Guild Wars 2

The weaponset was completely fine. Everyone’s qq was about the endless evades that occur while maintaining damage, and now you gave the ability to evade tank more, while maintaining the same damage. You should have moved feline grace to grandmaster, nerfed the might uptime on power of inertia and moved it to master tier and finally nerf the kitten out of fire + air combo and it would have been fixed. So out of touch with your own game its sad. The only thing the s/d change is preventing is precasting a larcenous to chain to mug/signet.

if they nerf this fire/air combo bullkitten its fine, but if they don’t, i completely agree with you.

I think the new change are great! They add far more counterplay to the juice. People, especially guardians, are afraid of Larcenous Strike, not Flanking Strike.

This new change make FS cost 4 initiative, so gg to the thief if he decides to “spam” it (which he can do 3, maybe 4 times) and then be left without initiative. For such a costly skill you definitely want to land it now to gain the hard hitting LS.

I’m kind of thorn between two opinions regarding this change:

Some people think it’s a nerf because now they can’t use LS if you are good enough to dodge FS, but personally I think that LS is insanely useful for the thief’s opponents because it gives you a small frame in which the thief is not evading, and if you time your burst accordingly, the thief pretty much dies or gets hit very hard. Good thieves never chain FS and LS, they always dodge in between, but still every thief uses LS.
Now not every thief will use LS (especially the bad ones!), thus giving us even less chance of hitting them.

Frenk.5917:

Now not every thief will use LS (especially the bad ones!), thus giving us even less chance of hitting them.

If a thief is going to spam FS, they’re going to be a dead thief in a hurry. 4 initiative cost isn’t a small amount especially if you’re double casting that. Besides, FS has an aftercast which you can easily unload a burst onto.

using FS as an actual way to evade an attack and land a hit makes it hit almost 100% of the time, you just gotta actually time what you are doing. The real nerf comes from the fact we can’t just spam 3 when nowhere near the enemy then shadowstep to the opponent with LS for a nice burst.

If thieves want to spam evade for 4 ini they’ll just switch to SBow, the important part was not allowing access to LS without a hit.

Coulter.2315:

If thieves want to spam evade for 4 ini they’ll just switch to SBow, the important part was not allowing access to LS without a hit.

They’re literally reintroducing a mechanic they were trying to get rid of on the shortbow. Disabling shot evade spam. It’s still going to help carry bad thieves who can now spam 3 on either set when they’re low and pressured. Before if you were without a weapon swap or a infiltrators return you could evade one time while immobilize, this is only going to lead to anet butchering the set even more with a kittenty after cast to flanking strike a la disabling shot & infiltrators return.

It pretty much makes it so it limits the burst on demand meaning you have a better tell, and can counter the set up easier. Actually to rephrase there actually will be a proper set up instead of pre loaded burst.

But I think it’s a good change, forces s/d to actually think. Sure a few thieves will get away but it’s healthy for the game to have a player pick defence or attack depending on the situation. It’s problematic when you do both, like it is now.