Guild Wars 2

i posted this in a seperate thread, but seeing how many people in OTHER threads are falling back onto terrible math, i decided to post it here to HOPEFULLY further people’s understanding of numbers.

the new Assassin’s Signet (hereby referred to as AS) combo on Backstab (hereby reffered to as BS) builds doesnt do 75% more damage. it does 15% more damage. percentages are not additive.

this makes it so that the combo actually does LESS overall damage (the combo being Steal + Cloak and Dagger + BS + Heartseeker x 2). what you SHOULD be complaining about is that this signet now just makes unskilled players fall RIGHT back onto HS spam.

here is some math to illustrate my point, in case youre still trying to add 15% 5 times.,.,.,

these are imaginary numbers simply used for explanation, im aware actual damage is higher than this:
Mug: 100 damage + 15% = 115 damage
CnD: 200 damage + 15% = 230 damage
BS: 500 damage + 15% = 575 damage
HS: 100 damage + 15% = 115 damage
HS: 100 damage + 15% = 115 damage

grand total of damage w/o AS = 1000 damage
grand total of damage w/ AS = 1150 damage
increase over 5 hit total = 150 damage, or, 15%————-NOT 75%

now lets apply actual numbers (all crits, for sake of argument, and rounded to what i typically see posted/hit me):
Mug: 4k, with old signet, 4k, with new signet, 4600 damage
CnD: 6k, with old signet, 6k, with new signet, 6900 damage
BS: 10k, with old signet, 15k, with new signet, 11500 damage
HS x 2: 6k, with old signet, 6k, with new signet, 6900 damage

grand total of damage w/o signet = 26k damage
grand total of damage w/ old signet = 31k damage
grand total of damage w/ new signet = 29.9k damage

is it a nerf in pure burst damage? yes. however, the problem i foresee, is that it also nerfs the skill cap, so now there will be a whole new problem of AS + HS spam being the new hot topic. plus, bad thieves that couldnt land the BS before, now just get the 15% bonus to S+Cnd+HS spam, no BS or positioning required.

feel free to link this in all future “OMG, THEY NERFED SIGNET, LEAVE THIEVES ALONE NOW!” threads.

i gave that b**** maths.
b****** love maths.

You either counted just one heatseeker, or biased the entire calculation making the backstab hits at full damage and heartseeker at minimum. The fact is, I’ve seen, as a thief, 5k+ damage on mug and 5k+ on heartseeker (in fact, usually more) on the very same target that it could hit for 10k with a backstab. So, if you actually use a more reasonable aproach to the damage a heartseeker can do, to be fair with the rest displayed, the damage nerf begins to be blurred. It’s not a nerf in overall damage, as you said at the begin of the post, but a nerf in burst as you pointed out at the end.

This video, as an example of the numbers a thief can make. I picked this one because I saw it in the forums recently, but youtube is full of them.

But I won’t say just your numbers are wrong and mine are right. What I will say is that, when the difference is so small, like 1.1k, It’s quite easy to bias it just “being optimistic” in some skills, and less in others, as you did.

I’m not against of doing that as much as I am against the attitude that your post distilles.

Salutes,
crp

PD: English is not my first language, I apologize for any mistake.

doing numbers with glass cannons… I hate that

If you nerf thief any more every other thief build will go to pot.

Please think outside the glass cannon box that everyone is trapped in

I dont run a glass cannon and my backstabs hit for around 4-6k depending on armour. Ive seen ele AoE hit for 5k. My build 10/30/20/10/0

I run power/crit gear and use hidden killer for 100% chance to crit every time. I used runes of scholar on top

If you take down the build which specifies in doing damage at the high end of the spectrum to a weak pot of crap imagine to what you do to medium builds that dont go full glass

besides, many classes inc engineers can counter me when I am full glass so balances is a none issue. Signet keep damamge but has instagib removed. That means the thief needs to work harder to finish, which means they need to spend more ini.

The new signet works great on Pistol Unload now giving P/P specs a buff which they needed and reduces dagger builds insta burst which was also needed

Guards and mesmers are still the current top end of the meta. Its time to move away from thieves

my numbers were based on the average of what ive seen personally. i do not now, nor have i ever, played a pure glass thief seriously. i took a stroll with one through a couple games to see the potential, and ultimately disliked the paper thin feel of it. ive seen screenshots of 24k backstabs, and screenshots of 5k backstabs. i just took what i felt was the happy medium in all categories, between my own experience of getting hit by them, and various videos, screenshots, etc.

d/d PD thief for life. <3