vardeleanu.8972

Is it already time for the yearly begging for conjure reworks post with useful brainstorming of ideas ? It's only march. Not like it matters anyway, we all know it's going straight in the trash.

Also, old tooltip bug that didn't deserve it's own post but might as well throw it here : if you equip the deadly aim trait in critical strikes then in PvE head shot (pistol 4 skill) damage shows up as it's pre buff value, effectively saying it does 1/4th of the damage it actually does. This has been the case all the way back from the head shot buff on 23/8/2022. If fixing this pls also remove the cooldown icon from deadly aim, since it's just leftover clutter with no value nowdays.

Found another one : 3. Death's Judgement : when used without the deadeye specialization the skill forces you to kneel for it's duration, despite the change on 29 november 2022 that should allow you to move while casting it. The skill also mentions damage on unmarked foes in the tooltip, despite being no mark, and fails to mention that it pierces, hits 5 targets, and the that the reduced damage refers to the pierced targets.

Don't forget the vulnerability : before it was 5-8 stacks per hit, now it's 0. They just straight up removed it and everyone seems to have forgotten it, but it was a really nice way to quickly get some vulnerability stacks in PvE when needed or a nice bonus for PvP, not to mention it was the only ranged attack on staff and helped a lot if for example you were playing deadeye and needed more malice for your stolen skill to give stealth. They nerfed it to the ground and added reflect as an excuse, also removing the reflect from the auto attack for that too.

1. Free action doesn't grant swiftness if used after spotter's shot 2. Legendary weapons and weapons with special projectiles don't affect haunt shot.

Look at this beautiful trait: https://imgur.com/a/0PBWd14. It's gives you everything you want. It's glorious, perfect almost. Almost Why is that ? because it disappointingly gives only 6 boons. My suggestion to fix it is to add resolution with the duration of protection to it, since it already has protection and regen. Either that or stability with the duration of vigor, 1 stack or 7. P.S. : Also change might stacks to 7 while at it

You only have smoke field if you run offhand pistol, because nobody uses rifle without deadeye or smoke screen. And even then they can just shield bash you from outside the smoke range, not to mention warrior literally has resistance on dodge, so no, I don't think it's even remotely usable against them. But the reflects are a good point I never knew about. Good info, only had too scroll one page on the wiki to verify it since it's not in the tooltip.

Let me first clarify 2 things : First, what I refer to are core thief/daredevil stolen skills that come on skill 2 after you use steal, the command skills that core ranger has over pets and 90% of the merged slot 1 skills that the soulbeasts have. These skills haven't been properly touched since the launch of the game, only having small adjustments to damage and cooldowns, and in rangers's case adding pets with better skills to compensate for the bloat of unusable pets that the roaster is made of. Second, when I say rework I mean rework, not buffs that slap some powercreep on the issue and call it fixed, not more stolen skills/pets to burry the old ones even harder, REWORKS. That is to say the current way these skills work allow their classes to be viable, so they are not underpowered so to speak, but they heavily lack in satisfaction when used and lead to most of them being ignored. I think the most simple solutions are reworking merged soulbeast skills 1 to each do a unique thing and pet command skills to make sure there's not one that's just flat out better than another, and letting thief either hold 2-3 different stolen skills at the same time or turning the stolen skills into bundles with 2-3 skill choices that gets consumed once you use a single skill in them. I propose these changes mainly from a PvP perspective, but I'm sure all players would appreciate any work done towards these old systems. These 2 classes have the same issue of a large amount of skills that are just bad and so the players just ignore them, but the cases are a bit different so I'll discuss the issues separately. Ranger : Pretty straightforward, powercreep made old pets redundant, forcing players into using only a small select ones, and making you feel like you only have 1-2 pets you could use for a build, despite fighting your way to the most remote corners of tyria to make sure you have a complete collection of cute and diverse pets to fight with. I'm don't even play ranger that much, but the other day I tried making a pvp build and noticed about 3 usable pets for a power build. Out of 59. I even tried to do something different and use the devourer since I liked it's skills and I don't often see it around, only to find out that Tail Lash (soulbeast merged with devourer first skill) doesn't even knock back the correct distance 90% of the time it connects, making it a lame 0.5 sec knockdown at most. Combined with the fact that about about 30 of those 59 have a merged melee skill 1 that does such low damage and condi/healing that it's better to use your auto attack, I begin to understand why every soulbeast I see sticks to smokescale and whatever else they can make work. It's such a shame, that's what it is, since it would be so easy to just throw some condi removal or rare boons on some pet families to make them more used too. Thief : Stolen skills are great in their own right, but funny enough lack any kind of synergy with thief in particular. This might sound strange, but let me explain : thief is a class with very well defined strong points and weak points, so it also is a class with a very clear list of what is and what it is NOT allowed to do, for balance reasons. It has excellent mobility and burst at it's disposal (at least in theory), but it has low durability and it's energy system puts it at a disadvantage against cooldown based classes in longer fights, meaning that if you're not careful about your initiative management and downtime, or CCed at a bad time you will very easily be focused and downed. However, since it has the most powerful ability of any class, that is being able to chose your fights, it's very easy for a thief to play around it's strengths die very rarely compared to other classes. Now, if you've paid attention to the strenghts and weaknesses of a theif, one thing should immediately be obvious : Thief is NEVER allowed to have a viable bruiser build, as it would be broken by definition. If a theif would be able to do the same damage as a spellbreaker or weaver for example, while also using some of it's more defensive traits and weapons like those classes do, It would be without question overpowered, as you could in theory 1v1 almost anyone AND always chose who to fight at the same time. Which is why specter, sword, staff and shadow arts HAD to be nerfed into the ground, and as a consequence most theifs play roam/+1 with dagger/shorbow and full damage traits. Why is any of this important ? because theif stolen skills are made for a bruiser build. Think about it : as of right now, you're either doing a pre-set rotation in PVE where you ignore your stolen skill because it's always useless unless it's cc, or you're always moving around points in PvP or WvW, doing your best to down people in between and using your steal as a gap closer, either firing your stolen skill immediately after steal or forgetting about it. In that context, let me explain why you can rarely get value out of any stolen skill : Warrior axe can only be used for rare cleaving or in low ranks, as you are a low durability class with no stability, so poping it is making you a giant target for damage and cc, meaning you only use it if you have a off cooldown stunbreak that you don't like that way. Guardian mace is among the more useful ones, but it's still melee, and all melee stolen skills suffer heavily from not having a time to use them . I know it sounds stupid but it's just that easy : as a low durability class known for high burst, dodging and preparing to fight after getting jumpscared from a stealth theif backstabbing you is basically a reflex for anyone in PvP at this point, so you do not have time to use it after a backstab. You also can't use it before since you lose stealth (or access to stealth from dagger 5 since people dodge) and backstab damage, being in melee range for a long time is asking for trouble, and since stealth can't protect you from random aoes your best play is to stay on shotbow and fire from range unless you can get a quick dagger kill anyway. That means the only optimal time to use guardain mace is to stun someone trying to res a down Revenant essence has no tracking and not good enough missile speed, making it unreliable to use form range. Which again leads us to the melee issues. It also has a 1 second slow only (lmao) and not even great damage, so not even worth casting Engineer has a great aoe that could be used as area denial if only it's radius was a bit higher, or as a way to chip enemies jumping on you if you could afford to sit still for one second and not die. But as neither of those are the case, you either throw it for a random condition and one instance of damage or you use it to help cleave downed, like every other stolen skill Ranger aoe is good regen, a water field and amazing condi cleanse, but since you can't stay in it you never get to see it's full power. Funny enough I'll still take 1 condi cleanse over skills that either miss or I have to lose half my health to get in position to use. Also, why does it have a 15 SECOND COOLDOWN ? Can't even use 2 in a row, even more anti-synergy with theif, thanks Arenanet. Thief blind/stealth is by far the best stolen skill, since it's the only actually good one, giving you a skill that worth either 5 initiative or a 30 seconds cooldown, and actually works with theif. The only issue is that to get this skill you have to steal from another thief, so you have to either waste your gap closer for it or try to take down the enemy that no one else in your team focuses alone, all while also finding a time when the enemy theif isn't rotating on the other side of the map or randomly dodging around (which is pretty rare) Ice shard stab has v good damage and a very dangerous chill, sadly you get it from the class with the most condi cleanse and it's also melee range, so of course, you get to use it on rare occasions Skull fear Is a very good skill to use to disrupt a fight, but it's usually a brief interrupt since fear is removed both by condi cleanse or stun breaks, which everyone has one of in pvp. You also almost always have to use it from stealth since it has a very distinct cast animation. Still, it goes through walls and the long cc duration combined the lack of stability on necromancers helps the matchup a lot, so it's the 2nd best stolen skill. Consume plasma is the most overrated. Since it has 1 second cast time you can only use it before engaging, so your defensive boons are always wasted during the enemies dodge + rebound reaction time. You also have to steal to get it obviously, so it's a setup skill that requires you to engage first, which is extremely stupid. you can't even count the boons with less than 2 seconds for anything other than giving a necro more things to corrupt, and theif has permanent swiftness, so it boils down to 10 seconds of furry, 1 stack of might, and 5 seconds of resolution and regeneration. Pretty unimpressive. 1-9 Tldr to use a melee stolen skill you have to be deliberately putting yourself in a bad spot that you don't want to be in, ranged stolen skills have bad missile speed for how telegraphed they are, and you can't stay in aoes since your rely on mobility for damage mitigation. And all of these issues could be heavily negated if theif would have a good bruised build that would allow it to negate damage while staying somewhat still, but by design, that is not allowed. What IS allowed is making stolen skills bundles like a firebrand tome with 2-3 options to chose from that get all consumed after you use one skill, so they're not fire and forget, or making the theif be able to hold onto more stolen skills so the old one doesn't get replaced when you steal again. The UI would look identical after 1 steal, after 2 steals the old stolen skill would be to the right of new stolen skill, and so on until you would have 3 stolen skills available. Stealing further would cause the oldest skill to phase out like it does now and so on. The theif part was kinda long so I'm gonna restate again in case anyone forgot : REWORK RANGER PET SKILLS.

Fresh air bonus ferocity doesn't trigger on overloading air, despite the fact that all the other traits that trigger on attunement also trigger on overloading. Since power tempest is basically nonexistent, can we at least fix this interaction ?

Less than one week now

You suggestion of making warhorn air 5 faster pretty much summarizes this post. You should consider why certain skills are the way they are before wishing to change things you don't understand

Just don't use a legendary skin if you like the animation, problem solved

And specter class mechanics from last expansion are still completely broken. And I don't mean broken as in overpowered, but bugged, not working, not fun and definitely something no one would touch if theif had another working supp/alac providing trait line. The wells have almost 1 second cast time and their effect doesn't even trigger instantly after you summon them, unlike necro CORE wells. Scepter pistol skill 3 is gated behind a useless initative sink, self displacing skill, and it also has a 2.25 second cast time. ON THIEF. THE FAST CALASS WITH NO CAST TIME HIGHER THAN 1 SECOND on anything beside elite skills. I understood that maybe on pistol/dagger they did the teleport away thing because it was a new gimmick and could be useful in PvP , but the specter/pistol skill 3 is a joke as it is now, has been since release, and since they removed the single target quickness from the skill you had to channel (op I know) no one ever touched it again. I dare anyone to make a good argument for keeping it like this. Siphon on allies doesn't work with almost ANY trait, despite there being no tooltip mention whatsoever ANYWHERE about this. No boons, no self heal, not even INITIATIVE, this lack of interaction between traits makes the slowest espec in the game (on thief no less btw) even more undesirable to play. Shoud skills have very strange and inconsistent ranges : 900, 900, 450, 130 (?), 240. While this isn't the biggest issue and it makes sense for the most part, why does skill 4, THE AOE DMG SKILL, have 130 range only ? Not only that, but it hits only in front of you, and it follows skill 3, the FEAR skill. If you combine this with the fact that the skill 2 that has cripple has a delay (god knows why ???) and that any sane person would like to use the cc dash ->dps skill combo, you often have targets leaving your skill 4 range, or just being feared in another completely random direction despite just having jumped on them. Which is just pathetic. Last but not least Haunt shot (shadow shroud skill 1) Is the ONLY class mechanic projectile skill in the game that doesn't change appearance based on special projectiles from weapons. And you might think ah, but theif never had a projectile in its profession mechanic skills before, it was easy for them to forget it except that they worked on both thief and necro shrouds at the exact same time, so tell me WHY does Harbringer have it properly implemeted and working and Specter not ?. I know this isn't a balance issue and in fact not even an issue for 90% of players, but it's just extra salt on the wound at this point. I'm sure that if there was any other class beside theif that got a necro shroud as an excuse for an elite spec, it wouldn't have been even close to this slow and unenjoyable to play. It's like it was done like this on purpose, not even having 5 target healing for most of it's existence. It's good that that part was fixed, but when are we gonna get rid of the other Revealed elephants in the room ?

Haunt shot, the first skill/autoatack of specter in shadow shroud doesn't change projectile based on thief's main weapon's unique animation. However, necromancer's shroud does change projectiles, as well as every other profession mechanic that has projectiles, including the harbringer shroud that was released in eod. They literally worked on 2 shrouds at the same time, how come thief's is the only one they forgot to add special projectiles for ?

With the new expansion Rifle is becoming baseline to theif. Even without the stealth from the deadeye trait, rifle is still 2 times better than pistol ever was ( 3 times if kneeled ). Can thief pistols finally get the buffs we've been asking for years now ? I'm especially looking at main hand pistol, unload, and the garbage pistol trait that lowers your damage.