Straegen.2938

Oddly Lotus Training does not suffer from these issues. It should work the same way mechanically.

First they need to fix it so that it always pulls rather than sometimes just knocking down or worse pulling the thief to the target. Second it should be every bit as good as Hunters Verdict meaning it is unevadable, unblockable and doesn't have the ridiculous terrain bugs. I would use it more often if it did those things. As it is, the skill often gets me killed by sucking me into a group of players rather than pulling one guy out. Or it completely fails to work since the ground isn't perfectly flat. Or it is stupid easy to dodge because of how slow the skill is to deploy.

The portal change just makes it even more important to sweep in smc and the like. The issue here is that thieves with dagger off hand can stealth at will off of gates and the like so finding them is often much more difficult than mesmers. The seal looks very trolly to me. Much like Binding Shadow but requiring way more setup. If the skill knocked people off mounts, it would be a total winner allowing for efficient ganking. As it is now, I suspect it will be dropped in camps, flags and such in order to gank unsuspecting foes. That said Binding Shadow is simply better at least on paper. Pitfall and Thousand Needles read like they are mostly pointless.

Those that don't think the Dagger Training nerf is substantial with D/D haven't really played the set. Remember daggers hit multiple targets and the old Dagger Training had no ICD so Death Blossom, Dancing Dagger and the AA, etc often smacked multiple targets and each proc triggered Potent Poison. That is gone now. Single target might be better but multi target DPS will take a significant hit after this change. Course looking at it single target looks to be less as well since dagger attacks are absurdly fast particularly on opening with a Burst of Agility. SA is mostly shite on condi builds and it will likely remain that way. Dare Devil, Trickery and DA are far stronger. Also Lotus Training is the cats meow for covering condi and jacking up its damage with that 10% boost. Steal applying poison, confusion, weakness and immediately dodge to drop a bleed, torment, cripple as cover. Lethal to a great number of builds.

Nerf Unload... seriously? Unload is far... far... really really far from being OP anywhere in the game. It is basically a crap version of Rapid Fire. It is a medium range SINGLE target skill on a single target weapon. Most ranged AoE in the game can hit at least five people. Does anyone run into P/P and go... wow that thing is stupid OP and I have virtually no way to beat it? Fun, sure. In need to some cosmic balancing in the game, hell no. As for the other skills in the set. Other than the AA and stealth attack, I find everything about it useful. I have builds centered around the interrupt. The immob spam is brilliant in a team setting as the number of enemies running toward a door have discovered. Bound makes BP fantastic. Fix the auto-attack and from stealth attack and the weapon might crawl into the barely usable section of WvW meta. Every time I think about this change it pisses me off. Lets take one of the most fun traits in the game that doesn't have a hint of OP-ness and remove it. Best thing about the skill was that it allowed thieves to compete more efficiently with clone spam, other pet builds and do better in outnumbered situations. The inability of the weapon set to pressure more than one opponent at a time basically limits its usefulness in virtually all aspects of the game.

Did they ever fix Swipe interacting with Steal traits? I don't remember seeing it in the patch notes.

Seal Area actually seems like it might be troll fun. The portal seems like a conditional thing to teleport other players in after a tower flip. As for the rest: SA Concealing Restoration is a nice buff.SA Meld with Shadows also a nice buff.SA Shadow Siphoning is likely a pretty big nerf since thieves had no other direct access to protectionSA Adept tier having to choose Shadows Embrace or Hidden Thief... ouch big nerfSA Master tier is mostly pointless nowSA Cloaked in Shadow - If the siphon procs a reveal... then this is worse than useless as stacking stealth could reveal a playerSA Grandmaster is at best a meh or at worst a nerf.DA Dagger Training is a small nerf particularly for D/? condiDA Deadly Ambition seems to be a wash to me since I used the unblockable trap to good effectDA Even the Odds, mostly pointless since Panic Strike is so good.Net trait changes to me is a nerf at least on paper. While I like most of the minor trait changes having to choose between Hidden Thief or Shadow's Embrace is a pretty big nerf to SA in my eyes. Not getting damage reduction while stealthed, also a nerf as that is one of the big saves when getting channeled. None of these changes will improve any of my builds, a couple of changes are straight nerfs and I don't see any new builds being made out of these changes. Hope I am wrong.

Damage should be X divided by the number of targets not X times the number of targets. I could careless that meteor storm or some other AoE hits 100 players. What I care about is that 100 x 4k shots is absurd DPS. Granted the big change to AoE was to deal with lag issues but IMO it was a very poor design decision to basically have spamable AoE in an action combat game of this scale. If they left it to me, spam AoE attacks would be systematically replaced and the few that remain would be class defining skills.

Rather than investing in one off changes, I would spend that time writing a report that kicked out the top and bottom used traits, skills, weapons, etc. I would then slightly nerf the top ones and slightly buff the bottom ones every month. Diversity is the key to balance. Having traits, weapons, etc that players feel they have to use to stay relevant is systemic to unhealthy game balance.

It is a better design to swap anything including classes while logged in without having to log out. However I am guessing the architecture is built around logging in/out and changing that has very little payback at this point in the games lifespan.

People that like to use DAoC as a "I wish" likely don't remember DAoC RvR very well. Players often ran 15 minutes only to get stun locked and killed by a small gank squad. The meta builds were insanely powerful compared to GW2. Gear creep was a very real thing unlike GW2 as players basically had no chance to compete with fully leveled artifacts and such. It was a fun game for its time but it was also a very harsh game. Far too harsh for the current carebear crowd that lose their mind over a thief ganking them once causing them an extra 60s of run time. There are lessons to be learned from RvR still but WvW is a vastly superior system even with all its flaws.

The npc buff I would respond mostly to is the targeting AI. I can be around 20 friendlies and all the NPCs single me out. I am the one getting blinded, immobilized, knocked down, etc and nobody else is sharing in that misery. Run past a tower, all the archers are pounding me. I am on siege off to the side and some player picks on the guards, they all run over to me instead of responding to the player starting the attack. Whatever flag I have flipped in the AI to pick me over everyone else, I would love to see unflipped.

Yes they will still be kicked. Nothing in their kit synergizes well enough to warrant a spot on a team. The portal they get is a watered down one way, limited occupancy portal. The entire class has basically been crapped on for months now. Virtually every balance patch over the last year and then some removes one more useful element of the class often under the guise of a buff. The weapon sets are mostly cannibalized to the point that a core build is the best one left. Say that about another class in the game... better play core because the two expansions in the game have basically nerfed a class to pointlessness.

I would also vote that the event itself is very lackluster. No down state greatly effects the way the game mode plays (and I personally love it). This event was largely ignored because the swap effectively made most meta builds weaker outside of the Holosmith bug. The ktrain was definitely choo-choo in T2 at least until FA decided they didn't want to be in T1 and essentially stopped ktraining the last part of the week.

The current gank squads running are pretty light on gank and most still struggle to deal with Warclaw. Most of the "good" ones are bunker squads that basically grind roamers at camps and such but basically aren't effective at anything useful from a game perspective. Most can be straight up ignored with virtually no impact on overall game play. Contrast to the old days when a group of five could tie up a WP and cut off reinforcements sometimes for hours. With Warclaw a WP being contested is a minor inconvenience at best and few gank squads can reliably dismount unless a player tries to troll them with it.

"Support Thief" is laughable. The entire class is nearly devoid of team synergy in any of the thief trait lines or weapon sets which makes it pointless as anything "support". The thief portal is only one way and only supports 5 players so not really a portal. Like most thief changes virtually everything added/changed is a warped version of something other classes do better or a straight up nerf. Swipe is still junk. The thief weapon sets are still miles behind other classes in terms of meta potential. Warclaw still effectively makes the class pointless.

Because the skills selected were mostly junk only Holosmiths really got a big improvement thanks to the bug. I like having events but this one was completely wasted on me.

BG simply should not have a link. Virtually every server collapses because too many guilds and players want to bandwagon into that match. If BG falls to T4, so be it. BG neither needs nor deserves a link.

T2 is hoping. I have just over 200 wvw levels so far this week with a stupid amount of hours played. The kills are just piling up. I haven't level this fast in ages.

The meta shifted big time just four months ago. The Scrapper buff from March is insane. It has changed zergs, skirmish and small scale. The Berserker changes were no slouch either. Scrapper needs a big ole nerf hammer to land on it.

I have piles of these and they are a pain to consume. Please allow the right click to do a Use All. Thanks.

P/P condi is a strong build once a player embraces the interrupt and learns the timing of other builds. It takes time but a lot of folks that run into me in WvW HATE that build. The easier version of it is all Dire with Acro 1-3-3, Trick 1-1-3, DD 2-3-1 with PP and SB weapons. I put Corruption/Energy on the SB and Draining/Absorption on PP. Antitoxin runes. Withdrawl, Shadow Step, Spider Venom, SoA and spinny. SB choking primed with Venom then dodges is great damage. Interrupts wreck an opponent with draining stacks before they know what hit them. Use the steal and a dodge to strip boons, get a confusion landed with solid cover condi from the dodge. It is even half decent in a zerg because the SB choking gas goes right through blocks and applies the venom. Swipe jacked up the build a little but not having to watch for blocks is kinda nice. The best part is practically nobody runs the build so pretty much nobody sees it coming or has had any time to prepare for it. The downside is that most of its damage requires an enemy to attack... killing players on mounts or running away is impossible.

Dust Strike is one of the best 1v1 staff skills against any number of builds. I often use it between every attack from an enemy until they are on cooldown.

Sadly Deadeye isn't even the best Rifle user in the game. Warrior rifle builds are really good snipers because they hit like a truck with shots that cannot be blocked or reflected and they are still extremely lethal when they switch to melee as well as being tanky AF. Miss a warrior kneeling and anything short of 3k armor and 20k health is ded. and channels long enough to force two dodge burns to keep from getting destroyed by one rotating skill that typically is unblockable.

The thief essentially has no meta variant any longer. Post Swipe change, the class is more or less a play if you like it sort of affair with few builds performing well beyond +1 fights. Much easier to roll an actual meta build on another class. The only way I win an even match is simply to outplay my opponent because nothing about the class can be relied upon for an advantage. Want ranged burst, hello pew-pew Soul Beast. Want stealth, roll a Mesmer variant or Holo. Want up close pure blowup, go with a Warrior variant or Holo. Condi build, virtually every class is better. Evasion build, load up a Tempest. Want to escape and reset in WvW or gank zerglings... not happening easily thanks to Warclaw. Its not the fastest, stealthiest, hardest hitting, evasive... it simply isn't the best at anything and it isn't even a good jack of all trades which is now owned by Ranger variants.