In wvw the problem isn’t so much the signet alone, it’s that the Warrior can use his mobility to kite and ensure those huge passive heals.
Solution: HS heals normally when in 600 range of an enemy, but outside of that range its heal interval is reduced to once per 3s.
Rush on GS and Savage Leap also should get increased cooldowns when used without an in-range target.
That and the Dec 10 changes would fix just about everything about Warrior imo.
The biggest issue with GS IMO is the way the #5 roots you, it’s just clunky. I think the #1 could be made cooler though, make the third chain that evades a spin attack that telegraphs to the player “hey, I’m evading!”, and make the #2->#3 chain timeout longer so you can “hold” the evade to better time it. GS #1 just needs some really nice polishing and not an overhaul.
I’m somewhat conflicted with the d/p change since it mainly appears to target WvW, which by it’s nature is all about fighting unfairly 95% of the time. On the other hand though, since the team may finally be sort of considering WvW in their balancing decisions maybe they’ll target some other issues down the road, like the ridiculous mobility cheese warriors can pump out, toning down perplexity runes with a cooldown on #6, making rangers not a laughing stock and a free kill, etc.
I wanted to add the requested Mimic suggestion here.
Mimic
30s CD
Breaks stun
Grants 4s Stability
4 second channel, reflects all ranged, blocks all melee. Counts the total number of hits, or blocks, and multiplies that times X (to a maximum of Y) for a single target ranged dps attack Echo effect post channel.
Personally I think they should completely rework the utility into something new: 90s cooldown, you literally become whatever your target is for 10s (stats, traits, everything except HP). Naturally, you wouldnt be able to transform into bosses/champs/etc, but to preserve the pve utility you can turn yourself into a friendly player.
They want to fight, and feel like the fight is fair.
90% of the time in WvW this is simply not true. This is what happens in most 1v1 situations:
A) The aggressor tries to go in for an easy kill, when the opponent proves too much to handle the aggressor just uses whatever utilities to gtfo (stealth, mobility, etc).
B) In a matchup that might be a fair fight, the defender won’t fight unless they are near a sentry, keep portal, or until they bring a buddy to 2v1 the other party.
Most of the time players run in packs that outnumber-gank other players anyway, or mindlessly zerg. WvW is anything but fair fighting.
One change that Ive been thinking about is the #3, half the time when you use it your enemy is still in your face, leaving you without too many options. What if after the evade, it force swaps your weapons without affecting the weapon swap cd (and increase the base cooldown of the skill to like 15s)? That way you can quickly shortbow #3 into a swoop or lb knockback or whatever on your second set to your advantage (and if your swaps not on cd you can immediately switch back to the sb)
I support the initiative changes, even if they don’t get it right the first time round, the idea of being less dependent on ini traits is a good one. TBH Im really more worried about Anet making monsters out of Mesmers (who are already brokenly OP in 1v1s) and their lack of concern over Warrior mobility and healing signet (I don’t really care too much about that hammer build they are over-addressing)
Ranger’s are just mediocre at both roaming and zerging, though not completely horrible for either if you build entirely for it. Staff eles are great in zergs, but any other build for roaming/zerging needs to be babysat by teammates to work. Thieves bring nothing to zergs, but can survive really well by themselves. However, is a thief by itself any good when in wvw it’s 80% guards/warriors that can’t be effectively taken down by a single thief?
I went ahead and got a celestial set since I main thief and already have a condi bunker and direct damage sets anyway.
And it works! Building celestial is viable, IMO, but it’s not what I would call and ideal super thief that can handle everything.
1) You need to like p/d and/or d/d and incorporate condition damage into your attack rotation.
2) You need to min-max somewhat to get around the deficiencies of full celestial, people might think you can build however you want with celestial since it has an even stat spread but that just isn’t true.
The biggest problem I found is going against full bunkers, because high armor and high condi cleanse work doubly against you, when you can wear them down faster with a pure condition set because armor isn’t a factor. However, kill time is noticeably faster against anyone that isn’t a bunker. So there you go.
Simple suggestion: in the right click menu when the weapon is in your bag, that lets you change stats (among other things), include the option “remove sigil”.
Your suggestion would ruin it for PVE thieves, one of the few reasons to bring a thief to a dungeon is SR and the utility it brings. Maybe it could work as strictly a sPvP change. I think if there is an answer it should be carefully tuned reveal counters given to classes that need it, like the sick-em buff Ranger’s got.
I saw these teories many times with sword,dagger,greatsword,axe even.
Someone gets close, you swap weapons and disengage a bit.
Ok, you are now away from your target for couple seconds, even less if it’s a thief.
Now what? You have 10 second gap on your LB and you’ve lost all pressure.
It isn’t the way outside of WvWvW zerg, you have to keep both pressure and range.
Ranger could really use a trait similar to the Warrior’s 5s weapon swap trait.
P/d doesnt need alot of ini, and the new balance changes will be giving every thief build a free quick recovery. Arguably P/d will be affected adversely the least. What I would like to see is the bleed durations increased and aftercast reduction on pistol #1. Condition sets on other classes can get by without +duration or use only the +40% food, but with P/d it feels mandatory to boost your bleeds at least 50% to be viable.
Does the balance team pay close attention to some of the things that go on in WvW? (obviously you guys do somewhat because d/p thief is more notorious in WvW than sPvP)
People have been using that gem-store toy axe to use it’s 600+ range rush on 3s cooldown to move around, seems pretty unfair…
Also within the context of WvW, I think Warrior mobility is way too strong when coupled with high regen, when you can create a 1200+ range gap and use the time it buys to get a 3-4k passive heal off, and do as long as needed.
The problem with p/d is that it’s been left behind in the balancing arms race that anet created. They keep pushing extra condition removal on classes because of the ridiculous condition spam that necros and engineers can put out, instead of nerfing necros/engineers. IMO the aftercast for pistol 1 should be lowered a bit and the duration of the bleeds increased from 4 to 6s
Engineers are still less desired in PVE, but good in PVP. Necromancers are in better shape, OP when played right in PVP, ok in PVE if you don’t focus on conditions.
Warriors are currently the ridiculous class, OP/borderline OP in every game mode. Other than that, the balance is mostly the same, depending on how long ago you stopped playing though ele’s took a nerf beating to d/d. Rangers are still garbage compared to the other classes when not playing sPVP. Thieves are still thieves, they’ve gotten a mix of nerfs/buffs. Mesmers had a big trait shuffle nerf but other than that they are the same mostly.
I personally think he’s wrong when it comes to necro. While the nerf should be done it shouldn’t just be a grandmaster trait and some torment on tainted shackles.
Its across the board with conditions in general.
I think the problem lies square with classes that can spam AOE conditions and get easy access to burning on top, namely necros and engies (and to a certain degree rangers). There should be some more skill splits between pvp/pve probably, and specific classes/skills looked at. Your suggestions would spill over into pve/wvw in a horrible, destructive way, leaving people wondering why they spent 100s of gold to gear up the way they did when Anet just uprooted whatever they built for.
Yeah, costume toys work in wvw. After doing some more investigating and seeing more people use it, the issue is the #2 skill on the axe, a 600 range leap on 3s cooldown
So Anet, are you going to do something about this accidental Pay to Win?
cuz its so hard to hit them? even mobility warriors can be hit, and ele’s with a fiery GS. you can’t use town clothes in combat
The item’s flexibility isn’t limited to just getting out of combat to escaping chasers. What if you see people chasing you before combat comes into play and you need an extra edge to get away? What if you see a fight and want to get into the fray faster to help teammates? What if you need to rush to a zerg or to defend a keep?
The game is balanced with mobility of classes in mind (some are designed to be slow, like guardians/necros), and this gem-store-only item breaks that.
Yeah, costume toys work in wvw. After doing some more investigating and seeing more people use it, the issue is the #2 skill on the axe, a 600 range leap on 3s cooldown
So Anet, are you going to do something about this accidental Pay to Win?
His main beef with it seems to be as a purely direct damage set. For full celestial you’d want to use P/D, or maybe in a D/D deathblossom build, mixing direct damage with condition damage.
The toy axe weapon it comes with seems to give some huge ooc mobility abilities, Ive seen characters zipping around with it. Is this fair to have on a gemstore item that’s meant to be cosmetic?
I think one option might be an indirect nerf, by buffing poison condition to make it more effective or more difficult to cleanse.
Same for stuns, instead of tweaking warrior stun skills, make it so that while you are under a stun-breakable effect, other stun-breakable effects cannot be applied, with a 1s immunity after the effect ends.
What’s the most fair way for it to go? Giving some anti-stealth measures to Rangers felt justified I think since Rangers tend to be thief cannon fodder, but what about other classes? The way I see it:
The maybe pile:
Mesmers – clones make them naturally weak to thieves, but mesmer is already a really strong 1v1 class, so if they ever got a reveal ability it should probably be put on a mantra or some other really underused area.
Thieves – thieves vs thieves fights tend to get silly, I think it would be interesting to see a way for thieves to counter eachother, maybe a revealed mechanic on a thief trap utility?
Ele – if Anet ever revamps the ele focus, I think it might be good candidate for a reveal ability, otherwise eles seem fine to me.
The no pile
Warriors/Necros/Guards/Engies – These classes generally have everything they need to deal with thieves, and not in really inconvenient ways. I’d be disappointed in Anet if any of them got a revealed utility/mechanic.
I am not talking about other mesmers. I am talking about other classes that are glass cannon’ish builds.
No offense intended, but I don’t understand what your saying. The blackwater build does use torch, and pu—and has good condition and good health.
I don’t know what you mean by ‘pointers’.
I have respect for natsu, talked to him a few times, nice guy.
I’d say that’s the way it’s supposed to be. High damage, ideally, should soft counter condition builds, while condition builds should soft counter high armor bunkering (and bunkers counter high damage). That isn’t always the case though the way the game is currently balanced though.
Kill Shot is a highly telegraphed channel. It’s fine.
Warrior ability to shrug off all conditions and dash/charge away while passively regaining all their health and immune to CC is what needs nerfed.
Where is the telegraph when you only see a culled nameplate somewhere in the enemy zerg 1500 units away? KS needs to telegraph a targeting reticule at your feet, similar to that deadeye boss fight from a couple patches ago.
I recently have done testing with the gs as well and it can get some very good damage in this build. I have not done any offhand sword testing but initially I would be worried about how much CC is lost if Hammer and Shield are both swapped out.
The basic cc combo with sword/gs is to cancel flurry into 100b
One change that I think Anet might want to consider is to base the cooldown on your remaining HP. 40s cooldown if you use it while under 50% HP and 20 otherwise with RtL for example. Warrior and other classes need a similar mechanic added also to their movement skills.
I like the idea really.. The suggested buffs don’t look too strong to me, quality of life things for those who fight in the field. The 3s quickness part is a bit much though and would have to go imo. I don’t think these are anywhere near as strong as the Guard Stacks so seems pretty decent.
I think it would be fine since I feel that if a players downs someone while outnumbered, they should be rewarded for it instead of punished when they guy they down gets rezzed faster then they could stomp. This wouldnt apply in even fights or fights where you do the outnumbering though.
Banner elite is pretty ridiculous even without the lord-rez factor. Cast time for it needs to be increased by a second and go on full cooldown if interrupted.
If anet came up with such a thing how would you like to see it implemented? I think something like this would be good:
5pt: Players you down have 10% less downed HP
15pt: +10% movement speed out of combat
30pt: Players you down have a further 15% less downed HP (25% total)
50pt: +15% movement speed out of combat (25% total)
75pt: If enemies outnumber allies in a 600 radius, gain 1s stability and 3s quickness when stomping(5s cooldown)
One of the perks of conditions is that they are supposed to bypass armor. The kind of buff you are suggesting would have the ill intended effect of making nearly every condition spec unviable except for necros and maybe engies, what you actually should want to do is just nerf condition application by necros/engies.
Human – Put down a shadow refuge and summon (invisible) hounds of balthazar to surprise your opponent, or become avatar of melandru and invisible cast binding roots (just like the ranger elite). Grenth elite is decent too. But the racial heal/utilities suck tho.
Could do the same with an Asura and its golem summons too I guess, and get access to pain inverter/technobabble/radiation field.
Grasping vines is decent on Sylvari for a thief, as is Take Root elite for condition builds.
Id also like to see poison buffed as an indirect counter to excessive healing/bunkering. Maybe raise the healing reduction to -50% or make poison stack in intensity (but instead if increasing damage, each stack takes off extra healing %, or maybe have condition removals only remove one stack at a time to make it a more difficult condition to cleanse).
1st point.Poison ia already direct counter to healing.
2nd point.How would buffing poison would turn it into indirect counter?
3rd point.Where is the counter for excesive stealth, condi spam, pet spam, boon spam, nerf war threads spam?
There was a time when poison got bugged and didnt even apply its healing reduction, and it took a while for people to even notice, so I think it needs a bump in that regard, sort of what they did to buff weakness. On the third point, those issues should be discussed in their respective forums. Or healing signet could be shaved down, Id be fine with that too.
And sigil of doom is an excellent source of poison if you ask me, but best used in a pair to keep proccing it.
Id also like to see poison buffed as an indirect counter to excessive healing/bunkering. Maybe raise the healing reduction to -50% or make poison stack in intensity (but instead if increasing damage, each stack takes off extra healing %, or maybe have condition removals only remove one stack at a time to make it a more difficult condition to cleanse).
