Guild Wars 2

Hey forum, here’s a list I compiled of all the nerfs this class has received. Please note that this list doesn’t include bug fixes that weakened the skill (Like bountiful theft no longer applying vigor twice) or anything that was changed before the game’s official release date.

September 2012:

• Heartseeker: Reduced damage of the 100%-50% threshold by 20%. Damage thresholds changed. Old: 100%-66%, 66%-33%, 33%-0%. New: 100%-50%, 50%-25%, 25%-0%.
• Descent of Shadows: This trait’s effect can now only trigger once every 8 seconds.

October 2012:

• Pistol Whip: Reduced damage by 15%.
• Assassin’s Signet: This skill has been updated to grant 15% damage for 5 attacks rather than 50% damage for one attack.
• Whirling Axe: This skill has had evasion removed from the ability and has a missile-reflection effect applied to the whirl effect.

November 2012:

• Dancing Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%.
• Cluster Shot: This skill’s damage is reduced by 15% in PvP.
• Cloak and Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.

December 2012:

• Fear (Stolen item— Skull): This skill now works like the warrior skill “Fear Me.” It will now actually hit its range, but also have a falloff on fear duration based on distance.
• Instinctual Response: Now triggers at 10% damage instead of 20%.(Can be either nerf or buff)
• Piercing Shot: This skill is no longer able to fire at enemies behind the player.

January 2013:

• Leeching Venoms: This trait no longer affects gadgets.
• Smoke Screen: This skill’s blinding pulse no longer follows the thief.

March 2013:

• Caltrops: Reduced duration from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. Now indicates its radius.
• Basilisk Venom skill: No longer immobilizes targets in addition to stunning them.

April 2013:

• Mug trait: Can no longer critically hit. Now heals the thief from a range of 1980 health to 2700 health. (Buff or nerf depending on wether you think healing makes up for no crits)
• Smoke Screen skill: No longer destroys unblockable missiles.
• Trick Shot skill: First arrow is no longer heat-seeking.

May 2013:

• Black Powder skill: No longer fires its projectile backward while moving. The field can still be generated.
• Shadow Return skill: No longer has infinite range.

June 2013:

• Cluster Bomb: Decreased the range set from 1200 to 900.
• Larcenous Strike: Increased the initiative cost to 2.
• Nine Tailed Strike: Increased the initiative cost from 3 to 5.
• Shadow Assault: Increased the initiative cost from 5 to 7.
• Shadow Return (Infiltrator Strike Toggle): This skill is no longer a stun breaker.

July 2013:

• Shadow Trap: This skill now has a maximum duration of 120 seconds.

October 2013:

• Destroy Shadow Trap: This skill now has a 1.5-second cast time. It plays an effect on the thief and on the trap location when it is being cast. Added 5 seconds of regeneration.
• Larcenous Strike: This skill now steals only 1 boon.
• Basilisk Venom: Petrify is now removed on stun break.

December 2013:

• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
• Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 5s from 8s.
• Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier. (since it might hinder some builds)
  *Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 10s.

April 2014:

• Pistol Whip has been split between PvP and PvE. It will now cost 6 initiative in PvP, while maintaining a 5 initiative cost in PvE.
• Disabling Shot (SB): Reduced the length of this skill’s evasion component from 100% of the skill’s duration to 64% of the skill’s duration—an overall reduction of .3 seconds.
• Choking Gas: Reduced the poison per pulse from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.

We are hated so much.

Difference between good thieves and bad thieves

Bad thieves: make a full compendium list of thief nerfs that’s been done over and over to show some sort of point in order to complain about how the class is bad now as compared to before.

Good thieves like sizer, magic toker, caed continue wrecking in top tier pvp and don’t complain at all. They just go with the flow and adapt.

Thieves still dominate in wvw since SA exists and good thieves still are a viable asset in top tier pvp. Why not stop complaining and just adapt/get good.

Bad thieves (players): think that game developers are their worst enemies, because they nerf their favourite class.

Interesting, the OP did not complain, yet 2/3 of the reactions imply he did, or worse.

Btw, OP, they also did something very weird with the animation and execution of Disabling Shot. If it’s not a nerf, or bug, it certainly is another skill that now breaks flow and movement.

Dagins.5163:

Bad thieves (players): think that game developers are their worst enemies, because they nerf their favourite class.

Bad players (all) use any and every excuse to nerf a profession other than their own.

Funny how thieves rarely if ever go to other forums to complain about a profession.

I agree with most of the “nerfs,” I’d only undo/reduce a few of them…

CnD – up the current damage by 15%-20%

LS – should still steal 2 boons but only if target is below 50% health

Cluster Bomb – revert the range back to 1200 outside of spvp, leave @ 900 in spvp

Basilisk Venom – agree w/ the changes they made, but feel like this elite could use a bit of a buff, maybe grant swiftness for a short period 5s-8s or so.

Signet Use – feel like this needs a buff, like using a signet removes a condition… base ini regen covers the nerf. Similarly, Quick Recovery could use a change, but not a revert to its previous functionality.

I’d even add a nerf to that list:
Feline Grace – returns some of the energy used IF you successfully evade an attack.

If they made that change, I’d like sword 2 reverted back it’s pre-Dec 10th functionality.

Most of the other ones were quite necessary, the change to Opportunist didn’t have nearly the effect on initiative regen that I thought it would, that was a nice buff (ini regen). HS was broken at launch.

We’ve had some nice buffs too, reducing the base CD on steal and Sleight of Hand update was amazing. Withdraw was fixed as well and they tweaked some aftercasts for us here and there. Pain Response has a shorter CD and better functionality now that it doesn’t proc w/o the conditions on you.

Anyway, still love playing teef.

Pixels.6532:

I’d even add a nerf to that list:
Feline Grace – returns some of the energy used IF you successfully evade an attack.

Have you ever tried doing that daily? Because there is a large gap between successfully dodging an attack and actually getting that evade message.

From what I gather in this thread:
Good thieves=tPvP high tier popular tourny level status
Bad thieves=everyone else
There is no middle ground folks, you are either good, like really good, or just flat out bad

RedSpectrum.1975:

From what I gather in this thread:
Good thieves=tPvP high tier popular tourny level status
Bad thieves=everyone else
There is no middle ground folks, you are either good, like really good, or just flat out bad

That’s just about it.
- Stream. This one is most important, if someone streams he’s skilled.
- Have a good team. Otherwise you wont be on scoreboard which makes you good.

Personally, the only Thief I’ve seen something special about is Magic Toker, no doubt the rest of the thieves are good too. But for sure not the best thieves in EU and US.

Its not dependent on the thief class’ actual state, this whole nerf thing is dependent on how the community percieves thief OPness. Anet is a business looking to satisfy customer needs that translate into money. Therefore Anet does not give a kitty about the class’ actual state or how balanced is it at high-tier tpvp. They will balance things on medium level or even lower, and they will adhere to the public opinion about certain things. So if thieves are not OP but a significant part of the community think they are, thieves will get nerfed even if Anet knows the class is ok. Its all just math: thief buff—> only thieves are happy, thief nerf—> a lot more people are happy.

But dont get me wrong, its the same with every issue. Not only the thief class get this attitude. They serve customer needs, and only look for solutions that result in the most widespread satisfaction within the community.

So all in all: when it comes to issues like this, imho its pointless to try to argue along the lines of ‘game balance’ and ‘competitiveness’ and try to convince the devs to do this or that. Sure, they will do it IF(!) it gets/keeps customers. We – forum readers/writers – have a false view on the community. Many of the players havent read a single thread here, let alone writing one. The reasonable and detailed discussion that goes on between the ‘forumer’ community and the devs is just concealing their real attitude. They will make it look as if these were mostly technical issues and they are working on it, thats why you dont get your solution yet. But in fact, they will never fix that whatever that you complained about, rightfully or not.

And Anet is not even to blame for this, they do this to make money. Like everyone else who runs a business. I’m only saying this to prevent you from getting too lost in a reasonable arguement. Its pointless. No matter what a genius kitten you are or how good your ideas are, if little Joe/Jill/Jack is mad about your class, it will get nerfed.

my 2 cents

Nimrud.5642:

Its not dependent on the thief class’ actual state, this whole nerf thing is dependent on how the community percieves thief OPness. Anet is a business looking to satisfy customer needs that translate into money. Therefore Anet does not give a kitty about the class’ actual state or how balanced is it at high-tier tpvp. They will balance things on medium level or even lower, and they will adhere to the public opinion about certain things. So if thieves are not OP but a significant part of the community think they are, thieves will get nerfed even if Anet knows the class is ok. Its all just math: thief buff—> only thieves are happy, thief nerf—> a lot more people are happy.

But dont get me wrong, its the same with every issue. Not only the thief class get this attitude. They serve customer needs, and only look for solutions that result in the most widespread satisfaction within the community.

So all in all: when it comes to issues like this, imho its pointless to try to argue along the lines of ‘game balance’ and ‘competitiveness’ and try to convince the devs to do this or that. Sure, they will do it IF(!) it gets/keeps customers. We – forum readers/writers – have a false view on the community. Many of the players havent read a single thread here, let alone writing one. The reasonable and detailed discussion that goes on between the ‘forumer’ community and the devs is just concealing their real attitude. They will make it look as if these were mostly technical issues and they are working on it, thats why you dont get your solution yet. But in fact, they will never fix that whatever that you complained about, rightfully or not.

And Anet is not even to blame for this, they do this to make money. Like everyone else who runs a business. I’m only saying this to prevent you from getting too lost in a reasonable arguement. Its pointless. No matter what a genius kitten you are or how good your ideas are, if little Joe/Jill/Jack is mad about your class, it will get nerfed.

my 2 cents

Also, the business system that they use in this game adds to what you have said. GW1 was Buy-2-Play whereas GW2 despite being, seemingly, Buy-2-Play as well, has Gem Store. You might argue that no one is forced to buy gems – indeed very true; I don’t buy gems myself and I know many people that don’t either. Yet, there’s a big group of players that purchase gems and they ‘demand’ nerfs just because they donate. ANET obviously caters for their rants because without them they would earn only 50% (as it were).
On the other hand, there’s a group of players (mainly ex-wow) that claim that gw2 is F2P because (!!!) you don’t have to pay monthly subscription. They believe that no one has a right to ask for content updates, balance etc. because there’s no monthly\quaterly fee.

Don’t get me wrong, I love GW2 but GW1 did lots of things a lot better, especially PvP. It was called Nerf Wars for a reason. Particular comp too strong? Fix/nerf in 2-3 days. They changed things frequently enough, though, that people had field to experiment after each patch. On the other hand, we had 6 months of cond meta followe by 4-5 months of hambow and decap eng. E-Sports not happening despite amazing take off in August 2012.

scabrous.7835:

Also, the business system that they use in this game adds to what you have said. GW1 was Buy-2-Play whereas GW2 despite being, seemingly, Buy-2-Play as well, has Gem Store. You might argue that no one is forced to buy gems – indeed very true; I don’t buy gems myself and I know many people that don’t either. Yet, there’s a big group of players that purchase gems and they ‘demand’ nerfs just because they donate. ANET obviously caters for their rants because without them they would earn only 50% (as it were).
On the other hand, there’s a group of players (mainly ex-wow) that claim that gw2 is F2P because (!!!) you don’t have to pay monthly subscription. They believe that no one has a right to ask for content updates, balance etc. because there’s no monthly\quaterly fee.

Don’t get me wrong, I love GW2 but GW1 did lots of things a lot better, especially PvP. It was called Nerf Wars for a reason. Particular comp too strong? Fix/nerf in 2-3 days. They changed things frequently enough, though, that people had field to experiment after each patch. On the other hand, we had 6 months of cond meta followe by 4-5 months of hambow and decap eng. E-Sports not happening despite amazing take off in August 2012.

Its a little hard for me to make the connection between gem buyers and complainers. If every gem acquisition would involve an opinion poll… But other than that I can only agree.

It’s so funny that people think if you pvp with a good team and win you’re an absolute god. Yes some Tpvp thieves are good, but it does not make them the best thieves in the game.

Business is one thing, when they don’t play the class and take 5+ months each balance update by listening to the whiners nothing is getting done. They had a ranger discussion and from the aftermath of threads, I can see the ranger community is not at all pleased. That thread had by far the most posts and views on that sub forum and it doesn’t seem like it took anywhere near the expected approach. Same with guardian, they got 2 condition specific GM traits that did nothing to make condi guard viable.

They listen to the community but they don’t seem to value things that make sense, and for how long these balance patches take to come around, I don’t feel like they take any real time on them as it appears. Why else would we have 4 runes that have near the exact same 1-5 effects (fire, pirate, strength, hoelbrak), or put no effort into balancing strength runes (if there is a hive of players using this, it’s likely because its a “best in slot” which is the opposite of balance), shave hambow yet its still the plague that it as before, ignore decap engi, etc. The list goes on with crap that is viewed horribly and not dealt with.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvX-Balance-Iteration-Wrongdoing/page/6#post4033813

Basically sums up how many players feel.