Guild Wars 2

(TLDR at bottom for all who wish to skip this)

Now I’m pretty kitten about some updates here but I’m going to hold off for a minute and ask for one thing.
Can we have some explanations with these skill updates? In GW we at least got detailed reports on why skills were changed and what the intended outcome of the update would be…I see nothing now. Give me some numbers and data to support your motives and share your view. Everyone on same page = less confusion when telling a story.
Once again I see problems being addressed in well, the wrong way.
Case&Point:
Thief -
Pistol Whip damage nerf. The skill isn’t OP by itself, its OP when combined with another skill(s). So because of that combination the skill itself suffers.
Assassin –
Old school Shadow Prison builds nerf. The individual skills weren’t OP, they were just OP when used in that very specific combination (Which still had many easy and prolific counters). So, because of that combination every skill suffered a nerf and this severely crippled many different builds relying on those individual skills.

Now I want to have faith in this game and it’s development team and place my trust in them (and I’m going to be harsh here I’m sorry) but from what I hear (so can be 100% wrong) the same guy who [failed] to balance GW skills is now in charge of GW2 skills and I already notice the exact same trend. I do not know how this was overlooked but this cannot be allowed, not in a game where skill combinations are the goal… I do not want to see another game of skills being nerfed or buffed because the real issues get ignored for the easy answer…again.

So, just give me the data you used to come to the conclusions you did and maybe even go so far as to explain to me what you were hoping to accomplish with any balance and I’m a happy camper. (So long as it makes sense, which, coming form ANet it usually does.)

Have a good night everyone, I’m out.

TLDR: Not providing cold hard data as to why skill balances are made is not an acceptable form of balancing. Ever. In addition to this, skill balances take the easy road of failing to address the larger issue of skill interactions by instead focusing on harming the individual skills.

I was worried already when Noobseeker was nerfed. I’m not even a Thief player but this seriously reeks of knee-jerk reaction - you nerf the key skill that makes it all work, instead of addressing source of the problem. In original GW1 at least you could throw out a nerfed/useless skill and replace it with something else, in GW2 breaking a single skill on your weapon skill bar might make a whole weapon set useless (which is what, a unique combination of 3+2 skills?).

This change alone won’t kill the Thief as profession, but it will definitely turn full-burst builds nearly useless if this trend continues. If your entire rotation depends on a once-every-45-seconds gimmick and suddenly just spiking the target down (in favourable conditions) is no longer possible (all the while your auto-attacks and staying power is completely kittened, because you traited for that SINGLE BURST out of stealth), you might as well make a balanced or condition build and forget glass cannons.

I’m not sure yet whether it’s a philosophical difference on the available build pool for Thieves on Anet’s part, or merely a quick "fix" to observe how things develop from this point forward. On an optimistic side, it would be interesting to see a greater build variety of Thieves in competitive environment thanks to this change, only later to see the nerf reversed when it’s obvious that it’s no longer warranted (e.g. meta has moved on and there are other broken Thief builds).

I’m just generally unhappy about this. Unhappy is a bit of an understatement but w.e.

I don’t even care that they nerf skills or anything, that’s a part of any game. But my problem is that this particular lead individual (or team) [for the second game in a row] is failing to address the main issues with nerfs and instead takes the easy way out. Are you kidding me? Please tell me you are. If they did indeed let the same guy who literally screwed GW skills into the ground with his half-arsed fixes I’m not even bothering with this game. I got my heart broken in GW too many times when I had to watch skill after skill get nerfed for the wrong reasons and I’m not going to watch it happen again. I usually disapprove of spouting fallacies out but not in this case as its a continuing [key word here]:

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