Bast.7253

> @"WhatLiesBeneath.9018" said:

> > @"cptaylor.2670" said:

> > > @"WhatLiesBeneath.9018" said:

> > > > @"derd.6413" said:

> > > > episode 0.5 from what i've heard this prologue just contains some introductions and a small map to serve as a hub

> > >

> > > Thats just pure player speculation.

> >

> > From what we’ve seen though it seems pretty likely. Unless we get involved in Charr drama the story hasn’t really started with this episode. And there won’t be much to the map in terms of antagonists. I’m assuming it will be just that, a small festival map. I don’t even think there will be mobs to fight. Just activities.

> >

> >

>

> Well instead of just grabbing things out of thin air, lets wait for the 17th ?

They could theoretically have the last part of this release be somekind of catalyst that involves some repeatable pve content, like a meta and actual mobs, but I'm pretty sure they stated the world bosses and possibly even strike missions won't start until Episode 1.

So without those, and the story being celebration-focused, and the teaser showing mini-games and activities, I find it hard to believe it will be anything other than a smaller map consisting of those what they've previewed. It's probably best to temper expectations and be pleasantly surprised. They haven't given us much to grasp at in general, but just going based off what they HAVE shown us, I would say that a hub-like festival area is far more likely.

I would also not be surprised if that was intentional, to have a Charr-focused festival that they can automate yearly moving forward. The more automated festival content the closer the game is to being self-sustaining, which seems to have taken a huge focus in the past couple of years. Sure, it looks like they're invigorating the game with festival content, but is it really because they're passionate about festivals or because it's just another way to have spaced out "content" while slimming down on some of the more packed releases?

But you're right, we'll see. I'm just going based off what they have shown us, which isn't much beyond Charr metal bands and activities. Which is cool, but will it be enough to sate people until the actual season starts. Sorry, saga. Not that anything ever really is in an mmo, but still.

It's also the word choice though, "Prologue." They're obviously not naming it a prologue to prevent story spoilers as they've already told us at least what the initial story is going to involve as well as the next two episode's maps and some world bosses, and not counting it as part of the season but a "prologue" to the season for what would normally be a full-sized episode seems rather strange. It feels implied that it's going to be a smaller addition and more akin to what we would have in a Festival of the Four Winds-type patch. It's also just enough to bridge the gap before Halloween, and then, either they add some other festival, MAYBE episode 1, or just drift until Wintersday and then release episode 1 the beginning of next year. It sounds like some of the upcoming episodes are still in a bit of a concept phase and they haven't really said much about the release cadence with whatever this new iteration of living story is, which means they probably don't have one or know, which is probably a good indication that the current 4-5 month release schedule is going to be the best we can hope for at least in the next year.

> @"Dragon Priestess.9760" said:

> I'm not heterosexual either but I don't really see why this is a big deal. They have tonnes of more important things in the game to fix than the gay/straight ratio of characters.

>

> It feels really... shallow, to me, to care so much about something so unimportant.

>

> For example: as a Lesbian I'd LOVE to see more sexy lady armour, but it's not really that important, either.

>

> I'd rather they fix the quest and gameplay bugs the have that actually effect the game performance.

To be fair, I feel like they've always had a very prominent lesbian representation. Caithe, Faolin, Majory, Kas. It's always felt a little strange to me that there were so many prominent lesbian couples in the game, and no gay male couples. Aside from that one core Sylvari that everyone references and I can't even remember, or the one debatably gay Norn that had his "partner" eaten by a vinetooth.

I keep secretly hoping Lord Faren will come out one of these days, but I feel like he's probably pan and would do anything, anyone, at anytime. He's probably had a few Choya by now. And those things have some gnarly teeth.

I'm not really sure how non-gender anatomically-ambiguous interspecies relationships work in Tyria, but I bet a Faren and Canach relationship would be a lot more entertaining than pretty much anything with Majory and Kas. (Assuming they are even still alive at this point and haven't just vanished into the abyss with Zolja. Not that I'm one of the ones that even really cares about Zolja. lulz)

> @"WhatLiesBeneath.9018" said:

> > @"derd.6413" said:

> > episode 0.5 from what i've heard this prologue just contains some introductions and a small map to serve as a hub

>

> Thats just pure player speculation.

From what we’ve seen though it seems pretty likely. Unless we get involved in Charr drama the story hasn’t really started with this episode. And there won’t be much to the map in terms of antagonists. I’m assuming it will be just that, a small festival map. I don’t even think there will be mobs to fight. Just activities.

I'd like to see more creativity in the in-game obtainable armor/weapon front. I know the gemstore is meant to shine, but you'd think they would come up with some armor designs that are more than just asymmetrical spikes and butt capes.

As to the story, I think it's probably hard when they make it up on the fly. I don't mind dealing with the elder dragons, but I don't think we will be fighting Jormag by the end of the season anyway. He's entices people and coerces people, he doesn't seem to just involuntarily subjugate them. I think that's one indication that we may not even have to kill him or fight him, so much as learn to live with him and around him. Maybe in terms of him/her and its minions conquering and taking more land, but I'd be more willing to bet that at some point we form an alliance with him for some reason, even if briefly. It's the only thing we haven't really done with an elder dragon so far.

Though admittedly the trailer did kind of give me the vibes that it looks like they're just readapting the Game of Thrones whitewalker angle into Guild Wars 2.

Yeah, I think it's safe to assume the only thing they are working on is Living Story episodes, build templates, and sometime in the next decade wvw alliances. They've given us a list of things they would like to do, like pvp mini seasons and events, but it doesn't sound like they've really hit development yet.

Anything that wasn't mentioned, like an expansion, elite specializations, player-housing, etc, is likely not even under consideration. Perhaps the lack of interest in expansions is a financial risk thing, or perhaps it's because so many people complained about Heart of Thorns despite it being a superb addition to the game, and likewise complained about Path of Fire. Maybe they don't want to release expansions anymore because of people expressing negative views of it each time and it just didn't seem worth the investment.

Which still seems odd, because there will always be those people and those opinions, no matter how good the content actually is. Personally, I enjoyed Heart of Thorns far more than Path of Fire, aside from mounts, but would be content getting that kind of content in a living story episodic format if it meant that some of those features actually made it into the game. It feels like that won't be the case either though. I think we've just shifted permanently to living story releases for the rest of the game's life, and expecting features like elite specializations, trait system revamps/weapon unlocks, features like mounts and gliding, etc, are no longer going to be added to the game. Whether that was the plan all along or a result of the layoffs, restructuring, and lack of resources who knows but I think it would be best to just assume that this is the content we will see for the rest of the game's lifespan. All you can really do with that is hope that the cadence is swifter and more reliable, and that it keeps the game feeling fresh despite truly game-changing features are no longer being developed.

Agreed. We know basically nothing about them and they were arguably the highlight feature of the announcement.

We don't know how many there will be do we?

Or what the incentives to do them will be?

Or if they'll be repeatable or on daily/weekly cooldowns like actual raids?

We know next to nothing about them, and the presentation could have been a good place to talk about them but that didn't happen.

I think one is coming with the prologue isn't it? If not, then perhaps they just aren't finished and it was more of a teaser of a future feature. In which case, worst case, they can just make them instanced bounties which is what they sound like to begin with.

We know nothing about the masteries either but I suppose they're coming in 6 months with episode 1.

We don't even really know anything about the upcoming release. lol

I highly doubt that these strike missions will offer the same level of rewards as raids. I doubt they will release strike mission specific armor and weapon skins, ascended gear, or another way to obtain legendary armor. I imagine, to keep my expectations as low as possible, it will be the bounty system in an instance setting in which players can complete them and get champion bags and possibly map currency. Whether or not there is anything of value to spend that map currency on is another question, because for prologue at least, they didn't advertise any grindable weapon/armor skins or general bonuses other than just a quick overview of the map.

Did you sit and watch for awhile? I noticed mine kind of alternated like Christmas lights. Sometimes they would stay, and sometimes they would flicker.

I'm sure there are a lot of toxic responses, but I also think it's an easy way to deflect from genuine concern and discontent.

I think it still should be worded carefully, and constructively, but criticism and consumer experience is what gets results, no matter the industry. People expressed their opinions on the Skyscale timegates, and it got resolved. You can't get resolution if you don't make your voice heard.

Sure, there were a lot of expectations for an expansion for this announcement, which were foolish to begin with as they said it was going straight into Living World, but I don't think it's that much of a stretch to have expected to hear more about expansion-like features during this announcement. Of course, "expansion-like features" according to our current pattern would have meant a new game-changing feature like mounts, gliding, guild halls, or elite specializations, but it could mean whatever they want it to mean moving forward. I guess their idea of that is instanced bounties as that's the only new feature we saw during the presentation. We really didn't get much info on those either.

I think the presentation was a wash, but not because of the unrealistic expectations it didn't meet, despite me personally desperately wanting new elites and weapon combinations, but because of the information they did present it was mostly just marketing of merchandise and advertising HOT's price change. The entirety of this presentation could have been done in separate, focused, blog posts. Why get people excited for a big announcement that's twice the length of the path of fire expansion announcement if all you're going to do is briefly reiterate that you're working on features that were announced months ago and show unfinished concept art of things that won't be in the game for another 3 months, and have a very small part to play in the content they are released in to begin with.

The only conclusion I can reach about this entire announcement is that it was the idea of people out of touch with the actual development on the game, and that the studio just had to cave in and do what they were told to do, put on somekind of show that gave them an excuse to push merchandise and expansion sales.

I can't imagine this event was for new players though. How would new players even know about this event if they weren't already a part of the community?

In any case, it is difficult to take this perception of toxicity seriously so much of this forum in particular is so heavily censored.

Updates in the near future.

Then thinking about possibly adding some other updates in the coming months.

Then announcing the announcement of other possible updates that might be in the works a few months after that.

> @"Redavv.2643" said:

>

>

> > All this giving me the impression there is no real future plans except for squeezing the lemon as much as possible before they drop the big news.

>

> it had a certain feel to it i hope its not true, of course the competition is great, will GW2 totally die? don't think so it may go to maintenance mode, but in my opinion as long as the keep the story at least its gonna have a certain type of audience for it.

>

>

>

Maybe, but I think it if it went into that mode, a lot of people would just wait until the season/saga/story/novel/whatever they want to call it this time, is completed, and then just buy them all at once so they can play through them back to back without the 4,5,6 month wait. (Whatever we're aiming for now.)

Pretty sure I would, but at that point I'd probably just watch youtube videos of story play throughs and save the money if I even still had any investment in the story.

> @"Ashantara.8731" said:

> > @"cptaylor.2670" said:

> > Among the repeated complaints, I still feel like I have no idea what this Prologue episode is actually going to contain? A new map? A shorter story? Is it going to be the same size as the previous chapters of Season 4?

> >

> > If not, and even still, how long until the actual first episode of this "Saga?" And how is this Saga different than any other season?

>

> I believe the "Prologue" will be an actual episode and that they only call it that for its dramatic effect and to make it fit into the concept of a written saga (i.e., an epic tale).

>

> I feel that there will be a whole new concept to upcoming LW seasons, hence the change of name. So let's wait and see what we get. :)

I hope so. I imagine they may release another trailer closer to the release date, but it seems odd they would have all of this presentation time and then not show the official episode trailer.

> @"Mass Pandemic.3517" said:

> > @"Iozeph.5617" said:

> > > @"Sinofgreed.9735" said:

> > > > @"MetalGirl.2370" said:

> > > > It's not players fault at all.

> > > > They announced it month prior. Even adding ominous sounds and stuff to the game to hype it, had 2 day long count down.... for what? Merch ads ?

> > > > They led people on... it's not players fault at all. Altho I learnt my lesson and wasn't excited for it at all, I wish others were smarter.

> > >

> > > Lmao they announced the stream as a living world stream from day one, they did the most with the countdown but still the players are also responsible for this. I kept seeing posts like "omg elite specs", "maybe new expac soon" and I thought why on earth would you think that?

> >

> You mean they made a regular blog post that they do for every LS patch seem to be bigger than it actually was? There i fixed your whole response for you. Please tell me, when was the last time anet annouced anything at a public gaming convention, the last thing i can think of was HOT. With that being said, i didn't expect an expansion reveal, but i did expect something , anything bigger and justified for all the trouble they went through trying to convince us to be excited to be announced. Not even an answer to if we will ever get another expansion or more elite specs , arguably what most of the community wants to know the most. They don't need to reveal or announce a date for any of it, just an answer if it's still a thing going forward of it this is going to be the game for the rest of it's days or not. For you not to see why the community is let down a bit is either you fanboying or just not really understanding what people like and want out of this game.

A lot of these people may not be whiteknighting or fan boys, but truly be so new and fresh to the game or so incredibly casual that logging in every three, four, five months is absolutely fine by them. It seems to be what Arenanet prefers, or is just ambivalent about. It's not really going to help with steady gemstore sales, especially when the sales are only on there for a certain length of time and have been repeatedly pushed into random loot boxes, but it's how they want their content to be enjoyed I guess.

So for the people that look for something new and exciting to stay enriched in the game, just stop playing and find new hobbies. Wait until they're ready to release whatever they have to release, and then, preferably, play it at a snail's pace, then leave again.

I think they chose to label this as a Saga for no other reason than, as someone else mentioned in another thread, "rebranding." They likely have no plans for the future, and instead of it being a living season, the new living story will just be one extremely long running living story season, that's now called a Saga, so they can change it up how they see fit. They want to be able to change it from the expected format of a new map and story, to, sometimes something added to a map and story driven, to minor story progression with focuses on quality of life updates.

Whether that means less frequent updates pushed into one to seem more robust, or more frequent updates to keep the game feeling more alive and people logging in for purchasing gem store items, who knows.

But I would say this is probably just a way to rebrand living story into a way to space it out more, minimize expectations, and push the game one step closer to maintenance mode.

> @"Vavume.8065" said:

> > @"LaFurion.3167" said:

> > COMMUNICATE with us. Is there more??? Or is that it?

>

> I think this is the thing I have wondered most about after watching the announcement, I feel like there has to be more that they are holding back as a surprise but right now I feel that that approach is back firing on them, because everyone is now out with the pitchforks, myself included.

I don't think there is though. I think that half of the things they presented aren't even finished yet and they mentioned so in this stream.

I think this is the false hope leading you blind. If they had something truly exciting, I'm pretty sure the money they spent on renting out this auditorium would have given them incentive to reveal or at least tease it.

But they didn't. And that gives me the impression this is it. I mean, why make this grandiose of a marketing gesture to announce that they are working on things they've pretty much already stated in blogposts, to reveal more interesting content later in blog posts? And if they haven't finished half of what they've announced during this presentation, then I would wager they haven't been secretly working on anything else that they don't want to spoil or announce and have not work out. It just simply isn't there.

Perhaps NCSoft wanted to shut the game down completely, and they simply coaxed them into letting them finish out this season. And now they're running on left-over resources trying to fulfill the promise that there would be a season, SAGA, 5. Then after that, the game is done for. They don't want to spend the resources making elite-specializations or other features because this is the end of the road for the game and they've pinched their budget just enough to finish this season.

Among the repeated complaints, I still feel like I have no idea what this Prologue episode is actually going to contain? A new map? A shorter story? Is it going to be the same size as the previous chapters of Season 4?

If not, and even still, how long until the actual first episode of this "Saga?" And how is this Saga different than any other season? The fact that they can make releases about more than just story chapters and maps? So? What does that mean then? Profession upgrades and quality of life improvements will now be considered major living story episodes because they add in a current-event sized story chapter to advance the plot? Maybe add a small tidbit of a map?

What is this mastery system about? What are the rewards and what is the incentive for doing these strike missions more than once?

What exactly was revealed during this announcement? A vague Jormag/Norn/Charr centric plot that we had already devised from the multiple hints we've gotten from the countdown and other teasers, or the fact that the map was expanded really far west ages ago? What kind of features can we expect from this new format that sets them apart from what we already get?

We already get quality of life improvements off-season like build templates, and we've known they were being implemented for awhile now due to a blog post? This announcement did nothing but say they are coming "very soon" and show what could easily have been characters weapon-swapping and using tomes for a level up animation?

Is anything actually finished? Like, anything? Why is there seemingly nothing to show for this 40 minute announcement other than some crap merchandise that a majority of the player base has no interest in?

I was kind of hoping for this announcement, even if focused on living story and not revealing any features like elite specs or player housing or new races, to at least show enough of the living story and upcoming features for me to be like... "Oh, so that's what they've been up to." But instead I'm still left wondering what exactly is even being worked on this whole time when the world boss for the second episode is still in a concept art phase. This season, excuse me... "saga", was already in production before the lay-offs wasn't it? And yet we still have what essentially is going to be a partial episode with presumably a 4 month wait due to more uninspired grindy festival filler?

I'm fairly certain if they had anything exciting to show, they would have shown it. But I watched feeling like they have pretty much nothing except encouragement that they still have plans to make what they already said they were making. Cool. So pretty much nothing is finished and you wanted to rent out a theater to tease a plot that you haven't even completely thought out yet, with creatures and concept art that isn't even decided yet, with no dates announced, and details of restructured "content" teams, with no mention of what those teams are responsible for.. and a season that's labeled differently to give it some pizazz and create the illusion of it being different than what we've already had.

I'm just going to give Anet the benefit of the doubt and say that this was NCSoft's decision. Maybe the guy pushing merchandise at the end was like, "hey, guys, I'm going to try to push some of our merchandise to sell, but I need a way to get viewers so I'll need you to come up with a quick presentation of what you're working on to help out. Also, do you think this poncho looks good on me?"

I'm all for freedom of expression and gender-neutral clothing, but if someone tries to sell me a bunch of crap I already know I don't want or need, I'm definitely not going to be persuaded by a guy in a poncho that's taller than him. lol

It was just all kind of cringe-worthy. I'm sorry. But don't make an announcement, no matter how unrealistic player expectations will be, if most of what you have to show is stuff that's not even ready yet or every other line is going to be reinforcing that it's still in the development stages. Isn't that kind of the reason for all of the silence?

People want more than what they currently expect from living story, and are craving an expansion. It was implied that living story can replace expansions and seems to be the model moving forward, but nothing about this presentation reassured people that this is a possibility.

My biggest hope for this announcement was at least going to be that even if elite specializations aren't coming with this living story, there will at least be some major features that truly impact the way we play the game or things I would consider expansion-worthy. Features like player-housing, a new guild hall, a new feature akin to mounts or gliding. Even if we didn't get elite specializations, it would have been nice to get some more weapon unlocks, or more customizable trait system, or dual-specs, or more frequent ranger pets even though I never play ranger.

No mention of fractals, no mention of new raids (not that I do them, care, and we just had one released). No details on a new queueable pvp mode? Not even fractals though?

Incredibly bleak, and whether players hyped themselves up or not, even for someone that had low expectations and expected at the very least to get a more in-depth overview of this new living story, it was still disappointing, bleak, and pretty lacking in information. Not even enough information to be excited about this upcoming prologue, whatever that means.

And they didn’t even have a q&a probably because they knew people would be asking questions they didn’t want to answer. Still strange though. Spend that money on renting a theater just to push merchandise and talk about story for a few minutes? And the only new feature mentioned being strike missions that just sound like instance bounties. But no talk of the reward or examples of mechanics or anything? And a vague hint at a new mastery with no details? Is anything other than the prologue actually finished? And 4 teams? Haven’t they always had at least three teams? Oh? It’s a saga now? Not a season? Cool, but how is that different?

Idk. This would have been better as a blog post.

Why have a presentation in a theater, no matter the content they are announcing, if half of the things they are announcing have already been said in blog posts or aren’t even ready yet? It just doesn’t make sense. Lmao It seems the only reason for this was to push merchandise and announce that heart of thorns is included in path of fire.

How could I even gauge any of it when all they talked about was Charr and Norn culture briefly, and whatever "Strike Missions" are that seem to sound just like bounties.

Okay, Jormag focused story, so... where's the new info?

> @"Kallist.5917" said:

> That Live stream was a voiced version of the episode announcement page. Wth Anet, you didnt really give us anything new we didnt already expect. The Builds system coming up, and the Strikes. That was pretty much the only real content of the stream. The rest was "Look at what you can buy!"

And how are strikes different than bounties? lmao

That was underwhelming. Even less than I expected.

This could have just been a living story trailer as usual.

They also didn't go into dates, or time frames. Like, sure, we get the "prologue" episode on the 17th, but they didn't talk about the expected time frame between episodes like how long till episode 1, or 2. How many episodes.

They spent more time talking about marketing and bundle discounts than they did the actual content.

New elite specs that will be unlocked as random drops from black lion chests and masteries that will be random drops from event loot boxes with a 0.0002% drop rate.

It seems off too. Had a match earlier with two topped rank people and I’m in low gold. I assume it’s the population drop.

I’d rather them just make a non-cap map battle royale. Most of the time people are fighting off point anyway and a lot of the maps have so much clutter it becomes a terrain and los abuse game.

> @"Crab Fear.1624" said:

> > @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > > @"Lighter.5631" said:

> > > 

> > >

> > > before holo nerf, there's so many should be nerfed, for example, fire weaver, poison thief, support fb

> > > after that power rev and holo, scourge nerfs at the same time

> > >

> > >

> >

> > Yeah ele and thief can now win some 1v1's ooohhhh noooo nerf nerf now lmao least ur match was close so not sure what the pics showing, or is it cuz theres 3 thieves on one side? I just did a match where we won 500-5 lol that's uneven.

>

> How core thief get top offense, kills, and healing when both these others were condi rambos?

>

> Bottom duo probably carried the game.

I don't much buy into those top stat things anyway. They don't really mean much to me when a bunker scrapper can come into a match and get almost all of the top stats simply because they've spent the entire time bunkering a point against multiple people. I mean, it doesn't really matter either way I guess, but it's not surprising. I've gotten top healing on my condi mirage before, but that's just because I'm pretty sure at least three of the people on the team were bots and didn't even press the heal button or do anything but auto.

I've seen probably the same 4 or 5 bots in every at least 20 matches now. I've dropped significantly lower in my ranking, partially because I'm out of practice and wasn't that good to begin with, but going from struggling to stay in plat to probably dropping to silver, I'm seeing a lot of people that were usually MUCH higher than me in my matches so I think the population drop is a lot more apparent this season. I guess I was going up against WAY worse people that made it higher up pushing me further, and now that the ones that stuck around are significantly higher skill than me they've all remained in their previous rankings or left all together.

But that's beside the point. I think I actually got top damage and healing on a joke acro staff thief build I ran a few days ago in Capricorn. lol

I know people don't want more elite specs because of it causing more "imbalance" but balance isn't obtainable. There are serious offenders though, and I'm not expecting anything groundbreaking from the upcoming announcement on the 30th, but I'd be excited for new specs if for no other reason than to break up the monotony of the current meta. You either run holo for it's insanely overpowered toolkit, cc, and damage, mirage to disorient people, spread condis, and clutter the screen with as many clones as possible, or some variation of necro which is honestly a coin flip as to whether or not they will actually be useful or just running what they think will get them an easy win. Or the necro IS decent, but the other team actually focuses them to the point that they don't even feel like leaving the base anymore.

Holo needs some fixing, but in general the whole system just breaks down to playing what you HAVE to play to be successful instead of what you enjoy playing that still has a chance to be successful. And that boils down to mirages forcing you to break condition cleanse oriented builds with reasonable sustain or enough random constant damage to burst them and their endless armies of clones down, or you have to play something condi heavy to counter holo's that can chain cc the majority of your team while doing insane damage, a reaper that can 100-0 people with aoe stuns, high damage and boon removal, or a scourge that if left unchecked and good enough can just fear spam, load people up with condis, remove boons, and revive their downs.

If you're at a high enough skill level I suppose anything you play can be viable, but does it have to be so much more work for things that aren't the current meta?

It gives the price of 5 keys as being 600 gems when it's normally 450, and 3k gems for 25 when it's almost half that much. I'm assuming it's listing the price of if you bought each key individually, but why would someone do that when there are already bundles of 5/25?

For new players that don't normally buy keys and already know what those prices normally run when not on sale, it feels like a pretty cheap way to con them into thinking they're getting a huge bargain when the actual sale, while still obviously cheaper, is far less drastic.

Seems like an unnecessarily predatory tactic to me and my grandfather was a car salesman...

> @"Lighter.5631" said:

> > @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > > @"Lighter.5631" said:

> > > 

> > >

> > > before holo nerf, there's so many should be nerfed, for example, fire weaver, poison thief, support fb

> > > after that power rev and holo, scourge nerfs at the same time

> > >

> > >

> >

> > Yeah ele and thief can now win some 1v1's ooohhhh noooo nerf nerf now lmao least ur match was close so not sure what the pics showing, or is it cuz theres 3 thieves on one side? I just did a match where we won 500-5 lol that's uneven.

>

> No, the problem is ele is currently the best side noder and does way too much burning damage, and poison thief requires no skill to play and melt most builds, including holo and warrior and imo performs better then power s/d

I can agree with condi thief. It doesn't really give any counterplay and honestly isn't that fun to play in general. But I've never been a fan of sword thief. The whole teleport spam thing just gets as annoying to me to play as it does to fight against, and does it really need a condi clear as well? But at least the power build takes quite a bit of skill to be able to be successful. Condi you just sword 2 and dodge spam.

Ele is annoying, but it still takes skill and timing and is still easily countered with high cc builds.