Guild Wars 2

Ok so long story short: I played Thief pretty much from day one when this game came out however around December I left on a Skyrim addiction and some others but now I’ve come back and want to play my Thief again.

Because its rather time consuming and difficult to find every little change and try and retune everything back after nearly 5 months gone my question to everyone is how have things changed? I left playing a thief with a build I made myself with 0/30/20/20/0 with zerk gear and soldier accessories so as to make a good balance between offense and defense while using a S/D and SB and occasionally switching pistols in depending on the fight I was expecting. I used this build for both PvE and WvW and switched the traits in that build accordingly. This build let me still hit hard with a good crit rate but not be paper. Back then most thieves were the D/D backstabbing nuke kind and so everyone fought me like I was one and I could massacre because of that while winking in and out of stealth with stuns, rolls, and shadowsteps confusing opponents considerably.

Anyways, what I wanted to ask as I search the forums once more, is this still effective in terms of in theory? Has one of these builds met the bad end of a nerfhammer, has some other build hit the godly status and so on. I’m not asking for someone to hand me a build that only involves me slamming my face into my keyboard as I’ve had my fill of that in other games. If anyone could help it’d be much appreciated, if anyone has any questions or wants to learn more about my build or something feel free to ask, I just want to get back into the game and continue WvW and not have my a** kicked by some up leveled guy who I thought I could previously had taken down easily.

well, as far as changes, two major ones are revealed now lasts 4 seconds, and quickness took a 50% nerf in speed. I think the cluster bomb nerf was after you left or not but it took a 15% damage hit at some point.

the revealed nerf isn’t that bad in WvW and PvP to be honest, especially against an opponent who wont let you CnD them on revealed falling off every time. in PvE however it hurt like crazy for any build that used stealth.

The free caltrops from dodging got nerfed some, if you were using that trait. There was a universal nerf to Quickness, which reduced it from +100% speed to +50% speed. Then to deal with the PvP / WvW stealth builds, the Revealed debuff from attacking out of stealth was increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.

The Revealed nerf might be restored in the near future for PvE only, but no one knows for sure. Other than that, there were numerous tweaks made in the past months. I remember S/D players complaining about their spec getting hit at some point, but I can’t recall whether it was Combo #3 or some other issue.

Thanks, was worried I was going to see some drastic changes or something while I was away. So if those are the only major changes I’m assuming that S/D is still viable as that was definitely my favorite build both in fighting and appearance.

I believe they were complaining about how the second hit is slightly delayed and that it’s an absolute kitten to hit with against a real opponent.

Wiser with Age.3714:

The free caltrops from dodging got nerfed some, if you were using that trait. There was a universal nerf to Quickness, which reduced it from +100% speed to +50% speed. Then to deal with the PvP / WvW stealth builds, the Revealed debuff from attacking out of stealth was increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.

The Revealed nerf might be restored in the near future for PvE only, but no one knows for sure. Other than that, there were numerous tweaks made in the past months. I remember S/D players complaining about their spec getting hit at some point, but I can’t recall whether it was Combo #3 or some other issue.

the S/D nerf was to tactical strike’s duration in PvP. I think that was before he left though. also, you reminded me, dodge roll caltrops have a larger area, and the caltrops utility took a 5 second duration nerf from 15 to 10 second duration.