LadyKitty.6120

Quickness and alacrity have literally been gamebreaking boons for any support that hasn't had access to them. In at least PVE, only scourge has been used as a healer without either of those 2 and some classes have simply been left out of squads if they weren't able to provide one of those 2 boons (in case pure DPS slots were full) while some other classes haven't had such issue. The incoming changes rectify that. It's equality. Meanwhile, uniquity doesn't necessarily need to come from results (aside from skills with utility or range having less damage or healing than pure melee DPS skills). In FF14 it comes from different playstyles and same is the case here. Though GW2 has it more distinct. Do you claim that dagger, sword and staff elementalist builds feel the same to play? If not, you also probably see what the GW2 build uniquity is about: how to get the results?

Since we're going down the buff rabbithole as of late in PVE, guess Kitty better give her numerous numeric suggestions now that she's updated her spreadsheet so she had pretty good grasp of how much damage/cast times various skills have and these numbers are directly compared to their rivalling weapons while taking utilities into account. (Note: casting times on tooltips are far from precise and Kitty went through the trouble of recording the cast times of invidual skills with Arcdps's reported cast times in golem logs to get correct numbers on basically all skills.) Some numbers might seem drastic but that's just due to how underpowered some skills are (which explains why people don't use them). Also, previously when Kitty wrote similar post and some of the changes she proposed happened, people were quite happy with the results so that'd likely be the case if these also happen. In patch note format to allow some copy-pastaing in case you decide to implement these changes. Warrior Reckless Impact: Increased power coefficient from 1.5 to 2.5. (Not as high as DD or Vindi for which it's a spec-defining feature but still to make Sigil of Energy+Signet of Stamina meme build into a somewhat valid option. Also works for making power warr more viable.) Body Blow: Increased the amount of Bleeding from 1 stack for 12 seconds to 2 stacks for 12 seconds. (Needed buff to make the trait work with condi Mace Berserker which is the only build benefitting from that trait.) Currently Heal Shout Warrior is a dream of many players and during a core class raid run, the squad noticed that half of the players there had it geared but hadn't got to play it due to its currently lacking heal output. Since it heals through Tactics, Kitty has following suggestions: Soldier's Comfort: Increased healing coefficient from 0.8 to 1.5 in PVE. Now also grants Regeneration for 5 seconds. (To allow healing without banners.) Empowered: Now also increases Outgoing Healing by 2% for every boon on you. Vigorous Shouts: Increased the base healing from 1000 to 1600 and healing power coefficient from 1.2 to 1.6 in PVE. Currently Sword's auto-attack chain overshadows some power weapons and same is the case with Final Thrust as well. Some boosting is needed to make those weapons do the damage they should. Mace and hammer are rather slow-hitters but don't hit that hard to compensate atm so that needs to change. And these are minimum required changes to do same Power DPS as main-hand sword (a condi weapon), going slightly higher doesn't hurt. Also, the Bleeding Kitty mentioned earlier for mace autos should come on top of these to almost match sword's auto-chain (sword would still have it slightly stronger due to faster attack speed). Even some of greatsword's non-burst skills struggle and axe's auto-attack chain is doing actually way lower DPS than sword's on power build (unless doing stowing memes). And to be clear, current power Berserker benchmark doesn't include any of the following skills as they didn't let any auto-attacks to happen and didn't use Rush. Hammer Spellbreaker bench also only did 2 auto-attack chains per rotation and those caused DPS drops. Mace Smash: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.2 in PVE. Also inflicts 1 stack of Bleeding for 6 seconds. Mace Bash: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.3 in PVE. Also inflicts 1 stack of Bleeding for 6 seconds. Pulverize: Increased power coefficient from 1.6 to 2.0 in PVE. Also inflicts 1 stack of Bleeding for 6 seconds. Counterblow: Increased power coefficient from 2.0 to 3.0 in PVE. Pommel Bash: Increased power coefficient from 0.4 to 1.0 in PVE. Crushing Blow: Increased power coefficient from 1.5 to 2.4 in PVE. Tremor: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.5 in PVE. Hammer Swing: Increased power coefficient from 0.9 to 1.1 in PVE. Hammer Bash: Increased power coefficient from 0.9 to 1.1 in PVE. Hammer Smash: Increased power coefficient from 1.2 to 1.6 in PVE. Greatsword Swing: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.1 in PVE. Greatsword Slice: Increased power coefficient from 1.05 to 1.1 in PVE. Brutal Strike: Increased power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.6 in PVE. Rush: Increased power coefficient from 2.5 to 3.5 in PVE. Chop: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.0 in PVE. Double Chop: Increased power coefficient from 1.6 to 2.0 in PVE. Kick: Increased power coefficient from 1 to 1.8 in PVE. Bolas: Increased power coefficient from 0.25 to 0.9 in PVE. Stomp: Increased power coefficient from 0.75 to 1.5 in PVE. Rifle could also use some buffing though not to the same level as melee weapons due to range advantage. Kill Shot: Increased power coefficient from 2.25/2.75/3.25 to 2.5/3.0/3.5 in PVE. Fierce Shot: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.1 in PVE. Volley: Increased power coefficient from 3.75 to 4.2 in PVE. Explosive Shell: Increased power coefficient from 1.5 to 2.3 in PVE. Brutal Shot: Increased power coefficient from 1 to 2.5 in PVE. Flurry: Increased power coefficient per hit from 0.33 to 0.475 in PVE. (It's for condi core Warrior and Spellbreaker which see literally 0 use atm, for a reason but still.) Dual Shot: Increased power coefficient from 1.05 to 1.25 in PVE. (Super-slow cast time. Doesn't buff condi Berserker much but helps core Condi Warrior). Impale: No longer inflicts Torment and inflicts 6 stacks of Bleeding for 12 seconds instead. (Torment doesn't synergize with rest of Condi Warrior's kit.) Berserker Same idea as above. Skull Grinder: Increased power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.85 in PVE. Rupturing Smash: Increased power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.75 in PVE. Spellbreaker Precise cut: Increased power coefficient from 0.6 to 0.65 in PVE. Focused cut: Increased power coefficient from 0.65 to 0.7 in PVE. Bladestorm: Increased power coefficient from 3.5 to 5.0. (Required to make off-hand dagger worth using.) Bladesworn Gunsaber is still underpowered compared to normal weapons and needs some buffing to get to similar level. Swift Cut: Increased power coefficient from 0.7 to 0.9 in PVE. Steel Divide: Increased power coefficient from 0.95 to 1.0 in PVE. Explosive Thrust: Increased power coefficient of initial strike from 1.1 to 1.2 in PVE. Blooming Fire: Increased power coefficient of initial strike from 0.8 to 1.2 and of follow-up explosions from 0.4 per hit to 0.5 per hit. Engineer Kitty's been requesting buffs to some kits for a good while to make them valid options. So... Tool Kit has a couple of utility skills but it's otherwise a power weapon with heinously low DPS at the moment. Throw Wrench: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.5 in PVE. (for comparison Surprise Shot has 1.0 as insta-cast) Box of Nails: Now also does strike damage at the power co-efficient of 0.4 per hit in PVE. (It has a long cast.) Smack: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.3 in PVE. Whack: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.3 in PVE. Thwack: Increased power coefficient from 1.75 to 2.8 in PVE. Now also heals mech for 4% of its maximum HP when hitting an enemy in PVE if Mechanist. (the slowest auto-attack chain in the game at 4.25 seconds for full chain without quickness.) Flamethrower has potential for hybrid power/condi DPS build but for whatever reason it only burns on last hit of auto-attack. It's a FLAMETHROWER and the skill's name is FLAME JET. (Sorry about caps.) It's meant to burn, not to be high-pressure oil gun, rite? Flame Jet: Now also inflicts 1 stack of Burning for 1 second on each hit in PVE. Increased power coefficient from 2.75 to 3.0 in PVE. Elixir Gun doesn't seem to know whether it's a power, condi or support weapon. Let's make it a condi/support hybrid weapon. Tranquilizer Dart: Increased Bleeding duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds in PVE. Fumigate: Increased Poison duration from 2 seconds to 6 seconds in PVE. Acid Bomb: Reduced the power coefficient from 5.1 to 1.0 in PVE. Now also inflicts 3 stacks of Torment for 8 seconds in PVE. Mortar Kit otherwise hits nicely but...Orbital Strike-toolbelt is actually DPS loss to use. (Surprised Kitty when she put in the damage numbers and recorded cast time.) Orbital Strike: Increased power coefficient from 1.33 to 1.8 in PVE. Necromancer Dagger and greatsword have seen lots of buffing lately but axe's been left slightly behind due to weak auto-attack. Or well, quite a bit. Staff's auto-attack also hits reaaaaally low. Rending Claws: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.25 in PVE. Necrotic Grasp: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.45 in PVE. (Fireball-treatment.) Death Shroud has been left behind other shrouds horrendously. Gotta fix that to make core Necro viable again! Life Blast: Increased power coefficient from 1.45 to 1.8 in PVE. Life Transfer: Increased power coefficient from 3.825 to 7.0 in PVE. (It has one of the longest casts in the game.) Tainted Shackles: Increased power coefficient from 1.25 to 1.7 in PVE. Thief Currently it's a DPS loss to use Stealth Attacks and Dual Wields on sword. Tactical Strike: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.7 in PVE. Malicious Tactical Strike: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.7 in PVE. Stab: Increased power coefficient from 1.05 to 1.3 in PVE. Pistol Whip: Increased power coefficient of initial strike from 0.37 to 1.0 and of follow-up strikes from 0.77 to 0.9 per hit in PVE. Flanking Strike: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.0 in PVE. Larcenous Strike: Increased power coefficient from 1.6 to 2.0 in PVE. Pistol could also use some buffing. Vital shot: Increased Bleeding duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds in PVE. Repeater: Increased Bleeding duration from 3 seconds to 5 seconds in PVE. (Still not as strong as scepter's Twilight combo after this but still a good buff.) Unload: Increased power co-efficient of invidual hits from 0.4 to 0.55. Dancing Dagger, a ranged skill, is vastly overshadowed by Death Blossom, an evade, to the point of practical non-existence. Dancing Dagger: Increased the Torment stacks from 1 to 2 and Torment duration from 6 seconds to 8 seconds in PVE. (compared to 3 stacks of Bleeding for 15 seconds on Death Blossom) Guardian Sword, longbow and greatsword have been buffed multiple times recently but scepter needs some buffing and staff's DPS skills also wouldn't complain about such. But since staff and scepter are ranged weapons, the buffs still need to reflect that advantage in by not raising to same level as melee weapons. But to factor in staff's role as healing weapon, staff is missing one DPS skill in Empower's slot which pays for its heal ability. Orb of Wrath: Increased power coefficient from 0.6 to 0.75 in PVE. Chains of Light: Increased power coefficient from 0.25 to 1.0 in PVE. (Currently hammer's Zealot's Embrace does similar thing better while doing some actual damage though with this moderate a buff, scepter still maintains the ranged weapon debuff.) Bolt of Wrath: Increased power coefficient from 0.65 to 0.8 in PVE. Searing Light: Increased power coefficient from 0.75 to 0.8 in PVE. Seeking Judgment: Increased power coefficient from 0.9 to 1.1 in PVE. Symbol of Swiftness: Increased power coefficient per hit from 0.5 to 0.6 in PVE. Puncture Shot: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.1 in PVE. Mace could also use a tiny bit of damage buffing since it hasn't been touched in a while. It's auto-attack chain is also uber-slow so those hits need some compensation in hit strength. True Strike: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.0 in PVE. Faithful Strike: Increased power coefficient from 1.55 to 1.7 in PVE. Symbol of Faith: Increased power coefficient per hit from 0.65 to 1.0 in PVE. (It has almost twice the cast time as any other symbol but similar power coefficients so it needs some heavy lifting.) With SotO approaching, axe's auto-attack needs to be tuned down a tiny bit since it currently does both condi and almost as good strike damage as power weapons. Off-hand sword needs some buffing to become competitive with focus which is the current choice of off-hand for Power Willbender Searing Slash: Decreased power coefficient from 2.4 to 2.0 in PVE. Executioner's Calling: Increased power coefficient of initial strike from 0.75 to 1.0. Advancing Strike: Increased power coefficient from 2.0 to 2.5 in PVE. Mesmer Greatsword's auto-attack and scepter in general need some upwards tuning to match their competitors (Due to long cast and low power coefficient, GS auto-attack has currently less than half the DPS of sword and less than axe, about same as scepter!) Also, though mirage does have sort of identity as pure condi spec atm, since virtuoso is already power/condi and chrono is power with capability for condi if scepter gets buffed, versatility-wise it wouldn't hurt to add some power modifiers to allow for some power builds to appear for mirage even if it stays primarily a condi spec. And currently most of Mirage ambushes are somewhat underpowered and as such prevents builds like Power Mirage from actually becoming a semi-viable thing. Spatial Surge: Increased minimum power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.2 and maximum power coefficient from 1.1 to 1.4 in PVE. (Maximum would do ~80% of sword's auto-attack DPS and minimum would do ~68%.) Split Surge: Increased power coefficient from 1.35 to 2.5 in PVE. (Yush, Kitty took into account that clones also use it at about 23.9% of mesmer's damage output per clone, for a total of 71.9% in Kitty's testing but long cast) Mirage Thrust: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 3.0 in PVE. (Only mesmer does actual damage and has a long cast.) Nomad's Endurance: No longer gives +150 Condition Damage. Instead, now increases (both strike and condition) damage by +10%. Elementalist Conjures have been ignored for a good while and there's quite a huge gap between auto-attacks of certain weapons/attunements as well as certain skills. And though some weapons do heal in Water, others don't and if a skill doesn't do anything support-, movement- or CC-wise, it should be considered a DPS skill with damage to reflect that. Dragon's Claw: Increased power coefficient from 0.375 to 0.5 per hit in PVE. (would still be weaker than sword's fire auto-chain which also burns.) Drake's Breath: Increased power coefficient from 3.2 to 4.5 in PVE. (Not really worth using for power builds atm.) Vapor Blade: Increased power coefficient from 0.33 to 0.36 in PVE. Lightning Whip: Increased power coefficient from 1.26 to 1.45 in PVE. Chain Lightning: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.0 in PVE. Ice Shards: Increased power coefficient from 0.72 to 0.9 in PVE. Arc Lightning: Increased power coefficients from 0.45/0.9/1.8 to 0.6/1.2/2.4 in PVE. Freezing Gust: Increased power coefficient from 0.25 to 1.0 in PVE. (Focus is now clearly a DPS weapon in Water.) Comet: Increased power coefficient from 0.75 to 2.0 in PVE. Aqua Siphon: Increased power coefficient from 0.75 to 1.3 in PVE. Lava Axe: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.0 in PVE. Double Lava Axe: Increased power coefficient per hit from 0.8 to 1.0 in PVE. Explosive Lava Axe: Increased power coefficient from 1.5 to 2.0 in PVE. Flame Leap: Increased power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.75 in PVE. Lightning Leap: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 2.5 in PVE. (It has a long'ish cast.) Flame Wave: Increased power coefficient from 0.65 to 0.75 per hit in PVE. (Looong cast.) Revenant Power Revenant builds have some room for DPS increase and especially hammer is currently extremely weak so some buffing's needed to create a good baseline across the weapons. Preparation Thrust: Increased power coefficient from 0.75 to 0.8 in PVE. Rift Slash: Increased power coefficient of the secondary hit from 0.225 to 0.3 in PVE. Death Strike: Increased power coefficient of initial strike from 0.45 to 807 in PVE. Unrelenting Assault: Increased power coefficient from 0.7865 to 1.0per hit in PVE. (Should hit a bit harder than just auto-attacking and has long cast.) Hammer Bolt: Increased power coefficient from 1.1 to 1.45 in PVE. Coalescence of Ruin: Increased power coefficient from 1.75 to 2.0 in PVE. Phase Smash: Increased power coefficient from 2.0 to 2.5 in PVE. Drop the Hammer: Increased power coefficient from 2.3 to 3.0 in PVE. Rapid Swipe: Increased power coefficient from 0.65 to 0.75 in PVE. Forceful Bash: Increased power coefficient from 0.75 to 0.8 in PVE. Mender's Rebuke: Increased power coefficient from 1.5 to 2.25 in PVE. Shattershot: Increased power coefficient from 0.65 to 0.8 in PVE. Bloodbane Path: Increased power coefficient from 1.2 to 1.8 in PVE. To be continuad.

Something Kitty's been requesting since forever: buff the maces into a viable option! (And Body Blow-trait too!) Currently they're somewhat in the limbo as CC weapon but very little damage potential and they haven't really seen any adjustments through all these balance patches. At least hammer finally got a rework. Also, Body Blow-trait does require a buff to be of any use in PVE. Meanwhile its competitors Sword and Longbow are getting some buffing. And yes, from what Kitty's been testing, maces currently work best as condi weapons with that Body Blow-trait slotted and that trait is pretty much exclusively useful for mace Berserker. Anyway, the numbers for buffs. Using the numbers from Kitty's condi zerker: Body Blow: Increased the Bleeding from 1 stack to 2 stacks. (3k DPS buff from 21.5k to 24.5k on mace+mace condi berserker but doesn't affect others) Skull Grinder: Increased the Bleeding from 4 stacks for 8 seconds to 6 stacks for 12 seconds. (Still smaller buff than the sword's Flaming Flurry buff coming with this patch due to Burning's 2,5x higher condi damage multifier.) Auto-attack chain: Added 1 stack of Bleeding for 6 seconds. (on all skills to get the auto-chain closer to sword's since sword already does same damage faster with added Bleeding and Mace pretty much uses "auto chain -> 2-3 skills -> auto chain"-style rota so there's not much auto-attacking to begin with.) Might be too late for the initial patch but if these were added to one of patches soon after, Kitty would be grateful for getting some use for her shiny Moot.

Well, if you want to add armors to dungeons/fractals...also add weapons to raids.😈

Once again, Kitty already knows and if she remembers correctly, Sun Spirit was about 1.8k DPS to condi-DPSers on metabuilds and that merely compensated for condibuilds not getting most of Frost Spirit's effect. (About 15-25% of condi-DPS's damage is power in most cases.) And you know, just because something isn't popular doesn't mean it's not effective. Raid community is painfully slow at recognizing and picking up effective builds if they're not on benchmark site. It took longer than a year for Heal Scourge to be recognized as the OP carry build (MTP popularized it but Kitty had already made videos about it soon after PoF arrived). Chaos Chrono was totally unused for a long time 'cause people thought it was horrible but then there were some videos and noise about its insane boon potential and it got demolished in a couple months later 'cause it was too OP (essentially Boon Thief before Boon Thief happened). Boon Thief and Alac Ren was a combo that people didn't even know about until some swifty teef and a Kitty went testing and published a vid about it (and even then it took until a QoL buff 7 months later that AlacRene finally became popular). Even then, it was a super-niche combo despite of being the META. If needed, Kitty can provide more examples of why using popularity is a fallacy in build arguments.

For starters, Kitty doesn't really need FYIs as she knows the build system quite thoroughly and she usually maths more than she plays (after all, she's done quite a bit of build pioneering). Anyway, guess Kitty needs to elaborate... Glint F2 is indeed +20% BD that bypasses the normal cap. And it has a +3 when used. But. +20% is only up when you have it active or for 6s after consuming with 16s CD after consuming which means 10s gap without that buff if you ever consume it. As such, there's only a few cases where it's worth it and doing so means not being able to share it reliably. The extension after consuming mainly covers for that a bit but it's nothing more than compensation if it's used for the passive effect. (Using it on QuickHerald is more understandable since it needs to Consume anyway and 3/10>20%.) But as such, there's not that many cases where it actually adds to boon duration over squad as to get full benefit, Herald's boost needs to 1. be reliable (Can be costly opportunity-wise) and 2. have other booners (as Kitty thinks she mentioned in previous post) for all 10 to adjust their gears for more healing/attack power. Including your and the other sub. For healers, that means swapping stuff to Magi's (Or Marshal's or Zealot's or Minstrel's) which essentially means legendary gears or former "Kitty's bank". So, compared to pogo stick HealVindi, not very impressive boost. Although HealVindi does have the problem of there having to be existing stacks to extend but that wasn't an issue when Kitty playing HealVindi when it was a thing. But that's why margins exist anyway. And so, when it comes to spirits, at golem, typical squad would get about 13k DPS boost from Frost Spirit if all (Boon)DPSers were power. Comparing the same numbers to Kitty's earlier calculations, guess what? The lowered boon duration requirement from running HealVindi+2 Boon DPS+2 DPS would also give about 12-14k DPS boost for whole squad. But doesn't even require everyone to be power which is a bonus. So after doing the math, it does seem like there would actually be even more reason to use HealVindi today than there was to use a druid before in Healer+QDPS+ADPS comp (excluding mechanics-reasons but those don't require druid these days or the other sub's healer can be alacdruid to cover those stuffs). And for clarity: for the math Kitty used Druid/HVindi+QDPS+ADPS+2DPS / Healer+Boon DPS+3DPS comp with DPSers doing 38k, Boon DPSers doing 25k and healers doing 3k each which are what mediocre metabuilds do at golem atm. And for the last part: please don't even hint at the horror that was Power VoE Vindicator. Kitty played it once as Power Alac Vindi and that's one of the few builds she didn't get to work even decently 'cause it spent too much time in the air without doing enough damage landing and didn't have enough time to hit stuff for DPS. To be more serious: It's not just "1 or 2 concentration pieces". 50% BD is 750 Concentration. From stat set with 4 stats, minor stats from all gear pieces give 633 Concentration. If you add concentration food on that, that's almost 50% Boon Duration. In other words: With Heal Vindicator, a boon DPS that would need full Ritualist's and boon duration food could use full Viper's with DPS food. Inversely, a pure Condi FB could be a full quickbrand just by couple trait and utility skill swaps and if you provide them with some sussy consumables that boost Concentration instead of Condi Damage. Power Engi just needs to pull out a hammer and put on Scrapper DPS build with one trait change. You can tell any warrior to just take Banner of Tactics+Banner of Whatever and they can Quick DPS with ease (there's even some room for them to delay the banner if rota requires). So, need to change habits and learn a new rota? Mostly less than in having to adjust rotas during boss fights anyway so shouldn't be a big deal anyway (unless you've literally pressed 1111111 before and on alac mech or Quick Bomberscrapper, even that works with HealVindi).

If you don't like the new meta version, there's always something you can do: go to training area and test how your favourite build compares to metabuild in your hands and are you willing to pay the DPS loss to continue using your build? In general, as long as you do mechanics cleanly, doing over 30k at golem is enough for almost every encounter unless squad is super-tryhard. 25k+ is enough for most raids, mostly stuff like some Strike CMs, fractal CM100 with pugs and maybe Twin Largos on melee build becoming an issue. Build being ranged compensates for DPS loss at encounters with lots of movement.

So, starting by some responses to this one... Elementalist: Conjured weapons need some serious buffing, though only to skills that don't do big DPS already *points at LH4*. Frost Bow kinda doesn't know what it wants to be as it's ele's best heals but secondarily is a "condi" weapon applying vulnerability. Going for Bleed instead (icicles can be sharp!) would kinda make it more useful hybrid weapon. Engineer: While otherwise in pretty good spot, Tool Kit indeed needs more damage. Currently it has some confusion and bleeding but none such on auto-attack. Shield and pull are nice utilities but even then, somewhat reasonable damage and purity of purpose would be good for it so either add some Confusion to auto-attacks or turn it into power/utility weapon. Meanwhile Flamethrower does mainly power damage on auto-attack (Flame Jet) while rest of the kit is burning? Kitty would change bunch of that power damage into burning to be more consistent with rest of the kit. And when it comes to Elixir Gun, currently it's a mixmash of condi, minor boon, healing and power damage (on EG4). In Kitty's opinion, EG5 is pretty fine as heals but EG4 could cause torment instead (It's acid, after all.) EG3 needs more potent poison (Doubling the Poison from 2s to 4s would work and still wouldn't make it OP). EG Auto-Attack could bleed a sec or two longer to do some condi damage but still not having pistol's cleave. EG2 could apply some poison to enemies and additionally give resolution to allies. (Poisons enemy and protects allies from it sounds kinda fun.) Guardian: Hammer is still kinda missing on damage-side. Kitty would personally boost the symbol and Mighty Blow a bit. But. The worst issue, in Kitty's hateful educated opinion, is scepter. Previously it got hit by pretty hard nerfs to its symbol and now other weapons have got some serious buffing. Returning the symbol to its former state wouldn't even be overkill now. Mesmer: Kitty has kinda 2 things to say - make Bountiful Disillusionment AoE again (except stab) and buff Illusionary Inspiration-trait for more heal output (20% would be good) and make Restorative Illusions AoE. Oops, that was 3 things. Anyway, just those changes would make Heal Boon Chronomancer a thing again. Necromancer: Core Shroud needs some love. Death Magic could use some clarification of its purpose as...it has minion line, defensive line...and random "gain power on carapace" and "poison damage increased" - traits which lack synergy and feel kinda out of place. Kitty would replace them with some more lifeforce generation or defensive shroud enhancements ('cause Unholy Sanctuary is already kinda about the latter). *to be continuad if Kitty has energy*

The different damaging condis are there simply for different damage formulas (if setting aside the themes). You could ofc slap in more types, yeah, but functionally they'd still be merely additional versions of same formulas. However, Kitty's kinda opposed to adding new condi damage types as it'd just end up slapping them on currently existing stuffs and unless balance team is using damage calculating spreadsheets for balancing, new formulas would result in balance issues that'd take a good while to fix. Meanwhile, we even currently have builds waiting for fixes. *stares at mace warrior, shortbow thief, hammer rev and half of engi's kits*

Not sure what gamemode you're talking about but in PVE, Scepter with Illusionary Inspiration traited has some pretty nice sustain going on to the point of being best heal weapon for mesmer as a whole (excl. Virtuoso).

Boon extension on Herald being better isn't effectively 100% true. Many healers over-cap the effective boon output already without that extra 20% and since Boon DPSers and healers take care of boons, in typical comp there's only 1 other player who truly benefits from that +20% of Herald's: the other Boon DPS. But even then, having specifically QuickHerald to allow the other sub's Boon DPS to run lower BD (and usually can't run 0% even in that case) is even more restricting that running Heal Vindi which does allow the 2 Boon DPSers in its sub to use DPS gears with some boon traits/skills to bring full quick+alac (in other words, pretty much anyone of suitable class can bring the boons so even most DPSers can change to Boon DPS without issues). Heal Vindi doesn't set ANY requirements for the other sub like fully utilizing QuickHeralf would. And considering that people occasionally use Heal Scourge which has only Might to offer, Kitty fails to see why Heal Vindi would be any more issue. Besides, have people already forgotten about old days of druid+QB+AlacRen combo? Also required healer+QuickDPS+AlacDPS (latter 2 requiring BD gears) and people even wanted such comp most of the time so Kitty fails to see why Heal Vindi would be any harder esp. since it actually makes having Boon DPSers easier.

Kitty's kinda greatly disliked how they took that alac away from Vindi when they did Salvation revamp. However. There's something people don't seem to realize: the potential of boon extension. By using the "Vassals of the Empire"-trait (Extend boons when you dodge), you can extend the boon uptimes to the point that Boon DPSers can run 0% boon duration and even drop boon skills/traits for DPS ones in some cases. Ofc this means not taking the "Heal on Dodge"-trait but Revenant already has massive amounts of other heals. And to tell about how effective it can be, just this build allows a Boon DPS with 50% BD to run 0% BD at fights without condi pressure and 80% can run 0% in heavy condi pressure while you'd RP a pogo stick. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmgAYZlZSJsTiilSTMUqiQhsSagl0zd8E-zxIYwoivMyMFquC8dWafzCqA-e So, a 25k benching Boon DPS could likely bench something like 30-32k if using Heal Vindicator and as such, using Heal Vindi+2 boon DPS instead of typical boon DPS+Boon Healer is about equal overall due to DPS boosts the Boon DPSers get from boon extension. Not to forget that something like staff mirage gets extra benefit due to ability to spam Chaos Vortexes faster at condi pressure bosses (Heal Vindi can convert condis to massive amounts of endurance for allies) and might even be able to run Staff/Axe rota again.

Tbh raid rewards could use some boosting. If you have a good group and do CMs without wiping, they can be somewhat worth doing compared to open-world farming but considering that it takes some time to form the groups (unless you have a static) and LFG squads do wipe at bosses if people don't pay attention, it is way more worth it to do open-world stuff and fractal dailies if you've already farmed legendary armors and Coalescence from raids. This is in fact the reason why Kitty had to stop raiding to be way more efficient in farming some very cost-intensive stuffs (Read: legendary weapons). And to make things worse, even the magnetite shards are kinda pointless if you're farming legendary gears as in current economy, the mats you get from clover rolling are usually worth more than the 1 ecto+MC you'd save by buying with raid/strike shards. So, tl;dr raids need to reward more gold and Magnetite Shards+LIs need some new uses so they'd be worth doing after finishing raid-related legendary gears. E: And to be clear, Kitty's currently making about 30g/hr from fractal dailies (CMs+T4s) and 20-30g/hour from crafting legendary weapons to sell while even in best case, she could make max. average 20g/hr from doing some raiding if doing the wing with Call of the Mists and CMs in W1-4 clear. (W5-7 take longer due to longer encounters and all the RP dialogue and increased difficulty but rewards are same as easier raids but lower than non-CM KO which is easy and HT).

To be honest, at least that failure was almost entirely on the squad by missing the vital mechanics. Of all the CCs, only one was successful and esp. around 70% and 18%, tail was up for 100+80 seconds (that's 3 minutes) which led to losing 120 seconds worth of DPS compared to going for it right away (and in successful runs, you only ignore the tail if boss is within 3-4% from phasing (6% is doable IF the squad successfully CCs) and squad is doing good DPS). If people had gone for the tail right away in both cases, it would've been a successful run. Also, a thing to note: if you have pulls, they're super-useful even during burn phases if there's adds around. Yes, using them would be about 2-3 seconds of personal DPS lost per phase but 1 less knockdown/back alone pays it back. Esp. important during that last 20% indeed. And if there's Thornhearts up, they must die ASAP. No questions asked. If squad doesn't kill them, they keep bombarding everyone to death as seen from ground literally having been yellow during last 20% on that one due to 2 Thornhearts murdering the squad. And third thing is: being clear about splits makes things faster. And it's not like communicating the splits is a purely DE thing. HoT metas (esp. Octovine and Dragon's Stand) pretty much require somewhat even splits and communication about burns or peoples' disappointment is immeasurable and their metas are ruined. Tl:dr Gotta get those breakbars to make DPS a lot better and also gotta get that tail ASAP if not close to phasing. Kill Thornhearts, pulls be nice, communicate splits. That's what every successful DE is made of. Ps. As a tip from fellow mesmer player, Distortion and Bladeturn Requiem (F5) are total haxxors for getting thru mechanics without stopping DPS. Kitty spams them whenever big mechanic is coming for big deeeeps.

As to why defensive stats are usually bad for solo gameplay (esp. on power builds that need 3 stats to be efficient vs condi requiring 2), the reason is very simple: sustain. Having vitality for big health pool doesn't help if it leaks faster than you can fill it. If dries up faster than you can kill the enemy, you die. Having a bigger pool simply takes longer to dry but if dps loss is greater than the added pool size, it just means a more likely slow death. You can try to fill it with heal skills and healing traits but that requires specifically investing in healing power (further losses to damage) and healing traits+skills (usually mutually exclusive with damage traits). By the time you've reached enough healing to outheal all damage to big health pool when eating most attacks, you have no damage left. Toughness isn't that good either as it only works against power damage, not against condis. 3rd option would be mixing damage stats and healing power with something like Zealot's (Power+Prec+Healing Power) or Plaguedoctor's/Shaman's (Condi damage+Vitality+Healing Power and Concentration on Plaguedoctor's, use runes+sigils+traits for condi duration). Those stats actually balance sustain and damage. So, usually best options for getting stuff killed is either going full glass cannon and obliterating everything before it kills you (requires actively evading and blocking hits) or investing a lot in Healing Power and healing stuffs and kill stuff slowly. Latter option has one problem, though: if there's a timer (often the case with champs and story achievements), you mightn't have enough damage to kill stuff fast enough. Ofc there's another thing to improve survivability on most classes: "Convert outgoing damage to healing/barrier"-traits like Invigorating Precision on thief and Parasitic Contagion on necromancer. But for those to be effective, you need to optimize rest of the build for maximum damage. This is in fact the best way to reach essentially godmode on most classes. Warrior is kinda exception as it gets healing from applying Might when using Tactics (Mending Might-trait) and/or last middle trait in Strength which thus benefits from Sigil of Strength and food like Fried Golden Dumplings. Also, having some kind of access to Protection-boon obviously helps IF the DPS cost is less than -25% damage for perma-Protection.

Congratulations, you successfully managed to call perhaps the weakest PVE build in the game as "viable"! (Sorry but Kitty just couldn't help it.) To elaborate, warrior's mace is currently the weapon with worst damage output now that they've boosted warrior's hammer from worst into a good option.(Which is why Kitty's asked for warr's maces to be boosted for a good while now) And Soldier's lacks both damage (no crit rate nor crit damage to boost the power damage) to kill enemies fast and self-healing to fill the big health pool faster than you take damage. (Even biggest pool becomes empty if it leaks faster than you can fill.) Even with optimized traits, utility skills and runes it still does 10% of damage of a meta build at very best, much worse if you also make poor trait and utility skill choices. And how Kitty knows this? She understands the build system fully, having actually tested how well hundreds of builds perform and as personal challenge, she's RNG'd her build of the day for a while now and once she got soldier's mace+shield spellbreaker as chosen by RNG. Even though spellbreaker has Full Counter to help a bit with damage, even optimized it was the most painful day Kitty's ever had in GW2. But so, on a serious and constructive note, Kitty would recommend better source critique and getting familiar with some metabuilds and how they work as learning and understanding why they have certain choices and how parts in them interact with each other gives a good basis on how to build an effective off-meta build. As others have already mentioned, GW2's build system is anything but simple due to how extremely versatile it is and most buildcrafters actually figure things out on GW2skills-build calculator and math to make sure that the builds have enough stats to cover what they need for what they're made for and that everything actually works together. One basic mistake people do is using condi weapon on power build or viceversa and using support-specialized weapon on dps build. "Purity of purpose" is a good starting point. And also, now that legendary armory is a thing and material prices have dropped, do yourself a favor and try to farm legendary armors, trinkets and runes if you're into testing builds that aren't 100% guaranteed to work. Makes testing a lot faster, easier and cheaper in the long run. Kitty said.

Also having that bug, though Kitty's enjoying it as fan of Ankka. If you fix the bug, please add Ankka combat tonic to vendor as well!😈 E: Kitty heard about AB Mutineer Tonic that transforms into Ankka as a feature so...gotta buy that one as well.

Increase replayability of older content by turning some older story bosses into strikes and adding better rewards to some LWS metas. And proper VR support might be worth lots of resources as the game already has action cam and making core systems work well with VR stuffs might turn GW2 into a good VRMMORPG.

So, now after seeing the changes, these are the changes that'd still be pretty logical from Kitty's PVE viewpoint. But first, an important thing to mention: when you're allowing Deadeye to move with -75% movement speed when kneeling, hopefully you tested that it doesn't move faster with Swiftness and Superspeed. If not, there's a good chance that we might have a squad of 4 deadeyes and a heal scrapper in both subs. Necromancer-Life Siphon (Dagger 2): Increase base damage from 990 to 1100 and damage coefficient from 2.7 to 4.0. (Currently worse than auto-attack.)-Enfeebling Blood: Increase base damage from 550 to 770 and damage coefficient from 1.5 to 2.5. (Balanced by nerfing Harbinger's pistol to retain its damage as it is now and currently Harbinger's pistol is quite purely a condi weapon. This change actually makes off-hand skill worth using on power DPS.)-Soul Grasp: This. Back. To. Normal. Now. Also Increase base damage from 248 to 392 and damage coefficient from 0.75 to 1.4.-Unholy Feast and Unholy Burst: Increase base damage from 323 to 432 and damage coefficient from 1.75 to 2.4. Unholy burst now triggers when target's health is below 50%. (this would bring axe's overall damage to situationally to same region as staff's equivalent skills.)-Life Blast: Increase base damage from 372 to 439 and damage coefficient from 1.8 to 2.2. (Currently using shroud is a DPS loss for core necro.)-Life Transfer: Increase base damage from 1017 to 2034 and damage coefficient from 3.825 to 8.0. (Currently does less damage than auto-attack and after these necro shroud buffs it'd be about 10% more damage than auto-attack.)-Tainted Shackles: Increase base damage from 332 to 564 and damage coefficient from 1.25 to 2.0. (The end hit would be about same as Dark Pact's, taking shroud buffs into account, and you need to be near the foe for 4 seconds for the skill to hit as power damage portion hits at the end of shackle's effect). Harbinger-Vicious Shot: Decrease damage coefficient from 0.65 to 0.6.-Weeping Shots: Decrease damage coefficient from 2.4 to 2.0. MesmerIt does have healing capability but weaker than other classes (about 2.4k HPS atm, average across other classes is about 3.5-4k atm). These would help fix it.-Restorative Illusions: Now heals 5 allies in 240 radius.-Healing Prism: Now gives +10% outgoing healing. No longer gives Healing Power based on a percentage of Power. (Considering that good portion of healing stat sets, for ex. Magi's, Minstrel's, Giver's etc., don't have Power, this change would take some healing power away from Harrier's but increase healing for many other stats.)-Illusionary Inspiration: Increase the base healing from 212 to 289 and healing modifier from 0.3 to 0.5.-Bountiful Disillusionment: Now grants the additional boons to 5 allies in 240 radius. Might and Vigor duration is increased to 12s, Fury duration to 16s and regen duration to 20s. (Reverses the nerf which was justified with old SoI and when chrono was able to give both alac and quickness but now seriously hinders mesmer's boon ability compared to every other healer. Worded as "Additional boons" like in trait description as stability won't be included in shared boons for the sake of balance.Since Inspiration doesn't provide boons and chrono doesn't have proper access to sharing these boons, this trait with 100% BD and Improved Alacrity-trait would be just enough to give 100% uptime on aforementioned boons if shatters are used off-CD. Though might output would still be max. 15 stacks from this trait and Tides of Time on shield gives the remaining 10 stacks for full might uptime. This trait would also force a choice between more heals from using Illusions traitline for faster clone generation for Illusionary Inspiration and Chaos for these boons. And though it'd be possible to use Inspiration traitline with Blurred Inscriptions for extending these boons to avoid modifying this trait, it's not really a viable thing to use that trait in conjunction with this trait on heal or DPS build as BI is mutually exclusive with II for healer and taking Inspiration at all is a HUGE DPS loss for boon DPS. Condi boon chrono could take this trait as well to give auxiliary boons but as of now, condi chrono is weak enough DPS-wise and giving full boons on it would require so much BD that DPS loss would be quite big that this wouldn't be overpowering even in that case.)Also, Staff's Winds of Chaos is capable of bouncing back to primary target for 2nd hit to apply both Torment on first hit and Confusion on 2nd hit. Thus Scepter's auto-attack needs some buffs to bring it to same level (while staff also gives boons and scepter is a DPS weapon). These changes also don't overshadow axe due to all the torment it generates when Mirrored Axes-trait is slotted and axe also cleaves while scepter doesn't.-Ether Bolt: Increase Torment duration from 2s to 3s.-Ether Blast: Increase Torment duration from 3s to 4s.-Ether Clone: If you don't have maximum number of illusions, additionally inflicts 5s of Torment. (In other words, 5s of Torment while summoning a clone.)-Ether Bolt (Clone): Increase Torment duration from 2s to 3s. (Clone's Winds of Chaos has potential to bounce back to enemy for 2nd hit which'd cause 2s of Confusion or bounce to ally to give boons and 3s of Torment on Scepter's Ether Bolt would be good midway between single and double hit on staff's Winds of Chaos). MirageThough Mirage was created as a condi spec, there are power DPS possibilities if the numbers are brought to where they should be.-Mirage Thrust: Increase base damage from 367 to 532 and damage coefficient from 1.0 to 3.0. (It's slow and melee and currently does 40% of auto-attack chain's DPS. Even GS ambush does 50% more and that one is weak as well. Even axe ambush does twice as much power damage as sword ambush. Thus 3.0 is the very bare minimum to make sword ambush worth using. The daze it has is essentially an interrupt so it doesn't really excuse low damage.)-Split Surge: Increase damage coefficient from 1.35 to 2.4. (10% less damage than sword ambush as ranged punishment)-Ether Barrage: Increase confusion and Torment duration from 4s to 6s. (With 3 clones, that'd equal to total of 30s+3x15s=75s of mix of Torment and Confusion as each hit does either Torment or Confusion. Meanwhile each staff's Chaos Vortex does 4x8s=32s of both Torment and Bleeding and 8s+3*3s=17s of Confusion so 81s of conditions total and big boons on top of that. Staff would still have advantage due to boons but if we get the scepter buffs mentioned in Mesmer-section, that'd balance it out.) ThiefThief is currently in pretty good place when it comes to condi builds. However, some thief's power builds are still quite underpowered, staff, pistols and sword in particular. (Rifle/Dagger+Dagger Deadeye doesn't count as counter-argument, they got even boosted further now.) And to be clear, yes, Infiltrator's Strike on sword did get a buff earlier but...Infiltrator's Return takes so long that ultimately using it for damage is a massive damage loss. Currently it's mainly good for catching up to opponent and for healing on Specter. But since sword's auto-attack chain already does big damage, the buffing needs to be done through Stealth Attack and Dual Wield skills. And to compensate for lack of cleave, requiring HP above 90% for vital boosts and reliance on flanking as well as making skills actually worth using on sword to encourage active gameplay (auto-attacking is currently best damage), Kitty has following suggestions: -Deadly Aim: Remove the damage reduction. (It competes with Practised Tolerance which is already about 10% damage boost on power builds. This trait is useful to begin with only if there's multiple enemies and you can position yourself well to hit them all and you likely won't be able to flank them all to begin with. If you can use this trait effectively, which are few bosses where Virtuoso and Rifle Mechanist also excel at without similar conditions for damage, you're kinda qualified for the slight damage boost from piercing.)-Tactical Strike and Malicious Tactical Strike: Increase damage coefficient from 1 to 2. (Tactical Strike was already a damage loss and now that B)-Pistol Whip: Increase damage coefficient of initial hit from 0.37 to 0.6 and 2nd part from 3.16 to 4.0. (Due to super-long cast, it currently does less damage than auto-attacking while also rooting in place and this change would make it do 16% more DPS than auto-attacks.)-Flanking Strike: Increase damage coefficient from 0.8 to 1.0.-Larcenous Strike: Increase damage coefficient from 1.6 to 2.2. (This chain would thus do 16% more damage to enemies without boons and 2.5% more damage to enemies with boons, comparing to auto-attack. Currently these attacks are a big damage loss.)-Vital Shot: Increase damage coefficient from 0.575 to 0.6. Increase Bleed duration from 4s to 6s.-Unload: Increase damage coefficient per hit from 0.4 to 0.46.-Repeater (Both versions): Increase damage coefficient from 1.5 to 1.8. (Would allow kinda hybrid bleed/power build) Dancing Dagger is also seeing pretty much 0 use and its torment is kinda outlier compared to rest of condi thief's kit so Kitty would replace it with bleed. (Torment is only a thing for Skale Venom, Condi Deadeye and Specter and they all already have stronger ranged torment skills.) It's really weak atm so Kitty would boost it a bunch. Not as strong as Death Blossom which would be its main companion skill, though, but as complimentary skill if you need to go to range for a few seconds. Also would kinda allow a shady knifethrower build on Daredevil(though Virtuoso does it shinier).-Dancing Dagger: No longer inflicts Torment but inflicts 3 stacks of Bleed for 8 seconds instead. DaredevilPower Daredevil's got some boost in previous balance patches but it's still a behind where it should be and is falling even deeper with DE buffs incoming. In Kitty's personal testing, it's currently behind metabuilds by about 10% while also having the disadvantage of having to spam evades while staying behind the enemy in melee range (Not an easy thing to do). But buff to one trait should be enough to get it to where it should be. With dagger auto-attack nerf from earlier, it also won't buff Condi Daredevil further. Also, to further compliment the knifethrower RP build...-Weakening Strikes: Increase damage increase from 10% to 15%.-Impairing Daggers: Increase the Poison duration from 10s to 12s. WarriorNow that warrior got quickness, the coveted Heal Warrior would actually become a viable build in PVE IF Vigorous Shouts wasn't in same column as Martial Cadence. So, here's how to make the dreams come true.-Vigorous Shouts: Swaps places with Shrug It Off! and no longer gives Healing Power based on Power. Increase the healing modifier from 1.2 to 1.5.-Empowered: Additionally gain Healing Power based on 13% of your Power. (Taken from Vigorous Shouts)(These 2 changes alone would increase the potential maximum healin output to about 2.8k per ally per second.)-Soldier's Comfort: Increase the healing modifier from 0.8 to 1.4. (This on top of previous changes would bring it to about 3.0k which would be similar to GotL druid.)-Shrug It Off: Swaps places with Vigorous Shouts and now removes 3 conditions when its "Shake It Off!" triggers. Increase the healing modifier from 0.2 to 0.4.Shrug It Off would compete with Martial Cadence as grandmaster trait and thus it'd be a choice between about 3.5k maximum healing potential+big cleanses and full Quickness output on heal build. Taking Shrug It Off wouldn't be super-OP even at condition-heavy bosses since keeping up full Quickness with Shrug It Off and 1 banner would require increasing Boon Duration to close to 100% and taking Banner of Tactics instead.-Warrior's Cunning: Lower the Health Threshold from 80% to 50%. (Overall damage bonus goes from 5% to 12.5%.) Currently Body Blow is slightly in weird position as it's main use is inflicting Bleeding which is one of the main themes in Arms. Meanwhile Signet Mastery focuses on improving damage which is exactly what Strength is about. Doing this swap would allow creating cohesive condi builds that utilize CCs, great for esp. main-hand mace which already does condis on Berserker's Primal Burst "Skull Cracker".-Body Blow: Move to Arms as Major Adept trait, replacing Signet Mastery. Reduce the Bleeding Duration from 12s to 8s and increase the Bleeding stacks from 1 to 2.-Signet Mastery: Move to Strength as Major Master trait, replacing Body Blow.Currently hammer is still behind meta weapons but these should get it to right spot slightly below GS as GS has good mobility while hammer has CC.-Earthshaker: Increase damage coefficient from 2.0 to 2.5.-Fierce Shock: Increase damage coefficient from 1.8 to 2.2.Sword is currently in pretty good spot and its power damage got boosted nicely. However, this has led to one skill becoming worthless to use for anything except movement.-Savage Leap: Increase damage coefficient from 2 to 2.75. (It's a slow skill without a condi component and this change would make it about 15% stronger than simply auto-attacking.)Also, rifle is still weak.-Kill Shot: Increase damage coefficient from 2.25/2.75/3.25 to 2.5/3.25/4.-Volley: Increase damage coefficient from 3.75 to 4.5. (It's slooow so the seemingly big damage modifier is actually pretty smål DPS.)-Explosive Shot: Increase base damage from 527 to 642 and damage coefficient from 1.5 to 2.5. Currently Spellbreaker uses dagger as main-hand and Bladesworn doesn't have normal bursts which means that main-hand can be boosted for core Warrior and Berserker without boosting the stronger alternatives by boosting the axe bursts.-Eviscerate: Increase damage coefficient from 2.0/2.5/3.0 to 2.25/3.0/3.75. Also, maces have been totally ignored for a good while (even in now!) and they're doing very low damage (in 21k region in Kitty's hands, benchers would prolly do 23-24k). While mace is a CC-weapon on warrior, it is often characterized as CC/condi weapon on other classes (and support weapon on Guardian). It also already does condis on Berserker and Warrior also has trait "Body Blow" which utilizes CCs to inflict Bleeding. Good synergy for maces.-Mace Smash: Inflict 1 stack of Bleeding for 4 seconds.-Mace Bash: Inflict 2 stack of Bleeding for 4 seconds.-Pulverize: On top of previous effects, also inflict 2 stacks of Bleeding for 8 seconds.-Counterblow: On top of previous effects, also inflict 2 stacks of Confusion for 5 seconds. (Rewards for skilled play)-Pommel Bash: On top of previous effects, also inflict 3 stacks of Confusion for 5 seconds.-Crushing Blow: Also inflict 3 stacks of Bleeding for 4 seconds.-Tremor: On top of previous effects, also inflict 3 stacks of Confusion for 4 seconds in melee range. (Since it has both melee and ranged component.) BerserkerThough power warr got buffs earlier, something was totally forgotten: Berserker bursts. That pretty much led to Power Berserker being weaker than core warrior with most weapons, esp. greatsword and hammer. However, since axes and greatsword are otherwise strong on Spellbreaker and Bladesworn, their normal weapon skills can't get big buffs and thus Berserker's buffing needs to be done through traits and bursts. Since Condi Berserker is also strong, the focus needs to be on stuffs specifically Power Berserker uses.-Arc Divider: Increase base damage from 564 to 1098 and damage coefficient from 1.4 to 4.8. (Arc Divider takes about 2.75x as long to cast as Arcing Slice and even after this boost it'd be 20% weaker in comparison.)-Rupturing Smash: Increase damage coefficient from 1.5 to 2.25.-Gun Flame: Increase damage coefficient from 2.2 to 2.6. SpellbreakerCurrently off-hand dagger is noticeably weaker than off-hand axe while they're direct competitors. While dagger does have damage bonus on Wastrel's Ruin, that can't be utilized very easily due to "enemy inactive"-requirement which would either require reading NPC enemy's movements (esp. any elite or higher since you can't normally CC them to stop their attacks) or setting Wastrel's Ruin by using CC before it (pretty much requires mace as main-hand or low latency with dagger) on CC-able targets (veteran or normal mobs or players, though this is PVE perspective and regarding Wastrel's Ruin, it'd be better to have separate balances.) Due to this conditional unreliability, Kitty would personally increase it's damage slightly higher than Dual Strike when 25% of attacks hit inactive foe, esp. considering that Dual Strike gives some quickness as well.Meanwhile Bladestorm's attack speed and relatively low damage coefficient causes it to do less damage than auto-attacking while it is 5th weapon skill which is usually supposed to be big damage/effect skill. It does have frontal damage reflect as utility but it's very rare niche cases it can be used effectively on. Swiftness also doesn't cover for it since you can get it from other sources usually and its competitor Whirling Axe has built-in +50% movement speed which makes it move faster than Bladestorm. Whirling Axe also has finisher for more damage while Bladestorm doesn't have such. Though it is true that Bladestorm has some range which allows tiny bit more DPS uptime and as such, being about 10% lower than Whirling Axe would be good spot for this particular skill, in Kitty's opinion.-Wastrel's Ruin: Increase damage coefficient from 1.5 to 1.65.-Bladestorm: Increase base damage from 896 to 1240 and damage coefficient from 3.5 to 5.0.

How well you do with your builds eventually comes to very simple equation: "Your mastery over the build %" x "build's maximum performance" = "Your efficiency". If you play your build vastly better than you'd play a metabuild, then your build works better for you. The formula above also describes why low intensity builds are so good: They're easy to reach good mastery on while still having enough potential performance to be efficient compared to playing difficult-to-master metabuild if your overall skill isn't very high yet. And that is what Kitty's preached about for years: if you play off-meta, you need to master it to greater degree to get same results. (And that's how Kitty's played off-meta for years, by optimizing non-meta builds as far as possible and mastering them, usually by simplifying to make mastering easier.) But if your build makes 0 sense in further inspection and doesn't have any synergy whatsoever (Magi's longbow berserker with power/CC/mace traits as example), it will simply make your gameplay needlessly painful and even hindrance to others if you go randomly kiting 'cause "safer". And as last note: what's efficient in soloplay vs squadplay can be totally different. In squad play, supports bring boons and heals and you maximize DPS as DPS. In solo play, you need to B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Boons) and heals and as such, taking some boon/survival traits and gears can be a good idea. Kitty's personal recommendation is using something to get might (Strength sigil+Fried Golden Dumplings), a trait that heals when you do damage (Invigorating Precision, Parasitic Contagion etc.) with some power or condi stat set that has added survivability if needed without compromising damage too much (like Marauder/Dragon's combo for power and trailblazer's for condi). Heal builds are kinda ill-suited for solo play as you'll take an eternity killing stuff and in many fights, damage pressure can become more than your self-sustain. Or you might simply have 10x more survivability than needed with 10x lower damage which means 10x more time wasted (and sometimes just failing the thing if there's a time limit/"kill before too late"-condition).

Nice to hear about current balance philosophy and how versatility has now a huge focus since it's one of the greatest strengths of GW2 combat and build system though previously underutilized due to huge power disparity between weapons. (Something Kitty's been saying for years.) Changes in recent balance patches have also hinted at that direction, yush. There's still some work to do with some weapons, though, and some specs do need some boosting as well. (Esp. for power melee builds) And though Kitty personally isn't the best benchmarker (she rarely plays one build for longer than few days as she's always looking for new playstyles and thus somewhat consistently plays at 85-90% efficiency most of the time), she does do bunch of testing for unused builds and playstyles while also mathing on how much and which stuffs needs to be changed to make them into competent options. Kitty will be posting her suggestions of possible changes and reasonings on why those particular changes should be made. She already has a long balance patch wishlist going on that she'll be updating as she gets more math done and builds tested. So, you might want to check this post occasionally: Kitty will also write in on the Balance preview after copying the damage values into her spreadsheet for possible changes if there's some major issues incoming. And on a sidenote: Kitty's using a spreadsheet with actual cast times and the skill datas to see quite precise estimations on how various skills do as damage multiplier alone doesn't tell much about how strong a skill really is. Currently esp. skills that have long casts and low damage coefficients are pushing bunch of weapons to incompetence and some weapons indeed lack a clear identity (Warr's main-hand mace, engi's Tool Kit and Elixir Kit as a couple examples in PVE).

For the one millionth time: no, no and especially NO. As many have already pointed out in this thread and other similar threads before this again and again (guess this thread is a weekly occurrence), traditional automatic group finder wouldn't work at all since there's bunch of bosses without a tank, tank is often integrated into healer (or DPS in some cases), boon support can be DPS or healer (you don't want 4 healers or 0 healers) and due to alacrity's and quickness' mutual exclusivity you want 2 boon supports per 5 players and many bosses have some special roles that you can't really make an auto-finder to take into account before start of the wing. Easier special roles are decided on the spot and harder ones are pre-LFG'd for to ensure that it's covered (or someone leaves before final boss that requires that role). And then there's the case of people possibly LFGing for something they have 0 experience on and with auto-finder, that'd mean going in blind and wiping again and again when some people keep wiping the squad by failing vital mechanics by not knowing about them. If you've ever been at Slothasor, you prolly know what that's like. "Bad poison. Very baaad poison." as is one of Kitty's catchphrases. So yeah. Current LFG has its flaws but due to GW2's designs, it's still a good compromise compared to other possibilities.

Kitty's wishes in patch note format...and PVE-perspective as usual. For basis of many of these numbers, Kitty's recorded cast times of all skills (literally tested ALL of them) and their damages and other infos into a spreadsheet and compared the numbers and these are the numbers that'd balance the weapons and some traits pretty well. Kitty updates this as she gets math and some testing done and edit logging is at the bottom of the post. Warrior Now that warrior got quickness, the coveted Heal Warrior would actually become a viable build in PVE IF Vigorous Shouts wasn't in same column as Martial Cadence. So, here's how to make the dreams come true. -Vigorous Shouts: Swaps places with Shrug It Off! and no longer gives Healing Power based on Power. Increase the healing modifier from 1.2 to 1.5. -Empowered: Additionally gain Healing Power based on 13% of your Power. (Taken from Vigorous Shouts) (These 2 changes alone would increase the potential maximum healin output to about 2.8k per ally per second.) -Soldier's Comfort: Increase the healing modifier from 0.8 to 1.4. (This on top of previous changes would bring it to about 3.0k which would be similar to GotL druid.) -Shrug It Off: Swaps places with Vigorous Shouts and now removes 3 conditions when its "Shake It Off!" triggers. Increase the healing modifier from 0.2 to 0.4. Shrug It Off would compete with Martial Cadence as grandmaster trait and thus it'd be a choice between about 3.5k maximum healing potential+big cleanses and full Quickness output on heal build. Taking Shrug It Off wouldn't be super-OP even at condition-heavy bosses since keeping up full Quickness with Shrug It Off and 1 banner would require increasing Boon Duration to close to 100% and taking Banner of Tactics instead. -Warrior's Cunning: Lower the Health Threshold from 80% to 50%. (Overall damage bonus goes from 5% to 12.5%.) Currently Body Blow is slightly in weird position as it's main use is inflicting Bleeding which is one of the main themes in Arms. Meanwhile Signet Mastery focuses on improving damage which is exactly what Strength is about. Doing this swap would allow creating cohesive condi builds that utilize CCs, great for esp. main-hand mace which already does condis on Berserker's Primal Burst "Skull Cracker". -Body Blow: Move to Arms as Major Adept trait, replacing Signet Mastery. Reduce the Bleeding Duration from 12s to 8s and increase the Bleeding stacks from 1 to 2. -Signet Mastery: Move to Strength as Major Master trait, replacing Body Blow. Currently hammer is still behind meta weapons but these should get it to right spot slightly below GS as GS has good mobility while hammer has CC. -Earthshaker: Increase damage coefficient from 2.0 to 2.5. -Fierce Shock: Increase damage coefficient from 1.8 to 2.2. Sword is currently in pretty good spot and its power damage got boosted nicely. However, this has led to one skill becoming worthless to use for anything except movement. -Savage Leap: Increase damage coefficient from 2 to 2.75. (It's a slow skill without a condi component and this change would make it about 15% stronger than simply auto-attacking.) Also, rifle is still weak. -Kill Shot: Increase damage coefficient from 2.25/2.75/3.25 to 2.5/3.25/4. -Volley: Increase damage coefficient from 3.75 to 4.5. (It's slooow so the seemingly big damage modifier is actually pretty smål DPS.) -Explosive Shot: Increase base damage from 527 to 642 and damage coefficient from 1.5 to 2.5. Currently Spellbreaker uses dagger as main-hand and Bladesworn doesn't have normal bursts which means that main-hand can be boosted for core Warrior and Berserker without boosting the stronger alternatives by boosting the axe bursts. -Eviscerate: Increase damage coefficient from 2.0/2.5/3.0 to 2.25/3.0/3.75. Also, maces have been totally ignored for a good while and they're doing very low damage. While mace is a CC-weapon on warrior, it is often characterized as CC/condi weapon on other classes (and support weapon on Guardian). It also already does condis on Berserker and Warrior also has trait "Body Blow" which utilizes CCs to inflict Bleeding. Good synergy for maces. -Mace Smash: Inflict 1 stack of Bleeding for 4 seconds. -Mace Bash: Inflict 2 stack of Bleeding for 4 seconds. -Pulverize: On top of previous effects, also inflict 2 stacks of Bleeding for 8 seconds. -Counterblow: On top of previous effects, also inflict 2 stacks of Confusion for 5 seconds. (Rewards for skilled play) -Pommel Bash: On top of previous effects, also inflict 3 stacks of Confusion for 5 seconds. -Crushing Blow: Also inflict 3 stacks of Bleeding for 4 seconds. -Tremor: On top of previous effects, also inflict 3 stacks of Confusion for 4 seconds in melee range. (Since it has both melee and ranged component.) Berserker Though power warr got buffs earlier, something was totally forgotten: Berserker bursts. That pretty much led to Power Berserker being weaker than core warrior with most weapons, esp. greatsword and hammer. However, since axes and greatsword are otherwise strong on Spellbreaker and Bladesworn, their normal weapon skills can't get big buffs and thus Berserker's buffing needs to be done through traits and bursts. Since Condi Berserker is also strong, the focus needs to be on stuffs specifically Power Berserker uses. -Arc Divider: Increase base damage from 564 to 1098 and damage coefficient from 1.4 to 4.8. (Arc Divider takes about 2.75x as long to cast as Arcing Slice and even after this boost it'd be 20% weaker in comparison.) -Rupturing Smash: Increase damage coefficient from 1.5 to 2.25. -Gun Flame: Increase damage coefficient from 2.2 to 2.6. Spellbreaker Currently off-hand dagger is noticeably weaker than off-hand axe while they're direct competitors. While dagger does have damage bonus on Wastrel's Ruin, that can't be utilized very easily due to "enemy inactive"-requirement which would either require reading NPC enemy's movements (esp. any elite or higher since you can't normally CC them to stop their attacks) or setting Wastrel's Ruin by using CC before it (pretty much requires mace as main-hand or low latency with dagger) on CC-able targets (veteran or normal mobs or players, though this is PVE perspective and regarding Wastrel's Ruin, it'd be better to have separate balances.) Due to this conditional unreliability, Kitty would personally increase it's damage slightly higher than Dual Strike when 25% of attacks hit inactive foe, esp. considering that Dual Strike gives some quickness as well. Meanwhile Bladestorm's attack speed and relatively low damage coefficient causes it to do less damage than auto-attacking while it is 5th weapon skill which is usually supposed to be big damage/effect skill. It does have frontal damage reflect as utility but it's very rare niche cases it can be used effectively on. Swiftness also doesn't cover for it since you can get it from other sources usually and its competitor Whirling Axe has built-in +50% movement speed which makes it move faster than Bladestorm. Whirling Axe also has finisher for more damage while Bladestorm doesn't have such. Though it is true that Bladestorm has some range which allows tiny bit more DPS uptime and as such, being about 10% lower than Whirling Axe would be good spot for this particular skill, in Kitty's opinion. -Wastrel's Ruin: Increase damage coefficient from 1.5 to 1.65. -Bladestorm: Increase base damage from 896 to 1240 and damage coefficient from 3.5 to 5.0. Mesmer It does have healing capability but weaker than other classes (about 2.4k HPS atm, average across other classes is about 3.5-4k atm). These would help fix it. -Restorative Illusions: Now heals 5 allies in 240 radius. -Healing Prism: Now gives +10% outgoing healing. No longer gives Healing Power based on a percentage of Power. (Considering that good portion of healing stat sets, for ex. Magi's, Minstrel's, Giver's etc., don't have Power, this change would take some healing power away from Harrier's but increase healing for many other stats.) -Illusionary Inspiration: Increase the base healing from 212 to 289 and healing modifier from 0.3 to 0.5. -Bountiful Disillusionment: Now grants the additional boons to 5 allies in 240 radius. Might and Vigor duration is increased to 12s, Fury duration to 16s and regen duration to 20s. (Reverses the nerf which was justified with old SoI and when chrono was able to give both alac and quickness but now seriously hinders mesmer's boon ability compared to every other healer. Worded as "Additional boons" like in trait description as stability won't be included in shared boons for the sake of balance. Since Inspiration doesn't provide boons and chrono doesn't have proper access to sharing these boons, this trait with 100% BD and Improved Alacrity-trait would be just enough to give 100% uptime on aforementioned boons if shatters are used off-CD. Though might output would still be max. 15 stacks from this trait and Tides of Time on shield gives the remaining 10 stacks for full might uptime. This trait would also force a choice between more heals from using Illusions traitline for faster clone generation for Illusionary Inspiration and Chaos for these boons. And though it'd be possible to use Inspiration traitline with Blurred Inscriptions for extending these boons to avoid modifying this trait, it's not really a viable thing to use that trait in conjunction with this trait on heal or DPS build as BI is mutually exclusive with II for healer and taking Inspiration at all is a HUGE DPS loss for boon DPS. Condi boon chrono could take this trait as well to give auxiliary boons but as of now, condi chrono is weak enough DPS-wise and giving full boons on it would require so much BD that DPS loss would be quite big that this wouldn't be overpowering even in that case.) -Mind Wreck: Increase the damage from 642 to 707 and damage coefficient from 2.42 to 3.0. (Tiny bit weaker than Chrono's Split Second which also has the advantage of lot lower cooldown with IA.) -Mind Gash: Increase damage multiplier from 0.8 to 0.9. (It has same damage as Mind Slash but 43% longer cast time.) -Blurred Frenzy: Increase damage coefficient from 3.0768 to 3.5. (Would do slightly more damage than dagger's Bladecall which has half the CD and Unstable Bladestorm still hits harder and both dagger skills are ranged. As rooted, locked to front and melee, Blurred-effect only compensates for the clunkiness and risk.) Staff's Winds of Chaos is capable of bouncing back to primary target for 2nd hit to apply both Torment on first hit and Confusion on 2nd hit. Thus Scepter's auto-attack needs some buffs to bring it to same level (while staff also gives boons and scepter is a DPS weapon). These changes also don't overshadow axe due to all the torment it generates when Mirrored Axes-trait is slotted and axe also cleaves while scepter doesn't. -Ether Bolt: Increase Torment duration from 2s to 3s. -Ether Blast: Increase Torment duration from 3s to 4s. -Ether Clone: If you don't have maximum number of illusions, additionally inflicts 5s of Torment. (In other words, 5s of Torment while summoning a clone.) -Ether Bolt (Clone): Increase Torment duration from 2s to 3s. (Clone's Winds of Chaos has potential to bounce back to enemy for 2nd hit which'd cause 2s of Confusion or bounce to ally to give boons and 3s of Torment on Scepter's Ether Bolt would be good midway between single and double hit on staff's Winds of Chaos). Mirage Though Mirage was created as a condi spec, there are power DPS possibilities if the numbers are brought to where they should be. -Mirage Thrust: Increase base damage from 367 to 532 and damage coefficient from 1.0 to 3.0. (It's slow and melee and currently does 40% of auto-attack chain's DPS. Even GS ambush does 50% more and that one is weak as well. Even axe ambush does twice as much power damage as sword ambush. Thus 3.0 is the very bare minimum to make sword ambush worth using. The daze it has is essentially an interrupt so it doesn't really excuse low damage.) -Split Surge: Increase damage coefficient from 1.35 to 2.4. (10% less damage than sword ambush as ranged punishment) -Ether Barrage: Increase confusion and Torment duration from 4s to 6s. (With 3 clones, that'd equal to total of 30s+3x15s=75s of mix of Torment and Confusion as each hit does either Torment or Confusion. Meanwhile each staff's Chaos Vortex does 4x8s=32s of both Torment and Bleeding and 8s+3*3s=17s of Confusion so 81s of conditions total and big boons on top of that. Staff would still have advantage due to boons but if we get the scepter buffs mentioned in Mesmer-section, that'd balance it out.) Necromancer -Life Siphon (Dagger 2): Increase base damage from 990 to 1100 and damage coefficient from 2.7 to 4.0. (Currently worse than auto-attack.) -Enfeebling Blood: Increase base damage from 550 to 770 and damage coefficient from 1.5 to 2.5. (Balanced by nerfing Harbinger's pistol to retain its damage as it is now. This change actually makes off-hand skill worth using on power DPS.) -Soul Grasp: This. Back. To. Normal. Now. Also Increase base damage from 248 to 392 and damage coefficient from 0.75 to 1.4. -Unholy Feast and Unholy Burst: Increase base damage from 323 to 432 and damage coefficient from 1.75 to 2.4. Unholy burst now triggers when target's health is below 50%. (this would bring axe's overall damage to situationally to same region as staff's equivalent skills.) -Life Blast: Increase base damage from 372 to 439 and damage coefficient from 1.8 to 2.2. (Currently using shroud is a DPS loss for core necro.) -Life Transfer: Increase base damage from 1017 to 2034 and damage coefficient from 3.825 to 8.0. (Currently does less damage than auto-attack and after these necro shroud buffs it'd be about 10% more damage than auto-attack.) -Tainted Shackles: Increase base damage from 332 to 564 and damage coefficient from 1.25 to 2.0. (The end hit would be about same as Dark Pact's, taking shroud buffs into account, and you need to be near the foe for 4 seconds for the skill to hit as power damage portion hits at the end of shackle's effect). Reaper Shouts are competing with Wells. Shouts do have the advantage that they have large radius and they hit right away. However, they still do too blasphemously low damage to be an option for DPS. Either they need a buff or wells need a nerf or both. -Grasping Darkness: Increase base damage from 524 to 624 and damage coefficient from 1.3 to 2.0. -Gravedigger: Increase base damage from 1210 to 1380 and damage coefficient from 3.0 to 3.5. -"Nothing Can Save You!": Increase base damage from 532 to 752 and damage coefficient from 2.0 to 3.0. -"You Are All Weaklings!": Increase base damage from 665 to 800 and damage coefficient from 2.5 to 4.5. Harbinger -Vicious Shot: Decrease damage coefficient from 0.65 to 0.6. -Weeping Shots: Decrease damage coefficient from 2.4 to 2.0. Thief Thief is currently in pretty good place when it comes to condi builds. However, some thief's power builds are quite underpowered, staff, pistols and sword in particular. (Rifle/Dagger+Dagger Deadeye doesn't count as counter-argument, essay of Kitty's reasoning in Deadeye-section.) And to be clear, yes, Infiltrator's Strike on sword did get a buff but...Infiltrator's Return takes so long that ultimately using it is a massive damage loss. Currently it's mainly good for catching up to opponent and for healing on Specter. But since sword's auto-attack chain already does big damage, the buffing needs to be done through Stealth Attack and Dual Wield skills. And to compensate for lack of cleave, requiring HP above 90% for vital boosts and reliance on flanking as well as making skills actually worth using on sword to encourage active gameplay (auto-attacking is currently best damage), Kitty has following suggestions: -Twin Fangs: Increase the critical damage and critical rate bonus from 7% to 10%. (About 4-5% buff) -Deadly Aim: Remove the damage reduction. (It competes with Practised Tolerance which is already about 10% damage boost on power builds. This trait is useful to begin with only if there's multiple enemies and you can position yourself well to hit them all and you likely won't be able to flank them all to begin with. If you can use this trait effectively, which are few bosses where Virtuoso and Rifle Mechanist also excel at without similar conditions for damage, you're kinda qualified for the slight damage boost from piercing.) -Tactical Strike and Malicious Tactical Strike: Increase damage coefficient from 1 to 2. (Dagger's Backstab from back would still do 50% more DPS and Malicious Backstab in typical rotation would do 116-155% more DPS.) -Pistol Whip: Increase damage coefficient of initial hit from 0.37 to 0.6 and 2nd part from 3.16 to 4.0. (Due to super-long cast, it currently does less damage than auto-attacking while also rooting in place and this change would make it do 16% more DPS than auto-attacks.) -Flanking Strike: Increase damage coefficient from 0.8 to 1.0. -Larcenous Strike: Increase damage coefficient from 1.6 to 2.2. (This chain would thus do 16% more damage to enemies without boons and 2.5% more damage to enemies with boons, comparing to auto-attack. Currently these attacks are a big damage loss.) -Vital Shot: Increase damage coefficient from 0.575 to 0.6. Increase Bleed duration from 4s to 6s. -Unload: Increase damage coefficient per hit from 0.4 to 0.46. -Repeater (Both versions): Increase damage coefficient from 1.5 to 1.8. (Would allow kinda hybrid bleed/power build) When it comes to daggers, the following buffs to Daredevil and Deadeye would buff Condi Daredevil and D+D Deadeye further so tiny nerf to auto-attack would counter that. Dancing Dagger is also seeing pretty much 0 use and its torment is kinda outlier compared to rest of condi thief's kit so Kitty would replace it with bleed. (Torment is only a thing for Skale Venom, Condi Deadeye and Specter and they all already have ranged torment skills.) It's really weak atm so Kitty would boost it a bunch. Not as strong as Death Blossom which would be its main companion skill, though, but as complimentary skill if you need to go to range for a few seconds. Also would kinda allow a shady knifethrower build (though Virtuoso does it shinier). -Lotus Strike: Reduce damage coefficient from 1.1 to 1.0. -Dancing Dagger: No longer inflicts Torment but inflicts 3 stacks of Bleed for 8 seconds instead. -Cloak and Dagger: Reduce damage coefficient from 1.25 to 1.2. Daredevil Power Daredevil's got some boost in previous balance patches but it's still a behind where it should be. In Kitty's personal testing, it's currently behind metabuilds by about 10% while also having the disadvantage of having to spam evades while staying behind the enemy in melee range. But buff to one trait should be enough to get it to where it should be. With dagger auto-attack nerf from earlier, it also won't buff Condi Daredevil further. Also, to further compliment the knifethrower RP build... -Weakening Strikes: Increase damage increase from 10% to 15%. -Impairing Daggers: Increase the Poison duration from 10s to 12s. Deadeye As one exception to "power thief is weak", we have current "meta" Power Deadeye which is so extremely conditional and has so many handicaps (no cleave, requires melee for dagger and can't move in rifle, really fast and precise rotation, has 1% per boon and 2% per condition damage modifiers as well as 15% of crit rate+7% crit damage is tied to being over 90% health and requires flanking for other 7% crit rate and needs extra precision from gears) that even 10% boost to it's already high benchmark wouldn't make it super-OP compared to its competitors. And just some gameplay problems it has: You can only have one Marked target at a time and Deadeye lacks cleave and Stealth attacks from guns don't pierce which can prevent hitting the mark if there's adds present which means malice doesn't get consumed which means that Deadeye is in big problems. And mark disappears if you get downed. And using rifle is extremely hard in many PVE scenarios as you either won't get support (which means no damage) if you range or you need to extremely high skill to time evades and weaving in attacks in melee and if you get CC'd by any attack, you get unkneeled and there goes damage and that interrupt feels bad like interrupted Weaver. Some enemies also simply don't allow consistent flanking for daggers. And as of now, from what Kitty tested, rifle DE does just 20% more damage than rifle mechanist which 1. pierces on most skills and has some cleaving stuffs 2. can move while DPSing 3. does good DPS by facerolling 4 buttons. 4. has superior self-boon capabilities. 5. has huge utility and massive CC. Tryhard rifle/dagger+dagger Deadeye does do about 30% more but...if anyone ever can realistically pull that off with all those conditions to it (and it also uses Hide in the Shadows as heal as part of rotation which means that it doesn't even have self-sustain), they seriously deserve the DPS superiority spot. E: Kitty also found out about dagger+dagger DE which does almost as much damage as rifle/D+D but the same drawbacks still apply which is why Kitty still considers giving a tiny boost for to even rifle and dagger+dagger variants reasonable. With the recent trend of kinda everyone giving Might and Fury, Fire for Effect has also become essentially obsolete and it could be converted to provide group Quickness instead to give thief a DPS Quickness support role while Specter does Alacrity. Since thief can already provide Fury through Unrelenting Strikes and Thrill of the Crime, Kitty would suggest taking Fury away from Fire for Effect and replacing it with 4s Quickness which would then give Deadeye a choice of big self-buffs from using skills with Maleficent Seven, self-quickness and easy extra DPS from Be Quick or Be Dead and altruistic choice of Fire for Effect for group boons. This also wouldn't make it stronger than other quick supports even if you give thief power DPS buffs as Deadeye would either need to sacrifice DPS and CC to get enough extra stolen skills and it'd also need to take extra precision AND concentration from gears and it also won't have the initiative generation of Maleficent Seven so even for top 1% players, this change wouldn't likely go above 25k DPS in golem conditions without other boosts to power thief. -Iron Sight: Increase the damage bonus against marked target from 15% to 20%. (Note: just marked target. Sucks for cleave. And in reality this is 4% buff 'cause adjusting existing modifier.) -Fire for Effect: Instead of Fury, now gives 4s of Quickness to allies when hitting the target with a stolen skill. E: Working on thief stuffs on October 27th. Continued thief stuffs and added spellbreaker stuffs on October 28th and fixed "modifiers" into "damage coefficient" like in patch notes usually.

Just as semi-related feedback: Kitty's tried to get that Twitch extension to work occasionally for half a year but it refuses to fetch the character list at all and thus can't choose the character to show its build. And Kitty's tested it in all the ways she can think of, including different API keys and accounts. Is it broken just for Kitty? o.o' (And sorry about bringing it up here.) E: Kitty troubleshot further and it is indeed a "just for Kitty" problem on one specific PC's Opera.

*imagines "auto-use" skills yeeting people to accidental deaths* Unthoughtful uses of that toggle would lead to many tragedies, a sea of grief and endless misery.