Guild Wars 2

Now thieves are even more squishier thanks to practiced tolerence change and the -200 armor from the trait stats. Shadow embrace now doesnt remove immob,cripple and blind. it force us to run glass cannon kill or dead. People says we have crazy burst but now every other class does same or more bursts along with better survivability. I used to run dual daggers in wvw now its harder for us to survive out there thanks to many nerfs cloaked in shadow as well. I just dont understand anet keep nerfing thieves because so many noob players qq about thieves op when they actually need to l2p issue.
at least revert shadow’s embrace anet..

Yeah i feel like I’m made out of toothpicks now compared to two days ago when roaming. Feels like if I even get touched, I’m dead. Survivability is completely gone. Bout to give up on the class/game (since all I play is thief) unless I find some new build that doesn’t die instantly when its suddenly a 1v2 or 1v3., yet still has good dmg.

Meanwhile mesmers are nuking the place and hiding with superior stealth.

exactly. i eat 9k fireballs from eles, but somehow they can heal themselves up after i give em a 11k backstab, yet i cant do that

I’m on the same boat, needless to say I’m not happy at all with the changes. This game is completely broken atm.

Well I thought I just sucked… took 5 months off and came back for the expansion. Glad to at least know other thieves feel survivability is gone also. /sigh

;Azure Prower.8701:]Meanwhile mesmers are nuking the place and hiding with superior stealth.

This ^

Not to mention engi getting pocket sky hammers and healing like guardians…
Again, I think the ESSENCE of the thief is intact, just please do something about our SA and acro lines so we can burst and actually live to tell the tale ; )

Sete.8012:

I’m on the same boat, needless to say I’m not happy at all with the changes. This game is completely broken atm.

Yep.

Shout warriors broken.
Trap rangers, Broken.
Add thief to the list.
Mesmers immediately nerfed in an area where they didn’t need it and OP in other ways.

I played one pvp game as thief yesterday and it was awful. I could go nowhere near the bigger fight because any random flying debree could kill me. I went down to 50% health from a terrormancer’s shroud’s Life transfer alone I also fought him 1v1 later on their point and it took ages to kill him. I had to hide and heal myself so many times…

Second game I tried celestial ele. I was fine through the whole game, no problem though I wasn’t quite as tanky as I used to be (which is good). A thief from the other team went down to my teammate’s heartseeker x2. I literally looked away for 2 seconds (or less even) and then the thief was already down.

I asked them via whisper what happened and he explained to me how little it took to kill him. He also said he was already tired of playing thief after 20 games and he felt like paper

Beautilation.7915:

exactly. i eat 9k fireballs from eles, but somehow they can heal themselves up after i give em a 11k backstab, yet i cant do that

The dmg is over the top for everyone. I use full dps build on ele, yet I haven’t seen 9k fireball in wvw, 2 × 4.5k yea but not as single hit. Also, if you stab me for 11k, I have like 1.4k HP left, one aa can deal with that.

I’ve had amazing success in PvP since the patch. Granted wvw is a lot different.

Yeah they messed up the defense aspects. Im was running testwise with soldier gear but even there u die in 2 secs in WvWvW. Anet pls tone down the dmg and give us some more defense options!

Normally im not in a boat to complain with the thief because I love it, but I really hate the fact that I usually can survive most encounters, but now I literally will backstab and follow up with like 3 AA all while throwing down caltrops and they just turn around and nuke me 100 to 0 because I only have like 10 -11k health. Looks like my necro and guardian are going to get some love until this gets a bit better balanced.

I think at this point it is safe to say that anet smoothed everything out. Conditions being powerful, anet revamped them all giving some of them a buff but indirectly nerfed them at the same time when they removed stats from traitlines (condition damage + duration).

With damage buffs all around, tanky gear became less popular but at the same time going full glass is a death sentence unless you kill first or are good at managing your evades and cooldowns. This forces people to prioritize rather than min/max which is a good thing because it opens up middle ground for stat combinations.

And while the nerf to Shadow’s Embrace did make the spec look less appealing, you got to understand that there is an underlying buff alot of you are not seeing. If you have a wall of conditions on you, Shadow’s Embrace bypasses that wall and removes damaging conditions. You can compliment this with trickster to remove the other conditions.

Speaking of the acro line, the trait Don’t Stop provides a passive reduction in the effectiveness of cripple and chilled. Immobilize also turns into cripple every 10 seconds which is powerful to say the least. But this passive effect makes cripple and chilled negligible. You do not have to count on withdraw or Hide in Shadows to remove it anymore. In fact if you studied the effects of the Acro line and build accordingly, you’ll find thief can handle most conditions way better than it used to.

Perhaps anet designed the specs accordingly: DA > Dropping an enemy from 50% to 0, CS Dropping an enemy from 100% to 50%, SA > Mitigating and avoiding damage, Acro > Mitigating and avoiding conditions, Trickery > debilitation because thats what each spec seems to accomplish.

With that in mind anet has not only made full acro viable but tricks and traps more appealing aswell. The condition removal isn’t loaded onto Shadow’s Embrace anymore. Simply using SA and Acro will make thief more of a damage sponge than it used to be.

yolo swaggins.2570:

snip

Have you been in Teefs guildchat tonight?

Yes and no, it’s still only one condition removed at a time and they’re all dangerous. They could’ve added a ranking system like boonstealing instead. And I really miss being able to get that fear off me – that was crucial when fighting teq – I can use blinding powder but no other skill, so withdraw, roll for initative and all other tricks don’t work. And since the damage in wvw right now is beyond insane, it’s really hard to test it or better; I don’t have any motivation to try to adjust my gear or anything as it will be nerfed regardless – and honestly, it should. I will try how it works with all the conditions later on in pvp but I honestly don’t think it was a buff.

Kinda feel like anet took a system that was working relatively ok, and shot it to hell.

sPvP was a huge train wreck for me. While I don’t claim to be a great thief, I could generally get my kills and survive to the enxt encounter. Yesterday, while still sporting a zerk amulet and 12k health, all eles had to do was sneeze at me and I died. Frequently 2-shot. With very poor condi removal (used Shadow’s Embrace and Withdraw) I simply cannot compete with eles and engis. Swapped to Marauder and now have 17k health, so hoping that helps.

Yes, my damage did go up, but A) everyone else’s did as well and now I feel I need to be a pure glass cannon to contribute. And is Blinding Powder from d/p #5 no longer working? I downed some guardians (in a group environment), hit #5, went to stomp, and the bubble blast just overrode my blind. Never had that happen before. Perhaps it was just fortuitous timing.

So if pure burst is the way forward now, maybe d/d will come back in some small way to sPvP.

Shadow’s embrace removing only damaging conditions is great. But I think they should revert the (unintended?) nerf where it no longer removes a condition as you enter stealth (and then 3s after). .

I’d be fine with the power creep, getting wrecked by burst builds while being one seems fine. My main issue is the condi bombs certain classes are tossing about … the only viable option to avoid instant death is to sit in the wings. Perhaps once they tone down conditions thiefs will be in a better position…. perhaps not.

Jana.6831:

yolo swaggins.2570:

snip

Have you been in Teefs guildchat tonight?

Yes and no, it’s still only one condition removed at a time and they’re all dangerous. They could’ve added a ranking system like boonstealing instead. And I really miss being able to get that fear off me – that was crucial when fighting teq – I can use blinding powder but no other skill, so withdraw, roll for initative and all other tricks don’t work. And since the damage in wvw right now is beyond insane, it’s really hard to test it or better; I don’t have any motivation to try to adjust my gear or anything as it will be nerfed regardless – and honestly, it should. I will try how it works with all the conditions later on in pvp but I honestly don’t think it was a buff.

I havn’t been on the game for a while but I can see how the traits would work in a general sense. What thief players are feeling is the result of arenanet smashing thief into putty and remoulding the profession. That’s what happens when broke professions get reworked.

The important thing to remember is that everyone will settle down and a new meta will appear eventually.

yolo swaggins.2570:

I havn’t been on the game for a while but I can see how the traits would work in a general sense. What thief players are feeling is the result of arenanet smashing thief into putty and remoulding the profession. That’s what happens when broke professions get reworked.

The important thing to remember is that everyone will settle down and a new meta will appear eventually.

I’m unsure about that.
But then again I’m a pessimist.

SpiritSpeakerOfHoelbrak.3980:

MidoriMarch.8067:

Now thieves are even more squishier thanks to practiced tolerence change and the -200 armor from the trait stats. Shadow embrace now doesnt remove immob,cripple and blind. it force us to run glass cannon kill or dead. People says we have crazy burst but now every other class does same or more bursts along with better survivability. I used to run dual daggers in wvw now its harder for us to survive out there thanks to many nerfs cloaked in shadow as well. I just dont understand anet keep nerfing thieves because so many noob players qq about thieves op when they actually need to l2p issue.
at least revert shadow’s embrace anet..

Simple solution. just become pro and use s/d likea man. Dont invis like a baby and reset 100 times and just own them with skill plus s/d has more swag

Yeah man. 1-2 button mash is an old trick pony. 1-2 Hey! …. heres a new trick.. -3 . Learn to play like real gamer & try something new & adapt.

Vieux P.1238:

SpiritSpeakerOfHoelbrak.3980:

MidoriMarch.8067:

Now thieves are even more squishier thanks to practiced tolerence change and the -200 armor from the trait stats. Shadow embrace now doesnt remove immob,cripple and blind. it force us to run glass cannon kill or dead. People says we have crazy burst but now every other class does same or more bursts along with better survivability. I used to run dual daggers in wvw now its harder for us to survive out there thanks to many nerfs cloaked in shadow as well. I just dont understand anet keep nerfing thieves because so many noob players qq about thieves op when they actually need to l2p issue.
at least revert shadow’s embrace anet..

Simple solution. just become pro and use s/d likea man. Dont invis like a baby and reset 100 times and just own them with skill plus s/d has more swag

Yeah man. 1-2 button mash is an old trick pony. 1-2 Hey! …. heres a new trick.. -3 . Learn to play like real gamer & try something new & adapt.

Lol what? Do u even play a thief?

D/D is the most hardest weapon set to play out there

I went from a full zerk DA/CS/Trickery (pre-patch) to DA/SA/Trickery with Marauder amulet and I’ve never felt so squishy in my life. Time to indeed try out S/D as suggested by some of you here. I hope it will increase my chances of survival.

Maris.3164:

I went from a full zerk DA/CS/Trickery (pre-patch) to DA/SA/Trickery with Marauder amulet and I’ve never felt so squishy in my life. Time to indeed try out S/D as suggested by some of you here. I hope it will increase my chances of survival.

I was doing DA/CS/T also. I think we’ve got to get back to treating SB as our main weapon since damage is pretty high on everything now and just wait for openings to burst.

Runes of the wurm might be decent also. I tried a couple of games switching between Pack and Wurm, but I can’t tell if the extra vitality is a good trade off yet.