Guild Wars 2

evilapprentice.6379:

Hmm, I wonder why you chose to quote only the first section of my post, but not the rest? Is it because I said the exact same thing you said, but actually using my full quote wouldn’t allow you to pretend like you had a point with that first paragraph? I bet it is, because not having a real point and making one up out of thin air seems to be your style, as far as I can tell.

I’m done with you – I’ve only been interacting with you on the board for 2-3 days an this is at least the 5th time you’ve done/said something disingenuous or dishonest because you don’t have anything real or serious to contribute. Go back in your cave, troll.

Oh my, offend more?
I’ve quoted your whole post. That was an answer to someone who said that the initiative system is bad designed, while you said it was a debunked argument.

Where exactly do we said the same thing? I haven’t said that the initiative system is fine because there are no CC on initiative. Was that what you tried to say? Or your post was completely out of context?

tac.2167:

I really don’t understand this whole complaint. I get that getting killed instantly by a D/D BV+CnD+Mug+BS combo back in the day was unfair (though I still die just as quickly to burst warriors and mesmers so…), but even if I’m fighting a boon heavy build and stealing from them, the fight lasts a long time. This means that the other player has myriad chances to come back. I’ve found a couple of things: 1) if the other player is better than me, I will lose, 2) if I make mistakes, even when fighting someone worse than me, I will lose. Boon stealing (FS/LS) is not ever a win button.

So a skill to be considered imbalanced has to be an “I win” button?
Well, this says much about the average balance of this game.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

CUT

There is something you have to consider:
- Heals do not scale with vitality. When having less but more efficient HP pool (read more armor), you’re going to outheal better the damage you take, thus we can say that heals scale with toughness as much as EHP scales with toughness. You should consider that also, but I don’t know exactly how you can put that in your formula.
- Death Shroud degen is a percentage. That means that the more Life Force you have, the more you are going to lose natually when in Death Shroud.
- Soldier gear has no access to the crit damage multiplier. If you consider the Soldier gear itself without any other trait or buff, it will give better damage output compared to Knight gear, but when you’re adding Critical Damage via traits or buffs, you’re multiplying your damage by a good amount and that’s where precision is worth something offensive-wise.

Noince.7364:

sorrow.2364:

All professions are plagued from bugs, I don’t really understand why Mesmers need special attention…

How is making a “State of the Mesmer” topic to discuss issues considered special attention? If I’m not wrong necromancers had one first and we merely followed along. Unless you are saying this “State of the X” topic which necros had first equals special attention? Didn’t you say “every profession need the same attention from devs”?

sorrow.2364:

expecially when they are one of the most powerful and wanted profession in the game.

I assume by “powerful and wanted” you mean viable. So unless a specific class is unviable it shouldn’t even expect an acknowledgement of bugs by devs? Lets wait until X class gets filled with so much bugs that it becomes unviable before we start a discussion? All currently viable classes should just wait until they become broken and have the sympathy of everyone before they can voice their problems?

State of the Necromancer topic is about balancing, not bugfixing. When someone makes a “State of the Mesmer” topic, it implies that the state of the Mesmer is pretty much bad and it needs to be looked at balance-wise.
Once you read the OP, you realize that the only purpose of this topic is to urge the developers to fix bugs which were already acknowledged, which doesn’t exactly make sense.

What do we want to to discuss about when developers have already stated they are aware of the bugs and they are working on? Do you guys think that if you make another topic saying how bugged the Mesmer is the fixes will come faster?

Or the purpose of this topic is to make a chorus of indignation about how slow the developers are to fix bugs? Well, in that case I see no point into bringing the word “mesmer” into the topic because developers are slow to fix every bug on every profession, not only Mesmer.

The solution of all these thieves spamming FS: increase FS initiative cost. Simple and easy. How is it possible that a skill that steals 2 boons is on 4 initative when average boon wiping skills are on 40s cooldown?
I mean, 4 initiative needs 5 seconds to be gained again only from regen…

jportell.2197:

I’m saying that the Devs need to
1. Stop breaking something EVERY SINGLE PATCH then not address it.
2. Fix the things they have broken before introducing any new nerfs OR buffs to this class.

Out of the professions I have played Mesmer is the only one where a huge bug is introduced and then just left with out any acknowledgement for months. When it is acknowledged it is a simple “Oh that’s weird we’ll look at it” Or “We have no earthly cluse what happened but we are gonna try fixing it.” And here we are 3 months later and our supposedly most damaging phantasm barely breaks 1k damage in a build that has 3600 power….

Take thief for instance in Feb or March the hidden killer trait got broken… Within a couple days it was fixed… Anything that gets bugged out with the Mesmer for what ever reason is swept under the rug and forgotten about by everyone except Mesmer players that have to deal with seeing how they can work with another new broken skill/trait/weapon.

Do we need all the attention from the devs? No do we need way more than we are currently getting.. Absolutely.

Every profession need the same attention from devs.
As I said before, Necromancers are still getting 1/3 of health when downed since launch, which is, to be honest, quite a gamebreaking bug when compared to only a skill not working properly.
All professions are plagued from bugs, I don’t really understand why Mesmers need special attention, expecially when they are one of the most powerful and wanted profession in the game.

Zacchary.6183:

How about we complain about the thief moving too much, eh? I mean everyone already kittened stealth to death and now that we have something to work with you guys come one here again to complain about it.

If every thief agreed to just stand there and die for you for an entire week would that satisfy you and the crowd you indirectly assotiate with so I don’t have to come on here and see, “OMFGTHIEFKILLDME! NERFIT!!!@#RC”?

For kitten’s sake, this kitten is getting old.

Has anyone here complained about Thief mobility? I don’t think so.
People here are complaining about the fact that Thieves can just mash tkittenutton continuously and steal a whole profession mechaninc and putting it at his advantage.

TsukiNoEi.4570:

Thief cannot take much damage, it’s fair

did you ever seen a thief have 25k HP?

In fact it is fine to me. I’ve never said I want it addressed or it should be toned down. It is a part of the Thief design to be slippery and hard to catch and pin down.

I’ve just pointed out that saying that thieves are easy to control is a lie.

But would be the Knight gear more well suited for Necro since their base HP pool is that high?
I mean, if you have more toughness and less HP, it is more easy to outheal the damage you get.
Knight gear gives way more toughness compared to Soldier gear, without considering the fact that it scales pretty well with Critical Damage.
Also, the benefits that comes from increased HP to Death Shroud are overshadowed by 30% more life force from Soul Reaping (quite mandatory if you have Knight gear, useless if you have Soldier gear) and the increased toughness of the set (the armor values applies to DS too, right?).

So, overall, Knight gear is more suitable for Necros compared to Soldier..?

jportell.2197:

Played 6 professions… My necro out conditions the Mesmer and the Mesmer dies…. my ele out lives with no problem thanks to the healing…. My bunker guard which is the anti condition build sits there and goes nananananana can’t touch me… And my with the BM build is pretty much immortal as a side point holder… The only one that I have a really hard time with against a Mesmer was on my thief…

And also Mesmer patch sees more bugs go unfixed than any other class… Every patch that a class gets something broken and is mentioned (Thief hidden killer trait for one) was hot fixed with in two days… This recent patch fixed a couple things that were OP on the Mesmer like the infinite range sink underwater… But introduced at least two new bugs that have yet to be addressed… Meanwhile bugs that other classes got as a result of the patch have already been fixed…

Do people see where I am going here? Game breaking build limiting bugs for the Mesmer never seem to be addressed…. Any other class that gets a but INTRODUCED thanks to a patch is addressed usually very quickly.

So, according to you, mesmers are weak and really need all the dev attention.

evilapprentice.6379:

Real quick!
Since you’re obviously intimately experienced with thief mechanics!
- Name every single thief weapon skill that provides KB/KD/Blowout
- Name every single thief weapon skill that provides daze over .5s
- Name every single thief weapon skill that provides fear
- Name every single thief weapon skill that provides Daze over .5
- Name every single thief weapon skill that provides immobilize over 1s.

That list looking a little light? I wonder why?.

Because having easy to access CC on initiative would be incredibly broken, I just imagine all thieves running CC spamming with high initiative regen builds… Then I immagine people complaining about that and Thieves answering “Just dodge it” (realistic, don’t you say?).

Obviously that doesn’t mean that you have no access to CC at all.

- When you steal from Guardian, you get 4s of Daze. No other profession in this game have such an high daze duration.
- When you steal from Necro you have up to 3s fear.
- You have Tactical Strike from Sword that Daze for 1.5s, which isn’t that bad considering that it can be potentially used every kitten .
- You have 4s of immobilization from Devourer Venom.
- You have 1.5s of stun from Basilisk Venom

Not to say how crucial can be a CC in the right time considering how much damage a Thief is capable to do in a couple of seconds.

Anyway, I don’t know why you posted that list as an answer to what Atherakhia said.
Initiative system encourage mindless spamming and unskilled play as it is now.
Giving too much utility on a single skill and on low initiative cost of course will encourage everyone to use that skill over and over and to use the whole initiative pool on that skill. FS has everything in it. Boon stealing, evade and damage. Why everyone would bother to use any other skill in the bar if everything is on FS?
This is the design flaws people are talking about.

I also don’t understand people saying that Thieves are easy to control through CC, specially S/D thieves. They have a stunbreaker on initiative, plus they have the most reliable set of stunbreakers in the game (somebody said Shadowstep with 2 stunbreaks in 50s?). I think Thief is the profession which suffer from stuns the least.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

300 power is a (1216/916) = 33% increase in damage. 40% crit chance is a (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) =20% increase in damage.

What exactly is the 0.6 part?
Anyway, there is something you forgot to mention (or I missed). With Knight gear, having just a little increase in crit damage boosts the damage quite a lot. For instance, spending 30 traitpoints into Soul Reaping gives a nice gap between Knight and Soldier in terms of damage.

Dahkeus.8243:

Can you explain the math on that? I don’t follow.

He’s right in some aspects.

Protection is 1/3 damage reduction, that means that you deal 2/3 of the damage. If you consider 2/3 of your damage as base, without protection you deal 2/3 + 1/3 damage, and 1/3 damage is actually 50% of 2/3.
It is quite of a trick to say things, but it is mathematically correct.

I started a topic in the thief forum about the new LS: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Flanking-Strike-was-definitely-overbuffed/

My suggestion is either increase the initiative cost, so making the skill not spammable anymore, or reduce the amount of boons stolen to 1.

ahuba.6430:

sorrow.2364:

ahuba.6430:

i’m pretty basilisk is just one strike

Yeah, it is.
To be more precise, it is just one hit.
That means that if the strike misses, the venom effect is still there.

“The number of uses on this skill’s effect will decrease if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable.”http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Basilisk_Venom

That was my fault then.
I thought that venoms still have their effects after the attack misses, it happened to me sometimes.

Noince.7364:

What this feels like to me: A rich guy gets robbed and goes queue up to file a police report. A poorer guy already in queue turns around and shouts in the rich guy’s face, “how dare you even file a police report. I’m poorer and deserve the whole space of the queue to myself!”. Even though the poorer guy is already ahead in queue and decision of priority is ultimately decided by the policeman.

It sounds more like that the richer guy wants to ho ahead in the queue because he can’t live without the stuff he got stolen, without considering the millions he has in his bank account. Devs have already said they are aware of the issues. I see no reason for this topic to even exist.

ahuba.6430:

i’m pretty basilisk is just one strike

Yeah, it is.
To be more precise, it is just one hit.
That means that if the strike misses, the venom effect is still there.

Alustriel.6802:

You can block it, or put fear after it, or any other class mechanic that give u those few safe second after beeing hit by basilik. ( i.g just blind thief ).

The point is, why do I even think to avoid any weapon hit which comes from the Thief after he has used Basilisk Venom? It is an incredible waste of endurance. Also if you succeed to dodge the first two attempt to trigger the venom, on the third you are going to eat it anyway. It is counter-productive to suggest to dodge Basilisk, it is way better to get hit from it and then use the stunbreaker.

I think I now know which is the next set I’ll make on my Necro and on my Thief.
Sad thing it costs an huge amount of gold :/

frans.8092:

sorrow.2364:

I said that it looked like that for him balance = punishment. I see no way someone can be offended by that statement.

Which is exactly the negative implied about the other person.

Aggression is when someone comes into the topic and start saying “another average topic in the thief forum, l2p baddie”. Aggression is when someone makes assumptions about you and your skill level in a game forum. …

Agression is, also, stating a negative, implied or direct, about someone.

I don’t feel I had this behavior before someone else had it toward me.

Well, you started it. And even if you feel you didn’t, it’s not an excuse to do it yourself.

Seriously?
Saying that I think that for someone balancing is a punishment is a some sort of offence?
Sorry, I didn’t know people get offended by that. I wonder how many people I’ve offended unintentionally here, then.

ahuba.6430:

you dodge whatever move the thief makes after casting it

Yeah, until you have finished the dodges and the thief finally manage to hit you and all your efforts into dodging the venom were vain.
It doesn’t look like a good tactic to me.

Is Basilisk Venom dodge-worthy?
I mean, how can you dodge that skill?

I’ve got full Soldier set and I feel the damage is nowhere enough.

Sure, the survivability is pretty high, but the damage output I have is pretty much way lower than, let’s say, the one I have with Knight Amulet in PvP (which is quite similiar to Emerald/Knight jewel in PvE).

Has anyone here full Emerald set that can give us a video showing the damage output? Or some combat log?

frans.8092:

Master of Timespace.2548:

The “you can dodge it” argument is indeed retarted. If warrior killshot would have instant cast time, it could still be dodged, but how balanced would it be?

For example, on page 2, “Looks like that, for you, “balance” is some sort of punishment” which was before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

That’s not agressive. He just pointed out that he doesn’t agree with someone’s vision of balance.

No, he doesn’t, if you just point out you don’t agree you just do that, basically by giving a neutral variant of “I don’t agree with what you say”, what he does is actually a form of hidden aggression where he says, “because you say X you must be Y” where Y is a negative, or implies a negative about a person

Master of Timespace.2548:

Seriously, are we in the forums of Hello Kitty Online Adventures? Because sometimes it looks like that here.

Well, maybe you should go elsewhere then. Aggression is aggression, whether it’s subtle or not. There is no need for it, after all nobody was threatening him, it doesn’t serve the primary goal of a discussion forum (discussion of and the exchange of ideas), but only invites more aggression and distracts from the actual discussion. This thread was slowly decaying, as many before it.

Is it negative to have a specific vision of balance instead of another? I mean, that was a consideration to someone who pointed out that every nerf should be accompained with a relative buff. I said that it looked like that for him balance = punishment. I see no way someone can be offended by that statement.

Aggression is when someone comes into the topic and start saying “another average topic in the thief forum, l2p baddie”. Aggression is when someone makes assumptions about you and your skill level in a game forum. I don’t feel I had this behavior before someone else had it toward me.

Iruwen.3164:

Funny to read such statements when you’re actually doing the same. I could say now that your bugs aren’t either which I don’t. I wonder why you’re so aggressive. I actually feel sorry for necros specifically after Jonathan came to their forum to tell them the next release would be a bugfix release.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-state-of-Necromancer/page/3#post2062970
I guess we were all fooled. And please, don’t try to decide what ruins my experience for me, I’m well aware of that.

I didn’t meant to have an aggressive behavior, sorry if you felt like that.

What I’m trying to say is that Mesmers aren’t in an unplayable state, neither they needs those bug fixed to be considered on par with other professions.

The downed state bug for Necromancer is incredibly gamebreaking. It pretty much means you’re dying 3x faster in PvE and WvW once downed. Same applies to minions not attacking, because that is a core mechanic of the profession completely not working.

What I’m arguing about (I’ve also said it before) is how OP is angry about bugs, specifically about Mesmer, like if they aren’t fixed right now, he can’t enjoy the Mesmer at all. That is the exaggeration I’m criticizing.
I’ve never said those bugs don’t need a fix, I’ve just said that doing a rant like that is pointless and quite ridiculous since some professions are in a worse state form much longer time without getting a fix and they aren’t as strong and required as Mesmer is in all environments.

Iruwen.3164:

Generally speaking, while some bugs may need time to fix because they’re complicated (I don’t even hope for leaps to ever be fixed, although they’re affecting two of five s/s skills), this is becoming an inacceptable situation where actually more new heavy bugs are introduced than fixed. Plus some balancing attempts are questionable, if not plain flawed.

The fact that balancing attempts are questionable is your opinion.
It happens that a patch brings some other bug.

As I said, those bugs listed aren’t gamebreaking as you guys are depicting them; I don’t think we would see so many GS mesmers or mesmers in general if their bugs were that gamebreaking. I’ve tried myself the Mesmer sometime in PvP (I refuse to have it as a main character) and it is still extremely strong, despite the bugs.

So, since those bugs aren’t ruining your game experience that much, I don’t see any reason to get angry and urge the developers for fixes, expecially when almost every profession is on the same state if even worse.

Iruwen.3164:

sorrow.2364:

Every profession needs bug fixes. Every profession are getting them more or less.
There are professions which are way worse when talking about bugs compared to mesmers.

- Necro minions still watch the fight half the time instead of attacking and this bug has existed since release. Basically 4 utilities, a heal skill and an elite skill are pretty much worthless.
- Spiteful Talisman still doesn’t work in PvE and PvP.
- Necromancer’s downed health is still 1/3 of what it should be in PvE and WvW. Yes. 1/3.
- Your Moa Morph skill still kills all minions and put them on cooldown, despite the fact it was stated by devs that this behavior is unintended.

Those are only from Necromancer I can recall at the moment. Plus, they are under-represented and unwanted in most situations and they are universally considered as weak, but this is another story.

Probably someone else can list some other game-breaking bugs other professions have.
Now, do you understand why people here say Mesmers are low priority at the moment?

So our gamebreaking bugs are of lower priority than your gamebreaking bugs. Well yeah, that’s clearly an unbiased statement. We didn’t say our bugs should be fixed quicker than yours, all bugs should be fixed, or at least the important ones (and definitely not the ones we usually find in the patchnotes) because otherwise balancing attempts are useless.

sorrow.2364:

Probably someone else can list some other game-breaking bugs other professions have.

Yes, why don’t you start doing that for necros instead of complaining here? Are you afraid that our bugs could actually be fixed before yours? We didn’t come here to compare to other classes but to make a general statement about the state of the mesmer (you know, that’s why the topic is called “state of the mesmer”).

What exactly is a gamebreaking bug for you?
The iZerker not hitting for 5k damage but only 3k?
Mirror Blades which also bounce between clones?
Your 2-damage per hit clones have wrong targets?
Yeah, they are sure gamebreaking bugs.
Having 6 skills completely not working and 2/3 less downed health in PvE and WvW are just marginal bugs, yeah.

I’m not complaining here.
I’m just saying how silly is that someone who says that an incredibly strong class needs to be fixed immediately, like they are worthless without those fixes, while there are professions that barely are into playable state and still don’t get the fixes they need.
The OP sounds more like a rant than a bug report, that’s why I’m posting here.

frans.8092:

For example, on page 2, “Looks like that, for you, “balance” is some sort of punishment” which was before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

What does aggressive means to you, exactly?

Archaon.6245:

And let’s say something else too..

Mind wrack is an easily avoidable burst too…you have to bait decent ppl with leap to make them waste their dodge/invuln and then mind wrack after some time if you want a chance to hit them, usual leap, diversion and mindwrack combo is going to be avoided by 100% of ppl with just a bit of brain…and after that you have nothing..just dodge and kite until it’s ready again…

Hard to catch…again, if you know how mesmer’s basic mechanincs work it’s easy to get the real mesmer…decent players stick to you like glue until you used all your escapes and then you’re dead, kittens given to clones = 0

But yeah…sure, if someone here still stomps our clone while downed i suppose mesmer is going to be pretty hard for him….but for sure is not because mesmer is op….

Please, please.
Don’t start the mesmer is UP argument again. It isn’t the subject of the topic (as the OP said, right?) and none agrees with you anyway, unless they play mesmer.
So, let it stop now.

Every profession needs bug fixes. Every profession are getting them more or less.
There are professions which are way worse when talking about bugs compared to mesmers.

- Necro minions still watch the fight half the time instead of attacking and this bug has existed since release. Basically 4 utilities, a heal skill and an elite skill are pretty much worthless.
- Spiteful Talisman still doesn’t work in PvE and PvP.
- Necromancer’s downed health is still 1/3 of what it should be in PvE and WvW. Yes. 1/3.
- Your Moa Morph skill still kills all minions and put them on cooldown, despite the fact it was stated by devs that this behavior is unintended.

Those are only from Necromancer I can recall at the moment. Plus, they are under-represented and unwanted in most situations and they are universally considered as weak, but this is another story.

Probably someone else can list some other game-breaking bugs other professions have.
Now, do you understand why people here say Mesmers are low priority at the moment?

frans.8092:

sorrow.2364:

I did not treated bad anyone in this topic, at least not first.
Check the last 4 pages and check who started to raise the tones here.

Uhm, you did, even before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

Where exactly I had an aggressive behavior toward anyone on this topic who treated me nicely? Because I fail to get what post you are referring to.

I think that if there is a priority list of profession that should be looked at, mesmer is at the bottom.

They are very strong and highly represented in every aspect of this game, starting form tPvP to dungeons. They have good damage, amazing survivability, the best control in the game, incredibly easy access to invulnerability, 3 of the most powerful elites in the game, all weapon sets are viable… They have everything, there is nothing to really complain about.

Oh, jportell!
I miss your posts about how weak mesmers are! :P

evilapprentice.6379:

@Sorrow
Sigh. I’m starting to think that you’ll just never get it.

You had access to GW2skills the same way I did. You obviously have no problem spending 5-10 minutes writing out your opinions, you can spare 3 minutes to provide the correct numbers. You’ve had ample opportunity to correct yourself (I’ve called you out on it multiple times, And in one post you went so far as to defend your numbers), but waited until I posted the math to say “20% off isn’t that much (Um, it is. Are you sure you play this game?), why are you making such a big deal about it”. The thief forums are plagued by exaggerations and outright lies that feed confirmation bias, so you should be more careful to only use facts, or else you’re going to get called out on it. You were perfectly content to ignore the fact that you were exaggerating, meaning you’re either lazy, malicious, or both.

Over-simplifying my argument weakens it. “Just dodge it” is usually a really poor argument because you have to watch out for all the other abilities and utilities the player can throw at you. “Just dodge it” works here because I’m specifically pointing out there are no other weaponskills/utilities worth dodging – LS and CS are the ONLY ONES. When you cut that point as extraneous, of course my argument looks weak, but you know this, because I’ve already said it to you at least once.

As others have pointed out, dodging the last hit of an autoattack (Yes, an autoattack) is not automatically a bad idea, and you’re being rather narrowminded for just assuming it is – in this specific instance, where CS and LS make up the vast majority of S/D’s damage, combined with the fact that there is absolutely no incentive to dodge any of the weaponsets other swings, AND the fact that the thief will not be running any other utilities that need to be dodged, it makes complete sense to dodge the last swing of the AA chain. Did you even play S/D pre-patch? Crippling strike and CnD were the only skills anyone ever dodged, because CS was the only DPS, and CnD was the only utility.

The ability to reasonably counter or avoid an ability IS part of a balance discussion. Seeing how easily the ability can be interrupted with CC or Dodged, dodge bears mention. All your interested in talking about is FS->LS’s strengths – anytime someone brings up a weakness, you either dismiss it or ignore it.

We haven’t even mentioned how Soft CC (like snares) would allow you to just walk out of the swing, or how Blind would force the the thief to either SR/IS to cleanse the blind (reducing the init pool for FS/LS), or leave himself vulnerable and waste time while trying to connect a swing to consume the blind while that precious 5s LS trigger ticks down.

You’re basically rehashing the HS spamming tears, and are for some reason surprised when people tell you to L2P. No one really cares because we all know HS spamming is pretty useless against anyone who’s not facerolling their keyboard, the same way FS/LS spamming is.

So yes, I concede that when you completely ignore half my points and underplay the value of the others, my argument looks weak – but that’s true of any point really.

What you said would be true if the skills we are talking about were on cooldown. They are not.

The problem of dodging isn’t to paying attention to a specific movement, because most of the skills worth dodging have an evocative animation, which leads in most cases to an automatic reaction. It is a problem of the endurance limit. We are talking about skills that can be used once every 5 seconds with normal initiave regen.

While “Dodge it” is ALWAYS a weak argument when talking about balance, no matter what you say, in this case it is even a weaker argument because dodging that skill does not grants you enough timespan to let your endurance regenerate and to be ready to dodge the dodgeworthy skill again.

Talking about counters makes no sense. Balance is a comparison between what that specific skill can do in the environment it is placed. Every skill has the implicit counter to be dodged or interrupted, what you have to do isn’t looking at the counters or the weakness, which is a marginal factor, but how this skill performs compared to other similiar skills and how this skill is effective against some professions.

As I said before, and I say it again, the statement about 1.5k damage had no importance for the argument, so there was no reason at all to mathematically check what I said with precision. I were not exaggerating. As I said, you hit 1.1k average on 2600 armor characters. In daily experience it happens you succed to hit for even 2k with sword hits with vulnerability, might stacks and so on. That statement, as I said, is based on my personal experience about sword thief in both PvE and PvE and it isn’t rare that you can hit for higher than 1.5k damage in both cases. Anyway it isn’t worth arguing.

evilapprentice.6379:

CUT

I did not treated bad anyone in this topic, at least not first.
Check the last 4 pages and check who started to raise the tones here.

20% lower than my estimations isn’t that much to call this as an incredible and horrible lie and it isn’t anyway that low to be considered “awful”; consider also that 2600 armor is quite high, it is the armor an Engineer has with soldier amulets. I did not made any math before saying that number but only based on my experience in both PvE and PvP. Since nothing in my reasoning is based on that statement, I don’t know why focusing that much on this. I mean, it looks like you are trying to split hairs into finding something to say “everything he said is a lie, don’t trust this guy!”.

So, in conclusions, your only argumenst were “You can dodge it” and “S/D has awful damage”, you just split them into more points to make it looks like you said more, but, in fact, those are your arguments.

As I said, “Dodge it” is an incredibly poor argument. First because you are suggesting to dodge the last hit of an autoattack (yes, autoattack) chain and a skill which is on low initiative, when you are probably going to have no Vigor on because it would be stolen. Also if you succes to dodge any of the CS and any of the LS, your endurance will be finished and you are going to take the next LS hit anyway. Does it look like as a valid argument to you?

Also, dodge should NEVER, NEVER brought into discussion in any balance topic. As far as you bring the word “dodge”, means that you completely failed to get the point of the topic.
We aren’t discussing about how to counter FS thieves, we are discussing if they are balanced or not.

Saying LS is balanced because it can be dodged brings nothing to the discussion. Any skill can be dodged in this game. So any skill can be interrupted by stun/CC/daze etc.

It’s pretty much like you you say that Ferrari is better than a Porsche because it has wheels and a motor.

evilapprentice.6379:

I Said LS was fine for a whole litany of reasons, one of which is that it can be dodged. Again, a hallmark of a weak argument is the need to change the story to fit your desired outcome, rather than the other way around.

We had 2 pages of arguments that amounted to nothing because it’s impossible to warp facts to fit your opinion – you realized this at some point and just started making kitten up. When called on it, you started including one-off points that didn’t really have anything to do with the discussion at hand in hopes that I’d forget that you had to outright lie to bolster your weak and incorrect conclusions (hint – I didn’t). At first I just disagreed with you – now I’m having fun watching you tailspin, discrediting yourself further and further every time you post.

The only two arguments from your side were it can be dodged and it does poor damage (which is relative and most likely not true).

The topic deariled when you started to make implicit assumption about myself and the fact that I think FS is overpowered because I have to learn to play, like every thief do when you try to make a discussion about balance. Every discussion leads to personal attacks in this forum.

The only lie I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie, but only a little mistake I made when counting the evade time in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGP64dIwBkM), was the one about Pistol Whip evade time. Period. You made that mistake looks like a giant lie like it is worth something for the argument’s sake.

I never said any lie to support my arguments, despite some other people in this topic did. The 1.5k average damage of sword hit isn’t a lie. Unless you run with no criticals at all.

Puru.4217:

I don’t know how you can define “awful damage” the average 1.5k thief deals per sword hit

sustained damage is pretty much non-existent

As i said, another priceless thread in the thief forum.

I had 2 pages of arguments with him leading pretty much to nothing

Well, when your “argumentation” is flawed and biased there’s no reason it should lead to anything.
The best you could do is ask a moderator to close this thread, i think it doesn’t really contain anything worth reading at this point.

Feel free to call me stupid again, that just proving my point even more.

---

As for the topic, i will at least share my opinion.

I indeed believe flanking strike is slightly to strong. I would personally change it to steal one boon, it woud still offer an extra dodge, relatively good damage and a boon steal.
But that rise another issue, which would be the viability of the set as a whole. The problem is that this set is almost only relying on sword skills and fs/ls in order to kill your target, off hand dagger skill being really situational. C&d -> tactical strike can’t really be used as an interrupt which basically make it more an interrupt requiring high degree of prediction (read luck) which often just result in a random daze that pretty much make it a waste of initiative. As for dancing dagger, it simply does terrible damage, is far to slow resulting in it not being able to hit anything sidestepping and the cripple is simply a mediocre bonus, for 4 initiative there is pretty much no reason to use it at all.

My suggestion would be to slightly nerf fs/ls, give some of it’s current power to off hand dagger skill to promote smart use of the 5 weapons ability instead of mainly the first 3 and especially fs/ls. To further promote the boon stealing mechanic as a result to the loss of the extra ls boon removal, i’d add boon stealing to some utility skills (scorpion wire, infiltrator signet or assassin signet would be some example), those are on relatively long cd unlike fs/ls, and could be used on some other set to help those deal with boon heavy specs.

This proves that you did not the read the topic at all, but you don’t hold yourself from spitting judgments about people.

In the same post you said my arguments are biased and then expressed your opinion which turns out to be EXACTLY the same of mine. But yeah, it must be flawed and biased because I said it.

RoRo.8270:

evilapprentice.6379:

RoRo.8270:

Ya it was overbuffed they can take me down pretty easily on my hgh engy they literally spam it 4x and im down to 30% health and all my might stacks are gone then they stealth and wait for initiative or use the shadow step skill. I play hgh engi they shred me apart

It also has a low skill ceiling. The problem with theives is if it’s a bad theif they will still be good because they can stealth or use their ridiculous teleports making them unkillable pretty much

I’m just going to be brutally honest with you – from the tone, writing style, and the way you described things in this post, I’m comfortable assuming you’re not the greatest player, and are not qualified to judge whats OP, has a low skill ceiling, etc…

Don’t be discouraged, that’s not a putdown. You can always get better. Watch some S/D video’s/spectate an S/D thief to get an idea how they work and you’ll start doing much better.

I’m rank 40 I have over 1k tourney games so I have a better idea than most people. Also I didn’t know that someones writing style dictates how they play the game thanks for pointing that out for me

Just ignore that guy. I had 2 pages of arguments with him leading pretty much to nothing.
That is the same guy who said LS is fine because it can be dodged because it has an obvious animation.

I don’t know why, but with full Settler trinkets and Apothecary armor, I don’t even hit 1k condition damage, neither 1k healing power or 2k toughness…
I think it isn’t that worth using after all…

Puru.4217:

Complains that fs removes boons from boon reliant class (mostly because of regen and protection, those class spam vigor so it being removed doesn’t really matter)
End up saying Protection is worthless.

Another priceless thread in the thief forum.

Oh man, why are people that stupid?

wish.1027:

Protection is amazing. My bunker guardian in WvW full times vigor, protection, regen and retaliation. I can face tank 2-3 people without breaking a sweat. I can also reapply boons faster than a S/D thief can take them from me by simply moving around a lot and using my blinds and CC’s and hitting him. Once the thief gets low on ini or HP they always back away, and when they back away I always run from them to force them waste cooldowns or ini to chase me. Its an effective strategy, and I havent lost a 1v1 yet doing it to a s/d thief. Theres been lots of times where they ran from me or didnt chase me though.

Honestly, I think it needs a bit more of a buff. Today for instance I was attacked by a s/d thief, plus a glass cannon mesmer and a ranger (no idea what he used other than a longbow). Know what happened? I kited them for 10 minutes before they managed to kill me, and I downed the thief once. This is on a slow moving guardian, that relies almost entirely on boons to stay alive. And youre saying S/D thief is somehow in need of a nerf? I think youre crazy.

I think WvW doesn’t really matter when evaluating how good something is.
There are too much parameters, laggs and everything that changes a lot in WvWvW. Try the same build you’re running in sPvP/tPvP.
Once an S/D thief come, you’ll see you won’t last that long.

Dahkeus.8243:

This logic is so broken, I’m not even sure where to start…

No one is arguing whether the protection boon is better than a dodge.

Protection and dodging aren’t mutually exclusive.

And wth is this about minion armies? Are you saying that you dodge everything? If you somehow evade every hit of damage, then please post a video of this godliness. For us mortals, however, protection means that your enemy has to do 33% more damage to kill you, which is easily the difference between whether you survive to use your heal when it comes off cooldown or whether you can live until you have the endurance to dodge that next shatter from the mesmer or whether that next backstab will drop you, etc.

Did you even undestood what I tried to say in one page of topic?
Seriously, you came here and say something which doesn’t really regards the dicussion, also with an arrogant tone.

I said that protection is useful only against a minion army, because it deals sustained damage over time, while, in any other average situation, having a dodge left is always better than having protection on.

Since some professions haven’t access to both vigor and protection while some have access to more dodge/evading compared to others, there is a reason behind comparing them. It looks like you don’t even know why we are comparing dodge to protection. Man, read the topic, then answer. Or, if you don’t want to read it first, don’t aggresively attack other people with your assumptions.

But hey, this is the thief forum. I don’t even know why I’m losing my time here.
I have too much faith in human’s race.

Daecollo.9578:

Rangers have Evade: 1 s on there greatsword’s autoattack… That is the same as Pistol Whip and Death Blossom’s Evade combined.

What do you want to tell me by saying that?

Daecollo.9578:

Vigorous Recovery? Why would I take that over 50% Stealth Movement Speed?

You can’t get that, and why would you? It relies on using a healing ability, I would rather save it for when I need it. Its a waste of stealth/cures.

Its unreliable and gimmicky.

Protection is amazing if you know how to use it correctly, however I don’t see if you can see how it works.

I thought this topic was about Flanking Strike?…

Why would you pick Vigorous Recovery?
Because when it is combined with Withdraw (which is an amazing healing skill), it is a wondeful trait, while 50% Stealth Movement Speed is worthless anyway because the bonus is 33%, not 50 as the trait says, just like the swiftness you get on dodge.

And no, it is far from unreliable and gimmicky.

Protection is alwasy worse than a well timed dodge, ALWAYS.
The only situation I would say Protection is useful is against a minion army, but we know how many MM are around…

1. Protection is pretty much worthless for a simple reason. It reduces the damage, it doesn’t cancel it.
Since this game is based on just some skills which deals massive damage while sustained damage is pretty much non-existent, dodge is always better than protection. The Necro example is to make you guys understand how protection is without evasion: worthless.

2. Exactly, when did we stated that the subject of the argument is protection on GC? Wasn’t it started because someone said that boons and invulnerabilities are better than stealth and evades? Wasn’t it the reason because FS got buffed?

3. The boon stolen which wrecks bunker is Vigor. All the boon bunkers have that boon always up. Protection is up more or less 1/4 of the time, it doesn’t really help to survive.

4. @evilapprentice: which invulnerability allows you to do damage while invulnerable? Only distortion. All the boon-bunkers, which you said they have access to invulnerability too, can’t attack while invulnerable (Mist Form, Renewed Focus).

5. @daecollo: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability
Look at the first line. " It does not prevent damage from existing conditions, fall damage, or environmental traps.".

6. @daecollo: you forgot about this in your “poor thief’s endurance regen” argument: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigorous_Recovery

7. As I pointed out before, compared to any other defensive mechanic in this game, stealth, evades and mobility allow thief to build GC without any downside. This is what makes them so strong as defensive mechanic and that’s why they are always better than any other invulnerability or boon.

evilapprentice.6379:

Silly me! I forgot that “not dying” was the metric by which capture point games were scored. No wonder bunkers are so popular!

Who’s talking Bunkers? I’m talking GC thieves with access to defensive buffs instead of stealth. Protection is powerful on a GC. It’s the equivalent of doubling your toughness if you’re running base toughness. Think about that for a second. Stability is also a nice one – no more getting stunned/feared/KB’d while executing your burst combos. Imagine an ability like endure pain on a GC thief – 5 seconds to go just go nuts, knowing that no burst can stop you. I’d give up the ability to go invisible (but still have competent players have a fairly good idea where I’m heading) for that in a heartbeat.

Actually “not dying” is a crucial part in any PvP match because if you’re dead you’re not helping your team. Simple.

Did you considered the fact that those good things are uptime half a time you are capable to have Stealth up?
Did you know that dodge is, in fact, a 0.75s invulnerability?
Did you know that Thief and Rangers are the only two professions who have a trait which maximize the endurance regeneration?
Did you know that Thief, if you look closely, have access to invulnerability? It has only a different name, which is “evade”.
Did you know that Pistol Whip has 2s of “evade”?

Protection is pretty much worthless, trust me.
Necro has some access to it due to Spectral skills, while they have no access to evades, movement skills or stealth.
Try protection on a GC Necro and tell me how are you doing into tanking people.

evilapprentice.6379:

“I Don’t know where my target is” is a disingenuous statement when referring to thief.
More accurate would be “I don’t know the exact location of my target”.

When a thief stealths, he isn’t contributing anything to his team. He isn’t contesting points, doing damage, CCing…and so on. This limits the effectiveness of a stealthed thief. So, lets puzzle out what our thief is doing. He could be running away (in which case, you won! grats, get ready for the next fight). He could be trying to kill you, in which case you have a very, very good idea where he’s aiming to end up (psst, it’s behind you). Those are basically the 2 options. If he’s not doing either of those things, he’s not contributing to his team, and he’s worthless.

If after a few weeks of play you can’t puzzle out where a thief might be headed when he stealth’s based on his health and how the fight was going prior to him stealthing, you’re not trying.

By all means though, keep insisting on how broken stealth is – when anet eventually caves and replaces it with protection, stability, blocks, more evades, and maybe even an invuln skills, people will feel really stupid when they get shredded by GC thieves that they can see but can’t stop.

We are talking about a defensive mechanic, right?
So if it let you escape alive, it has done its job.
I don’t know how do you think boon-bunkers work, but having boons doesn’t allow you to run GC, which is something Stealth and evades do.

Since Toughness, Healing Power and Condition Damage sets are incredibly cheap right now, I’d like to know if someone has found any viable build which fits nicely with this set.

Daecollo.9578:

I can see how bunker boon users would be angry about flanking strike, however its rock paper scissors, I think Warrior and Ranger elites should have there boons split a bit so they arn’t as effected by this however the ability itself is fine.

Any boon removal in this game isn’t capable to constantly cleanse the enemy out of their boons. They mostly annoy the boon-user if you are good enough to use your boon strips at the right time, to strip the most crucial boons.

Once you give to some profession the tool to completely wipe any boon out of your enemy for some reasons (probably they want boons out of the meta), you should adjust any other boon-hate skills according to your game design decision, or your buff will become imbalanced.

evilapprentice.6379:

Of course they do, and they’re the most kittened about classes on the forums because their defensive measures are evasiveness and confusion (talking about confusion as a noun, not the in-game condition). As far as thieves are concerned, they get a ton of evasiveness and confusion because they don’t get block, invuln, protection or stability, and their access to regen is pretty kitten . And it’s all perfectly fair, until people (in general, not singling you out) start crying about how broken stealth and evasion are.

I never claimed one was more powerful then the other, just that they existed. I honestly think most of the classes are fairly well balanced (Well, beside Warriors) at this point – once warriors get a leg up, we’ll probably be in the “minor tweaks” part of game balancing, rather than sweeping changes.

I can’t believe you really think this game is well balanced. There are some major flaws to address that it is impossible to not notice them.
For instance, Mesmer are always over the average in any situation and any settings. In PvP there is an huge amount of Mesmer representation, probably they are extremely easy to play and extremely effective at the same time. Some weapon sets are completely worthless and some traitlines of some professions are complete trash.

About the evasiveness-boons argument, I don’t really think it is a fair trade.
Having your enemy in sight, being aware of their positioning and also having it targeted is huge in any fight. Nothing can be a better defensive mechanic then making your enemy not know where you are and making you untargeted.
Also, this brings another important issue, because as good evasiveness is in a PvP environment, it is not as effective as tankyiness in PvE. This means that giving some profession evasiveness only and no tankiness, makes them extremely strong in PvP while below average in PvE.
There is a reason if Thief and Mesmer are the two most played professions in the mist and it’s not because they are pretty.

evilapprentice.6379:

Those classes with vigor generally have additional defensive options such as invulns, blocks, protection, stability, and high regen uptime.

I think that you know that Mesmers and Thieves have additional defenses too.
Uh, and they have vigor too!

stof.9341:

Well, except the classes with lots of vigor and invulnerability or blocks, like elementalist and guardian. Or the ranger with a lot of evade on his melee weapon skills too. For sure they can get very strong healing.

So we got mesmer, thief, elementalist, guardian, maybe ranger too. That’s the majority of the cast already :p

I think there are 2 missing, right?
Uh, do Vigor is as much effective as an evade on any weapon set?

Evilek.5690:

And unkillable boons Guardian,Ranger or Ele is balanced ? Do not be silly
Boons steal/remove is only way how kill this terminators. All things must have their nemesis=balance.

No, having a nemesis isn’t balance. The word itself says what balance is. It isn’t about giving a nemesis to a specific build, it is about finding the exact compromise to make them both effective, so the skills may speak.

As boon-bunkers were too much effective against Thief (that’s the reason FS was buffed), now Thief is too much effective against boon-bunkers. Imbalance then, imbalance now.

The rock, paper and scissor game isn’t balance, it is just rock, paper and scissor.

stof.9341:

Even counting a sword mesmer which gets a weapon skill giving 2s of evade followed by 6s of cooldown and a class tool giving him invulnerability nearly on demand?

Yeah, this is right.

But what it makes me laugh is that when you say to any Mesmer that Blurried Frenzy is too much powerful, they say “Look at Thieves! They have lots of evades” and they are right too!

And, in the meantime, all other professions with no evades/invulnerabilities on demand get kitten d.

DanH.5879:

the answer is simple:
DON’T USE BOONS !!!
problem solved.

Yeah, the answer is to completely avoid to use a base game mechanic because S/D thieves are around. Looks balanced.