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Intra-Class Balance Dynamic - My Perspectives - Things I'd Like To See Happen - 8/29/2020


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@Supreme.3164 said:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:Oh dear.
  1. We aren't in a condi meta. The fact that there are handful of viable condi builds amongst the endless sea of power builds, doesn't mean condi meta. I see more power revs than condi revs these days, warriors on the rare occasion you see them are power, guardians are split 50/50 between power and condi atm, as are rangers, holos/scrappers are power, thieves are mostly power atm, necro is split 50/50 between power reapers and condi core/scourge, eles are mostly either playing support tempest or LR, and mesmers atm appear to be playing hybrid. Where is the condi meta? It seems like a pretty healthy mixture to me.
  2. Exactly what passive CC are you talking about? And you say it's been added..... what was added? Apart from Flashbang. Shocking aura access is the same as its been since HoT release. None of the CC that scourge or FB do is 'passive'. If the issue is just with Flashbang and shocking-aura (it's debatable whether shocking aura is "passive" since it requires deliberate activation) then just say so.
  3. You got supports 100% wrong here. The reason all "supports" at the moment are more like cc/tank hybrids, is that a purely support focused build is not viable at the moment. If you try and play a pure healing/boon guardian, or a pure healing tempest, or a pure healing druid, scrapper, ventari, you'll fail miserably. To be worth a player slot you also have to be providing heavy CC or moderate damage on top of heals. If you can't provide those, then an additional DPS player is preferable to a pure support.

I never said we were in a condi meta. I said we were in a condi heavy meta. Reread it.
  1. Thieves are nearly 75% PD Condi in NA and they are played often. Even in ATs good teams stack them lately, which is obnoxious. I had recently posted a screenshot of my team against Vaans' team in the final round of an AT. We had 4 PD Thieves in the match. This is where the difference is between EU players saying that condi isn't that big of a thing, but NA players complaining about too much condi. Outside of that yeah, it's nearly 50/50 power & condi play. But that doesn't change my point of view that condi heavy metas have bad dynamic.
  2. What passive CC am I talking about? Exactly what I said in the OP post. And yes, Shocking Aura is as passive as it gets. The Tempest itself casts it frequently and then after it is cast it lingers passively and auto CCs when players attempt attacks. Now when we're talking Aura Share, OTHER PLAYERS ARE DOING NOTHING to benefit Shocking Aura Share which once it goes onto them, it passively lingers there, interrupting enemies who attempt attacks around them. That's pretty much the epitome of passive CC. I don't understand how you can try to argue that.
  3. About Supports - I don't care if the Supports are Full-Support, Hybrid-Support, or Berserker Amulet-Support. The fact of the matter is that regardless of what ratio of Offense to Defense they are running on the build, they're still pumping out over-tweaked support whereas other classes don't have support at all. You fail to mention that things like Shocking Aura Share with Lightning Rod actually work better with high DPS for its support factor. And how things like condi cleansing & prot spam & team stab & bubbles for proj reflection type support, works exactly the same whether a Full-Support build or a Berserker-Support build. The only thing different on a Full-Support build really, is heal factor when someone is choosing to run something like Mender. Right now in this meta, Supports are optimizing for high damage with damage mitigation techniques, rather than raw healing. This style of support is showing to be much stronger and proving that my statement holds true when I said that: "Supports are too strong right now" regardless of why or how. I don't understand what your point in your 3) was, as if it were trying to avoid this fact.

Shocking aura is not passive at all , you don't get passively stunned unless you attack the ele
exactly
like full counter that you consider "heavy telegraph"; furthermore the aura is plenty visible. Since launch auras have worked "on hit" and full counter can be used way more frequently than SA seen as it's on a 8s CD

If I put down a symbol then the tempest uses shock aura and runs into my symbol, I get stunned. I continue to get stunned if it AOE's shock aura onto more people and am basically stunlocked from CC I had to ""predict"" coming by literally not pressing my highest damaging ability. Shock aura is completely broken and passive, and it's counter play is simply not playing the game at all.

Not playing GW2 isn't good counterplay for an ability btw.

Shocking aura has been here since launch ..which was 8 years ago, that was plenty of time to learn how to counterplay the skill :

1.The stun is only
melee
  1. You have stability
  2. Only last 4s and stun once every 2s for 1s
  3. Does not reflect or block incoming dmg be it condi or direct

Saying that Shocking aura stops you from playing the game is a pompous grossly exaggeration to say the least
  1. No it isn't. When I try to use Lightning Reflexes while in range of Shocking Aura, it prevents me from using my evade and nullifies the point of the stun break to begin with. The same goes for other non melee damage sources.
  2. You reference Shocking Aura being in the game for 8 years and this is true. But in those initial years, it was convenient for every build to run as much Stability as they could. And later years, +conc stat amulets were introduced along with runes that added wildly large amounts of flat +boon durations. During these years, a single proc of Stability with say 10 stacks, would last like 15s to 20s. This is why no one noticed Shocking Aura during those years. AFTER the legend nerf patch that massively lowered DPS, removed tons of stun breaks, removed stability procs, removed +conc stat amulets, and hard nerfed +boon duration runes, players now have access to roughly 2/3rds of the stun breaks they previously had, and only 1/3rd of the Stability access & uptime. This makes it so that for many classes/builds, it simply isn't worth bringing Stability at all because the procs are infrequent and short duration. Utility skills slots & traits are often better used in other ways. <- These are the reasons why Shocking Aura is a problem now, post legend nerf patch.
  3. "Only lasts 4s and stun once every 2s for 1s" Yeah against 5 opponents. Each opponent can be struck by Shocking Aura once per 2s. So with that 4s of Shocking aura while in a team fight, it can potentially land 10x instant unavoidable interrupts against 5 opponents, for a total of 10s worth of stun collectively and on only a 25s CD. And that 25s CD is for just the actual normal skill, not countering traits or abilities or other sources that cause it to happen much more frequently. Dude that's way too much CC to be healthy for the game after so much counter play vs. CC was removed from the game. And that's not even mentioning the entirely passive nature of it.
  4. Doesn't reflect or block damage? Dude it interrupts incoming damage. That's like equal to reflects or blocks if not better, because it is CCing opponents so they themselves are being setup to be counter pressured. Not sure if you're being serious with your responses or not tbh.

No one said Shocking Aura stops them from playing the game. People say it bogs the game dynamic down, and it does.
  1. It is melee range, this is a fact
  2. and 3. How people run their builds got nothing to do with what is available in game in terms of counterplay ,
    as a matter of fact elementalist was the most affected by the removal of stability/stunbreak
    , they removed stability from weaver and doubled the CD of Twist of fate; the stability uptime of : rangers, warriors, guardians, engineers is basically the same here as far as I can remember, yes Soulbeast had Dolyak stance doubled in CD and Corona burst/Foot in the grave removal of stability....other than that there has been no massive reduction in the number of stunbreaks and stability uptime
  3. Does not reflect or block damage as fact,
    it interrupts melee attacks from opponents lacking stability

Shocking aura works as deterrent and it does its job, now I have seen the idea of changing stun to daze, that would work too.....anything that doesn't change the defensive nature of the skill would work.

As long there is counterplay is available in game...you can't really expect the game to be balanced based on what you find "convenient" to run on your build

No one even plays soulbeast for competitive. Rangers only source of stab got cut in half and now it’s just a very temporary source of stab.> @Supreme.3164 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:You know what, on a different note, here is a list of class balance commentary:
  • War - Should stay the same as it is now. It's in a good place balance wise/feel wise.
  • Spellbreaker - Same as War. If it weren't for OP classes, Spellbreaker feels good to play and play against.
  • Berserker - It's actually not bad in the absence of the current OP classes. Don't feel like it's sitting in a cherry spot though.
  • Guard - Needs either a damage or sustain shave. Should stay the way it is other than that. It feels good to play right now.
  • Dragonhunter - I feel like it's balanced nowadays, but underused due to presence of broken classes. Though it isn't in a sweet spot.
  • Firebrand - It's right where it should be for once. Leave it alone.
  • Rev - Never see it in play, no idea
  • Herald - Needs a decrese in its teleportation frequency and it would be balanced. Leave it as is.
  • Renegade - Feels balanced at times. Other times I feel like Kalla needs reviewing. I don't know Ren enough to really comment.
  • Engi - Only reason it's not being used is due to how strong Scrapper/Holo are right now. Wouldn't say it's in a sweet spot though.
  • Scrapper - Balanced. It would see a lot more play if it weren't for other super specs.
  • Holo - It's packing way too much after flashbang. Imo forge needs to go to a 9s CD and flashbang needs to be removed.
  • Thief - Balanced outside of Deadly Arts line as usual. Leave everything else alone.
  • Daredevil - Balanced. Leave it alone.
  • Deadeye - 1/2 a step away from no longer playable. If you don't want to give it back its damage, give it some passive sustain that comes from DE trait line abilities so it's at least playable in spvp.
  • Ranger - Balanced. Leave it alone. Some would say it fell out, but that's only because of the presence of OP things. If those things were nerfed, Ranger would be sitting in a nice sweet spot. Even the way core ranger plays right now, is how it should have always felt.
  • Druid - In a bad place. See the link in my signature about Druid competitive suggestions.
  • Soulbeast - Balanced. Leave it alone. If the god tier specs were nerfed, Soulbeast would be sitting in a sweet spot. And aside from what many people may say, I actually agree with the no pet swap drawback.
  • Mes - Balanced if in a world without god tier specs. It actually feels good to play at this point. Leave it alone, nerf the out of control specs.
  • Chrono - ^ same as Mes
  • Mirage - Needs its 2nd dodge back and compensation for losing expertise stat.
  • Ele - Kind of weak tbh. Tempest & Weaver provide really really powerful mechanics that Ele simply does not have access to.
  • Tempest - Shocking Aura seriously needs to be heavily nerfed. The CC could be changed to a 1/2 daze and it would be functional. It does not need to be a 1s stun for such a ridiculously persistent passive effect.
  • Weaver - These are actually really strong right now and I'm not really sure why I don't see them being used more often. I suppose it's because "Why roll Weaver when you could roll Tempest Aura Share?" But Weaver is on the verge of being OP if other things were to be nerfed.
  • Necro - Kind of fell out but you know what? It's where it should be for a core spec. Though I do have to say that Vampiric Rituals needs to be put right back where it once was. It was a bad idea to remove that trait and tinker with wells. It removed an entire category of niche builds that many people really enjoyed the feel of.
  • Reaper - Too strong right now. Though I feel like this is more of a symptom of the disease that is Tempest Shocking Aura Share. The Reaper became super OP when he's running around with Shocking Aura all of the time in team fights. That's pretty much exactly what happened. If Shock Aura was nerfed, leave Reaper as is. It's in a good place.
  • Scourge - Exactly where it should be. Leave it as is.

Just my opinions. I feel like if the actual problems were addressed next time around rather than a stir the bucket approach, we'd have a good balanced meta on our hands.

Don't want to comment too much but....1.Guardian sustain is not nearly as high as you make it sounds2.Weaver is not used ...because simply it's weak, even more in PvP than WvW where still doesn't see much play ( not even staff weaver is used anymore ), the number of people playing eles has drastically reduced over the years and if my words are not enough, here are some more info from @Blamthrax , supposedly one of the few TOP eles

Weaver is fine wouldn’t even call that a top ele player. Ppl played weaver to win mATs after the big patch and someone even got rank1 on it.

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@wevh.2903 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as fuck, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as fuck.

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@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:Currently in spvp "all modes" I see 3x main problems concerning the intra-class balance & dynamic that are seriously dragging down the fun factor of the game. The first problem is concerning how conditions are currently working in a condi heavy meta. The second is how too much passive CC is making the game feel like being stuck in a traffic jam. The third is that support classes have seriously been buffed way too much.

Conditions:

  1. Condition play is too strong and too bursty right now. Since year 1 we've all seen how condition dominant metas always bring in the laziest, spammiest, sloppiest, and most RNG type of play, which players generally have less fun with for several reasons. Most of the condi based attacks in the game are AoE in nature or activated through traits & utilities that create these primer abilities that cause condi damage to happen through any attack the user wants, including auto 1 spam. The real problem here is that the telegraphs for these AoE abilities and primed traits & utilities, have little to no telegraphs at all.
  2. All of the attack animations in the game are tied to power side damage. With power side damage, there is always a clear wind up animation and strike animation, regardless of the speed of the attack. However with condi based attacks or condi effects tied onto power based weapon attacks, they have slight tiny animations that don't even occur until after the skill is used or in some cases no animation at all. Without going into too much detail, I'll give a simple example to think about: Situation (A) - You enter a 3v3 at mid against a Holo, a Spellbreaker, and a Reaper. In this situation it is possible to counter play the telegraphs well enough that you can avoid most of the damage or maybe all of it. But in Situation (B) - You enter a 3v3 at mid against a Core Burn Guard, a Scourge, and an Ele. In this situation there is so much no animation no warning pulsing condi AoE, that you will get hit and you will take a lot of damage. I'm not saying that anything is OP or UP here. I am saying that this is the difference between when the game's dynamic feels good, and when it feels bad.
  3. With power dominant metas, we've seen over the years that this is when the difference in player skill levels really shines. Good players can see telegraphs and outplay a class/build that normally should be beating it. But in condi dominant metas, the gap in player effectiveness between a strong player and a weak player begins to shorten. This is because condi dominant metas force a type of playstyle that is less about watching telegraphs & outplaying, and more about just running whatever statistically has the strongest attributes in the current given patching, because no one can really avoid damage. Sure, being experienced does matter, but it matters a lot less in condi dominant metas.
  4. Condition builds also get out of control more easily than power builds in terms of being OP. This is mainly because of the way condi clear & stun breaks & other effects were implemented into the game. Most stun breaks and condi clears are utility skills and are often the same skill. We are talking skills such as "Shake it off" "Contemplation of purity" "Ranger utilities in conjunction with Wilderness Lore" "Plague Sig/Spectral Walk" "ect ect". So what happens is that while vs. power damage, a player only worries about using these skills for stun breaks. But while vs. condi damage, a player has to use these skills for clears and stun breaks. Condi builds, especially ones that can burst, often make a player have to cycle through their utilities & other abilities twice as quickly as normal. When condi builds are left too strong, they become dominant to the point that there is little to no practical counter play at all for this reason for forcing cool downs out of players too quickly with unavoidable nearly no telegraph AoE damage.
  5. My Suggestion - Due to how conditions were implemented into Guild Wars 2 in conjunction with how clears & stun breaks & other effects were implemented, conditions should only ever be attrition. Under no circumstances should any class/build ever be able to burst with conditions in the same way that a power build can burst. Condition based attacks have a negligent amount of telegraphs and too much AoE spam which makes the game dynamic feel sloppy, less skill based, and in general less fun to play.

Passive CC:

  1. Before all the passive CC was added, you could be in a 1v1 or team fight and be counter playing all the opponent's active CCs. You had a distinct good satisfying feeling of fluid play dynamic & being free of the hassle of mechanics that stop up and put delay on everything that everyone is doing. After all the passive CC was added, team fights and even 1v1s often feel like being stuck in a traffic jam. Now we have situations where you should be able to deal damage or stomp or revive or just do something, but you can't. Now we have combats that should be ending in 30s to 60s but instead they go on for ridiculously elongated amounts of time in a way that just feels bad man. This is too close of a feel to the old bunker metas, and in my opinion it actually feels worse than the old bunker metas because you're glued to the floor like 50% of the time you're engaged in a combat when too much passive CC is floating about.
  2. We're talking about: "Flashbang" "Shocking Aura Share" and also soft CC skills that passively proc of traits or pulse off pits, spamming soft CCs way too frequently and for way to elongated of amounts of time. When all of these effects start stacking on top of each other, it just turns into a mess of play dynamic that doesn't feel fun. Again, I'm not saying anything is OP or UP. I am saying that it makes the game feel bad to play. Another example to think about: Situation (A) a Spellbreaker and an S/D Thief vs. Power Soulbeast and Power Herald. In situation (A) every single skill used matters, every single CC is active, landing or missing an important CD creates detrimental momentum shifts, everything is high risk high reward, and as such the difference between good players and bad players in the match up is enormous. But most importantly, every single attack used has an actual telegraph that can be seen. There are no random pulsing nearly invisible effects happening at all. But in Situation (B) Tempest & Scourge vs. Tempest & FB, we have a mess on our hands. Players on these classes are rewarded for spamming skills off of CD, they actually don't need to pay that much attention at all to what's happening. There is way too much passive CC going on to where the traffic jam effect is happening. Landing or missing an important CD isn't really very detrimental at all and in fact, there is so much AoE going on here that it's actually hard to miss with a skill. Even if attacks are missed, chances are that the two duos in conjunction with their passive hard & soft CCs, could also support themselves so strongly to such a degree, that neither side would be able to kill the other. There is absolutely nothing risky here for how high the reward is, and every single thing that is happening in this 2v2 is a nearly impossible to see telegraph pulsing pit or aura like effect with little to no animation at all. This kind of dynamic is lame and boring because although the difference between P2 vs. G2 will be very obvious in Spellbreaker & Thief vs. Soulbeast & Herald, the difference between P2 vs. G2 in Tempest & Scourge vs. Tempest & FB will be barely visible at all due to the traffic jam effect.
  3. My Suggestion - Get rid of passive CC completely, at least the hard CCs. This trend needs to stop. Compensate the classes that lose the passive CCs in other ways.

Supports:

  1. Simply put, things that traditionally played the Support role are too strong right now. In years past it used to work like this: (Team Fighter) Has lots of AoE damage & active CC. Not so strong in 1v1s. Not as mobile as some other builds. Designed in a way that it benefits greatly when being paired with other Team Fighters and especially Supports. (Team Supports) Has lower supportive damage & CC to assist Team Fighters. It's prone to focus if it is alone but is very difficult to kill when being covered by its Team Fight. It greatly benefits Team Fighters who stay around it with frequent heals, buffs, and even debuffs vs. the opponents. Usually amongst the slowest classes/builds. (DPS + Roamer) Sometimes good in some 1v1s but bad in others. Of the highest mobility. Mainly single target strike damage but the damage is very high vs. that single target. Good at escaping, not so good when caught or focused. (Side Node Duelist or Bunker) Excellent in 1v1. Designed to hold a node, sometimes even in 1v2s. Designed to frequently CC opponents off the node. Designed to beat opponents with attrition if they waste enough time in the 1v1 against it. Not nearly as effective in team fights as Team Fighters, Team Supports, or even DPS + Roamers. <- All of this made sense and felt good. Very distinct roles that gave the game a special flavor & feeling with how it was balanced. But somewhere along the lines, anything that was a Support role just started getting buffed to where they were allowed to have the Team Fight damage & CC of Team Fighters, and the self sustain of Side Node Duelists & Bunkers, and even comparable mobility to some DPS + Roamers, all the while maintaining their full original Support capabilities. Now we have Supports that are capable of stacking on top of each other to also be full fledged Team Fighters, who can also wander off alone and be dominant in 1v1s, who are also amongst the most stable Side Noders. Supports are running spvp right now with alpha status.
  2. Yet another example of what I mean: Situation (A) A Tempest & FB vs. Tempest & Scourge are fighting in 2v2 arena. In this situation one team could be P2 and the other G3 and you'll barely be able to see the difference in the outcome of the match of how the skill difference mattered. Situation (B) A D/P Thief and Chrono vs. Tempest & Scourge. In this situation, the D/P Thief and the Chrono will need to be P2 to even be able to realistically threaten the G3 Tempest & Scourge in a 2v2 arena. The level of sustain alone on the G3 Tempest & Scourge duo is enough to deny the P2 Thief & Chrono of any opportunity they have to ever get a downstate, and even if they get a downstate, both supports have instant revive skills. The Thief & Chrono will have a difficult time dealing damage not only due to the large sustain on their opponents, but also because their opponents have a lot more damage output and CC than they should have for being full supports. The G3 Tempest & Scourge can play sloppily, missing most bursts, taking a lot of flat footed damage they don't need to be taking, and heal through all of it. But the Thief & Chrono could greatly mechanically outplay them, flawlessly & perfectly for over two minutes or more, and if either of them messes up just once, they can get caught and put into downstate instantly, with their partner having no way to realistically revive them. Supports are so strong right now, that on a daily basis I am seeing normally G3 players on Supports, bullying their way through and winning against normally P2 players who are on things like Thieves and Warriors and Mesmers. Supports are currently way way too strong.
  3. My Suggestion - The traditional strong Support classes/builds need to lose a sizeable amount of the offensive pressure they have. And instant revive skills all need to be on longer cast times so that there is a more realistic time frame to interrupt those skills.

There are lots of other things I'd like to go into detail on, like how hack programs & match manipulation needs to be punished. Or how I feel that Ranked mode should be deleted, Ranked rewards shuffled into Unranked, and rating/badge/title rewards shuffled into AT seasons which reset after each MAT. But for now I'll leave this thread as is in hopes that it is heard by someone, anyone, in the Arenanet office.

~ Some of us still love this game and we want it to feel good again.

I hope you're not including Druid in traditional support.

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer buffs the enemy thief by giving it plasma anytime it wants, so that's even worse than being hard countered by thief, that's actively griefing your team by playing mesmer.

Plasma is a huge, huge issue.

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@Shiyo.3578 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer buffs the enemy thief by giving it plasma anytime it wants, so that's even worse than being hard countered by thief, that's actively griefing your team by playing mesmer.

Plasma is a huge, huge issue.

I know.Me playing at be like. Thief jumps on me, I outplay the shit out of him -> my reward? I get to live. He escapes.20s later my thief dies? why? enemy thief ran him down cuz he had plasma, nice!

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer was viable with portal roaming together with a thief. Ye both of them on a team comp .

Mesmer with portal without actual nerf woulf be meta for sure . It allows to do a lot of stuff , conquest is about rotation and portal there is a masterpiece.

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@wevh.2903 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer was viable with portal roaming together with a thief. Ye both of them on a team comp .

Mesmer with portal without actual nerf woulf be meta for sure . It allows to do a lot of stuff , conquest is about rotation and portal there is a masterpiece.

its not a masterpiece when mesmer is so shit its forced to use portal as a survivability tool every time. Its a win more ability, yes often its fun and you can make cool things but its a win more ability and those in general are unhealthy.

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer was viable with portal roaming together with a thief. Ye both of them on a team comp .

Mesmer with portal without actual nerf woulf be meta for sure . It allows to do a lot of stuff , conquest is about rotation and portal there is a masterpiece.

its not a masterpiece when mesmer is so kitten its forced to use portal as a survivability tool every time. Its a win more ability, yes often its fun and you can make cool things but its a win more ability and those in general are unhealthy.

Remove sb 5 on thief, see how awesome it still is. U go on a out how broken thief is yet if u remove sb5 its basically in same position as mesmer, except mesmers gank outa stealthis 16k not 7k like a booned up power thief's burst. Yeah mesmers get countered by thief but thief has its counters as well, most classes do. Thief is taken every match because its mobility lends greatly to the cap/decap mechanic in conquest, if it was purely combat based thief would drop tiers fast. All mesmer needs is it portal back.

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In testimony to how passive CC has butchered the flow of balance, in conjunction with some other glaring balance issues.

Right now we are in patching where only 4 classes/builds are considered meta:

  1. Tempest
  2. Reaper
  3. Holosmith
  4. DP Daredevil

~ https://metabattle.com/wiki/Conquest

Why is it happening? Shocking Aura Share and Flashbang are running the direction of the meta and pushing out classes/builds that can't front enough CC & Stability uptime to deal with the chemistry of what's happening while still remaining viable. It's kind of happening like this:

  1. Tempest covers all of the weaknesses that the Reaper has in its defense, and then Reaper covers the Tempest's lack of direct offensive pressure. Then both of their elites Tornado & Lich, also have unusually strong chemistry when used together. It is important to note that these two classes have large amounts of CC, Stability uptime, and Stun Breaks, while still being able to run very powerful build structures. <- This is key to understand where the meta is being driven from. Post ultra nerf patch that removed so much stability & stun breaks from other classes, these two classes have found a very strong position to be able to abuse the new dynamic after the nerf patch, in a new style of "broken" that we've never really seen before. - The Tempest is by far the strongest and only Support Role needed. The Reaper is by far the strongest and only Team Fighter needed.
  2. It all begins with the Tempest & the Reaper combo, but mainly just the Tempest. The Reaper is just the Tempest's ideal right hand man. It's the Shocking Aura Share for the entire team that puts the Tempest and the Tempest alone, in a position where he is driving the current not so diverse meta. What makes the Reaper position #2 is not only because he is the Tempest's best wing man, but also because of his level of access to Stability so that he can get in at the enemy Tempest and actually deal damage without having all of his combo strings being interrupted constantly from enemy Shocking Auras. The Reaper is getting frequent Stab from Shroud 3, plenty of Stab while in Lich, or even extra frequent Stab stacks if he uses Chilled To The Bone. And this isn't to mention the Stun Breaks on his utility bar and all of the CC that his weapon skills and Shroud has, and what the Tempest buffs him with. Again, the level of Stab, CC, Stun break uptime between these two classes is unbelievably high compared to other class configurations. In a nutshell, they make it so you can't move or do anything, while they are able to still move and do things. It's that simple, and the very large bulk of this exploit is due to Shocking Aura Share, which is driving this meta.
  3. Then we have ye good ole' Holosaiyan. He's always the strongest bruiser in the game that has access to the most mechanics, that self sustains fine on his own, and deals a lot of damage while maintaining good mobility. We could argue how OP or if it is OP but that's not really point here. The point to note is that it is able to maintain a top slot in this no diversity meta for 2x reasons. First of all it has Flashbang, another passive CC that is hard and soft CC, and it happens frequently. This new and very powerful over defensive ability is for some reason available on an offensive trait line https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Explosives and it allows the Holosaiyan to passively be super defensive while running a glass cannon berserker amulet full damage grenade build, while it plays 100% aggressively, mechanically. The second reason and probably the bigger reason why it can hang in the remaining 4 metas, is the large amount of Stab access/uptime that it is. This allows it to be able to get in and actually deal damage to a Tempest or those around it, through the instant passive CCs of Shocking Aura. It also allows the Holosaiyan the ability to deal with other Holosaiyan passive CC. - The Holosmith is tweaked SO MUCH as a bruiser, that it can perform 3x job roles equally as well as the other: 1) Team Fighter, 2) DPS + Roamer, 3) Side Node Duelist. This specialization is packing way too much in this patching.
  4. DP Daredevil is the only DPS + Roamer that is needed. Due to how Tempest/Reaper/Holo have pushed certain specific builds/classes out of viability that normally should be able to deal with the DP Daredevil. Due to this effect, right now the DP has no contestation whatsoever in the role of DPS + Roamer. Anyone who would play something that is good at dealing with DP Daredevil, will be getting trashed by the above aforementioned classes when they try to do so. The DP is also strong at +ing against Tempests & Reapers when they are separated, which gives his job a a great deal importance within this patching. Some people may say that Thief is currently OP, but honestly it's just that Tempest/Reaper/Holo is making it look that way. The DP Daredevil doesn't worry so much about the passive CC because it can out rotate anything, especially the above 3 classes/builds.

So what happened is that the disproportionate nerfing to some classes, concerning removing access & uptime to Stab & Stun Breaks, along with the implementation of entirely passive CC skills, has resulted in a situation where most classes/builds in the game have to sit out and revel in their ineptitude. This is because passive CC play has set a standard where classes/builds are now required to have a certain level of Stab acces & uptime to be able to deal with the passive CC meta. Ironically enough, the very same classes with all of the passive CC are also the classes with high Stab & Stun Break uptime.

This problem begins and ends with Shocking Aura Share.

Even though Flashbang is also an entirely broken design, it stands in the shadow of the tall tall problem that is Shocking Aura Share post nerf patch that removed so much Stab access & uptime on so many classes/builds.

^ Fix it please. In a game with 9 classes that each have 3 specializations each, surly our meta during a given patching should be a larger list than 4 builds.

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer was viable with portal roaming together with a thief. Ye both of them on a team comp .

Mesmer with portal without actual nerf woulf be meta for sure . It allows to do a lot of stuff , conquest is about rotation and portal there is a masterpiece.

its not a masterpiece when mesmer is so kitten its forced to use portal as a survivability tool every time. Its a win more ability, yes often its fun and you can make cool things but its a win more ability and those in general are unhealthy.

Portal was proved to be a high skill ability, bad mesmer use to do shitty portals and was a crealy advice to know how good the mesmer was. Ofc is so strong maybe like helseth said one time i was watching his stream anet could increase cd instead of kiling the ability like they did.

About mesmer being bound to portal well , as a roamer class portals allows to somehow compare mes utility to thief also i think mesmer is way better at ganking due to its condi pressure cc and boon removal.

Like someone said on the forum ye mes is bounded to portal as thief to shortbow or even mes to blink and thief to shadow step. I dont think this is a problem . I would like to see a power shatter lg mes again , thats the variation mes should have and sharing a utility like portal is not that drastical .

Yep i played mes myself sometiems and playing vs thief is like one steal and u fucked , plasma maybe shoulx get some nerf but i think thief countering mes state shouldnt change

I rember both sindrener and helseth playing together and that was so beatiful to watch rly .

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@wevh.2903 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer was viable with portal roaming together with a thief. Ye both of them on a team comp .

Mesmer with portal without actual nerf woulf be meta for sure . It allows to do a lot of stuff , conquest is about rotation and portal there is a masterpiece.

its not a masterpiece when mesmer is so kitten its forced to use portal as a survivability tool every time. Its a win more ability, yes often its fun and you can make cool things but its a win more ability and those in general are unhealthy.

Portal was proved to be a high skill ability, bad mesmer use to do kitten portals and was a crealy advice to know how good the mesmer was. Ofc is so strong maybe like helseth said one time i was watching his stream anet could increase cd instead of kiling the ability like they did.

About mesmer being bound to portal well , as a roamer class portals allows to somehow compare mes utility to thief also i think mesmer is way better at ganking due to its condi pressure cc and boon removal.

Like someone said on the forum ye mes is bounded to portal as thief to shortbow or even mes to blink and thief to shadow step. I dont think this is a problem . I would like to see a power shatter lg mes again , thats the variation mes should have and sharing a utility like portal is not that drastical .

Yep i played mes myself sometiems and playing vs thief is like one steal and u kitten , plasma maybe shoulx get some nerf but i think thief countering mes state shouldnt change

I rember both sindrener and helseth playing together and that was so beatiful to watch rly .

its hard to see any portal mesmer, the only ones I see are unranked/ranked against scrubs, where you play game of " avoid that 1 good player "and whenever I saw mesmer with portal in at/mat he gets farmed off respawn and forced to use portal as a defensive tool.I played with portal, its feast and famine skill. Some games things just dont align and its useless, and some others it lets you gangbang someone repeatedly with 2-3 people, or constantly keep someone afking on a node similar to how fucking broken shadow portal was ( its still viable btw, so even if you wanted portal you can just use thief for shadowportal instead if you run 2man groups and run with holo/power rev instead ) The bigger advantage your team has over enemy the better portal becomes, you can rotate kill someone ( you have to do it fast or else it wears off and its useless -> this is why you will find 2 top players actually make good value from portal but only sometimes, but if they play on even footing its just bad )And after playing with it its cool as fuck skill, but I dont think I want it to be good, it feels shit to afk on a node cuz mesmer placed his fucking portal there and you are forced to stay there for 40s. And when you really think about it locking someone on side to afk is almost as good if not as good as killing them, and its somewhat risk free.And coming back to thief vs mesmer thing, I hate it cuz I play against thief EVERY SINGLE GAME for 5000 games if not more, there is thief in EVERY FUCKING TEAM ALWAYS. So by default mesmer to be viable, it HAS to be overpowered to manage that. And its unhealthy. I have NEVER played a serious game, where both teams did not have at least 1 thief. It NEVER happens.Its fine to have hard counters, problem is that thief is MANDATORY ALWAYS. Its not necro vs ranger when you will get countered and have a shit game,where you try to avoid/outplay them. no no no, you get fucked repeatedly over and over and over again. And there is no reward for winning either, your victory is not dying.It reminds me from AT I had.3 fucking duels with a thief, once thief made no mistakes so I died. twice I outplayed the shit out of him so he fled, and my " victory " was that he used his faster mobility to gank ally thief with plasma he stole by attacking from stealth, there is no winning against good thief as mesmer, there is just losing less.

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If your hard counter is the most mobile class in the game WITH stealth that ALSO gets every boon in existence for you playing said class, your class is literally useless. IDK why it's so hard for the devs to understand this.

Thief is a bigger issue than holo in pvp AND wvw small scale.

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@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer was viable with portal roaming together with a thief. Ye both of them on a team comp .

Mesmer with portal without actual nerf woulf be meta for sure . It allows to do a lot of stuff , conquest is about rotation and portal there is a masterpiece.

its not a masterpiece when mesmer is so kitten its forced to use portal as a survivability tool every time. Its a win more ability, yes often its fun and you can make cool things but its a win more ability and those in general are unhealthy.

Remove sb 5 on thief, see how awesome it still is. U go on a out how broken thief is yet if u remove sb5 its basically in same position as mesmer, except mesmers gank outa stealthis 16k not 7k like a booned up power thief's burst. Yeah mesmers get countered by thief but thief has its counters as well, most classes do. Thief is taken every match because its mobility lends greatly to the cap/decap mechanic in conquest, if it was purely combat based thief would drop tiers fast. All mesmer needs is it portal back.

yes, if you remove ability from a class it becomes worse, what a surprise, guys, holo is not OP, cuz if you dont take explosions you dont 1shot people! so its fine.it doesnt matter how much damage mesmer can do from steath if its permanently dead, it cant stealth or run like thief can, so when I whiff my combo, im fucking punished for it. Thief cant be punished so by default its better. Always.

EDITits better to always do 10k dmg and survive then to sometimes deal 16k and sometimes whiff and die.

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer was viable with portal roaming together with a thief. Ye both of them on a team comp .

Mesmer with portal without actual nerf woulf be meta for sure . It allows to do a lot of stuff , conquest is about rotation and portal there is a masterpiece.

its not a masterpiece when mesmer is so kitten its forced to use portal as a survivability tool every time. Its a win more ability, yes often its fun and you can make cool things but its a win more ability and those in general are unhealthy.

Remove sb 5 on thief, see how awesome it still is. U go on a out how broken thief is yet if u remove sb5 its basically in same position as mesmer, except mesmers gank outa stealthis 16k not 7k like a booned up power thief's burst. Yeah mesmers get countered by thief but thief has its counters as well, most classes do. Thief is taken every match because its mobility lends greatly to the cap/decap mechanic in conquest, if it was purely combat based thief would drop tiers fast. All mesmer needs is it portal back.

yes, if you remove ability from a class it becomes worse, what a surprise, guys, holo is not OP, cuz if you dont take explosions you dont 1shot people! so its fine.it doesnt matter how much damage mesmer can do from steath if its permanently dead, it cant stealth or run like thief can, so when I whiff my combo, im kitten punished for it. Thief cant be punished so by default its better. Always.

Can you think of any other class, where, if you remove 1 weapon skill. Not an elite. Not a profession mechanic. Not even a utility skill. But 1 weapon skill. Where if you remove that, the class immediately goes from "you should have one on your team" to "so unplayable that if you get one on your team, you lose".

EDITits better to always do 10k dmg and survive then to sometimes deal 16k and sometimes whiff and die.

Thief doesnt do 10k, not even with critical strikes. Let alone 16k.

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@UNOwen.7132Thief would not be underpowered without sb 5, plenty of times as a thief you roam so fucking fast that switching to shortbow will mean that you rotate with sb in hand instead of daggers, after removal of SB thief would go from mandatory in every team or you automatically lose the game to : mandatory on most small maps since it can move between points in 5s but still very good on bigger maps.

Speaking of overpowered classes there isnt much to choose from, the closest thing that comes to mind is if nades holo with shield would lose shield 5.Sure it would still burst people down but with 1 cooldown less it would be dead meat to reaper/power herald and thiefs so it would go from overpowered to average, still propably worse off then thief without sb5.

BTW if sb wasnt this broken mb something interesting like d/p + s/d could be a thing where you rotate with hearthseeker + sword port, on most maps you would be equally fast if not faster, capable of taking duels much better like s/d does, you would take ini recovery in stealth to cover extra in combat ini costs.But you would lose broken clusters+sb autos which both are REALLY good and in general having only melee weapons sucks even as a class with teleports.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer was viable with portal roaming together with a thief. Ye both of them on a team comp .

Mesmer with portal without actual nerf woulf be meta for sure . It allows to do a lot of stuff , conquest is about rotation and portal there is a masterpiece.

its not a masterpiece when mesmer is so kitten its forced to use portal as a survivability tool every time. Its a win more ability, yes often its fun and you can make cool things but its a win more ability and those in general are unhealthy.

Remove sb 5 on thief, see how awesome it still is. U go on a out how broken thief is yet if u remove sb5 its basically in same position as mesmer, except mesmers gank outa stealthis 16k not 7k like a booned up power thief's burst. Yeah mesmers get countered by thief but thief has its counters as well, most classes do. Thief is taken every match because its mobility lends greatly to the cap/decap mechanic in conquest, if it was purely combat based thief would drop tiers fast. All mesmer needs is it portal back.

yes, if you remove ability from a class it becomes worse, what a surprise, guys, holo is not OP, cuz if you dont take explosions you dont 1shot people! so its fine.it doesnt matter how much damage mesmer can do from steath if its permanently dead, it cant stealth or run like thief can, so when I whiff my combo, im kitten punished for it. Thief cant be punished so by default its better. Always.

Can you think of any other class, where, if you remove
1
weapon skill. Not an elite. Not a profession mechanic. Not even a utility skill. But
1
weapon skill. Where if you remove that, the class immediately goes from "you should have one on your team" to "so unplayable that if you get one on your team, you lose".

Power Herald, Unrelenting Assault.

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:@"UNOwen.7132"Thief would not be underpowered without sb 5, plenty of times as a thief you roam so kitten fast that switching to shortbow will mean that you rotate with sb in hand instead of daggers, after removal of SB thief would go from mandatory in every team or you automatically lose the game to : mandatory on most small maps since it can move between points in 5s but still very good on bigger maps.

Thief would not be underpowered without sb 5.:lol: Oh Im sorry. I didnt expect you to meme it up here. Whoever writes your material, you gotta pay them more, this stuff is gold.

Jokes aside, you could not have said anything more ignorant if you tried. Of course thief would be very underpowered without shortbow 5. Without it, you dont rotate faster than other classes. Hell, there are classes which will now rotate faster than you. So, youre a class with the worst survivability (oh yeah, no shortbow 5 means you cant even disengage well anymore. Youre just screwed), the worst damage, and the worst utility. Why do you think it would be playable, let alone mandatory anywhere? I get that "irrational thief hatred and ignorance of how thief works" is your gimmick so to speak, but there is a limit to how far you can push it.

Speaking of overpowered classes there isnt much to choose from, the closest thing that comes to mind is if nades holo with shield would lose shield 5.

Nah, Nades Holo without shield 5 would still be good. Worse? Yes. But good. There is no class like this, because no class is defined by 1 weapon skill.

Sure it would still burst people down but with 1 cooldown less it would be dead meat to reaper/power herald and thiefs so it would go from overpowered to average, still propably worse off then thief without sb5.

Dead Meat to thieves.Worse off than thief without sb5

Ok just out of curiosity. Are we supposed to take you seriously, or are you legitimately just hard trolling now? I cant actually tell. Because you say things so obviously and hilariously wrong, that I cant fathom that even the forums renowned thief hater would unironically believe it.

BTW if sb wasnt this broken mb something interesting like d/p + s/d could be a thing where you rotate with hearthseeker + sword port, on most maps you would be equally fast if not faster, capable of taking duels much better like s/d does, you would take ini recovery in stealth to cover extra in combat ini costs.

You would be way slower. Heartseeker is not good for rotation. Much too slow. You also would gain no benefit from that double combination, since S/D and D/P want different things. SA is totally useless to S/D, so it wouldnt be good at dueling, D/P wouldnt gain any benefit from having a dead weight weaponset on its flipside, and ini recovery in stealth wouldnt help anyone. It would be bad. The only weaponset Id maybe consider on the other side is P/P, but it would not save the class.

But you would lose broken clusters+sb autos which both are REALLY good and in general having only melee weapons sucks even as a class with teleports.

Thats not the issue. The fact that youre a gimped class without the mobility that made you relevant is.

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@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Being meta doesnt mean it is not balanced ,Yes I agree, but thief is more than "meta". Look at any competitive team, they have 4 anything and 1 thief in their team.

mesmer could be with portalYeah the ultimate "nobody uses" skill.

Ye but thats not bad , thief makes game fluid and counters slowly stuff , i mean ofc it is good af there is no way to negate it but i feel its role totally needed.

Also thief can co-exist with other roamer specs like power rev/nades holo or including mesmer. With portal i mean the not nerfed portal . This skills made pvp lot more competitive while making mesmer have some value over thief .

how can a mesmer exist in a game where every team is guarantee to have a hard counter to you? even funny you would put mesmer as a roamer, you know. To contest the thief that hard counters you. As long as thief is overpowered as kitten, and mandatory in every team. Mesmer will not be viable choice unless its equally overpowered as kitten.

Mesmer was viable with portal roaming together with a thief. Ye both of them on a team comp .

Mesmer with portal without actual nerf woulf be meta for sure . It allows to do a lot of stuff , conquest is about rotation and portal there is a masterpiece.

its not a masterpiece when mesmer is so kitten its forced to use portal as a survivability tool every time. Its a win more ability, yes often its fun and you can make cool things but its a win more ability and those in general are unhealthy.

Remove sb 5 on thief, see how awesome it still is. U go on a out how broken thief is yet if u remove sb5 its basically in same position as mesmer, except mesmers gank outa stealthis 16k not 7k like a booned up power thief's burst. Yeah mesmers get countered by thief but thief has its counters as well, most classes do. Thief is taken every match because its mobility lends greatly to the cap/decap mechanic in conquest, if it was purely combat based thief would drop tiers fast. All mesmer needs is it portal back.

yes, if you remove ability from a class it becomes worse, what a surprise, guys, holo is not OP, cuz if you dont take explosions you dont 1shot people! so its fine.it doesnt matter how much damage mesmer can do from steath if its permanently dead, it cant stealth or run like thief can, so when I whiff my combo, im kitten punished for it. Thief cant be punished so by default its better. Always.

Can you think of any other class, where, if you remove
1
weapon skill. Not an elite. Not a profession mechanic. Not even a utility skill. But
1
weapon skill. Where if you remove that, the class immediately goes from "you should have one on your team" to "so unplayable that if you get one on your team, you lose".

Power Herald, Unrelenting Assault.

Class, not build. Power Herald may die because of Unrelenting Assault, but Revenant as a whole remains playable. Whether its condi rev or Renegade. However every thief build dies with SB 5.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

Class, not build. Power Herald may die because of Unrelenting Assault, but Revenant as a whole remains playable. Whether its condi rev or Renegade. However every thief build dies with SB 5.

But that is actually an argument for getting rid of SB 5....If a skill becomes that mandatory on a class, then it holds too much of the power budget hostage. Without that skill, Anet would be allowed to buff thief in other areas and make them good at something else besides just decapping.

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@Kodama.6453 said:

Class, not build. Power Herald may die because of Unrelenting Assault, but Revenant as a whole remains playable. Whether its condi rev or Renegade. However
every
thief build dies with SB 5.

But that is actually an argument for getting rid of SB 5....If a skill becomes that mandatory on a class, then it holds too much of the power budget hostage. Without that skill, Anet would be allowed to buff thief in other areas and make them good at something else besides just decapping.

The problem is that Shortbow 5 is thief. Remove it, and you remove thief and replace it with something new. Dont get me wrong, I would like that, but I know a lot of players wouldnt. So its a non-starter.

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@"Shiyo.3578" said:Thief is so strong SB5 isn't even needed anymore. I find myself rarely using it often due to 10s wep swap CD. I find cluster bomb and bouncy autos more impactful if I take out SB.

Weren't you trying to argue that you are a thief main? Its not a good look if you say something no thief worth his salt would ever say. "SB5 isnt even needed anymore". What a hilarious joke. Yes, the class that is defined entirely by its ability to outmanouver everyone else doesnt even need the skill that allows it to do that. You do realise how silly that sounds, dont you? Also, why are you swapping from shortbow to dagger in the middle of combat? If youre already on shortbow, that means its a situation where dagger aint great. The 10 second weapon swap CD should never apply.

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