Guild Wars 2

How have other P/D thieves taken the stealth nerf, caltrops nerf and “dodgetrops” buff?

Personally, i find my dps has been significantly harmed. Instead of using the pre-patch chain (C/D ->2 autoattacks-> C/D), now i have to use 3 autoattacks. I would have much preferred the expected (but not implemented) stealth nerf where we would be revealed regardless of attacking or not. At least this is reasonable as it removes the problem of perma-stealth. Instead we are hit by a nerf that does not address this problem, no, we get a nerf which simply drops damage. This contradicts the very purpose of the implementation of the nerf…

It’s unfair that P/D users have to suffer, we were already a small population which are nearly never found in spvp tournaments.

But this is just me, i have been deterred from P/D and now i am encouraged to conform and play D/D glass-cannon that everybody complains about, which i DO NOT want to play.

What do you think? Discuss.

I’ve always been a caltrops thief. I run a caltrops build. As far as the patch goes, it’s hard to tell with constant skill lag while these 100man zergs are running around, which hopefully will die down soon. What I can tell you is that my thief is still solid. The 4s revealed change messes up my timing, but other than that, it’s alright. Caltrops change sucks for PvE, but in WvW, with the dodge caltrops buff, it’s still really effective. A good trade off.

As a P/D since headstart, I’m feeling the nerf pretty hard, but only in PvE. What’s most frustrating is that the timing of vital shot isn’t exactly on the 1 second mark, so you can’t que C&D any more and get a reliable stealth to keep your damage going. In stead it’s three vital shots… wait for half of number four, hit C&D

In addition, my bread and butter mitigation from blind on stealth is suffering timing wackiness as well. As previously you could time C&D to lock down a single normal mob with blinds and reliably mitigate a lot of damage on multiples, they’re fitting in a lot more hits now which has be considering swapping to my PvP Trait setup for PvE as blind isn’t mitigating as well against groups of mobs.

The timing is pretty ungainly now and the caltrops nerf just makes me kinda sad in general at the loss of damage but it still does its job. Before this patch, P/D (and the thief in general) felt smoothly timed and rewarded smart footwork to avoid/mitigate damage at mid/close range and keep your rotation going. Now it just feels kinda clunky and broken as the attacks don’t sync up with the revealed timer.

Overall I’m killing things noticable slower with P/D and spending more time cluster-shotgunning single mobs with a shortbow in PvE. I’m seriously considering putting on a MH dagger and running DB spam for a while in stead since I’m already geared for durability anyway.

In PvP… not much of a problem. You can’t get perfect rotations on humans anyway so the revealed extension doesn’t really make much of a difference. It usually takes four or more seconds after a sneak attack to get positioned for another C&D anyway, and caltrops is still a largely wasted slot due to human beings being smart enough to not walk in to it or dodge out of it. Uncatchable is much easier to use reliably now, so overall P/D feels slightly buffed in PvP as the nerfs didn’t really affect it outside of the occasional time that caltrops kicks off a bit earlier than you’d like while attacking/defending a hallway or point of some sort.

I was running in WvW using a 0/0/30/20/20 P/D build with apothecary armor. The stealth nerf wasn’t game breaking for me, but I do think that if I stick with P/D, I’m going switch into a carrion-based build. Not sure exactly what it’s going to look like yet, but I have some ideas. I just need to be able to exert more pressure.

That being said, the apothecary spec was probably always suboptimal… I just didn’t want to drop it after farming the mats.