Guild Wars 2

Compilation of Thief Nerfs
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Compilation-of-Thief-Nerfs-V-2-0/first

Biggest nerfs by order

a. Basilisk Venom not immobilizing
b.Mug not criting.
c.Introduced one second reveal
d.Short-bow range changed to 900.

First of all,

“A thief can jump in and out —> No Risk”

Thief’s role is not to jump in and out like a bunny on speed like you see with this condi-meta, wasting most of his time cleansing conditions than giving to the team sustained damage. You even forgot to tell us the risk in staying IN. Why don’t you imagine for a second what staying IN means as S/D with having in front of him an engineer, an elementalist and an necromancer spamming Aoe?

Secondly,

“In regards of stealth counterplay…”.

Regarding nerfing stealth, that includes all types of stealth right from all classes right; aka thieves, mesmers, engineers?

Also let me get this straight.

Due to the fact that your team is not running a thief and thus does not have Shadow Refuge then stealth needs to be nerfed. So because you choose not to run a class and others are choosing to run one with it you gotta nerf that specific class so everyone is rolling the same team composition as you. Got it.

Shadow refuge has existed for far too many months and the whole grouping-up-to moah-that-poor-little-soul-named-Guardian is not something new. I never saw one person complaining about that tactic because everybody was doing it or have done it at some point. In fact it was considered a very intelligent play.

So why now if not because of other teams not running the same composition as you?

“This would allow people who rely on stealth to get away still to use it as an escape”

Can you name me which classes right now rely on stealth? We are talking about stealth and not teleporting I assume unless there is a new definition of stealth meaning teleporting. The only trait line for a thief to rely on stealth is Shadow Arts and no thief invests on SA for TPvP.

Lets now talk about intelligent play

Mesmer – Spamming Clones [Artificial Intelligence] and one-shotting a player.
Mesmer – 3-shotting a player with Moah.
Mesmer – Auto-attacking with GS, going and making some coffee, have some a smoke and then come back to see Phantasms [Artificial Intelligence] nuke the kitten out of a player.

Elementalist – “Hey guys I used to go and contest an enemy’s close point by pressing only one button – activating my tornado and then I would just be chilling there healing my self over and over again”.
Elementalist “Right now I do things differently; wanna see real magic? Say blink and boom!”.

Ranger – “I was such a beast master back in the day that I would sit on my close point and wait for my pets to do the work for me”
Ranger – “Now I am working a bit harder because I also have to do some auto-attacking and laugh at you as I am applying my conditions. Ask my new pets. They love it!”

Necromancer – “You wanna see the train of death? Just ride with me”.

Engineer – “I am all about the pew pew pew. I am like Lucky Luke. I pew pew pew faster than my shadow”.

So with all of these great examples of intelligent play in mind, the second class that is so game-breaking right now is an S/D thief. Rumors say that in the next patch we are going to see double thieves and before 2014 it would be triple just to get even with elementalists.

There is too much irony and hypocrisy in having a mesmer, an engineer and an elementalist calling nerfs on thief; regardless of the reality of nerfs over the period of time.

PS: Ultima used to run triple elementalists in his team comp. That was the epitome of balance right right Ultima?

Ultima is asking specifically for a nerf because his favorite role and build are not viable anymore so instead of adjusting and adapting like all the thieves have always have done as well as the current trend with warriors, he is asking for a nerf.

Others should jump in as well and defend this nerf S/D thief bandwagon. Especially the ones that claimed that engineers would be replaced by necromancers (you real bro?!) even though logic dictated that they would compliment them. I predict many more pages where the end of the line would be shouting that playing a thief is skilless and everybody else’s sweat is unbearable to watch it.

I hope I do not offend anyone because that was not my intention. But to be quite honest while I do agree with a couple of points presented so far and logic dictates again that S/D thief should be nerfed, it shouldn’t happen if other nerfs are not implemented as well.

However, I am still extremely suspicious that this is more about a personal TP thread against Car Crush regarding the latest outcome facing them than balance itself.

Long version short, if you genuinely want “balance” then ask for all classes to be nerfed to the extend of a Warrior or a D/D thief.

^
you would be very narrow minded to assume that; our complaints about those things have been on going for a few months now, and the reason I am discussing this now is because there is a huge up coming tournament, that could potentially shape the face of this game, so I am a lot more concerned about that.
It’s obvious to me that your not even talking objectively if you have come here with the assumption that this is for some petty loses to a team; I don’t think that we are gods gift to guildwars, we win and loose just like any other team, but when I see things that are broken then I point them out.
Also nerfing some classes will bring other potential builds out, but if you are too blind to see the classes ruling this meta and in a very negative manner then I would say ask any team and they will give you the same answers I have.

I am not here to try and give my team some edge over others; and regarding the matter of stealth, well we have an engi and we do use stealth openers, I just hate the fact that there is no counter play to it.

Don’t worry xeph, everyone feels that way after lossing so many times to Car Crash, just play better and deal with it.

I just cant believe that whole thread here really…

KazAk.3269:

Don’t worry xeph, everyone feels that way after lossing so many times to Car Crash, just play better and deal with it.

Xeco|VoTF

I would rather you post something constructive, then trying to bring some petty argument onto this topic, I presume from your guild you are friends with people in CC or familiar with them; so please don’t come on this forum and make them look bad.

I think what ArenaNet wants is a PvP with faster pace. We now have a condition meta that rivals (even exceeds) the dmg of power builds

As a result, PvP is now on a faster pace than before, yes, and bunkers are no longer that annoying. BUT it is just so fast that players hardly have time to think.

An e-sport is supposed to encourage thinking and strategy, but right now, planning is not that important. Just bring in the RIGHT classes, since all we can do is to instinctively react, which draws the game further away from e-sports

Great post Xeph, +1 to you!

Before this last major patch (June 25th), personally, I did actually enjoy the game a lot. The only thing pre-patch that I felt like was over the top were the Sword/Dagger thief and is also what I would like to post about, since I am playing as one. The ”balance” last patch did not really change anything.
The “Shadow Return” is simply still just as strong, as you’re able to teleport 1200 distance away from a situation regardless of the fact that you’re stunned. It can be “obstructed” or you can have a ton of conditions applied to you, since it “only cleanses one.” What you have here is a disengage in combination with very high survivability on a profession with high damage. What?
I think that either reducing the range of “Shadow Return” to 600-900 or making it impossible to use it while under the effects of either “Stun”, “Launch” or “Knockdown” would be reasonable fixes.

Flanking strike feels like specificly a addition to the DPS evasive thief. The dodges are just such a strong way to counter the fragile build. A tanky glass-cannon? Well I’ll be kitten ed.
Simply put the initiative up for this spell with one, and we should notice a big change.

The “Larcenous Strike” does have a 0.5 second evade first-activation that hits for ~1.3k and as you cast it, you will have a unblockable 3.3k boon-ripping strike. I get 4.6k damage, 0.5 seconds of evade and two boons for five initiative? I’d take that deal any day. Except for this one, the “Larcenous Strike”, the unblockable spell with lowest cooldown in the game would be the mesmers “Mirror Blade” on greatsword (I do not include the marks of necromancers since they depend on a trait. Yes, everyone is running it. It does not make it less of a trait though). This “Mirror Blade” is a visible pink projectile that can be fairly easily dodged, and it got a 8-second cooldown. Under theese 8 seconds, a thief have the resources to throw out six “Larcenous Strikes” for 3.3k each, every indivudial one ripping two boons, and I am including the initial 1.3k-0.5s evade cast “Flanking Strike”.

Just to give you a comparison, kind of, what horrors for example guardians have to experience in combination with, let’s say a necromancer. A problem with S/D thief is that, to be honest, easy as kitten to learn, and the low-risk-high-reward in TEAMFIGHTS with damage all over the place is just kittenedly imbalanced.

The “Larcenous Strike” has way too high damage for a unblockable boon-ripping strike, in combination with the DPS build. it should be lowered and/or have its initiative cost increased by one. Since removing the other good and interesting boon-ripping and unblockable functions, lowering the damage would still let the S/D thief apply somewhat pressure through blocks, while stealing valueable boons.
You need to lower either the overall damage or survivability of S/D, and since the damage is there in other builds I would like too see the survivability staying.

Teldo.1473:

In regards of stealth counterplay the best thing I could come up with would be allowing people to reveal enemies by just hitting them while they are in stealth, but this only works if someone is stealthed for longer than 3 seconds.

The smoke fields and spells like “Shadow Refuge” are in addition to necromancers and the AoE condition ranged meta, dumbing down the game. If people would be worried that this would destroy thiefs, as one, I can say no, it would not. The thief have enough mobility and blinks, resources if you would like, and having to actually use them intelligently more than a “IDGAF” factor would improve gameplay a lot in my opinion. Maybe like Razac said, reveal invisibility when under the effect of either “Stun”, “Launched” or “Knockdown”?

S/D thief is not OP. if you can’t deal with S/D than you are just bad. S/D thief already got a nerf last patch they shouldn’t change it.

Yeah… This game is supposed to be 5v5. And unless engineers, S/D does not really shine in 1v1’s (even though they kind of do), it’s the fact that they can pressure a single target by themselfs in a teamfight with a low-to-no chance of dying. The enemy team has two options;
1. Let the thief pressure, and do nothing about it.
2. Try to spike it. Blow cooldowns that will probably be evaded. Wait for the 1200 ranged shadow return when under the effects of crowd control.

And then I really wonder, why the hell are you guys not “hot-fixing” or revoking things?
Necromancer, really?
Poison?
Weakness?
The 1650 range on the mesmers greatsword?
Thief’s 1200 projectile on the trick shot and disabling shot?
The heal on down-stated allies of Shadow Refuge? Is that even supposed to be there?
Are you really adding new skills before you have kittening balanced the old ones?

If you do listen to the community, please, please, this is the time to prove it…

While I agree with the OP’s post I find it pretty funny he doesn’t mention Mesmer’s disgustingly skewed risk-reward ratio, AI damage, burst damage, high invulnerability uptime, low cooldown weaponskill pseudo-stunbreak, and (hotjoin only) many stunbreaks and stealth.

Like that is exactly the same issue he mentioned with thieves just being able to evade. Except Mesmers can evade and do the 1-shot wonder burst combo at the same time and not die.

Jzaku.9765:

While I agree with the OP’s post I find it pretty funny he doesn’t mention Mesmer’s disgustingly skewed risk-reward ratio, AI damage, burst damage, high invulnerability uptime, low cooldown weaponskill pseudo-stunbreak, and (hotjoin only) many stunbreaks and stealth.

Like that is exactly the same issue he mentioned with thieves just being able to evade. Except Mesmers can evade and do the 1-shot wonder burst combo at the same time and not die.

Jzaku; while mesmer damage is high its probably one of, if not the most fragile class in the game, it is very weak to both condi and power damage.
Also in high level tournament play, mesmer is almost extinct, with almost no teams running mesmers anymore.
I am currently talking about the most pressing matters; and sadly mesmer isn’t one of them, if mesmers needed nerfing trust me, I would be the first person calling for it, but at the moment they are almost not viable.

Authority.6145:

PS: Ultima used to run triple elementalists in his team comp. That was the epitome of balance right right Ultima?

Ultima is asking specifically for a nerf because his favorite role and build are not viable anymore so instead of adjusting and adapting like all the thieves have always have done as well as the current trend with warriors, he is asking for a nerf.

just watch the last european curse masters of the mists tournament . in my team i am the only ele… (switching from bunkerele to an offensive one is a completely different role/playstyle)

i played at beginning of the game an offensive staffelementalist ( in svanir ninjas with posi, psyco..) and that steal backstab mug combo was really too high damage. u didnt see the thief coming and u died from 100% to 0% instant. so the thief nerfs were justified….

u should be glad that i won’t post here all former elenerfs….
many of them were justified i can refer to old posts of me
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-reign-of-eliminati/first#post1704192

so kitten my complaints are justified.

They talked about power creep in their post in 06/26 but when you see how AoE is getting stupider and stronger, and evade spamming is ruling the meta on both rangers and thieves, it just makes me angry.

Neither of those require timing or promote teamwork. It’s making one person either able to attack three or four simultaneously with great effect, or taking the risk out of the playstyle they’re going for.

Do any even remotley “top” pvpers think this meta is decent in the least bit?

It’s a joke.

Necro is more OP than ANYTHING ever was in beta.

Poision bug makes it so its almost impossible to out down 2-3 man resses.

At the very least these two things HAVE to be fixes before this next weekend. It’s a joke and frustrating as hell.

Can we please stay on topic and not talk over some win or loses. most teams are doing good now adays cuz of some OP classes FACT.

Nobody who runs double necro or double spirit ranger have really beaten their opponent, they are getting carried by a spec.

Condis and AoE have to be limited

Xeph.4513:

Jzaku; while mesmer damage is high its probably one of, if not the most fragile class in the game, it is very weak to both condi and power damage.
Also in high level tournament play, mesmer is almost extinct, with almost no teams running mesmers anymore.
-snip-

Funny, that reminds me of D/P Thief.
Before the Curse tournament it was like:
“Hey guys, group for Curse? I got this highly experimental build I think is going to end up to be really strong”
“Lol you only play thief. No. L2p mesmer or s/d ele.”
laughs at the idea of a Thief not playing D/P
…A month after patch
….Last minute signups:
Ostrich: “Hey, um we need a 5th and have no other options so I guess we’re stuck w/ you.”
Me: “Ok…” wrecks face
Everyone else: “OH GOD S/D THIEF SO OP EVERYONE GRAB THE NEAREST THIEF AND ROSTER HIM NOW”

If it were so painstakingly brainless, overpowered, and etc… why did it take only my actions to flip the meta 1 month after the patch?
From patch day 1 Necros have been completely dominating the scene with their 30/30/10 or 30/20/20.

You know, most players I group with still won’t even let me try to play D/P 10/30/0/0/30. “Just reroll mesmer or ele” they say.

Jumper.9482:

Xeph.4513:

Jzaku; while mesmer damage is high its probably one of, if not the most fragile class in the game, it is very weak to both condi and power damage.
Also in high level tournament play, mesmer is almost extinct, with almost no teams running mesmers anymore.
-snip-

Funny, that reminds me of D/P Thief.
Before the Curse tournament it was like:
“Hey guys, group for Curse? I got this highly experimental build I think is going to end up to be really strong”
“Lol you only play thief. No. L2p mesmer or s/d ele.”
laughs at the idea of a Thief not playing D/P
…A month after patch
….Last minute signups:
Ostrich: “Hey, um we need a 5th and have no other options so I guess we’re stuck w/ you.”
Me: “Ok…” wrecks face
Everyone else: “OH GOD S/D THIEF SO OP EVERYONE GRAB THE NEAREST THIEF AND ROSTER HIM NOW”

If it were so painstakingly brainless, overpowered, and etc… why did it take only my actions to flip the meta 1 month after the patch?
From patch day 1 Necros have been completely dominating the scene with their 30/30/10 or 30/20/20.

You know, most players I group with still won’t even let me try to play D/P 10/30/0/0/30. “Just reroll mesmer or ele” they say.

suldaris played s/d at curse-tourney in my team all of my teammates new it was too strong… but the builds evolved and new builds came so… but now suldaris is kittened on s/d = it is too boring for him and he left the team and i understand him. http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/c/2307472

Here some specific balance suggestions that may make the game more enjoyable without changing builds entirely right before PAX (so yeah, I am not saying these are perfect, but the more in-depth changes could be done and tested thoroughly after the tournament):

- Dhumfire and Incendiary Powder

I believe that burning in general is way too strong in terms of damage, because it does meaningful damage without the ramp up time that conditions should have to deal meaningful pressure. The potential damage, the randomness and unavoidable nature of this source of damage is a critical issue

I suggest that, due to the time constraints we face with PAX, this trait to be changed to only proc from your basic auto attack chain. The reasons for my change would be that burning proccing from an attack that already deals 3 other conditions makes it incredibly hard to cleanse and that you’d now have a reason to counter a specific attack in order to avoid the burning for as long as you can without completely taking away the RNG nature that you apparently want to keep in place.

- Terror

The way condition damage dealers operate is simple (well, the viable ones like engineer and necromancers). You stack on the condis for huge potential damage with as little time commitment as possible and then you spend all your excess time preventing your opponent from cleansing your conditions and evading their meaningful damage. You disrupt their combat flow, while your damage is turned from potential damage into as much actual damage as possible.

Repeat this over and over till they die.

Based on the above, you can see that a CC tool like fear does exactly that. It disrupts your opponent’s flow, so that your condis can tick away. Fear is a very powerful and punishing tool, just like all the knock backs, dazes and stuns of the Engineer.

Since “Terror” makes you double dip on this mechanic, I would like to change Terror without destroying it in the process by making Terror deal damage only when fear is removed. While they are feared, your condis deal sufficient damage already, because you eitehr can’t cleanse them or because you can not pressure your opponent. If they break fear in order to be able to regain control over the condis placed on them and the fight, you are rewarded with some extra damage from fear (this would have to be a single fear tick and could also be expanded to deal damage directly if the target is immune to fear through stability, something that necromancers have complained about)

- S/D Thieves

Everybody likes to complain about S/D Thieves nowadays. I have never seen a weapon set become so hated after it was severely nerfed, but nobody seems to stop and think as to why that is.

Take what I say with a grain of salt, as while I play every profession, I consider thief my main and thus I can not entirely discard bias on my part, but it is incredible how much stronger Thieves feel when the team has a necromancer and an engineer, simply because they can act freely due to these two classes being the bigger threat and the focus of the enemy team’s attention.

The CC and the AoE pressure coupled with the high potential damage of these two classes are the main culprits here in my opinion.

You can take the same S/D thief and put him into a group composition without a necromancer and an engineer and you will see him become substantially weaker.

Regardless, my suggestion is simple. Flanking Strike needed its tracking improved, because it was broken, but this was taken too far, as it is now essentially a gap closer with an evade. Remove the gap closing capability of this attack and make it a channeled evade while you perform the attack.

- Elixir R

It is an insult to my intelligence watching Engineers lose a battle clearly and then turn it around in a matter of seconds, because they managed to stack the conditions on their target and throw their elixir right before going down. All their condis fall off, they stand up, have their heal ready, as they obviously didn’t even try to heal up knowing they have a second and third life, and proceed to win the encounter.

When I watched the TP invitational a particular Engineer rezzed himself over a dozen times in the couple matches and the twitch chat was full of comments like “ridiculous” and “broken” and that it is. I believe that more than one match was decided by this mechanic.

The advantages a rally that you can actively pursue give are just too strong. You may think this is a tactical tool, but as much as this may be true, it’s way too powerful, when your opponents do not have that tactical choice to begin with.

Elixir R practically acts as an invul when the Engineer throws it down (an invul during which the Engineer can act freely), because your opponent can not risk to down you for several seconds, unless he wants to take the huge risk of doing nothing but damaging you kittence you go down, at which point any lingering conditions on him will probably take him down, because he can’t deal with them while damaging you. The Engineer on the other hand is sitting in his elixir and stack as much damage on you as he possibly can, because he knows he’s got a fail safe to fall back on.

My suggestion is to add a stun break to Elixir R and make it a fixed heal over time (I will leave numbers at your discretion, though 1.5-2k heal would probably be the mark I would aim for) when thrown down rather than a 20% rezz per tick like it currently is.

The Elixir R heal is also still buggy and even after the latest patch, where you tried making it heal for the adequate amount regardless of where you stand in it, it’s still sometimes giving double the healing ticks in a single tick, if you sit right in the center of it.

- Poison

As many already may know, poison is not working as intended currently. Some people say it doesn’t work at all, but what’s actually happening is that you never know when it works right now.
I went through around 5 hours of footage (looking for healing amounts under the influence of poison) from the end of june to the 19th of july and what I saw was that poison didn’t work 80% of the time (so yes, it definitely does work at times), but what makes the whole matter worse is that it sometimes reduces your healing after it has already been removed for several seconds (I basically had my healing reduced by exactly 33% without a single condition on myself in more than one instance, just in case anybody was wondering).

Nerf thief, nec and warrior. Full buff ranger, mesmer, engi, guard and ele. Than we will never see a post like this one.

Xeph.4513:

^
you would be very narrow minded to assume that; our complaints about those things have been on going for a few months now, and the reason I am discussing this now is because there is a huge up coming tournament, that could potentially shape the face of this game, so I am a lot more concerned about that.
It’s obvious to me that your not even talking objectively if you have come here with the assumption that this is for some petty loses to a team; I don’t think that we are gods gift to guildwars, we win and loose just like any other team, but when I see things that are broken then I point them out.
Also nerfing some classes will bring other potential builds out, but if you are too blind to see the classes ruling this meta and in a very negative manner then I would say ask any team and they will give you the same answers I have.

I am not here to try and give my team some edge over others; and regarding the matter of stealth, well we have an engi and we do use stealth openers, I just hate the fact that there is no counter play to it.

Lets do this the other way.

To the individuals that I have personally talked to so far and are on teams currently participating in tournaments, varying classes, the common census was that S/D thief at best is annoying; either you deal with S/D thief [which practically in one map it is impossible due to teleporting from bottom to top] or you let him loose.

No player so far told me personally through our entire discussions regarding how this game is going, that a specifically S/D Thief is “meta” nor “game-breaking”.

If something is too strong or overpowered in Guild Wars 2 then either you see whole

a.Teams running double that class in their comps.
b.Teams re-traiting their builds specifically to deal with that class.

None of that has happened.

To add, you still didn’t answer why an S/D thief in team fights versus specifically elementalist, necromancer and engineer spamming Aoe and stacking conditions makes the S/D thief a threat.

Considering that in an environment like that the thief is too pre-occupied investing his time, I would roughly say 65-75% or more either with

1.cleansing conditions.
2.trying to evade as much as possible the range-close-spam of all types

how is it literally possible that a class who spends most of its time out of team fights to avoid being nuked from either Aoe or Conditions be considered belonging to the meta?

Considering the fact that it cannot even use a short-bow and therefore it cannot offer by any means ANY Aoe damage from either range or in close, how can it be meta? How is S/D that strong where it can’t even one-shot anyone?

S/D thieves don’t even apply weakness as they were meant to because they have to keep on spamming to play the build like it is suppose to be played.

If for example thieves in the future will be able to have a strong condition removal tool, then that will be the day they they would be the new meta because D/P would be viable again. The only reason thieves do not play D/P which is far, so much superior to S/D it is even a joke to compare it; and let us not forget that if properly timed a D/P thief can shut down the S/D thief instantly while using Headshot and Heartseeker as a finisher, is because of the sword #2 with S/D. Take out the ability to teleport like that and I guarantee you that either 99.9 reroll or switch back to D/P.

In this current meta, Necromancers and Engineers are there. Maybe in the future we are going to see mesmers playing high condition bunker builds since right now torment is extremely powerful for that certain class.

So if a certain class like that with fact-based drawbacks in an environment dominated by aoe-and-conditions team fights where it spends most of the time out of team fights, is perceived to belong in this current meta, then I guess I am going to be blinded to death and not agree to it.

To finish, you can counter-play stealth by stealthing your team after or time it when to stealth.

Jumper.9482:

Funny, that reminds me of D/P Thief.
Before the Curse tournament it was like:
“Hey guys, group for Curse? I got this highly experimental build I think is going to end up to be really strong”
“Lol you only play thief. No. L2p mesmer or s/d ele.”
laughs at the idea of a Thief not playing D/P
…A month after patch
….Last minute signups:
Ostrich: “Hey, um we need a 5th and have no other options so I guess we’re stuck w/ you.”
Me: “Ok…” wrecks face
Everyone else: “OH GOD S/D THIEF SO OP EVERYONE GRAB THE NEAREST THIEF AND ROSTER HIM NOW”

If it were so painstakingly brainless, overpowered, and etc… why did it take only my actions to flip the meta 1 month after the patch?
From patch day 1 Necros have been completely dominating the scene with their 30/30/10 or 30/20/20.

You know, most players I group with still won’t even let me try to play D/P 10/30/0/0/30. “Just reroll mesmer or ele” they say.

Honestly, I don’t think s/d thief is that far above the curve; 1 or 2 small adjustments is all it probably needs. Reducing the range on inf strike/return would be reasonable, or making the return not usable when stunned. One or the other, not both. The build does have a ton of dodges, which I think is alright as long as you could more easily punish them when you catch them when they’re not evading, which is the problem with the current inf strike. And I totally agree with you on how tac strike and dancing dagger are vastly UP currently and need some lovin.

On the other hand, Shadow Trap is pretty insane for map mobility even with the 120s CD. Not sure why your team values Mesmer or Ele higher considering how many points you can deny the enemy team over the course of the game via virtually free backcaps.

Apparently, arenanet have to nerf everything and remove every weapon from the game, so the players start slap each other instead of using skills.

Jumper is right s/d thief is strong if u play it in the right way and it do nothing if u dont know how to use that spec or ure just spamming 3 how many ppl say.

necro marks haven’t been changed in any way so it cannot be the source of any of your problems or it would have been so for a year

i can however agree that all necro buffs didn’t go in right places. necros still sit a whole lot of time at 0% life force since they cannot get it from anywhere and no regen, even dat laughable signet lol. granted some skills load life force pretty fast AFTER you are in combat but that means you got to survive first whole lot of time without dat DS. first good step would be DS regen out of combat. also some traits have idiotic ON KILL pve mechanics. there must be better way to make these traits work in decent way which is useful.

and if lol meta complaining i’d also add lolinstagibaoespam mesmers right there too. too much forgiving facerolling. there must be a reason why every one of them rolls with a GS. even though not unkillable too pretty strong right there, right beside op 30/30/x/x/x necro.

and faceroll condirangers and friedns. condi this and condi that

Until everything reaches warrior level, strong classes complaining about stronger classes is like first world problems.

No offense to any person in particular, but the forums have really become: This build is OP because it is easier to faceroll then my faceroll build.

AOE condi cleave- stupid faceroll
S/D thief- lol don’t catch me faceroll
Rangers- pets/spirits faceroll for you
mesmers- either my AI facerolls you or my immunity accessibility
necromancer- freight train faceroll aoe everything
engineer- Cool story free undodge-able 100% burning proc for 4 seconds
Elementalist- more skills to faceroll you with- but I will just recharge my same 5

Jumper.9482:

Problem is they’re fixing things that aren’t broken.
For Necro, they weren’t working because 0 disengage.
The fix? Just double their damage.

Thief?
Oh, we see S/D is a viable yet rarely played set so we took a third of your daze duration away. We also added 1 more second till you could stealth again, drastically affecting your daze upkeep even further. Also we cut your dagger offhand damage by 50% and 33% respectively. Oh and about half a year ago we broke Runes of the Mesmer and Sigil of Paralyzation for Tactical Strike and haven’t fixed it.
A couple months later…
dev1:“Hmm I wonder why S/D isn’t played anymore”
dev2:“Well it sure isn’t dancing dagger and cloak and dagger. I mean look at how many people take D/D over D/P and the advantages it brings.”
dev1:“My god, you’re right! Let’s just superbuff their #3 ability! We’ll make it their primary utility, defense, as well as dps!”
dev2:“That was sarcasm…” facepalm
dev1:“Too late! Done!”

Ugh. Story of my life in GW2. I loved the control role of the set, now we’ve got people acting like S/D was always about 3 like some less bursty D/D.

Olli.6137:

Jumper is right s/d thief is strong if u play it in the right way and it do nothing if u dont know how to use that spec or ure just spamming 3 how many ppl say.

S/D thief is made easy to play because people blow their high value skills during the evade on 3, rather than when 3 is locked down due to larcenous being available. When people are better, it makes S/D much harder to play.

Still, the damage from the set is overly focused on larcenous and flanking, and playing it doesn’t feel right. There’s still very little need to toss that much ini into a CnD, and tactical strike requires a setup that makes it weak as a method of reacting to a skill you want to shut down.

Weeks before jumper made his S/D build, I made a similar one using shortbow as the main running 25 in acro, 30 in crit strikes, and 15 in deadly arts. I remember telling Acandis I had found the next biggest thing. The build ran a bunch of +might duration runes and might on dodge + agil sig, vigor on heal, withdraw, etc. It kept 8 stacks of might on itself consistently and blasted out stupid amounts of might when paired with an ele (and at the time aurashare D/D ele pairs were popular and gave me peels and sustained pressure for me to capitalize on) and I ran it in a few tpvp matchs, and I could consistently stay alive with 3 people training on me. The tradeoff was that the sustained damage the build put out dropped to zero when people trained you, whereas an SD thief can still put out pressure while being focused. This build is why bry and a number of people consistently lose their kitten about me running withdraw a month before it got popular.

Then they decided to nerf trickshot, cut cluster damage, and give a massive boost to S/D the next patch. The exact same evade-centric play came out, but instead of having damage centered on avoidable cluster bombs and mitigatable projectiles, requiring positioning to deal with condi pressure, and the cross team ele synergies, instead we got all of the upsides of the build’s support and sustained damage with none of the downsides.

Instead of focusing on buffs that allow for cross-class synergy and the development of team wide strategies, Anet has just been trying to give every class a ‘complete’ toolkit to deal with everything. That’s obviously not going to work. If the devs get worried about power creep, they end up just homogenizing classes’ strengths. If they’re worried about class diversity, they do kitten like give necros a thousand different buffs concurrently.

Instead, devs should be examining how classes interact with each other and try to lessen their ability to function at 100% on their own, while emphasizing their ability to help out other classes.

I crafted my build a week before the buff to S/D in preparations to the buffs. My inspiration had actually come from a thief that played for only a few months after release known as “Deeja”. He ran a double shortbow perma dodge ‘spam 3’ build.
However, obviously it did zero dps and offered very little in teamfights. Especially after the Cluster 15% nerf very early on (and subsequently the 900 range and heatseeking nerfs).

Anyways its obvious, what Xeph tries to reach here.
So i hope Arenanet can see through that thread

’’ I have been having a very big problem getting a grasp on what Arena Net was thinking when this patch went live."

Simple and a very smart choice
Forcing the metas to change till the Pax 2 , and found out which one suit the best , for the game.
Or later revalue all these <<data>> and find a mid ground
If all goes well and the game realease on the eastern market in Junuary , at the August PAX2 – 50k dollars WORLDWIDE tournament , everything must be perfect :P

An other smart dicision for the PAX 1 was to choose this meta .
Theres was 3 possible metas they had to choose :
a) Power builds (if they nerf conditions) , focusing fire any target and kill it in 0.5 sec-1 sec . The anouncers wont have time to discribe anything and the non-GW2 viewers , wont understand whats happening
b) Buff Bunker specs , ppl will get bored
c) Condtios specs , killing everything in 5-8 sec , but atleast the viewers can understand something

the balance is bad now ,but the nekro patch was good couse it destroyed domination of
other very old setup guard,mesmer ,ranger ,engi ,ele ……..
before this patch this was the best setup u can choose ,ofcourse TP doesnt like (i wouldnt like it too ) couse this was their setup ,they create it and master it more than others…….
Car Crash found them self in new changes ,we will see if after another meta change if they still can do it ……this destroying meta will reveal which team is the best
i hope they will nerf this weird nekro OPness ,thiefs hmmm they are powerfull but not sure if OP
and they shouldnt nerf stealth ,i dont know why u wanna change it, it is only 15 secs ,maybe they should give for every class skills like aoe reveal from stealth with preaty big cooldown , to just give a chance ,or something like u cant put ccs from stealth and moa ofcourse

and they should buff wariors ,they dont need much ,more to be viable at tourneys
i thin that staff ele would be nice in tourneys too
or longbow greatsword ranger
or full bunker nekro

Lot’s of people whined that balancing went so slow. This was the first big balancing patch and see what happens… They should just stick with the slow pace balancing and hope the new influx of skills and traits will help diversifying.

btw forgot to write it :fear should have cooldown like stealth …..
when u put fear u cant put another fear for 5 secs ,and feared target is immune to fears for 5 secs,so another nekro cant fear him

dzindzinier.6138:

btw forgot to write it :fear should have cooldown like stealth …..
when u put fear u cant put another fear for 5 secs ,and feared target is immune to fears for 5 secs,so another nekro cant fear him

I disagree, the fear lockdown is the same mechanic as the immobilise lockdown/knocklock. What is different between 2 eles training you with updrafts/kds or an engie immobilising you for an hour than a necro or 2 locking you in fears?

Regarding the overall of Xeph’s and other players’ posts, I have to agree – the meta is dumb, sorry but that’s what it is. Instead of nerfing AoE to “slow down the game” (Jonathan Sharp in SotG) we were given a power creep update that rose the offensive strength of my beloved necro so I can solo up to 3 people sometimes. It gave us one-shot eles. It gave us S/D thieves.

Is this what we want GW2 to become? A spamfest of AoE and a clutterfest of particles with little to no regard to tactics and timing that is not fun to play and even worse to watch.

A thought experiment: What would a tourny match look like if all AoE was turned off (ignore that some professions are based around AoE, let’s assume they would have a fair access to good builds)?
Would it be more interesting? More difficult? Skillful?

there is a difference stuns dont do dmg ,btw how many fears nekro has,and how long they are ,couse ele can updraft u and maybe than earth 4 , and nekro can fear from ds ,fear from staff, fear from wall ,not the fear is OP itself but this chain that nekro does …
but i think the game machanic should change to all disables ,like u are immune to disables for 2 secs after disabled
how would match looklike without aoe , thief thief thief thief

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Until everything reaches warrior level, strong classes complaining about stronger classes is like first world problems.

No offense to any person in particular, but the forums have really become: This build is OP because it is easier to faceroll then my faceroll build.

AOE condi cleave- stupid faceroll
S/D thief- lol don’t catch me faceroll
Rangers- pets/spirits faceroll for you
mesmers- either my AI facerolls you or my immunity accessibility
necromancer- freight train faceroll aoe everything
engineer- Cool story free undodge-able 100% burning proc for 4 seconds
Elementalist- more skills to faceroll you with- but I will just recharge my same 5

I snorted into my food because of how hilariously true this is. I too believe that basically every class needs toning down rather than constantly adding new things to deal with the (older) new things. Like if they fixed the “condition meta” by adding a million new condition cleansing methods then that would be hilarious. And terrible.

nerf dmg of all classes.

Nerf burning.

Remove dodge return trait.

Nerf Vigor. (make it something like 50% instead of 100% + add 50% chance no go through glancing strikes – a bit counter to weakness)

Stop dodge-spamming. Dodge is skill based not random spamming.

Bring all to warriors.

TRoopEr.5364:

nerf dmg of all classes.
Nerf Vigor. (make it something like 50% instead of 100% + add 50% chance no go through glancing strikes – a bit counter to weakness)
Stop dodge-spamming. Dodge is skill based not random spamming.

the problem is that bunkers will come back ,and u will have to kill them with 3 guys again

but doge spamming is true ,evades shouldnt be that easy to get ,from skills or dodges

One of my constant concerns with Guild Wars 2 has always been that ArenaNet is way too slow to fix bugs and other issues that are blatantly game breaking.

For example, the poison bug: Does anyone on this forum doubt that Riot would hotfix such a huge issue in a matter of days or even hours? It’s pretty clear to me that this bug wouldn’t have lasted long enough to be known by the official forums if this was League of Legends.

But the balance problems are pretty kitten obvious as well. Let’s assume for a second that the developers’ assumptions about necromancers were right, and the metagame would eventually shift to balance them. What would that look like? Well, necromancers would still be stacking more conditions than can be cleansed because there simply isn’t and shouldn’t be enough cleansing in the game to deal with a constant barrage of five to eight conditions. They would still be bursting down people with Terror in seconds once stun breakers are down. A lot of their damage would still come through ridiculous AOEs that cover entire points. Let’s assume that’s somehow balanced. Does that make the ridiculous damage and thoughtless play OK? Absolutely not.

This balance problem applies to the game across the board. Let’s say the metagame adjusts to spirit rangers, sword/dagger thieves and scepter/dagger elementalists so they’re all balanced. Does that make the mindless, passive utility and damage of spirit rangers OK? Does that make the endless evades and teleports of a sword/dagger thief any more tolerable or genuinely thought-provoking? Does that make the instant, nearly unpredictable one-shot burst of an elementalist any more interesting or gameplay-enhancing? No, no and no. It’s not even a question.

Even from the start, this was a huge problem with main-hand dagger thieves. Were they always possible to counter? Absolutely. Did that make the one-shots acceptable? Absolutely not. (Obviously this build has fallen out of favor, but it still exemplifies how something can be balanced or even weak and still carry bad game mechanics, particularly when it comes to e-sports.)

The developers are too reluctant to nerf and seem to rely way too much on players forcing the meta to adjust to make a bad situation tolerable. But what that really does is just get players stuck with bad mechanics. Because once the meta adjusts, that’s the standard everything has to meet. That means every other class also has to get bad mechanics to fight the bad mechanics. Some might even call that power creep.

reduce the duration of stability to 3 sec max. Or even remove stability from SPVP.

Increase cc’s cds, reduce duration of cc.

And the game starts being moreeeeeeee fun.

Removing stability… My god, I can’t imagine the horror. Maybe a bit finetuning, but removing it?

just balance every class near engi ,imo opinion it is most balanced class in game ,and before nekro patch valk ele was balanced preaty much but imo ofcourse

I honestly cant believe how some people here are defending S/D thief in order to get an easy win in PAX.

Not running S/D is like crippling your team just like not running Necromancer. I strongly believe that when certain classes are 100% needed in a setup that something is wrong balance-wise. Lets not speak of guardians because they are part of the larger problem which Heleseth actually described in a recent interview with TehMaker:

http://www.twitch.tv/tehmaker/c/2605731 – Referring to the part starting 18mins in, thanks Jzaku.9765
(Referring to the part he talks about other classes balanced around warriors)

People saying that Xeph is doing this because his team is just loosing against a certain comp don’t know Xeph very well. I’d say when a team like TP that is for a couple of months the strongest team and all of a sudden gets contested for its place by unknown players something fishy is going on.

Jumper.9482:

I crafted my build a week before the buff to S/D in preparations to the buffs. My inspiration had actually come from a thief that played for only a few months after release known as “Deeja”. He ran a double shortbow perma dodge ‘spam 3’ build.
However, obviously it did zero dps and offered very little in teamfights. Especially after the Cluster 15% nerf very early on (and subsequently the 900 range and heatseeking nerfs).

Yep, I didn’t run my build very often before the patch, so I would have been very surprised if you took it off me, but cluster and trickshot both got hit a week after I came up with it so I scrapped it, and then dropped D/D. Shortbow main works better with D/D vs D/P because of the near instant spike timing after the switch from shortbow to your melee weaponset. But now shortbow deals around half the damage it used to while also having less range.

The move towards a sustainable thief that was most effective with specific team synergies that could be neutralized by smart counterplay already existed. Instead, they gutted the existing option for thief, and gave S/D a truckton of power instead, allowing for damage and evasion to come from the same initiative point expenditure, with the added bonus of having infiltrator strike’s bullkitten to back you up.

RaZaC.1963:

http://www.twitch.tv/tehmaker/c/2605731
(Referring to the part he talks about other classes balanced around warriors)

This is a very good interview. I’d edit in a specific time for people to listen to, though.

Xeph.4513:

^
you would be very narrow minded to assume that; our complaints about those things have been on going for a few months now, and the reason I am discussing this now is because there is a huge up coming tournament, that could potentially shape the face of this game, so I am a lot more concerned about that.
It’s obvious to me that your not even talking objectively if you have come here with the assumption that this is for some petty loses to a team; I don’t think that we are gods gift to guildwars, we win and loose just like any other team, but when I see things that are broken then I point them out.
Also nerfing some classes will bring other potential builds out, but if you are too blind to see the classes ruling this meta and in a very negative manner then I would say ask any team and they will give you the same answers I have.

I am not here to try and give my team some edge over others; and regarding the matter of stealth, well we have an engi and we do use stealth openers, I just hate the fact that there is no counter play to it.

There is a counter to stealth openers but it’s just that not everyone can use it. It’s called Traps and Marks and I’m pretty sure you know that.

Also about conditions, it’s either Anet nerfs them directly or creates something that counters them indirectly. Something that builds counterplay against condtions that isn’t cleansing them. I’ve talked about this several times and I think that’s the way they need to go in order to stop this chain of whack-a-mole they seemingly are about to enter.

There might be too many AoE condi spammers in the meta right now but just throw a Stun Warrior in the mix and the game just changes. This basically countering one extreme, with another extreme because the chain stunning that Warriors can do is bordering on OP (just like the Necros are considered OP now) but it is the only way that I can see that counters the Necros directly. Even two Necros have to pressure hard to take down such a Warrior.

Olli.6137:

Anyways its obvious, what Xeph tries to reach here.
So i hope Arenanet can see through that thread

he’s pointing out that classes that take no effort to get high reward (either spam 3-dodge or mindless spam aoe conditions) should get nerfed, I see nothing wrong in that.
Then again, if you think that someone spamming 3 should get better “rewards” than someone playing piano on his keyboard JUST TO KEEP UP, then there is something wrong with you.
Seriously, old D/D backstab one-shot thieves took more effort than S/D thieves today, at least they had to chain some actions together (unless they macroed it, but that’s another story.)

Shar.3402:

Olli.6137:

Anyways its obvious, what Xeph tries to reach here.
So i hope Arenanet can see through that thread

he’s pointing out that classes that take no effort to get high reward (either spam 3-dodge or mindless spam aoe conditions) should get nerfed, I see nothing wrong in that.
Then again, if you think that someone spamming 3 should get better “rewards” than someone playing piano on his keyboard JUST TO KEEP UP, then there is something wrong with you.
Seriously, old D/D backstab one-shot thieves took more effort than S/D thieves today, at least they had to chain some actions together (unless they macroed it, but that’s another story.)

The funny thing about the people spamming 3 is that, you have to be really good at it to receive any rewards. You can jump in a 1v1 and kill people based on your evasiveness, YAY good for you but if you jump into a group of people (just like several thief builds tend to do. PS: I really don’t know what’s so special about this one) you WILL get hit.

There’s definitely a risk to jumping in and that’s why they have a way to jump out, they don’t insta-gib anyone, so they need that ability to retreat when the kitten hits the fan, they also have to work with their team to get a target down or pop in when a target is low to push him down to downed health.

I’ve fought so many S/D thieves, and you can tell the bad ones from the good ones. It takes skill to play the build, nerfing it more would be idiocy.

RaZaC.1963:

Not running S/D is like crippling your team just like not running Necromancer. I strongly believe that when certain classes are 100% needed in a setup that something is wrong balance-wise. Lets not speak of guardians because they are part of the larger problem which Heleseth actually described in a recent interview with TehMaker:

http://www.twitch.tv/tehmaker/c/2605731
(Referring to the part he talks about other classes balanced around warriors)

That was a very enjoyable time watching that, Helseth is hilarious. The part referred to in the post I’m quoting starts at 18 minutes in btw. I feel it was an excellent discussion about the current state of gameplay right now, and would strongly recommend watching it.

I really cant understand these ppl, as they argue against posts like op’s, what are they thinking really? Are they thinking game is balanced or they think the game depends on skills, strategy and cunning right now?

Op made a post, gave us his thoughts, he’s a little agitated because of PAX tournament, he clearly worries about future of this game. If you dont agree with him, make a well-construct counter argument like some ppl.