s definitely a bad trait, but there are plenty of horrible minor traits in the game.
Like Instinctual Bond for Ranger (remember how nice the original trait was?) or Last Refuge for Thief (tends to kill Thieves almost as much as it does saving them)
I think a bard could be a fun class. However like other classes they’d need to be able to access the standard weapon pool in some away (probably similar to Mesmer, accessing something like sword,focus, maybe shield, shortbow).
For the class mechanic you could have a song book that lists simple melodies (think Ocarina of Time type stuff), and actually trigger songs manually by playing your F1-F4, depending on what intrument kit you have swapped in (with just a weapon you maybe you could whistle).
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If you want to kill PD Thieves there are plenty of builds that counter it.
Skullcrack on Warrior with the projectile reflect trait
PU Scepter Mesmer, move 20pt in domination to inspiration and time the scepter block on every sneak attack = dead pd thief
Terrormancers can flip the conditions back onto the Thief.
D/P Permastealth Thieves can shed conditions endlessly plus blind the CnD
D/D Eles have plenty of tools to deny CnD and shed conditions (offhand focus works well too)
Toolkit Engies also have CnD denial and aoe.
LB Rangers should be able to counter easily enough after they get buffed.
PD Thieves are incredibly predictable and lower on the cheese scale than some other builds you see if you ask me (Im looking at you PU Mesmer). People just dont factor in the threat they pose into their own builds/strategies for whatever reason, probably because the garden variety backstab Thief is a lot more common.
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THIS VIDEO IS FOR ALL OF YOU
P.S. I barely play warrior, It is an easier class to do well with, no dispute there but once you actually reach a certain skill level you don’t fall for eviscerate and learn 2 dodge. One day you guys will get there
Round 1: Warrior keeps running away from pet and spends little time attacking. Evades while Endure Pain is up. :I
Round 2: Same thing as Warrior in Round 1 but instead keeps waiting for eviscerate to become available and barely does anything else until then.
Round 3 and 4: The Warrior did better than the first 2. However, she pretty much autoattacked until she hit 50% and THEN started using the rest of her attacks. She also might have been better off with Healing Surge instead of signet. Then in the second one she kept hitting him while block was up and paid for it. She also din’t evade the bigger hits very well. It might have been a first for her fighting a ranger that wasn’t using Bearbow.
Round 5: That warrior was burning attacks and evades that he should have used on the Ranger. But otherwise better than the first 2.
Round 6: This warrior actually managed to land an eviscerate that hit for 9.3k. Which is kinda low from what I’ve seen so I am wondering if the warrior wasn’t fully glass. Either way both of them did a good job.
Round 7: INTERFERENCE! But other than that the warrior almost got him. The ranger timed his downing move well though. It looked like it hit twice. o.O
Round 8: The warrior would not get off his GS until he was less than halfway dead. He didn’t use anything other than autoattack on axe and randomly dodged.
Round 9: The warrior starts off by messing around, not targeting and then targeting the ranger’s pet. She was all over the place the whole fight and even managed to get in the fire of another fight. :I
Round 10: For a few seconds the warrior actually attempted to tank him and lost plenty of HP doing so. He also didn’t kitten herself before she hit an attack.
I am going to stop there since the rest is pretty much the same. Overall this just shows, if anything, that Rangers need to get off of their bearbows. The build that the ranger was using was as evadey as a ranger can get, almost to thief level. The ranger knew when to time those evades and he knew the rest of his profession as well as the cooldowns of warrior skills because he timed all of them beautifully.
So I would not go by that simply because it looks like another Good n’ Glassy vs. Mediocre Not-so-glassy.
You know what would happen if he played against a Warrior ‘in the wild’ (so to speak) and not in an OS duel? The moment stability goes up the Warrior would just twirl away on his GS and wait out the CDs/boons, then come back and destroy him (Assuming an un-braindead Warrior).
The problem with Warrior isn’kittens telegraphed attacks that can be dodged/played around in 1v1s, it’s the access it has to to nearly everything important in general combat (mobility/sustain/control/damage) without any significant tradeoffs (just put 20pts in defense, take some stances and healing signet, GS for utility and a control weapon like hammer).
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Personally I think the GS needs a minor overhaul. Rush needs to be swapped with Arcing Slice and reworked a little (with a pbaoe at the end and a short combo field) so that it always spends adrenaline sort of like the LB.
The benefit of this is twofold:
A)GS becomes are lot more viable since you can proc cleansing ire with it, and use it in combat more regularly to keep closing the gap, making GS Warriors a little stronger when engaged.
B) Using Rush to escape means spending adrenaline, meaning if Warriors want to keep spamming Rush for a complete getaway they’d need additional utilities, like Healing Surge or Signet of Fury to make the most of it.
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Would be nice if that trait also made the duration of your cripple/chill/immobs irreducible. Otherwise you are forced to run + duration food in wvw, hardly ideal for direct damage builds.
Im looking forward to a lot of these changes, I do not however think anyone will be using Strider’s Defense though. Would be more interesting along the lines of “Weapon skills that block and evade now reflect projectiles” or “Autoattacks with melee weapons chain against projectiles, initial attack reflects projectiles” (meaning you get guaranteed reflect frames when you first swing but you have to to through a full chain to get to another reflect chance).
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Ranking from most to least:
Ranger – Not really wanted in pve, pretty crappy in wvw, and slightly subpar in spvp, most of the buffs needed are to pet handling, longbow and GS power playstyle.
Engineer – Needs a niche in WvW zerg fighting and PVE, also borderline OP in low-mid level spvp. Everything not condition-build related should be looked at.
Mesmer – Like Engineer, needs more variety in zergs, mostly fine in PVE, needs a better role in spvp. Anet really needs to be careful not to make them even more ridiculous in 1v1 pvp situations though, PU Mesmers definitely do not need to be made stronger.
Warrior – Fine in PVE, borderline OP in spvp and wvw. Too much access to min-maxing its intended weaknesses, and the sustain buff they got should have been accompanied by a mobility nerf.
Necromancer – Necromancer’s PVE gameplay primarily needs to be looked at, it needs somekind of cleaving power.
Thief – Mostly minor issues. There still isn’t a viable P/P spec. S/d might be a little too strong in spvp, slightly more counters to stealth might be needed, otherwise fine.
Elementalist – Have a strong role in every aspect of the game, would be nice to see RtL unnerfed a little though. Celestial eles might be a little too strong, would be nice to see conjured weapons looked at more.
Guardian – Strong everywhere, like Eles. Would be nice to see a viable condition build out of them, getting closer. Would be nice to see more escape options for non-zerging in wvw (something like Necros flesh wurm utility-wise).
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Increasing condi duration and damage needs a cap.
Condis are already capped at 100%. Personally I think the main problem lies with power builds that also utilize conditions, since they can’t really afford +duration, rendering alot their cc/vuln stacking/etc useless when they come across -duration. IMO all conditions should be guaranteed at least 1s.
Looks more like a dueling build. Can’t really roam effectively without at least some mobility in there.
Main change I would do is time-slice the matchups into 6-8 hour blocks, with different matchups and rankings per time block for the week.
Would fix most coverage issues I think.
Secondly I would make holding Borderland Bloodlust more meaningful somehow, something to bring more people into the middle area. Maybe somesort of mini-game within wvw (maybe a Ruins of Power outbreak event every hour, and participants get a special buff for winning).
Thirdly I would introduce new/interesting wxp upgrades. One could be targeted towards pets in zerg fights (i.e., a rank that gives your pets/summons increased HP/defiance stacks when fighting in vicinity of orange swords). Another one could be targeted toward roaming, maybe faster stomping when not near orange swords or something.
A list of some things that should be changed with pets:
Since Ranger’s can’t manually res pets I think the dead pet CD should be lowered to like 30s.
Ranger’s pet defenses should also scale like PVE champs/gain defiance when in the presence of more than 5 enemy players, for WvW zerging. Heck, Anet should just make a pet wxp traitline that implements this (Ranger isn’t the only one that can have a pet/summon/etc).
Pet return command should instantly swap your pet to you, with a short 5s CD.
Pet leash nerf should be reverted for WvW/PvE.
Ranger should give up less of his own DPS for the pets, which thanks to nerfs dont even do as much damage as once did.
Pet F2’s need rework, such as boar foraging (should display a telegraph on the pet and give you the bundle without needing to pick it up).
Pet F2’s that aoe buff shouldn’t automatically send your pet to a target. Im some cases for some reason the pet needs to get into range of the enemy to buff you?(Im not sure if this has been fixed)
The 5pt trait in BM should be scrapped, and replaced with “Dodging gives your pet Aegis, 5scd”. Most of the other BM traits need interesting reworks/buffs/fixes.
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It’s pretty silly that I can put these runes on my thief, venom share with the bird and feel like I get more use out of the bird than any ranger pet :/ Heck, that setup beats any BM build that Ive tried even.
Only bad condition Necros lose to p/d Thieves. Most lopsided 1 on 1 would probably be PU Mesmer vs Warrior (unless the Warrior decides to just run) or any Thief offhand-dagger build vs Ranger. Also Diamondskin Eles hard counter any pure condition setup.
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I would switch to pirate runes instead of strength and abuse the parrot before it gets nerfed :p
Even before the 8% nerf, the signet didnt seem that OP IMO. What makes it bad is the ability to use crazy mobility to buy time to heal a bunch, giving warriors the option to endlessly reset fights. Before the sustain buff the mobility was justified I think, high mobility and armor plus sustain shouldnt be so easily accessible.
Anet should at least make Warrior’s options consistent with the changes that Ele faced when it too, could endlessly reset fights thanks to mobility + sustain.
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Last Refuge should have an auditory/visual indicator, and instead of stealthing you without notice, it slots a free Blinding Tuft into your steal slot.
It died in PvE a long time ago when the zerker or gtfo consensus came. It died in PvP when Anet gave out condition removals like candy instead of just nerfing necros/engies :/
IMO the closest way to make any sort of deathblossom build viable is somekind of a hybrid/celestial dd and sb build.
The best change to rush would be to rework it completely (a targeted leap instead of something that uses wonky pathing), and make it the new F1 and have it consume adrenaline in a similar manner to the LB (have Arcing Slice take over its old spot).
It would force Warriors to use it more tactically instead of a braindead way to reset combat, and to get max mobility some utilities might have to be factored in, like taking healing surge instead of signet, or taking signet of fury.
Since the living story is revving up again, good chance we’ll see new stat combos/sigils/runes at some point. Hopefully we wont wind up getting some bad ones! Some ideas for sigils:
Sigil of Brightness – Blind nearby foes when swapping to this weapon (9s cd)
Sigil of the Opportunist – Gain 250 to all stats when you interrupt a foe for 5s (15s cd)
Sigil of Dexterity – Reduce weapon swap CD by 1.5s when swapping to this weapon
Sigil of Lightness – +20% movement speed
Sigil of Ferocity – +7% crit damage
Sigil of Longevity – +10% vitality
Sigil of Dampening – -20% condition duration applied to you when you interrupt a foe for 5s (15s cd)
The axe conjure would be amazing if the autoattack wasn’t super flaky. I feel like it misses/gets obstructed 50% of the time despite being in range.
Stealth should counter itself, stealthed enemies visible and targetable when you are stealthed.
That trait that transfers stuns/knockdown to the pet should have its CD reduced from 90s to like 30.
I would be tempted to take thieves guild as the elite. Then send out the parrot and the thieves and use same tactic. It could be interesting.
I like using venomshare on dolyaks I escort.
I found thieves guild is best when used with a Torment condition build, but the problem it has is the long CD. With the runes not only do you have a near 100% pet uptime, you also open up the ability to use basi venom, 4 strikes worth.
What makes it fun is that no one expects it, people think you’re a typical d/p thief. The downside though is the risk of getting condi-bombed or stunned (and subsequently zerged down).
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So it turns out venom sharing with the parrot summon on the Privateer runes is both fun an hilarious. Anyone else try something like this?
Still deciding on the exact gearing (might be good with sword/dagger or sword pistol too), but basically all you need is some toughness/vit to take a hit to get the parrot out, then stealth/postion yourself and pour on the venoms.
Kill leeching is neither fun nor honorable, most of the time I just ignore them and move on. Turning something like a 2v2 into a 3v2 is more of a gray area on the other hand.
Easy fix would be to change the life-blast piercing trait to make it cause a damaging aoe on hit instead.
I would like it to affect both the pet and the Ranger, so I don’t have to rely on the signet.
This.
The reality is if you are running a hybrid build, you are very likely to be running +condi food instead of a food that adds to power damage. That in itself should speak volumes as to how powerful the food is.
On the flip side it’s quite obvious that if I’m having to run +condi food in order for my soft cc’s to have any significant impact in a fight despite running a power build then the -condi food is also too strong.
I think the best way to deal with the food is to buff the condition specific foods to 40%+ and in turn attach conditions to the general food. For example, making Rare Veggie Pizza function only when your health is above 75% and make Lemongrass Soup only work when your HP is bellow 33%.
I think that if toughness worked against conditions and there was a condition limit (say around 5 conditions) conditions would be a lot more balanced.
Getting rid of immobilize stacking would be a good start.
Confusion would be more balanced if it got removed once it caused damage.
Weakness + blind should be removed entirely imo.
If toughness worked against conditions when what would counter toughness? If anything, toughness might need a treatment similar to what happened to crit damage.
Turrets (minus healing turret) should be all bundled into one kit, and the toolbelt skill blows up all turrets and reduces the deployment CD per turret destroyed (the concept of picking up multiple individual turrets in a build dedicated to them is pretty dumb).
The + duration and – duration modifiers are pitted against eachother but the real losers I think are the power builds that use utility conditions but + duration food isn’t optimal for them. For example Id love to run a power/rifle Engie but the moment you run into a Melandru Warrior, suddenly you cant use net shot to set up any combos, and traits like Sitting Duck and Exploit Weakness become worthless. MH sword on a power Warrior suffers the same issue, making it impossible to land a flurry + 100b combo, and you cant land those cripples with MH Sword either for Thieves and Rangers.
I like the Thief forums.
People here are not delusional. Even if they speak the truth by saying that P/D is our best set for 1v1s, they also state that “downsides” of running said spec.
Meanwhile, in the Mesmer forums, everyone says “go PU you won’t regret that”.
I’ve stopped dueling PU mesmers and P/D thieves 3-4 months ago. Hope more and more people would start doing this.
Sometimes I wonder why p/d hasn’t gotten a nerf stick, but just about every other build has. I’m with you on the duels.. I just walk away from dired out thieves; they cant chase anything so its easy to walk away from. I throw up a little in my mouth every single time I have to fight one though~
I would guess it’s because the build has no place in the game outside of WvW roaming. Cant use it in a zerg, cant use in s/tPvP because it uses Shadow Arts, can’t use it in PvE because lolconditions. And if Anet does eventually set its eyes on WvW roaming/small group play, it had better do a lot more than just nerfing stuff and build a solid gameplay foundation for that kind of play.
A WvW perspective on how things currently are, as opposed on how they should be (do the devs even factor in WvW when balancing?)
Warrior – Strengths: Running Away, Weakness: A perfectly timed Signet of Spite (to keep them from running)
Guardian – Strengths: Pressing #1 on staff in zergs, Weakness: not being in zerg
Engineer – Strengths: Spamming interrupts with perplexity runes and proccing IP, Weakness – Getting out-condied by a Necro
Ranger – Strengths: What strengths? Weakness: Their pet dies in zergs and gets them killed by being CnD bait for Thieves
Ele – Strengths: Strength Runes! (and something about staff in zergs) Weakness: RtL being on a 40s CD most of the time.
Necro – Strengths: Signet of Spite, Zerg Welling, Weakness: Getting hammered by a warrior and/or zerg
Thief – Strengths: Stealth trolling, Weakness: Nerf Bait
Mesmer – Strengths: PU, Weakness: Enemies realizing the best way to beat PU is to walk away
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Option 3 wouldnt make Final Thrust quite so final if you are forced to use it again. I would just reduce the cast time significantly, and change the damage range to compensate (100-66% HP and very little damage, 66-33% a little less damage than it does now, 33-1% a lot more damage than it does now.
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Blame Anet for making power/glass builds unviable on most classes for roaming, because of downed state/group ressing and the ability to go super tanky. The only strategy left on the table is to burn tanky enemies down quickly by going tanky yourself and condi-bombing. Nerf condition builds (which are only useful in WvW roaming and partially useful in sPvP), and what will you have left? Power bunkers slapping eachother with wet noodles until someone gets zerged down. Oh, and thieves, and nike warriors, the end.
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. Feel free to force me to be revealed whenever a warrior hits 5 on his shield just as I hit my backstab key. But when I come out of that stealth, let me have PU bonuses like protection and aegis.
I actually think the best route might be a compromise, where skills that block only selectively apply revealed on weapons/utilities for classes that might need it. Like the block on Ranger’s GS, or the block on Engies shield which has a 40s CD.
It seems like roaming solo is a dying art. I can’t recall the last time I actually met an enemy player roaming around the battlefield by himself.
I see plenty of roamers though…in packs of 2, 3…5. It seems like everyone has given up on fair fights and prefers either running or completely overwhelming their enemies.
A shame really since solo-roaming used to be kind of fun. But now it feels like nobody dares leave the house without an easy backup.
Why? so the crazily OP’ed thieves can smack you down before you can even retaliate? Lets face it, most dont solo anymore due to the fact that thieves have the ability to unload massive DPS then stealth and remove any condi, then rinse and repeat until enemy dies. There is absolutely NO fun in trying to kill someone that keep cowering in the shadow. I believe it is because of this that people roam with 2 or more.
If specs/classes currently viable for solo play were suddenly nerfed to the ground would you see solo gameplay open up for wvw? I think the likely answer would be no, it would probably kill it altogether.
One of the big reasons people group up is to take advantage the most IMBA thing in WvW: the downstate and rezzing, something solo players have no access too. The other reason is that Anet has made it incredibly hard to get kills even in 1v1 situations because of how tanky players are allowed to get. Its getting to the point that battles are being decided more on having that one extra guy over skillful play, basically mini-zerging.
If you want to see how refreshing quick kills and outnumbered fights are, go to EotM and focus on fear/knocking people off ledges. That’s the most fun Ive had solo-playing in WvW recently (well, at least until EotM devolved into a brainless karma train)
I dont think ele needs a lot at this point, mainly minor stuff. If anything, Ranger needs a second CDI.
If Anet is that concerned about economic impact, the easy solution is to just make karma gear salvage into karma jugs, wvw gear into badges of honor, etc instead of potential ectos/dark matter. That way we could at the very least be able to recover runes/sigils.
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Instead of being bundled into a template system, Id like to see the next iteration of the wardrobe have custom outfits to divest skins completely from the stats of the gear. To make a custom outfit you get 6 slots for armor (+1 back piece), and x slots for weapons (however many your class has access to, one slot for each weapon). Filling a slot costs one transmutation, and once you have your outfit complete you can flip it on anytime you want and the outfit will override the look of any of your gear where you have a slot transmuted.
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1)New permanent map/zone
2)Jumping puzzles in new map zone
3)Dynamic events in new zone
4)Completion of said puzzles/events awards progression towards new skills/traits/elites
5)New dungeon in zone, complete with paths/tokens/weapon and armor skins
6)World boss in new zone akin to karka queen/wurm/teq
7)A way to easily gather stuff like azurite and toxic spores in new zone, as well as unique ingredients for crafting interesting new food/runes/sigils
8)New guild missions in zone
9)No brainless zerg farms
10)A cohesive and entertaining plot.
Personally I think all the healing signets (except Mesmer) need to have their actives changed/buffed to be much more interesting instead of being last-ditch heals. The passives are fine though.
There are a large amounts of skills/traits, particularly on guardian/ele that provide 1s of burning. But the moment you run into a player with any -condi duration, those burns will never tick. Getting +condi duration makes perfect sense sure.. on a condi build, but not necessarily on might stacking or hybrid builds.
Would it be a fair change to frontload ticks for damaging conditions such as burning at the beginning of a second instead of at the end?
I present to you the bm/pet build that doesn’t use the bm line much:
Dagger instead of warhorn is acceptable, if you arent Sylvari, use RaO (its probably better regardless, but its just too fun running around with 3 pets)
While under retal boon you should build up retal-stacks, which would be spent as damage when you strike someone (but stacks would always be spent, so you’d have counterplay via dodging/blocking/etc).
Rewards have gone up from garbage to mediocre. GG anet!
What about the Sky Crystal stuff? Sure, you could say “It’s a grind, you have to collect X of them!”, but then… they’re not identical. Each one is unique in location and how you get there, so there’s no repetition involved.
The sky crystal stuff is the only nice thing in this patch, and you don’t even get any rewards other than AP from doing that :p Sometimes nice rewards can cover for grindy/boring/zergy content, but nothing beats enjoyable gameplay. What’s ironic is that the grindy/zergy stuff doesn’t even have good rewards this time..