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JaxLeo.7912

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  1. i still think they should remove the shadowstep aspect of the skill, it still makes it too unreliable for instanced content, where you'll just shadowstep into an instant death mechanic
  2. On top of that, i'd like to add Harrowing Storm still teleports to the target despite the devs saying in the patch notes that behaviour would be changed so the axes hit the enemy without the teleport
  3. please give us dual Axes, people have been saying this ever since the weapons were announced, thief is in desperate need of more offhand options, please consider the option and for once, AT LEAST ONCE listen to the feedback thief mains give
  4. the issue here from what i can tell is that the NPC that needs to be resurected for the event to continue either doesn't spawn or spawns under the ground, so it cannot be reached by the players, thus the event drags on endlessly, stalling not only this event but all of the other events in the chain for the Jade Mech Habitation Zone
  5. that can also be true for every single other boon build in the game, nothing stops you from running 2 DPS firebrands using mantra of potence, nothing stops you from running 2 DPS renegades both running Righteous Rebel, and so on nobody does that because it cannibalizes itself, having 2 people providing the same boon will make it so that at moments you will overcap the boon and the cooldowns won't line up to maintain it, and so would be true for this idea, because it is dependant on iniciative, so you would need to wait for your iniciative to build back up it is way harder to ensure the boon uptime when 2 people have to synchronize their skills to keep it up, so for convenience and reliability you just maximize the uptime of a single person
  6. i think it is still a decent tradeoff for condi Quickness builds but not for the reason you think, ritualist stats entirely lack the power component, which is present in the DPS variant of condi Daredevil via viper stats, so by that alone you are sacrificing a decent percentage of your damage
  7. The issue currently with Deadeye is that the balance team placed the quickness generation on a skill that, thanks to how thief is designed, can be used very often; to fix this issue would require going back to the drawingboard and re-locate the quickness source to a much healthier alternative that also offers a damage trade-off, instead of this the balance team decided to hit the entire damage kit on deadeye to try to balance the build because it is unrealistic to solve with just reductions to the quickness output: too little of a reduction won't solve the issue, too harsh of a reduction will make it unviable. Deadeye as an elite spec is interesting because it sacrifices way to much to be able to do massive damage: it has very little options to cleave enemies, it has very little utility to help your allies, it takes a hit to it's own mobility, so reducing the damage so wildly is not an adequate solution. Instead, what i propose is returning deadeye to it's previous state and giving the Quickness role to a different elite spec of thief: Daredevil, where it would be easier to balance and it would make more sense thematically my proposal would be simple: reworking the Pulmonary Impact trait into somethig entirely different, to explore this idea i will re-name the trait "encouraging initiative" this new trait would make use of thief's mechanics to generate Quickness, and the tradeoff would be Havock specialist, which means thief no longer has access to that 15% extra damage you get from consuming all your endurance. Personally, in order to tie it to one of thief's mechanics, i would tie it to initiative consumption, since it is part of thief's core mechanics and it is directly related to time, which means it is easy to correlate the quickness output with how much initiative the thief has, and since initiative is not closely affected by alacrity it is simple to balance because reduced skill reload becomes a minor concern; so, as an example, i would make it so every 5 iniciative consumed gives you 3.3 seconds of quickness on a radius around the thief, since iniciative is generated with time this makes it so that daredevil also has to take some boon duration to make quickness last enough to be able to make use of this trait effectively, with my example of 3.3 seconds of quickness it would be necesary to have around 50 ~ 60% boon duration to provide quickness effectively, with most of the gear requiring diviner or ritualist stats, reducing some of the damage the thief can offer, also further reducing the damage potential of the build bit still allowing it to remain on an effective and competent level. having the trait in this way also allows for more options for thief, since you have access to both Bounding dodger and impaling lotus, meaning a quickness daredevil can be built in both power and condition damage variants, allowing for more freedom of choice, and since initiative is in one of thief's integral mechanics it also allows for freedom of choice in the utility skills as well as the ability to provide quickness both in combat and out of combat scenarios. Of course, this is simply an exploration of the idea, coming from someone who likes to play thief mostly in instanced content, different scenarios of the game have different requirements, so i assume for WvW and PvP this idea might have different repercussions i didn't consider out of my lack of experience in those modes, regardless of this, with this option it would be easier to balance with tweaks to the values, and it would allow for deadeye to have it's specialty in doing damage, and covering that niche effectively without having to worry about a very strong elite specialization having access to a very strong boon.
  8. it needed a change, yes, but not like this, not nerfing the overall class damage, they should have reduced the quickness output from steal time, that way deadeye would be forced to invest a bit in boon duration which would take away from the power stat what they did was punish the entire elite spec without even fixing the issue, because guess what? even after the change deadeye is still able to do 100% quickness with no boon duration as for specter the nerf was way too heavy handed, unlike other support classes thief does NOT have boon duration in their traits, so reaching the 80% boon duration they likely had in mind with this change is impossible even on full ritualist and boon duration runes and sigils
  9. these nerfs are way too heavy handed, and at least for deadeye they do NOT adress the issue, deadeye will still be able to run 100% quickness with no investment on boon duration, not that it matters anyway since after this nerf we can't do decent damage anymore. as for specter the required investment in boon duration is WAAAY TOO HIGH for a class that has no access to the additional boon duration traits that other support classes have
  10. yeah, i know about those, i never said we don't have supportive options, what i said is that the options we have are very lackluster from a PvE Healer perspective, while those options might be great or acceptable for a PvP support class they are basically worthless at least in PvE (can't talk about WvW, i don't like to play competitive modes), we have protection and regeneration on a skill nobody wants to use because of forced movement making it clunky to use effectively; stealth is useless in PvE even more so considering encounters with permanent reveal pulsing from the arena; slow, immobilized and chill don't help anyone against enemies with defiance bars, all the while other healer classes can keep up permanent protection, permanent regeneration, and give you aegis without a single issue, while also removing conditions as soon as they are inflicted on you just by existing, while we have to jump through 50 hoops to not even reach 60% of what they can do
  11. i have noticed a bit of an inconsistency between the patch’s intention and the dev team’s proposal for Quickness Deadeye, this patch was meant so that boon support classes don’t need to spam their utility skills on cooldown to grant their boons, deadeye’s quickness will be granted through the stolen skill “steal time” which grants 5 seconds of quickness per use, now, deadeye’s mark has a 25 second cooldown, which means you have to also rely on one in the chamber to keep giving you steal time until your mark recharges, for that you are FORCED to have cantrip skills on your kit and use them on cooldown, so, this play style goes 100% against what the dev team said they intended to achieve with this patch on top of that another issue i have is that with these changes both specter and deadeye are stuck needing to hit an enemy in order to generate their buffs, which is very limiting for the player, as well as the team that player may be playing with, specter’s shadowforce is generated through hitting an enemy with siphon, hitting enemies with skills that consume initiative and having allies stand in your wells during combat, none of those options work at all while out of combat, so out of combat you just don’t get access to your shroud, and can’t offer alacrity; now, on deadeye it’s more straight forward, if you can’t hit your enemy with a mark none of your options give you steal time, so you have no way to offer quickness unless you are in combat as for healing specter, making the specter skills hit 5 ally targets is a wonderful step in the right direction, but specter still lacks access to defensive boons in order to be on par with the other healer alternatives in the game, it has no protection, no resolution, no aegis and at best lackluster regeneration while all the other healers in the game offer these boons left and right without even needing to make tradeoffs, and while yes, specter can offer a lot of barrier, so can mechanist while also having a lot of these boons without needing to press more than 4 buttons
  12. I thought about the shadowsteps option at first but sadly just Infiltrator's Strike alone is enough of a reason for that to never get implemented Also, the reason why i touched shadow arts is because it's the most problematic traitline with thief, it's "too strong" for PvP/WvW (put it on quotes because we all know it's not really the case) but it is also WAAAY too weak for PvE while also being the only traitline aside from specter that offers healing, it was meant with that double purpose, nerfing it in PvP/WvW while buffing it in PvE, the stealth needs to be removed as the focus of the traitline because as long as it is there thief will not be allowed to get any buffs, that's just how it is, because as soon as thief gets access to defensive buffs while also getting access to stealth all the PvP community will start complaining about it as they usually do which will prompt Anet to nerf it again, the solution i provided was meant to be a middle ground, not entirely deleting the stealth based gameplay but offering good options that are tentative enough to use at the sacrifice of stealth. On top of that i thought of changing a core traitline because it would also give more options for varied play styles not only on specter but for thief in general, for example let's say we get a future Elite Specialization that focuses on sharing group quickness, this would allow for a Heal Quickness Thief build, it also helps more with group fights allowing thieves to have more synergy on WvW squads, you could have a deadeye in the back line giving extra protection to your ranged fighters, or even work well for team fights in PvP, and all of this while not entirely gutting the stealth gameplay, noticed that i only touched a few of the options on each tier, the others would remain unchanged, so yes, stealth wouldn't be the "be all and end all" option for thief as it currently is, but it would still be a good choice, with it's trade off being support options. Again though, that is only my opinion and idea of how to solve a wide array of issues, it's not like i have the power to make those ideas a reality, that power rests upon the devs and balance team, though again, they may be able to come up with a better solution to those issues than the wild and unlikely ideas i came up with, they were more so meant as a way to show what i think is currently wrong with the class and the general direction of where i would like it to be headed, a mere pointer in a general direction that has a chance of yielding a more positive result.
  13. Very well, this will be a long one, so let's beging: The base idea: Specter as a whole was meant to be a strong support option for thieves, bringing healing and boon sharing to the table while also being versatile. The main problems i see on specter in this regard it's that it lacks both the healing and versatility other heal classes have in excess. Starting with a very simple fact, just as many thief mains have been saying ever since the class was revealed, the game is not suited for a single target support class, it is not only an issue with the User Interface, the issue also comes down to how the fights are structured, not allowing time for a single healer to focus every player in their team singularly to bring them back to health when needed, so while specter has a TON of healing in it's kit, it becomes meaningless because the moment you have to heal someone the rest of your team will die or underperform due to lack of support. The second issue specter has is the lack of versatility, if you want to support by giving alacrity you have to use your wells as soon as they come out of cooldown, the issue with this approach is that you can not use the them to support reactively to mechanics: Well of Bounty will likely never line up whenever you need Stability, Well of Gloom will likely never line up when you need healing, Well of Silence may not line up when you need to cleanse conditions from your allies, so you can't reliably help unlike other classes like Firebrand or Mechanist who can do either of those on demand, on top of that those classes can also swap their utility skills for ones that are more fit for the fight any time, specter does not get that luxury because as soon as you take a well out of the kit you will not be able to give your team the alacrity they need, causing them to underperform. Another thing that makes the issue worse is the way the Shadow Arts trait line is designed, most of the shadow arts traits are triggered by entering and exiting stealth, for a PvP thief that is very common, for a PvE thief is unrealistic, if you want to use the healing benefits from those skills you are not able to reliably use them due to the fact that revealed exists, so if you want to heal someone by stealthing them, you won't be able to heal them again for the next 3 seconds, if you get hit by another mechanic during that time your squad is likely going to die, and given how often bosses attack it is unrealistic to expect this method of healing will be useful in any way, shape or form. Last but not least one of the biggest issues for specter as a healing class is the lack of Protection, Resolution, Aegis, Regeneration and stun breaks on it's kit, with a very lackluster access to Stability and Resistance. I understand that it was designed this way for the intent of PvP balance, because giving thieves these tools on PvP on top of them having access to stealth on demand would be very difficult to counter for many people, but for a PvE healing class these boons are crucial and the fact that they are not available whatsoever is very troublesome fot a gameplay style that is meant to keep the team alive. All of these issues would have to be addressed in order to make Specter work well as a healing class, there are a few things tht come to mind that could help to alleviate those issues like giving new triggers to shadow arts so that you do not require stealth to gain the benefits, and re-adjusting some of the existing skills in order to make room for new choices to thief Some ideas of this would be reworking the shadow arts Trait line, i will attempt to explain an idea of what i would do, though it would likely be over-tuned for PvE, and likely would be hated by every PvP thief due to shifting the focus from stealth to other methods of obtaining the benefits, though i'm sure the team at ArenaNet could do much better, it's just an example of what i would consider a trait line that is more in line with mechanics that can be reliably used in PvE and have good synergy with the way thief is played: the idea of this Rework to Shadow Arts would be using Barrier, shadowsteps and Initiative as a way to gain the benefits granted by shadow arts, this with the purpose of allowing thief the option to have a support role in PvE while discouraging stealth play in PvP and WvW, instead offering a play style more focused on smart use of their abilities to aid in team fights, giving thieves more versatility in their roles. First of all "Shadow Savior" would be moved to the Minor Adept slot replacing "Merciful Ambush" ideally also increasing the healing done by this skill in PvE only, this would be done to give thieves a reliable way to heal using one of their main profession mechanics; "Shadow's Embrace" would be re-worked to be triggered every time you gain barrier with an internal cooldown of 5 seconds in PvE and 10 seconds in PvP/WvW, this with the focus of adding a method for thieves to remove conditions reliably; "Meld with Shadows" would now be triggered every time you gain barrier and grant 2 seconds of superspeed to up to 5 targets you apply barrier to, with an internal cooldown of 5 seconds in PvP/WvW only, this focusing on sharing thieves' mobility with your team. In the Major Master slot previously occupied by "Shadow Savior" there would be a new trait called "Empowering Shadow" this trait would give 4 seconds of Regeneration and 4 stacks of might to 5 targets around the thief on a 360 unit radius whenever a dual wield skill is used; "Shadow Siphoning" would be reworked, this trait would now grant barrier for every 5 Initiative used in PvE and every 9 Initiative used in PvP/WvW; "Cover of Shadow" would now grant Protection and Resolution for 4 seconds in PvE and 1½ seconds in PvP/WvW. To aid with these changes some Utility skills would also be given the ability to grant asmall amount of barrier to 5 targets: Shadowstep, Shadow return, Infiltrator's Signet, Seal Area, Well of Bounty and Well of Silence. Infiltrator Signet would also get additional boon duration added to it's passive. Some changes to the Specter trait line would also be necessary in order to give thief the versatility it needs to be a competitive option with the other healers: Entering shadow shroud would now tether the specter to 4 allies, granting them healing and boons, prioritizing the players on your party/squad sub group. "Shadestep" would also grant 2 stacks Aegis to 5 targets for 7 seconds whenever an Elite Skill is used in PvE only, Revive percentage would be increased from 33% to 75% in PvE only. The wells would also need some changes so that the benefits they offer can be used more reliably, some of those changes will be explored further down when the issues with the current implementation of Specter are explored, for now though the changes made to the well effects would be as follows: Well of Bounty would give 2 stacks of Stability on the first impact in PvE only, Well of Silence would be an AoE Stun break on it's first impact in PvE only. now to mention a few of the issues of the current implementation of DPS support Specter and Condition Damage Specter in genral that make the class feel clunky to play, some issues that make the gameplay feel slow and make the class feel limited to a few skills instead of using all the wide range of choices available: First is the wells themselves and how oppressive and limiting their gameplay style is, since you need to use at least 3 of them to cover alacrity, and you need to use them as soon as they come out of cooldown, the idea to solve this would be to let players use some of them more than once via the ammo system, that would allow the first impact to be used for Alacrity, and the second one to be used if the effect is necessary: Well of Gloom and Well of Bounty would make use of the ammo system in PvE only, with a maximum of 2 charges and gaining a charge every 20 seconds. Also it is very important to note, since the wells are shadowsteps the environment is very important, in the game there are some fight arenas where the terrain is irregular, in those arenas it is very frustrating to see constantly "no valid path to target", Kaineng Overlook being a big offender in this regard, not only because some parts of the arena show this behavior, but also because there is a specific point in the arena where if you use a shadowstep you instantly die (i've fallen victim to it nearly 10 times total in the last 2 weeks), also this presents an issue with underwater content like the underwater fractal, where Condition Alacrity Specter instantly becomes useless because of the lack of ability to use it's wells altogether. Another issue with Specter is how slow some of the animations are, and how easy they are to cancel, for example, the animation of Twilight Combo is very slow unless you have quickness, in such case it's just slow, it feels very clunky to have to use it constantly and makes for a very displeasing gameplay experience, the same issue goes for the animation of Well of Sorrow, it feels like it takes an eternity to finish casting, even with quickness, and it is very easy to cancel mid cast as well. to solve this i would make the animations play faster: 66% faster for twilight combo and 100% faster for Well of Sorrow Again, most of the idealized changes mentioned are likely unrealistic and over-tuned, it's just more so a way to show the thought process of how i would try to fix the class, the thought process i would like the balance team to consider in order to let Specter be the support thief they promised us it would be, i love Specter, but you know what they say, when you love something you can easily tell when there is something wrong with it, i find it fun, even with how clunky and unresponsive it can sometimes feel, i can only hope my voice my voice can reach someone that understands the points i am trying to make: the lack of synergy not only with core thief but with the game as a whole, the slow and unresponsive gameplay, and the lack of versatility. Thank you for your time.
  14. Shadow Shroud tethers to an ally and helps protect them, in order to do so you loose a percentage of your shadow force if an ally is hit to give them barrier, the in game tooltip is very vague on how it says it, but that is how it has worked ever since EoD launch, whenever a tethered ally gets hit you loose some shadow force to lessen the impact of the hit up to 1.4k of the damage
  15. not really, shallow grave only avoids the ally getting downed, the protection to ally and shared Shadow force is a general mechanic of specter no matter what trait you choose
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