Guild Wars 2

I liked the old Flanking Strike, I played that set in the age where D/D backstab and heartseeker spammers were rampant and have a lot of fun with it.

The single boon removal, the dodge and the unforgiving pathing made that skill a real challange giving great results if user properly.
I needed to know where is the right position to cast it to make the skill land, I needed to know when to use it to remove the right boon because I wasn’t able to afford to spam it to remove all the boons.

I understand that some people who are used to leap skills like HS may get frustrated on Flanking Strike and then refused to use it, in fact the path adjusting is the only buff I can understand.

But they completely messed it. Right now, Flanking Strike is the new era of succesful spammers. 2-2-2-2 has become 3-3-3-3. You can easily steal ALL boons from any boon-reliant profession with no efforts at all while dealing sweet constant damage, evading and have the initiative cost split in 2 installments.
I mean, why? It’s like they want the Thief to be the hole where all the spammers, FotM abusers and baddies should be confined to.

Dont spam the skill.

Glad i could help you, please enjoy the rest of your day.

Strip the boons then fight them, you’ll do far better adding a little verity to your fighting style AFTER removing their god-hacks.

WereDragon.6083:

Strip the boons then fight them, you’ll do far better adding a little verity to your fighting style AFTER removing their god-hacks.

The only god-hack in this game is stealth. Not saying that thieves are OP in general. They are in certain aspects of the game (WvW roaming) and not in others (dungeons). And if you will say that thief needs stealth becouse this is how class works, well, some professions need their boons to be effective at what they do.

Flanking strike strips full boon durations instead of returning base boon durations which is nice, and which makes me wonder, why do we treat s/d flanking strike different then the boon steal trait, flanking strike is more spammable, the cd on steal is pretty long, and the share radius is a joke so why has the same boon steal mechanic not been applied to our steal trait yet.

Wolfield.9812:

Dont spam the skill.

Glad i could help you, please enjoy the rest of your day.

That’s not the point.
The point is that I can spam the skill and get good results, so there is no point into using it properly.
The game should encourage players to get better and get skilled to win, not spamming. Am I right?

sorrow.2364:

Wolfield.9812:

Dont spam the skill.

Glad i could help you, please enjoy the rest of your day.

That’s not the point.
The point is that I can spam the skill and get good results, so there is no point into using it properly.
The game should encourage players to get better and get skilled to win, not spamming. Am I right?

Considering it’s currently one of our best PvE tools, I’m going to disagree at any notion of nerfing it. In fact, I’m hoping they add that ability to share the stolen boons. Thieves need thier day in the sun in dungeons.

sorrow.2364:

Wolfield.9812:

Dont spam the skill.

Glad i could help you, please enjoy the rest of your day.

That’s not the point.
The point is that I can spam the skill and get good results, so there is no point into using it properly.
The game should encourage players to get better and get skilled to win, not spamming. Am I right?

I didn’t know target dummies had boons.
You will do terrible damage in PvE, and anyone worthwhile will just deny your larcenous strike in PvP.

Obviously I’m talking PvP-wise, I don’t know how you can consider Flanking Strike a good PvE tool, it is actually useful only against some boons mobs like dredge, otherwise it is no more useful then Pistol Whip.

Thieves have some good builds in dungeon, it is called Venom Sharing. AoE might, fury, lifesteal and tons of conditions including Weakness to reduce the damage input. What else do you want from a PvE thief? Anyway, I’m not talking about PvE neither I want to go off-topic.

Fact is that Flanking Strike is easily spammable, anyone without infinite dodges will get hit from Larcenous Strike multiple times (it is unblockable, did you know that?) and it is on an incredible low initiative cost.

Elm, you answer is simply pointless. Seriously, why do you think that “anyone worthwhile will deny your larcenous strike”? You know it is impossible to deny any LS.

Perhaps the boon reliant professions needs to use a variety of skills rather than just rely on boons. It’s a variation on learn to play, a bit like firing arrows into missile defense.

sorrow.2364:

I liked the old Flanking Strike, I played that set in the age where D/D backstab and heartseeker spammers were rampant and have a lot of fun with it.

The single boon removal, the dodge and the unforgiving pathing made that skill a real challange giving great results if user properly.
I needed to know where is the right position to cast it to make the skill land, I needed to know when to use it to remove the right boon because I wasn’t able to afford to spam it to remove all the boons.

I think your first little bit there is exactly the reason why S/D needed a buff. You were nerfing yourself if you use S/D anywhere. It’s actually sort of viable now in PVP and WvW.

I also disagree with your second paragraph. The old Flanking Strike was a poorly designed skill that lacked polish. There was too much random chance surrounding it. You shouldn’t have to cross your fingers every time you use a skill and hope that the pathing didn’t send you out of range of a target instead of behind them like the skill states.

Splitting the skill into two attacks was also a move in the right direction. Look at the Ranger and how many of their melee attack animations are locked. It’s horrible. You lose control of your character.

Does the damage need some balancing? Absolutely.

Flanking strike is not overpowered. It’s only useful against classes with lots of boons. Moving on.

Eugenides.1274:

I think your first little bit there is exactly the reason why S/D needed a buff. You were nerfing yourself if you use S/D anywhere. It’s actually sort of viable now in PVP and WvW.

I also disagree with your second paragraph. The old Flanking Strike was a poorly designed skill that lacked polish. There was too much random chance surrounding it. You shouldn’t have to cross your fingers every time you use a skill and hope that the pathing didn’t send you out of range of a target instead of behind them like the skill states.

Splitting the skill into two attacks was also a move in the right direction. Look at the Ranger and how many of their melee attack animations are locked. It’s horrible. You lose control of your character.

Does the damage need some balancing? Absolutely.

I wasn’t nerfing myself to be honest. There is a thin line between underpowered and balanced. Underpowered is that no matter what you do and how good you are, you are still performing subpar. That wasn’t the case of the old Flanking Strike. It was good if used properly, extremely good.

Also, I’d like to point out that the old pathing wasn’t random. It just followed a circle with a lower radius tollerance; essentially, you needed to be in the right position to hit. Right now it is autoaimed. No matter where you are, you alwaykitten, somethimes it eventually follow a linear pathing instead of a circle. It can be even used as a gap closer!

Also, I don’t understand why adding the steal boon effect and also adding another boon stealed. They should be more careful when balancing no-cooldown skills.

style.6173:

To the poster of the “culture” thread:

See, this is one of the examples that I mentioned. Someone comes here, claims to be a thief and asks for a nerf. While they may have a thief, they are most likely somehow who just got pwned recently and want to feel better by thinking a skill is OP.

Flanking strike isn’t OP in any way. It is easy to counter and no good thief is just going to spam it.

It is BS posters like this one that causes everyone to attack.

Seriously, this is why I hate thief forums, because of people like you.
I tried to start a discussion about the skill, but there is always the rampant kitten who says “everything is fine, you are a baddie, l2p”. Are you not interested into starting a constructive discussion? Fine. Just move away and don’t delight us with your useless posts.

swinsk.6410:

Flanking strike is not overpowered. It’s only useful against classes with lots of boons. Moving on.

Yep, it is useful. Probably too much?
It isn’t a counter to boon-reliant profession, it completely wipes away any chance to have boons up, which is different from “being useful”.
Corrupt Boon is useful. You use it, all the boons get converted then the enemy has the chance to build them up again until Corrupt Boon is recharged.
With Flanking Strike you get all boons stolen as soon as you get them up.

The old FS had uses but it was quite niche, and as much as I loved it truth be told no weapon sets should be niche. It is one thing for specific playstyles based off that weapon to be so but as a whole? FS did require some change.

I feel there is something that is not right with the current FS in how the dynamic has shifted between the 1st hit and 2nd hit in terms of utility, but S/D itself still isn’t where it should be, so I’m hesitant on attacking it. That also being said I’m not sure if what I think works either.
Optimal success for the set does not demand spamming FS, that’s rather unwise but the set does punish you less now for doing so. Just one of those things that happens.

Imho its not necessarily OP. Classes like ele and guardian have strong access to boons so stripping them often becomes a necessity and it will not alwaykitten. The problem is classes with weak access to boons are punished too heavily in a fight. A class that can get swiftness every ten seconds isn’t going to be as affected by this as a class that gets it every minutes. Also because the timers to not reset to base you can literally have thieves with buffs times they were never supposed to get access to. However, considering what flanking strike used to be I think the change was necessary. They may need to nerf it in the future. That being said I do not think they will because it is important to meta.

TheGuy.3568:

Imho its not necessarily OP. Classes like ele and guardian have strong access to boons so stripping them often becomes a necessity and it will not alwaykitten. The problem is classes with weak access to boons are punished too heavily in a fight. A class that can get swiftness every ten seconds isn’t going to be as affected by this as a class that gets it every minutes. Also because the timers to not reset to base you can literally have thieves with buffs times they were never supposed to get access to. However, considering what flanking strike used to be I think the change was necessary. They may need to nerf it in the future. That being said I do not think they will because it is important to meta.

I know what they did, they buffed Flanking Strike to tone down all boon-heavy professions like Elementalist and Guardian, but right now they did a bit too much.

I mean, they were supposed to give tools to play against those profession, not tools to completely destroy their mechanic. You can easily use a flanking strike every 4-5 seconds or less, which means 2 boons stolen every 4 seconds, which is HUGE.

swinsk.6410:

Flanking strike is not overpowered. It’s only useful against classes with lots of boons. Moving on.

And that’s fine. FS was buffed to counter classes with a lot of boons. I get that. Instead of just making FS more reliable with better boon removal, they added:

-FS does not need to hit to activate LS
-Unblockable
-High Damage (4-5 K crit is a bit high for a spammable unblockable boon removing attack)

They just need to tone down the damage and not make it unblockable. Bottom line is, for 1 init, this skill is kittening awesome.

Flanking Strike is fine. It offers a meta against people who stack boons so they are not invincible.

I didnt like the new flanking strike, its less fluidy. The old one was more “thief like”, more quickly and stuff. I dont like the new one, it puts a break on the speed it just doesnt feel good.

The old flanking strike was absolutely horrible and had a 50% global MISS RATE calculated, it was extremely dull, please stop trying to get thieves nerfed.

Go back to the Ele/Guardian/Ranger forums please, boons are not suppost to be god-mode.

Yep. They need to increase the amount of initiative this uses. Right now the most effective way for a thief to fight is sword 2 in, spam 3, sword 2 out. Rinse and repeat until thief wins. Number 3 can actually do massive damage with certain setups and it’s an evade as well. Also, why is this skill unblockable? As a warrior my elite is important to me and a thief can swipe it all away and I can’t do a single thing about it. Not even shield stance helps.

Changes for the better:
-Higher initiative cost
-Steals only 1 boon
-Blockable

I find it hard to not spam this when I use my thief because it’s so effective. There’s really barely a need to use any other attacks.

style.6173:

It is easy to counter

Someone care to share how you can counter it? I more or less agree with OP and MIrra that it seems a bit too much… it can be spammed almost constantly with init regen traits and it does a ton of damage.

Lets nerf everything thief has until nobody plays them!

WOOT WOOT!

EvilSardine.9635:

Yep. They need to increase the amount of initiative this uses. Right now the most effective way for a thief to fight is sword 2 in, spam 3, sword 2 out. Rinse and repeat until thief wins. Number 3 can actually do massive damage with certain setups and it’s an evade as well. Also, why is this skill unblockable? As a warrior my elite is important to me and a thief can swipe it all away and I can’t do a single thing about it. Not even shield stance helps.

Changes for the better:
-Higher initiative cost
-Steals only 1 boon
-Blockable

I find it hard to not spam this when I use my thief because it’s so effective. There’s really barely a need to use any other attacks.

That’s how the thief has always been. CnD Backstab, CnD Sneak attack, Unicorn death blossom-deathblossom, unload-unload, hs-hs.

EvilSardine.9635:

Changes for the better:
-Higher initiative cost
-Steals only 1 boon
-Blockable

So, worse than it used to be. And it used to be worthless.

anet tend to do this for bunkers. cuz bunker ele and mace/shield staff bunker guardians almost unkillable. in which any thieves cant compete with these bunkers. and bunker build is the most popular build in all classes in spvp tpvp wvw. so they want thieves as boon destroyers. as well as warriors +3%dmg per/boon new trait.

EvilSardine.9635:

Yep. They need to increase the amount of initiative this uses.

No.

Flank strike isn’t going to be nerfed. They buffed it to let thieves do something else other than sit in stealth and burst people when they can’t see it coming. They aren’t going to make the load out less attractive. It is only good vs bunkers and that was the point of the patch, bunker busting.

I’m just boggled by how many non-thieves come in here and complain about LS. By the fact that you even ask for a nerf on FS/LS, and claim “4-5k damage” because your enemies/yourself is using a spanking berserker amulet, just makes me want to bang my head.

A) To even hit that high amount of 4-5k damage, you’re basically equipping berserker armor/traiting damage.
B) Spamming that basically means tactical strike is non-functioning.
C) Some builds without boons can’t be beaten with S/D.

To be completely honest, it’s almost impossible to pair S/D with any other weapon builds (swap weapons). If you want condition, you can’t have “4-5k damage”. If you want burst damage from D/D (which heavily relies on SA to work), you can’t spam your inits 33333 from S/D.

So it kitten es me off to see how many “thieves” who doesn’t know what they are talking about. If you’re extremely skilled with the profession, you should already know that superman elementalists/guardians one on one can’t be taken down, and if it’s a group fight, superman elementalist can run away, while guardian holds down the fort for a long enough time.

There’s a HUGE problem with thief pvp. I can’t build any build I want to satisfactorily and reasonably make it work. The only few builds are conditional P/D, Burst D/D, survival P/D.

S/D is imo the worst set that has the most awkward mechanics. It demands initiative, controls only a single target (mostly), and yet is unable to take down the majority of the builds out there 1v1. That nerf in pvp is ridiculous (both tactical strike and Backstab damage), and that so called buff FS/LS remains nothing more than a niche campaign thus far. It does nothing against non-boon users, thank you very much. While I proposed my own buffs, anet better consult a brilliant thief user and ask him what problems S/D has, and not some random guy saying “Oh, FS needs nerfing.”

• ….. Bangs head.*

In the world of OP thief skills, it’s nothing compared to Cloak and Dagger spam

I recently change my build to S/D because I got bored of my dual dagger build (Back Stab build, focus in stealth) and I have to say its really fun even though I don’t use stealth at all, I can counter bunker builds since I can steal their boons and in PVP it really helps ure party to support it this way.
FS is a great skill as it is now, don’t change anything.

sorrow.2364:

Corrupt Boon is useful. You use it, all the boons get converted then the enemy has the chance to build them up again until Corrupt Boon is recharged.
With Flanking Strike you get all boons stolen as soon as you get them up.

It’s a bit difficult to directly compare stuff like this. Note that as a necro you’d have more options to remove boons in the first place, compared to the whole two skills (if steal is traited for it) that a thief does, which helps balance out the lack of weapon c/d on the thief.

They’re also a bit more offensively tuned. Rather than take two boons for yourself, (in the case of CB anyway) you turn every single boon on them into a corresponding condition. So they don’t just have to replenish the boons, there’s those to worry about as well. Then if they are replacing them, you can still use something like spinal shivers to kill 3 more (+ damage and chill).

But actually, as far as keeping boons off your enemy goes, I’d say mesmers have the most options (link). Thieves are better at taking them for themselves though, and necros have a monopoly on actually converting them.

style.6173:

To the poster of the “culture” thread:

See, this is one of the examples that I mentioned. Someone comes here, claims to be a thief and asks for a nerf. While they may have a thief, they are most likely somehow who just got pwned recently and want to feel better by thinking a skill is OP.

yup, I noticed that;).

I was wondering why the OP, a supposed thief, was wearing platemail…seriously though, thieves are still very squishy, and s/d requires a lot of skill to play well. the boon ripping combo also takes some skill to pull off, as you get a free evade, then you have to land a slow attack. it is obvious when it is coming if you’re spamming, so its easy to dodge. and if you are not spamming, then the boon rips are not that frequent. seriously, in the time it takes to rip boons, a d/d thief would have already finished the burst and be on his way to another target.

people with boon based builds are annoyed because there is now a hard counter to them, but s/d is easily counterable with kiting and well timed dodge rolls…play s/d for a bit and you’ll see that it is not at all op’d, just a fun and different way to play the class.

also note that most builds have hard counters, for example, stealth backstab thieves have a hard time with pbaoes….likewise many mesmer builds have a hard time with conditions. if you min max around one mechanic (i.e. boons) then there should be classes and builds that can easily ruin your day.

one more thing; I think the builds that are most hurt by this new ‘boon hate’ are the 1vX builds, that are so used to being able to take on a group. stripping boons makes thieves great team support in these situations and makes those builds a lot harder to play. I have no sympathy for whiners that want to be able to easily take on greater numbers…that is the definition of overpowered, and rather than nerf it, Anet has offered interesting counterplay options, which IMO is a good way to go.

Lets nerf attunements/boon builds as well, and protection.

Lets just remove the thief class too.

You guys are seeing the situation in the wrong direction.

Let’s consider the facts.
Flanking Strike can be easily spammed. Period.

It is on 4 initiative which is quite low, also most thieves enjoy run S/D+S/D to get initiative regen on weapon swap, allowing them to have almost unlimited initiative to better spam their FS.

It is an issue. I know you are enjoying your newfound FotM skill, but you have to stop to see the situation as a Thief player and look the picture as a whole.
Every thief said that the backstab combo wasn’t powerful; there was NO ONE who said it can use a little nerf, everyone said “if can be dodged”, “l2p” and all the BS we are seeing here again over and over. Fact is that it was overpowered and it was nerfed. So, probably, you should adjust your point of view and stop justifying any flaw with the more of the same arguments. Or, if you like, you can just say “ANet hates thief”, “just remove the thief class from the game” or any of the average whine we daily see in the Thief forum, then come back into your little corner of the world and start crying about how unfair the world is.

If is fair and right that Thieves have access to some boon stripping skills, but that boon stripping shouldn’t be that much powerful for two simple reasons:
1. There are profession who completely relies on boons. Being able to constantly strip boon moves any form of boon build into the unviable category, which isn’t exactly a symptom of an healthy meta. This is actually what’s happening.
2. Any other profession which is specialized into boon control is overshadowed by FS Thief, another symptom of bad meta.

And please, please, don’t start again with the “you can dodge” argument, because it is an horrible one. Everything in this game can be dodged, this doesn’t mean that you can justify something which is too much powerful.

sorrow.2364:

You guys are seeing the situation in the wrong direction.

Let’s consider the facts.
Flanking Strike can be easily spammed. Period.

It is on 4 initiative which is quite low, also most thieves enjoy run S/D+S/D to get initiative regen on weapon swap, allowing them to have almost unlimited initiative to better spam their FS.

It is an issue. I know you are enjoying your newfound FotM skill, but you have to stop to see the situation as a Thief player and look the picture as a whole.
Every thief said that the backstab combo wasn’t powerful; there was NO ONE who said it can use a little nerf, everyone said “if can be dodged”, “l2p” and all the BS we are seeing here again over and over. Fact is that it was overpowered and, in fact, it was nerfed. So, probably, you should adjust your point of view and stop justifying any flaw with the more of the same arguments.

If is fair and right that Thieves have access to some boon stripping skills, but that boon stripping shouldn’t be that much powerful for two simple reasons:
1. There are profession who completely relies on boons. Being able to constantly strip boon moves any form of boon build into the unviable category, which isn’t exactly a symptom of an healthy meta. This is actually what’s happening.
2. Any other profession which is specialized into boon control is overshadowed by FS Thief, another symptom of bad meta.

And please, please, don’t start again with the “you can dodge” argument, because it is an horrible one. Everything in this game can be dodged, this doesn’t mean that you can justify something which is too much powerful.

I play Spvp and WvWvW and I still don’t see many S/D Thieves.

Most of the thieves I see are heartseeking cloak and dagger and P/D, D/P Infinite stealth thieves.

Just
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/showposts/sorrow-2364/9
You: The pathing of FS is fine. The first strike always land if you are in melee range, the second one needs you to get closer to enemy if he moved, not to hard anyway. I don’t see any problem here.

This is from a long time ago when flanking strike was absolutely horrible, a lot of your posts are NOTHING but about trying to get thieves nerfed. Your posts not only /FLAT OUT LIE/ about our class, your blatantly constantly assaulting it in hopes it gets nerfed.

Pages 1-7 are constantly being asked for thieves skills to be nerfed, complaining about stealth, asking for things to be nerfed.

Do you ever take a break? If you hate thieves so much why don’t you play one instead of complaining about them?

Do you take your own advice?
Here is a post you made a long time ago.

Topic How do I take down a D/D Ele?
Remove boons. Ele damage is all reliant to its might stacks and fury. Remove those boons and you’ll feel only itch.
Use Sword/Dagger or either pick bountiful theft.

So now you want to take away one of our abilities to do just this?

Take your /own/ Advice.

MIrra.3604:

swinsk.6410:

Flanking strike is not overpowered. It’s only useful against classes with lots of boons. Moving on.

And that’s fine. FS was buffed to counter classes with a lot of boons. I get that. Instead of just making FS more reliable with better boon removal, they added:

-FS does not need to hit to activate LS
-Unblockable
-High Damage (4-5 K crit is a bit high for a spammable unblockable boon removing attack)

They just need to tone down the damage and not make it unblockable. Bottom line is, for 1 init, this skill is kittening awesome.

The old FS was already unblockable on the hit that removed boons. No point in having a blockable boon removing attack because of Aegis you know.

Daecollo.9578:

I play Spvp and WvWvW and I still don’t see many S/D Thieves.

Most of the thieves I see are heartseeking cloak and dagger and P/D, D/P Infinite stealth thieves.

Just
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/showposts/sorrow-2364/9
You: The pathing of FS is fine. The first strike always land if you are in melee range, the second one needs you to get closer to enemy if he moved, not to hard anyway. I don’t see any problem here.

This is from a long time ago when flanking strike was absolutely horrible, a lot of your posts are NOTHING but about trying to get thieves nerfed. Your posts not only /FLAT OUT LIE/ about our class, your blatantly constantly assaulting it in hopes it gets nerfed.

Pages 1-7 are constantly being asked for thieves skills to be nerfed, complaining about stealth, asking for things to be nerfed.

Do you ever take a break? If you hate thieves so much why don’t you play one instead of complaining about them?

Attachment.
So the fact that I play a Thief means I have to cry like a baby and start hating when someone says “nerf” and “thief” in the same sentence and only suggesting buffs for my dear, beloved profession?

Wolfield.9812:

Dont spam the skill.

Why not? It’s a cheap dodge, with some mobility, with high damage, that steals 2 boons per use, that I can spam almost indefinitely.

Give me one good reason not to?

As someone who is definitely using and abusing the new flanking strikes, it’s a bit much… Particularly the 2 boons stolen per use…

Any thief ability can be spammed to a certain degree. It’s what the class is built on. Spamming abilities!

Flanking strike is not overpowered spammed or not.

Get over it!

sorrow.2364:

Daecollo.9578:

I play Spvp and WvWvW and I still don’t see many S/D Thieves.

Most of the thieves I see are heartseeking cloak and dagger and P/D, D/P Infinite stealth thieves.

Just
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/showposts/sorrow-2364/9
You: The pathing of FS is fine. The first strike always land if you are in melee range, the second one needs you to get closer to enemy if he moved, not to hard anyway. I don’t see any problem here.

This is from a long time ago when flanking strike was absolutely horrible, a lot of your posts are NOTHING but about trying to get thieves nerfed. Your posts not only /FLAT OUT LIE/ about our class, your blatantly constantly assaulting it in hopes it gets nerfed.

Pages 1-7 are constantly being asked for thieves skills to be nerfed, complaining about stealth, asking for things to be nerfed.

Do you ever take a break? If you hate thieves so much why don’t you play one instead of complaining about them?

Attachment.

This skill is FINE.

I would rather fix Necromancer and Warrior then fight Thieves for there dwindling tools. However your constant complaining is getting on my nerves, Necromancers are an amazing class if you know how to play one.

Daecollo.9578:

This skill is FINE.

I would rather fix Necromancer and Warrior then fight Thieves for there dwindling tools. However your constant complaining is getting on my nerves, Necromancers are an amazing class if you know how to play one.

Man, it isn’t my fault if you can’t see when something is too powerful.
And please, don’t let me dig your posts because I remember some of your “balancing suggestions”…

sorrow.2364:

Daecollo.9578:

This skill is FINE.

I would rather fix Necromancer and Warrior then fight Thieves for there dwindling tools. However your constant complaining is getting on my nerves, Necromancers are an amazing class if you know how to play one.

Man, it isn’t my fault if you can’t see when something is too powerful.
And please, don’t let me dig your posts because I remember some of your “balancing suggestions”…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Change-Flanking-Strike-to-Vampiric-Strike/page/2#post1147711

The flanking strike change was partly ONE of my “Balancing Suggestions.”

Daecollo.9578:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Change-Flanking-Strike-to-Vampiric-Strike/page/2#post1147711

The flanking strike change was partly ONE of my “Balancing Suggestions.”

So they actually made the skill stronger then you suggested but you still think it is fine? Well…
Why am I still arguing with you?
Your posts were just “FS is fine”, but I still see no reasoning, no answers to the points I’ve raised but only personal attacks. Is that the way you usually have an argument?

ensoriki.5789:

EvilSardine.9635:

Yep. They need to increase the amount of initiative this uses.

No.

Nice signature.

I really only play p/d nowdays but I carry sword as an escape tool and to bait stuns. Sometimes I also use #3. Even if I do no damage, it’s quite hilarious to steal all their boons by spamming 1 button. xD

LoneWolfie.1852:

I’m just boggled by how many non-thieves come in here and complain about LS. By the fact that you even ask for a nerf on FS/LS, and claim “4-5k damage” because your enemies/yourself is using a spanking berserker amulet, just makes me want to bang my head.

A) To even hit that high amount of 4-5k damage, you’re basically equipping berserker armor/traiting damage.
B) Spamming that basically means tactical strike is non-functioning.
C) Some builds without boons can’t be beaten with S/D.

To be completely honest, it’s almost impossible to pair S/D with any other weapon builds (swap weapons). If you want condition, you can’t have “4-5k damage”. If you want burst damage from D/D (which heavily relies on SA to work), you can’t spam your inits 33333 from S/D.

So it kitten es me off to see how many “thieves” who doesn’t know what they are talking about. If you’re extremely skilled with the profession, you should already know that superman elementalists/guardians one on one can’t be taken down, and if it’s a group fight, superman elementalist can run away, while guardian holds down the fort for a long enough time.

There’s a HUGE problem with thief pvp. I can’t build any build I want to satisfactorily and reasonably make it work. The only few builds are conditional P/D, Burst D/D, survival P/D.

S/D is imo the worst set that has the most awkward mechanics. It demands initiative, controls only a single target (mostly), and yet is unable to take down the majority of the builds out there 1v1. That nerf in pvp is ridiculous (both tactical strike and Backstab damage), and that so called buff FS/LS remains nothing more than a niche campaign thus far. It does nothing against non-boon users, thank you very much. While I proposed my own buffs, anet better consult a brilliant thief user and ask him what problems S/D has, and not some random guy saying “Oh, FS needs nerfing.”

• ….. Bangs head.*

Wow, you know jack kitten about thieves outside of Spvp. Obviously, you only play sPvP and do not or rarely play WvW. I can hit for upwards of 6K with LS on my 10/30/30/0/0 or 0/30/30/10/0 build. I have 50% crit chance, 270% crit damage (150% base), and close to 4K attack. 4K crits is the norm and 5+K crits if target is below 50%.

I run HIS for heals and blinding powder so tactical strike is aways available if the situation calls for it. In WvW, there is no build that will win 1v1 against a good S/D thief. The most they can do is run for their life. The closest would be either a trap ranger or phast mesmer, but in WvW, that is almost a none issue since you’re fighting in an open area and not a 600 radius capture point.

Stop speaking as if PvP doesn’t happens outside of Spvp. /shrug

sorrow.2364:

It is an issue. I know you are enjoying your newfound FotM skill, but you have to stop to see the situation as a Thief player and look the picture as a whole.
Every thief said that the backstab combo wasn’t powerful; there was NO ONE who said it can use a little nerf, everyone said “if can be dodged”, “l2p” and all the BS we are seeing here again over and over. Fact is that it was overpowered and it was nerfed. So, probably, you should adjust your point of view and stop justifying any flaw with the more of the same arguments. Or, if you like, you can just say “ANet hates thief”, “just remove the thief class from the game” or any of the average whine we daily see in the Thief forum, then come back into your little corner of the world and start crying about how unfair the world is.

not sure what your point here is, is it:

ANET is always right, so when they nerfed stealth, it proved that stealth needed a nerf?
if thats the point, well then why are you arguing with ANETS decision? they buffed this, therefore it must’ve needed buffing.

or maybe your point is that thiefs always need nerfing.
if that’s your point then it leads me to one of two conclusions;
1-you’re on here complaining because this buff hurt your favorite build…maybe d/d ele. and rather than openly complain about it, you decided to pose as a thief player demanding a self nerf…if that’s the case, you should just switch to the newest OP’d class…I hear s/d thieves are pretty good.

or

2-you play thief and are just so tired of it always being so easy, so you want ANET to nerf it into hard mode. if this is the case, you can always just ditch your gear…try playing with lvl 20 weapons, or if you’re playing pvp, steady weapons are a nice change. if that’s not enough, you could play with no armor.

I still find it amazing they allowed this skill to steal 2 boons at full duration. I mean, spammable boon removal can be a pretty strong denial mechanic as is, let alone claiming that power for yourself.

I do think the skill is too strong, just because the reversal is too drastic. Grabbing someone’s elite skill stability and another boon (if they have one) is pretty strong: being able to do so again immediately is even stronger. I don’t even care about the damage on the skill, it’s just too much denial and empowerment.