Terrorhuz.4695

- Remove F5 block on virtuoso - Give virtuoso an even stronger block with shield IDK how anyone expected this to work out, but with the benefit of hindsight we can admit this whole reasoning could have used some balancing. Honest talk about mesmer here 1) Blurred Inscriptions currently gives distortion any time you cast a signet. This shouldn't exist in any way, shape or form: the distortion from this trait should be removed, without compensation. The trait is strong enough already as it is. 2) Blade Renewal comes from the original design of Virtuoso: you can't invuln anymore, but you can block. If you really wanted to have an invuln, you slot a dedicated utility skill for that. It's not as strong as baseline distortion (can't be activated while stunned, can't cover other actions) but it gets the job done. Then balancing considerations occurred: virtuoso was so easy to focus, so the cd was lowered to 40s, placing it as the invuln with the lowest cd in the game. The main take is that none of those design points exist Today. S*lar introduced Blade Renewal to compensate the change from invulnerability to block... but virtuoso was redesigned since then. The block which was supposed to substitute Distortion is gone, and Distortion (which wasn't designed to be there) is now a normal shatter. All the reasons that justified the creation of blade renewal are now gone, so... the current iteration of that skill doesn't have any reason to exist today. Should definitely be reworked IMHO, but the whole spec is really badly designed IMHO

Too much dooming, the relics are funnier than the runes. Plenty of new effects, unique combinations, stuff. Loving it, stop being negative.

Breaching strike could use exactly this kind of treatment to tell it apart from aura slicer. IDK what you mean about arching slice though, that one is very visible and easy to tell.

Proper particle effects. Much easier and faster to make than actual 3d animations, and you can reuse the same particle effect for all races by simply scaling it down (whereas animations needs to be authored separatedly for each one of the 5 races).

Slow projectiles just shouldn't exist, period. Every slow projectile shouldn't be slow and that's pretty much it.

Boy do I have a thread with a GOOD proposal you might love

IMHO it's a normal crowd control like many others, you can break out of it and enter stealth. I'm a mesmer; some rev use forced engagement on me, I use Decoy, I'm in stealth and your forced engagement is gone. If it was a revealed I wouldn't be able to do that.

What bothers me is that every cheese mechanic you can pull off DOES have some sort of counterplay. Ranged spam? All classes have access to SOME projectile block, all maps have several sceneries you can use to block LoS. CC spam? All classes have access to SOME stability (with the only exception of thief, which have stab only on plasma) Block spam? All classes have access to SOME unblockable. Big condi spikes? All classes have access to cleanse + resistance\resolution. Or straight up condi transfer if you're lucky. Big power spikes? All classes have access to weakness or prot. Heal spam? All classes have access to poison (if only in the form of runes\sigils) Shadowstep spam? All maps are sprinkled with no-port spots to prevent people from porting on you. Boon spam? All classes have access to SOME boonrip\corrupt (if only in the form of runes\sigils); some even get bonus damage the more boons you have (hello spinal shivers). And nobody would argue to remove these tools, because they are healthy. But for some reason, this particular spammable mechanic must be uncounterable. The whole discussion about "thief mechanic is stealth" is surreal, I guess we live in a world where initiative\steal\stolen skills\dual wield skills aren't a thing, I guess. I'm not a revenant specialist, but I'm looking at the wiki and it doesn't say "revealed". There's a taunt so... I guess it can sometimes reveal your opponent if you land it at just the moment they enter stealth? Wouldn't call it the best counterplay tho.

The thread was about getting revealed to counter other classes too, which I listed (PU mesmers, rangers) and the mechanic in general, which for some classes is totally uncounterable.

For the life of me I can't figure out how players of a class with more evades than actual skills are so bothered at the idea of having to evade an elite skill once every minute or so. It's not like they'll stop having endless ports, endless blinds and 3 more evades at the very least. "HOW DARE I GETTING PUNISHED FOR GETTING HIT BY STUFF I SHOULDN'T GET HIT BY". Beats me.

No. 1) Thief has damage. Backstab hits for 7k, Impairing Daggers hits for 7k, Cluster Bomb hits for 4.5k, Larcenous Strike hits for 4.5k, Pistol Whip hits for 7k, Shadow Shot hits for 4.5k, Skirmisher's Shot hits for 3k (but it's 1200 range and has 0.5s cast time, no aftercast), dagger has the strongest power AA in the game excluding transformations (stuff like holo forge and shrouds). You don't lack damage, every time a thief lands anything on you, you're SAD. 2) Thief already has some of the best defensive skills in the game. Uninterruptable healing skill, Shadowstep, Dagger Storm, Roll for Initiative, a metric kittenton of blinds and ports, weakness on every attack following a dodge (and they dodge a lot), on top of the insane disengaging potential from Unhindered Combatant (or stealth on dodge as a deadeye), most of your attacks have evades (Pistol Whip, Death Blossom, Flanking Strike, Disabling Shot), and a lot of cleanse sprinkled around. I'm all for lowering ini costs on some skills and we've talked about that (vault, sb5, sb4), I'm all for improving usability on some skills (Scorpion Wire, most of staff skills) but damage and defensives are already frankly bloated. I tried it myself, thief is not brittle and I repeatedly got away with stuff that would have killed me instantly on any other class. Some classes can spam obscene amounts of stealth (rangers, PU mesmers, thieves) and part of the roster has exactly 0 ways to interact with that. I'm sorry buddy, I love you and I respect you but being given a free win against 30% of the roster just because you can press 5-2 for 30 minutes doesn't feel fair.

kittening initiative, bazsi.

If it's bound to elite skills (as it usually is) you can be arsed to dodge once every 45s 😉

As per the title says. Stealth is very binary as a mechanic, and some classes (elementalist, mesmer, all revenants except herald) totally lack any form of counterplay against it. Having a relic to give these classes a tool to fight stealth spam could be a decent choice, with the proper opportunity cost.

Me getting embedded in the wall by a point blank shot

Damage on tooltips, in this game, is slightly less useful than a warrior with a scepter. Skills with the same listed damage will end up dealing totally different numbers and nobody will ever know why.

wait until you see mirage with staff and shield bunkering a nuclear bombardment

HOT TAKE Keep the damage, but shave the defensives. Smokescale F2 gets a more reasonable cooldown, since 16s cd for a stealth is very low. This way rangers can still perform their fun oneshot memes against tanky targets, but if they fail they don't get to stealth and jog away for free; not immediately, at the very least.

Not what I said, not relevant to the topic at hand. The claim was "the build is a noob stomper, it doesn't work against experienced players"; it was played against the best of the best and did wonderfully. Boyce is indeed exceptional, and the build does have a modicum of counterability (we're downplaying the value of stealth, but whatever), but it can be played at the highest level and was played at the highest level.

It literally won the last MAT

JULY 25 PATCH NOTES - All ranger skills are now named Maul

TBH ranger DOES have a metric kittenton of prot (which also acts as regeneration), old core valk ranger abused it.

UHM THIS GS WARRIOR JUST LET OUT A PRIMAL SCREAM OF RAGE, POWERED UP WITH A SUPER SAYIAN ANIMATION AND NOW HAS A MENACING RED AURA ALL AROUND THEM... GEEZ, I REALLY WONDER WHAT HE MIGHT BE UP TO...

Stab is something you build your next move on; I press X skill IF I have the stab to complete the cast. Having it on some ICD -and thus making it entirely unreliable- is honestly worse IMHO

I hate spellbreaker with a passion.