Terrorhuz.4695

In a world where support chronomancers keep alive everything, from players to NPCs including turrets, the occasional condi reaper keeps them in check. If chrono gets adjusted we'll have to get there.

This thread surely aged like milk.

Hi Azure I'm your personal thief hater. I'm here to throw ideas. This is what I would do if I could work on staff. CORE CONCEPT: thief gets to spam the same button over and over. It allows more freedom in the usage of your resources, so long as this button is used correctly. Headshot is the best example of this. Thief design is good when every button does one thing and it should be spammed only if the situation actually calls for it. CURRENT PROBLEM: staff thief very easily runs out of steam. Initiative costs were increased because every monkey could spam Vault for days and win everything thanks to the age old design, "ONE BUTTON WHICH DOES EVERYTHING" (hello Shadow Shot, hello Pistol Whip, hello Flanking Strike). Initiative costs should be lowered but only for thieves correctly answering to the given situation. Staff was designed as a teamfighting melee weapon, and thus staff skills should reward fighting against multiple targets in melee range. Be it with boons or initiative refunds, the more you hit the more you're using staff the way it's intended. AA: it's fine, I love it, it stays like it is. Weakening Charge: targets can currently walk out of this thing, need to remove the starting self root. It's like the clunkier brother of Lingering Thoughts, which is very clunky already. Hitting targets will grant boons; the more foes you hit, the more boons you get. What kind of boons will decide the intended usage of this skill. A possible offensive setup would give 1 stack of might per target hit; this creates some kind of building up of damage particularly useful for cleaving scenarios (3 hits against 3 targets; 9 stacks of might from a single skill, in a way not dissimilar from what Split Surge does on mesmer). However I'm inclined towards a more defensive setup: Hit1: 0.5s prot + 0.25s per target Hit2: 0.5s vigor + 0.25s per target Hit3: 0.5s regen + 0.25s per target INTENDED USAGE: This is the tool you use to stay in a fight without being punished for just existing, so long as you consistently hit your targets. Boon duration can be discussed, so long as staff3 doesn't allow to single handedly cap those boons. Debilitating Arc: it's gone. Don't act like you miss it, you never pressed that button. It is now called Bandit's Riposte: it is a single block, 0.5s duration, costs 5 initiative. If procced you cast Bandit's Revenge: 0.5s cast time 0.5s evade 120 knockback 180 radius 3 targets. 1.5s fury + 0.5s fury for every target hit 2 initiative restored INTENDED USAGE: This is your hard defensive button. Of course we can't give thief a channeled block in a weapon skill, but I think staff deserves a single riposte with a short duration to defend yourself against single big hitters, maybe shake off a bit of unwanted attention when focused (something thief struggles with unless you're using a lot of stealth and ports; this design of staff tries to avoid that). In the meantime you also get to set up Vault with a CC (more on that later) and fury, why tf not. Dust Strike: it restored to whatever it used to be, this iteration of the skill is a troll. Blind duration is halved against targets which are already blinded. INTENDED USAGE: either reactively blinding some opponent's skill or preemptively blinding the opponent before engaging. Don't stack 30 minutes of blind though, this is irritating. Vault: Increase radius from 180 to 240, this thing never kittening lands. Restores 1 initiative for every opponent hit, up to a max of 3 ini restored. 25% damage increased against crowd controlled targets. INTENDED USAGE: bonk. But AoE. Multi faceted skill: It rewards the knockback from Bandit's Defense, but not too much because targets are spread out and won't be hit to refund your initiative. In short: expensive and single target, but higher damage (thanks to fury and damage increase from CC). It rewards cleaving situations, the initiative refund will let you go ham on people trying to res. Cheap AoE bonks, each with lower damage (no fury, no CC to set it up). Using it without the preconditions (either a CC to ensure it lands with fat damage or having targeted multiple opponents) will just drain you of initiative. You can't spam vault for defensive value: the evade exists just to allow you to land it. Boom, you have teamfight staff thief. Thank me later.

I can do that against slow and letargic duelists. Works against condi berserkers, hammer catalysts, fire weavers, druids, all various iterations of the same base formula "sit on node and kitten pulsing AoE". But good luck outrotating a staff spellbreaker, they're as fast as willbenders.

Literally kill them, they're full glass with no cleanse. In WvW they're twice as effective as they are in PvP and even there they're far from a problem, no matter how much more powerful they get (much more interrupts because a lot more endurance due to food + perma vigor + sigil of energy giving a whole dodge instead of half; celestial gear; sigil of draining bumping up their damage to asinine levels). But you know very well yours is a troll take; there's a reason staff spellbreaker is played at any level and daze spam mirage is not. Dagger burst is unblockable, fc is unblockable, staff3 makes 3 skills unblockable. I never rely on blocks against spellbreakers. Nor on blinds, as wars get resistance on dodge and their cleanse is excellent anyway. SOMETIMES blind does work, but it's definitely not something I rely on, spellbreakers have plenty of ways around it. Half a bar of adrenaline every 5s just by weapon swapping. A burst skill is 8s seconds cooldown. You get to use your burst skills just by weapon swapping even if you hit nothing but air; if you land them there's more, but you can't starve a spellbreaker out of adrenaline, they WILL get what they need anyway. I'm not going to comment about negating dagger3 with 0.15s cast time. You could outrange spellbreakers, but it's not trivial because for some reason they also have the best movement in the game right now and they will catch up to you (even without counting magebane tether). With mirage I've been able to outrun daredevils, willbenders and heralds but NOT spellbreakers. It's the strongest duelist and it also outruns any dedicated roamer, I have no clue how you warriors can defend this abomination.

Just rework signet of illusions so that it doesn't fully restore distortion, I've been saying that for ages, I promise. That skill is the core enabler of every single degenerate mesmer build. Support mesmers are able to chain shield4 => sword 2 => shield 4 => f3 rupt (+ healing\cleanse from trait) => distortion (+ stab and healing\cleanse from trait) => more shatter spam for healing\cleanse => SIGNET OF ILLUSIONS => f3 (+ healing\cleanse from trait) => distortion (+ stab and healing\cleanse from trait) => more shatter spam for healing\cleanse => another sword 2 You rework signet of illusions, you remove some 2k healing, 2 cleanse, 1 stab and 1 invuln from that chain. Now focused bursts can actually kill them in reasonable time. Without the cleanse\invuln, condi bombs can actually punish them. Ok, they still have feedback superspeed + blink + resustain, but they're not going to be as immortal as they currently are.

based

Yeah let's rely on 1 (one) condition against a class which NEVER struggled with cleanse. Tell you more: let's apply this condition ON CC, against the one class with repeated access to pulsing stability. Tell you more: let's apply this condition against a class running a full cleanse on healing every 16s, and the cleanse happens BEFORE the healing. This will surely work fine, a simple relic change will do 🙂 warrior doesn't need any shaving, it's fine 🙂

not from the forum tho, everything you post is gold.

Maybe a support weapon should do support, instead of dps. Kind of like rifle mesmer. Just a thought.

TLDR you're the one and only daredevil ever since HoT was released to get killed by a necromancer and nobody has the faintest trace of a clue as to how would you even do that

And for guardian he truely designed one of the skills of all times. (but truth be told, I loved warrior OH pistol) CmC, listen to me, I know what you need for this one: Reduce charge time by 50%: from 0.5s, 1.0s, 1.5s to 0.25s, 0.5s, 0.75s Change the effects: level 1, short knockback - level 2, fat knockback - level 3, launch. With this it becomes a super skillful button, depending on the situation can be used a rupt tool (0.25s charge time, akin to Headshot), a fat CC to setup stuff (and for a hard CC, 0.75s cast time is fairly balanced) or even a downstate management tool. Gimme that and I reroll to guardian, I want guardian pistola to be good.

Power berserker. I'm not joking. Power berserkers are absolute madmen and deserve the best in life -even if they mostly lack the IQ to actually appreciate it. I also dream of a world of roamer bladesworns. Shoot gunblade behind your kitten, proper yourself from node to node.

Give willbenders back the charges on their f2 already EDIT also tried pistol offhand on guardian right now, what is this garbage?

Or maybe limiting the range of staff burst, that thing tethers people through space and time. I play in Colisem EU and getting yoinked by warriors in Stonemist Castle USA.