Guild Wars 2

I’m usually not one to complain, but the balance changes to Ranger and Thief….what happened?

Based on the various posts made by Anet I thought I had a general idea of how they wanted to bring things. I’m relatively unhappy with the current state of thief, where one dimensional glass cannon builds reign supreme or you spam bleed conditions with p/d. However, with the Anet post stating, “burst was being reduced, compensation in other areas” I figured they would start providing better options again. I was running sword/dagger daze build to help support my team in larger fight by helping lock down critical opponents. Damage was hardly ridiculous, and while the daze effect was powerful, there is ample opportunity on the part of the player to react with utilities, dodge, or call for backup. Compare that to the crazy front loaded easy damage from a glass cannon, and I’d say its a balanced build that rewards coordination. My ranger has been sitting the past few weeks because I’m just not having fun the with options available.

So…what happened with the patch? Dancing dagger needed to be nerfed because of the crazy bouncing damage(damage reduction is a tad high, but Im not that disappointed), and the cloak and dagger reduction is fair but….

Backstab? Untouched.
Shortbow? 15% damage reduction.
Mug+CnD precasting? Untouched.
Daze reduction for tactical strike with 10% damage boost(lol)? Uh.

Result? Everyone is still glass cannon thieves. With the daze reduction S/D thieves viability is put into question, and with the shortbow nerf, non glass cannon builds will be seeing much less range damage viability. With backstab not being nerfed Anet is practically screaming at us to go this direction.

After patch thieves:
-Glass cannon backstab thieves are still rampant, and still using the IWIN combo. They’ll be using less damage, but the entire class will doing less as a whole unless you spec conditions(Inc FOTM anyone?).
-Shortbow damage reduction. Probably necessary because of how much damage glass cannon thief cluster bombs can put out, but…what does it change? Thieves will still be using shortbow given how useful it is, guess what? They’ll be glass cannon so they get any damage out of it.

If anything this patch has dis-proportionally hurt non glass cannon and condition thieves far more that it did before. I don’t understand what they were shooting for in these changes.

Ranger? What can I say? Some nice bug fixes and a few slight buffs, but it won’t change the big picture.

So…status quo maintained I guess? Can someone explain this to me? I’ll give my thief some more play time, but if it doesn’t turn out well I’ll be switching to my elementalist for my permanent main.

I’m really not seeing how backstab is so bad. I’ve played 80% of my games as a thief and I do just fine without the backstab build. Cluster bomb was way too strong, and with the nerf, it is still just fine.

Klinch.2964:

I’m really not seeing how backstab is so bad. I’ve played 80% of my games as a thief and I do just fine without the backstab build. Cluster bomb was way too strong, and with the nerf, it is still just fine.

Glass Cannon thieves front load easy ridiculous damage with how the backstab combo works right now. I can avoid a good portion of it on my thief given our mobility, but run any of the lighter armored classes with slightly less than tanky builds you’ll die in seconds just because you didn’t see the thief warp at you outside your field of vision.

The patch has addressed none of this, or actively made it worse for the class. You either stack damage and still do slightly less insane damage with cluster bomb/trick shot, and backstab combo or do less damage overall in a balanced build. I’m not seeing the logic.

People will finally realise that anet knows how to balance their games and to improve them constantly and not succumb to the mass qq of the casuals. Great update

offence.4726:

People will finally realise that anet knows how to balance their games and to improve them constantly and not succumb to the mass qq of the casuals. Great update

what? that sounds pretty good, noble and patriotic and all that kittenpoo, but explain the grenade nerf. why? what purpose does it serve for anet to nerf engineer damage on a kit set when kit damage isn’t even as high as it should be in the first place due to not being affected by weapon stats or sigils at all. engineers, unless the person playing one has actual skill at it, are pretty lackluster as a pvp class. horrible balance decision.