Guild Wars 2

I play a mes/ele/necro and am a casual Spvp’er (No WvW). I just read through the upcoming balance notes and am curious as to why thieves are potentially being nerfed. Just from my play experience I don’t see thieves over represented or particularly hard to deal with. This is certainly not WOW status where they burst you down in one second even when I’m on my ele. I am genuinely confused, what am I missing? Is there a super troll spec or something that I haven’t gone up against?

Basically, very skilled top tier players learned how to use S/D to avoid almost all burst while dealing significant damage.

On the flip side, very, very bad players complained about very bad perma-stealth players ganking them in WvW

But, thieves are not really getting nerfed because they are getting a 33% higher base initiative regen. These changes are good for the class in general in my opinion. We might even see the return of d/d to competitive play with the improved initiative regen

They’re buffing thieves, not nerfing them. Possibly too much.

Narcarsis.5739:

They’re buffing thieves, not nerfing them. Possibly too much.

how so?

Narcarsis.5739:

They’re buffing thieves, not nerfing them. Possibly too much.

Actually, it is more than certain builds are being buffed and certain builds are being nerfed.

The issue I see is that ANET is pigeon holing thieves more into the 3 hit dps builds. All this is going to do is cause way more QQ on the forums.

Narcarsis.5739:

They’re buffing thieves, not nerfing them. Possibly too much.

As a sword thief, i disagree.

dwest.7145:

I play a mes/ele/necro and am a casual Spvp’er (No WvW). I just read through the upcoming balance notes and am curious as to why thieves are potentially being nerfed. Just from my play experience I don’t see thieves over represented or particularly hard to deal with. This is certainly not WOW status where they burst you down in one second even when I’m on my ele. I am genuinely confused, what am I missing? Is there a super troll spec or something that I haven’t gone up against?

As a mesmer, I assume you haven’t had the “pleasure” yet of a thief starting in stealth where you are not even aware they are there, stealing/mugging you with a basilisk burst , taking all you mesmer health in your light armor in about three hits.

Sure, you say, just “simply” hit your stun break and quickly deal with the thief. Easier said than done. And your stun break might just be on cooldown.

Silentshoes.1805:

dwest.7145:

I play a mes/ele/necro and am a casual Spvp’er (No WvW). I just read through the upcoming balance notes and am curious as to why thieves are potentially being nerfed. Just from my play experience I don’t see thieves over represented or particularly hard to deal with. This is certainly not WOW status where they burst you down in one second even when I’m on my ele. I am genuinely confused, what am I missing? Is there a super troll spec or something that I haven’t gone up against?

As a mesmer, I assume you haven’t had the “pleasure” yet of a thief starting in stealth where you are not even aware they are there, stealing/mugging you with a basilisk burst , taking all you mesmer health in your light armor in about three hits.

Sure, you say, just “simply” hit your stun break and quickly deal with the thief. Easier said than done. And your stun break might just be on cooldown.

I play mesmer/necro as alt and i eat thieves alive.

Yeah, S/D thieves too.

Just press you distortion skill, you have it always available even if your stunbreak is on CD.

Chaos storm awards you with almost perma aegis while the storm is in place.

Adapt, stop playing your Mh sword shatter build.

I understand the frustration of that situation but in practice it just doesn’t happen with enough frequency to be a problem. Most mesmers stock two stun breaks on utility (Decoy, Mirror Images) . Basically all I’m saying is thieves don’t cause me any more problems than any other class, significantly less than some actually, and yet they seem to be getting hit pretty hard in the Dec. 10th patch. Though from the other posters I guess I underestimated the importance of the increased initiative regen.

I always interpret these comments of “well, I don’t have any problem at all!” as, “you basically suck and are incompetent.” But in his reply dwest is not saying that.

There are some pretty good thieves out there with lightning reflexes, which is why they play the thief in the first place. And from what I understand S/D thieves, if they are talented, are very tough and not a pushover.

Mrbig.8019:

Chaos storm awards you with almost perma aegis while the storm is in place.

Adapt, stop playing your Mh sword shatter build.

Please explain the permanent aegis. Chaos Storm randomly gives you swiftness, aegis (3 secs), or protection. Once every 35 seconds. And two chaos armors that do not give aegis, ever.

infantrydiv.1620:

Basically, very skilled top tier players learned how to use S/D to avoid almost all burst while dealing significant damage.

On the flip side, very, very bad players complained about very bad perma-stealth players ganking them in WvW

But, thieves are not really getting nerfed because they are getting a 33% higher base initiative regen. These changes are good for the class in general in my opinion. We might even see the return of d/d to competitive play with the improved initiative regen

WoW 9,5 ini per 10 sec vs new 11 ini per 10 sec, Arena net really boost initiative regen !!!! lol And big nerf Opportunist. And nerf all vigors durations on thief for -50%

infantrydiv.1620:

Basically, very skilled top tier players learned how to use S/D to avoid almost all burst while dealing significant damage.

On the flip side, very, very bad players complained about very bad perma-stealth players ganking them in WvW

But, thieves are not really getting nerfed because they are getting a 33% higher base initiative regen. These changes are good for the class in general in my opinion. We might even see the return of d/d to competitive play with the improved initiative regen

They also lowered Initative regen traits (understandably), without adding anything to them to make them interesting or useful (the part that doesn’t make any sense).

Common thief specs (10/30/0/30/0 and 10/30/0/0/30) aren’t going to see much difference in their init regeneration, because opportunist and kleptomaniac are bland, boring, subpar minor traits, and no one is going to slot Quick recovery unless they do something to make it not awful.

It does potentially open up some other specs that avoid worthless init based traits (which means less than 15 points in CS and trickery, very popular trait lines at the moment), but we won’t know that until the new meta stabilizes (assuming all those changes make it into the patch).

The perma-stealth change wasn’t a nerf – IMO permastealth was against the spirit of the game, the way the dev’s designed stealth, and I’m glad to see it. The 1/4s cast time on Inf return sounds like it’ll kill sword, but again we’ll have to see.

They did nothing to address Death blossom, how useless P/P is in general, and their PW “Fix” seems more like a bandaid then a real fix – on paper, it’s mostly nerfs coming to thief.

The only bright point is that 30 acro specs have a buffed Assassins reward to look forward too, and since no one in their right mind will be using quick recovery, You’ll probably see alot of thieves running assassins reward and pain response. New sundering strikes also seems like it’s finally well designed, and being in DA in a bonus because DA needs traits worth taking, but it’s nothing to jump for joy over.

Thieves are definitely receiving buffs for builds that lacked on initiative regen. Sword MH is pretty much being shafted, but 1/4s cast time is still pretty quick, you can dodge stuns with that. I can name several stuns right now that can be avoided with it. Obviously the direction they are going with the sword main hand is, if you are caught, you are caught, in that .25s you manage to get away you are rewarded with your life.

The vigor nerfs are acceptable, questionable why bountiful theft got changed but who knows, maybe it will get reverted.

And of course, initiative nerfs are going to happen when they increase the base initiative regen, not to surprising. Thieves overall were buffed, maybe some new builds can come to fruition.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Thieves are definitely receiving buffs for builds that lacked on initiative regen. Sword MH is pretty much being shafted, but 1/4s cast time is still pretty quick, you can dodge stuns with that. I can name several stuns right now that can be avoided with it. Obviously the direction they are going with the sword main hand is, if you are caught, you are caught, in that .25s you manage to get away you are rewarded with your life.

The vigor nerfs are acceptable, questionable why bountiful theft got changed but who knows, maybe it will get reverted.

And of course, initiative nerfs are going to happen when they increase the base initiative regen, not to surprising. Thieves overall were buffed, maybe some new builds can come to fruition.

The issue is that even with the cheese following shadow return instant nature, S/D thieves are barely on par with current meta proffs, which are not getting nerfed enough, while the thief is getting gutted.

Now thieves won’t be on par anymore.

if they nerfed hard engies-wars-necros-spirit rangers than i would have been fine with these brutal nerfs to thieves, but since it didn’t happen, i’m not fine at all.

I was the first advocating for an Inf strike nerf, but what is going to happen on 10th december is beyond silly.

Mrbig.8019:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Thieves are definitely receiving buffs for builds that lacked on initiative regen. Sword MH is pretty much being shafted, but 1/4s cast time is still pretty quick, you can dodge stuns with that. I can name several stuns right now that can be avoided with it. Obviously the direction they are going with the sword main hand is, if you are caught, you are caught, in that .25s you manage to get away you are rewarded with your life.

The vigor nerfs are acceptable, questionable why bountiful theft got changed but who knows, maybe it will get reverted.

And of course, initiative nerfs are going to happen when they increase the base initiative regen, not to surprising. Thieves overall were buffed, maybe some new builds can come to fruition.

The issue is that even with the cheese following shadow return instant nature, S/D thieves are barely on par with current meta proffs, which are not getting nerfed enough, while the thief is getting gutted.

Now thieves won’t be on par anymore.

if they nerfed hard engies-wars-necros-spirit rangers than i would have been fine with these brutal nerfs to thieves, but since it didn’t happen, i’m not fine at all.

I was the first advocating for an Inf strike nerf, but what is going to happen on 10th december is beyond silly.

the inf strike nerf you wanted, isn’t what everyone else wants. this is the nerf everyone else wants. they want to prevent shadow return being used to trivialize CC.

i agree with you that S/D is not viable anymore though.

@MrBig
Did you read the whole preview and understood all the changes to the other classes?
Some classes took a hard nerf, harder than Thief

ExaFlare.1390:

@MrBig
Did you read the whole preview and understood all the changes to the other classes?
Some classes took a hard nerf, harder than Thief

Mind posting the nerfs? I’m actually lazy to do the research

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first

ExaFlare.1390:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first

Lol, that’s not what I asked. All i’m asking is the nerfs you mentioned that are way worse than the thief’s one.

evilapprentice.6379:

infantrydiv.1620:

Basically, very skilled top tier players learned how to use S/D to avoid almost all burst while dealing significant damage.

On the flip side, very, very bad players complained about very bad perma-stealth players ganking them in WvW

But, thieves are not really getting nerfed because they are getting a 33% higher base initiative regen. These changes are good for the class in general in my opinion. We might even see the return of d/d to competitive play with the improved initiative regen

They also lowered Initative regen traits (understandably), without adding anything to them to make them interesting or useful (the part that doesn’t make any sense).

Common thief specs (10/30/0/30/0 and 10/30/0/0/30) aren’t going to see much difference in their init regeneration, because opportunist and kleptomaniac are bland, boring, subpar minor traits, and no one is going to slot Quick recovery unless they do something to make it not awful.

It does potentially open up some other specs that avoid worthless init based traits (which means less than 15 points in CS and trickery, very popular trait lines at the moment), but we won’t know that until the new meta stabilizes (assuming all those changes make it into the patch).

The perma-stealth change wasn’t a nerf – IMO permastealth was against the spirit of the game, the way the dev’s designed stealth, and I’m glad to see it. The 1/4s cast time on Inf return sounds like it’ll kill sword, but again we’ll have to see.

They did nothing to address Death blossom, how useless P/P is in general, and their PW “Fix” seems more like a bandaid then a real fix – on paper, it’s mostly nerfs coming to thief.

The only bright point is that 30 acro specs have a buffed Assassins reward to look forward too, and since no one in their right mind will be using quick recovery, You’ll probably see alot of thieves running assassins reward and pain response. New sundering strikes also seems like it’s finally well designed, and being in DA in a bonus because DA needs traits worth taking, but it’s nothing to jump for joy over.

I’m not sure how hard the Opportunist nerf will hit us really when paired with the new +33% initiative regen. Thieves obviously still have lots of useless traits.

It’s clear to me at this point that converting Unload to a condition based attack and converting Death Blossom to power would open up a ton of possibilities for thief in general.

Personally I’d like to see Death blossom keep it’s short evade frame but deal aoe damage of around 800 per crit on a glass cannon thief (for a total of around 2k damage). This would give D/D more survivability and finally a complete weapon kit.

For unload, I’d like to see this attack changed basically to something similar to Sneak Attack (5 bleeds, some power damage). Then I’d like to see the stealth attack changed to a 600 range attack which deals burning damage. Torment could be substituted for either of these attacks too if it was hard to balance burning.

infantrydiv.1620:

evilapprentice.6379:

infantrydiv.1620:

Basically, very skilled top tier players learned how to use S/D to avoid almost all burst while dealing significant damage.

On the flip side, very, very bad players complained about very bad perma-stealth players ganking them in WvW

But, thieves are not really getting nerfed because they are getting a 33% higher base initiative regen. These changes are good for the class in general in my opinion. We might even see the return of d/d to competitive play with the improved initiative regen

They also lowered Initative regen traits (understandably), without adding anything to them to make them interesting or useful (the part that doesn’t make any sense).

Common thief specs (10/30/0/30/0 and 10/30/0/0/30) aren’t going to see much difference in their init regeneration, because opportunist and kleptomaniac are bland, boring, subpar minor traits, and no one is going to slot Quick recovery unless they do something to make it not awful.

It does potentially open up some other specs that avoid worthless init based traits (which means less than 15 points in CS and trickery, very popular trait lines at the moment), but we won’t know that until the new meta stabilizes (assuming all those changes make it into the patch).

The perma-stealth change wasn’t a nerf – IMO permastealth was against the spirit of the game, the way the dev’s designed stealth, and I’m glad to see it. The 1/4s cast time on Inf return sounds like it’ll kill sword, but again we’ll have to see.

They did nothing to address Death blossom, how useless P/P is in general, and their PW “Fix” seems more like a bandaid then a real fix – on paper, it’s mostly nerfs coming to thief.

The only bright point is that 30 acro specs have a buffed Assassins reward to look forward too, and since no one in their right mind will be using quick recovery, You’ll probably see alot of thieves running assassins reward and pain response. New sundering strikes also seems like it’s finally well designed, and being in DA in a bonus because DA needs traits worth taking, but it’s nothing to jump for joy over.

I’m not sure how hard the Opportunist nerf will hit us really when paired with the new +33% initiative regen. Thieves obviously still have lots of useless traits.

It’s not about how hard the change will hit the class – it’s about the trait now being boring and kittenty. .2 init per second is bland and kind of useless – it should be something that helps differentiate players who put points into CS from players who didn’t. If instead it had a 50% chance to restore 1 init and strip 1 boon on crit with kitten ICD, it’d be a good trait that differentiated those with points into CS from those who didnt.

It’s clear to me at this point that converting Unload to a condition based attack and converting Death Blossom to power would open up a ton of possibilities for thief in general.

Personally I’d like to see Death blossom keep it’s short evade frame but deal aoe damage of around 800 per crit on a glass cannon thief (for a total of around 2k damage). This would give D/D more survivability and finally a complete weapon kit.

For unload, I’d like to see this attack changed basically to something similar to Sneak Attack (5 bleeds, some power damage). Then I’d like to see the stealth attack changed to a 600 range attack which deals burning damage. Torment could be substituted for either of these attacks too if it was hard to balance burning.

They could just design the skill to do both – Make each unload hit proc bleeding, and balance the direct damage so that it was good, but not the best – that way for power/crit specs, the kittenty 43 per second bleeds you get at 0 condition damage help the skill still do solid damage for your damage setup, and vice versa for condition setups. Then do the same for DB.

I am having a hard time understanding why thieves are getting nerfed. I play the s/d build and it is the only thing that keeps you alive against wars, necros, and spirit rangers at the moment. The others aren’t getting hit this hard.. I really hope they don’t break sword, its change makes it useless in pvp as the shadowstep keeps you alive against the infinite cc wars hit you with.

Also even though no one uses p/p this makes unload even worse.

can i get a link to the patch notes please?

Excalibur.9748:

Mrbig.8019:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Thieves are definitely receiving buffs for builds that lacked on initiative regen. Sword MH is pretty much being shafted, but 1/4s cast time is still pretty quick, you can dodge stuns with that. I can name several stuns right now that can be avoided with it. Obviously the direction they are going with the sword main hand is, if you are caught, you are caught, in that .25s you manage to get away you are rewarded with your life.

The vigor nerfs are acceptable, questionable why bountiful theft got changed but who knows, maybe it will get reverted.

And of course, initiative nerfs are going to happen when they increase the base initiative regen, not to surprising. Thieves overall were buffed, maybe some new builds can come to fruition.

The issue is that even with the cheese following shadow return instant nature, S/D thieves are barely on par with current meta proffs, which are not getting nerfed enough, while the thief is getting gutted.

Now thieves won’t be on par anymore.

if they nerfed hard engies-wars-necros-spirit rangers than i would have been fine with these brutal nerfs to thieves, but since it didn’t happen, i’m not fine at all.

I was the first advocating for an Inf strike nerf, but what is going to happen on 10th december is beyond silly.

the inf strike nerf you wanted, isn’t what everyone else wants. this is the nerf everyone else wants. they want to prevent shadow return being used to trivialize CC.

i agree with you that S/D is not viable anymore though.

Since CCs are so overabundant, there’s no point in in gutting the only efficient option a profession has to deal with them ( since if you play */P you’re getting eaten alive by other professions such spirit rangers, necros, engies, hambow wars and all the ridicolous AoE spam /Aoe condi spam which is acutally what PvP is about).

The ini buff is pointless if you do not have any efficient set to play with. Now swords are being removed from PvP, dagger is subpar.

We’re left with venom share and body shot spamming, hoping our teammates will make good use of the 30 secs immo.

This is no cheese at all, well played aNet.

/sarcasm

Mrbig.8019:

Excalibur.9748:

Mrbig.8019:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Thieves are definitely receiving buffs for builds that lacked on initiative regen. Sword MH is pretty much being shafted, but 1/4s cast time is still pretty quick, you can dodge stuns with that. I can name several stuns right now that can be avoided with it. Obviously the direction they are going with the sword main hand is, if you are caught, you are caught, in that .25s you manage to get away you are rewarded with your life.

The vigor nerfs are acceptable, questionable why bountiful theft got changed but who knows, maybe it will get reverted.

And of course, initiative nerfs are going to happen when they increase the base initiative regen, not to surprising. Thieves overall were buffed, maybe some new builds can come to fruition.

The issue is that even with the cheese following shadow return instant nature, S/D thieves are barely on par with current meta proffs, which are not getting nerfed enough, while the thief is getting gutted.

Now thieves won’t be on par anymore.

if they nerfed hard engies-wars-necros-spirit rangers than i would have been fine with these brutal nerfs to thieves, but since it didn’t happen, i’m not fine at all.

I was the first advocating for an Inf strike nerf, but what is going to happen on 10th december is beyond silly.

the inf strike nerf you wanted, isn’t what everyone else wants. this is the nerf everyone else wants. they want to prevent shadow return being used to trivialize CC.

i agree with you that S/D is not viable anymore though.

Since CCs are so overabundant, there’s no point in in gutting the only efficient option a profession has to deal with them ( since if you play */P you’re getting eaten alive by other professions such spirit rangers, necros, engies, hambow wars and all the ridicolous AoE spam /Aoe condi spam which is acutally what PvP is about).

The ini buff is pointless if you do not have any efficient set to play with. Now swords are being removed from PvP, dagger is subpar.

We’re left with venom share and body shot spamming, hoping our teammates will make good use of the 30 secs immo.

This is no cheese at all, well played aNet.

/sarcasm

I dont understand why the vigor nerfs are 50% – anets stance has always been “Shaving” – 50% less doesn’t sound like shaving. 25%, maybe even 33% for bountiful theft – not 50%. Most of the thief changes have been huge percentages that seem more like lazy nerfs than shave and re-evaluate (DD, CnD, LS cost and boons trip, the proposed vigor changes…).

Regardless, please visit https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Make-a-Stink/first#post3140045 and leave your opinion.

Also, please express your opinion on the preview post, though I’m sure you’ve already done that.

Bad thieves will get nerfed hard, but the good ones will still be good, if not better than they were.

jmatb.6307:

Bad thieves will get nerfed hard, but the good ones will still be good, if not better than they were.

How do you know this, do you even play thief?

jmatb.6307:

Bad thieves will get nerfed hard, but the good ones will still be good, if not better than they were.

Good thieves already left this game sadly.. Average thieves will leave after 10th Nov.. Bad thieves will leave when they realize the pointless of thief class in tpvp spvp and pve. Very simple and true,

Narcarsis.5739:

They’re buffing thieves, not nerfing them. Possibly too much.

Mind sharing why you think that way? I’m starting to wonder if 25/30/0/0/15 might be worth taking over 10/30/0/0/30 now.

Hype.8032:

Narcarsis.5739:

They’re buffing thieves, not nerfing them. Possibly too much.

Mind sharing why you think that way? I’m starting to wonder if 25/30/0/0/15 might be worth taking over 10/30/0/0/30 now.

the reason why thieves went for trickery and D/P was the ability to burst 3 times as much than standard burst build thanks to Steal CD on 21 secs.

After mug nerf there was no point to go for full damage and still there is not.

The problem is that they totally gutted thief sustain without addressing the reason why thief sustain ( which is great in the S/D acro build) is STILL not enough in the large majority of cases ( necros-wars-engies-spirit rangers).

What i hate the most is that they choose for the nerf hammer for everything instead of bringing down acro thieves in the proper way.

And the worst part is that they REALLY believe Hard to Catch is any good.

Oh god.

i can’t justify hard to catch still.

30s cooldown can’t keep up with constant warrior stuns.

Bad thieves? I still know that bad warriors didn’t get nerfed. They still have Healing signet which allows them to not focus on their hp at all.

It’s a trade off.

Long story short you are rewarded for more calculated play. This is not a bad thing.

Daishi.6027:

It’s a trade off.

Long story short you are rewarded for more calculated play. This is not a bad thing.

This doesn’t make any sense, due to a lack of details.
Can you please elaborate?

stealth-spamming thieves are already OP. why buff it?

Excalibur.9748:

jmatb.6307:

Bad thieves will get nerfed hard, but the good ones will still be good, if not better than they were.

How do you know this, do you even play thief?

Yes I play thief among other classes.

The initiative boost is huge. It’s one of those things that doesn’t look good on paper, but will shock you in game.

The post talked about depending on init traits/utilities and that’s addressed. That’s letting thieves be more aggressive, not less.

The sword changes are very important for the game, because that single weapon has been holding back two entire classes’ total packages.

the initiative boost is cancelled out by opportunist nerf and other nerfs. it’s not a buff to initiative (actually a net nerf), it’s already been calculated.

jmatb.6307:

Excalibur.9748:

jmatb.6307:

Bad thieves will get nerfed hard, but the good ones will still be good, if not better than they were.

How do you know this, do you even play thief?

Yes I play thief among other classes.

The initiative boost is huge. It’s one of those things that doesn’t look good on paper, but will shock you in game.

Like many others, you fail to acknowledge the changes to init regen traits. The fact that init regen traits now produce less init per second makes complete sense to me, considering the boost to base init regen. What doesn’t make sense is the fact that they don’t offer anything else is compensation. Opportunist, Quick recovery and Kleptomaniac are now all garbage – you’re forced to take 2 of them if you go 15 points into CS or 5 points into Trickery, and quick recovery will now never be slotted. There is potential to open up new specs due to faster init base init regen, but that will have to be tested – all we can tell for sure is that some init regen traits are now horribly bland and UP. Opportunist, Klepto, and quick recovery should have secondary effects added to them (like Signet use) to better define specs that trait along those lines.

The sword changes are very important for the game, because that single weapon has been holding back two entire classes’ total packages.

The sword changes will likely kill sword – S/D has to equip a Zerkers jewel and roll as a glass cannon to do respectable sustained DPS. Stats that would make a Dagger MH spec a burst oriented killer allow S/D to do the sustained damage it needs to actually kill targets. Lets also note that losing 50% vigor uptime on our 2 vigor producing traits doesn’t mesh with Anets stated “Shaving” style of balance updates. 15-25% is a “Shave”, 50% is a lazy nerf hammer.

I really doubt that calculation was done comprehensively lol.

Haste on crit buff, assassin’s reward, and the vulnerability stacking potential look really good with the init regen boost.

Edit: Math folks. Take the same traits in the patch and enjoy the results of your massive intiative buff. It will be too much initiative to even use lol

jmatb.6307:

I really doubt that calculation was done comprehensively lol.

Haste on crit buff, assassin’s reward, and the vulnerability stacking potential look really good with the init regen boost.

Edit: Math folks. Take the same traits in the patch and enjoy the results of your massive intiative buff. It will be too much initiative to even use lol

no, the math is comprehensive.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Proposed-Dec-10th-Changes-Some-Math/first#post3141423

critical haste, and assassin’s reward still won’t be used. sundering strikes good buff though.

Using this chart if you add up the total and the boosts from klepto and opportunist, it’s still higher than current, and not even including the bonuses from infiltrator’s signet.

You must have read the variance column and gotten mad or something that chart actually disproves your argument.

jmatb.6307:

Using this chart if you add up the total and the boosts from klepto and opportunist, it’s still higher than current, and not even including the bonuses from infiltrator’s signet.

You must have read the variance column and gotten mad or something that chart actually disproves your argument.

No it’s lower….

Did you even read the topic or you just skipped to the chart?

Initiative Regen
The passive Initiative regen will work exactly as shown on the spreadsheet, but active traits, like signet use, won’t unless you burn your signets every single time they come off cd… but it still shows how the change will effect (affect?) your ini gain on use.
The Total (2 Sig) etc. are just showing the regen with 2, 3, 4 signets equiped and again burning them exactly as they come off cd.
Opportunist is a 33% nerf in Initiative gain no matter what Crit Chance you have whether it is 4% or 100%. However the higher your crit chance, the more ini that 33% nerf becomes. If you run a high crit build, this is a significant nerf, more on this below.
Anet has mentioned that they want to reduce our dependence on Ini regen traits, yet for an S/D thief (10/30/0/30/0) running 1 signet and using Quick Recovery and Signet Use along with 65% crit change, you effectively lose about .02 ini per second… while keeping the same traits under the new proposal.
Remove Quick Recovery from your trait selection and you lose .12 ini per second. This new proposal doesn’t free you up to choose a different trait at all, it just shifts your regen around. You have to keep Sig Use and Quick Reco just to stay where you were pre-patch.
The guilty party here is Opportunist, don’t nerf this trait and you’ll actually free up a select-able trait and achieve what you’re trying to do.

Going by the chart, the net nerf is -0.12 ini/s if you add up the total variance changes.

I agree that it would be a big buff if opportunist did not get such a huge nerf. But as it stands it’s still a net nerf.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: If this forces S/D thieves to actually think about what they’re dodging, then I’m all for it. If things go as planned, bad ones will have to peel more frequently and the good ones will maintain dps pressure. I’m still skeptical about the potential patch though since we haven’t seen the initiative “flow” yet.

I, among others, raised an eye at opportunist.

tbh i am personally confused as well where they want thieves to be in this game after 10th dec

i am all up for s/d nerf and i understand why people had issues with perma stealth thieves, but they are not exactly top tier and stealth is ironically the biggest weakness in pvp as you can’t hold point stealthed; changes will affect other specs as well and not in good way, sadly :/

i might be wrong though, maybe some bunker thief will become fotm

Excalibur.9748:

jmatb.6307:

Using this chart if you add up the total and the boosts from klepto and opportunist, it’s still higher than current, and not even including the bonuses from infiltrator’s signet.

You must have read the variance column and gotten mad or something that chart actually disproves your argument.

No it’s lower….

Did you even read the topic or you just skipped to the chart?

Initiative Regen
The passive Initiative regen will work exactly as shown on the spreadsheet, but active traits, like signet use, won’t unless you burn your signets every single time they come off cd… but it still shows how the change will effect (affect?) your ini gain on use.
The Total (2 Sig) etc. are just showing the regen with 2, 3, 4 signets equiped and again burning them exactly as they come off cd.
Opportunist is a 33% nerf in Initiative gain no matter what Crit Chance you have whether it is 4% or 100%. However the higher your crit chance, the more ini that 33% nerf becomes. If you run a high crit build, this is a significant nerf, more on this below.
Anet has mentioned that they want to reduce our dependence on Ini regen traits, yet for an S/D thief (10/30/0/30/0) running 1 signet and using Quick Recovery and Signet Use along with 65% crit change, you effectively lose about .02 ini per second… while keeping the same traits under the new proposal.
Remove Quick Recovery from your trait selection and you lose .12 ini per second. This new proposal doesn’t free you up to choose a different trait at all, it just shifts your regen around. You have to keep Sig Use and Quick Reco just to stay where you were pre-patch.
The guilty party here is Opportunist, don’t nerf this trait and you’ll actually free up a select-able trait and achieve what you’re trying to do.

Going by the chart, the net nerf is -0.12 ini/s if you add up the total variance changes.

I agree that it would be a big buff if opportunist did not get such a huge nerf. But as it stands it’s still a net nerf.

I would have done the same spreadsheet, thanks god someone beat me on it and saved my time

High ini regen builds received a massive nerf but, at the same time, burst builds and trickery burst builds received a good buff, basically they’re reducing ini regen variance when specced for it.

The issue is that in order to let eles play ( mesmer is already in a good state with the war meta shifting) sword thieves will be totally destroyed with this patch: vigor nerf, ini regen nerf, Sword BRUTAL nerf without any compensation an without nerfing meta proffs ( necro-war-engi-spirit ranger) to a useful degree.

Wars are brought in teams due to their AoE CCs ( unnerfed), not for their damage

Engies are brought in teams due to their AoE CCs ( unnerfed), AoE condi ( unnerfed) and point control ( unnerfed)

Necros are brought in teams due to their CCs ( unnerfed), AoE condi stacking ( VERY sligthly nerfed, since the cuplrit is sigil of geomancy and not mark of blood) and condi burst ( unnerfed, since the problem with signet of spite is not how many bleeds it stacks, but how many CONDIES it applies, overwhelming any non global condi removal)

Spirit rangers are brought for their massive support ( very slightly nerfed) and ress ( unnerfed)

If these builds are kept like this, there’s no point in bringing a thief simply for Shadow refuge ( which was a problem anyway).

So with a single patch they’ll get rid of two huge problems (team stealth oneshots and evade spam thieves) by completely removing the thief profession.

Thanks god we still have venom share.

The math can be correct in theory but not in practice. You aren’t attacking people every second in a fight, the chart only shows how opportunist was nerfed in perfect settings. Having said that I don’t think thieves are good at much(if anything) right now.

People take warriors for their CC and not their damages? The problem with warrios right now is that they can deal a lot of damages, CC and that they are tanky. They can do anything because they are good in every situations.
Nerfing the damages on their main CC is a lot. And moving Unsuspecting Foe to Master Tier is also a big nerf.

You also say that rangers got slightly nerfed, but I dont call “reduced damage from storm spirit by 33%”, “reduced burning duration on sun spirit from 3 to 2s” and " Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%" a slight nerf.

I also dont call the nerf on Weakening Shroud and Chill of Death a slight nerf for necros.
Even if the bleed reductions may not sound like a big deal, it still is a nerf.

Of the 4 classes you mentionned, Engineer is the only one untouched.

Oh, and now thieves wont have a free escape button, you call it a brutal nerf, but I see that Thieves will now have to pay attention.

Thieves are not really hard to deal with.

It’s just that they (in my opinion, obviously) are really boring to fight against.

Anything that can turn invisible and disappear whenever he/she wants to is really, really, really boring to fight against.

@ Excalibur

A: Total of current init with Quick Recovery and Sig use = 1.03
B: Total of init/second on Dec. 10 w/out Quick Recovery and Sig use = 1.00
C: Total of Dec. 10 w/Quick Recovery and Sig Use = 1.14

Current A + Klepto and Opp = 1.15
B + Klepto and Opp = 1.07
C + Klepto and Opp = 1.21

So if you run the same S/D build as before on Dec. 10 you get a .7 boost to init/second, not including the init you’d be getting from Infiltrator’s Signet.

Thief is fine on Dec. 10 quit freaking out guys