Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

I take small issue with two of the thief chances but commend the third.

I don’t believe the 1 second nerf to Upper Hand was merited. That was one trait that rewarded active play. The nerf is noticeable and should be revoked in my opinion as it is a bit much in conjunction with the endurance nerf.

The change to vault is not only buggy but is poor. The new hit box is very odd, and bugs out when you vault over somebody in a line of sight. When that happens it will hit the opponent at a greater distance.

The new “slower” vault also has much greater vulnerability. (I also didn’t like the change to being able to swap weapons to stop the end of the vault.)

I do commend the endurance nerf. It was needed and I think well received.

Feel free to discuss, but those are my 2c.

Oddly enough the patch actually buffed the build i run (i use withdraw and DA instead of acro) however in the big picture (see other classes) i feel like we got screwed pretty badly and will probably resort to season 1 decap bot-style that never engages any fights.

Vault definitely feels buggy, i have been running it in pve and it feels very inconsistent when you use it on the same place where you stand. It also oddly enough often doesn’t go to location i pointed unlike before patch, i thought the goal of the patch was to fix this very issue but it seems they broke it more O.o

I am actually surprised they nerfed dodges in pvp but left out wvw. They actually buffed ghost thief lel.

A dev confirmed that the current vault interaction is buggy so they will look into that.

I don’t like the Upper Hand change as well. The trait promotes reactive playing when compared to the other passives in the line, and we were seeing a bit more build diversity in pvp as well.
Instead of nerfing Upper Hand, they should of targeted the passives in the traitline like Instant Reflexes and harsher nerf to Hard to Catch.

It was mostly the power variant of acrobuilds that were hit w/ this change; the mechanical difference of power acro vs condi acro is that power acro builds had to actively engage in auto attack trades even w/ less weakness application(DA minor trait) while watching and timing their skill evades to actually finish off opponents because they can’t rely on burst dmg gained from Deadly Arts.
The condi d/d builds on the other hand didn’t need to make themselves vulnerable by autoattacking; they could just channel deathblossom and dodge back to back while letting the frequent condi applications finish off the opponent.

To discourage playstyle like this, Anet could of just nerfed the bleed application on deathblossom while increasing the power coefficient to help power d/d varients in the process. I don’t mean to kill off condi d/d builds with proposals like this, balance changes can be done so that risk/reward playstyle can be promoted; an example would be to add stronger bleed application on the auto-attack sequence of the dagger+add torment/bleed on Dancing Daggers (kinda makes sense thematically too) while lessening it on deathblossom. This would advocate more active playing even for the d/d condi builds, not just chaining evades back to back while still getting rewarded.

Frankly, I’m tired of balance patches killing off effectiveness of different builds in the meta…
Having build diversity as a profession can help address class stacking as well. This is relevant especially for thieves because having more than one in a team can be a big disadvantage even before the match starts, at least in season 5, the other thief swapped to acrobatics which had a different role compared to DP dash and could supplement the team balance.

The nerfs to endurance/dodges was needed because some people would just spam dodges (Bounds) over and over, the same goes for the passive traits like Hard to catch.

The Upper hand nerf was super uncalled for. I would rather see the emergency evade at 50% trait get nerfed instead of Upper hand, because those are passives and Upper hand is active.
Upper hand requires the opponent’s cooperation to proc. It’s similar logic to confusion. If they keep trying to attack you and you end up evading it every time, then they should be careful not to attack into your evade frames. There’s plenty of evade downtime on even the most spammy staff master acro that there’s no excuse for missing every attack, unless you don’t play from NA. But if you don’t play from NA, you face issues across the board with all classes/builds, not just with thief, due to high ping.
A trait that rewards successful evades and not proccing after you simply using an evade skill should have more impact. Upper Hand used to be 3s and acrobatics line was never used, because DA’s damage made it a better pick even in staff builds. Why are we going back to that?

I really like the Thief changes and think it kills really lame gameplay patterns that arise from the Acrobatics traitline. It didn’t work in the past with SD and won’t work in the future with Condi and Staff. Good riddance, DA is much more interactive and skillful. Also I’m gonna have to disagree with Kronos on this one, it’s ridiculously easy to proc the trait every 2 seconds. It has nothing to do with counterplay, the only counterplay is to literally NOT ATTACK which is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Also there might be time in between evades but when you’re using staff 3 backwards and the opponent is melee.. well you still can’t hit them in between evade frames because they’re not in range anymore.

and the acro staffers crying begins

ayyy krnos and min xD

how can u defend a build where the only thing u need to do is timing your #3 and dodge key everytime while you get rewarded for evading every single attack and also doing enough damage to pressure targets?

tbh anet should just delete acro line and make a new line because acro builds aren’t diversity, they are unhealthy for the game.

good changes but they should have nerfed more hard to catch maybe 1m cd and remove the dodge immune passive skillful trait that prevents getting one shot from being bad.

And for dp they didn’t touch PI which is really baaad, they need to do something about PI.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

and the acro staffers crying begins

Ruru.1302:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

and the acro staffers crying begins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlIpD3IXMoI

can i c ur duels vs him next?

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Ruru.1302:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

and the acro staffers crying begins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlIpD3IXMoI

can i c ur duels vs him next?

I see the timestamp didn’t show up when I linked the video.

I’d originally linked it at 4 minutes in, you know, when you start spamming kys after losing a few duels in a row.

Thief is not my main, so I never really played it much nor I enjoyed the play style of D/P. However, with the introduction of Staff – I immensely enjoyed playing it. Acrobatics is the only sensible “defensive” line for Staff users, which has now been quite noticeably and significantly nerfed.

As pointed out, I believe Signet of Agility nerf would have been enough, but in conjunction with Upper Hand nerf and the finicky Vault it feels too clumsy and out of place. I guess I am going to shelve playing Thief again, ArenaNet just LOVES to pigeon hole people into one build. So much for build diversity.

Dariya.9380:

Thief is not my main, so I never really played it much nor I enjoyed the play style of D/P. However, with the introduction of Staff – I immensely enjoyed playing it. Acrobatics is the only sensible “defensive” line for Staff users, which has now been quite noticeably and significantly nerfed.

As pointed out, I believe Signet of Agility nerf would have been enough, but in conjunction with Upper Hand nerf and the finicky Vault it feels too clumsy and out of place. I guess I am going to shelve playing Thief again, ArenaNet just LOVES to pigeon hole people into one build. So much for build diversity.

Join the bunker bandwagon – by the looks of it (see patches) Anet doesn’t want roamers in this game apparently (nerf to thieves, nerfs to revs, changes to pvp maps – it all screams “roamer hate”).

Ruru.1302:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

and the acro staffers crying begins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlIpD3IXMoI

That right there was why thief was nerfed.

What’s funny is they removed the traitline they made that was in line with the rest of the classes of the game….Acro.

I don’t see enough nerfs to the rest of the games passives, freebies, etc. to justify the nerfs since Staff/Acro was never meta nor OP when stacked.

@Potato.2567: do thieves have any other alternative than being +1 pet? No. Never had (except for first 1-1.5 years) and probably never will unless (i mean, look, staff was semi viable 1v1 build → boom, nerfed) current balancing team changes. The classes you named (druids, mes and i will throw ele in the mix) do have alternative of playing support/point holder. So why should thief be worse at roaming than those classes when this is only role Anet allows thief players to fill?

Btw, khylo change negatively affected other classes (ironically, including necros), not just thieves.

I haven’t said in this thread that thief is UP, i just think in overall picture the balance between point holders and roamers is disappearing atm and i personally don’t think that direction (more bunkers) that devs seem to have chosen is right, if they want to keep people interested in pvp.

Personally I’m more upset with the fact they greatly reduced the sustain for DA staff builds by removing the active dodges gained from SoA/CV. The only reason I can see for toning these two things down that affect every other build would be to tone down the map presence that the meta conquest build has by removing some movement speed. (I’m a bit surprised they didn’t go about nerfing this spec around its +1 potential via reducing the damage of PI or adding an ICD/out play factor to it.)

I’d have much rather seen the removal of H2c (give acro might stacking or a dmg modifier for when endurance is not full instead of a passive get out of jail free card that rewards 2 dodges) and a nerf to the evasion trait at 50%. Id have also been fine with the nerf to upper hand if they left SoA and CV alone – This would have left the gap between DA/acro very small in terms of dueling across all match ups.

Looking at the changes that actually happened now though, upper hand I’d agree was an uncalled for change (it’s potentially 2 initiative/10 seconds less then before, a huge reduction in the traits effectiveness) CV/SoA dodge reduction hurts other builds more than the ones that had issues with dodge spam (Acro builds). H2c is still a carry trait as is every passive stun break traits. I also wish you could still cancel vault with weapon swap (it was good baiting and mobility).

Moving on though, I don’t see DA staff being used much anywhere, outside of the mirror match up between thieves. Now since it now clearly loses a lot more match ups than acro does when both classes are played optimally. I feel acro will become the more common duelist spec, even though it was nerfed more directly than DA was. Staff thief was already a meme in pro league before these changes, now its pretty dead in high tier conquest.

NationalNacho.5972:

Im sad they removed evades cuz they’re active defense etc

When you have such a ridiculous amount of dodges I don’t think it’s the same thing as active defense. That’s like saying Endure Pain is active defense. The nerfs are justified.

Potato.2567:

NationalNacho.5972:

Im sad they removed evades cuz they’re active defense etc

When you have such a ridiculous amount of dodges I don’t think it’s the same thing as active defense. That’s like saying Endure Pain is active defense. The nerfs are justified.

I can’t tell if you actually read what I said because by the looks from your reply I’d say you did not. I have zero issues with them toning down acro, I feel it is a good thing they did (if you had read what I said you’d have seen that I would have rather’d them remove H2c entirely, which is 2 dodges and a passive stun break).

All I’m saying is that they could have toned down the build that was the major issue without reducing the number of effective builds. (DA Staff).

Also the utility endure pain is active, you have to press it. So are dodges. DA really did not have excessive dodges. Acro did for sure on top of a lot more initiative gain (for more staff 3’s.)

why did they even change vault? why redo the whole animation when it was fine? I suppose I should stop being surprised at some point in time… but then stuff like this happens.

Stand The Wall.6987:

why did they even change vault? why redo the whole animation when it was fine? I suppose I should stop being surprised at some point in time… but then stuff like this happens.

Check this one out lol. Previously, this wasn’t an issue, even weapon-swap cancel doesn’t work with it anymore while all the other leap finishers in the game can do it.