Guild Wars 2

Just finished catching up on some of the suggested/guaranteed changes to most of the professions show cased by anet, and the nerf to black powder caught my attention. Im honestly curious to know what went through anet’s minds when they said that a blind field with an incredibly high initiative cost is too over powered and needed to be nerfed. Not only did the blind’s duration get decreased but the frequency of the blinds as well turning it into an almost completely ineffective attack – but since the patch hasn’t hit and we haven’t tested it its too soon to tell how big of a nerf this is and how ineffective D/P will become due to it. But sadly i fear that anet is planning on turning this skill into an even worse (if possible) version of the engineers smoke bomb which is currently mostly RNG based do to its in-frequent blinds not allowing the player to counter the enemies animations – or even downed skills properly if at all.

All this is just speculation, i personally am not incredibly familiar with the D/P spec on thief, but i am familiar in dueling it with a large variety of specs and classes, and personally, if ANY player is having trouble walking outside of that tiny field and eating all those blinds, its 100% his issue, and since that is what the community is leading me to believe is the logic behind the nerf – which i sincerely hope is inaccurate, because that reasoning is flawed in my opinion – anet needs to recheck this incredibly un-needed nerf (and if it was needed, why now after 2 years without significant changes to the skill if any?). Another reason i hear for this nerf is that the skill is over powered in PvE settings, but then the question of why does this have to affect SPvP or WvW at all is raised, and since i personally this reason is more absurd than the 1st im inclined to believe its not it.

So first off, could some one please explain to me why this no longer popular spec is being nerfed so critically to one of its (if not its most) crucial skill, and secondly do you all agree that BOTH the frequency of the blinds AND their duration need to be changed? Isn’t one enough?

Thank you for reading and any and all input is welcome, if anything i wrote above is incorrect or inaccurate i will make corrections.

PvE balance

(The duration of the blind was increased btw, only the pulses have greater intervals)

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

PvE balance

(The duration of the blind was increased btw, only the pulses have greater intervals)

If you think the thief got any type of buff, you are playing a different game.

Joking side, both the number of pulses and duration got nerfed.

style.6173:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

PvE balance

(The duration of the blind was increased btw, only the pulses have greater intervals)

If you think the thief got any type of buff, you are playing a different game.

Joking side, both the number of pulses and duration got nerfed.

Nope. Pulse is every 2 seconds (up from 1) and the duration is 2s (up from 1). It’s a PvE nerf so you can’t just stay in a corner and completely shut down all PvE enemies that aren’t dredge.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Nope. Pulse is every 2 seconds (up from 1) and the duration is 2s (up from 1). It’s a PvE nerf so you can’t just stay in a corner and completely shut down all PvE enemies that aren’t dredge.

The blind duration is currently 3 seconds. Not 1.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Powder

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

PvE balance

(The duration of the blind was increased btw, only the pulses have greater intervals)

actually it was decreased from 3s to 2s.

Well, their explanation was something like increase skill requirements or something on thieves, so they probably ment pvp… the joke is, the nerf does nothing but decrease skill floor for enemies. Right now half smart person will just walk out of BP and continue attack, the stupid person will sit in BP and wonder why he can’t hit anything.

Come the patch, even most braindead clicker will be able to attack thief w/o any problems while sitting in BP. Amazing logic, Anet! /slowclap.

If they really wanted increase skill requirements on thief, they should have removed blind shot from BP (kind of funny to type that one out considering how every other class goes low risk high reward mode: full bunker, runs in circles and mindlessly spams AoE; but thieves have to have high skill flooor. Once again, amazing logic looooooooooooooool).

As far as pve goes, it kind of sucks, but if Anet wants to remove the little team utility thieves have, oh well… most ppl run warriors anyway :/

P.S. traps, venoms etc., more than half of the traits are still a joke~

Oh well, life goes on.

go acobatic sword/ dagger

Honestly, this skill could’ve been easily fixed by simply removing the blind from the projectile. It would’ve allowed for counterplay outside the puddle without having to dodge/cleanse it off before cc’ng.

This change along with the buffs to other classes will make both D/P and especially S/P struggle even more so than before. After the patch, the skill will not particularly promote more skillful play from the thieves side, but will only promote dumber play from his opponent, as Black Powder can be pretty much facetanked fearlessly. This change also made any buffs made to P/P completely irrelevant.

I’m pretty sure this change was made for pve/wvw more than pvp, though. I can’t really see how BP was ever a problem in pvp aside for those scrubs who didn’t have the brain not to stand in a small black puddle of evil.

ps. The whole ‘make the skill floor higher’ excuse is a joke. The thief class is already more reactive than most classes/builds out there, and I would wager D/P trickery was one of the hardest builds to be succesful with in the meta in the first place. At the same time, they buff a lot of mindless faceroll stuff on other classes. So where’d the ‘increased skill floor’ go? Oh yeah, I heard it’s a thief exclusive.

An example situation that’s not too uncommon: Thief catches someone with a 1222222, blackpowders, stomps.

With blackpowder’s blind only being applied every 2 seconds, it’ll be much more reliable to get stomp-prevention off on the Thief by clearing blind with a #1 attack first.
Sure, most folks will struggle to prevent a stomp if the Thief immediately Heartseekers into the smoke field... but the increased ini cost means it’s riskier to spam that skill to get someone down, and it’ll take a moment longer to regenerate the ini to then leap -> stealth -> stomp after laying the field. Probably long enough to clear blind and rupt.

This applies to both sPvP and WvW - not sure which it matters more in, but it’s definitley widely used by anyone running D/P in both.

cheese.4739:

An example situation that’s not too uncommon: Thief catches someone with a 1222222, blackpowders, stomps.

Only terrible players lose to heartseeker spam. The best skill on their skillbar is shadowshot. The worst is heartseeker. So yes, your hypothetical situation is rather rare.

i don’t think the point of the post was how the downing took place.

Because thief is too strong at high levels.

I claim they nerf Black Powder to counter easy safe stomps. No more, no less.

tbh it was pretty OP, i’ve auto attacked warriors to death without taking a hit by using BP…
though the tricky thing about thieves having no cooldowns is that things are usually either OP or UP, its very tricky to get the middle ground.
i think this nerf might have been too much.
we’ll have to wait and see how it pans out.

Liewec.2896:

tbh it was pretty OP, i’ve auto attacked warriors to death without taking a hit by using BP…

Sadly true. It’s the laziest thief combo in soloq. Blind, auto,blind,auto, toss in a few Heartseekers if you like, repeat.