Kuma.1503

> @"TrollingDemigod.3041" said: > Staff on Ele will never be used in PvP, even though it should be "favored by circle gameplay" of PvP... > Fireball -> Apply 1 stack of burn for 2s from "splash" damage(Including on main target that was hit by it). > Lava Font -> Apply 1s of Slow&Burn every 1s for whole skill duration. > Flame Burst - Reworked fully > Inner Burst -> Kaboom at caster location, dealing xyz damage, apply 3 stacks of burn for 6s. Push away enemies from you(the closer they are the furher away they'll pushed), Knockdown after push for 1s. > Meteor Shower -> Ignore Protection. > Water Blast -> Increase velocity by x%. > Ice Spike -> Apply 2s of slow/chilled if it hit target. Create 6 small ice icicles on the ground that damage enemies if they step on them.(radius a tiny bit bigger than the balls created by revs aa on staff). > Geyser -> Each tick heals 5% more than previous one. > Frozen Ground -> Encase enemies in block of solid ice, after staying within field for longer than 3s. > Healing Rain -> Increase healing by 15%. If you or your allies are under effect of Frost Aura, they'll get periodically healed by x flat amount. (Like 500hp every 1 sec). > Lightning Surge -> Revealed and apply stun for 1s if enemy was stealthed. > Gust -> Change into chargable skill, which if used "instantly without charging" will be normal Gust, if used "charged fully for 1s" will become a wide(180/240 width) wall that knockbacks all enemies in it's path. > Windborne Speed -> Additionally removes Slow, gains immunity to impairing conditions for 4s. > Static Field -> Removes 2 stacks of stability and dazes enemies within it for 1/4s every 1s. > Stoning -> Increase velocity by x%. > Eruption - Reworked fully > Landslide: Push away enemies (be it either a cone like thing or straight line like rev hammer 2, but a bit wider) and apply slow/cripple. After initial push field will stay for 3s dealing medium damage and applying bleeding. > Unsteady Ground -> Apply Cripple for 3s to those that has passed through it. > Shock Wave - Reworked fully > Earthquake: Earth Kaboom at targetted location that deals heavy damage in 240 radius and dazes enemies for 1/2s. - Secondary skill > Shock Wave: from blast location send 3 shock waves to nearest targets and apply immobilize and bleeding. > It would be nice to see that, but yea, one can dream. > As for your ideas: > Overcharged, why not make it "chargable", if you just instant cast it it'll just poke away your enemy by a bit, but if you fully charge it, it'll send him flying long distance, but you'll still get knockedback? > Poison Dart increasing fire rate and velocity is ok, but projectile finisher chance should be 20% max. > I would rather nerf grenade kit dmg than buff Barrage. > No idea about Med kit though, could be passable to buff it a bit here and there, as long as won't make it too bunkerish for no reason. > Fixing Illusionary Leap and adding transmute to Chaos Aura sounds good, beside that buff to scepter block is no-no(enough of this visual noise). > Phantasm Warlock could become something like: Warlocks Fury: Cast Illusionary spikes on the ground that'll go toward enemy and deal damage, apply blind and slow, at the end of spike, summon Warlock which will pewpew your target, or something, adding more clones/phantasm to skills is really no-no... Some great ideas here man. A full rework for staff ele along the lines of what you've listed would be very welcome.

> @"Ghos.1326" said: > I'd like to also say that poison dart volley is actually not too bad, especially when paired with pistol 3 (bread and butter combo for main hand pistol is pistol 3 -> 2). One thing I'd fix about engi mainhand pistol, which they still have not addressed, is the aftercast of the autos. It's too long, making that .5 cast time actually around .8 or .9. Reduce after cast of the autos to make the pistol autos more smooth and threatening. > > I think nade barrage is fine where it's at. 3 extra nades at the same power coeff as nade 2, no change is needed. What I would like to see in general for nades, is how the grenade projectiles themselves doing damage, instead make it do the damage inside of its ring to prevent issues where you're just inside/outside of the ring, and some nades hit, but others don't. > > I agree with overcharged shot. One idea I've been playing with is to make overcharged shot make you roll back (like warrior's rifle shot that immobs) to help with rifle's theme of "keeping you mobile". Could be used in interesting ways. > > I'm not too keen on mirage getting their 2nd dodge back, but I'd like to see, as a sort of offset to the penalty, more frequent and longer lasting vigor effects for compensation. > > Chaotic Dampening is fine where it's at. it's supposed to be a more defensive tool to help with damage mitigation (damage dampener, see what i did there? coughscrappertraitcough) Smoother autos would be nice, but the change would be minor in the grand scheme of things. Pistol mainly sees play on core engineer builds, and with your kit swaps, you should always have at least one skill to press to fill in the gaps where you could be autoing. Reducing the sliggishness of Poison dart Volley would play into this playstyle nicely by allowing you to flow through your skills more fluidly. Giving it a finisher would further play into your kit swapping by allowing you to combo it with a fire bomb/ poison gas shell, ect. In mirage's case, giving them more vigor uptime with one dodge would just encourage them to spam dodge off cd. If you've got high vigor uptime, but only one dodge, any time you spend at full endurance is just wasting all of that endurance regen. I'd rather mirage had two dodges and very low vigor uptime than one dodge and very high vigor uptime. The former encourages the mirage to leverage their dodges intelligently (When should I use them offensively vs saving them?) the other encourages the mirage to spam them out as much as they can to make the most out of vigor and energy sigils. I agree that giving them a dodge back **should** come at a cost elsewhere though. I'm not certain what the best trade-off would be. Some have suggested 2 clones instead of 3. Others have suggested removing clone ambushes (I don't necessarily agree with this one due to the utility granted by clone ambushes. e.g. Positioning all clones onto your target with sword ambush. Loading up the target with 25 vuln with gs ambush. I believe that ambushes should provide utility that encourages you to use dodges offensively) One idea that I can think of off the top of my head is that the mirage and clones take more damage for a period of time after gaining mirage cloak, which would actually discourage you from spamming them mindlessly. It would also mean that managing to hit the mirage in-between his invulnerability frames will most definately be felt by both players.

> @"Stand The Wall.6987" said: > poison dart volley does plenty of damage. if they're gonna decrease damage on skills like grenade barrage, then they should at least lower cd. not sure how such basic math escapes these people. Idk, the damage is okay in a vaccuum, but when you factor in how painfully slow and clunky the skill is, I feel like it should matter a bit more when you manage to land the full damage. I figured the best fix, instead of simply increasing the numbers, would be to reduce the clunk/unreliability of the skill, as well as add a finisher to it to encourage more combo field play with kits.

Only problem with Jacaranda isn't even a problem with Jacaranda, but with buggy binding roots. Necro staff autos still can't hit them btw.

I played critstrikes Deadeye for fun a while back, but instead of camping rifle I played around malicious backstab. Was funny, critting people for 10k from stealth, instantly dropping them from ~70% health. Thief mains keep telling me "CS is less reliable damage than SA" but I was seeing these numbers consistently. I would die at the slightest misstep, but ho boy if you want to do damage on thief, you can definitely do damage on thief.

> @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said: > > @"Kuma.1503" said: > > My point is that thief alone shouldn't get special treatment. It's far from dead when compared to actual underperformers (who have had to just suck it up for ages). > > Let's not do that. If we keep blocking actual fixes from going through because X class that you happen to play is not buffed everything is going to go further to hell than it already is. > > >What core thief has to deal with now is just a taste of what other classes have had to deal with and accept. Saying buff thief doesn't begin to address the real problem here. > > I'm not talking about core thief specifically here. I am aware it's weak and is not alone on that front. > > > We should be saying "Buff underperformers" because frankly there's been a criminal lack of that since Feb 2020 dropped. > > I'm aware core engie is hella weak despite what Woodstock is doing. > > > @"Kuma.1503" said: > > It's even become a meme around here "Nerf teef". > > It's a meme because Thief is punished equally across all specs. While core engie is weak and playing with core kit is frustrating, engies have the option of rolling either holo or scrapper and becoming combat effective. I understand the nade nerf was frustrating and getting it rebalanced because of holo was annoying, but holo still performs well, as does scrapper. Correct me if I'm wrong by all means. > > Also I don't play core engie very well/am not interested in core beyond bomb kits (I am mildly interested in holo/scrapper) , while I **do** play thief, so I'm going to have much more to say about thief, and relatively little to say about engie. I'm not against them getting buffs, as long as the end result is not handhold-y. I have become that which I sought to destroy :skull: But seriously, I agree. Even in my (clearly unbiased) rant, I admitted that the nerf was lazy at best. Likewise, I think thief weapon skills have been overnerfed in a lot of cases. I can't remember the last time I fought a staff thief on sidemodes. At least a few people are starting to bring up outliers on the underperforming end. I don't know much about thief so I can only attest to what I see from other players, and it's almost always d/p or p/d. I reckon there's a good reason for that.

> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said: > > @"Kuma.1503" said: > > > @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said: > > > Condi P/Dagger can still kill people who don't press buttons right. (And that's kind of hard to run in a team comp anyway.) > > > One good nerf away from being actively sandbag though. Just because it isn't dead doesn't mean it's in a good spot. > > > > > > > > All three of these core classes are about on par with core thief performance wise, with core ele being the weakest objectively. > > > You're correct about Sb5 not being the classkilling nerf. I'll give you that. > > > > > > All daredevil physical skills, staff, and sword need to be buffed, and rifle needs to be rebalanced so holding down 2 isn't more effective than timing 3. Then I'll agree with you. > > > > > > Nerf thief, btw. I can still down people with a toothpick if they can't fight. > > > > Buffing underperforming weapons/traits? Such a concept is unheard of since Feb2020 dropped. Around here we just nerf everything else until it's all equally garbage. > > > > I would also enjoy if nades were worth running on core, if rifle 4 didn't have two trade-offs for the price of a single CC that does 7 damage, if pistol skills were strong enough to be worth dodging (people facetank my Pistol 2-3 all the time and just walk away as if a flea had bitten them) but trying to convince people that buffs to underperformers are necessary as well as nerfs is like pulling teeth. > > > > My point is that thief alone shouldn't get special treatment. It's far from dead when compared to actual underperformers (who have had to just suck it up for ages), What core thief has to deal with now is just a taste of what other classes have had to deal with and accept. Saying buff thief doesn't begin to address the real problem here. > > > > We should be saying "Buff underperformers" because frankly there's been a criminal lack of that since Feb 2020 dropped. > > > > > > > > > > I think ur first paragraph is a lot of the reason players are leaving or have left aside from infrequent pvp support. Classes or builds become less fun to play if the devs are only focused on bringing fun, effective and interesting traits and skills down in line with useless traits or skills as a effort to make the useless or less used skills more appealing. The devs should definitely open their eyes up to bringing the less used or useless traits up in line with the better ones as it will create a better chance for an increase in diversity among effective builds instead of increasing build diversity of ineffective builds. One sounds way better than the other. > Yeah engi needs love and tweaks in other areas and whether op is asking for buffs to thief or any other class really has no bearing on engi or any class op is not asking for. He plays thief so of course his thread would be about improving thief, why would he post a thread asking for buffs of a class he doesn't main, just like if u post a buff thread its probably on the classes u play right? He's not asking for special treatment, just asking for buffs to the class he plays and isn't implying others shouldn't as well. You make very good points. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a good deal of frustration behind that post (Trying to convince a mob that clamoring for nerfs and only nerfs isn't the right way to go for over a year with no luck will do that). I suppose what irks me most is the tendency of thieves to act as if they've been singled out. It's even become a meme around here "Nerf teef". But you are right, I suppose I should be grateful we're even having this conversation at all. It shows people at least are beginning to see the flaws in this "nerf everything" approach.

> @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said: > Condi P/Dagger can still kill people who don't press buttons right. (And that's kind of hard to run in a team comp anyway.) > One good nerf away from being actively sandbag though. Just because it isn't dead doesn't mean it's in a good spot. > > All three of these core classes are about on par with core thief performance wise, with core ele being the weakest objectively. > You're correct about Sb5 not being the classkilling nerf. I'll give you that. > > All daredevil physical skills, staff, and sword need to be buffed, and rifle needs to be rebalanced so holding down 2 isn't more effective than timing 3. Then I'll agree with you. > > Nerf thief, btw. I can still down people with a toothpick if they can't fight. Buffing underperforming weapons/traits? Such a concept is unheard of since Feb2020 dropped. Around here we just nerf everything else until it's all equally garbage. I would also enjoy if nades were worth running on core, if rifle 4 didn't have two trade-offs for the price of a single CC that does 7 damage, if pistol skills were strong enough to be worth dodging (people facetank my Pistol 2-3 all the time and just walk away as if a flea had bitten them) but trying to convince people that buffs to underperformers are necessary as well as nerfs is like pulling teeth. My point is that thief alone shouldn't get special treatment. It's far from dead when compared to actual underperformers (who have had to just suck it up for ages), What core thief has to deal with now is just a taste of what other classes have had to deal with and accept. Saying buff thief doesn't begin to address the real problem here. We should be saying "Buff underperformers" because frankly there's been a criminal lack of that since Feb 2020 dropped.

> @"Kachros.4751" said: > > @"Kuma.1503" said: > > When you go from being uncontested in your role for ages to actually having competition from other classes... I can see how you'd feel that your class is dead. > > > > 8 ini was a lazy change... but so are the majority of nerfs Anet deals out (Core engi nerfs). I don't see why thief should get special treatment. > > Personally im quite happy with the change, i still play thief a bit but it never really impacts me too much because SA still exists, and it still saves me from situations that i should die in. I only ever die if i facetank attacks lol. Tbh this ^. While I'm not a huge fan of just bloating costs to balance skills, I don't think thief is dead because of it. It's still the safest class in the game by a mile. It still has better mobility than any other class + stealth to help them disengage fights that would result in the deaths of most other classes (exceptions being maybe a rocket boots engi or owl soulbeast). It can still use stealth to cover rotations, leaving players in a lose/lose scenario of either asuming the thief has left and leaving their node, only to have it back-capped, or staying to defend it, only for the thief to rotate mid and get a kill. Thief is still thief even after the sb5 nerf. I wouldn't call it dead by a long shot. Even core thief, without dash to make up for the nerf, is nowhere near the level of underperformance of core mesmer, engi, or ele.

When you go from being uncontested in your role for ages to actually having competition from other classes... I can see how you'd feel that your class is dead. 8 ini was a lazy change... but so are the majority of nerfs Anet deals out (Core engi nerfs). I don't see why thief should get special treatment.

> @"Shao.7236" said: > > Yeah, as thought. You ignored them. Majority of players quit when they can't be cheesy, that's a hard undeniable fact. > Conviction does not turn hypothesis into fact. You cannot prove this to be true, claiming otherwise would be dishonest. > > Yeah just take everything that I said like I never did and regurgitate it with more vague elitism as if that adds any value. > > HOW CAN YOU PROVE THAT DIVERSITY IS DEAD WHEN EVERYONE IS PLAYING WHAT THEY WANT RIGHT THIS MOMENT????? ZZZZZZZ. > Guess that poor lad who just wanted to play his celestial ele and couldn't doesn't count eh? > Completely ignore how an avid RPG player should be expected to have the dedication of a Fighter player to improve. You go ahead and deny that fact then come back > telling me that I am stupid for thinking that it's probably because people just can't accept that they need to get better at it. You'd be surprised. A desire for growth is near-universal among humans. It's not something exclusive to an elite club of individuals. It's arrogant to assume that your own desire to improve far exceeds the majority of the playerbase. > Just for your special dedicated case to my statement on balance, it has improved a lot and players are the one that needs to adapt, still not getting it? It's not perfect but it's better than what we had before. Not picking up on it is the prime example of a /whiny/ playerbase, because "I" am doing good at it and I am having fun that is as crystal clear because my gameplay is rewarded with good plays and punished with bad plays, nothing ever says I am perfect, you're the one taking offense to my statement that people are not wanting to improve, like it's illegal or whatever. Better by what metric? If we're judging whether or not it's better based on opinion, well, we'll be here a while. However, if the population is any guage, things are, in fact, not better. Fewer players results in weaker matchmaking, which results in lower quality matches... A fact which is especially harsh on players attempting to pick up PvP for the first time. Fact is, if the current state of balance only appeals to a niche few individuals at the expense of the large majority of retiring veterans, the quality of said balance should come into question. It suggests that the game is simply less fun by widely held standards. A game should, before all else, be fun. If it isn't, people will leave. When people leave, profits drop. Not exactly the most sound business decision.

Way I see it, we've at best traded one form of mindlessness for another. Pre Feb, I at least had to be on my toes at all times and ration my dodges and defensive cd's appropriately. Now I can run into a fight, facetank a full burst combo because immob ranger disables my dodge key (fun), and still live through it. Yes, the balance pre Feb was less than ideal, but trading one set of problems for another set of problems does not equate to making things better. Not to mention the constant devolution of every class just gives them a bigger mess to clean up once EoD launches. Unless the new elite specs launch with baked in PvP splits that go beyond just numbers, I doubt these neutered elite specs will be able to compete.

> @"Shao.7236" said: > Why are you expecting buffs when nobody is calling them when deserved and all we can find is outliers that the initial patch missed? > > Makes no sense. > > Nobody is putting an effort in making suggestions that are elaborated for ideas to be tipped in as well. > > As far I've noticed when people do suggest "one" thing it's all in vacuum without much consideration of anything else anyway. > > Super drastic changes that completely change fundamentals with more than can be done. > > At this rate it is really true that people complain because they can, gameplay is an extremely good state right now and we have this unbearable negativity that despite all efforts think that the game was better before... > > It objectively wasn't. > > Gameplay is in such a good state right now that the playerbase has shrunk to a fraction of what it once was. It's so compelling that several would-be returning players have come to the forums asking "why has my favorite build been obliterated from existance"? only to resolve not to touch the game mode again. Balance is so good that we've embraced burn dh as a necessary evil just so people can actually die. All we've done is identify problematic aspects of PvP and delete/smiter's boon them out of existance. That isn't fixing problems. It's sweeping them under the rug. And then we sit here with the pile of garbage growing ever bigger and pretend that everything is fine. Ahem-- pardon me I broke script there for a second... Trapper ranger is unhealthy for the game. Pls nerf, ect. ect.

Fixed for now because new outliers haven't popped up. I give it a month tops.

Power dip happened. 2 years ago you got raged at for picking Renegade. Now it's apparently deserving of a damage and mobility cut. Welcome to whack-a-mole nerf meta, and DH is the new mole to be whacked.

They didn't even touch the Renegod build I play. And now it's even better by default. Ah well, time to raise some hell~

I expect nothing and I'm still disappointed.

Replace grenade barrage with Shrapnel Grenade. It does more damage than it after the last nerf, lul. I'd like to add a few Magic Bullet (same hand waving motion as duelist) Reaper's Mark Spectral Grasp (projectiles are tiny and often hard to see amidst visual clutter) Crippling shot (virtually no tell at all) Chains of Light (another immobolize with a very weak tell) Desync Rush (Make it stop randomly opening worm holes in space-time)

I wouldn't call this never ending game of whack-a-mole balance. Patches are a disappointment anyway so I'm not exactly eager to see one.

After fighting several weavers... I honestly don't see what all the fuss is about. After it's nerfs, the cooldown increases, the sustain cuts, the burning reduction, it feels like a fair fight where if I die, it's because I got careless, blew through my cooldowns, let the weaver stunlock me with gale/gale strike -> tailored victory and ate full channel of primordial stance. Strong or not, Weaver seems balanced as far as mechanics go. It's got clear weaknesses (kitable, slow to rotate, not great in teamfights, long cooldowns on important cds, cannot handle large bursts of conditions) it's got it's stregths (high damage output, high sustain, multiple evades, can survive +1s and some +2s). Good ones are a threat, yes, but that's exactly the kind of build I'd prefer we keep around. I don't mind being outskilled by a player on a build that requires you to outplay me and consider what I'm going to do several seconds in advance. Likewise, if I'm mindlessly mashing and fail to kill the weaver because I blew my burst into twist of fate or stone resonance, I blame my own lack of patience. We've reached a point where we can/should consider giving some underperformers a bit of help to diversify the competition. If mirage wasn't gutted, for a start, they'd be able abuse the fact that they have a favorable matchup into fire weaver much more consistently. If condi scourge were in a better spot, perhaps a few side node varients could pressure weavers off node or kill them by matching their barriers, transfering burns or loading them up with more condis than they can handle. This is an instance where the best solution to the problem isn't the easy/intuitive answer: Simply nerf what's directly in front of us. Sometimes nerfing overperformers is the right choice. I don't think this is one of those sometimes.

On second thought, ban the hackers/ wintraders/ frequent afkers too. A drop in population is a small price to pay

> @"FrownyClown.8402" said: > Too much access to barrier. Too much untellable burning with sunspot and flame expulsion. Giving those an internal cd might help. Weaver has a rough range of 300 so staying outside that range severly reduces burn output. I think its a problem with their defences and not their offense since it can be played around. 1. Flame expulsion has a very obvious tell. It's a red circle that slowly gets bigger 2. Giving it an ICD would be a buff anyway. It would allow the weaver to maintain their might stacks.

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said: > > @"Multicolorhipster.9751" said: > > > > If you have tradeoffs, you can lower the cooldowns. In a perfect world, no skill would have any cooldown, and the rational decisions made by agents would be to not spam the skill. To even get approximately close to such a world, means that the skills need some kind of tradeoff that prevents them from just button mashing something with no cooldown...what would that effect be? Well it could really be anything and your imagination is the limit here. For me, draining barrier was just the first thing that came to mind. But hell it could be anything... Perhaps, something like "For every attack that is evaded, X Barrier currently on you gets drained. If you have no Barrier, you take damage equal to 2x of every attack you evaded." > > Again just a quick example of what you can do...the above cast time and cooldowns don't even really matter. You could make TOF with a 10 second cooldown...so long as it has a consequence involved in it's usage...it's like adding an artificial cooldown to it...except it's not based on time, it's based on using rationality of when to use it so you don't get punished for using it any time you want. > > Thanks for the great comment Cheers, In that vein, what do you think of trade-offs like Impact Savant? In essence, it acts like a permanent stance where you sacrifice some hp in exchange for sustain whenever you deal damage. The trade-off here is that you will feel frail when you hitting nothing and beefy when you are able to deal damage. I believe that there are some skills in GW2 that retain the same design philosophy from GW1, and some that are close. For example: Overcharge Shot: CC yourself and also your opponenet. Epidemic (Or any corruption really): Spread conditions from one foe onto nearby foes, place conditions on yourself. Kneel: Gain enchanced skills and +300 range. You cannot move with WASD. Examples of skills that are close, but missed the mark Surge of The mists: Roots you in place, but evades while standing still. Added clunk, but no real trade-off Pain Absorbtion: Pull conditions from allies onto yourself. Gain resistance per condition. Energy cost gates this too heavily when the effect itself has potential to be the trade-off. Finally a few ideas of my own. These aren't meant as balance suggestions, or even necessarily changes that I would want to see. This is mostly to see if I've understood your points correctly in what a proper skill trade off would look like: Engineer Shield 4: [Cooldown reduced to 5 seconds.] Create a projectile reflecting bubble for 2 seconds. Gain 1 charge per projectile reflected. At 10 charges, shield explodes, knocking you back and dealing heavy damage to you. Cannot be interrupted manually except by magnetic inversion. -- Flip Skill -- Magnetic Inversion [added 3/4 cast time] - Block all incoming attacks and continue building charges. Then knockback foes and consume 5 charges. [Note: cannot be stow canceled] Since the reflect and block are consolodated into one skill, shield 5 can be changed into a new skill. The idea here is to create a constant risk if this ability is used carelessly. You will always have a minimum 3/4 second commitment when using this skill, and you only get rid of 5 of your 10 charges if you land it. Spamming this carelessly will cause you to get knocked back and take damage, which could either get you killed or cause you to lose node. Eventually the engi may want to kite off node to clear out their charges without risk of being hit. Pain Absorbtion: Energy cost reduced to 15 - Create swirling dark field around the Rev for 3 seconds - Allies **or enemies** who walk into the field will transfer condis to the Rev once per pulse - Gain torment per enemy condi. Resistance per ally condi transfered This turns pain absorption into a position reliant skill. It has the potential to be insane, making the enemy team immune to conditions. It can also cause the Rev to torment bomb themselves if they dare use this while in combat. If forces them on the defensive for 3 seconds if they try to stunbreak with it despite the low cost. Enemies are further rewarded for punishing them by giving the rev a taste of their own torment.

After doing raids, I stopped being surprised when a 10 man group has 6+ guardians in it. It can play every role viably, so It's not hard to fill up a team with just guardians playing different builds.

I didn't know you could get ascended drops.