Thunderclap is broken and now needs to be nerfed.

speaking of protective bond has anyone tested it out since "end" bug.

that would be crap if a warrior could us this and bond 2 targets each.

Imagine if bond didnt end either...that'd be nuts. Very cool, but nuts.

just tested it. pro bond does end when you hit 0 energy.

this bug is not working on all end skills there are a few that are still functioning as normal. might not be a simple bug as most people seem to think.

What you should be comparing here is other Shutdown elites - don't think Spiteful Spirit, think Power Block, or Blackout.

Blackout (non-elite) can shut down someone's entire skillbar at the cost of your own - with the proper skills it's pretty much maintainable on one target, effectively shutting them down with little to no counters possible.

Power Block (elite) shuts down most of any spellcaster's skills, does not drain your entire energy pool, and is maintainable with Arcane Echo.

Thunderclap (elite) is a removable hex that relies on them hitting you every time while draining the caster's. The target is shut down and cannot move, but the caster sacrifices their entire energy pool to create this effect.

Comparing these I don't think it's hideously unbalanced, and I certainly prefer it in its current state to its previously useless state. Single target shutdown skills that come at the expense of everything else are DESIGNED to be nasty.

Anyway, whether you like it or not, here's a few things I'd recommend bringing to random arenas as counters...

Monk - Holy Veil (run it on yourself at the beginning of the fight), Contemplation of Purity, Guardian, Aegis.
Mesmer - Inspired Hex, Shatter Hex, Interrupts, Ether Lord (keep their energy at 0 after the first cast of Thunderclap), Distortion + Spirit of Failure.
Warrior - Balanced Stance, any Block/evade stance.
Ranger - Whirling Defense, Dust Trap, Throw Dirt.
Elementalist - Minimal counters here; either a Block/Evade enchantment or Blurred Vision.
Necromancers - Even less counters; Faintheartedness is your best bet, but you'll have to rely on other's help to a degree.

Most of these make Thunderclapper builds useless, and most are useful in a variety of situations besides Thunderclappers. A powerful but easily counterable build is nothing new, and in high-end PvP I imagine Thunderclap in its current state will go the way of Illusionary Weaponry before long.

The not being able to move is a big part of the reason Thunderclap has uses. If you can set up a skill bar that will keep your energy at high levels even with the constant -6 energy every 2 seconds, not only is your target not doing anything, but he is easily accessible to all of the melee damage dealers you have in your group. And if you build smartly, when you gain the energy back you're doing a lot of harmful things anyway.

The problem is when you get the W/E with 25 energy using this skill without worrying about thier energy. It NEEDS to be fixed. A warrior with this skill not only gets the constant interupt/shutdown/immobilization, but also has the rest of his skill bar free to use adrenal skills. This means he not only has complete shutdown of his target, but he is still doing a comparale ammount of damage to a warrior without TC. Plus, chances are the W/E has gauntlets that increase knockdown time.

Blackout has your skills disabled for 5 seconds, which measn you can only use adrenal skills that charge up in less than that. Or, if you're a spell caster: Requires the target be touched, meaning that you have to get near the guy first, and then disables your spells for 5 seconds, limiting your options.

Power Block is arguably a better shutdown elite. But, it requires at least a little skill to use it correctly. You have to make sure you block the right attribute, and you have to make sure you interupt the spell in the first place. This is not something your average W/E thunderclap exploiter has the ability to do. You don't get the nice immobility that you do with TC. If you have a melee range guy trying to hit the target, it makes it a lot easier if he's on his ass for most of the fight. Also, with TC, you get every spell they try to use, not almost all of them.

Oh yeah, and with TC you get to use all the skills that do extra stuff while the target is knocked down. (all four of them if I remember right)


Long story short:

1) Thunderclap is bugged, and is giving too much power to warriors in comp arenas. In team arenas it's a little better, but not by much. (Much more of a chance to have an ally who isn't knocked down who has hex removal.)

2) I like Thunderclap the way it's supposed to be, and it needs to be fixed so I can use it again without being harassed.

all i can really say about this matter is we all know this fix is coming. most questions on when and want some kind of reply from anet. just have to wait for it. its only been 6 days since the update.

this could have horrible problems in HoH in the mean time.

rangers with TC are pure dangerous. the ranger's normal attack times perfectly with the knockdown animation. with TC's aoe knockdown 1 ranger can possibly lock 2+ foes while his team can pound on the immoblized targets.

R/E is the most popular class for pvp b/c of ranger spike. add 1 ranger with TC in the current environment and you will have some MASSIVE problems.

You can gain back 6 energy per second while dealing lightning damage and with you elite slot used up? That's one I'd have to see to believe.

Mesmers have the best non-elite energy management, and most of it is conditional and requires seperate targets - Power Drain, Drain Enchantment, and others. You have to find a spell to interrupt or an enchantment to drain, and if one isn't on the target you're hitting with lightning then you'll see serious issues. What else are you going to use? Energy Tap?

And all of this for one easily-removable hex that knocks them down when they get hit by lightning damage? At that point you'd be better off getting a hammer warrior, since they'll do additional damage as well as Knockdowns and not have to use an impossible skill lineup to do it.

As for owning CA without skill, if someone wants to farm faction in CA it's already more effective to just use a Monk with Holy Veil, owning those Thunderclappers and always having a healer on your team at the same time. Likewise, effective tactics that unskilled players can use to farm against other unskilled players is really nothing new. Look at IWAY.

For a skill to be overpowered it would have to require counters that either take much more skilled players than using the skill, or counters that severly cripple the rest of a build.

So I'll make it a challenge - write up an effective build you've used in PvP with Thunderclap. List your skills, attributes, and explain how and why the build works and why it is better than alternative characters with the same goal (ie: Hammer Warriors, Shutdown Mesmers, ect.)

Blood Is Power?

But normally you are happy with a few seconds.

You can easily beat every healball with it. Cast it on one, knock him down (and all adjacent people - which in a ball means: the whole enemy team) then someone else casts meteor shower and its gg.

Or you shutdown some people with it. Often the monk will stand next to each other - for example for heal area to heal them...
Therefore, if meteor shower does 1000 damage per meteor is not overpowered.

You should have interrupts anyways in your build and you can move out of meteor shower and not even get hit once. Also protective spirit counters it - and you should bring it always... So it is a perfect legal skill

Why would I bother? I explained the uses and I explained it is not the best skill in the world. It can work in certain situation but it is not always usefull, therefore most people take skills which help them always (and not only sometimes).

But Thunderclap ist the best counter to a healing ball - even if they already seeded. You hold them locked down and in position for 12+ seconds.

I saw teams use it to shutdown a few people at once -> they casted thunderclap on someone and covered it strong, then locked down 3-4 players for 12+ seconds.

Fair enough, let's work out these numbers.

Let's say you've got a party member entirely devoted to casting a powerful BiP on you so you're running at a constant +10 energy regen. +10 is 3.3 energy per second, so you're now able to hit with an AoE Knockdown every two seconds and you've sacrificed two party members to do it. Assuming, of course, they decide not to remove your hex which is locking down one of their characters.

Of course, you could achieve the same effect plus damage if you Arcane Echoed Meteor Shower.


So...you bring Thunderclap to shut down something with a dozen non-elite counters that are otherwise useful on your bar? Bringing an elite skill that's only useful against healing balls is like bringing a skill that's only useful against Mending Wa/Mos - pointless most of the time, and there are better choices even when it isn't.

If Meteor Shower did 1000 damage it would be the ideal NPC-killer in PvP, owning Ghostly Heros, Guild Lords, and insta-killing PCs for no real reason.

Furthermore, you are not looking at the counters to the counters. Protective spirit is killed by enchantment removal, which every team carries, so relying on it as a sole counter to ridiculous damage insta-kill skills doesn't make any sense. Countering the opponent's hex removal or stances are considerably more difficult - sure, you could have an ally throw a Cover Hex on your Thunderclap, but at that point you're once again using two party members for a pretty weak single-target shutdown that Guardian, Aegis, or stances will own.


Logically, any skill that is only useful a very small portion of the time should be massively better than a skill that is useful all of the time, or no one will ever bring the former over the latter.

Until you post a build, you're just stating your opinion, not proving anything. It's all very well to say "I got owned by Thunderclap once", but until you can say the exact tactics used and how they'll work against good teams it doesn't mean anything more than "Yeah, I was in a team once that couldn't hit through that Wa/Mos mending, so eventually he killed us all."

You haven't understand what I said.

You don't need to knockdown the enemy for hours - you need it for a few seconds. You sacrifice your energy pool for it, but if played right it can be quite good.

you totally missed the point.




I said it _can_ work out and that it will only work in certain situations.
I never said: It is the best skill in the world.

I said: I saw it work and I saw it failing.

Therefore making it unbalanced?
I can easily shutdown the enemy hex removal by hexing the hell out of them. I necro can cast about 1 hex every 2 seconds - can you remove one every 2 seconds?

But that is not the point. You can counter everything. So let's say a hex that kills you after 5 seconds is balanced, right? because you can remove it... 5 seconds is plenty time...


I never said Thunderclap is better than something. I said it can work in certain situations. Nothing more, nothing less.

That is just stupid. I don't need to prove anything. I wanted to give some of you insight on what can work. I saw it working and I saw it failing.

I explained how it was applied.

I'm not here to judge if it is the best skill for that situation or not. I just said I saw it work. It may be a bad solution but nonetheless it worked.

I never said it. You should start reading my posts. Why do I need to say everything 10 times?

I posted a few strategies where TC works (something different may work better - I'm not to judge that) - but even if it works very bad, it still works.

If you don't believe you, you don't need to. I never said that everyone should pack TC. But if you are a bit smart, you can think about a few situation where TC would have been nice to have. It may not be the best for that situation, but it may come in handy sometimes. And that is way noone picks it as elite: it works only in certain situations. I wouldn't build my team around such a hex - I guess there are builds around TC, but that is not the point. The only point is: TC can be useful. And only a fool would argue TC not useful against Balls. (Remember: I never said the best choice, I said USEFUL)

I don't really see how Blood is Power every 10 seconds (at most, you really don't need it on constantly) is "sacrificing two party members". You're using one and a fraction party members; the other necro, if he's smart, is going to use his *other* six skill slots to do something else on the enemy, or at the very least throw BiP on other friendly casters.

Also when used right it's not *one* of their characters. It's multiple of their characters. If you're using it just to shut down one enemy, then yes, there are better skills. That's called balance.

If someone can't walk out of the AoE of Meteor Shower there's plenty of skills that will kill them and/or shut them down. The advantage of Thunderclap is that it doesn't matter what you do; when used right the affected target(s) aren't going anywhere and are taking the reasonably useful damage of the Air Magic line at the same time.


I thought I'd point out here that "balling up" is a very common tactic in tombs - in fact, it's what almost everyone does when they come up against IWAY or warrior groups in general. You could bring a fire ele, but as I mentioned already they can just pick a direction and walk three steps and you've wasted as much energy as multiple Thunderclap shots.


Also, although I know you "l33t competitive players" talk about 4v4 like it shouldn't matter, Thunderclap is significantly more effective in the arenas because even when there are two monk groups they don't usually have enough hex removal to take care of Thunderclap plus whatever else your team has got going, and since the battles are shorter the energy drain is less of a concern.

Fair point, but it still is two elite slots, which seems pretty crazy for a 'Knockdown every two seconds' hex on one target, IMHO.

I'll expand on the Meteor Shower comment a bit here...

First off, MS has the same radius as Thunderclap, and cannot be removed as a hex. The disadvantage is that, as you say, they can just step out of it.

So let's say you use your elite slot on a snare to go with Meteor Shower - bring Mind Freeze and they can't move out of it effectively, at which point you've done more damage than Thunderclap, more frequent knockdowns, and less energy if you use an attunement.

And even with all of that, Meteor Shower + Mind Freeze still isn't a massively effective build, because temporary single target Knockdowns aren't really all that dangeous to an 8-man team.

After Thunderclap's change I started having the Monks in any TA group I was in run Holy Veil on themselves at the start of the battle and bring it down. With this tactic we rolled any team relying on Thunderclap for shutdown.

This was the 'overpowered' version - and you say the standard version is good for 4v4? Even in CA most every class has an easy counter. I posted several above, and haven't really seen how any of them is insufficent or useless of its own right.

I'm not meaning to ignore 4v4 here, but it really isn't that much more difficult to counter in 4v4 than 8v8. In some ways easier, because in 4v4 it's much more difficult to effectively cover hexes.

All that said - Arenanet has apparently confirmed this to be a bug with the skill rather than the description, so I do apologize to anyone I ran into the day I was using it. I believe this is a better skill as it is now than it was before the update, but I'm also not one to exploit what I know to be a bug in the design.

As I've said, if you're using it on only a single target, you're right, it isn't the most effective skill, especially in 8v8. Its use there is when you can get it to hit multiple targets.

If you're looking at single target damage you're not doing more than with Thunderclap unless you're wanding the enemy to knock him down, which is foolish. And Meteor Shower is a knockdown every three seconds (Thunderclap is about two if you're doing it right) and Mind Freeze doesn't even last the entire duration, so you probably only get two hits (which is why Mind Freeze is still underpowered). All for 35 energy + 20 exhaustion, or 27.5 and 20 exhaustion if you use Fire Attunement, and a gigantic 60 second recharge time.

Well, of course. The people exploiting it are mostly brainless FOTM fools. Anyone with brains sees Thunderclap taking twice as long to cast and cancels the spell.

In 4v4 you don't need to cover it. Unless the monk you're targeting has Holy Veil (which, as I mentioned, is easily detected), they can't possibly remove the hex without a second monk because you can't get a one second spell off when you're getting knocked down by Thunderclap.

Granted, using Thunderclap legitimately just got a lot harder because a lot of monks just found out the hard way why you need hex removal as well as a whole lot of proof for why Holy Veil is so good at it now.

Anyway, I'm not trying to say this is a great skill. It's certainly not. It's an average skill that generally is either rediculously effective or completely useless. On the other hand, if you're an Elementalist, it's not like you have many better elites... the Mind spells all do too little damage and recharge too slowly, Ether Renewal has been nerfed so only smiters gain real energy from it, Ether Prodigy has too many drawbacks, Glittering Mark requires you to do nothing but target Warriors and Rangers that you usually save for later when you don't need it anymore anyway (although admittedly it's probably useful against IWAY)... I could go on. It's not like you're just filled with useful elites like some other classes.

I don't think further input of mine would do any good. It's obvious that Thunderclap is bugged, and everyone and their mother is using it in TA; Anet will fix it soon, hopefully.

I do have to say though, until AreaNet fixes this, us mesmers can have some fun Mind Wrack spamming on those R/Es and W/Es to death much much much more easily

I've been running my divine boon healer for my PvP slot in TA for these pass 3 days (where I learned TC was sooo much more popular). Since I do random sometimes, I like self-preservation as a monk, and I can confirm that Contemplation of Purity really *is* fast enough to remove TC. I.e. you can pretty much get the hex off once it's on you. Just look out for the xx/E or E/xx classes when you start off and stay alert if a hex is slapped on you. This was effective for me since I was pre-enchanted anyway with divine boon.

Otherwise, you pretty much have to watch your own ass in random competition arenas until this skill gets a fix.

/signed for fixage

everyone abuse thunderclap before they fix it!

XD Kills Glint quick!!

Well its an aoe hex in that it works in the same way that Energy Surge does. One person is hit with it, and every other foe nearby feels the effects.

For the cost of making it a maintained hex, I'd probably up the cost by about 5-10. Air spells, specifically most Lightning spells are very cheap to cast, and most dont cause exhaustion. Having Thunderclap cost too little for being a maintained spell would make it overpowered.

If you were any more of a moron than this, I'd have to smack you for thinking. There arent two elites there, that's the effects of Thunderclap as they are now, with a changed method for using it. Read the damn skill you stupid tank.

Secondly, the spell's original cast cost would have to be higher, or it'd be over abused. And possibly give the spell exhaustion in its casting.