Guild Wars 2

This game is new and there are a lot of builds other classes are going to recieve, and we do not bring much to the table, currently we have three things going for us.

“Rendering Issues: this makes our class a lot better then it actually is.”
“Burst Damage: We have very little DPS, if the fight doesn’t go in our favor we have to pray the enemy does not have access to cripple or chill or knows how to get us, luckily rendering issues saves us a lot of the time, but they are removing that.”
“Mobility: Actually elementalist beat us on this, but many of them are just discovering how to use there skills.”

So far, we know classes all of them are going to get buffed, and for all we know its going to be more towards aoe damage and utility, which is a nightmare for us.

So far, we know rendering issues will be fixed, another nightmare for us.

and So far, we know our burst damage is going to get nerfed, the biggest nightmare we have.

I’m afraid with the combination of all this happening at once and almost no clues on what we are going to get back from this, we might not have anything left to do, and so far the classes we have most trouble against are getting major buffs. (Ranger/Engineer.) from what we are hearing from developers.

Thieves have some of the worst traits imaginable for dps, alot of our traits are “only can be used once every second”, which punishes most of our damage per second options and makes only certain weapon sets viable, luckily we also have very strong traits, but that just pigeon holes us into one or two builds, which I do not think the developers had planned for.

I am afraid to say that after all these changes, we might not be that good of a class, probably the worst, but that is just my deja voo speaking to me.

The class that has the most complaints almost never recieves anything from updates, and we are always going to get complained about because we punish those who don’t pay attention and are not on there A-game, every patch so far has nerfed the thief, and honestly if this chain of whining does not end you just may as well remove the class, at the start we were the worst class to have in dungeons and now you might as well make it where we cannot attend them, because we honestly just slow the group down more then help them if you take us over any other class. (especially after the updates.) we simply do not bring enough group utility to the table, we are very narcissistic and only really help ourselves.

This is why I rerolled to S/D about a month or so ago. If anything, I’m looking forward to buffs.

Zunhar.4079:

This is why I rerolled to S/D about a month or so ago. If anything, I’m looking forward to buffs.

So far though, I don’t really think you will be getting anything is the problem, just a lot of trait nerfs.

Even if they nerf our burst, there’s a lot of ways they can compensate. They probably won’t reduce backstab, as it’s not the problem; the problem is using backstab in conjunction with a lot of other talents and abilities. Being able to precast C&D and steal in the middle is a little overpowered, and mug probably hits too hard.

I would expect IF we get a nerf in damage, we would see a survivability boost and sustained damage.

Daecollo.9578:

Zunhar.4079:

This is why I rerolled to S/D about a month or so ago. If anything, I’m looking forward to buffs.

So far though, I don’t really think you will be getting anything is the problem, just a lot of trait nerfs.

One can hope. Maybe FS will be fixed.
ANet should really buff/change our underwhelming traits (of which there are a lot). All of the decent/good traits deal with improving damage (Executioner, Mug, etc) so Thieves are somewhat pigeonholed into doing high damage, be it burst or steady DPS through conditions or S/D.

Nothing new here.

Analyzing the thief, the class was lacklustre from the start: we’re good only thanks to high burst and mobility, and since we are kind of unmatched in this role, people will pass by over all the bad design issue the thief had.

Bad/lame mechanics ( initiative and steal)

Bad utilities ( traps, untraited venoms, signets and some other sub-par ones, like blinding power ( when compared to shadow refuge) and smoke screen)

Bad traits

Bad weapon design

All those issues were evident, but those big numbers on the damage department and the ability to leave ANY fight at will totally covered them.

Point is that those big numbers are not balanced, especially when coming from nowhere, especially when dealth in a matter of a second or two, so that people have no real chance to react ( and in team-play, with coordinated stuns, the spike damage is insane).

Thanks god i’m playing S/D, so MAYBE i’ll get some buff , at least with the dual skill.

I’ve said plenty of times the thief would be better off being totally reworked.

Am I delusional? Our class is amazing with many different specs and playstyles. We have hardly been nerfed at all. The signet of power change was basically a buff.

Pistol Whip and Heartseeker are the only things that have been directly nerfed. Burst builds with PW still work, I ran into one the other day. The Heartseeker change was justified. It’s for movement and finishing, not 22222222 like before. Other than that we had some changes to revealed so it triggers off our openers that effected Vital shot slightly and was very easy to adapt to.

I have some faith that Anet will balance reasonably based on what they have done thus far.

i will tell you my opinion regarding this:
i had builded my thief on maximum surivaivability, to minimize the deaths on wvw, since i solo 95% of the time. I am hardly bursted down, and under no circumstances except 3-5 seconds freeze, or afk i cannot get downed in 1 vs 1 by another thief.
But at 90% critical power, and only 2780 p attack i find my initiative pool to small in order to finish an decent player , i am forced to use autoattack a lot , specialy vs warriors and guardians, and i can finish from 1 initiative pool only full glass cannons.
if by any chance thieves will suffer an future nerf in damage, the thieves who aren’t full glass cannon builded will suffer more.

We definitely need some buffs, Pistol Whip nerf needs to be undone. autoattack does more then it in terms of damage now…that’s kinda sad (I’ve done 12-16k worth of damage in the time it takes PW to do 8k worth of dmg).

i’m looking forward to the rendering bug being fixed. that should cut down a decent portion of the constant whining about thieves. (though, some will always persist for stealth based classes because whining is easier than adapting.) it will also be nice not to walk into what appears to be an open field, get killed instantly, only to find out 3 minutes later it was actually filled with people the whole time.

for the nerf(s), i have yet to see any numbers stating how anything will be changed, so i can’t really concern myself with it at this point. it’s completely unknown exactly what changes will come, so it might not even be that big of a deal when it does come. it could be crippling. we have no way of knowing yet, so it’s best to see what happens and work from there once it does.

All that really needed to happen was to nerf utilities that instantly put you into stealth. So yes, Blinding Powder is too weak you say, but that’s only because Shadow Refuge is absolutely overpowered.

Take away the ability to stealth without having a target, without prerequisite and the class would be fine.

I am probably alone with this opinion, but honestly, does anybody here see them buffing our actual survivability before a nerf as described above? Hell they nerfed Shadow Protector, so you know they aren’t even looking at the possibility of making thieves tougher. Thieves will always be squishy as soon as you catch them and thus nerfing the damage must not be done in a vacuum.

Thieves aren’t always squishy.
I have a 17000 health thief with 2200 armor and 3200 attack. I can face tank champion mobs in Orr (can’t kill them but I can face tank them for a few minutes).

So to me the survivability of thieves isn’t a big issue, what is the issue is the burst damage is too high while the dps is too low.

I expect the burst to get nerfed and the dps to get buffed.

Med.6150:

All that really needed to happen was to nerf utilities that instantly put you into stealth. So yes, Blinding Powder is too weak you say, but that’s only because Shadow Refuge is absolutely overpowered.

Take away the ability to stealth without having a target, without prerequisite and the class would be fine.

I am probably alone with this opinion, but honestly, does anybody here see them buffing our actual survivability before a nerf as described above? Hell they nerfed Shadow Protector, so you know they aren’t even looking at the possibility of making thieves tougher. Thieves will always be squishy as soon as you catch them and thus nerfing the damage must not be done in a vacuum.

ah, but people flock to the forums to whine en masse because they want easy wins. if they keep us squishy, and nerf our damage, people get what they want. granted, they won’t actually improve, and will get steamrolled by everything else. but they’ll just counter that by flocking to the forums for another whine fest to get whatever happened to have killed them that time nerfed into uselessness. but, whenever the nerf-a-thon comes around to their neck of the woods, they’ll be adamant that their class is perfect, and that they’re flawlessly skilled in playing it, and resort to their default (whining) to try to have that nerf halted. and if that doesn’t work, they’ll whine some more to have the nerf reversed. often times pulling imaginary “statistics” out of thin air, or posting cherry picked screenshots with the information that’s actually relevant to the situation curiously absent. they’ll go on about how they’re the top players, without any form of evidence to actually back that claim up. just “i am because i say i am” and really, who would actually be untruthful on this wonderful place we call the internet?

this is the accepted method of properly playing a class. gear? build? ability? those silly things don’t factor into it. just as long as they whine loud and whine often. that determines who has serious skills.

Culling

I’m happy they’re fixing it. The dumb masses will lose something to QQ about, moderate players will give me more of a challenge (which is fun), and really good players won’t care. They already know to look for the shadow effect on stealth exit and target your invisible body, and they even hit you while in stealth.

Nerfs to BS Burst

I’m also okay with this. I’m all for glass cannons being able to down other glass cannons in mere seconds, but even I think the speed you can get a BS burst off is a tad high. Nerfing this will make that more fun.

It’ll help get rid of the no-skill noobs who transfer to the current “OP” class and use crap like this. There are good players who use BS, but they’ll adapt. The noobs who have memorized one rotation will be weaker, and they’ll go away.

This will also help diversify thief builds. So many people remain convinced that D/D burst is the only way to play a thief, which couldn’t be more wrong. Maybe this will convince more people to try out a variety of builds, which would be wonderful.

Everything else

Everything else in OP is baseless speculation. When I see update notes that say that everything else about us is getting nerfed too, then I’ll freak out. However, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see us get buffs in other areas to compensate for the burst nerf. Either way, I’d be shocked if they hurt our utility/support.

say hello to the nukes from orbit that A-net are doing, doing more nerfing that is intended (see PW) where i do more damage (without quickness) from autoattack than form the skill itself: so why spend my initiative on it ???,
question: is there anyone still using this build ?

You spend your initiative on PW because it has evade and still does decent damage with a interrupt and has a significantly large cone AoE but now it’s so circumstantial and reliant on Signet of Malice/Haste its a little sad.

DanH.5879:

say hello to the nukes from orbit that A-net are doing, doing more nerfing that is intended (see PW) where i do more damage (without quickness) from autoattack than form the skill itself: so why spend my initiative on it ???,
question: is there anyone still using this build ?

It stuns. It gives you evasion. It has a massive hit volume, so Signet of Malice and heal-on-crit food are incredibly powerful with it. It’s also great for crit-related effects, because you’re virtually guaranteed to get several crits with it. It’s great while you have confusion on you, because it does the same damage but you take 66% less confusion damage.

I could go on.

I’ve also noticed, it makes you evade stuff like bleed and burn damage. That evade is quite powerful.

S/D and S/P are both great builds that will come into play when BS gets its nerf.

S/D you can get a near perm daze on your target, you can steal boons 2 ways if traited right and you have the sword AoE. you have access to cripple with your auto attacks and DD.

S/P you have PW which hits multiple times and multiple mobs/players, this is great in pve/DG settings with signet of malice (heal when hit a mob… yes please) Plus it has a stun an evade. so like BabelFish said you can essentially face tank mobs

I can’t wait for the nerfs

Daecollo.9578:

I can’t wait for the nerfs

I can’t wait for you to get nerfed.

Daecollo.9578 , there won’t be any nerfs without boosts
So since backstab might get nerfed , heartseeker won’t be buffed , we will get an boost on debufs:)
So watch your back, thieves will stay viable

They said if they nerfed burst they would compensate the damage elsewhere. Debuffs don’t seem like an option, considering how useless they are in PVE, and Heartseeker is out of the question. So it will likely just be a buff to auto-attack, which is really pretty lame.

Unless they do something with Deathblossom. Maybe buff the base damage so that it becomes viable for a power/crit build? I dunno.

Rayya.2591:

Daecollo.9578 , there won’t be any nerfs without boosts
So since backstab might get nerfed , heartseeker won’t be buffed , we will get an boost on debufs:)
So watch your back, thieves will stay viable

Currently, the only thing making thieves viable ( aside some very specific build) is its burst.

I severely doubt, if the nerf hammer hits our burst THAT bad, the thief will still be viable, without GREAT buffs on other areas ( support, control, versatility).