2/28 PvP Balance

[Burial.1958]

31 minutes ago, phixion.9428 said:

Thief mains don't complain about SA nerfs, they complain because SA didn't get nerfed and instead they nerf around the real issues for no good reasons.  What is so hard to understand about that?

Having no devs left with clue about all classes and pvp and senseless only number splits with pve main balance/ no resources for senseful balance are no good reasons and shouldn't be arguments, in particular not considering how much money i and others leave in the gems shop as pure pvp player...

 An he also do not understand that Anet has a big History for not reverse those changes. SA nerf will come when u see Cal's post so that means we get SA Nerfed AND these skills without any reason (The last is Okay). And of top of that we will not see any rework of complete GARBAGE Traitlines since YEARS and complete GARBAGE weaponsets no thief choose because they are simply complete trash for PvP and with this Meta we have. At the End every thief will be forced to play S/D or Specter when it will be good. WoW what a great pool of choices. Also people began to complain on S/D because it have to much Evades & Ports. LUL So next S/D will be nerfed then to a point where this class will be complete trash then. 

Edited February 19, 2022 by Grebcol.5984

[Myror.7521]

@Grebcol.5984 welcome to warrior life i would say then xD

[Meridian.9103]

These Thief changes are really mind boggling again. They say one thing, and then proceed doing the opposite. Meanwhile the actual solution is so obvious: nerf/remove CD reduction from Hidden Thief trait instead of nerfing the CDs of Core skills.

Aside from these short term changes, the prevailing problem is that thiefs have no real alternative to playing SA if they wanted to. kitten isn't doing any damage, while Improv is not good enough anymore to carry the entire traitline, and Acro is simply in a pityfull state, doing basically nothing. Crit strikes offers no defensive ulility (no, IP is not good with current thief builds), which btw becomes even more of a problem when you nerf defensive core skills.

[Zekent.3652]

15 hours ago, frareanselm.1925 said:

Anet team, instead of balancing, the only thing they do is Nerf, Nerf, and Nerf!

I don't know what do you know about what a balance is, but nerfs are part of it lol.

[aymnad.9023]

I am happy to see some changes but when I saw the title of the thread I expected to see a few additional professions (herald, holo, guard) or different updates. Most of the changes seem to be aimed at ranked queue and will (mostly) be good for it. I am excited about the necro nerfs but I also like the idea that other supports could see updates in the future.

Necro : I am not sure how important the lifesteal changes are but Unholy martyr, lesser enfeeble and lich are already really good changes.

Tempest : I did not expect anything for tempest but instead some guard defense decrease (it would have made more sense in my opinion). Tempest is not a bad support, just one with fewer defenses than guard. It looks good but only time will tell if this becomes too much.

War : I have been playing a good amount of games on healbreaker recently. The build, while not providing a crazy amount of healing, is quite strong. Good defense, cc, dispel, anti stealth make it a solid choice in ranked against a lot of annoying builds relying on stealth or those relying on guard stability. Some buffs will be welcome to bring it on the same level as other supports but, just like tempest, they should probably be given in small amounts.

Druid : not mentioned in the patch but I just add it because I would love to see it after the spirits rework, after all this is a support spec (or should be)

Thief : Smokescreen is a great change. Other cd look really high but I do not have enough experience with them.

Scrapper :  Less damage on ft auto is a good change. Maybe 0,2 would have been enough with some stab or support decrease? Ft scrapper is dangerous because it has both offense / defense into the auto while providing at the same time some strong support options.

Edited February 19, 2022 by aymnad.9023

[Crozame.4098]

16 hours ago, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

Hi everyone,

In addition to bringing new elite specializations, the End of Dragons release will include a handful of PvP balance changes that we want to cover today.

Overview

• Necromancer variants
• Core Guardian Support
• Tempest
• Shadow Arts Thief
• Flamethrower Scrapper

 

Necromancer

• Unholy Martyr: Reduced the number of conditions removed when exiting shroud from 3 to 2 in PvP only.
• Vampiric: Reduced base life-stealing damage from 41 to 29 in PvP only. Reduced base life-stealing healing from 39 to 26 in PvP only. Minion life-stealing has been adjusted to match the necromancer life-stealing in PvP only.
• Vampiric Presence: Reduced base life-stealing damage from 65 to 49 in PvP only. Reduced base life-stealing healing from 32 to 28 in PvP only. Reduced life-stealing bonus effectiveness while in shroud from 100% to 50% in PvP only.
• Lesser Enfeeble: Reduced weakness duration from 6 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only.
• Summon Flesh Wurm: Increased cooldown from 32 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP only.
• Lich Form: Reduced the amount of life force granted when exiting the transformation from 15% to 5% in PvP only.
• Deathly Claws (Lich Form): Reduced power coefficient from 2.34 to 1.64 in PvP only.

Condition-based core necromancer is the most common variation, boasting a high playrate and winrate in both tournaments and ranked play. Reaper and minion builds are a bit less common in tournament play, but are still extremely effective in the ranked environment in almost every rating bracket. A common component in all these builds is the Blood Magic traitline. The life siphoning traits in particular generate a ton of value over the course of an extended fight, contributing to both outgoing pressure and self-sustain. Unholy Martyr getting a slight shave to its cleanse also reduces the amount of life force generation for the blood magic builds, which in combination with the siphon adjustments and other defensive shaves should give more chances to pressure enemy necromancers.

In addition to the Blood Magic adjustments, we’re making a few changes to further reduce necromancer survivability. Weakening Shroud will still provide a strong amount of weakness between its on-critical trigger and Lesser Enfeeble, but the latter coming down to 3 seconds should provide more opportunities to go aggressive in the cases where it can’t be avoided or cleansed. Flesh Wurm also gets a slight cooldown increase to bring it more in line with other necromancer stunbreaks.

Finally, Deathly Claws is getting a reduction in damage. While good counterplay options exist, it can be more difficult to capitalize on these as a team in a less coordinated environment like ranked. We feel that there’s room to tune Deathly Claws in a way that lich is still a threatening elite skill, while also giving players a bit more time to react when the counterplay isn’t immediate.

 

Core Guardian Support

• Signet of Mercy: Increased cooldown from 90 seconds to 135 seconds in PvP only.

Core guardian is undoubtedly the best support build in the current state of the game, and we see this in both its play rate and win rate compared to other options. We’re going to be keeping a close eye on the general pace of the meta following the changes to necromancer, but currently we see core guardian as being fairly close to what we want out of a support build in terms of power level. There are things that can be shaved if we find a broader reduction to support builds is needed, but for now we want to improve diversity of the support role by bringing other builds up to the level of core guardian. For this update we’ve started with Tempest, but for a follow-up patch we’re also investigating some buffs to support warrior. Additionally, we’ve started some investigation into what other specializations have the potential to fit into the support role, but for the short term we’re prioritizing tempest and warrior as both of those have been the premier support build in previous metas and feel the closest to competing with guardian.

The one thing that we are touching in the support realm is the availability of resurrection utilities, namely Signet of Mercy and Glyph of Renewal. These skills are significantly more potent in slower metas where kills are less frequent, especially in the ranked environment where teams are less likely to coordinate cleaving or stomping while also interrupting the resurrection skill. Going forward we’ll constantly be evaluating the pace of fights and what the right availability is for these skills, but for now we believe the longer cooldown is warranted. Battle Standard is remaining slightly lower (120 seconds when picked up) as an elite skill.

 

Tempest

• Elemental Shielding: Increased protection duration from 2 seconds to 2.5 seconds in PvP only.
• Latent Stamina: Increased endurance gain from 10 to 15 in PvP only.
• Elemental Bastion: Increased healing coefficient from 0.55 to 0.8 in PvP only.
• "Feel the Burn!": Increased ammunition count from 1 to 2 in PvP only.
• Glyph of Renewal: Increased cooldown from 90 seconds to 135 seconds in PvP only.

For this round of Tempest buffs we primarily looked at the earth variant. While the fire variant was more commonly seen the last time that tempest was getting regular play, we see earth as the more well-rounded support build. Giving a bit more protection back to Elemental Shielding and bumping up the healing of Elemental Bastion, in addition to an additional use on Feel the Burn should give the more shout-oriented earth build more impact.

 

Thief

• Hide in Shadows: Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP only.
• Blinding Powder: Increased cooldown from 40 seconds to 50 seconds in PvP only.
• Shadow's Rejuvenation: Reduced base heal from 219 to 158 in PvP only.
• Smoke Screen: Reduced field duration from 7 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only.

The Shadow Arts trait line is a common topic of discussion when it comes to thief balance. We’ve been having some conversations internally about common feedback topics like Hidden Thief and Meld with Shadows, but those discussions are still ongoing and for now we’ve bumped up the cooldown on some of the stealth-granting deception skills. Smoke Screen is also getting a duration reduction rather than a cooldown increase as 7 seconds is a bit longer than we like to see on a one-second pulse blind field.

 

Flamethrower Scrapper

• Flame Jet: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.25 to 0.15 in PvP only.
• Flame Blast: Increased burning duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP only.

Finally, we have an adjustment to Flamethrower Scrapper. This is another case where we’re making a shorter-term change while discussions are happening around the underlying issue (Juggernaut pulsing stability). This build isn’t too widely played compared to some of the other meta builds, but it’s one of the most effective in lower ranks and the gameplay of primarily sitting in flamethrower kit and autoattacking isn’t something that we like to see. If the damage reduction doesn’t appear to be impactful enough, we’ll likely split the pulse interval of Juggernaut until we can find a better game-wide solution.

 

That’s all we have for today. As we briefly touched on there are a few things that are already being looked into for post End of Dragons launch, and we’ll also be evaluating the state of the new elite specializations as we gather more real gameplay data.

 

-The Systems Team

Trapper condi ranger is also a degen build.. Dont know how you miss that~

[Sindrener.1592]

I understand that thieves are frustrated about the patch its cus the patch just made all other specs than sa poop while sa remains strong and even more mandatory than ever. me idc cus drd been awfully boring to play for years

This is the differences that the patch will achieve.
blinding powder from 32s to 40s (which is the normal cd without SA) non SA thieves will enjoy 50s BP
shadowstep remains the same 40s vs 50s

smoke screen idc about cus i prefer signet anyway

hide in shadows 24 to 32 which is close to 30sec(pre nerf) which it is without sa, and if u ran deadly arts u ran HiS as well. Non SA thieves enjoy your 40sec HiS lmao
shadow rejuv: Reduced base heal from 219 to 158 in PvP only.  most of us didnt even run shadow rejuv until lately, majority of time since feb 2020 we ran rending or cloaked in shadows.

tldr you did nothing to kill stealth or sa.
kill deception trait (hidden thief) was the #1 thing you needed to do in order to make deadly arts picked over sa. instead this patch achieved picking anything but sa even worse. I mean drd been terribly boring to play after the endless nerfs to endurance gameplay with pulm. old hot drd with pulm, deadly arts and channeled vigor remains the most enjoyable version.

Specter coming soon tho ❤️

Edited February 19, 2022 by bluri.2653

[Noko Anon.9154]

31 minutes ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

I don't know what do you know about what a balance is, but nerfs are part of it lol.

You're limiting your perspective. Balancing is more than nerfing one profession to be comparable to others, it's also about boosting a profession's mechanics against its other capabilities. Take a look at engineer, for example: What is it about Alchemy and Holosmith that makes those trait lines so important in PvP? It's because Firearms and Scrapper (outside of the current meme build) and Tools are so comparatively worthless. Alchemy and Holosmith are too strong in their current form in comparison to Firearms, Tools, and Scrappers. The solution, if this ever becomes a problem to the developers, isn't to nerf Alchemy and Holosmith, but to do something about the other three trait lines to make them viable options in PvP. In fact, with so much dislike for stealth in this thread, I would find it hard for most on here to argue with me that Tools shouldn't get a buff when it sports a trait to reduce the cooldown on toolbelt skills and also gadgets, with one gadget in particular, Utility Goggles, a stun break that cancels blindness offered up by a hypothetical Shadow Shot or Black Powder or Smoke Screen, offering a toolbelt skill called Detection Pulse, which offers 6 seconds of reveal in an area, as well as a trait called Lock On which also causes 6 seconds of reveal. Yet I don't hear any complaints about not buffing Tools to be something an engineer can use, when this could make engineer oh so valuable in protecting against backstabbing thieves going after a support class that has less than 50% health.

Also, consider a decently-balanced profession in PvP, the revenant. While both top-ranking builds for it use Legendary Assassin stance (which makes sense, given it's the most mobile and bursty of its stances) and both use Invocation (which also makes sense, given how important switching stances is as a core profession mechanic), they both differ wildly despite both being power-based builds. One makes use of Devastation and Herald for its burst damage and damage mitigation, while the other instead can use Retribution and Renegade to help it survive and deliver a tremendous amount of damage all at once. Revenants have a reason to choose whether to take this trait line or that one, because they are balanced within themselves. The game is more "open" to revenants compared to engineers who, if they don't take Alchemy and Holosmith, are handicapping themselves at higher levels of play.

We're not asking for everything to be viable, but we're asking for more than one single option to be viable for our professions.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Noko Anon.9154

[Flumek.9043]

I personally liked gw2 pvp best in 2013-15 , before HOT powercreep.

 

I see some overall problems:

- power level of support guard

it is VERY strong compared to old support builds, mostly that it solo survives 2v1 as long as a duelist (dedicated 1v2 role). This makes ALL squishy but interesting to watch builds useless, and it also forces THIEF (main +1 role) into shadow arts because it takes 30s instead of 5-10s to get a kill. *i would rather see support guard and other survivability lowered to tempest level*

- necro

my 1 trick main and sunshine.... I never liked being slow sponge, but anet also never gives necro mobility and evades. Even new garbinger is supposed to trade 40k hp for one 0.75s evade...also necro moved into RELIABLE clense rather than transfer condi direction, because powercreep gave other classes  more blocks, evades or CC to avoid necros main COUNTERATTACK (condi transfer). *I would be happy to see blood GM cleanse trait not needed - but its because necro weapons are too slow and UNRELIABLE to counter, that its forced into procs. make necro weapons instant hit and poeple will pick dmg traitlines again*

- thief and shadow arts

It doesnt seem to solve problem. now everyone will need SA trait even more, while rest of traitlines is still bad. Same problem I talked about in guard, if everything is too tanky --> thief useless.  Simple fact since launch.

 

But we sadly dont see skill reworks and animation changes, since Anet has now very limited resources, so at best we get number tweaks every 3-6 months..

Edited February 19, 2022 by Flumek.9043

[saerni.2584]

15 minutes ago, Meridian.9103 said:

These Thief changes are really mind boggling again. They say one thing, and then proceed doing the opposite. Meanwhile the actual solution is so obvious: nerf/remove CD reduction from Hidden Thief trait instead of nerfing the CDs of Core skills.

Aside from these short term changes, the prevailing problem is that thiefs have no real alternative to playing SA if they wanted to. kitten isn't doing any damage, while Improv is not good enough anymore to carry the entire traitline, and Acro is simply in a pityfull state, doing basically nothing. Crit strikes offers no defensive ulility (no, IP is not good with current thief builds), which btw becomes even more of a problem when you nerf defensive core skills.

No, and people need to understand. Thief stealth durations are *not* significantly/unfairly increased by being able to gain stealth on Steal/Swipe/Mark/Siphon. The reasons you don't have a cooldown on the trait is because the cooldowns on Steal vs Swipe vs Mark vs Siphon are all quite different (and then there are the cooldown reduction traits or utilities). Changing/nerfing this trait (1) won't significantly reduce the stealth durations (it's a 3 second stealth application) and (2) make using Steal to initiate a stealth attack—a core gameplay component of thief—unreliable on any build/elite specialization that can lower it's cooldown. 
 

I've tried to explain what underlies complaints about SA repeatedly—namely the long durations of stealth. Shadow's Rejuvenation passively gives a thief initiative while in stealth. This means that a thief running SR will regenerate a lot of the initiative used to gain or maintain stealth. Without it, long stealth durations matter much less because either the thief will have initiative but less utilities (using those to gain stealth) or they will have utilities but much less initiative to maintain any stealth duration of significance. Shadow's Rejuvenation, not Hidden Thief, is the trait that needs to be adjusted. 
 

The bulk of these proposed changes are nerfing core utilities (not SA like some people are claiming lol). The only SA nerf is a reduction in SR's *heal* which is not primarily why thieves take the trait. SR could literally not heal at all and it would be worth taking for the passive initiative regeneration in stealth. 

I just want to reiterate as well that nerfing Hide in Shadows, an important cleanse for thief, and forcing any thief who wants to take it into SA just to get a decent cooldown on a burst cleanse, is not well thought out. There are plenty of heals on a 15-20 second cooldown. HiS at 30 seconds gets to stealth/cleanse, so the effects are mitigated by the cooldown time. If the concern is the duration of stealth with Concealing Restoration then that trait should be looked at. It isn't hard to just target the source of the thing you are trying to fix. This is another example of nerfing core utilities to mitigate the actually problematic trait interaction.

[BobbyT.7192]

Doesn't matter what your feelings are on stealth and thieves, everyone here should be upset about 40s untraited heal. If it can happen once, you know it can happen again, what heal should get a 40s CD next? Shelter? Infused light? A.E.D?

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by BobbyT.7192

[saerni.2584]

21 minutes ago, bluri.2653 said:

I understand that thieves are frustrated about the patch its cus the patch just made all other specs than sa poop while sa remains strong and even more mandatory than ever. me idc cus drd been awfully boring to play for years

This is the differences that the patch will achieve.
blinding powder from 32s to 40s (which is the normal cd without SA) non SA thieves will enjoy 50s BP
shadowstep remains the same 40s vs 50s

smoke screen idc about cus i prefer signet anyway

hide in shadows 24 to 32 which is close to 30sec(pre nerf) which it is without sa, and if u ran deadly arts u ran HiS as well. Non SA thieves enjoy your 40sec HiS lmao
shadow rejuv: Reduced base heal from 219 to 158 in PvP only.  most of us didnt even run shadow rejuv until lately, majority of time since feb 2020 we ran rending or cloaked in shadows.

tldr you did nothing to kill stealth or sa.
kill deception trait (hidden thief) was the #1 thing you needed to do in order to make deadly arts picked over sa. instead this patch achieved picking anything but sa even worse. I mean drd been terribly boring to play after the endless nerfs to endurance gameplay with pulm. old hot drd with pulm, deadly arts and channeled vigor remains the most enjoyable version.

Specter coming soon tho ❤️

Could you clarify what exactly you think should replace Hidden Thief or how you'd nerf it? 
 

I don't personally think thief stealth running without SR is a problem. RS is a great option for anti-boons. And CiS is solid for 1vX survival (similar to using blinds from Smoke Screen in a sense) while providing a nice life steal. 
 

But that said I'm curious what you think about Hidden Thief exactly needs to be changed/how you'd implement it.

[AikijinX.6258]

31 minutes ago, bluri.2653 said:

I understand that thieves are frustrated about the patch its cus the patch just made all other specs than sa poop while sa remains strong and even more mandatory than ever. me idc cus drd been awfully boring to play for years

This is the differences that the patch will achieve.
blinding powder from 32s to 40s (which is the normal cd without SA) non SA thieves will enjoy 50s BP
shadowstep remains the same 40s vs 50s

smoke screen idc about cus i prefer signet anyway

hide in shadows 24 to 32 which is close to 30sec(pre nerf) which it is without sa, and if u ran deadly arts u ran HiS as well. Non SA thieves enjoy your 40sec HiS lmao
shadow rejuv: Reduced base heal from 219 to 158 in PvP only.  most of us didnt even run shadow rejuv until lately, majority of time since feb 2020 we ran rending or cloaked in shadows.

tldr you did nothing to kill stealth or sa.
kill deception trait (hidden thief) was the #1 thing you needed to do in order to make deadly arts picked over sa. instead this patch achieved picking anything but sa even worse. I mean drd been terribly boring to play after the endless nerfs to endurance gameplay with pulm. old hot drd with pulm, deadly arts and channeled vigor remains the most enjoyable version.

Specter coming soon tho ❤️

Yeah Specter coming soon! And that’s gonna be a breath of fresh air. It’s also gonna be broken as kitten😂🥴 power sc/d dragons/marauder stat combo. These twilight combo crits WILL hurt. (WvW roaming/1vX perspective)

and in regard to the changes. Yeah they’re quite illogical and backwards. Really don’t understand how they missed the mark but still won’t effect me or any other Thief of competence. 

And it’s crazy to me that people are crying over hidden Thief. I’ve been using this trait OVER the condi cleanse trait that I had thought was the meta BiS trait for a while, especially in this kitten condi infested period we are in. (WvW)

I always picked hidden Thief because I saw the benefit of it years ago, but I guess now it’s a threat and just is additional fluff to add on to the SA is OP narrative. (Which objectively it is, and always has been, im just sad that my trait I’ve been using for years now has eyes on it and is a target) 

EDIT: Oh and not to mention. Rending Shade is a great trait that people overlook because of shadow rejuv. Cloaked in Shadows is good too, but I feel like it alerts the enemy too much, since they get blinded when you go near. 

Edited February 19, 2022 by AikijinX.6258

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

@Cal Cohen.2358 thanks for this. It's good to hear from you again! I think many in the PvP community appreciate having regular communication with the devs, and I hope we'll hear from you guys more once EoD drops!

 

While the opinions regarding what should be nerfed/buffed are many and often fiercely held, I think the changes you intend will generally move the game mode in the right direction. Thank you. I hope we can look forward to many more such adjustments in the future--and not only to rein in toxic or over performing things, but also to lift up specs and professions that are struggling.

 

I also appreciate the limitations that you and the balance team have re: mostly being able to tweak numbers rather than to actually redesign troublesome traits and skills (e.g., you can only nerf FT's damage rather than rework the pulsing stab from juggernaut). That definitely dampens your ability to balance the game mode. I hope that, going forward, your efforts will be more supported by the skills team--or even that you could have the liberty to make "competitive only" versions of skills/traits that would help balance PvP/WvW without destroying how the original skills/traits function in PvE.

 

Again, thanks for your efforts. I firmly believe that PvP/WvW is where GW2 shines the most--or has the potential to, at any rate. I'm looking forward to seeing how ANet decides to invest itself in these game modes in the coming months!

[HotDelirium.7984]

17 hours ago, Levetty.1279 said:

Yeah, would much rather see this.

I am lowkey scared there are minimal changes since the last update per his comment of gathering real world gameplay. With the history of GW2 optimizing elites years later, I say ....good luck to all of us.

[Vancho.8750]

All I see from the patch is enforcing the lame hit and run meta, sidenoding is still garbage, nerf on thief just buffs the other roamers, and the nerf on necro just shifts the meta more in favour in the roamer type builds mostly core necro (like we need more roamers per ranked game 4 wasn't enough i suppose) , FT nerfs over taking a look at Holo lol. 
All the changes lead to push the boring tournament meta in ranked witch is dumb considering that the bi cht mode builds from there don't work that well without coordination since ranked is chaotic. 

 

[Esorono.1039]

I don't play much Spvp, so none of these changes really affect me, but I do have to admit these changes are hilarious and somehow managed to miss every target they tried to hit. Like you don't even have to play PvP to realize that you don't make traitlines less powerful by nerfing skills that work with the traitline, making them even more necessary. What's next? You are going to try to make Trickery less required by raising the initiative of skills? XD 

Well, at least all the nerfs to necromancers don't matter, and that is pretty much all I care for as a necro main. Sure lich, deathly chill, and wurm, got nerfed a bit, but overall that is not too much of a problem. What are these changes? XD

Edited February 19, 2022 by Esorono.1039

[Nihil.9817]

im not sure about the blood magic trait changes but the lesser enfeeble and wurm changes are really bizarre, lesser enfeeble is rarely used in the context that youre going to aggressively use it, its more like "get off me" the wurm utility is picked because it is a port, the cooldown of the port isnt the issue its the stunbreaks are all dog kitten compared to the distance created from wurm, the lich form nerf is deserved but i dunno if its an entirely sound thing to be at .7 maybe 1 or .988 also if it was long enough to get 2 fears off that would be dope, i never used bm because its un-interactive and doesn't give any solid utility outside of the downstate interactions when ressing people (but who even resses people) and unholy martyr, that trait is really really good, im glad you didnt nerf it. i like the nerfs despite me being a necro main but i dunno limiting peoples options isnt good, if other things were good it might open up the choices and build diversity, nerfing this now makes sense but down the road when someone wants to make a dagger sustain build its now less attractive than the axe focus or scepter dagger standard build because of these changes, like think about the utility or the stuff provided from plauge and now its plagulands a thing you put on the ground and you just kinda stand in a circle for 10 seconds or 9 however long it is.

 

im glad the nerfs arent as bad as they possibly could be, please remove trapper rune from the game

[Meridian.9103]

1 hour ago, saerni.2584 said:

No, and people need to understand. Thief stealth durations are *not* significantly/unfairly increased by being able to gain stealth on Steal/Swipe/Mark/Siphon. The reasons you don't have a cooldown on the trait is because the cooldowns on Steal vs Swipe vs Mark vs Siphon are all quite different (and then there are the cooldown reduction traits or utilities). Changing/nerfing this trait (1) won't significantly reduce the stealth durations (it's a 3 second stealth application) and (2) make using Steal to initiate a stealth attack—a core gameplay component of thief—unreliable on any build/elite specialization that can lower it's cooldown. 
 

I've tried to explain what underlies complaints about SA repeatedly—namely the long durations of stealth. Shadow's Rejuvenation passively gives a thief initiative while in stealth. This means that a thief running SR will regenerate a lot of the initiative used to gain or maintain stealth. Without it, long stealth durations matter much less because either the thief will have initiative but less utilities (using those to gain stealth) or they will have utilities but much less initiative to maintain any stealth duration of significance. Shadow's Rejuvenation, not Hidden Thief, is the trait that needs to be adjusted. 
 

The bulk of these proposed changes are nerfing core utilities (not SA like some people are claiming lol). The only SA nerf is a reduction in SR's *heal* which is not primarily why thieves take the trait. SR could literally not heal at all and it would be worth taking for the passive initiative regeneration in stealth. 

I just want to reiterate as well that nerfing Hide in Shadows, an important cleanse for thief, and forcing any thief who wants to take it into SA just to get a decent cooldown on a burst cleanse, is not well thought out. There are plenty of heals on a 15-20 second cooldown. HiS at 30 seconds gets to stealth/cleanse, so the effects are mitigated by the cooldown time. If the concern is the duration of stealth with Concealing Restoration then that trait should be looked at. It isn't hard to just target the source of the thing you are trying to fix. This is another example of nerfing core utilities to mitigate the actually problematic trait interaction.

You seem to have missed, that I specifically talked about the CD reduction part of Hidden Thief, which should be nerfed or removed. You are right that the 1.25s (in pvp) stealth application on steal does not add much the overall stealth duration and survivability of thiefs, but the 20% CD reduction on Deception skills definitely does.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Meridian.9103

[Okhu.7948]

I'd be more happy / give less of a crap about FT nerf on Engineer if Engineer had other skills that were useful / fun to play with. Most of the kits, gadgets, weapons, and turrets aren't very good. Most of the skills on Flamethrower can barely be used besides the auto-attack. If they wanted to turn FT into an actual condi weaponkit I wouldn't even be mad.

[Stalima.5490]

12 hours ago, Nimbus Nomad.1237 said:

I hate to break it to you mate, but kiting around and avoiding damage while your abilities are on cooldown is how gw2 pvp is played. You don't just sit there and facetank damage while spamming 1 when waiting for cds, unless you're playing ft scrapper, but that's getting nerfed, so poggers.

you aren't really looking at the side effects of this, 1 button spamming isn't going to go away, after all, I see that the grenade kit, which has way more damage 1 spam was not hit and then also the bomb kit 1 spam was also not hit either.

 

This isn't just a FT issue because there are numerous 1 spammers in the game, even deadeye can do it better, just deadeye actually has abilities that increase it's damage over 1 spamming rather than nerf it like the FT, essentially if the other abilities on the FT actually did something then you wouldn't be spamming the 1 button because you'd actually gain something, that is the problem with the FT and one that has been brought up a few times im sure, if their description for the change is really what they think, then this was a very lazy nerf based upon that when the solutions are directly obvious...

 

To elaborate, if, for example they stated that they wanted to move the flamethrower into a more condition specialised weapon then it would be an acceptable explanation to the nerf to it's power damage, however, they way they have explained this would imply that they should have increased the flame blast damage to maintain the strike potential of the weapon and if all else fails, just replace the stability with protection or something... we can already 100% uptime that anyway if we want to.

[Sindrener.1592]

1 hour ago, saerni.2584 said:

Could you clarify what exactly you think should replace Hidden Thief or how you'd nerf it? 
 

I don't personally think thief stealth running without SR is a problem. RS is a great option for anti-boons. And CiS is solid for 1vX survival (similar to using blinds from Smoke Screen in a sense) while providing a nice life steal. 
 

But that said I'm curious what you think about Hidden Thief exactly needs to be changed/how you'd implement it.

 

 

1 hour ago, AikijinX.6258 said:

Yeah Specter coming soon! And that’s gonna be a breath of fresh air. It’s also gonna be broken as kitten😂🥴 power sc/d dragons/marauder stat combo. These twilight combo crits WILL hurt. (WvW roaming/1vX perspective)

and in regard to the changes. Yeah they’re quite illogical and backwards. Really don’t understand how they missed the mark but still won’t effect me or any other Thief of competence. 

And it’s crazy to me that people are crying over hidden Thief. I’ve been using this trait OVER the condi cleanse trait that I had thought was the meta BiS trait for a while, especially in this kitten condi infested period we are in. (WvW)

I always picked hidden Thief because I saw the benefit of it years ago, but I guess now it’s a threat and just is additional fluff to add on to the SA is OP narrative. (Which objectively it is, and always has been, im just sad that my trait I’ve been using for years now has eyes on it and is a target) 

EDIT: Oh and not to mention. Rending Shade is a great trait that people overlook because of shadow rejuv. Cloaked in Shadows is good too, but I feel like it alerts the enemy too much, since they get blinded when you go near. 

Ok so thief has slowly been shifting towards SA over the years due to continuous nerfs to endurance utilities/trait nerfs and february 2020 patch was pretty much the "last straw"

SoA from 100 to 25 over the years
CV pulse nerfs over the years + increased CD with feb patch.

Endurance thief from 50 to 25

evades = making it possible to evade the damage rather than stealth to avoid it. Nerfing evades = making stealth our go to defense. The harder it is to avoid condi spam = the more forced into cleanse we become and thats why HiS became mandatory. I tried CV and withdraw with SA after feb 2020 patch and it was just not possible to run, you just fed to p/d condi although its nerfed now theres still tons of condis in the game.

The reason why we dont pick EA in DRD is cus our damage isnt the greatest after nerfs to deadly arts and CS not a viable pick. We are forced into running marauders resilience with div/vamp rune to be able to run zerk cus mara amulet is nerfed(mara amulet poop now) So we are more squishy due to very low HP and lower evades means we go to SA and dmg between deadly arts/SA is not much whatsoever and improv is nerfed over 10 times by this point. Its hard to balance improv but current iteration is quite bad.

So the reason why we go into SA is simply because of surviveability and why does SA offer that? Well its simple, you run 3 or 4 deception skills 100% slotted in every scenario even as deadly arts. The outlier being smokescreen, I still prefer signet for example but most competitive tourneys its 4 deception utils.

Hidden thief makes them 20% lower CD giving you a much bigger advantage than a thief that does not run it and the bonus being stealth on steal obviously. So SA thieves becomes much harder to kill and will out trade any other thief spec since u mirror the same utilities since they are best in slot cus no other can compete with them. And yes sorry all 3 GM's are fine to run obv RS lost a bit of value due to BT+RS getting nerfed at the same time making RS very unlikely to procc 90% of the time, the only decent value becomes the rip itself. CiS very good pick cus of smokescreen sometimes and just in general blind spam ofc.

I have no proposed changes I'm simply saying what made thieves shift into SA and what makes SA the must pick in sPVP.

Dont get me wrong, these changes might make SA thief a tiny bit more possible to punish than before but also at the cost of making all other non SA D/P specs impossible to run

Also why is D A = kitten????

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by bluri.2653

[allshallperish.4620]

amazing balance patch wow

[frareanselm.1925]

3 hours ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

I don't know what do you know about what a balance is, but nerfs are part of it lol.

That's part of the psychology behind mmos, devs nerf everything to make the customer demoralized and willing to buy the new expansion. Until people get so burnt out that end up quiting... sometimes groups of tired customers  create an alternative server that works 10 times better, and do you know how they balance it? Boosting all classes, not nerfing them.

[solemn.9670]

Why is this not also a WvW patch

If it doesn't happen I swear I will riot