andrewlcl.8176

I'd be happy with no downstate.

If you can't beat 'em, I say join' em. Go look up other obnoxious builds you can play. A failure of balance is a good opportunity to be carried by a build.

Focus skills in water are actually terrible. Focus 5 doesn't hit most of the time. A player with swiftness easily walks away from it, or the target is out of range before it even lands. Focus 4, don't waste the 1 second or so to press that button and cast it, unless you're just burning time waiting to do something else.

Not sure why we we are mentioning getting stealth with Shadowshot, I presume Black Powder? Referring to my earlier post with the two combo examples from a thief's arsenal, the second combo demonstrates a chase! Heartseeker and Shadow Shot both gap closers, the latter being almost instacast. Even assuming all initiative is used, we still have Infiltrator's Signet and Steal, both being skills with no activation time or after cast, and both 1200 range gap closers (or in a pinch, a disengage, if you target ambients/enemy NPCs or other enemy players). That's plenty of chase in a zero initiative thief. Damage figures are from combat log, against a player. In the case of guardians, then unfortunately/fortunately, I have run into at least 4 times the number of rapid kill thieves. The difference, which I'm starting to get to, lies in skill activation times (and after cast times) and even in animations. It is more feasible to get away or survive an initial burst if it's slower to chain and if it's more visible. I might understand the old guard you're referring to, but it's helluva slow compared to a thief. I've sometimes quietly wished Sniper's Cover was a circle but do we realise how laughably obnoxious that would be? A harb can attempt to walk around the wall. But! The DE can choose to teleport forwards or backwards through it, a distance of 600 units. The difference is mobility. Assuming not revealed, doubles up into a stealth combo. The Sniper's Cover + Death's Advance combo is even more powerful when you run Shadow Arts because it costs you almost zero initiative to endlessly reposition. Meanwhile, you build stacks of Spider Venom that lets you heal when you eventually attack again. DE is so kitten obnoxious the only reason why I've lost more fights than I should, is because I'm one of the worst players you'll ever meet. On the topic of bloated skills and Cele, fully agree. Power creep in GW2 has reached laughable levels and is out of control. Things have reached a new level of stupid with harb, willbender, catalyst, power virt, even power vindi. And there's some quiet performers murdering people with their untamed. They just don't shout it from the rooftops.

The only one I give credit for is the Sic 'em railgun rangers, who are also some of the worst killjoys in the WvW. I believe you responded to my post pretty fast because I literally edited it within minutes to talk about ranger. Don't be ridiculous about Willbender. I've never been erased by one as quick as with a thief, and I've made light work of many of them using a deadeye. Cele harb, also, deadeye. Put up rifle Kneel 4 wall, and just dance around them. Alternatively, counter the cele kitten with more cele kitten of your own, using cele p/p sneak attack daredevil. What's the problem again?

For the sake of discussion, which other classes, and which other builds? Because I want to learn to play those builds if they can just about instagib with lesser tradeoff than on thief. The one I immediately think of is Sic em LB Soulbeast. Maybe glass shatter Chrono. With the latter I can even see the set up coming and hightail it before the entire combo completes. The discussion is actually more complex because in encounters like this, it's also the ability to escape and resustain that makes a difference. With a thief's mobility, there is little chance to escape and/or resustain. In that particular example, the thief can execute the entire combo in under 2 seconds with 3 buttons, while still having at least 7 initiative left (usually 10, since thief usually runs trickery). That's at least enough for a follow up of one heartseeker and one shadow shot with natural initiative regen. Assuming thief didn't also bust out Assassin's Signet for more frontloaded damage, we still have open slots for three utilities and an elite skill from which we can pick any number of quality skills like Shadow Step, Blinding Powder, Infiltrator's Signet & Signet of Agility, Scorpion Wire and then Dagger Storm. There's plenty there to gap-close, disengage and clear condis, especially for what usually is a 10 second fight (or much less). Also, those numbers I wrote in the earlier post are on a target with 2450 armor, hardly full-glass as the other poster suggested. I know this is straying away from the main topic of the thread, which is about stealth. But when you can also do all these things, WITH the added ability of stealth, we have a monster roamer in WvW that annihilates almost anyone else in a 1v1. I'm not asking for blanket nerfs. Balance is not my job. I also like to play thief. Just not those kinds of instagib variants.

Steal + CnD + Backstab. Add Mug trait, Sigil of Air. That's 17 THOUSAND damage. And it's very fast. Since we can't call that one-shot, maybe it's wombo-combo? Or Pistol 5 + heartseeker through to hit, lead to backstab, then shadow shot + heartseeker? Over 24 THOUSAND damage. All this can happen outta nowhere. I don't care how fast people think they are. Those who have met a good thief in WvW know this. Skills generally have an activation time. People usually need a reaction time. It's possible to avoid instant down, but generally, you're too weak to fight back after the first hit or two, and the fight is over in favor of the thief. Other factors can add to the matchup. Thief with good latency plus yourself with ping in the 200 ish (which isn't uncommon), and invariably, people get destroyed. I appreciate these things don't happen commonly. But I'm trying to explain that, I see the frustration when people get their kitten whooped like that.

Hitting a foe through a pistol 5 + heartseeeker combo does not break stealth. Last I checked, backstab was still pulling 10K hits, enough to one-shot a player if they have already taken some damage. If not, it leaves you open for couple of other quick attacks like heartseeker or shadow shot.

As with anything, there's always outliers. Like diamond rank thieves that destroy in 2 seconds with almost no counterplay.

Although, if Catalysts are dead, so would all other ele specs. Anet has a pretty blunt nerf hammer.

Celestial is about as balanced as the harbingers, catalysts and renegades that abuse it.

Proposal: do away with downstate in WvW. NOW! Sincerely, Elementalist player

I don't think that would be helpful in in example. In most cases, boon blobs themselves have a comped group backbone (like a guild for example, or at least a bunch of friends who communicate on what to run). If we re implement damage on CC skills, the boon ball will demolish the small comped group. It's also just how the AoE cap works.

I do think power creep (and a blatant attempt to sell more new specs and expansions) was the reason driving the massive "balance" patch that dropped damage from CC skills, and shaved both healing and damage from a whole host of other skills. That patch just gave the team room to add more weapons and skills without further trivialising old content. That includes instances of trivialising encounters with players running most older specs in WvW. Nevertheless, the power creep is still so blatant that, for months now, many of these new specs have been mentioned repeatedly when discussing the most obnoxiously overpowered of builds in GW2.

This is possible. Like a bunch of Staff daredevils.

I don't assume people are noobs. Also, context is important when talking about stomps.

Disabling down state in WvW would be great. In some cases, down state is an absolute clutch that encourages (or at the very least negates the repercussions) being bad, or performing excessively risky gameplay for relatively poor reward. Yes, it's frustrating to say, 2v5 some group, get one down and it's impossible to kill the down before they get ressed. And if you try and stand still to stomp (without some clutch invul of your own), enemy group seriously messes you up. If on the other hand, you are downed, your one pal cannot possibly res you against the pressure of 5 others and the fight is lost.

Comped groups will have a field day. Imagine running into a comped group of 6-7 peeps, capable of chain CCing you for 7-10 seconds straight, never mind that they blow you up after the second CC even in "tank" gear, because they reimplement hard CC damage.

Tankiness isn't just about toughness and vit. It's a combination of things. Ability to mitigate and avoid damage is better than absorbing like a sponge. They did try to design GW2 in a manner that there are no true tanks but of course some builds survive better than others. We should probably call it longevity because that takes into consideration your sustain (top up heals for example). Evades (hence also dodging and vigor boon) , blocking, invul, healing and even good positioning (hence movement skills included), blind (condition), projectile blocks and reflects, protection, contributes to longevity much more than outright toughness. Then you should consider things like stab and resistance boons, and traits (and equipment) that either remove or reduce duration of movement impairing condis because those things either allow you to reposition to avoid damage, and/or continue using your skills. If you are immob and hard CC without stunbreak, you die pretty fast. It's a pretty complex thing.

I think you missed a couple more evades in there.

Is it, really?

+300% stolen skill damage is stupid. Can't believe it was even allowed to happen.

Read your original post and it just sounded a lot like, "I like my sc/X fresh air ele, so go look the other way please, Anet, and nerf all the other guys." Anyway. I seem to see less core fresh air ele than the weaver + catalyst varieties combined. But everytime I see a fresh air ele of any kind, they are invariably very strong and considered a sizeable threat.

Probably the same person who said golems shouldn't be allowed to contest camps. Neither are show-stopper techniques. And agree with you, EWPs are sometimes borked. They get used and called out and peeps in other maps can't even see it.

Very few peeps seem to talk about Vindicators. But I've run into a couple that are just tiresome to fight. They don't die, and they can beat you if you just space out a bit, which you inevitably will after trying to down an unkillable bunny for 10 minutes.