Basharic.1654

I tested every weapon set on thief: Infiltrator Strike Flanking Strike Larcenous Strike Shadow Strike Measured Shot The sword ones I am certain of in PVE and WvW AB lobby. Another note that Relic of speed is definitely not working. Relic of Isgarren is supposedly putting a debuff on enemies you evade, it might be working but there's no way to tell at the moment. Tested versus a single PVE mob, got the "Evade" text, nothing showed up on their bar. Thankfully this is minor as we only ever engage in honorable one on one combat and never fight big packs of mobs. EDIT: Correction on Isgarren. Apparently Anet decided to put a nice faint blue symbol over their head and nothing on the buff bar, where we've been conditioned to look for such things for the last decade. Since I was testing versus a single smaller mob the standard targeting arrow covered it up.

This relic is horribly broken. On thief it DOES NOT work for: Infiltrator Strike Flanking Strike Larcenous Strike Shadow Strike Measured Shot All other weapon sets and combinations are triggering.

A few points for consideration on my first pass of these: I'm really stoked to hear ya'll focusing on counterplay, that's a direction I'm been hoping you'd take for a long while now. I'm excited we are reducing damage across the board. We'll have to see how the damage nerfs shake out. I expect their increased cadence on balance changes is directly tied to making such across the board changes, allowing you to tune more quickly. My issue is you're talking about counterplay but only planning to increase the cooldowns on automatic traits – like Defy Pain and Instant Reflexes for example. These types of traits are antithetical to enjoyable counter play because they are not player-triggered. Decreasing how often they go off is better than nothing, but the problem with these traits is it's the game playing your character for you. There should be no traits where a health point threshold automatically triggers defensive actions. Because the players should be making the decisions on when to invoke those defenses.

Here's my question: With this update, we are adding a trade-off to the profession skill that keeps the theme of a melee-oriented specialization. How does removing a Daredevil's ability to use steal to close a long gap help us melee in any way? If Anet wants us to melee they should be giving us more abilities to stick to a target not less. The range drop would be appropriate if we were getting something useful towards that end. Unblockable isn't it. Maybe something like: Physical Supremacy: This trait changes Steal to Hitched, which tethers the target to the thief and gives the thief a stolen skill and X seconds of X% base damage reduction. Toughness improves total reduction. Neither can leave 600 range of each other for X seconds. Stunbreaks used by either the thief or it's target will break the link. If either party attempts to use a skill to get out of range that is not a stun break it results in a knockdown and puts that skill on cooldown + X seconds. Stability applied after Hitched is engaged counters certain effects of Hitched but does not remove it - That means an attempted non-stunbreak maneuver to get out of range won't give the knockdown but the target still can't leave range. Stability applied before would prevent it of course. It would work a lot like Guardian's Ring of Warding while allowing some counterplay for the target and helping the thief to be toe to toe for the duration. Most importantly it offers significant risk/reward choices in its use. Which is all I want. And if you wanted to make it really sexy and give thief a GvG/WvW group perk, let it affect targets in an AOE. Would force the thief to use discretion on its use in small scale and be great for locking down targets for bombs.

I understand something must be done, but this plan does not seem to speak to the biggest issue WvW has. The vast bulk of people who play at certain times all play on the same side. Because of this all you are really going to be doing is trading Blackgate's dominance for the Blakgate Alliance's dominance. Your player analysis metrics are great and all, but my read on this is player choice, through guilds and alliances, are going to override those metrics. To be honest I agree with that choice. It's the right thing to do. But by letting players self select you are opening the door to the same old BS. The only way I can see to overcome this is a solution you should have already implemented years ago: What WvW needs more than anything else is variable map population caps based on the time of day. Cut the asian time zone population cap to HALF of North America's cap and this problem will be radically reduced. There are not enough players in the asian time zones to populate three factions evenly at the same population caps you have for NA. If you allow them to, that population will always cluster in one place. It doesn't matter if you call it a server or an alliance.

it has to be a .jpgopen the picture in a new window and then try it Got it thanks!

Someone once encapsulated my look as "Charrgoyle"