Dagger.2035

@subversiontwo.7501, you missed a few player archetypes: You have your entrenched support players - you'll see them attempting to gatekeep balance discussions about large scale fights since they believe all professions should stay in their lanes. They tend to believe roaming professions should scout and create pick groups instead of participating in large scale fights. They also don't realize that support only exists as a means to allow damage to be applied effectively. They have a one-track mind and always want to stack and push. Are you getting w-keyed due to a lack of damage? We need more support players! Are you in an outnumbered fight where you should spread out and DPS? Just get on tag, push, die, and repeat. Then the typical group / blob / GVG crowd - they tend to complain about the effectiveness of unorganized things. It may be things on how an unorganized cloud's damage, CC, and strips are too effective. My organized group wiped to a pug cloud and that should never happen since organization equals skill. They tend to want to cap the ceiling on all types of builds to make sure the game matches their point of view.

The thief relic could use a few fixes. I know it doesn’t trigger on Infiltrator’s Strike, Flanking Strike, Larcenous Strike, and Unrelenting Assault to name a few.

I don't put much effort into roaming and I never felt Willbender was too strong. It feels like a fair fight on my old S/D core build and they have to run away from my Celestial Renegade. If something feels strong just play it yourself. It's also not likely that there will be a balance patch for small-scale fights. You could be waiting months/years. Odds are Willbender will remain strong until it can be replaced with something else from the next expansion. This pattern can be expected based on this game's history.

Shush, just play support.

*cough* Lick Wounds *cough*

I would recommend that you follow a tag when possible since large scale fights will give you a chance to learn. I would also recommend using a profession that can do it all: large scale DPS, large scale support, and Celestial roaming. I do think a Celestial roaming build could be a good starting point since it can be used for roaming and large-scale fights due to its extreme survivability. In my experience the most flexible professions are the Guardian and Revenant. Here's some builds to consider: Revenant Builds GW2 - Celestial Renegade Roaming Build - GuildJen (very strong and easy to play) GW2 - Support Vindicator WvW Zerg Build - GuildJen (I prefer using Dwarf over Ventari and you must run the Superior Sigil of Stamina) Herald - Hammer Herald - MetaBattle Guild Wars 2 Builds (I would go full berserker gear if possible. Strength runes and force/impact on hammer and force/strength sigils on swords.) Guardian Builds GW2 - Support Firebrand WvW Zerg Build - GuildJen (I haven't run this much in recent years, but I prefer more boon duration) GW2 - DPS Dragonhunter WvW Zerg Build - GuildJen (Run great sword for higher damage and non-stop cleaving. If you don't it feels like you run out of gas.) Guardian - Burn Guard - MetaBattle Guild Wars 2 Builds (Run a condition stat instead like dire, carrion, or ritualist's) GW2 - Celestial Willbender Roaming Build - GuildJen (I haven't run this myself, but I trust this website)

Have you've tried using short bow? It's fairly easy to kite around using auto attacks and repositioning with skill 3 and 5. Nothing fancy. I didn't know how difficult it was to defeat the Champion Mushroom King, so I tried it out on my WvW S/D build. This build accomplished it on my first try, but there are probably more optimal open world builds. This is a pet S/D build which I use for WvW roaming and soloing towers and keeps. Celestial or condition builds will work much better than this one.

This skill no longer removes revealed. But I agree the original skill should have never been added to the game.

My bad I should have mentioned that I mainly play WvW. What you are saying makes sense in PvE since there are no consequences for using skills and energy, but WvW is different. You have to react to what the enemy players and your commander are doing so you don't have the option to pick whether you want to play melee or range. If you are stuck at range, you will be using Elemental Blast, Coalescence of Ruin, Phase Smash, Inspiring Reinforcement, and Drop the Hammer. Typically, you always use Coalescence of Ruin and Phase Smash together since they hit at the same time for higher burst damage then you can refresh the relic when using Drop the Hammer as a CC. Either way you run out of gas and won't be able to sustain the relic stacks. If you are starting at range and pushing into melee then you will be using Elemental Blast, Coalescence of Ruin, Phase Smash, Burst of Strength, Inspiring Reinforcement, and then apply sustained damage with sword/sword via auto attacks and Vengeful Hammers. Having an active upkeep skill is important for the 13% damage that Forceful Persistence provides so I don't use weapon skills if they aren't needed. Shackling Wave is a good AOE burst, and Chilling Isolation can be used to burst a single target. Unrelenting Assault should be saved to help self-sustain yourself during hard won fights and Deathstrike should be used for either offensive or defensive repositioning. This is why I said you have to pick your poison and choose whether to use your skills appropriately or burn through them to keep the thief relic going. This is why I think the old T6 damage bonuses were better (strength, eagle, scholar). They were more generic and could be used by most professions. You also didn't have to alter your playstyle to use them since they were passive bonuses.

Yeah, I feel like Revenant has a slight disadvantage when trying to use Power relics since it has to deal with upkeep skills. You can't freely play as you did before since you need to refresh the thief relic, but doing so also is a waste of energy. You have to pick your poison. This is why the old eagle, scholar, strength, runes were much better.

If they want to improve the quality of life of thieves in large scale WvW combat they just need to make scepter skill 2 a low cost AOE. It would be nice to have a decent ranged option which isn't susceptible to projectile hate.

Decoupling the T6 bonus should have been a good thing, but it's amazing how this company always finds a way to mess things up. It seems like they didn't like the passive damage bonus that you would get from runes so now relics require you to trigger the bonus. This is an unfair system since certain professions will have an easier time triggering bonuses than others. It also leads to spammy gameplay which is something they keep pushing the game towards. I would rather use a skill when it makes sense instead of trying to trigger effects.

It seems like they are shooting for a maximum up time of 100% for a 5% damage bonus and 50% for a 10% damage bonus. Based on this Relic of Isgarren should be a 5% relic. I have no doubt things like this won't be addressed until the next expansion is being released.

The new expansion doesn't seem appealing to me. Taking away the rune's 6th bonus so we must earn them back, meh. Allowing us to use elite spec weapons as core weapons, meh. The newly announced weapons don't seem useful for WvW large scale fights, meh. The balance patch would be ok, if it wasn't for the Arc Divider change. Warriors can't have fun in WvW apparently. I also think the balance philosophy of pushing changes to create a melee meta are just wrong. This does nothing but make large, organized groups stronger. When outnumbered it is better to avoid fights rather than being a bag. Some bad support-oriented guilds which always lost fights to pug clouds are much harder to break now. I can't say balance is headed in the right direction.

It sounds like you should trust your gut and go with malice. I tend to prefer large scale fights so I use power and concentration infusions. I use the power infusions on my large-scale Herald and roaming Herald. Then I use my concentration infusions on my support Vindicator and roaming celestial Renegade.

Good thing I couldn't afford three right away. This seems as annoying as the disappearing back item bug.

I feel like changing the hero point would be a waste of developer time. The achievement is trivial and most of the active player base will have completed it after a week or two. It won't present an on-going competitive disadvantage.

I think a good start would be to have stealth attacks always apply reveal. Then we could remove the 1 second stealth attack cool down. This change makes mistakes more punishing for stealth builds since they won’t get free retries when they miss. It is also a buff for more aggressive thief builds which don’t rely on stealth. If they miss a stealth attack they can auto attack immediately since they would be revealed. This is better than being locked out of using auto attacks for a second. I’ve proposed this before on the thief forum, but most thieves use stealth so they don’t want to hear it. I also feel that many of today’s thieves didn’t play prior to the stealth attack cooldown so they are not aware of how much it affects build options. If the cooldown was removed some aggressive blind spam builds from the core era could make a possible comeback. I also proposed that Shadow Meld shouldn’t remove reveal years ago because counter to counters are not intuitive and create messy gameplay. Thieves should be punished when an opponent reveals them. Instead of fixing that skill, they proceeded to nerf other parts of thief for years before they finally admitted Shadow Meld was the source of the thief “slipperiness” problem.

This argument is wrong because Bountiful Theft is very popular and is one of the most slotted traits. It is picked and used with the condition removal traits you referenced. Acrobatics and Swindler's Equilibrium aren't fair to compare against. It's less frequently used because the sword/dagger weapon set isn't as popular as other options. In addition, most thief forum goers consider Acrobatics to be one of the weakest trait lines since Daredevil is a better alternative.

Sweet, now I can play a tanky build and I won't even need to push any buttons. 😜

Yeah, many of us went through this phase years ago. I used to enjoy roaming, but they kept making changes to minimize it. Tactivators, auto-upgrades, lord buffs, being marked, and siege vs siege damage nerfs. Heck the dang walls they introduced blocked roamers, but a zerg could destroy in a second. Same thing for defending. Now any strategy around siege placement is gone. Back in the day lazy siege placement could be countered by a single person who knew what they were doing. I feel the same way about the ranged AOE damage nerfs and lack of boon strips. This affects me more since I have been forced to play full glass DPS specs because of our pug situation. A high percentage tend to be new or PVE players. We used to be able to overcome being outnumbered by coordinating high damage spikes. It used to work on any DPS, then only Weavers. Now not at all. I feel like we have reached a tipping point where it is better for pugs to walk away instead of attempting to defend against larger groups. Less reasons to participate in fights makes the game worse IMO, even if balance is based off of statistical outliers, EU blob feedback or GvG feedback.

And JADE is back with Jade Quarry lol

I'm just pointing out that individual players don't have good fight instincts. The skill disparity is real.

This is 100% true. Most of the players on my server will not get aggressive and push any downs we create. Instead, they stay at 1200+ range and watch Magauma resurrect their allies. The few that know how to fight are vastly outnumbered by the players who don't. I'm usually forced into playing certain builds because I know I will always be in this situation.

I feel like everything has tradeoffs and removing celestial seems to be a drastic solution. Maybe buffing power damage coefficients and condition damage scaling is a better option to improve non-hybrid builds. This will also lessen the impact of running with defensive stats. Just to provide a different perspective in this thread, I usually roam with a S/D thief. This tends to have an easy match up against celestial bruiser builds. They provide me with an endless supply of boons to steal and I out sustain them by evading most of their damage. Since these builds have low damage, I can also choose to disengage and reset the fight if I make too many mistakes.