Potential Future Balance Changes - PvP

[SeikeNz.3526]

they should remove rune of speed from pvp too , one you will reduce the number of speed hackers since you never know when they are at rune of speed or not, second some classes are not supposed to run that fast because they have high damage, like reaper/ranger/holo with rune of speed become an unstopable killing machine

[Arheundel.6451]

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Umm...

Sharper Images and Duelist's Disclipline on mesmer need to get looked at too. Pistol 4 can apply 18 stacks of bleeding on a 20 second cooldown and can almost be instantly reset with interrupts from stuff like sword ambush spam.

Please don't forget about these 2 traits. 18 stacks of bleeding on a single button press is CRAZY overpowered.

now that cmirage is nerfed to kitten you wanna nerf core condi mes i see?those "18" bleeds deal same damage as other hard hitting skills of other classes, prove me wrong or go home.

Suuuure... if you insist.

1. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 7 seconds (not even the full 18 bleeds lel)
2. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 33 seconds
3. TTK on Light Golem = 31 seconds
4. TTK on Light Golem = 18 seconds/26 seconds

Bonus!

5. TTK on Light Golem = 5 seconds (can be spammed or just passively does stupid amounts of damage every time a mirage dodges)

Not to mention the other 4 skills in the sc/p weaponset also do a ton of damage, 1 ccs you, + multiple ambushes to dodge. Compare the 7-8 skills necessary to avoid on sc/p to the 1 skill on ranger gs that can kill you (maul) and the 3 on warrior gs (maul, whirlwind, arcing slice) etc. etc. and it should be pretty easy to see why mesmers are completely overloaded.

if you gonna post biased stuff I shall too.

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

here you go. 6,3k ranger autoattack.how many of them can you throw at 1,5k range with quickness? 10 in that 7s? that would deal 63k dmg. :D

Sure and I can make the Phantasmal Duelist do way more burst damage as well.

Someone is just salty they've gotten proven wrong yet again lmao.

dont have to mate, did it for you ( or rather some random oponent did )

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

6350 dmg, long range shot. basic longbow auto with 1500+ range. (usable while moving )2242 dmg, rapid fire ( 1 hit ) it fires 10 over all so thats total of 22420 dmg. again 1500+ range,

usable while moving.

so you die in what, 1,5s? 2s? from 1500 range. and you compare it to 8s bleed + pistol channel, that will do about 10k dmg if not cleansed.

Yeah sure you'd die in 1.5/2s from 1500 range if you have a 12k health pool and no boons or toughness meanwhile I'm over here casting Phantasmal Duelist one shotting everyone while remaining completely stationary!

Keep reaching lmao.

If you eat entire pistol 4 channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesnt happen becouse everyone just cleanses that INSANE 18 BLEEDS OP.you dont get to cleanse 22,4k rapid fire from 1500+ range. even if you eat 3-4 shots thats still 6-8k dmg.toughtness? protection? sure lets add prot and toughtness, oh wait still about 10-14kdmg. thats STILL more then p4.keep whining mate, keep whining.

If you eat the entire rapid fire channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesn't happen (except to you judging by the screenshots) because everyone just walks behind a wall!

I'm sorry to tell you that toughness and protection don't reduce condition damage! Pistol 4 will still kill a light armored class just as fast regardless of whether they're on paladins or marauders.

LMAO you're the one whining. "Mesmer is so weak literally nothing does damage because you can dodge it D: does no damage can't survive you can't nerf anything about this class because you can only nerf mesmer if a team wins MAT for 2 years in a row with 5 mesmer comp" blah blah blah like come on I'll prove you wrong again later but clearly pistol 4 does more damage than all of these other hard hitting skills. You're just in denial constantly about anything mesmer related yet have the audacity to call other people biased. :joy:

Mate, I just posted a screenshot of rangers autoattack dealing almost as much damage as entire pistol 4 channel, cut the kitten.Unlike you I dont go around forums creating post, putting biased, cut out of contecst kitten to fit my agenda.You even go out of your way to outright lie to get mesmer nerfed.GJ they will nerf staff, mirage will still be cancer, people will still whine, YOU will still whine. nothing changes other then the fact that staff becomes unplayable.people will move on to scept/torch + axe/pistol or some sort of bunkercondi mesmer. GJ you did it, 1 less build clap clap.All I do is come here to poke fun at people that go out of their way to bend the truth, so it can fit their agenda.

like what, staff 3 thief abuse baaaad needs to go.gs1 ranger evade abuse goooood bring back.this is you, biased. as always.

Mate, that ranger was on a full glass cannon build. Not to mention a 6k auto attack would only take around half of the Light Golem's health off meanwhile Phantasmal Duelist killed it in a single cast.

Lmfao those videos cut or biased? I literally just hopped on wanderers/demo and used the skills on meta builds and didn't stack any additional modifiers the builds wouldn't normally run.

The difference between daredevil staff 3 and ranger gs autos is that the daredevil can be nearly untouchable for a VERY long time while the ranger autos actually require you to hit your target twice before the evade triggers so there is way more counterplay for the latter.

Don't know what set up you were using but I tried replicating it with the most popular wander/deadshot condition mirage.

Light Golem has 17,193 health so 62% of that in one attack ends up being 10,662 damage over about 7 seconds. With about 1.2k of that being from the power portion of the attack.

You're also definitely running a lot more power. On Deadshot/Wanderer the duelist does 1k-1.5k on the power portion of the attack and you're getting 2-3 three times that from the power portion.

I even ran a goofy variant using Krait runes and an Agony sigil to bump my bleeding duration up to 100% and even with a pretty yolo combo like that while I was getting really close but it still wasn't one shotting.

I tried a few options and I found Grieving amulet, with Krait Runes and Agony Sigil and Signet of Midnight will get occasional one shots while the phantasm does 3k+ in physical damage when you get lucky with crits.

I also gave rapid fire the same test with fury on my sic em soulbeast and this is what I got.

Are you seriously comparing condi mirage to lb soulbeast using zephyr+scholar runes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8031_uhtIM..this

is a power variant, at one point winning 1vs2...and these are not practice golems

We're discussing what level of damage from a single skill is reasonable, so yeah similar DPS skills with similar realistic stat set ups are relevant. Quickening Zephyr doesn't increase the overall damage of the Rapid Fire, it just makes the cast complete faster. I'm not sure why you're mentioning it as though it's boosting the damage beyond what's normal. I used it to give my soulbeast fury since in Shadowpass's test he specifically set it up so that Phantasmal Duelist had fury. This wasn't even using pet stacks or sic em. Just the pure vanilla stats from gear and traits. A core ranger can get the same damage results.

The question is 10.5k damage on a 20 second cooldown that involves a 2 second channel and 7 seconds of bleed after said channel too much damage compared other damage dealer skills?

There's so much counter play to this skill that other skills that do similar damage have noticeably less than. First you can prevent the phantasm from spawning entirely through environmental Line of Sight as well as using invulnerabilities like Elixir S, Obsidian Flesh, Renewed Focus. Second the bleeding doesn't just apply to you instantly. The mesmer has an animation which signifies the Phantasm will be spawning, it's the three bullets that fly in a weird arc. This doesn't do much damage but it signifies the attack is about to happen. Second the Phantasm casts it's unload, this itself is a 2 second channel as far as I can tell. So even if you get hit by the first packet of damage because they got the drop on you you can still react and avoid 87.5% of the entire skill's damage and all it's bleeds. So let's say you eat the entire skill and now you have 9k damage in bleed on you. You can cleanse it and get rid of all of it. And if you can't avoid it, if you can't cleanse it, it's possible to heal through it whereas getting hit with a 10k Crit from a power class isn't going to give you that luxury.

Is it strong? Yeah, Duelist is very strong and impactful can and often is the skill that wins the fight. Is he super over powered? I think in light of the cooldown, the actual clear audio and visual tell on the attack, and the multitude of ways and opportunities to survive the skill both before it lands it's damage and even afterwards makes me feel the overall level of damage is justified.

Your idea of counterplay is what would work basically against anything

Yeah. Because it's basically like any other attack. It's not like we're dealing with pre-nerf Death's Judgement that's also unblockable and thus can't be blocked or nullified by projectile reflection and destruction. It's just any other DPS attack just with a slightly unusual delivery method and it's damage values aren't out of the ordinary.

...like blow out high CD defenses for a second of respite, your answer

Never said you needed to blow high cooldown defenses. I simply stated that if you eat the full attack, which gives plenty of warning to avoid, by it's nature as a condition damage attack you also have methods to entirely retroactively mitigate the damage should a mistake like that happen and verses attacks that do all their damage immediately you do not get that opportunity. You get hit by an 8k Arcing Slice? If you're below 8k health you don't get to heal that off or use a cooldown to retroactively nullify that damage before it's all applied.

Your wording is also kind of hard to parse here. It sounds like you're saying you should be able to avoid 100% of damage without needing to expend any resources like cooldowns what so ever.

Simply in GW1 there was a limit on degen from condis at -8 arrows for sec so no matter how many condis the enemy would stuck on you...you still would lose -8 arrows for seconds and that's why the gameplay was smarter , easy to follow from the outside and overall more enjoyable ; same concept goes for CC..you could not CC an already CCed target

which makes bloody sense

while in GW2 you can daze and already dazed target , asking to remove this brainless gameplay is not exactly a request for 100% dmg inmmunity.

Okay. What should the hard limit be on how long a condition damage build needs to spend attacking in order to kill a stationary target that doesn't fight or cast skills? What is your proposed hard limit on their damage per second?

They could limit the number of damaging and not damaging conditions applicable on a single enemy at time, a limit that stays till the expiration or removal of such condition : Ex - you apply burning-bleed-confusion on Bob like 12 stacks each for 20s, for 20s no other damaging condition can be applied on BoB unless he removes one or two of those condis and in which case 1 or 2 new condis can be applied on Bob, if he doesn't clear than the attacker can renew the same condis before the time expires or simply wait it out and reapply same or different conditions. While doing that limit the number of non damaging condis to 1-2; right now you can load Bob with all condis with absolutely nothing he can do because many skills applying condis in this game also have CC/daze/stun.

Roughly the same concept used in GW1, you apply burning dealin -8 arrows, you could not apply another -8 arrows condi while burning was still active....after doing that you can take a look at condi removal so that we move away from condi bunkers doing burst

[do it.4016]

I don't see why they still going through nerfing condi mirage... speically staff damage?!Current mirage hardly can win duels vs meta classes and you wont stand a chance if you switch out staff w/e scepter/Axe/pistol/torch...I guess they just want mesmer to be gimmk class and lets not talk about support after nerfing portal...

[mortrialus.3062]

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Umm...

Sharper Images and Duelist's Disclipline on mesmer need to get looked at too. Pistol 4 can apply 18 stacks of bleeding on a 20 second cooldown and can almost be instantly reset with interrupts from stuff like sword ambush spam.

Please don't forget about these 2 traits. 18 stacks of bleeding on a single button press is CRAZY overpowered.

now that cmirage is nerfed to kitten you wanna nerf core condi mes i see?those "18" bleeds deal same damage as other hard hitting skills of other classes, prove me wrong or go home.

Suuuure... if you insist.

1. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 7 seconds (not even the full 18 bleeds lel)
2. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 33 seconds
3. TTK on Light Golem = 31 seconds
4. TTK on Light Golem = 18 seconds/26 seconds

Bonus!

5. TTK on Light Golem = 5 seconds (can be spammed or just passively does stupid amounts of damage every time a mirage dodges)

Not to mention the other 4 skills in the sc/p weaponset also do a ton of damage, 1 ccs you, + multiple ambushes to dodge. Compare the 7-8 skills necessary to avoid on sc/p to the 1 skill on ranger gs that can kill you (maul) and the 3 on warrior gs (maul, whirlwind, arcing slice) etc. etc. and it should be pretty easy to see why mesmers are completely overloaded.

if you gonna post biased stuff I shall too.

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

here you go. 6,3k ranger autoattack.how many of them can you throw at 1,5k range with quickness? 10 in that 7s? that would deal 63k dmg. :D

Sure and I can make the Phantasmal Duelist do way more burst damage as well.

Someone is just salty they've gotten proven wrong yet again lmao.

dont have to mate, did it for you ( or rather some random oponent did )

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

6350 dmg, long range shot. basic longbow auto with 1500+ range. (usable while moving )2242 dmg, rapid fire ( 1 hit ) it fires 10 over all so thats total of 22420 dmg. again 1500+ range,

usable while moving.

so you die in what, 1,5s? 2s? from 1500 range. and you compare it to 8s bleed + pistol channel, that will do about 10k dmg if not cleansed.

Yeah sure you'd die in 1.5/2s from 1500 range if you have a 12k health pool and no boons or toughness meanwhile I'm over here casting Phantasmal Duelist one shotting everyone while remaining completely stationary!

Keep reaching lmao.

If you eat entire pistol 4 channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesnt happen becouse everyone just cleanses that INSANE 18 BLEEDS OP.you dont get to cleanse 22,4k rapid fire from 1500+ range. even if you eat 3-4 shots thats still 6-8k dmg.toughtness? protection? sure lets add prot and toughtness, oh wait still about 10-14kdmg. thats STILL more then p4.keep whining mate, keep whining.

If you eat the entire rapid fire channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesn't happen (except to you judging by the screenshots) because everyone just walks behind a wall!

I'm sorry to tell you that toughness and protection don't reduce condition damage! Pistol 4 will still kill a light armored class just as fast regardless of whether they're on paladins or marauders.

LMAO you're the one whining. "Mesmer is so weak literally nothing does damage because you can dodge it D: does no damage can't survive you can't nerf anything about this class because you can only nerf mesmer if a team wins MAT for 2 years in a row with 5 mesmer comp" blah blah blah like come on I'll prove you wrong again later but clearly pistol 4 does more damage than all of these other hard hitting skills. You're just in denial constantly about anything mesmer related yet have the audacity to call other people biased. :joy:

Mate, I just posted a screenshot of rangers autoattack dealing almost as much damage as entire pistol 4 channel, cut the kitten.Unlike you I dont go around forums creating post, putting biased, cut out of contecst kitten to fit my agenda.You even go out of your way to outright lie to get mesmer nerfed.GJ they will nerf staff, mirage will still be cancer, people will still whine, YOU will still whine. nothing changes other then the fact that staff becomes unplayable.people will move on to scept/torch + axe/pistol or some sort of bunkercondi mesmer. GJ you did it, 1 less build clap clap.All I do is come here to poke fun at people that go out of their way to bend the truth, so it can fit their agenda.

like what, staff 3 thief abuse baaaad needs to go.gs1 ranger evade abuse goooood bring back.this is you, biased. as always.

Mate, that ranger was on a full glass cannon build. Not to mention a 6k auto attack would only take around half of the Light Golem's health off meanwhile Phantasmal Duelist killed it in a single cast.

Lmfao those videos cut or biased? I literally just hopped on wanderers/demo and used the skills on meta builds and didn't stack any additional modifiers the builds wouldn't normally run.

The difference between daredevil staff 3 and ranger gs autos is that the daredevil can be nearly untouchable for a VERY long time while the ranger autos actually require you to hit your target twice before the evade triggers so there is way more counterplay for the latter.

Don't know what set up you were using but I tried replicating it with the most popular wander/deadshot condition mirage.

Light Golem has 17,193 health so 62% of that in one attack ends up being 10,662 damage over about 7 seconds. With about 1.2k of that being from the power portion of the attack.

You're also definitely running a lot more power. On Deadshot/Wanderer the duelist does 1k-1.5k on the power portion of the attack and you're getting 2-3 three times that from the power portion.

I even ran a goofy variant using Krait runes and an Agony sigil to bump my bleeding duration up to 100% and even with a pretty yolo combo like that while I was getting really close but it still wasn't one shotting.

I tried a few options and I found Grieving amulet, with Krait Runes and Agony Sigil and Signet of Midnight will get occasional one shots while the phantasm does 3k+ in physical damage when you get lucky with crits.

I also gave rapid fire the same test with fury on my sic em soulbeast and this is what I got.

Are you seriously comparing condi mirage to lb soulbeast using zephyr+scholar runes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8031_uhtIM..this

is a power variant, at one point winning 1vs2...and these are not practice golems

We're discussing what level of damage from a single skill is reasonable, so yeah similar DPS skills with similar realistic stat set ups are relevant. Quickening Zephyr doesn't increase the overall damage of the Rapid Fire, it just makes the cast complete faster. I'm not sure why you're mentioning it as though it's boosting the damage beyond what's normal. I used it to give my soulbeast fury since in Shadowpass's test he specifically set it up so that Phantasmal Duelist had fury. This wasn't even using pet stacks or sic em. Just the pure vanilla stats from gear and traits. A core ranger can get the same damage results.

The question is 10.5k damage on a 20 second cooldown that involves a 2 second channel and 7 seconds of bleed after said channel too much damage compared other damage dealer skills?

There's so much counter play to this skill that other skills that do similar damage have noticeably less than. First you can prevent the phantasm from spawning entirely through environmental Line of Sight as well as using invulnerabilities like Elixir S, Obsidian Flesh, Renewed Focus. Second the bleeding doesn't just apply to you instantly. The mesmer has an animation which signifies the Phantasm will be spawning, it's the three bullets that fly in a weird arc. This doesn't do much damage but it signifies the attack is about to happen. Second the Phantasm casts it's unload, this itself is a 2 second channel as far as I can tell. So even if you get hit by the first packet of damage because they got the drop on you you can still react and avoid 87.5% of the entire skill's damage and all it's bleeds. So let's say you eat the entire skill and now you have 9k damage in bleed on you. You can cleanse it and get rid of all of it. And if you can't avoid it, if you can't cleanse it, it's possible to heal through it whereas getting hit with a 10k Crit from a power class isn't going to give you that luxury.

Is it strong? Yeah, Duelist is very strong and impactful can and often is the skill that wins the fight. Is he super over powered? I think in light of the cooldown, the actual clear audio and visual tell on the attack, and the multitude of ways and opportunities to survive the skill both before it lands it's damage and even afterwards makes me feel the overall level of damage is justified.

Your idea of counterplay is what would work basically against anything

Yeah. Because it's basically like any other attack. It's not like we're dealing with pre-nerf Death's Judgement that's also unblockable and thus can't be blocked or nullified by projectile reflection and destruction. It's just any other DPS attack just with a slightly unusual delivery method and it's damage values aren't out of the ordinary.

...like blow out high CD defenses for a second of respite, your answer

Never said you needed to blow high cooldown defenses. I simply stated that if you eat the full attack, which gives plenty of warning to avoid, by it's nature as a condition damage attack you also have methods to entirely retroactively mitigate the damage should a mistake like that happen and verses attacks that do all their damage immediately you do not get that opportunity. You get hit by an 8k Arcing Slice? If you're below 8k health you don't get to heal that off or use a cooldown to retroactively nullify that damage before it's all applied.

Your wording is also kind of hard to parse here. It sounds like you're saying you should be able to avoid 100% of damage without needing to expend any resources like cooldowns what so ever.

Simply in GW1 there was a limit on degen from condis at -8 arrows for sec so no matter how many condis the enemy would stuck on you...you still would lose -8 arrows for seconds and that's why the gameplay was smarter , easy to follow from the outside and overall more enjoyable ; same concept goes for CC..you could not CC an already CCed target

which makes bloody sense

while in GW2 you can daze and already dazed target , asking to remove this brainless gameplay is not exactly a request for 100% dmg inmmunity.

Okay. What should the hard limit be on how long a condition damage build needs to spend attacking in order to kill a stationary target that doesn't fight or cast skills? What is your proposed hard limit on their damage per second?

They could limit the number of damaging and not damaging conditions applicable on a single enemy at time, a limit that stays till the expiration or removal of such condition : Ex - you apply burning-bleed-confusion on Bob like 12 stacks each for 20s, for 20s no other damaging condition can be applied on BoB unless he removes one or two of those condis and in which case 1 or 2 new condis can be applied on Bob, if he doesn't clear than the attacker can renew the same condis before the time expires or simply wait it out and reapply same or different conditions. While doing that limit the number of non damaging condis to 1-2; right now you can load Bob with all condis with absolutely nothing he can do because many skills applying condis in this game also have CC/daze/stun.

Roughly the same concept used in GW1, you apply burning dealin -8 arrows, you could not apply another -8 arrows condi while burning was still active....

after doing that you can take a look at condi removal

so that we move away from condi bunkers doing burst

I never played guild wars 1. -8 arrows means nothing to me.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:

General

• Sigil of Agility has been removed from the PvP build panel

^ Not sure if that is a wise idea

right now.

A lot of the balance that we actually do have, is because of this single sigil. This very important single sigil, is what allows certain attacks from certain classes to be viable at all. If this sigil is removed, it will greatly effect the performance of certain build archetypes that utilize slower attacks during bursts, due to the sigil of agility. Some of these attacks that have honed in the balance structures of certain builds, have done so only due to the sigil of agility. I suggest maybe lowering the quickness uptime from 2s to 1s or something like that. But I believe that removing it entirely at this point, may cause more problems than it would solve. It's going to be a situation where, if it is removed, certain build archetypes will still survive because their animation times are juuuust fast enough to remain viable and practical, but certain other build archetypes which were already utilizing slower animation frames, will become too slow to be practical. When that happens, it is likely that the meta will flip flop all over the place again, and builds that were once balanced due to sigil of agility will become unviable, and builds like Holosmith that never needed it to begin with, will prosper in its absence, despite the incoming nerfs to Holo quick uptime.

Condi Thief

• Spider Venom: Reduced poison duration from 6 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only
• Serpent's Touch: Reduced poison stacks from 2 to 1 in PvP only

^ I believe the nerf to Spider Venom will effect Condi DrD much more than most people are realizing right now. This nerf should be adequate.

Holosmith

• Kinetic Battery: Reduced quickness duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only
• Elixir U: Reduced stability duration from 6 seconds to 1 second in PvP only

^ It's going to need more nerfing than that. This spec's overperformance is currently disgusting. You certainly should nerf the quickness on U as well. But it seriously needs to lose the sustain from Heat Therapy and Forge needs to be put on a 9s CD just like everything else in the game has. If you don't go deep on this one, it's going to keep driving off player base as people are REALLY getting tired of dealing with a class that is both easy & powerful for new users to use AND has a high skill ceiling for veteran players. It's too much.

Condi Mirage

• Illusionary Counter: Reduced the number of clones spawned on block from 2 to 1 in PvP only
• Phantasmal Warlock:
  • Reduced the number of warlocks spawned from 2 to 1 in PvP only.
  • Increased the vulnerability applied per hit from 2 stacks to 4 stacks in PvP only
• Chaos Vortex:
  • Reduced bleed duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only.
  • Reduced burn duration from 2 seconds to 1 second in PvP only.
  • Reduced Torment duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only

^ I believe this all very unnecessary. The only thing it needs, is a shift on some of its damage from clone ambush, onto shatter play. This way the Mirage has to be offensive to deal the same level of damage, rather than be allowed to 100% defense while spamming clone ambush damage.

Rampage

• Rampage skills have been adjusted as follows
  • Kick: Power coefficient reduced from 1.2 to 0.01 in PvP only
  • Throw Boulder: Power coefficient reduced from 2.0 to 0.01 in PvP only
  • Seismic Leap: Power coefficient reduced from 1.6 to 0.01 in PvP only

^ Oh that'll definitely be a strong nerf, maybe a bit too strong.

Warrior’s Cunning

• Warrior's Cunning: Reduced damage bonus against targets above 90% health from 25% to 7% in PvP only. Reduced damage bonus against targets with barrier from 50% to 10% in PvP only.

^ Hrm, I think it would be more reasonable to go maybe: above 90% health is 10% damage, and then when opponent has barrier is 25% damage. Not sure it needs that big of a nerf.

Staff Thief

• Quick Pockets: Reduced initiative gained on weapon swap from 3 to 2 in PvP only
• Staff Master: Reduced endurance gain per initiative spent from 2 to 1 in PvP only
• Debilitating Arc: Reduced initiative cost from 6 to 5 in PvP only

^ The Staff Thieves out there would give better feedback than me, but I think it's mostly important that the animation exploits are fixed.

You mean that

sigil of agility

has removed counterplay from many skills whose big dmg was justified by their slow animation/cast time...in that regard the removal of the sigil is simply a

brilliant idea

P.S Holosmith is tolerable right now and not really that OP compared to the status quo, the reduction in quickness rather than sustain nerf at this point is again a brilliant idea , holosmith is a bruiser and to keep up with the current trends in power dmg/PvE and WvW..their sustain is justified, with the reduction of the dmg and less access to quickness...they become tolerable

No, that's not what I meant at all. What I meant was exactly what I said.

Holosmith is in no way tolerable, as indicated by 99.9% of the community feedback. You are actually the first person I've seen say anything at all to defend it or attempt to water down opinions of its clear overperformance. In fact, I think that "Holosmith being grossly overpowered in its current state" is the first thing I've seen everyone in this forum actually agree on, to the point that Holosmith mains don't even argue against that opinion, but rather show up in-thread and agree with everyone, while honestly trying to help better the flow of suggestions on how to fix it. So we can INB4 this "Holosmith isn't that strong" thing you got going on here.

Also, I was actually the first person to suggest quickness nerfs to Holosmith as a suggestion to bring down its overall DPS factor, as well as its capability to abuse water field blasting/leaping. It was posted in a thread several months ago, which ended up becoming a popular opinion. But what I'm telling you now, is that these quickness nerfs to Holosmith won't be enough to effect its performance vs. other classes/builds if Sigil Of Agility is removed along with the direct Holosmith nerfs. The removal of Sigil Of Agility and the nerfs to Holo Quickness will nerf the Quickness uptime of a Holosmith, but he'll still have quite frequent Quickness application nonetheless. However, the removal of Sigil Of Agility will actually remove MOST if not ALL of the Quickness application for other classes/builds. This will result in an effect where the Holosmith will remain just as proportionately powerful in the next meta, as he is now in this meta. If Sigil Of Agility were to be kept upon this next patch, then the Quickness nerfs to Holo would be adequate to bring Holosmith down to the level of other specs.

Note that I never vouched for or against Sigil Of Agility. I said that: "It might not be a good idea to remove it right now" as in, wait for a better patch to release the removal of the sigil. Cal had already stated that this next patch was going to be sort of a "fit in the quick stuff that is easy to do" kind of thing. Removing the Sigil Of Agility is not going to be a "Quick Fix" kind of thing. It's going to come with significant disproportionate changes & shifts to the existing balance that we have now. It is not going to lower the power creep in equalized balanced ways amongst every class. I believe it would be a better idea to wait for a larger and more organized patch to remove the sigil, one that will be able to compensate for the lopsided varying differences in balance effects that it will make vs. every class individually. IE: Removing Sigil Of Agility isn't a big loss in Quickness uptime for a Holosmith, but it is the only Quickness uptime that a Core Guardian has for his burst at all.

If you still aren't able to "See" what I'm trying to explain here, I'll just say that: You should be careful what you wish for.

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

@"Arheundel.6451" said:The real problem starts when the community does not realize that this game it's based on broken mechanics at core level, they allowed mechanics banished from others MMO:

1) Chainable CC - despites their original claims of hating chainable CC as they did in GW1....they fully allowed it to run unchecked in GW22) Re-stealthing option - in other games once stealthed..you can't re-stealth..it's just broken3) Overhybridization - The powercreep starts when a class can healburst and power/condi burst with the same buld, there should be limits to self-sustain as there should be to instant dmg

These are the basic problems on top of my head, but they're others, I just don't know why all of you still insist with this "skilled gameplay" talk when the very game is designed to get away with it

^You basically described Holosmith, especially your #3. Yet later you say:

@"Arheundel.6451" said:P.S Holosmith is tolerable right now and not really that OP compared to the status quo, the reduction in quickness rather than sustain nerf at this point is again a brilliant idea , holosmith is a bruiser and to keep up with the current trends in power dmg/PvE and WvW..their sustain is justified, with the reduction of the dmg and less access to quickness...they are tolerable now

The problem with Holosmith isn't so much its damage, or its stability up time, or its quickness up time (though these contribute). It's that it doesn't at all play according to its concept of being a high-risk, high reward glass cannon. Overheating should be the "high-risk" part of the equation but it is entirely missing because it is so easy to avoid. Meanwhile, it has some of the best self-healing (as broken down numerous times by people on this forum) courtesy of Heat Therapy, Healing Turret with water field finisher, and high stealth and quickness up-time to execute and cover it. It really, truly has it all: sustained damage--check, burst damage--check, CC--check, boon spam--check, stealth--check, sustain and resustain--check. It's been said that the only thing Holo lacks is long cooldowns.

Right now, there is no reward for outplaying a Holo in duel. They'll just be like, "Time out. Toss Elixir-S for 6 seconds of stealth, Healing Turret/water field for nearly full heal, then CC+burst you out of the still-going stealth"--all without ever having to leave the area of the fight. And they can do this multiple times within the span of a single duel because of those short cooldowns. This is the epitome of unfair.

People, including reasonable Holo mains, have been saying for a while, that the proper way to bring Holo in line (because it is most definitely not fine as is; it remains a persistent outlier) is to curb its sustain by nerfing Heat Therapy, upping Forge cooldowns, and perhaps nerfing Elixir S stealth duration, among other things. Unfortunately, going by this balance preview, they are again missing the mark. It isn't difficult. Literally do what Chaith has suggested in other threads here and that would be a huge step in the right direction.

[mortrialus.3062]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:

General

• Sigil of Agility has been removed from the PvP build panel

^ Not sure if that is a wise idea

right now.

A lot of the balance that we actually do have, is because of this single sigil. This very important single sigil, is what allows certain attacks from certain classes to be viable at all. If this sigil is removed, it will greatly effect the performance of certain build archetypes that utilize slower attacks during bursts, due to the sigil of agility. Some of these attacks that have honed in the balance structures of certain builds, have done so only due to the sigil of agility. I suggest maybe lowering the quickness uptime from 2s to 1s or something like that. But I believe that removing it entirely at this point, may cause more problems than it would solve. It's going to be a situation where, if it is removed, certain build archetypes will still survive because their animation times are juuuust fast enough to remain viable and practical, but certain other build archetypes which were already utilizing slower animation frames, will become too slow to be practical. When that happens, it is likely that the meta will flip flop all over the place again, and builds that were once balanced due to sigil of agility will become unviable, and builds like Holosmith that never needed it to begin with, will prosper in its absence, despite the incoming nerfs to Holo quick uptime.

Condi Thief

• Spider Venom: Reduced poison duration from 6 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only
• Serpent's Touch: Reduced poison stacks from 2 to 1 in PvP only

^ I believe the nerf to Spider Venom will effect Condi DrD much more than most people are realizing right now. This nerf should be adequate.

Holosmith

• Kinetic Battery: Reduced quickness duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only
• Elixir U: Reduced stability duration from 6 seconds to 1 second in PvP only

^ It's going to need more nerfing than that. This spec's overperformance is currently disgusting. You certainly should nerf the quickness on U as well. But it seriously needs to lose the sustain from Heat Therapy and Forge needs to be put on a 9s CD just like everything else in the game has. If you don't go deep on this one, it's going to keep driving off player base as people are REALLY getting tired of dealing with a class that is both easy & powerful for new users to use AND has a high skill ceiling for veteran players. It's too much.

Condi Mirage

• Illusionary Counter: Reduced the number of clones spawned on block from 2 to 1 in PvP only
• Phantasmal Warlock:
  • Reduced the number of warlocks spawned from 2 to 1 in PvP only.
  • Increased the vulnerability applied per hit from 2 stacks to 4 stacks in PvP only
• Chaos Vortex:
  • Reduced bleed duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only.
  • Reduced burn duration from 2 seconds to 1 second in PvP only.
  • Reduced Torment duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only

^ I believe this all very unnecessary. The only thing it needs, is a shift on some of its damage from clone ambush, onto shatter play. This way the Mirage has to be offensive to deal the same level of damage, rather than be allowed to 100% defense while spamming clone ambush damage.

Rampage

• Rampage skills have been adjusted as follows
  • Kick: Power coefficient reduced from 1.2 to 0.01 in PvP only
  • Throw Boulder: Power coefficient reduced from 2.0 to 0.01 in PvP only
  • Seismic Leap: Power coefficient reduced from 1.6 to 0.01 in PvP only

^ Oh that'll definitely be a strong nerf, maybe a bit too strong.

Warrior’s Cunning

• Warrior's Cunning: Reduced damage bonus against targets above 90% health from 25% to 7% in PvP only. Reduced damage bonus against targets with barrier from 50% to 10% in PvP only.

^ Hrm, I think it would be more reasonable to go maybe: above 90% health is 10% damage, and then when opponent has barrier is 25% damage. Not sure it needs that big of a nerf.

Staff Thief

• Quick Pockets: Reduced initiative gained on weapon swap from 3 to 2 in PvP only
• Staff Master: Reduced endurance gain per initiative spent from 2 to 1 in PvP only
• Debilitating Arc: Reduced initiative cost from 6 to 5 in PvP only

^ The Staff Thieves out there would give better feedback than me, but I think it's mostly important that the animation exploits are fixed.

You mean that

sigil of agility

has removed counterplay from many skills whose big dmg was justified by their slow animation/cast time...in that regard the removal of the sigil is simply a

brilliant idea

P.S Holosmith is tolerable right now and not really that OP compared to the status quo, the reduction in quickness rather than sustain nerf at this point is again a brilliant idea , holosmith is a bruiser and to keep up with the current trends in power dmg/PvE and WvW..their sustain is justified, with the reduction of the dmg and less access to quickness...they become tolerable

No, that's not what I meant at all. What I meant was exactly what I said.

Holosmith is in no way tolerable, as indicated by 99.9% of the community feedback. You are actually the first person I've seen say anything at all to defend it or attempt to water down opinions of its clear overperformance. In fact, I think that "Holosmith being grossly overpowered in its current state" is the first thing I've seen everyone in this forum actually agree on, to the point that Holosmith mains don't even argue against that opinion, but rather show up in-thread and agree with everyone, while honestly trying to help better the flow of suggestions on how to fix it. So we can INB4 this "Holosmith isn't that strong" thing you got going on here.

Also, I was actually the first person to suggest quickness nerfs to Holosmith as a suggestion to bring down its overall DPS factor, as well as its capability to abuse water field blasting/leaping. It was posted in a thread several months ago, which ended up becoming a popular opinion. But what I'm telling you now, is that these quickness nerfs to Holosmith won't be enough to effect its performance vs. other classes/builds if Sigil Of Agility is removed along with the direct Holosmith nerfs. The removal of Sigil Of Agility and the nerfs to Holo Quickness will nerf the Quickness uptime of a Holosmith, but he'll still have quite frequent Quickness application nonetheless. However, the removal of Sigil Of Agility will actually remove MOST if not ALL of the Quickness application for other classes/builds. This will result in an effect where the Holosmith will remain just as proportionately powerful in the next meta, as he is now in this meta. If Sigil Of Agility were to be kept upon this next patch, then the Quickness nerfs to Holo would be adequate to bring Holosmith down to the level of other specs.

Note that I never vouched for or against Sigil Of Agility. I said that: "It might not be a good idea to remove it right now" as in, wait for a better patch to release the removal of the sigil. Cal had already stated that this next patch was going to be sort of a "fit in the quick stuff that is easy to do" kind of thing. Removing the Sigil Of Agility is not going to be a "Quick Fix" kind of thing. It's going to come with significant disproportionate changes & shifts to the existing balance that we have now. It is not going to lower the power creep in equalized balanced ways amongst every class. I believe it would be a better idea to wait for a larger and more organized patch to remove the sigil, one that will be able to compensate for the lopsided varying differences in balance effects that it will make vs. every class individually. IE: Removing Sigil Of Agility isn't a big loss in Quickness uptime for a Holosmith, but it is the only Quickness uptime that a Core Guardian has for his burst at all.

If you still aren't able to "See" what I'm trying to explain here, I'll just say that: You should be careful what you wish for.

I'm personally happy Sigil of Agility is going away. It was reaching absurd levels of usage rates. Most builds in the game were using it to snap out one animation or another. Rangers, Soulbeasts, Core Guardians, Support Firebrands, Reapers, Scourge, Core Necromancers, Power GS Mesmers, Spellbreakers, Core Warriors, Heralds, Holosmith, Deadeyes, Holosmiths.

The only really good builds that weren't using it were Condition Thief, Fire Weaver, and Condition Mirage.

I think it had gotten to the point of "If everyone is using it then let's have no one use it and force everyone to decide on other options" levels of usage the way Surging Runes and Earth Runes had recently before.

[BruceLee.5092]

If you are nerfing damage, please don't forget fresh air weaver. With one shot and super speed and unlimited dodges and teleport and invul, its a one shot machine that's unkillable.

The build is unhealthy for the game so please take a look into that. If you nerf all the damage beside one, the meta will be unfun again.

[Arheundel.6451]

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@"Arheundel.6451" said:The real problem starts when the community does not realize that this game

it's based on broken mechanics

at core level, they allowed mechanics banished from others MMO:

1) Chainable CC - despites their original claims of hating chainable CC as they did in GW1....

they fully allowed it to run unchecked in GW2

2) Re-stealthing option - in other games once stealthed..you can't re-stealth..it's just broken3) Overhybridization - The powercreep starts when a class can healburst and power/condi burst with the same buld, there should be limits to self-sustain as there should be to instant dmg

These are the basic problems on top of my head, but they're others, I just don't know why all of you still insist with this "skilled gameplay" talk when the very game is designed to get away with it

^You basically described Holosmith, especially your #3. Yet later you say:

@"Arheundel.6451" said:P.S Holosmith is tolerable right now and not really that OP compared to the status quo, the reduction in quickness rather than sustain nerf at this point is again a brilliant idea , holosmith is a bruiser and to keep up with the current trends in power dmg/PvE and WvW..their sustain is justified, with the reduction of the dmg and less access to quickness...they are tolerable now

The problem with Holosmith isn't so much its damage, or its stability up time, or its quickness up time (though these contribute). It's that it doesn't at all play according to its concept of being a high-risk, high reward glass cannon. Overheating

should

be the "high-risk" part of the equation but it is entirely missing because it is so easy to avoid. Meanwhile, it has some of the best self-healing (as broken down numerous times by people on this forum) courtesy of Heat Therapy, Healing Turret with water field finisher, and high stealth and quickness up-time to execute and cover it. It really, truly has it all: sustained damage--check, burst damage--check, CC--check, boon spam--check, stealth--check, sustain and resustain--check. It's been said that the only thing Holo lacks is long cooldowns.

Right now, there is no reward for outplaying a Holo in duel. They'll just be like, "Time out. Toss Elixir-S for 6 seconds of stealth, Healing Turret/water field for nearly full heal, then CC+burst you out of the still-going stealth"--all without ever having to leave the area of the fight. And they can do this multiple times within the span of a single duel because of those short cooldowns. This is the epitome of unfair.

People, including reasonable Holo mains, have been saying for a while, that the proper way to bring Holo in line (because it is most definitely not fine as is; it remains a persistent outlier) is to curb its sustain by nerfing Heat Therapy, upping Forge cooldowns, and perhaps nerfing Elixir S stealth duration, among other things. Unfortunately, going by this balance preview, they are again missing the mark. It isn't difficult. Literally do what Chaith has suggested in other threads here and that would be a huge step in the right direction.

I'd like to know at this point what exactly is your reference point when talking about balance, we can talk about balance all you want in the end of the days there 9 professions with different mechanics, HP and armor levels in this game and yet the GW2 playerbase keeps asking for nerfs left and right or buff up and down.....where do you guys want to lead this balance?

Let's be realistic guys, this is a MMO meant for pve gameplay....we have 9 professions for that reason alone , expecting to dictate a skill based gameplay is nothing more than pure fantasy.

To put it blantly : X + X= 2 as an equation can only have a set limited number of option for variable X or have a single build for each class and this build would have a set amount of actions available, in that scenario the player with the best decision making wins; true balance would means having a single class with 2-3 actions

I believe you used warrior as template for balance in this game...shall we assume you want to "nerf" or "buff" all other classes to have as much sustain as the warrior in terms of numbers?...oh wait if you do that there is then the problem of armor and HP differences and pet/clones/stealth mechanics , shall I assume you want to change these too? based on which template of balance?

[Arheundel.6451]

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@"Arheundel.6451" said:The real problem starts when the community does not realize that this game

it's based on broken mechanics

at core level, they allowed mechanics banished from others MMO:

1) Chainable CC - despites their original claims of hating chainable CC as they did in GW1....

they fully allowed it to run unchecked in GW2

2) Re-stealthing option - in other games once stealthed..you can't re-stealth..it's just broken3) Overhybridization - The powercreep starts when a class can healburst and power/condi burst with the same buld, there should be limits to self-sustain as there should be to instant dmg

These are the basic problems on top of my head, but they're others, I just don't know why all of you still insist with this "skilled gameplay" talk when the very game is designed to get away with it

^You basically described Holosmith, especially your #3. Yet later you say:

@"Arheundel.6451" said:P.S Holosmith is tolerable right now and not really that OP compared to the status quo, the reduction in quickness rather than sustain nerf at this point is again a brilliant idea , holosmith is a bruiser and to keep up with the current trends in power dmg/PvE and WvW..their sustain is justified, with the reduction of the dmg and less access to quickness...they are tolerable now

The problem with Holosmith isn't so much its damage, or its stability up time, or its quickness up time (though these contribute). It's that it doesn't at all play according to its concept of being a high-risk, high reward glass cannon. Overheating

should

be the "high-risk" part of the equation but it is entirely missing because it is so easy to avoid. Meanwhile, it has some of the best self-healing (as broken down numerous times by people on this forum) courtesy of Heat Therapy, Healing Turret with water field finisher, and high stealth and quickness up-time to execute and cover it. It really, truly has it all: sustained damage--check, burst damage--check, CC--check, boon spam--check, stealth--check, sustain and resustain--check. It's been said that the only thing Holo lacks is long cooldowns.

Right now, there is no reward for outplaying a Holo in duel. They'll just be like, "Time out. Toss Elixir-S for 6 seconds of stealth, Healing Turret/water field for nearly full heal, then CC+burst you out of the still-going stealth"--all without ever having to leave the area of the fight. And they can do this multiple times within the span of a single duel because of those short cooldowns. This is the epitome of unfair.

People, including reasonable Holo mains, have been saying for a while, that the proper way to bring Holo in line (because it is most definitely not fine as is; it remains a persistent outlier) is to curb its sustain by nerfing Heat Therapy, upping Forge cooldowns, and perhaps nerfing Elixir S stealth duration, among other things. Unfortunately, going by this balance preview, they are again missing the mark. It isn't difficult. Literally do what Chaith has suggested in other threads here and that would be a huge step in the right direction.

Holo mains have been asking for nerfs to other professions as compensation to reductions in sustain...basically nobody wants to be the underdog and yet everybody wants to draw water from the well. Game needs changes...but those changes must be made while keeping in mind the idea of fun....your fun it's not the only element in the equation, there is also your enemy idea of fun

@Chaith in his posts was specifically asking for nerfs on everybody else while suggesting what should be nerfed on Holo....he's not different from the rest of us, he still wants to have fun while playing the game aka he doesn't want to play the underdog either , for the vast majority fighting uphill battles is not fun.

It's not fun to fight a mesmer for example and yet if you mention this to a mesmer...he will come out with usual L2P arguments, every class does that.

[Arheundel.6451]

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Umm...

Sharper Images and Duelist's Disclipline on mesmer need to get looked at too. Pistol 4 can apply 18 stacks of bleeding on a 20 second cooldown and can almost be instantly reset with interrupts from stuff like sword ambush spam.

Please don't forget about these 2 traits. 18 stacks of bleeding on a single button press is CRAZY overpowered.

now that cmirage is nerfed to kitten you wanna nerf core condi mes i see?those "18" bleeds deal same damage as other hard hitting skills of other classes, prove me wrong or go home.

Suuuure... if you insist.

1. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 7 seconds (not even the full 18 bleeds lel)
2. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 33 seconds
3. TTK on Light Golem = 31 seconds
4. TTK on Light Golem = 18 seconds/26 seconds

Bonus!

5. TTK on Light Golem = 5 seconds (can be spammed or just passively does stupid amounts of damage every time a mirage dodges)

Not to mention the other 4 skills in the sc/p weaponset also do a ton of damage, 1 ccs you, + multiple ambushes to dodge. Compare the 7-8 skills necessary to avoid on sc/p to the 1 skill on ranger gs that can kill you (maul) and the 3 on warrior gs (maul, whirlwind, arcing slice) etc. etc. and it should be pretty easy to see why mesmers are completely overloaded.

if you gonna post biased stuff I shall too.

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

here you go. 6,3k ranger autoattack.how many of them can you throw at 1,5k range with quickness? 10 in that 7s? that would deal 63k dmg. :D

Sure and I can make the Phantasmal Duelist do way more burst damage as well.

Someone is just salty they've gotten proven wrong yet again lmao.

dont have to mate, did it for you ( or rather some random oponent did )

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

6350 dmg, long range shot. basic longbow auto with 1500+ range. (usable while moving )2242 dmg, rapid fire ( 1 hit ) it fires 10 over all so thats total of 22420 dmg. again 1500+ range,

usable while moving.

so you die in what, 1,5s? 2s? from 1500 range. and you compare it to 8s bleed + pistol channel, that will do about 10k dmg if not cleansed.

Yeah sure you'd die in 1.5/2s from 1500 range if you have a 12k health pool and no boons or toughness meanwhile I'm over here casting Phantasmal Duelist one shotting everyone while remaining completely stationary!

Keep reaching lmao.

If you eat entire pistol 4 channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesnt happen becouse everyone just cleanses that INSANE 18 BLEEDS OP.you dont get to cleanse 22,4k rapid fire from 1500+ range. even if you eat 3-4 shots thats still 6-8k dmg.toughtness? protection? sure lets add prot and toughtness, oh wait still about 10-14kdmg. thats STILL more then p4.keep whining mate, keep whining.

If you eat the entire rapid fire channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesn't happen (except to you judging by the screenshots) because everyone just walks behind a wall!

I'm sorry to tell you that toughness and protection don't reduce condition damage! Pistol 4 will still kill a light armored class just as fast regardless of whether they're on paladins or marauders.

LMAO you're the one whining. "Mesmer is so weak literally nothing does damage because you can dodge it D: does no damage can't survive you can't nerf anything about this class because you can only nerf mesmer if a team wins MAT for 2 years in a row with 5 mesmer comp" blah blah blah like come on I'll prove you wrong again later but clearly pistol 4 does more damage than all of these other hard hitting skills. You're just in denial constantly about anything mesmer related yet have the audacity to call other people biased. :joy:

Mate, I just posted a screenshot of rangers autoattack dealing almost as much damage as entire pistol 4 channel, cut the kitten.Unlike you I dont go around forums creating post, putting biased, cut out of contecst kitten to fit my agenda.You even go out of your way to outright lie to get mesmer nerfed.GJ they will nerf staff, mirage will still be cancer, people will still whine, YOU will still whine. nothing changes other then the fact that staff becomes unplayable.people will move on to scept/torch + axe/pistol or some sort of bunkercondi mesmer. GJ you did it, 1 less build clap clap.All I do is come here to poke fun at people that go out of their way to bend the truth, so it can fit their agenda.

like what, staff 3 thief abuse baaaad needs to go.gs1 ranger evade abuse goooood bring back.this is you, biased. as always.

Mate, that ranger was on a full glass cannon build. Not to mention a 6k auto attack would only take around half of the Light Golem's health off meanwhile Phantasmal Duelist killed it in a single cast.

Lmfao those videos cut or biased? I literally just hopped on wanderers/demo and used the skills on meta builds and didn't stack any additional modifiers the builds wouldn't normally run.

The difference between daredevil staff 3 and ranger gs autos is that the daredevil can be nearly untouchable for a VERY long time while the ranger autos actually require you to hit your target twice before the evade triggers so there is way more counterplay for the latter.

Don't know what set up you were using but I tried replicating it with the most popular wander/deadshot condition mirage.

Light Golem has 17,193 health so 62% of that in one attack ends up being 10,662 damage over about 7 seconds. With about 1.2k of that being from the power portion of the attack.

You're also definitely running a lot more power. On Deadshot/Wanderer the duelist does 1k-1.5k on the power portion of the attack and you're getting 2-3 three times that from the power portion.

I even ran a goofy variant using Krait runes and an Agony sigil to bump my bleeding duration up to 100% and even with a pretty yolo combo like that while I was getting really close but it still wasn't one shotting.

I tried a few options and I found Grieving amulet, with Krait Runes and Agony Sigil and Signet of Midnight will get occasional one shots while the phantasm does 3k+ in physical damage when you get lucky with crits.

I also gave rapid fire the same test with fury on my sic em soulbeast and this is what I got.

Are you seriously comparing condi mirage to lb soulbeast using zephyr+scholar runes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8031_uhtIM..this

is a power variant, at one point winning 1vs2...and these are not practice golems

We're discussing what level of damage from a single skill is reasonable, so yeah similar DPS skills with similar realistic stat set ups are relevant. Quickening Zephyr doesn't increase the overall damage of the Rapid Fire, it just makes the cast complete faster. I'm not sure why you're mentioning it as though it's boosting the damage beyond what's normal. I used it to give my soulbeast fury since in Shadowpass's test he specifically set it up so that Phantasmal Duelist had fury. This wasn't even using pet stacks or sic em. Just the pure vanilla stats from gear and traits. A core ranger can get the same damage results.

The question is 10.5k damage on a 20 second cooldown that involves a 2 second channel and 7 seconds of bleed after said channel too much damage compared other damage dealer skills?

There's so much counter play to this skill that other skills that do similar damage have noticeably less than. First you can prevent the phantasm from spawning entirely through environmental Line of Sight as well as using invulnerabilities like Elixir S, Obsidian Flesh, Renewed Focus. Second the bleeding doesn't just apply to you instantly. The mesmer has an animation which signifies the Phantasm will be spawning, it's the three bullets that fly in a weird arc. This doesn't do much damage but it signifies the attack is about to happen. Second the Phantasm casts it's unload, this itself is a 2 second channel as far as I can tell. So even if you get hit by the first packet of damage because they got the drop on you you can still react and avoid 87.5% of the entire skill's damage and all it's bleeds. So let's say you eat the entire skill and now you have 9k damage in bleed on you. You can cleanse it and get rid of all of it. And if you can't avoid it, if you can't cleanse it, it's possible to heal through it whereas getting hit with a 10k Crit from a power class isn't going to give you that luxury.

Is it strong? Yeah, Duelist is very strong and impactful can and often is the skill that wins the fight. Is he super over powered? I think in light of the cooldown, the actual clear audio and visual tell on the attack, and the multitude of ways and opportunities to survive the skill both before it lands it's damage and even afterwards makes me feel the overall level of damage is justified.

Your idea of counterplay is what would work basically against anything

Yeah. Because it's basically like any other attack. It's not like we're dealing with pre-nerf Death's Judgement that's also unblockable and thus can't be blocked or nullified by projectile reflection and destruction. It's just any other DPS attack just with a slightly unusual delivery method and it's damage values aren't out of the ordinary.

...like blow out high CD defenses for a second of respite, your answer

Never said you needed to blow high cooldown defenses. I simply stated that if you eat the full attack, which gives plenty of warning to avoid, by it's nature as a condition damage attack you also have methods to entirely retroactively mitigate the damage should a mistake like that happen and verses attacks that do all their damage immediately you do not get that opportunity. You get hit by an 8k Arcing Slice? If you're below 8k health you don't get to heal that off or use a cooldown to retroactively nullify that damage before it's all applied.

Your wording is also kind of hard to parse here. It sounds like you're saying you should be able to avoid 100% of damage without needing to expend any resources like cooldowns what so ever.

Simply in GW1 there was a limit on degen from condis at -8 arrows for sec so no matter how many condis the enemy would stuck on you...you still would lose -8 arrows for seconds and that's why the gameplay was smarter , easy to follow from the outside and overall more enjoyable ; same concept goes for CC..you could not CC an already CCed target

which makes bloody sense

while in GW2 you can daze and already dazed target , asking to remove this brainless gameplay is not exactly a request for 100% dmg inmmunity.

Okay. What should the hard limit be on how long a condition damage build needs to spend attacking in order to kill a stationary target that doesn't fight or cast skills? What is your proposed hard limit on their damage per second?

They could limit the number of damaging and not damaging conditions applicable on a single enemy at time, a limit that stays till the expiration or removal of such condition : Ex - you apply burning-bleed-confusion on Bob like 12 stacks each for 20s, for 20s no other damaging condition can be applied on BoB unless he removes one or two of those condis and in which case 1 or 2 new condis can be applied on Bob, if he doesn't clear than the attacker can renew the same condis before the time expires or simply wait it out and reapply same or different conditions. While doing that limit the number of non damaging condis to 1-2; right now you can load Bob with all condis with absolutely nothing he can do because many skills applying condis in this game also have CC/daze/stun.

Roughly the same concept used in GW1, you apply burning dealin -8 arrows, you could not apply another -8 arrows condi while burning was still active....

after doing that you can take a look at condi removal

so that we move away from condi bunkers doing burst

I never played guild wars 1. -8 arrows means nothing to me.

There you go https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Health_degeneration

[Crab Fear.1624]

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Umm...

Sharper Images and Duelist's Disclipline on mesmer need to get looked at too. Pistol 4 can apply 18 stacks of bleeding on a 20 second cooldown and can almost be instantly reset with interrupts from stuff like sword ambush spam.

Please don't forget about these 2 traits. 18 stacks of bleeding on a single button press is CRAZY overpowered.

now that cmirage is nerfed to kitten you wanna nerf core condi mes i see?those "18" bleeds deal same damage as other hard hitting skills of other classes, prove me wrong or go home.

Suuuure... if you insist.

1. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 7 seconds (not even the full 18 bleeds lel)
2. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 33 seconds
3. TTK on Light Golem = 31 seconds
4. TTK on Light Golem = 18 seconds/26 seconds

Bonus!

5. TTK on Light Golem = 5 seconds (can be spammed or just passively does stupid amounts of damage every time a mirage dodges)

Not to mention the other 4 skills in the sc/p weaponset also do a ton of damage, 1 ccs you, + multiple ambushes to dodge. Compare the 7-8 skills necessary to avoid on sc/p to the 1 skill on ranger gs that can kill you (maul) and the 3 on warrior gs (maul, whirlwind, arcing slice) etc. etc. and it should be pretty easy to see why mesmers are completely overloaded.

if you gonna post biased stuff I shall too.

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

here you go. 6,3k ranger autoattack.how many of them can you throw at 1,5k range with quickness? 10 in that 7s? that would deal 63k dmg. :D

Sure and I can make the Phantasmal Duelist do way more burst damage as well.

Someone is just salty they've gotten proven wrong yet again lmao.

dont have to mate, did it for you ( or rather some random oponent did )

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

6350 dmg, long range shot. basic longbow auto with 1500+ range. (usable while moving )2242 dmg, rapid fire ( 1 hit ) it fires 10 over all so thats total of 22420 dmg. again 1500+ range,

usable while moving.

so you die in what, 1,5s? 2s? from 1500 range. and you compare it to 8s bleed + pistol channel, that will do about 10k dmg if not cleansed.

Yeah sure you'd die in 1.5/2s from 1500 range if you have a 12k health pool and no boons or toughness meanwhile I'm over here casting Phantasmal Duelist one shotting everyone while remaining completely stationary!

Keep reaching lmao.

If you eat entire pistol 4 channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesnt happen becouse everyone just cleanses that INSANE 18 BLEEDS OP.you dont get to cleanse 22,4k rapid fire from 1500+ range. even if you eat 3-4 shots thats still 6-8k dmg.toughtness? protection? sure lets add prot and toughtness, oh wait still about 10-14kdmg. thats STILL more then p4.keep whining mate, keep whining.

If you eat the entire rapid fire channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesn't happen (except to you judging by the screenshots) because everyone just walks behind a wall!

I'm sorry to tell you that toughness and protection don't reduce condition damage! Pistol 4 will still kill a light armored class just as fast regardless of whether they're on paladins or marauders.

LMAO you're the one whining. "Mesmer is so weak literally nothing does damage because you can dodge it D: does no damage can't survive you can't nerf anything about this class because you can only nerf mesmer if a team wins MAT for 2 years in a row with 5 mesmer comp" blah blah blah like come on I'll prove you wrong again later but clearly pistol 4 does more damage than all of these other hard hitting skills. You're just in denial constantly about anything mesmer related yet have the audacity to call other people biased. :joy:

Mate, I just posted a screenshot of rangers autoattack dealing almost as much damage as entire pistol 4 channel, cut the kitten.Unlike you I dont go around forums creating post, putting biased, cut out of contecst kitten to fit my agenda.You even go out of your way to outright lie to get mesmer nerfed.GJ they will nerf staff, mirage will still be cancer, people will still whine, YOU will still whine. nothing changes other then the fact that staff becomes unplayable.people will move on to scept/torch + axe/pistol or some sort of bunkercondi mesmer. GJ you did it, 1 less build clap clap.All I do is come here to poke fun at people that go out of their way to bend the truth, so it can fit their agenda.

like what, staff 3 thief abuse baaaad needs to go.gs1 ranger evade abuse goooood bring back.this is you, biased. as always.

Mate, that ranger was on a full glass cannon build. Not to mention a 6k auto attack would only take around half of the Light Golem's health off meanwhile Phantasmal Duelist killed it in a single cast.

Lmfao those videos cut or biased? I literally just hopped on wanderers/demo and used the skills on meta builds and didn't stack any additional modifiers the builds wouldn't normally run.

The difference between daredevil staff 3 and ranger gs autos is that the daredevil can be nearly untouchable for a VERY long time while the ranger autos actually require you to hit your target twice before the evade triggers so there is way more counterplay for the latter.

Don't know what set up you were using but I tried replicating it with the most popular wander/deadshot condition mirage.

Light Golem has 17,193 health so 62% of that in one attack ends up being 10,662 damage over about 7 seconds. With about 1.2k of that being from the power portion of the attack.

You're also definitely running a lot more power. On Deadshot/Wanderer the duelist does 1k-1.5k on the power portion of the attack and you're getting 2-3 three times that from the power portion.

I even ran a goofy variant using Krait runes and an Agony sigil to bump my bleeding duration up to 100% and even with a pretty yolo combo like that while I was getting really close but it still wasn't one shotting.

I tried a few options and I found Grieving amulet, with Krait Runes and Agony Sigil and Signet of Midnight will get occasional one shots while the phantasm does 3k+ in physical damage when you get lucky with crits.

I also gave rapid fire the same test with fury on my sic em soulbeast and this is what I got.

Are you seriously comparing condi mirage to lb soulbeast using zephyr+scholar runes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8031_uhtIM..this

is a power variant, at one point winning 1vs2...and these are not practice golems

We're discussing what level of damage from a single skill is reasonable, so yeah similar DPS skills with similar realistic stat set ups are relevant. Quickening Zephyr doesn't increase the overall damage of the Rapid Fire, it just makes the cast complete faster. I'm not sure why you're mentioning it as though it's boosting the damage beyond what's normal. I used it to give my soulbeast fury since in Shadowpass's test he specifically set it up so that Phantasmal Duelist had fury. This wasn't even using pet stacks or sic em. Just the pure vanilla stats from gear and traits. A core ranger can get the same damage results.

The question is 10.5k damage on a 20 second cooldown that involves a 2 second channel and 7 seconds of bleed after said channel too much damage compared other damage dealer skills?

There's so much counter play to this skill that other skills that do similar damage have noticeably less than. First you can prevent the phantasm from spawning entirely through environmental Line of Sight as well as using invulnerabilities like Elixir S, Obsidian Flesh, Renewed Focus. Second the bleeding doesn't just apply to you instantly. The mesmer has an animation which signifies the Phantasm will be spawning, it's the three bullets that fly in a weird arc. This doesn't do much damage but it signifies the attack is about to happen. Second the Phantasm casts it's unload, this itself is a 2 second channel as far as I can tell. So even if you get hit by the first packet of damage because they got the drop on you you can still react and avoid 87.5% of the entire skill's damage and all it's bleeds. So let's say you eat the entire skill and now you have 9k damage in bleed on you. You can cleanse it and get rid of all of it. And if you can't avoid it, if you can't cleanse it, it's possible to heal through it whereas getting hit with a 10k Crit from a power class isn't going to give you that luxury.

Is it strong? Yeah, Duelist is very strong and impactful can and often is the skill that wins the fight. Is he super over powered? I think in light of the cooldown, the actual clear audio and visual tell on the attack, and the multitude of ways and opportunities to survive the skill both before it lands it's damage and even afterwards makes me feel the overall level of damage is justified.

Your idea of counterplay is what would work basically against anything

Yeah. Because it's basically like any other attack. It's not like we're dealing with pre-nerf Death's Judgement that's also unblockable and thus can't be blocked or nullified by projectile reflection and destruction. It's just any other DPS attack just with a slightly unusual delivery method and it's damage values aren't out of the ordinary.

...like blow out high CD defenses for a second of respite, your answer

Never said you needed to blow high cooldown defenses. I simply stated that if you eat the full attack, which gives plenty of warning to avoid, by it's nature as a condition damage attack you also have methods to entirely retroactively mitigate the damage should a mistake like that happen and verses attacks that do all their damage immediately you do not get that opportunity. You get hit by an 8k Arcing Slice? If you're below 8k health you don't get to heal that off or use a cooldown to retroactively nullify that damage before it's all applied.

Your wording is also kind of hard to parse here. It sounds like you're saying you should be able to avoid 100% of damage without needing to expend any resources like cooldowns what so ever.

Simply in GW1 there was a limit on degen from condis at -8 arrows for sec so no matter how many condis the enemy would stuck on you...you still would lose -8 arrows for seconds and that's why the gameplay was smarter , easy to follow from the outside and overall more enjoyable ; same concept goes for CC..you could not CC an already CCed target

which makes bloody sense

while in GW2 you can daze and already dazed target , asking to remove this brainless gameplay is not exactly a request for 100% dmg inmmunity.

Okay. What should the hard limit be on how long a condition damage build needs to spend attacking in order to kill a stationary target that doesn't fight or cast skills? What is your proposed hard limit on their damage per second?

They could limit the number of damaging and not damaging conditions applicable on a single enemy at time, a limit that stays till the expiration or removal of such condition : Ex - you apply burning-bleed-confusion on Bob like 12 stacks each for 20s, for 20s no other damaging condition can be applied on BoB unless he removes one or two of those condis and in which case 1 or 2 new condis can be applied on Bob, if he doesn't clear than the attacker can renew the same condis before the time expires or simply wait it out and reapply same or different conditions. While doing that limit the number of non damaging condis to 1-2; right now you can load Bob with all condis with absolutely nothing he can do because many skills applying condis in this game also have CC/daze/stun.

Roughly the same concept used in GW1, you apply burning dealin -8 arrows, you could not apply another -8 arrows condi while burning was still active....

after doing that you can take a look at condi removal

so that we move away from condi bunkers doing burst

I never played guild wars 1. -8 arrows means nothing to me.

Thing of it like revenant energy allotment to upkeep, but instead of draining energy the condition is draining health.

[viquing.8254]

@Arheundel.6451 said:It's not fun to fight a mesmer for example and yet if you mention this to a mesmer...he will come out with usual L2P arguments, every class does that.ttt we come with data argument now :p

[Virdo.1540]

I love those things and cant wait for them to come!

But just to mention.... after all the Damage-Nerfs from the Revenant & the might-generation being completely torn down, could it be possible to lower the energy cost of "Impossible Odds" of the Assassin-Stance to the normal 6-bars?

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:The real problem starts when the community does not realize that this game

it's based on broken mechanics

at core level, they allowed mechanics banished from others MMO:

1) Chainable CC - despites their original claims of hating chainable CC as they did in GW1....

they fully allowed it to run unchecked in GW2

2) Re-stealthing option - in other games once stealthed..you can't re-stealth..it's just broken3) Overhybridization - The powercreep starts when a class can healburst and power/condi burst with the same buld, there should be limits to self-sustain as there should be to instant dmg

These are the basic problems on top of my head, but they're others, I just don't know why all of you still insist with this "skilled gameplay" talk when the very game is designed to get away with it

^You basically described Holosmith, especially your #3. Yet later you say:

@Arheundel.6451 said:P.S Holosmith is tolerable right now and not really that OP compared to the status quo, the reduction in quickness rather than sustain nerf at this point is again a brilliant idea , holosmith is a bruiser and to keep up with the current trends in power dmg/PvE and WvW..their sustain is justified, with the reduction of the dmg and less access to quickness...they are tolerable now

The problem with Holosmith isn't so much its damage, or its stability up time, or its quickness up time (though these contribute). It's that it doesn't at all play according to its concept of being a high-risk, high reward glass cannon. Overheating

should

be the "high-risk" part of the equation but it is entirely missing because it is so easy to avoid. Meanwhile, it has some of the best self-healing (as broken down numerous times by people on this forum) courtesy of Heat Therapy, Healing Turret with water field finisher, and high stealth and quickness up-time to execute and cover it. It really, truly has it all: sustained damage--check, burst damage--check, CC--check, boon spam--check, stealth--check, sustain and resustain--check. It's been said that the only thing Holo lacks is long cooldowns.

Right now, there is no reward for outplaying a Holo in duel. They'll just be like, "Time out. Toss Elixir-S for 6 seconds of stealth, Healing Turret/water field for nearly full heal, then CC+burst you out of the still-going stealth"--all without ever having to leave the area of the fight. And they can do this multiple times within the span of a single duel because of those short cooldowns. This is the epitome of unfair.

People, including reasonable Holo mains, have been saying for a while, that the proper way to bring Holo in line (because it is most definitely not fine as is; it remains a persistent outlier) is to curb its sustain by nerfing Heat Therapy, upping Forge cooldowns, and perhaps nerfing Elixir S stealth duration, among other things. Unfortunately, going by this balance preview, they are again missing the mark. It isn't difficult. Literally do what Chaith has suggested in other threads here and that would be a huge step in the right direction.

Holo mains have been asking for nerfs to other professions as compensation to reductions in sustain...basically nobody wants to be the underdog and yet everybody wants to draw water from the well. Game needs changes...but those changes must be made while keeping in mind the idea of fun....

your fun it's not the only element in the equation, there is also your enemy idea of fun

@Chaith in his posts was specifically asking for nerfs on everybody else while suggesting what should be nerfed on Holo....he's not different from the rest of us, he still wants to have fun while playing the game aka he doesn't want to play the underdog either , for the vast majority fighting uphill battles is not fun.

It's not fun to fight a mesmer for example and yet if you mention this to a mesmer...he will come out with usual L2P arguments, every class does that.

Except, most everything else has seen serious nerfs over the last several updates. Everything but Holo. The last time they tried to hit Holo was with disabling Toolbelt skills upon Overheating. That proved to be another toothless nerf that mainly affected PvE, not PvP and WvW where again, Overheating seldom happens. Currently, Holo is hands down the top duelist, and is also useful in other roles. It's hard to point to any real drawbacks. It's a jack of all trades, and is great, if not superb, at all.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Holo being the most blatently OP spec in the game gets a slap on the wrist compared to other specs who got things some somewhat over nerfed.Good job professional devs.Least ur trying I guess

[mortrialus.3062]

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Umm...

Sharper Images and Duelist's Disclipline on mesmer need to get looked at too. Pistol 4 can apply 18 stacks of bleeding on a 20 second cooldown and can almost be instantly reset with interrupts from stuff like sword ambush spam.

Please don't forget about these 2 traits. 18 stacks of bleeding on a single button press is CRAZY overpowered.

now that cmirage is nerfed to kitten you wanna nerf core condi mes i see?those "18" bleeds deal same damage as other hard hitting skills of other classes, prove me wrong or go home.

Suuuure... if you insist.

1. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 7 seconds (not even the full 18 bleeds lel)
2. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 33 seconds
3. TTK on Light Golem = 31 seconds
4. TTK on Light Golem = 18 seconds/26 seconds

Bonus!

5. TTK on Light Golem = 5 seconds (can be spammed or just passively does stupid amounts of damage every time a mirage dodges)

Not to mention the other 4 skills in the sc/p weaponset also do a ton of damage, 1 ccs you, + multiple ambushes to dodge. Compare the 7-8 skills necessary to avoid on sc/p to the 1 skill on ranger gs that can kill you (maul) and the 3 on warrior gs (maul, whirlwind, arcing slice) etc. etc. and it should be pretty easy to see why mesmers are completely overloaded.

if you gonna post biased stuff I shall too.

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

here you go. 6,3k ranger autoattack.how many of them can you throw at 1,5k range with quickness? 10 in that 7s? that would deal 63k dmg. :D

Sure and I can make the Phantasmal Duelist do way more burst damage as well.

Someone is just salty they've gotten proven wrong yet again lmao.

dont have to mate, did it for you ( or rather some random oponent did )

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

6350 dmg, long range shot. basic longbow auto with 1500+ range. (usable while moving )2242 dmg, rapid fire ( 1 hit ) it fires 10 over all so thats total of 22420 dmg. again 1500+ range,

usable while moving.

so you die in what, 1,5s? 2s? from 1500 range. and you compare it to 8s bleed + pistol channel, that will do about 10k dmg if not cleansed.

Yeah sure you'd die in 1.5/2s from 1500 range if you have a 12k health pool and no boons or toughness meanwhile I'm over here casting Phantasmal Duelist one shotting everyone while remaining completely stationary!

Keep reaching lmao.

If you eat entire pistol 4 channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesnt happen becouse everyone just cleanses that INSANE 18 BLEEDS OP.you dont get to cleanse 22,4k rapid fire from 1500+ range. even if you eat 3-4 shots thats still 6-8k dmg.toughtness? protection? sure lets add prot and toughtness, oh wait still about 10-14kdmg. thats STILL more then p4.keep whining mate, keep whining.

If you eat the entire rapid fire channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesn't happen (except to you judging by the screenshots) because everyone just walks behind a wall!

I'm sorry to tell you that toughness and protection don't reduce condition damage! Pistol 4 will still kill a light armored class just as fast regardless of whether they're on paladins or marauders.

LMAO you're the one whining. "Mesmer is so weak literally nothing does damage because you can dodge it D: does no damage can't survive you can't nerf anything about this class because you can only nerf mesmer if a team wins MAT for 2 years in a row with 5 mesmer comp" blah blah blah like come on I'll prove you wrong again later but clearly pistol 4 does more damage than all of these other hard hitting skills. You're just in denial constantly about anything mesmer related yet have the audacity to call other people biased. :joy:

Mate, I just posted a screenshot of rangers autoattack dealing almost as much damage as entire pistol 4 channel, cut the kitten.Unlike you I dont go around forums creating post, putting biased, cut out of contecst kitten to fit my agenda.You even go out of your way to outright lie to get mesmer nerfed.GJ they will nerf staff, mirage will still be cancer, people will still whine, YOU will still whine. nothing changes other then the fact that staff becomes unplayable.people will move on to scept/torch + axe/pistol or some sort of bunkercondi mesmer. GJ you did it, 1 less build clap clap.All I do is come here to poke fun at people that go out of their way to bend the truth, so it can fit their agenda.

like what, staff 3 thief abuse baaaad needs to go.gs1 ranger evade abuse goooood bring back.this is you, biased. as always.

Mate, that ranger was on a full glass cannon build. Not to mention a 6k auto attack would only take around half of the Light Golem's health off meanwhile Phantasmal Duelist killed it in a single cast.

Lmfao those videos cut or biased? I literally just hopped on wanderers/demo and used the skills on meta builds and didn't stack any additional modifiers the builds wouldn't normally run.

The difference between daredevil staff 3 and ranger gs autos is that the daredevil can be nearly untouchable for a VERY long time while the ranger autos actually require you to hit your target twice before the evade triggers so there is way more counterplay for the latter.

Don't know what set up you were using but I tried replicating it with the most popular wander/deadshot condition mirage.

Light Golem has 17,193 health so 62% of that in one attack ends up being 10,662 damage over about 7 seconds. With about 1.2k of that being from the power portion of the attack.

You're also definitely running a lot more power. On Deadshot/Wanderer the duelist does 1k-1.5k on the power portion of the attack and you're getting 2-3 three times that from the power portion.

I even ran a goofy variant using Krait runes and an Agony sigil to bump my bleeding duration up to 100% and even with a pretty yolo combo like that while I was getting really close but it still wasn't one shotting.

I tried a few options and I found Grieving amulet, with Krait Runes and Agony Sigil and Signet of Midnight will get occasional one shots while the phantasm does 3k+ in physical damage when you get lucky with crits.

I also gave rapid fire the same test with fury on my sic em soulbeast and this is what I got.

Are you seriously comparing condi mirage to lb soulbeast using zephyr+scholar runes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8031_uhtIM..this

is a power variant, at one point winning 1vs2...and these are not practice golems

We're discussing what level of damage from a single skill is reasonable, so yeah similar DPS skills with similar realistic stat set ups are relevant. Quickening Zephyr doesn't increase the overall damage of the Rapid Fire, it just makes the cast complete faster. I'm not sure why you're mentioning it as though it's boosting the damage beyond what's normal. I used it to give my soulbeast fury since in Shadowpass's test he specifically set it up so that Phantasmal Duelist had fury. This wasn't even using pet stacks or sic em. Just the pure vanilla stats from gear and traits. A core ranger can get the same damage results.

The question is 10.5k damage on a 20 second cooldown that involves a 2 second channel and 7 seconds of bleed after said channel too much damage compared other damage dealer skills?

There's so much counter play to this skill that other skills that do similar damage have noticeably less than. First you can prevent the phantasm from spawning entirely through environmental Line of Sight as well as using invulnerabilities like Elixir S, Obsidian Flesh, Renewed Focus. Second the bleeding doesn't just apply to you instantly. The mesmer has an animation which signifies the Phantasm will be spawning, it's the three bullets that fly in a weird arc. This doesn't do much damage but it signifies the attack is about to happen. Second the Phantasm casts it's unload, this itself is a 2 second channel as far as I can tell. So even if you get hit by the first packet of damage because they got the drop on you you can still react and avoid 87.5% of the entire skill's damage and all it's bleeds. So let's say you eat the entire skill and now you have 9k damage in bleed on you. You can cleanse it and get rid of all of it. And if you can't avoid it, if you can't cleanse it, it's possible to heal through it whereas getting hit with a 10k Crit from a power class isn't going to give you that luxury.

Is it strong? Yeah, Duelist is very strong and impactful can and often is the skill that wins the fight. Is he super over powered? I think in light of the cooldown, the actual clear audio and visual tell on the attack, and the multitude of ways and opportunities to survive the skill both before it lands it's damage and even afterwards makes me feel the overall level of damage is justified.

Your idea of counterplay is what would work basically against anything

Yeah. Because it's basically like any other attack. It's not like we're dealing with pre-nerf Death's Judgement that's also unblockable and thus can't be blocked or nullified by projectile reflection and destruction. It's just any other DPS attack just with a slightly unusual delivery method and it's damage values aren't out of the ordinary.

...like blow out high CD defenses for a second of respite, your answer

Never said you needed to blow high cooldown defenses. I simply stated that if you eat the full attack, which gives plenty of warning to avoid, by it's nature as a condition damage attack you also have methods to entirely retroactively mitigate the damage should a mistake like that happen and verses attacks that do all their damage immediately you do not get that opportunity. You get hit by an 8k Arcing Slice? If you're below 8k health you don't get to heal that off or use a cooldown to retroactively nullify that damage before it's all applied.

Your wording is also kind of hard to parse here. It sounds like you're saying you should be able to avoid 100% of damage without needing to expend any resources like cooldowns what so ever.

Simply in GW1 there was a limit on degen from condis at -8 arrows for sec so no matter how many condis the enemy would stuck on you...you still would lose -8 arrows for seconds and that's why the gameplay was smarter , easy to follow from the outside and overall more enjoyable ; same concept goes for CC..you could not CC an already CCed target

which makes bloody sense

while in GW2 you can daze and already dazed target , asking to remove this brainless gameplay is not exactly a request for 100% dmg inmmunity.

Okay. What should the hard limit be on how long a condition damage build needs to spend attacking in order to kill a stationary target that doesn't fight or cast skills? What is your proposed hard limit on their damage per second?

They could limit the number of damaging and not damaging conditions applicable on a single enemy at time, a limit that stays till the expiration or removal of such condition : Ex - you apply burning-bleed-confusion on Bob like 12 stacks each for 20s, for 20s no other damaging condition can be applied on BoB unless he removes one or two of those condis and in which case 1 or 2 new condis can be applied on Bob, if he doesn't clear than the attacker can renew the same condis before the time expires or simply wait it out and reapply same or different conditions. While doing that limit the number of non damaging condis to 1-2; right now you can load Bob with all condis with absolutely nothing he can do because many skills applying condis in this game also have CC/daze/stun.

Roughly the same concept used in GW1, you apply burning dealin -8 arrows, you could not apply another -8 arrows condi while burning was still active....

after doing that you can take a look at condi removal

so that we move away from condi bunkers doing burst

I never played guild wars 1. -8 arrows means nothing to me.

There you go

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Health_degeneration

That sort of system is probably unwise because between dodge rolls, blocks, evades, true invulnerability, every class being able to spec for a wealth of condition cleanses, everyone's capacity to avoid damage entirely in GW2 is leagues beyond what it is in GW1.

[Fueki.4753]

Now that Rampage is absolutely useless in PvP, together with the Elite Signet and Battle Standard, which Elite should Core Warriors choose?Can't you free up the 5th utility slot for all utilities already? It's basically a dead slot now.Or maybe give Warrior Rifle some extremely-much needed love.

[Arheundel.6451]

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Umm...

Sharper Images and Duelist's Disclipline on mesmer need to get looked at too. Pistol 4 can apply 18 stacks of bleeding on a 20 second cooldown and can almost be instantly reset with interrupts from stuff like sword ambush spam.

Please don't forget about these 2 traits. 18 stacks of bleeding on a single button press is CRAZY overpowered.

now that cmirage is nerfed to kitten you wanna nerf core condi mes i see?those "18" bleeds deal same damage as other hard hitting skills of other classes, prove me wrong or go home.

Suuuure... if you insist.

1. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 7 seconds (not even the full 18 bleeds lel)
2. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 33 seconds
3. TTK on Light Golem = 31 seconds
4. TTK on Light Golem = 18 seconds/26 seconds

Bonus!

5. TTK on Light Golem = 5 seconds (can be spammed or just passively does stupid amounts of damage every time a mirage dodges)

Not to mention the other 4 skills in the sc/p weaponset also do a ton of damage, 1 ccs you, + multiple ambushes to dodge. Compare the 7-8 skills necessary to avoid on sc/p to the 1 skill on ranger gs that can kill you (maul) and the 3 on warrior gs (maul, whirlwind, arcing slice) etc. etc. and it should be pretty easy to see why mesmers are completely overloaded.

if you gonna post biased stuff I shall too.

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

here you go. 6,3k ranger autoattack.how many of them can you throw at 1,5k range with quickness? 10 in that 7s? that would deal 63k dmg. :D

Sure and I can make the Phantasmal Duelist do way more burst damage as well.

Someone is just salty they've gotten proven wrong yet again lmao.

dont have to mate, did it for you ( or rather some random oponent did )

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

6350 dmg, long range shot. basic longbow auto with 1500+ range. (usable while moving )2242 dmg, rapid fire ( 1 hit ) it fires 10 over all so thats total of 22420 dmg. again 1500+ range,

usable while moving.

so you die in what, 1,5s? 2s? from 1500 range. and you compare it to 8s bleed + pistol channel, that will do about 10k dmg if not cleansed.

Yeah sure you'd die in 1.5/2s from 1500 range if you have a 12k health pool and no boons or toughness meanwhile I'm over here casting Phantasmal Duelist one shotting everyone while remaining completely stationary!

Keep reaching lmao.

If you eat entire pistol 4 channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesnt happen becouse everyone just cleanses that INSANE 18 BLEEDS OP.you dont get to cleanse 22,4k rapid fire from 1500+ range. even if you eat 3-4 shots thats still 6-8k dmg.toughtness? protection? sure lets add prot and toughtness, oh wait still about 10-14kdmg. thats STILL more then p4.keep whining mate, keep whining.

If you eat the entire rapid fire channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesn't happen (except to you judging by the screenshots) because everyone just walks behind a wall!

I'm sorry to tell you that toughness and protection don't reduce condition damage! Pistol 4 will still kill a light armored class just as fast regardless of whether they're on paladins or marauders.

LMAO you're the one whining. "Mesmer is so weak literally nothing does damage because you can dodge it D: does no damage can't survive you can't nerf anything about this class because you can only nerf mesmer if a team wins MAT for 2 years in a row with 5 mesmer comp" blah blah blah like come on I'll prove you wrong again later but clearly pistol 4 does more damage than all of these other hard hitting skills. You're just in denial constantly about anything mesmer related yet have the audacity to call other people biased. :joy:

Mate, I just posted a screenshot of rangers autoattack dealing almost as much damage as entire pistol 4 channel, cut the kitten.Unlike you I dont go around forums creating post, putting biased, cut out of contecst kitten to fit my agenda.You even go out of your way to outright lie to get mesmer nerfed.GJ they will nerf staff, mirage will still be cancer, people will still whine, YOU will still whine. nothing changes other then the fact that staff becomes unplayable.people will move on to scept/torch + axe/pistol or some sort of bunkercondi mesmer. GJ you did it, 1 less build clap clap.All I do is come here to poke fun at people that go out of their way to bend the truth, so it can fit their agenda.

like what, staff 3 thief abuse baaaad needs to go.gs1 ranger evade abuse goooood bring back.this is you, biased. as always.

Mate, that ranger was on a full glass cannon build. Not to mention a 6k auto attack would only take around half of the Light Golem's health off meanwhile Phantasmal Duelist killed it in a single cast.

Lmfao those videos cut or biased? I literally just hopped on wanderers/demo and used the skills on meta builds and didn't stack any additional modifiers the builds wouldn't normally run.

The difference between daredevil staff 3 and ranger gs autos is that the daredevil can be nearly untouchable for a VERY long time while the ranger autos actually require you to hit your target twice before the evade triggers so there is way more counterplay for the latter.

Don't know what set up you were using but I tried replicating it with the most popular wander/deadshot condition mirage.

Light Golem has 17,193 health so 62% of that in one attack ends up being 10,662 damage over about 7 seconds. With about 1.2k of that being from the power portion of the attack.

You're also definitely running a lot more power. On Deadshot/Wanderer the duelist does 1k-1.5k on the power portion of the attack and you're getting 2-3 three times that from the power portion.

I even ran a goofy variant using Krait runes and an Agony sigil to bump my bleeding duration up to 100% and even with a pretty yolo combo like that while I was getting really close but it still wasn't one shotting.

I tried a few options and I found Grieving amulet, with Krait Runes and Agony Sigil and Signet of Midnight will get occasional one shots while the phantasm does 3k+ in physical damage when you get lucky with crits.

I also gave rapid fire the same test with fury on my sic em soulbeast and this is what I got.

Are you seriously comparing condi mirage to lb soulbeast using zephyr+scholar runes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8031_uhtIM..this

is a power variant, at one point winning 1vs2...and these are not practice golems

We're discussing what level of damage from a single skill is reasonable, so yeah similar DPS skills with similar realistic stat set ups are relevant. Quickening Zephyr doesn't increase the overall damage of the Rapid Fire, it just makes the cast complete faster. I'm not sure why you're mentioning it as though it's boosting the damage beyond what's normal. I used it to give my soulbeast fury since in Shadowpass's test he specifically set it up so that Phantasmal Duelist had fury. This wasn't even using pet stacks or sic em. Just the pure vanilla stats from gear and traits. A core ranger can get the same damage results.

The question is 10.5k damage on a 20 second cooldown that involves a 2 second channel and 7 seconds of bleed after said channel too much damage compared other damage dealer skills?

There's so much counter play to this skill that other skills that do similar damage have noticeably less than. First you can prevent the phantasm from spawning entirely through environmental Line of Sight as well as using invulnerabilities like Elixir S, Obsidian Flesh, Renewed Focus. Second the bleeding doesn't just apply to you instantly. The mesmer has an animation which signifies the Phantasm will be spawning, it's the three bullets that fly in a weird arc. This doesn't do much damage but it signifies the attack is about to happen. Second the Phantasm casts it's unload, this itself is a 2 second channel as far as I can tell. So even if you get hit by the first packet of damage because they got the drop on you you can still react and avoid 87.5% of the entire skill's damage and all it's bleeds. So let's say you eat the entire skill and now you have 9k damage in bleed on you. You can cleanse it and get rid of all of it. And if you can't avoid it, if you can't cleanse it, it's possible to heal through it whereas getting hit with a 10k Crit from a power class isn't going to give you that luxury.

Is it strong? Yeah, Duelist is very strong and impactful can and often is the skill that wins the fight. Is he super over powered? I think in light of the cooldown, the actual clear audio and visual tell on the attack, and the multitude of ways and opportunities to survive the skill both before it lands it's damage and even afterwards makes me feel the overall level of damage is justified.

Your idea of counterplay is what would work basically against anything

Yeah. Because it's basically like any other attack. It's not like we're dealing with pre-nerf Death's Judgement that's also unblockable and thus can't be blocked or nullified by projectile reflection and destruction. It's just any other DPS attack just with a slightly unusual delivery method and it's damage values aren't out of the ordinary.

...like blow out high CD defenses for a second of respite, your answer

Never said you needed to blow high cooldown defenses. I simply stated that if you eat the full attack, which gives plenty of warning to avoid, by it's nature as a condition damage attack you also have methods to entirely retroactively mitigate the damage should a mistake like that happen and verses attacks that do all their damage immediately you do not get that opportunity. You get hit by an 8k Arcing Slice? If you're below 8k health you don't get to heal that off or use a cooldown to retroactively nullify that damage before it's all applied.

Your wording is also kind of hard to parse here. It sounds like you're saying you should be able to avoid 100% of damage without needing to expend any resources like cooldowns what so ever.

Simply in GW1 there was a limit on degen from condis at -8 arrows for sec so no matter how many condis the enemy would stuck on you...you still would lose -8 arrows for seconds and that's why the gameplay was smarter , easy to follow from the outside and overall more enjoyable ; same concept goes for CC..you could not CC an already CCed target

which makes bloody sense

while in GW2 you can daze and already dazed target , asking to remove this brainless gameplay is not exactly a request for 100% dmg inmmunity.

Okay. What should the hard limit be on how long a condition damage build needs to spend attacking in order to kill a stationary target that doesn't fight or cast skills? What is your proposed hard limit on their damage per second?

They could limit the number of damaging and not damaging conditions applicable on a single enemy at time, a limit that stays till the expiration or removal of such condition : Ex - you apply burning-bleed-confusion on Bob like 12 stacks each for 20s, for 20s no other damaging condition can be applied on BoB unless he removes one or two of those condis and in which case 1 or 2 new condis can be applied on Bob, if he doesn't clear than the attacker can renew the same condis before the time expires or simply wait it out and reapply same or different conditions. While doing that limit the number of non damaging condis to 1-2; right now you can load Bob with all condis with absolutely nothing he can do because many skills applying condis in this game also have CC/daze/stun.

Roughly the same concept used in GW1, you apply burning dealin -8 arrows, you could not apply another -8 arrows condi while burning was still active....

after doing that you can take a look at condi removal

so that we move away from condi bunkers doing burst

I never played guild wars 1. -8 arrows means nothing to me.

There you go

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Health_degeneration

That sort of system is probably unwise because between dodge rolls, blocks, evades, true invulnerability, every class being able to spec for a wealth of condition cleanses, everyone's capacity to avoid damage entirely in GW2 is leagues beyond what it is in GW1.

As I have said everybody here wants to draw water from the well..but tries at the same time to stop his "neighbour" from doing so, you and @Shadowpass are exactly the same..biased

[apharma.3741]

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Umm...

Sharper Images and Duelist's Disclipline on mesmer need to get looked at too. Pistol 4 can apply 18 stacks of bleeding on a 20 second cooldown and can almost be instantly reset with interrupts from stuff like sword ambush spam.

Please don't forget about these 2 traits. 18 stacks of bleeding on a single button press is CRAZY overpowered.

now that cmirage is nerfed to kitten you wanna nerf core condi mes i see?those "18" bleeds deal same damage as other hard hitting skills of other classes, prove me wrong or go home.

Suuuure... if you insist.

1. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 7 seconds (not even the full 18 bleeds lel)
2. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 33 seconds
3. TTK on Light Golem = 31 seconds
4. TTK on Light Golem = 18 seconds/26 seconds

Bonus!

5. TTK on Light Golem = 5 seconds (can be spammed or just passively does stupid amounts of damage every time a mirage dodges)

Not to mention the other 4 skills in the sc/p weaponset also do a ton of damage, 1 ccs you, + multiple ambushes to dodge. Compare the 7-8 skills necessary to avoid on sc/p to the 1 skill on ranger gs that can kill you (maul) and the 3 on warrior gs (maul, whirlwind, arcing slice) etc. etc. and it should be pretty easy to see why mesmers are completely overloaded.

if you gonna post biased stuff I shall too.

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

here you go. 6,3k ranger autoattack.how many of them can you throw at 1,5k range with quickness? 10 in that 7s? that would deal 63k dmg. :D

Sure and I can make the Phantasmal Duelist do way more burst damage as well.

Someone is just salty they've gotten proven wrong yet again lmao.

dont have to mate, did it for you ( or rather some random oponent did )

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

6350 dmg, long range shot. basic longbow auto with 1500+ range. (usable while moving )2242 dmg, rapid fire ( 1 hit ) it fires 10 over all so thats total of 22420 dmg. again 1500+ range,

usable while moving.

so you die in what, 1,5s? 2s? from 1500 range. and you compare it to 8s bleed + pistol channel, that will do about 10k dmg if not cleansed.

Yeah sure you'd die in 1.5/2s from 1500 range if you have a 12k health pool and no boons or toughness meanwhile I'm over here casting Phantasmal Duelist one shotting everyone while remaining completely stationary!

Keep reaching lmao.

If you eat entire pistol 4 channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesnt happen becouse everyone just cleanses that INSANE 18 BLEEDS OP.you dont get to cleanse 22,4k rapid fire from 1500+ range. even if you eat 3-4 shots thats still 6-8k dmg.toughtness? protection? sure lets add prot and toughtness, oh wait still about 10-14kdmg. thats STILL more then p4.keep whining mate, keep whining.

If you eat the entire rapid fire channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesn't happen (except to you judging by the screenshots) because everyone just walks behind a wall!

I'm sorry to tell you that toughness and protection don't reduce condition damage! Pistol 4 will still kill a light armored class just as fast regardless of whether they're on paladins or marauders.

LMAO you're the one whining. "Mesmer is so weak literally nothing does damage because you can dodge it D: does no damage can't survive you can't nerf anything about this class because you can only nerf mesmer if a team wins MAT for 2 years in a row with 5 mesmer comp" blah blah blah like come on I'll prove you wrong again later but clearly pistol 4 does more damage than all of these other hard hitting skills. You're just in denial constantly about anything mesmer related yet have the audacity to call other people biased. :joy:

Mate, I just posted a screenshot of rangers autoattack dealing almost as much damage as entire pistol 4 channel, cut the kitten.Unlike you I dont go around forums creating post, putting biased, cut out of contecst kitten to fit my agenda.You even go out of your way to outright lie to get mesmer nerfed.GJ they will nerf staff, mirage will still be cancer, people will still whine, YOU will still whine. nothing changes other then the fact that staff becomes unplayable.people will move on to scept/torch + axe/pistol or some sort of bunkercondi mesmer. GJ you did it, 1 less build clap clap.All I do is come here to poke fun at people that go out of their way to bend the truth, so it can fit their agenda.

like what, staff 3 thief abuse baaaad needs to go.gs1 ranger evade abuse goooood bring back.this is you, biased. as always.

Mate, that ranger was on a full glass cannon build. Not to mention a 6k auto attack would only take around half of the Light Golem's health off meanwhile Phantasmal Duelist killed it in a single cast.

Lmfao those videos cut or biased? I literally just hopped on wanderers/demo and used the skills on meta builds and didn't stack any additional modifiers the builds wouldn't normally run.

The difference between daredevil staff 3 and ranger gs autos is that the daredevil can be nearly untouchable for a VERY long time while the ranger autos actually require you to hit your target twice before the evade triggers so there is way more counterplay for the latter.

Don't know what set up you were using but I tried replicating it with the most popular wander/deadshot condition mirage.

Light Golem has 17,193 health so 62% of that in one attack ends up being 10,662 damage over about 7 seconds. With about 1.2k of that being from the power portion of the attack.

You're also definitely running a lot more power. On Deadshot/Wanderer the duelist does 1k-1.5k on the power portion of the attack and you're getting 2-3 three times that from the power portion.

I even ran a goofy variant using Krait runes and an Agony sigil to bump my bleeding duration up to 100% and even with a pretty yolo combo like that while I was getting really close but it still wasn't one shotting.

I tried a few options and I found Grieving amulet, with Krait Runes and Agony Sigil and Signet of Midnight will get occasional one shots while the phantasm does 3k+ in physical damage when you get lucky with crits.

I also gave rapid fire the same test with fury on my sic em soulbeast and this is what I got.

Are you seriously comparing condi mirage to lb soulbeast using zephyr+scholar runes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8031_uhtIM..this

is a power variant, at one point winning 1vs2...and these are not practice golems

We're discussing what level of damage from a single skill is reasonable, so yeah similar DPS skills with similar realistic stat set ups are relevant. Quickening Zephyr doesn't increase the overall damage of the Rapid Fire, it just makes the cast complete faster. I'm not sure why you're mentioning it as though it's boosting the damage beyond what's normal. I used it to give my soulbeast fury since in Shadowpass's test he specifically set it up so that Phantasmal Duelist had fury. This wasn't even using pet stacks or sic em. Just the pure vanilla stats from gear and traits. A core ranger can get the same damage results.

The question is 10.5k damage on a 20 second cooldown that involves a 2 second channel and 7 seconds of bleed after said channel too much damage compared other damage dealer skills?

There's so much counter play to this skill that other skills that do similar damage have noticeably less than. First you can prevent the phantasm from spawning entirely through environmental Line of Sight as well as using invulnerabilities like Elixir S, Obsidian Flesh, Renewed Focus. Second the bleeding doesn't just apply to you instantly. The mesmer has an animation which signifies the Phantasm will be spawning, it's the three bullets that fly in a weird arc. This doesn't do much damage but it signifies the attack is about to happen. Second the Phantasm casts it's unload, this itself is a 2 second channel as far as I can tell. So even if you get hit by the first packet of damage because they got the drop on you you can still react and avoid 87.5% of the entire skill's damage and all it's bleeds. So let's say you eat the entire skill and now you have 9k damage in bleed on you. You can cleanse it and get rid of all of it. And if you can't avoid it, if you can't cleanse it, it's possible to heal through it whereas getting hit with a 10k Crit from a power class isn't going to give you that luxury.

Is it strong? Yeah, Duelist is very strong and impactful can and often is the skill that wins the fight. Is he super over powered? I think in light of the cooldown, the actual clear audio and visual tell on the attack, and the multitude of ways and opportunities to survive the skill both before it lands it's damage and even afterwards makes me feel the overall level of damage is justified.

Your idea of counterplay is what would work basically against anything

Yeah. Because it's basically like any other attack. It's not like we're dealing with pre-nerf Death's Judgement that's also unblockable and thus can't be blocked or nullified by projectile reflection and destruction. It's just any other DPS attack just with a slightly unusual delivery method and it's damage values aren't out of the ordinary.

...like blow out high CD defenses for a second of respite, your answer

Never said you needed to blow high cooldown defenses. I simply stated that if you eat the full attack, which gives plenty of warning to avoid, by it's nature as a condition damage attack you also have methods to entirely retroactively mitigate the damage should a mistake like that happen and verses attacks that do all their damage immediately you do not get that opportunity. You get hit by an 8k Arcing Slice? If you're below 8k health you don't get to heal that off or use a cooldown to retroactively nullify that damage before it's all applied.

Your wording is also kind of hard to parse here. It sounds like you're saying you should be able to avoid 100% of damage without needing to expend any resources like cooldowns what so ever.

Simply in GW1 there was a limit on degen from condis at -8 arrows for sec so no matter how many condis the enemy would stuck on you...you still would lose -8 arrows for seconds and that's why the gameplay was smarter , easy to follow from the outside and overall more enjoyable ; same concept goes for CC..you could not CC an already CCed target

which makes bloody sense

while in GW2 you can daze and already dazed target , asking to remove this brainless gameplay is not exactly a request for 100% dmg inmmunity.

Okay. What should the hard limit be on how long a condition damage build needs to spend attacking in order to kill a stationary target that doesn't fight or cast skills? What is your proposed hard limit on their damage per second?

They could limit the number of damaging and not damaging conditions applicable on a single enemy at time, a limit that stays till the expiration or removal of such condition : Ex - you apply burning-bleed-confusion on Bob like 12 stacks each for 20s, for 20s no other damaging condition can be applied on BoB unless he removes one or two of those condis and in which case 1 or 2 new condis can be applied on Bob, if he doesn't clear than the attacker can renew the same condis before the time expires or simply wait it out and reapply same or different conditions. While doing that limit the number of non damaging condis to 1-2; right now you can load Bob with all condis with absolutely nothing he can do because many skills applying condis in this game also have CC/daze/stun.

Roughly the same concept used in GW1, you apply burning dealin -8 arrows, you could not apply another -8 arrows condi while burning was still active....

after doing that you can take a look at condi removal

so that we move away from condi bunkers doing burst

I never played guild wars 1. -8 arrows means nothing to me.

There you go

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Health_degeneration

Guild Wars 1 at it's very core is a vastly different game, you rely on allies, there's a trinity, different stat systems and kiting. Something like a degeneracy cap in GW2 the way you explained wouldn't work simply because Guild Wars 2 tries it's best to prevent 1 player being able to unintentionally grief their team by using a weak skill and locking out another player.

Think of it from a condition players perspective, how fun would it be to join a fight and not be able to use a single skill because the enemy has reached their cap however they're capped from a power build? You could then say cap it at a certain percentage of life being removed per tick however it still encounters problems where a heavily outnumbered player takes the same amount of time to expire as if they weren't outnumbered.

Yet we don't see a power cap and I rarely see anyone talking about capping power damage where hits can be anywhere from 3-4k auto attacks all the way up to 40k which vastly out perform conditions builds with a few exceptions.

One more thing to think about, in the current meta you don't see much in team support and because power damage is so egregiously high the opportunity of taking more cleanse to deal with condition builds isn't worth the cost as you then end up weak to everything else or simply weak to that 1 power build on the enemy team, like holo, rev or warrior which causes your value to drop tremendously. However I've been seeing a resurgence in Symbolic FB/DH/Core which will heavily counter condition builds across the spectrum.

If you want a glimpse at what the real problem is I'll give you a hint: Sharper Images procs per hit on illusions (phantasms and clones) now see if you can figure out why bleed is so high on current mesmer mirage build.

[Flumek.9043]

1-month and did more than the PVE team which balanced around roleplay and "character identity".

Really impressed that the poeples feedback was taken in, and that the balance key points varied from traits to elite skills... great job

If it keeps up, i think in 1-year PVP could be played around animations and dodge counting instead of spam again. gl

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Umm...

Sharper Images and Duelist's Disclipline on mesmer need to get looked at too. Pistol 4 can apply 18 stacks of bleeding on a 20 second cooldown and can almost be instantly reset with interrupts from stuff like sword ambush spam.

Please don't forget about these 2 traits. 18 stacks of bleeding on a single button press is CRAZY overpowered.

now that cmirage is nerfed to kitten you wanna nerf core condi mes i see?those "18" bleeds deal same damage as other hard hitting skills of other classes, prove me wrong or go home.

Suuuure... if you insist.

1. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 7 seconds (not even the full 18 bleeds lel)
2. TTK on Light Golem w/ Fury = 33 seconds
3. TTK on Light Golem = 31 seconds
4. TTK on Light Golem = 18 seconds/26 seconds

Bonus!

5. TTK on Light Golem = 5 seconds (can be spammed or just passively does stupid amounts of damage every time a mirage dodges)

Not to mention the other 4 skills in the sc/p weaponset also do a ton of damage, 1 ccs you, + multiple ambushes to dodge. Compare the 7-8 skills necessary to avoid on sc/p to the 1 skill on ranger gs that can kill you (maul) and the 3 on warrior gs (maul, whirlwind, arcing slice) etc. etc. and it should be pretty easy to see why mesmers are completely overloaded.

if you gonna post biased stuff I shall too.

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

here you go. 6,3k ranger autoattack.how many of them can you throw at 1,5k range with quickness? 10 in that 7s? that would deal 63k dmg. :D

Sure and I can make the Phantasmal Duelist do way more burst damage as well.

Someone is just salty they've gotten proven wrong yet again lmao.

dont have to mate, did it for you ( or rather some random oponent did )

https://imgur.com/gallery/6qqQh54

6350 dmg, long range shot. basic longbow auto with 1500+ range. (usable while moving )2242 dmg, rapid fire ( 1 hit ) it fires 10 over all so thats total of 22420 dmg. again 1500+ range,

usable while moving.

so you die in what, 1,5s? 2s? from 1500 range. and you compare it to 8s bleed + pistol channel, that will do about 10k dmg if not cleansed.

Yeah sure you'd die in 1.5/2s from 1500 range if you have a 12k health pool and no boons or toughness meanwhile I'm over here casting Phantasmal Duelist one shotting everyone while remaining completely stationary!

Keep reaching lmao.

If you eat entire pistol 4 channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesnt happen becouse everyone just cleanses that INSANE 18 BLEEDS OP.you dont get to cleanse 22,4k rapid fire from 1500+ range. even if you eat 3-4 shots thats still 6-8k dmg.toughtness? protection? sure lets add prot and toughtness, oh wait still about 10-14kdmg. thats STILL more then p4.keep whining mate, keep whining.

If you eat the entire rapid fire channel you deserve to die, sadly it doesn't happen (except to you judging by the screenshots) because everyone just walks behind a wall!

I'm sorry to tell you that toughness and protection don't reduce condition damage! Pistol 4 will still kill a light armored class just as fast regardless of whether they're on paladins or marauders.

LMAO you're the one whining. "Mesmer is so weak literally nothing does damage because you can dodge it D: does no damage can't survive you can't nerf anything about this class because you can only nerf mesmer if a team wins MAT for 2 years in a row with 5 mesmer comp" blah blah blah like come on I'll prove you wrong again later but clearly pistol 4 does more damage than all of these other hard hitting skills. You're just in denial constantly about anything mesmer related yet have the audacity to call other people biased. :joy:

Mate, I just posted a screenshot of rangers autoattack dealing almost as much damage as entire pistol 4 channel, cut the kitten.Unlike you I dont go around forums creating post, putting biased, cut out of contecst kitten to fit my agenda.You even go out of your way to outright lie to get mesmer nerfed.GJ they will nerf staff, mirage will still be cancer, people will still whine, YOU will still whine. nothing changes other then the fact that staff becomes unplayable.people will move on to scept/torch + axe/pistol or some sort of bunkercondi mesmer. GJ you did it, 1 less build clap clap.All I do is come here to poke fun at people that go out of their way to bend the truth, so it can fit their agenda.

like what, staff 3 thief abuse baaaad needs to go.gs1 ranger evade abuse goooood bring back.this is you, biased. as always.

Mate, that ranger was on a full glass cannon build. Not to mention a 6k auto attack would only take around half of the Light Golem's health off meanwhile Phantasmal Duelist killed it in a single cast.

Lmfao those videos cut or biased? I literally just hopped on wanderers/demo and used the skills on meta builds and didn't stack any additional modifiers the builds wouldn't normally run.

The difference between daredevil staff 3 and ranger gs autos is that the daredevil can be nearly untouchable for a VERY long time while the ranger autos actually require you to hit your target twice before the evade triggers so there is way more counterplay for the latter.

Don't know what set up you were using but I tried replicating it with the most popular wander/deadshot condition mirage.

Light Golem has 17,193 health so 62% of that in one attack ends up being 10,662 damage over about 7 seconds. With about 1.2k of that being from the power portion of the attack.

You're also definitely running a lot more power. On Deadshot/Wanderer the duelist does 1k-1.5k on the power portion of the attack and you're getting 2-3 three times that from the power portion.

I even ran a goofy variant using Krait runes and an Agony sigil to bump my bleeding duration up to 100% and even with a pretty yolo combo like that while I was getting really close but it still wasn't one shotting.

I tried a few options and I found Grieving amulet, with Krait Runes and Agony Sigil and Signet of Midnight will get occasional one shots while the phantasm does 3k+ in physical damage when you get lucky with crits.

I also gave rapid fire the same test with fury on my sic em soulbeast and this is what I got.

Are you seriously comparing condi mirage to lb soulbeast using zephyr+scholar runes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8031_uhtIM..this

is a power variant, at one point winning 1vs2...and these are not practice golems

We're discussing what level of damage from a single skill is reasonable, so yeah similar DPS skills with similar realistic stat set ups are relevant. Quickening Zephyr doesn't increase the overall damage of the Rapid Fire, it just makes the cast complete faster. I'm not sure why you're mentioning it as though it's boosting the damage beyond what's normal. I used it to give my soulbeast fury since in Shadowpass's test he specifically set it up so that Phantasmal Duelist had fury. This wasn't even using pet stacks or sic em. Just the pure vanilla stats from gear and traits. A core ranger can get the same damage results.

The question is 10.5k damage on a 20 second cooldown that involves a 2 second channel and 7 seconds of bleed after said channel too much damage compared other damage dealer skills?

There's so much counter play to this skill that other skills that do similar damage have noticeably less than. First you can prevent the phantasm from spawning entirely through environmental Line of Sight as well as using invulnerabilities like Elixir S, Obsidian Flesh, Renewed Focus. Second the bleeding doesn't just apply to you instantly. The mesmer has an animation which signifies the Phantasm will be spawning, it's the three bullets that fly in a weird arc. This doesn't do much damage but it signifies the attack is about to happen. Second the Phantasm casts it's unload, this itself is a 2 second channel as far as I can tell. So even if you get hit by the first packet of damage because they got the drop on you you can still react and avoid 87.5% of the entire skill's damage and all it's bleeds. So let's say you eat the entire skill and now you have 9k damage in bleed on you. You can cleanse it and get rid of all of it. And if you can't avoid it, if you can't cleanse it, it's possible to heal through it whereas getting hit with a 10k Crit from a power class isn't going to give you that luxury.

Is it strong? Yeah, Duelist is very strong and impactful can and often is the skill that wins the fight. Is he super over powered? I think in light of the cooldown, the actual clear audio and visual tell on the attack, and the multitude of ways and opportunities to survive the skill both before it lands it's damage and even afterwards makes me feel the overall level of damage is justified.

Your idea of counterplay is what would work basically against anything

Yeah. Because it's basically like any other attack. It's not like we're dealing with pre-nerf Death's Judgement that's also unblockable and thus can't be blocked or nullified by projectile reflection and destruction. It's just any other DPS attack just with a slightly unusual delivery method and it's damage values aren't out of the ordinary.

...like blow out high CD defenses for a second of respite, your answer

Never said you needed to blow high cooldown defenses. I simply stated that if you eat the full attack, which gives plenty of warning to avoid, by it's nature as a condition damage attack you also have methods to entirely retroactively mitigate the damage should a mistake like that happen and verses attacks that do all their damage immediately you do not get that opportunity. You get hit by an 8k Arcing Slice? If you're below 8k health you don't get to heal that off or use a cooldown to retroactively nullify that damage before it's all applied.

Your wording is also kind of hard to parse here. It sounds like you're saying you should be able to avoid 100% of damage without needing to expend any resources like cooldowns what so ever.

Simply in GW1 there was a limit on degen from condis at -8 arrows for sec so no matter how many condis the enemy would stuck on you...you still would lose -8 arrows for seconds and that's why the gameplay was smarter , easy to follow from the outside and overall more enjoyable ; same concept goes for CC..you could not CC an already CCed target

which makes bloody sense

while in GW2 you can daze and already dazed target , asking to remove this brainless gameplay is not exactly a request for 100% dmg inmmunity.

Okay. What should the hard limit be on how long a condition damage build needs to spend attacking in order to kill a stationary target that doesn't fight or cast skills? What is your proposed hard limit on their damage per second?

They could limit the number of damaging and not damaging conditions applicable on a single enemy at time, a limit that stays till the expiration or removal of such condition : Ex - you apply burning-bleed-confusion on Bob like 12 stacks each for 20s, for 20s no other damaging condition can be applied on BoB unless he removes one or two of those condis and in which case 1 or 2 new condis can be applied on Bob, if he doesn't clear than the attacker can renew the same condis before the time expires or simply wait it out and reapply same or different conditions. While doing that limit the number of non damaging condis to 1-2; right now you can load Bob with all condis with absolutely nothing he can do because many skills applying condis in this game also have CC/daze/stun.

Roughly the same concept used in GW1, you apply burning dealin -8 arrows, you could not apply another -8 arrows condi while burning was still active....

after doing that you can take a look at condi removal

so that we move away from condi bunkers doing burst

That's not how GW1 works. Not even close.In GW1 you can apply as many condis as you want.Damage is capped at 20dps but regen is negated by the extra degen pips.

So for example if you have -15 pips you still take 20dps, you put +5 pips of regen, your regen does nothing and you still take 20dps.

I've been saying since forever that condis should work that way in gw2.Cap the damage, extra damage would negate your regen and healing.

@mortrialus.3062 here is the idea. ^

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:

General

• Sigil of Agility has been removed from the PvP build panel

^ Not sure if that is a wise idea

right now.

A lot of the balance that we actually do have, is because of this single sigil. This very important single sigil, is what allows certain attacks from certain classes to be viable at all. If this sigil is removed, it will greatly effect the performance of certain build archetypes that utilize slower attacks during bursts, due to the sigil of agility. Some of these attacks that have honed in the balance structures of certain builds, have done so only due to the sigil of agility. I suggest maybe lowering the quickness uptime from 2s to 1s or something like that. But I believe that removing it entirely at this point, may cause more problems than it would solve. It's going to be a situation where, if it is removed, certain build archetypes will still survive because their animation times are juuuust fast enough to remain viable and practical, but certain other build archetypes which were already utilizing slower animation frames, will become too slow to be practical. When that happens, it is likely that the meta will flip flop all over the place again, and builds that were once balanced due to sigil of agility will become unviable, and builds like Holosmith that never needed it to begin with, will prosper in its absence, despite the incoming nerfs to Holo quick uptime.

Condi Thief

• Spider Venom: Reduced poison duration from 6 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only
• Serpent's Touch: Reduced poison stacks from 2 to 1 in PvP only

^ I believe the nerf to Spider Venom will effect Condi DrD much more than most people are realizing right now. This nerf should be adequate.

Holosmith

• Kinetic Battery: Reduced quickness duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only
• Elixir U: Reduced stability duration from 6 seconds to 1 second in PvP only

^ It's going to need more nerfing than that. This spec's overperformance is currently disgusting. You certainly should nerf the quickness on U as well. But it seriously needs to lose the sustain from Heat Therapy and Forge needs to be put on a 9s CD just like everything else in the game has. If you don't go deep on this one, it's going to keep driving off player base as people are REALLY getting tired of dealing with a class that is both easy & powerful for new users to use AND has a high skill ceiling for veteran players. It's too much.

Condi Mirage

• Illusionary Counter: Reduced the number of clones spawned on block from 2 to 1 in PvP only
• Phantasmal Warlock:
  • Reduced the number of warlocks spawned from 2 to 1 in PvP only.
  • Increased the vulnerability applied per hit from 2 stacks to 4 stacks in PvP only
• Chaos Vortex:
  • Reduced bleed duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only.
  • Reduced burn duration from 2 seconds to 1 second in PvP only.
  • Reduced Torment duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only

^ I believe this all very unnecessary. The only thing it needs, is a shift on some of its damage from clone ambush, onto shatter play. This way the Mirage has to be offensive to deal the same level of damage, rather than be allowed to 100% defense while spamming clone ambush damage.

Rampage

• Rampage skills have been adjusted as follows
  • Kick: Power coefficient reduced from 1.2 to 0.01 in PvP only
  • Throw Boulder: Power coefficient reduced from 2.0 to 0.01 in PvP only
  • Seismic Leap: Power coefficient reduced from 1.6 to 0.01 in PvP only

^ Oh that'll definitely be a strong nerf, maybe a bit too strong.

Warrior’s Cunning

• Warrior's Cunning: Reduced damage bonus against targets above 90% health from 25% to 7% in PvP only. Reduced damage bonus against targets with barrier from 50% to 10% in PvP only.

^ Hrm, I think it would be more reasonable to go maybe: above 90% health is 10% damage, and then when opponent has barrier is 25% damage. Not sure it needs that big of a nerf.

Staff Thief

• Quick Pockets: Reduced initiative gained on weapon swap from 3 to 2 in PvP only
• Staff Master: Reduced endurance gain per initiative spent from 2 to 1 in PvP only
• Debilitating Arc: Reduced initiative cost from 6 to 5 in PvP only

^ The Staff Thieves out there would give better feedback than me, but I think it's mostly important that the animation exploits are fixed.

You mean that

sigil of agility

has removed counterplay from many skills whose big dmg was justified by their slow animation/cast time...in that regard the removal of the sigil is simply a

brilliant idea

P.S Holosmith is tolerable right now and not really that OP compared to the status quo, the reduction in quickness rather than sustain nerf at this point is again a brilliant idea , holosmith is a bruiser and to keep up with the current trends in power dmg/PvE and WvW..their sustain is justified, with the reduction of the dmg and less access to quickness...they become tolerable

No, that's not what I meant at all. What I meant was exactly what I said.

Holosmith is in no way tolerable, as indicated by 99.9% of the community feedback. You are actually the first person I've seen say anything at all to defend it or attempt to water down opinions of its clear overperformance. In fact, I think that "Holosmith being grossly overpowered in its current state" is the first thing I've seen everyone in this forum actually agree on, to the point that Holosmith mains don't even argue against that opinion, but rather show up in-thread and agree with everyone, while honestly trying to help better the flow of suggestions on how to fix it. So we can INB4 this "Holosmith isn't that strong" thing you got going on here.

Also, I was actually the first person to suggest quickness nerfs to Holosmith as a suggestion to bring down its overall DPS factor, as well as its capability to abuse water field blasting/leaping. It was posted in a thread several months ago, which ended up becoming a popular opinion. But what I'm telling you now, is that these quickness nerfs to Holosmith won't be enough to effect its performance vs. other classes/builds if Sigil Of Agility is removed along with the direct Holosmith nerfs. The removal of Sigil Of Agility and the nerfs to Holo Quickness will nerf the Quickness uptime of a Holosmith, but he'll still have quite frequent Quickness application nonetheless. However, the removal of Sigil Of Agility will actually remove MOST if not ALL of the Quickness application for other classes/builds. This will result in an effect where the Holosmith will remain just as proportionately powerful in the next meta, as he is now in this meta. If Sigil Of Agility were to be kept upon this next patch, then the Quickness nerfs to Holo would be adequate to bring Holosmith down to the level of other specs.

Note that I never vouched for or against Sigil Of Agility. I said that: "It might not be a good idea to remove it right now" as in, wait for a better patch to release the removal of the sigil. Cal had already stated that this next patch was going to be sort of a "fit in the quick stuff that is easy to do" kind of thing. Removing the Sigil Of Agility is not going to be a "Quick Fix" kind of thing. It's going to come with significant disproportionate changes & shifts to the existing balance that we have now. It is not going to lower the power creep in equalized balanced ways amongst every class. I believe it would be a better idea to wait for a larger and more organized patch to remove the sigil, one that will be able to compensate for the lopsided varying differences in balance effects that it will make vs. every class individually. IE: Removing Sigil Of Agility isn't a big loss in Quickness uptime for a Holosmith, but it is the only Quickness uptime that a Core Guardian has for his burst at all.

If you still aren't able to "See" what I'm trying to explain here, I'll just say that: You should be careful what you wish for.

The only really good builds that weren't using it were Condition Thief, Fire Weaver, and Condition Mirage.

Not arguing with you, I'd like to see the rune go away myself. I just want to see it happen later, when it won't create a bunch of balance issues when it happens. I think that the game has been being indirectly balanced around the Sigil Of Agility for a lot longer than we've all previously noticed. I believe the removal of the Sigil Of Agility is going to have wonkier effects than any of us are quite identifying at the moment.

What you said here in the bolded is what I mean. Removing the Sigil Of Agility won't effect those builds at all, but it will greatly effect the performance of certain other builds that are only viable to keep up with Condi Thief/Fire Weaver/Condi Mirage due to the Sigil Of Agility. This shows that the removal of the Sigil Of Agility is not lowering creep in a proportional way amongst all classes/builds, but rather removing it has no effect on some class/build performance but greatly effects the performance of others. This works against the idea of "Bringing the power levels and viability of all classes/builds towards the median" and instead begins to push them away from the median because the change creates decline in some build's performances, but doesn't effect other builds at all. Core Guardian again as one example, is currently viewed as counter play against things like the aforementioned classes, but the Core Guardian will likely drop out of viability completely when he's dealing half the DPS on his burst that he is now, after Sigil Of Agility is removed.

Really, the more I discuss this the more it's brought up, the more I realize that removing Sigil Of Agility is going to be effecting the power based builds that are in play right now. When power bursting on swap goes to literally half the DPS that it is now, due to the removal of Sigil Of Agility, in addition to the nerfs being laid down on Holosmith and Rampage, we'll probably be seeing a new condi meta roll in. Power based builds are going to be taking an enormous hit to their damage potentials & practicalities to land the hits on the weapon swap, in addition to rather large trait/utility nerfs. The current condi builds however, are seeing only shaves to their current performance, and Weaver at that, isn't being touched at all.

I'm worried that this is what we'll be looking at:

• Not the balancing of currently dominant power specs, but the falling out of those power specs.
• Fire Weaver side node dominance. Without power builds that are capable of pushing out enough DPS to actually have kill potential 1v1 against Fire Weaver, Fire Weaver will become dominant on side nodes. Then of course condis aren't that threatening to the Weaver. The Fire Weaver is going to be unkillable in 1v1s. Nothing in the game will be able to get it off a node unless the difference in the two player's skill levels is large where, the attacker is a good player and the Weaver is a bad player. The condis of course punished Herald to begin with and now Herald is losing quick uptime = loss in DPS. Rampage was the only way for a Warrior to secure a kill on a good Weaver, which now Rampage is being nerfed damage wise and Warrior is losing quickness uptime to land these kinds of hits to begin with. Holosmith is losing A LOT of quickness uptime to the point that it's not going to be realistic for a Holosmith to push out enough raw DPS to land kill opportunity on a good Fire Weaver. Then of course Staff/Staff is getting gutted. And then all other power specs were already losing to Fire Weaver, except in the case that the players on those specs were just better players than the Fire Weaver. Those specs that were already losing are going to have it even worse when that burst potential on swap is removed when we see Sigil Of Agility go.
• Condi Mirage & Condi Thieves will be the runners up for side node dominance, 2nd only to the Fire Weaver because their condi damage can't provide realistic kill potential vs. a good Weaver. On top of that, Condi Mirage & Condi Thieves will both be seeing some damage shaves. Condi Mirage & Condi Thieves will begin to clearly dominant everything other than Fire Weavers in 1v1 situations, for all of the same reasons already listed above.
• The most annoying and boring part about the above ^ is that those 3 classes won't actually be able to kill each other in side node battles. 9/10 times the fights will result in stalemates or someone just running away if they are losing.
• Scourge will definitely come back with the nerfs to Warrior's Cunning, the lack of power CC play, and with all of the cover condi spam play that is going to begin happening, to create even more condi cover spam play in team fights. Core Necro may become a REAL thing due to its resistance vs. conditions.
• All of the cover condi spam play is going to make Sage FB an undeniable must have MVP in any team comp. In fact, it will more than likely be a great idea to always run two of them, not only for the obvious condi cleanse & other support, but also for those AoE burn stacks amongst all of the condi cover.
• Core War & Spellbreaker after nerfs, Core Guard after Agility is gone, Herald with its condi vulnerability, Holo after nerfs with its condi vulnerability, and Reaper, are going to be completely #$%^ out of luck in a new approaching sheer condi meta. And the nastiest thing here is that if those builds try to stat for more resistance vs. condi, they'll lose too much damage potential to be viable at all. Well Herald could get away with it while using Shao's build but that's about it, and then we'll be seeing a lot of Mallyx in play to add to the condi meta. The other classes can't stray from their current build structures without becoming completely unviable off-meta garbage.
• Power Rangers & Deadeyes on the other hand, will see increased representation due to their extreme ranged to stay away from condi mess to begin with, and the lack of the presence of their normal power based counters.

^ If my forecast is even roughly accurate, that meta is going to piss everyone off far far worse than the meta we have now. You're talking nothing but messy condi AoE splashing with little to no tell animations, and high power damage ranged all over the place that not many classes/builds in play will even be able to chase. These are the two things that we have by far seen complained about in the forums more than anything else.

I think that Arenanet needs to seriously evaluate the decision to make all of those class nerfs at the same time they want to remove Sigil Of Agility. In my opinion it would be wise to either do the class nerfs as is listed and leave Sigil Of Agility in play, or remove Sigil Of Agility and lighten up on those class nerfs. But removing the sigil at the same time they deal out these heavy handed nerfs, while NOT touching things like Weaver, is going to push condi to the top, which in turns pushes other certain things out, which in turn allows weird things to come in with presence that were not present before. AND YES, the removal of the Sigil Of Agility will effect the game's dynamic every bit as much as it did when Sigils Of Blood and Sigils Of Leeching were removed.

I guess to me, the question is really this, and this question has no right or wrong answer:

Although the removal of Sigil Of Agility may be healthy in the long run, is it worth doing right now? Are players ready to deal with the shifts & consequences for the next 2 or 4 or 6 months until they can be compensated for, through Arenanet's patching schedules?

[RedShark.9548]

Great changes so far, but can we pls change thief venoms in a way that when i avoid attacks with venoms active, he actually loses those stacks? Right now hes coating his wepon in venom, throws it at me, i dodge or block it and he has tge same amount of coated weapons, yay, its hard to counterplay that kitten

[Leonidrex.5649]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:

General

• Sigil of Agility has been removed from the PvP build panel

^ Not sure if that is a wise idea

right now.

A lot of the balance that we actually do have, is because of this single sigil. This very important single sigil, is what allows certain attacks from certain classes to be viable at all. If this sigil is removed, it will greatly effect the performance of certain build archetypes that utilize slower attacks during bursts, due to the sigil of agility. Some of these attacks that have honed in the balance structures of certain builds, have done so only due to the sigil of agility. I suggest maybe lowering the quickness uptime from 2s to 1s or something like that. But I believe that removing it entirely at this point, may cause more problems than it would solve. It's going to be a situation where, if it is removed, certain build archetypes will still survive because their animation times are juuuust fast enough to remain viable and practical, but certain other build archetypes which were already utilizing slower animation frames, will become too slow to be practical. When that happens, it is likely that the meta will flip flop all over the place again, and builds that were once balanced due to sigil of agility will become unviable, and builds like Holosmith that never needed it to begin with, will prosper in its absence, despite the incoming nerfs to Holo quick uptime.

Condi Thief

• Spider Venom: Reduced poison duration from 6 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only
• Serpent's Touch: Reduced poison stacks from 2 to 1 in PvP only

^ I believe the nerf to Spider Venom will effect Condi DrD much more than most people are realizing right now. This nerf should be adequate.

Holosmith

• Kinetic Battery: Reduced quickness duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only
• Elixir U: Reduced stability duration from 6 seconds to 1 second in PvP only

^ It's going to need more nerfing than that. This spec's overperformance is currently disgusting. You certainly should nerf the quickness on U as well. But it seriously needs to lose the sustain from Heat Therapy and Forge needs to be put on a 9s CD just like everything else in the game has. If you don't go deep on this one, it's going to keep driving off player base as people are REALLY getting tired of dealing with a class that is both easy & powerful for new users to use AND has a high skill ceiling for veteran players. It's too much.

Condi Mirage

• Illusionary Counter: Reduced the number of clones spawned on block from 2 to 1 in PvP only
• Phantasmal Warlock:
  • Reduced the number of warlocks spawned from 2 to 1 in PvP only.
  • Increased the vulnerability applied per hit from 2 stacks to 4 stacks in PvP only
• Chaos Vortex:
  • Reduced bleed duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only.
  • Reduced burn duration from 2 seconds to 1 second in PvP only.
  • Reduced Torment duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only

^ I believe this all very unnecessary. The only thing it needs, is a shift on some of its damage from clone ambush, onto shatter play. This way the Mirage has to be offensive to deal the same level of damage, rather than be allowed to 100% defense while spamming clone ambush damage.

Rampage

• Rampage skills have been adjusted as follows
  • Kick: Power coefficient reduced from 1.2 to 0.01 in PvP only
  • Throw Boulder: Power coefficient reduced from 2.0 to 0.01 in PvP only
  • Seismic Leap: Power coefficient reduced from 1.6 to 0.01 in PvP only

^ Oh that'll definitely be a strong nerf, maybe a bit too strong.

Warrior’s Cunning

• Warrior's Cunning: Reduced damage bonus against targets above 90% health from 25% to 7% in PvP only. Reduced damage bonus against targets with barrier from 50% to 10% in PvP only.

^ Hrm, I think it would be more reasonable to go maybe: above 90% health is 10% damage, and then when opponent has barrier is 25% damage. Not sure it needs that big of a nerf.

Staff Thief

• Quick Pockets: Reduced initiative gained on weapon swap from 3 to 2 in PvP only
• Staff Master: Reduced endurance gain per initiative spent from 2 to 1 in PvP only
• Debilitating Arc: Reduced initiative cost from 6 to 5 in PvP only

^ The Staff Thieves out there would give better feedback than me, but I think it's mostly important that the animation exploits are fixed.

You mean that

sigil of agility

has removed counterplay from many skills whose big dmg was justified by their slow animation/cast time...in that regard the removal of the sigil is simply a

brilliant idea

P.S Holosmith is tolerable right now and not really that OP compared to the status quo, the reduction in quickness rather than sustain nerf at this point is again a brilliant idea , holosmith is a bruiser and to keep up with the current trends in power dmg/PvE and WvW..their sustain is justified, with the reduction of the dmg and less access to quickness...they become tolerable

No, that's not what I meant at all. What I meant was exactly what I said.

Holosmith is in no way tolerable, as indicated by 99.9% of the community feedback. You are actually the first person I've seen say anything at all to defend it or attempt to water down opinions of its clear overperformance. In fact, I think that "Holosmith being grossly overpowered in its current state" is the first thing I've seen everyone in this forum actually agree on, to the point that Holosmith mains don't even argue against that opinion, but rather show up in-thread and agree with everyone, while honestly trying to help better the flow of suggestions on how to fix it. So we can INB4 this "Holosmith isn't that strong" thing you got going on here.

Also, I was actually the first person to suggest quickness nerfs to Holosmith as a suggestion to bring down its overall DPS factor, as well as its capability to abuse water field blasting/leaping. It was posted in a thread several months ago, which ended up becoming a popular opinion. But what I'm telling you now, is that these quickness nerfs to Holosmith won't be enough to effect its performance vs. other classes/builds if Sigil Of Agility is removed along with the direct Holosmith nerfs. The removal of Sigil Of Agility and the nerfs to Holo Quickness will nerf the Quickness uptime of a Holosmith, but he'll still have quite frequent Quickness application nonetheless. However, the removal of Sigil Of Agility will actually remove MOST if not ALL of the Quickness application for other classes/builds. This will result in an effect where the Holosmith will remain just as proportionately powerful in the next meta, as he is now in this meta. If Sigil Of Agility were to be kept upon this next patch, then the Quickness nerfs to Holo would be adequate to bring Holosmith down to the level of other specs.

Note that I never vouched for or against Sigil Of Agility. I said that: "It might not be a good idea to remove it right now" as in, wait for a better patch to release the removal of the sigil. Cal had already stated that this next patch was going to be sort of a "fit in the quick stuff that is easy to do" kind of thing. Removing the Sigil Of Agility is not going to be a "Quick Fix" kind of thing. It's going to come with significant disproportionate changes & shifts to the existing balance that we have now. It is not going to lower the power creep in equalized balanced ways amongst every class. I believe it would be a better idea to wait for a larger and more organized patch to remove the sigil, one that will be able to compensate for the lopsided varying differences in balance effects that it will make vs. every class individually. IE: Removing Sigil Of Agility isn't a big loss in Quickness uptime for a Holosmith, but it is the only Quickness uptime that a Core Guardian has for his burst at all.

If you still aren't able to "See" what I'm trying to explain here, I'll just say that: You should be careful what you wish for.

The only really good builds that weren't using it were Condition Thief, Fire Weaver, and Condition Mirage.

Not arguing with you, I'd like to see the rune go away myself. I just want to see it happen later, when it won't create a bunch of balance issues when it happens. I think that the game has been being indirectly balanced around the Sigil Of Agility for a lot longer than we've all previously noticed. I believe the removal of the Sigil Of Agility is going to have wonkier effects than any of us are quite identifying at the moment.

What you said here in the bolded is what I mean. Removing the Sigil Of Agility won't effect those builds at all, but it will greatly effect the performance of certain other builds that are only viable to keep up with Condi Thief/Fire Weaver/Condi Mirage due to the Sigil Of Agility. This shows that the removal of the Sigil Of Agility is not lowering creep in a proportional way amongst all classes/builds, but rather removing it has no effect on some class/build performance but greatly effects the performance of others. This works against the idea of "Bringing the power levels and viability of all classes/builds towards the median" and instead begins to push them away from the median because the change creates decline in some build's performances, but doesn't effect other builds at all. Core Guardian again as one example, is currently viewed as counter play against things like the aforementioned classes, but the Core Guardian will likely drop out of viability completely when he's dealing half the DPS on his burst that he is now, after Sigil Of Agility is removed.

Really, the more I discuss this the more it's brought up, the more I realize that removing Sigil Of Agility is going to be effecting the power based builds that are in play right now. When power bursting on swap goes to literally half the DPS that it is now, due to the removal of Sigil Of Agility, in addition to the nerfs being laid down on Holosmith and Rampage, we'll probably be seeing a new condi meta roll in. Power based builds are going to be taking an enormous hit to their damage potentials & practicalities to land the hits on the weapon swap, in addition to rather large trait/utility nerfs. The current condi builds however, are seeing only shaves to their current performance, and Weaver at that, isn't being touched at all.

I'm worried that this is what we'll be looking at:

• Not the balancing of currently dominant power specs, but the falling out of those power specs.
• Fire Weaver side node dominance. Without power builds that are capable of pushing out enough DPS to actually have kill potential 1v1 against Fire Weaver, Fire Weaver will become dominant on side nodes. Then of course condis aren't that threatening to the Weaver. The Fire Weaver is going to be unkillable in 1v1s. Nothing in the game will be able to get it off a node unless the difference in the two player's skill levels is large where, the attacker is a good player and the Weaver is a bad player. The condis of course punished Herald to begin with and now Herald is losing quick uptime = loss in DPS. Rampage was the only way for a Warrior to secure a kill on a good Weaver, which now Rampage is being nerfed damage wise and Warrior is losing quickness uptime to land these kinds of hits to begin with. Holosmith is losing A LOT of quickness uptime to the point that it's not going to be realistic for a Holosmith to push out enough raw DPS to land kill opportunity on a good Fire Weaver. Then of course Staff/Staff is getting gutted. And then all other power specs were already losing to Fire Weaver, except in the case that the players on those specs were just better players than the Fire Weaver. Those specs that were already losing are going to have it even worse when that burst potential on swap is removed when we see Sigil Of Agility go.
• Condi Mirage & Condi Thieves will be the runners up for side node dominance, 2nd only to the Fire Weaver because their condi damage can't provide realistic kill potential vs. a good Weaver. On top of that, Condi Mirage & Condi Thieves will both be seeing some damage shaves. Condi Mirage & Condi Thieves will begin to clearly dominant everything other than Fire Weavers in 1v1 situations, for all of the same reasons already listed above.
• The most annoying and boring part about the above ^ is that those 3 classes won't actually be able to kill each other in side node battles. 9/10 times the fights will result in stalemates or someone just running away if they are losing.
• Scourge will definitely come back with the nerfs to Warrior's Cunning, the lack of power CC play, and with all of the cover condi spam play that is going to begin happening, to create even more condi cover spam play in team fights. Core Necro may become a REAL thing due to its resistance vs. conditions.
• All of the cover condi spam play is going to make Sage FB an undeniable must have MVP in any team comp. In fact, it will more than likely be a great idea to always run two of them, not only for the obvious condi cleanse & other support, but also for those AoE burn stacks amongst all of the condi cover.
• Core War & Spellbreaker after nerfs, Core Guard after Agility is gone, Herald with its condi vulnerability, Holo after nerfs with its condi vulnerability, and Reaper, are going to be completely #$%^ out of luck in a new approaching sheer condi meta. And the nastiest thing here is that if those builds try to stat for more resistance vs. condi, they'll lose too much damage potential to be viable at all. Well Herald could get away with it while using Shao's build but that's about it, and then we'll be seeing a lot of Mallyx in play to add to the condi meta. The other classes can't stray from their current build structures without becoming completely unviable off-meta garbage.
• Power Rangers & Deadeyes on the other hand, will see increased representation due to their extreme ranged to stay away from condi mess to begin with, and the lack of the presence of their normal power based counters.

^ If my forecast is even roughly accurate, that meta is going to kitten everyone off far far worse than the meta we have now. You're talking nothing but messy condi AoE splashing with little to no tell animations, and high power damage ranged all over the place that not many classes/builds in play will even be able to chase. These are the two things that we have by far seen complained about in the forums more than anything else.

I think that Arenanet needs to seriously evaluate the decision to make all of those class nerfs at the same time they want to remove Sigil Of Agility. In my opinion it would be wise to either do the class nerfs as is listed and leave Sigil Of Agility in play, or remove Sigil Of Agility and lighten up on those class nerfs. But removing the sigil at the same time they deal out these heavy handed nerfs, while NOT touching things like Weaver, is going to push condi to the top, which in turns pushes other certain things out, which in turn allows weird things to come in with presence that were not present before. AND YES, the removal of the Sigil Of Agility will effect the game's dynamic every bit as much as it did when Sigils Of Blood and Sigils Of Leeching were removed.

I guess to me, the question is really this, and this question has no right or wrong answer:

Although the removal of Sigil Of Agility may be healthy in the long run, is it worth doing right now? Are players ready to deal with the shifts & consequences for the next 2 or 4 or 6 months until they can be compensated for, through Arenanet's patching schedules?

reaper is not that bad against condis when speced for it, reaper shroud passively clears the, same as spectral walk. and heal that removes them all, if played smartly you wont combust against condi. And reaper can actually get rid of fire weaver, FAST. I suspect it might be much stronger after the changes, expecially since from what i have seen its warriors rampage and holos that bully them alot.