Guild Wars 2

Fellow S/D Thieves, we’ve been nerfed over and over again and we’ve finally achieved a state of balance and we’re still kinda viable(for the most part).

We’re not too dangerous but we can still hold our own, however Hearth of Thorns might be our end. With the upcoming changes to Feline Grace, our main defensive trait is being reworked into a vigor trait.

At first I wasn’t too worried, 2 seconds of vigor is about the same amount of endurance we got back from dodging with the current version of this trait, and in fact it encourages us to always carefully time our dodges, or else we loose our biggest defence tool.

But then I noticed the 3 second cooldown, having a 1 second cooldown would be plenty to avoid this trait from activating more than once per evasion and still keep the build fine, however a 3 second cooldown is a cruel nerf, especially to a build that now barely holds itself viable.

I know this decision isn’t set in stone, but this change will most likely force all other good thieves to go D/P along with possibly the new elite specialisation. Please don’t limit our build diversity like this.

TL;DR: We’re getting nerfed to the ground.

Update: (To those saying this is a buff)
2seconds of vigor (with the +20% vigor buff) = ~ 15 extra endurance(Same from current)
But we only get a proc with a cooldown of 3 seconds, since this depends on if the opponent throws out a dodge worthy skill, lets make it ~3.5seconds.
How many times do you have to roll within the first 3.5seconds? If its a aggresive necro or warrior that answer should be around 3. Which means we get 45 endurance back, but with our ’’buff’’ we get… 15… and wont get another 15 for more than 3seconds.

Ensign.2189 Has a valid point here

I’ve spent a good amount of time watching replays of duels and small scale fights from a thief’s perspective to understand just how often this will actually proc; the best estimate seems to be about once every 10 seconds.

Yes, you dodge or FS important attacks more often than that, but because both of those involve a lot of movement they frequently take you out of range of the attack before it would land – which means they see a miss, you never see an evade, and FG would never trigger.

3
second
cooldown

didnt even notice…
i hope anet is kidding because otherwise they are simply trolling s/d thieves
i mean its not too bad if you think about it for one second… but then the amount of dodgeworthy skills for example warrior can put out within 3 seconds made me realize the nerf to feline grace is worse than it seemed before
and its a straight nerf as with III in acro and Bountiful Theft in trickery you were able to have (or at least close to) perma vigor before as well

1. None of the numbers are set in stone. They said that over and over on the live streams.
2. You forgot that we also get a new grandmaster that gives a chance to evade projectiles while we have swiftness, and we still get swiftness on dodge.

How many times do the developers have to say “numbers are not final”, “experimental”, “still in development”?! I thought they said it too much and that it was obvious, but apparently not…

Jesus, they even said that the Acrobatics line hadn’t even been tested and will most likely be completely different.

Auesis.7301:

Jesus, they even said that the Acrobatics line hadn’t even been tested and will most likely be completely different.

Despite saying that, moves were obviously made to change its effect, and since the trait is so strong already, I only expect a nerf.

I’m just making this thread to spark a discussion about how their current decision during the livestream should be discouraged, since it will only limit build diversity and kill off a build that is already less effective than D/P.

lol anet strikes again

Yeah it’s not set in stone…

But will they listen and make/revert the change?

Not really banking on that, they have their own agenda for balancing things. So yeah just wait and see.

Knowing Anet, they’ll still manage to make it worst.

And they are creating a grandmaster minor trait that increases vigor potency by 20%.

They really want you to think how to spend your evades instead of chain spamming them until my 6sec Sic’em reveal wears off so you can hide in shadow refuge to reset…

It’s fine because it will proc with fs/ls , sb#3, pw…( that’s what they said in stream). If you think about it, it’s more like a buff.

MatthiasL.5346:

It’s fine because it will proc with fs/ls , sb#3, pw…( that’s what they said in stream). If you think about it, it’s more like a buff.

I’m not entire sure if it’s a buff, but I really like the change that it can proc now on evade.

MatthiasL.5346:

It’s fine because it will proc with fs/ls , sb#3, pw…( that’s what they said in stream). If you think about it, it’s more like a buff.

Its not a buff, if you do the math, we still don’t get the same amount of endurance back.

2seconds of vigor (with the +20% vigor buff) = ~ 15 extra endurance(Same from current)

But we only get a proc with a cooldown of 3 seconds, since this depends on if the opponent throws out a dodge worthy skill, lets make it ~3.5seconds.

How many times do you have to roll within the first 3.5seconds? If its a aggresive necro or warrior that answer should be around 3. Which means we get 45 endurance back, but with our ’’buff’’ we get… 15… and wont get another 15 for more than 3seconds.

You forget that you don’t have to “waste” a dodge roll to get endurance back ( which is the case at the moment). Add that to the “dodge projectiles trait” ( which will proc the vigor trait as well) and you are fine. While I understand your opinion, you have to agree that gameplay will be less spammy and skillfull players will be rewarded.

kaikalii.4198:

1. None of the numbers are set in stone. They said that over and over on the live streams.
2. You forgot that we also get a new grandmaster that gives a chance to evade projectiles while we have swiftness, and we still get swiftness on dodge.

3. Going into acrobatics has a nifty new GM minor trait that increases vigor effects by 20%.

4. the dps on s/d is going up since you get the full benefit of DA now, or if you wana try out CS either way you’re getting 6 traits in an offensive trait line vs just 2 (minor and major).

5. Acrobatics also gets the choice of a internal stun breaker or a reduction in CD for steal which is something s/d loves to use.

Result: Judging on their suggested trait changes (again, not set in stone as people have mentioned), S/D is getting far more buffs than nerfs. So no moment of silence for you OP.

kaikalii.4198:

1. None of the numbers are set in stone. They said that over and over on the live streams.
2. You forgot that we also get a new grandmaster that gives a chance to evade projectiles while we have swiftness, and we still get swiftness on dodge.

3. Going into acrobatics has a nifty new GM minor trait that increases vigor effects by 20%.

4. the dps on s/d is going up since you get the full benefit of DA now, or if you wana try out CS either way you’re getting 6 traits in an offensive trait line vs just 2 (minor and major).

5. Acrobatics also gets the choice of a internal stun breaker or a reduction in CD for steal which is something s/d loves to use.

Result: Judging on their suggested trait changes (again, not set in stone as people have mentioned), S/D is getting far more buffs than nerfs. So no moment of silence for you OP

^this

Well most of the nerfs to S/D are because they do not listen to the players. If they would have changed acrobatics in the first place and left Inf. Strike and FS/LS alone it would have been relatively fine. But nah, they go ahead and kept doing the exact opposite of what the feedback was.

Well, don’t make assumptions until it’s released.
Once we’ve played with it, we can whine about it.

I think that the simple fact that it procs on every evade instead of every dodge is great. The 3 second CD is also not much of an issue… LoS or create distance also avoids getting hit.
So it seems that our playstyle will change, for sure, but to say it’s a nerf and that we should have a moment of silence for that reason… It’s a bit too soon still.
Heck, maybe we’ll get unlimited dodges and blinds in the Specialization Tree to offer an alternative to the typical 6 in Shadow Arts…

Don’t stop believing!

MatthiasL.5346:

1. None of the numbers are set in stone. They said that over and over on the live streams.

This is only an argument of hope, it appears the Devs want to change this trait, and I’m only seeing it getting worse based on their past balancing.

MatthiasL.5346:

2. You forgot that we also get a new grandmaster that gives a chance to evade projectiles while we have swiftness, and we still get swiftness on dodge.

That has a 5 second cooldown, and will proc mostly useless vigor since most of the time they will be engaging us our endurance will full for most of the first second. This also means none of our dodges will proc vigor for the next 3 seconds.

MatthiasL.5346:

3. Going into acrobatics has a nifty new GM minor trait that increases vigor effects by 20%.

Useless, read updated OP

MatthiasL.5346:

4. the dps on s/d is going up since you get the full benefit of DA now, or if you wana try out CS either way you’re getting 6 traits in an offensive trait line vs just 2 (minor and major).

Yes, but this hugely changes the playstyle of the build, making it more similar to the D/P burst variant which seems to be getting most buffed, essentially probably making S/D useless next to new D/P

MatthiasL.5346:

5. Acrobatics also gets the choice of a internal stun breaker or a reduction in CD for steal which is something s/d loves to use.

That does sound nice but we also loose the ability to have both Vigorous recovery and Pain response in acrobatics in exchange.

MatthiasL.5346:

Result: Judging on their suggested trait changes (again, not set in stone as people have mentioned), S/D is getting far more buffs than nerfs. So no moment of silence for you OP

I fail to see how its getting ’’buffed’’ in any way.

Dude, dont know why you quote me, cause NinjaEd.3946 posted it. But that´s just YOUR opinion, other ppl want to test it before they start crying. I mean how do you even know how traits will develop? It´s just your expectation.
By the way do your maths again with: “20% feline grace+ 20% vigor buff+bountyful theft+ hard to catch+ don´t stop”
You gonna have 100% vigor uptime (with 20% vigor buff), stun break+ full endurance (30 sec cd), evading projectiles AND DA or CS trailine.
In your words “I fail to see how its getting ’buffed’ in any way.”, in my words: "
obviously"
Greetz

I quoted you because you supported everything he said (and it was much easier to quote you then to quote from 2 other posts). No offence to you buddy, I respect you.

Also this isn’t an opinion this is a prediction based on our current info for HoT, I’m making this thread in hopes the Devs see it along with our discussion, in hopes of having them prove me wrong.

I want to be proven wrong since I don’t want my favorite build to become so weak. Doing this is much more than doing nothing about it.

What we need a moment of Silence for is actually Infusion of Shadows :’(

It is currently not possible to go over 100% endurance regen according to wiki;

“Vigor does not stack with other effects which increase endurance regeneration rate (such as from certain traits and signets). The endurance regeneration rate is capped at double the normal rate, which is most easily achieved when under effects of the vigor boon.”

With that said, we don’t know what is the actual regen rate is going to be. All we can do is hope that they would actually test this and adjust the numbers accordingly and appropriately.

Phantom Master.9582:

But we only get a proc with a cooldown of 3 seconds, since this depends on if the opponent throws out a dodge worthy skill, lets make it ~3.5seconds.

I’ve spent a good amount of time watching replays of duels and small scale fights from a thief’s perspective to understand just how often this will actually proc; the best estimate seems to be about once every 10 seconds.

Yes, you dodge or FS important attacks more often than that, but because both of those involve a lot of movement they frequently take you out of range of the attack before it would land – which means they see a miss, you never see an evade, and FG would never trigger.

I’d guess it’ll trigger more frequently in very big fights with a lot of spammy AoE, but in small scale fights I would not expect it to trigger often.

It is a massive, massive nerf over the current FG.

Ensign.2189:

Phantom Master.9582:

But we only get a proc with a cooldown of 3 seconds, since this depends on if the opponent throws out a dodge worthy skill, lets make it ~3.5seconds.

I’ve spent a good amount of time watching replays of duels and small scale fights from a thief’s perspective to understand just how often this will actually proc; the best estimate seems to be about once every 10 seconds.

Yes, you dodge or FS important attacks more often than that, but because both of those involve a lot of movement they frequently take you out of range of the attack before it would land – which means they see a miss, you never see an evade, and FG would never trigger.

I’d guess it’ll trigger more frequently in very big fights with a lot of spammy AoE, but in small scale fights I would not expect it to trigger often.

It is a massive, massive nerf over the current FG.

Great perspective, It seems I haven’t thought of the distance dodge rolling actually produced, meaning you actually rarely ’’evade’’ an attack, you more or less get out of the way.

This seems like a whole lot of doom and gloom for no reason. You’re focusing on all the negative aspects without taking into account the positive ones.

First of all, let’s acknowledge that this is all conjecture, both your points and mine below; What we’ve seen in the preview isn’t necessarily what we are going to get.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take what was revealed at face value, and look at S/D thief.

1) S/D is going to gain a lot of damage in HoT.
Recall that 2/0/0/6/6 is going to change to 6/0/0/6/6, meaning you can take 2 more DA traits. Those traits, as previewed, include panic strike and executioner, which are both excellent DPS traits. Also note that as far as we know currently, amulets are going to be making up for the stats lost from traitlines. 6/0/0/6/6 with a zerker ammy should now have similiar stats to our current systems 6/6/x/x/x. This means S/D should be seeing much harder hits.

2) FG is triggered by a successful evade, not a dodge roll. This means you’ll potentially be getting FG’s benefits when using Flanking strike/Disabling shot/Death Blossom/Pistol whip, and even from ‘Dont Stop’.

3) Swindlers equilibrium can further reduce steal CD, giving you more vigor from BT. If you prefer Hard to Catch, it’s finally been competently designed and will refill all of your endurance.

It’s also worth noting there were a couple of verbal mentions in the stream that were intriguing. It was specifically mentioned that stolen items were losing their damage component, which leads me to believe they’ll be stronger support/defensive utiltiies. I’m paraphrasing here, but when speaking about “Dont Stop”, one of the dev’s said that only dodging projectiles felt weak, and maybe it should be bumped up to any attack. If “Don’t stop” evades any attack while under the effects of swiftness with kitten ICD, then S/D just got a pretty substantial buff.

If you take into account the new higher damage potential and the new defensive options (again, assuming they play out as I’ve laid them out), then S/D thief has gained a good amount of damage and no longer needs as many evades as it currently has.

evilapprentice.6379:

Snip

Great Perspective, Although I had thought a bit about that I brushed off that thought since all classes will be getting these huge extra trait buffs, probably leaving our S/D friend lacking behind in comparison.

However I agree with you, that’s a great way to see things, getting both Panic Strike and Executioner is sure to keep things interesting.

evilapprentice.6379:

This seems like a whole lot of doom and gloom for no reason. You’re focusing on all the negative aspects without taking into account the positive ones.

First of all, let’s acknowledge that this is all conjecture, both your points and mine below; What we’ve seen in the preview isn’t necessarily what we are going to get.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take what was revealed at face value, and look at S/D thief.

1) S/D is going to gain a lot of damage in HoT.
Recall that 2/0/0/6/6 is going to change to 6/0/0/6/6, meaning you can take 2 more DA traits. Those traits, as previewed, include panic strike and executioner, which are both excellent DPS traits. Also note that as far as we know currently, amulets are going to be making up for the stats lost from traitlines. 6/0/0/6/6 with a zerker ammy should now have similiar stats to our current systems 6/6/x/x/x. This means S/D should be seeing much harder hits.

2) FG is triggered by a successful evade, not a dodge roll. This means you’ll potentially be getting FG’s benefits when using Flanking strike/Disabling shot/Death Blossom/Pistol whip, and even from ‘Dont Stop’.

3) Swindlers equilibrium can further reduce steal CD, giving you more vigor from BT. If you prefer Hard to Catch, it’s finally been competently designed and will refill all of your endurance.

It’s also worth noting there were a couple of verbal mentions in the stream that were intriguing. It was specifically mentioned that stolen items were losing their damage component, which leads me to believe they’ll be stronger support/defensive utiltiies. I’m paraphrasing here, but when speaking about “Dont Stop”, one of the dev’s said that only dodging projectiles felt weak, and maybe it should be bumped up to any attack. If “Don’t stop” evades any attack while under the effects of swiftness with kitten ICD, then S/D just got a pretty substantial buff.

If you take into account the new higher damage potential and the new defensive options (again, assuming they play out as I’ve laid them out), then S/D thief has gained a good amount of damage and no longer needs as many evades as it currently has.

Totally agree. Couldn’t said it better myself. +1

Honestly if you want to think about S/D thief post-update, you should be thinking about how a Deadly/Critstrikes/Trickery thief would perform, which is comparable to builds we have now. The Acrobatics traits as last shown are embarrassingly bad, you clearly run 66006 with the previewed options on S/D.

I don’t think 66006 S/D (or current 26006 S/D) is a competitive build, and the same would likely be true post-update; hence the doom and gloom, especially with D/P getting supercharged from full Shadow Arts.

The relevant counterpoints:

evilapprentice.6379:

1) S/D is going to gain a lot of damage in HoT.
Recall that 2/0/0/6/6 is going to change to 6/0/0/6/6, meaning you can take 2 more DA traits. Those traits, as previewed, include panic strike and executioner, which are both excellent DPS traits.

60066 gains Exposed Weakness and Executioner over the current set-up; it loses Fluid Strikes and Power of Inertia. At least in sPvP, this is an upgrade, but a minimal one – Fluid Strikes outperforms Exposed Weakness, and Executioner, while providing much better situational damage, adds about as much as Power of Inertia overall.

evilapprentice.6379:

Also note that as far as we know currently, amulets are going to be making up for the stats lost from traitlines.

This is the biggest power boost S/D is getting; moving stats out of boon duration and vitality (not to mention the condition damage wasted points) is a big buff.

It also reshuffles the relative value of traits, particularly Acrobatics traits which benefit immensely from boon duration. This does not make you want to invest heavily into boon duration (at the expense of Precision or Ferocity), if it is even available – it instead encourages you to run something other than Acrobatics.

evilapprentice.6379:

2) FG is triggered by a successful evade, not a dodge roll. This means you’ll potentially be getting FG’s benefits when using Flanking strike/Disabling shot/Death Blossom/Pistol whip, and even from ‘Dont Stop’.

As mentioned in a post above, this is a massive nerf. In a skirmish, S/D thieves seem to actually get an ‘evade’ text to pop up every 8-10 seconds on average. That would make the new Feline Grace a 20% vigor uptime, which is absurdly bad (one additional dodge every 40-50 seconds).

Current Feline Grace is a straight 43% multiplicative boost to the number of dodges you get – both up front, and over time. It stacks on top of vigor, works out of combat, and is generally a ridiculously powerful trait.

Add to it that under the current system, between Bountiful Theft and Vigorous Recovery, S/D thieves have essentially 100% vigor uptime already. This is getting hit by the loss of the boon duration on Acrobatics – the new Feline Grace will partially fill in the difference, but not contribute much more than that.

The loss of Feline Grace has wide ranging repercussions – Signet of Agility is no longer good, you have less ability to dodge up front, you are substantially weaker with vigor on you – which are not being made up by the rest of the line at all.

evilapprentice.6379:

3) Swindlers equilibrium can further reduce steal CD, giving you more vigor from BT. If you prefer Hard to Catch, it’s finally been competently designed and will refill all of your endurance.

Swindler’s Equilibrium is likely to trigger 2-3 times between Steal cooldowns if you camp sword, making it, effectively, ‘steal recharges 13% faster while wielding a sword’. Color me unexcited.

New Hard to Catch is indeed a good trait – it is, by my estimation, the only good trait in the entire line.

If “Don’t stop” evades any attack while under the effects of swiftness with kitten ICD, then S/D just got a pretty substantial buff.[/quote]

Remember that thief has very poor access to swiftness, and its access to swiftness is getting sledgehammered by these changes (loss of boon duration, loss of Feline Grace which powered Expeditious Dodger); the trait still looks ok, but is only slightly more exciting than the passive aegis from Virtue of Courage.

Without 3 of its best traits or the boon duration synergies, I see little reason to spec into Acrobatics with the current setup – which represents a substantial nerf to S/D thief. I’m hoping that reinforces the need for (at least numeric) changes before launch, because as is the line simply cannot compete with the alternatives.

I don’t even want to touch how much S/D benefits from animation canceling via dodge rolls, which is going to get slammed without Feline Grace.

@ensign

Don’t get me wrong, I believe Acro could be better designed, but IMO it’s still leagues better than the trainwreck that CS is. I’m surprised in your earlier post you ranked it above acro – what we saw previewed was bland, underpowered, and disjointed. Nothing syngergizes well, opportunist is gone, first strikes is weaker, unrelenting strikes is crap, the adept traits are bland, 2 of the 3 master traits are borderline useless, and all 3 GM traits are woefully UP. Even the currently poorly designed Acro blows it out of the water.

Concerning your points

While fluid strikes is slightly better than exposed weakness for S/D, I don’t feel its particularly substantial, considering your slightly better condition application with 6 points in DA.

We don’t yet know how stats like boon/condition duration from traits are being handled in HoT. I can’t imagine they’re being abandonded entirely, but for either of us it’s just conjecture.

Your analysis of “Actually evaded attacks” was from duels and small skirmishes. Duels have nothing to do with PvP in this game, and I feel like your observations aren’t exactly enough to conclude how often FG will actually trigger. We’ll have to wait until the changes are live to see.

As for SE, 13% Seems like a lot to me – the 20% from SoH is considered mandatory in every thief build, and the quicker steal recharges the quicker you have access to poison, weakness, mug, 2 initiative, fury/might/swiftness/vigor, 2 stolen boons, daze and your (potentially better utility/support designed) stolen item. We haven’t even talked about Improvisation – it means less damage, but with withdraw becoming a trick, it has an 80% chance to recharge a skill off of standard S/D bar, and again assuming the redesigned stolen skills are good, gives you a second use. You also calculated that 13% from your previous analysis of “actually evaded attacks”, which I pointed out earlier doesn’t feel accurate enough to be basing other judgements on. Not being excited about a quicker steal CD seems to be like an underestimation on your part.

Poor access to swiftness? Steal with pack runes is 13s on a 21s CD (faster with swindlers), and 2 seconds for every dodge. That’s not even counting the trigger from Pack runes themselves or the 30% additional duration from the current acro tree. In the current system, you should effectively have perma-swiftness. If ‘Dont stop" remains just projectiles it’ll be crap, but if they upgrade it to any attack it has the potential to be phenomenal.

evilapprentice.6379:

I’m surprised in your earlier post you ranked it above acro – what we saw previewed was bland, underpowered, and disjointed.

I agree with bland and disjointed. I don’t agree fully with underpowered. Invigorating Precision and Practiced Tolerance are both strong traits; Hidden Killer isn’t bad either if not applicable for a S/x build. Signet of Power is very good if applicable, Side Strike is serviceable, and the minors are weak but still actually do something.

It’s the opposite of Acrobatics, which I think is flavorful, coherent, and massively underpowered.

evilapprentice.6379:

We don’t yet know how stats like boon/condition duration from traits are being handled in HoT. I can’t imagine they’re being abandonded entirely, but for either of us it’s just conjecture.

The point is that it doesn’t actually matter. You don’t put out enough boons to invest in boon duration, regardless of whether or not you have the option. Right now, you have to take it in order to access Acrobatics traits, so you evaluate the traits considering that you have the 30% boon duration. If given the choice, you’d prefer to not invest in it, which makes those traits seem much weaker.

evilapprentice.6379:

Your analysis of “Actually evaded attacks” was from duels and small skirmishes. Duels have nothing to do with PvP in this game, and I feel like your observations aren’t exactly enough to conclude how often FG will actually trigger. We’ll have to wait until the changes are live to see.

If you really want to understand how often it may trigger, you can record a couple matches and see how many evades you actually get through an extended engagement. My experience is that in larger fights you rely more on Infiltrator’s Strike, spend more time moving in and out of combat, and, consequently, evades probably do happen every 8-10s or so. Granted, that number is quiet lower if you could evades that happen simultaneously or in quick succession, it’s not rare to see 2-3 evades back to back.

Still, it’s very clear that quite a few ‘evades’ don’t actually trigger an evade, because the dodge roll / FS moves you out of range of the attack before the attack would land; it’s also quite obvious that you aren’t going full bore 100% of the time, that there’s quite a bit of time spent when you aren’t under attack, and those put together make the idea that you’ll be triggering FG every 3 seconds completely unrealistic.

Even under a really optimistic model of evading every 3 seconds on average, you’d only get a trigger of FG every 6 seconds, on average (as you can add the cooldown in directly); 2s of vigor every 6 seconds is not a particularly attractive trait.

Realistically, either it won’t trigger terribly often and you’ll run Bountiful Theft + Vigorous Recovery + Feline Grace for 100% uptime, or it will trigger a bunch and you can drop Vigorous Recovery for Pain Response while maintaining high uptime. I’m not the biggest fan of Pain Response, but it’s a serviceable adept trait and better than a Vigorous Recovery that isn’t doing much for you.

evilapprentice.6379:

As for SE, 13% Seems like a lot to me – the 20% from SoH is considered mandatory in every thief build, and the quicker steal recharges the quicker you have access to poison, weakness, mug, 2 initiative, fury/might/swiftness/vigor, 2 stolen boons, daze and your (potentially better utility/support designed) stolen item.

20% and daze on steal. Recharging more quickly while disengaged matters too. You kind of hit a wall in just how many evades you can fit into a smaller and smaller window. 3 is fairly realistic, which would be a 14% reduction. Getting 4 in is possible. 5 is not something you should be planning on. 3 would drop you from a 21.5 second steal to a 18.5 second steal, which certainly isn’t a bad trait – better than most of the ones in the line – but not something that draws me into the line.

Hard to Catch is in the same spot anyway. It’s the one trait spot in Acrobatics that actually pulls its weight, as far as I’m concerned. In a strong trait line I’d be happy to take either.

But when it’s paired with Expeditious Dodger (weak without boon duration and Feline Grace), Vigorous Recovery (weak without boon duration and Feline Grace), new Feline Grace (middling, clearly worse than Critical Infusion / Vigorous Precision), Endless Stamina (garbage), and Don’t Stop (might be ok, I guess), I’m really super unimpressed. The only real problem with the current line is trash grandmasters (but you can stick Power of Inertia in there anyway); post update, more than half of your traits look to be dead weight.

I agree with you that Critical Strikes is also particularly bad, but without major changes, the elite spec would have to be pretty putrid for me not to run it over Acrobatics or Critical Strikes, sight unseen.

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgcBrAS4Bdg~

This looks like a decent acrobatics build to me.

you get:
-perma vigor with 120% boost
-refill endurance when disabled
-refill endurance on signet of agility use
-if you still need more endurance: use sigil of energy on each weaponset
-Evades on S/D3, S/P3, D/D3, SB3

Aren’t that enough evades/dodges?

+ you get
-panic strike
-executioner
-generally more damage because of the new gear stats

you lose:
-significant condition removal
-vitality if you still go full berzerk

KrHome.1920:

Snip

I assume you’re not keeping up much with the conversation and you’re just adding your 2 cents, nevertheless I appreciate your research.

S/D is somewhat the only close combat build that allows you to essentially ’’fight’’ opponents for a certain period of time if you play your cards right, since thief is essentially terrible in attrition that’s why we utilise more evades.

We typically have a ratio of evades of 1.75:1 compared to another class with reliable access to vigor(Not 100% uptime), this is essential as we lack attrition, getting hit is a huge punish to a thief. Also flanking strike is essentially terrible as it won’t activate until all other thief ability animations are over and doesn’t have any evasion during its startup, this means you have to preemptively rely on that fact your opponent may lack experience in hopes they try to use in important attack on you during your Flanking Strike evasion.

Flanking Strike’s only other use it to get closer to you opponent after rolling away out of pressure. Also 100% vigor uptime for the HoT thief can only happen in a perfect world, because of the huge distance covered from dodge rolling makes it VERY unlikely to continuously proc the new Feline’s Grace when its off cooldown. The current Feline’s Grace is much superior than vigor.

This makes our new evasion ration to be much closer to 1-1.25 : 1 compared to another class with reliable access to vigor, this is terrible since we are squishy and have almost no other defensive options. (Dodgerolling is essential for its ability to cancel animation). This then forces us to build into sudden burts damage, a role that D/P excells at alot more, essentially making S/D very useless in comparison.

Phantom Master.9582:

The current Feline’s Grace is much superior than vigor.

True, but this does not mean, that brainless evade spamming should be rewarded. I main an acro thief for about 2 years now and I would say I know this build. AND I don’t need all that endurance.

This then forces us to build into sudden burts damage, a role that D/P excells at alot more, essentially making S/D very useless in comparison.

I guess you all underestimate the huge damage boost we get from the new stats and excutioner. I am glad we have more damage now at hte cost of maybe 20% of our evade ability, which is still very strong.

Btw.: Yes the new stealth traits are OP. 50% damage reduction in stealth as a minor trait is a complete joke.

A lot of people have mentioned that the DA changes are a buff to S/D. The problem is that D/P also uses DA and, after the trait changes, all classes will have access to additional traits.

I also don’t see much of a negative to the loss of Infusion of Shadows for D/D and D/P thieves. If you slot Shadow’s Rejuvenation you will still gain 2 initiative if you stay in stealth (1 initiative every 3 seconds). I currently use Infusion of Shadow with S/D, but I rarely sit in stealth. I just enter stealth to gain initiative, clear conditions, and apply blinds from the sword attack. It’s odd that thieves are being rewarded for staying in stealth longer.

I wouldn’t consider Don’t Stop a buff to S/D. I personally don’t ever see myself using this trait over Assassins Reward or Quick Pockets.

KrHome.1920:

True, but this does not mean, that brainless evade spamming should be rewarded. I main an acro thief for about 2 years now and I would say I know this build. AND I don’t need all that endurance.

Brainless evade spamming isn’t rewarded at all, people seem to forget that dodge rolling is a commitment, you can’t dish out damage at the same time you’re dodge rolling until the animation ends meaning if you just spam your evades, your damage is weak. Also with Infiltrator’s return having a cast time, these extra evades are typically used to gain a safer distance to avoid being CCe’d before being able to return.

KrHome.1920:

I guess you all underestimate the huge damage boost we get from the new stats and excutioner. I am glad we have more damage now at hte cost of maybe 20% of our evade ability, which is still very strong.

I’m not underestimating, I’m being realistic here, all classes are getting these huge stat boosts, so I expect thief to have some too in hopes of keeping up.

KrHome.1920:

I guess you all underestimate the huge damage boost we get from the new stats and excutioner.

It’s in the neighborhood of 13%, at the cost of the boon duration and vitality current Acrobatics gives. It’s not trivial but not something I’d characterize as a ‘huge damage boost’.

KrHome.1920:

I am glad we have more damage now at hte cost of maybe 20% of our evade ability

It’s closer to 30%, and represents virtually the entire advantage an Acrobatics thief has over any other class.

The numbers above are roughly correct. In, say, a 20-25 second fight a default character has access to 4 dodges. A Trickery thief, with only the vigor from Bountiful Theft, will have access to 5. The current acrobatics thief will have access to 9-10, providing a marked advantage.

Post-update Acrobatics thief has access to 6-7. This is a huge, huge nerf – pre-update Acrobatics gives roughly a 80-100% increase in dodges over the baseline, while the post-update Acrobatics gives a 20-40% increase. The former is a huge advantage and the reason you spec Acrobatics. The latter isn’t totally irrelevant, but isn’t a game changer. Do you really want to take an entire trait line for what will often be one more dodge?

Ensign.2189:

KrHome.1920:

I guess you all underestimate the huge damage boost we get from the new stats and excutioner.

It’s in the neighborhood of 13%, at the cost of the boon duration and vitality current Acrobatics gives. It’s not trivial but not something I’d characterize as a ‘huge damage boost’.

13% doesn’t seem accurate. Are you sure you’re counting executioner and ~200 power, ~300 ferocity/precision (of course, still conjecture)?

13% seems consistent with just Executioner (roughly 10%), and 300 ferocity/precision (15% more crit, 20% more crit damage), and doesn’t take into account the additional power.

No comment until they actually ship something, then ill be mad/happy.

Ensign.2189:

Still, it’s very clear that quite a few ‘evades’ don’t actually trigger an evade, because the dodge roll / FS moves you out of range of the attack before the attack would land;

I just want to say that this is not entirely accurate. If you failed to evade a melee attack using dodge, it means you dodged too early and failed at timing. It is not because you roll out of range before the attack would land.

Picture it as an arching projectile. If you dodge while it’s on the rise, you’ll fail to evade — but if you dodge while it is falling, then you’ll trigger an evade.

It is fairly common that dodge are used to create distance than actually evading an attack — this kind of compulsive dodging is not what FG is rewarding nor should be rewarded.

evilapprentice.6379:

13% doesn’t seem accurate. Are you sure you’re counting executioner and ~200 power, ~300 ferocity/precision (of course, still conjecture)?

I should have at least been clear about methodology.

There are a couple things that matter – the raw amount of stats tacked onto the amulets, and the basis for comparison. The latter, it turns out, is much more important, as it makes the former not matter all that much – essentially, who cares if you do 20% more damage if everyone does 20% more damage as well? What you really care about is the comparative damage advantage S/D gains, relative to other classes.

Thus you need to build a toy model of before / after changes for S/D, as compared to a reference (D/P 26006 or 60206).

I assumed that the additional stats would come as a proportional increase to all the stats on the extant amulets.

It’s important to note that the damage modifiers from traits are essentially unchanged for the S/D thief – again, Fluid Strikes and Exposed Weakness are roughly equivalent, and while Executioner is a much stronger trait than Power of Inertia due to the nature of its conditional and synergy with every build, it’s only marginally stronger from a raw DPS added perspective (at least in sPvP, where raw stats are lower). You can put a couple percentage points on the scale in favor of post-patch Executioner if you prefer.

Modeled in this way, S/D 20066 moving to S/D 60066 has a 17% comparative advantage over D/P 26006 in terms of additional damage. Compared to D/P 60206 (keeping Improvisation over Executioner), S/D has a 9% comparative advantage from moving to the new stat system (essentially zero if you swap to Executioner; 60206 does not have a good stat allocation either).

Simple average for comparison is 13%, which is the tl;dr number.

Again, and this should be clear, this is a comparative advantage over competitor builds; you’d get similar numbers if you did it for Mediguards or Mesmers. For all we know they could give out a ton of power and players could see a 50% increase in damage across the board (I personally doubt that, but it is possible). You can’t tout that as a perk for S/D that’s going to keep it competitive, however, since everyone would be getting it – only the comparative advantage matters, and that is surprisingly indifferent to the exact number of stat points added.

Make sense?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I just want to say that this is not entirely accurate. If you failed to evade a melee attack using dodge, it means you dodged too early and failed at timing.

It does not. It means I dodged effectively and evaded the attack – the entire point of using the dodge. In fact, dodging earlier in this way is more effective, as it positions you to counterattack earlier; your opponent will still be finishing their animation when your dodge ends, giving you the initiative. In fact, actually seeing the ‘evade’ is frequently a sign of ineffective dodging – you have not used it to reposition yourself effectively and are still directly in front of whoever is attacking you.

It is anything but mindless ineffective dodging. The fact that Feline Grace does not play nicely with anything other than slow dodges with poor positioning is a serious detriment to the trait and a big part of why I rate it so poorly.

Ensign.2189:

~snip~

I think what you’re missing is the fact that a Berseker Amulet as we know it may not even exist anymore.

If they will adjust Berserker Amulet so that a D/P 26006 will still work as is, then that amulet will be overpowered when a D/P 00666 wears it.

So it is safe to assume that the Berserker Amulet will receive a drastic change, at least in PvP where gear stats are non-existence but traits stats are.

EDIT:

It does not. It means I dodged effectively and evaded the attack – the entire point of using the dodge. In fact, dodging earlier in this way is more effective, as it positions you to counterattack earlier; your opponent will still be finishing their animation when your dodge ends, giving you the initiative.

There’s a difference between effective dodge and effective evade.

In fact, actually seeing the ‘evade’ is frequently a sign of ineffective dodging – you have not used it to reposition yourself effectively and are still directly in front of whoever is attacking you.

Thus the reward is for those who effectively evade an attack, not effectively dodge.

They are not one and the same.

It is anything but mindless ineffective dodging. The fact that Feline Grace does not play nicely with anything other than slow dodges with poor positioning is a serious detriment to the trait and a big part of why I rate it so poorly.

Well we just have to disagree because the intended use of dodge is for evading attacks and not for repositioning, thus even though it allows you to use it for repositioning, FG will only reward you if you use it as intended.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Well we just have to disagree because the intended use of dodge is for evading attacks and not for repositioning, thus even though it allows you to use it for repositioning, FG will only reward you if you use it as intended.

The current intent of FG is exacly that, to reward both positioning via rolling and evading via rolling, FG’s function is to increase our dodge rolling capacity to give us a more manual defensive mechanic rather than a static one. There is no indication that this needs to change in the meta nor in the build’s performance.

The new FG is not a needed change, and shouldn’t be welcomed, thus the making of this thread.

About the amulet and stat changes, this affects all classes, our balance is only relative to other classes (getting ~30% extra damage is not a balancement if other classes without nerfs also get ~30% extra damage). I’d agree that our relative damage increase should barely be ~15%. At the cost of most of our evasion.

Phantom Master.9582:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Well we just have to disagree because the intended use of dodge is for evading attacks and not for repositioning, thus even though it allows you to use it for repositioning, FG will only reward you if you use it as intended.

The current intent of FG is exacly that, to reward both positioning via rolling and evading via rolling, FG’s function is to increase our dodge rolling capacity to give us a more manual defensive mechanic rather than a static one. There is no indication that this needs to change in the meta nor in the build’s performance.

The new FG is not a needed change, and shouldn’t be welcomed, thus the making of this thread.

The fact that there is dodge rolling that indefinitely evades any attack (except the few warding skills) is an indication that it was meant for skillful play. Most classes either get a small source of vigor or have to simply deal with their 2 evade cap and wait. I know thief, especially acrobatic’s thieves, are meant to avoid damage entirely rather than soak it up and recover but I don’t think this much evasion was intended.

When you have the current FG stacking alongside the current vigor boon and pair it with fire/air sigils to roll around and poke it’s pretty powerful and with the upcoming traits allowing 3 full investments they had to address this issue. You can’t just straight buff something and not expect some possible overpowering, so even if they dish these changes in the HoT update I fail to see how it can be a bad one. You can’t just look at 1 trait and say it is the entirety of a build, there are many good changes outside of this small nerf and when you take into consideration the buffs not only to 4 more traits but what those traits you can pick from, we’re getting some solid options. Call it a change if you will at the very least, but don’t say s/d is going to die from this.

the answer to the nerf might lie on rune of adventurer. it might be able emulate the current feline grace. it’s not the perfect of runes since the stats are somewhat not exactly inclined for s/d, or at least by half. but then again the traits aren’t nailed yet and changes might occur plus i’m sure they’re going to release a whole slew of new sigils and runes at hot release and most likely a whole slew of new balance issues with it. better wait for now before immediate qq. …but remembering their track record for s/d…Ahuehuehuehue, don’t be surprised if they forgot the weapon set even existed. :P

This is honestly looking pretty bad for S/D, but I’m sure the devs are going to test this out internally in order to make sure that they keep build diversity. I’m sure most of these traits are going to change before HoT release.

NinjaEd.3946:

Phantom Master.9582:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Well we just have to disagree because the intended use of dodge is for evading attacks and not for repositioning, thus even though it allows you to use it for repositioning, FG will only reward you if you use it as intended.

The current intent of FG is exacly that, to reward both positioning via rolling and evading via rolling, FG’s function is to increase our dodge rolling capacity to give us a more manual defensive mechanic rather than a static one. There is no indication that this needs to change in the meta nor in the build’s performance.

The new FG is not a needed change, and shouldn’t be welcomed, thus the making of this thread.

snip
Most classes either get a small source of vigor or have to simply deal with their 2 evade cap and wait. I know thief, especially acrobatic’s thieves, are meant to avoid damage entirely rather than soak it up and recover but I don’t think this much evasion was intended.
snip

Actually
Guardian: ~50% uptime with 1 minor trait.
Mesmer: ~50% uptime with 1 minor trait.
Elementalist: ~100% uptime with 1 major trait.

Thief: ~100% uptime with 3 major traits and constantly using your heal when available.

Half the classes in the game have decent access to vigor and the other 3 have more access to other defensive boons, blocks, and invulnerability. I’m not saying our current access is bad, but we build around it heavily compared to the throw away access that other professions have.

If critical strikes could get some access to vigor, it might compete with the new DA line. I don’t necessarily mind the new FG either, but the 20% improvement trait is underpowered as it gives 1 more natural dodge every 50 seconds compared with regular vigor. If it were 50%, it would be 1 more dodge every 20 seconds, which seems reasonable for a class with limited defensive boons.

I’ll agree that the current form of feline grace returning 15 on dodge might be a little too good since it allows a natural dodge every 3.5 seconds when combined with vigor, but reducing it 10 on dodge would go a long way to helping it.

^
Both Engineer and Ranger have a good access to Vigor just need to trait more for it and they usually do.
Warrior gets signet of stamina, Warhorn 5, Converted bleeds into vigor and Traited stances

kaikalii.4198:

2. You forgot that we also get a new grandmaster that gives a chance to evade projectiles while we have swiftness, and we still get swiftness on dodge.

So, we’re to swap a trait that promotes active defenses to mitigate pretty much anything for a passive random proc against projectiles? Hooray for passive play, the forte of GW2!

What’s the point of nerfing the trait anyways? The only popular build that uses it is the S/D and that’s in name only, since we get outnumbered by the D/P thieves in every game mode as is. I guess the nerfs are being made to feed the vanity of bad players seeing all their key skills miss and go nuts about “infinite evades omg ezmud plux nerfz”. I really hope they rethink this; even if it was 1 sec cd, as pointed out, it will hardly ever proc and will be weaker by default (get the evade immediatly vs. accumulate the same amount in 2s). I’ve been playing S/D for more than a year and a half and would hate to be forced to completely swap into D/P and/or elite spec just because of some nerf that has no basis or reason to even happen at all.