Guild Wars 2

Since S/D is dead now, I think we can all agree that ANet totally dropped the ball on this one. I personally haven’t even bothered playing thief since my intial post-patch playtesting, which is really sad because I love the mechanics of the class.

I think FS>LS needs to reverted fast or we are going to see nobody playing this build whatsoever soon. I am even seeing many thiefs running P/X builds in pvp at the moment, which is just worse than useless. There is no point in having mobility in shortbow if it means you are going to a point and fighting an enemy whilst strafing around, kiting and eventually dying whilst doing nothing productive. In short, pistol builds are really weak in PvP, and the patch did nothing to fix that.

The reason S/D was really a little teeny bit too powerful was clearly the access to evade. It was too kitten high. Once a S/D thief learned the basic attack/dodging rotation, they were very very difficult to even land hits on as a melee class. I believe this comes down to arguably the single most powerful master trait in the game.

Feline Grace

What on earth is with this trait? I say this as a thief player remember…. It’s cheap, requiring minimal trait invesment whist feeling like a GM trait – and gives a HUGE buff to the amount of damage mitigation a thief is capable of, essentially giving a thief a permanent +30% endurance regeneration that STACKS on top of vigor. Really? How can this possibly have been overlooked with regards to balancing? Outside of S/D, acrobatics are not taken very often, so it does not really harm different builds to nerf this trait. Alongside this, I don’t believe the nerf would have to be that much to have enough of an impact on how much the thief evades.

Keep in mind I am saying this as if we were still playing pre-patch and S/D was still the best PvP build going.

A slight nerf to endurance regen, say 10% rather than 15%, would have been probably significant enough to ever so slightly rein the acrobatics line in. Does anybody feel else feel that this would have been FAR FAR preferable to the horrendous FS>LS nerf?

I really just hope that Anet will revert this sooner rather than later (it will happen at some point, S/D is dying, and dying fast) so that they can get back to fixing the problems with the class.

Oh and while they are at it can they fix our teleports plz :’)

TrOtskY.5927:

Since S/D is dead now, I think we can all agree that ANet totally dropped the ball on this one. I personally haven’t even bothered playing thief since my intial post-patch playtesting, which is really sad because I love the mechanics of the class.

I think FS>LS needs to reverted fast or we are going to see nobody playing this build whatsoever soon. I am even seeing many thiefs running P/X builds in pvp at the moment, which is just worse than useless. There is no point in having mobility in shortbow if it means you are going to a point and fighting an enemy whilst strafing around, kiting and eventually dying whilst doing nothing productive. In short, pistol builds are really weak in PvP, and the patch did nothing to fix that.

The reason S/D was really a little teeny bit too powerful was clearly the access to evade. It was too kitten high. Once a S/D thief learned the basic attack/dodging rotation, they were very very difficult to even land hits on as a melee class. I believe this comes down to arguably the single most powerful master trait in the game.

Feline Grace

What on earth is with this trait? I say this as a thief player remember…. It’s cheap, requiring minimal trait invesment whist feeling like a GM trait – and gives a HUGE buff to the amount of damage mitigation a thief is capable of, essentially giving a thief a permanent +30% endurance regeneration that STACKS on top of vigor. Really? How can this possibly have been overlooked with regards to balancing? Outside of S/D, acrobatics are not taken very often, so it does not really harm different builds to nerf this trait. Alongside this, I don’t believe the nerf would have to be that much to have enough of an impact on how much the thief evades.

Keep in mind I am saying this as if we were still playing pre-patch and S/D was still the best PvP build going.

A slight nerf to endurance regen, say 10% rather than 15%, would have been probably significant enough to ever so slightly rein the acrobatics line in. Does anybody feel else feel that this would have been FAR FAR preferable to the horrendous FS>LS nerf?

I really just hope that Anet will revert this sooner rather than later (it will happen at some point, S/D is dying, and dying fast) so that they can get back to fixing the problems with the class.

Oh and while they are at it can they fix our teleports plz :’)

How does a thief with almost no reason to stealth (IE, an S/D thief) stay alive without evading?

Beside that point, Anet apparently has no issue with the amount of evades S/D thieves get – this change made them more spammable. What it did was kill damage by allowing other players to avoid both FS and LS by just avoiding FS.

I support ANY Thief build buffs that doesn’t rely on stealth. Thief was my first class, and is now sitting shelved almost permanently because I am not using a stealth build for it.

evilapprentice.6379:

What it did was kill [S/D] damage

I agree. S/D damage was already iffy damage wise, not because the raw numbers aren’t there, but because of the slow attacks. That is fine for sustain and general pressure, though I land my third AA much less vs practiced players, but it doesnt allow for any spike, and without any spike, you can’t get over the top of many enemies HP before they react or have time to heal. This leads to long protracted fights.

We found ways to spike with different combos, like “preloading LS”, but otherwise, all our spike options (mug, sigs, i guess.. haste?) were also available to other weapon sets which did it better, so what was the point?

Sword makes a good control set, but since it’s not a damaging condi set, it really doesn’t work well (at least as S/D, maybe it does as S/P with poisons would) in a condi/power build – but again, dagger MH would do better, pistol MH even better.

So what is it’s place? Evasion troll? Clutch interrupts? I love both of those things, but occasionally I’d like to down someone.

To answer OP:

How would I have fixed S/D? I’d leave trait-ed evades alone. Messing with traits has collateral damage for other weaponsets/builds. To fix S/D, I would increase ini cost of FS, as they did, but also increase it’s damage. I would reduce the damage of LS significantly, and make it more of a utility skill, so restore it to 2 boonrips, for instance, or maybe apply a non-damaging condition, or maybe even gasp clear a condi so we don’t have to keep going in to SA!

Edit: Or, screw it — I’d increase Ini on FS, increase damage on FS, and I’d remove attack damage from LS, and rename it from LS to SP (Soul Parry). As is now the case, SP would need you to successfully land a FS, if FS is blocked it would not allow SP.

SP would life leach a small amount and transfer 1 condi from myself, to the opponent. Now with Infil Strike and SP, this would be our anti condi, non-stealth set.

First, I would remove the cast time on the Shadow Return from IS, and increase the initiative cost to 4 up from 2 to reduce spammability.

Allow FS to proceed to LS through blocks or invulnerability. Dodges still prevent it.

Change LS to rip 2 boons again.

Trait-related but incorporates S/D:

Move Fleet of Foot up to Grandmaster and move Assassin’s Reward down to Master. Change Fleet of Foot to remove any single condition or any two conditions on dodge with ICD appropriate for either choice.

McFribble.2349:

I support ANY Thief build buffs that doesn’t rely on stealth. Thief was my first class, and is now sitting shelved almost permanently because I am not using a stealth build for it.

Seriously? What is so wrong with stealth?

evilapprentice.6379:

TrOtskY.5927:

Since S/D is dead now, I think we can all agree that ANet totally dropped the ball on this one. I personally haven’t even bothered playing thief since my intial post-patch playtesting, which is really sad because I love the mechanics of the class.

I think FS>LS needs to reverted fast or we are going to see nobody playing this build whatsoever soon. I am even seeing many thiefs running P/X builds in pvp at the moment, which is just worse than useless. There is no point in having mobility in shortbow if it means you are going to a point and fighting an enemy whilst strafing around, kiting and eventually dying whilst doing nothing productive. In short, pistol builds are really weak in PvP, and the patch did nothing to fix that.

The reason S/D was really a little teeny bit too powerful was clearly the access to evade. It was too kitten high. Once a S/D thief learned the basic attack/dodging rotation, they were very very difficult to even land hits on as a melee class. I believe this comes down to arguably the single most powerful master trait in the game.

Feline Grace

What on earth is with this trait? I say this as a thief player remember…. It’s cheap, requiring minimal trait invesment whist feeling like a GM trait – and gives a HUGE buff to the amount of damage mitigation a thief is capable of, essentially giving a thief a permanent +30% endurance regeneration that STACKS on top of vigor. Really? How can this possibly have been overlooked with regards to balancing? Outside of S/D, acrobatics are not taken very often, so it does not really harm different builds to nerf this trait. Alongside this, I don’t believe the nerf would have to be that much to have enough of an impact on how much the thief evades.

Keep in mind I am saying this as if we were still playing pre-patch and S/D was still the best PvP build going.

A slight nerf to endurance regen, say 10% rather than 15%, would have been probably significant enough to ever so slightly rein the acrobatics line in. Does anybody feel else feel that this would have been FAR FAR preferable to the horrendous FS>LS nerf?

I really just hope that Anet will revert this sooner rather than later (it will happen at some point, S/D is dying, and dying fast) so that they can get back to fixing the problems with the class.

Oh and while they are at it can they fix our teleports plz :’)

How does a thief with almost no reason to stealth (IE, an S/D thief) stay alive without evading?

Beside that point, Anet apparently has no issue with the amount of evades S/D thieves get – this change made them more spammable. What it did was kill damage by allowing other players to avoid both FS and LS by just avoiding FS.

This is my entire point and the entire point of the thread, it just seems to have gone completely over your head. If you think the access to ridiculous numbers of evasion frames was in no way a bit OP, then I guess you probably didn’t learn the rotations properly that quite literally let u perma evade while dishing damage. Did I say remove Feline Grace? No.

Also, you act like Stealth was not used in S/D, when in fact it is used fairly often, just not as often as in other builds. CnD > Auto from pretty much any direction (front or behind both work well tbh) totally messes with any melee class that doesnt have a lot of stability/stunbreak.

Please re-read the thread properly and make some suggestions. I’m not saying it should not have been able to dodge a lot. I’m saying it should not have been able to dodge ever so slightly as much as before.

I would have put Infiltrator Return on an 5s timer instead of the current 15s. This way, you could not abuse the “stay there, burst, then go back”, because 5s is a too little time frame to do that reliably.

Woaden.9425:

evilapprentice.6379:

What it did was kill [S/D] damage

I agree. S/D damage was already iffy damage wise, not because the raw numbers aren’t there, but because of the slow attacks. That is fine for sustain and general pressure, though I land my third AA much less vs practiced players, but it doesnt allow for any spike, and without any spike, you can’t get over the top of many enemies HP before they react or have time to heal. This leads to long protracted fights.

We found ways to spike with different combos, like “preloading LS”, but otherwise, all our spike options (mug, sigs, i guess.. haste?) were also available to other weapon sets which did it better, so what was the point?

Sword makes a good control set, but since it’s not a damaging condi set, it really doesn’t work well (at least as S/D, maybe it does as S/P with poisons would) in a condi/power build – but again, dagger MH would do better, pistol MH even better.

So what is it’s place? Evasion troll? Clutch interrupts? I love both of those things, but occasionally I’d like to down someone.

To answer OP:

How would I have fixed S/D? I’d leave trait-ed evades alone. Messing with traits has collateral damage for other weaponsets/builds. To fix S/D, I would increase ini cost of FS, as they did, but also increase it’s damage. I would reduce the damage of LS significantly, and make it more of a utility skill, so restore it to 2 boonrips, for instance, or maybe apply a non-damaging condition, or maybe even gasp clear a condi so we don’t have to keep going in to SA!

Edit: Or, screw it — I’d increase Ini on FS, increase damage on FS, and I’d remove attack damage from LS, and rename it from LS to SP (Soul Parry). As is now the case, SP would need you to successfully land a FS, if FS is blocked it would not allow SP.

SP would life leach a small amount and transfer 1 condi from myself, to the opponent. Now with Infil Strike and SP, this would be our anti condi, non-stealth set.

Well it’s interesting, I can’t see how S/D would work without the LS damage spike tho.(which isn’t actually THAT high but oh well)

Pretty much all the kills on thief in 1v1 relies on applying so much consistent, unavoidable pressure that gets your oppoent in a tizz, making them auto attack whiff at nothing but air and getting them to waste weapon skills and utilities in a “panic” of sorts.

S/D functions largely as before with the exception of facing classes that have access to block, which is like half the classes in the game. Medi Guard? Forget it, you have to play absolutely flawlessly just for a VERY slim chance at winning.
Engi? It was bad before, now…..ermagerd.
Bunk Guard? Was nigh on impossible before, and now it’s even worse.
Warrior? Not so bad, the 4s block is pretty annoying. The problem was the sheer amount of time it took to kill a decent soldier warrior before, which was also made ridiculously difficult by their ability to camp in preloaded combustive shot fields. Of course with this nerf, they are not so dangerous, but with OUR nerf coming in conjunction, its just resulted in a real trade off that hasn’t particularly favoured either class.
Mesmer? I would say this is a biggie, before we could fairly reliably kill them, but now if they take PU trait it can be really difficult to break through with all the AoE and condi damage flying around. If not, it’s basically the same as before.
Rangers are still food. Necros are still dangerous as hell if the opponent is decent OR any old noob can wtfpwn u with fearmancer build.

IDK if removing spike damage from LS would work, but if you are suggesting FS becomes powerful ENOUGH to compensate, then I dunno, it might just make FS ridiculously OP as well.

TrOtskY.5927:

Woaden.9425:

evilapprentice.6379:

What it did was kill [S/D] damage

I agree. S/D damage was already iffy damage wise, not because the raw numbers aren’t there, but because of the slow attacks. That is fine for sustain and general pressure, though I land my third AA much less vs practiced players, but it doesnt allow for any spike, and without any spike, you can’t get over the top of many enemies HP before they react or have time to heal. This leads to long protracted fights.

We found ways to spike with different combos, like “preloading LS”, but otherwise, all our spike options (mug, sigs, i guess.. haste?) were also available to other weapon sets which did it better, so what was the point?

Sword makes a good control set, but since it’s not a damaging condi set, it really doesn’t work well (at least as S/D, maybe it does as S/P with poisons would) in a condi/power build – but again, dagger MH would do better, pistol MH even better.

So what is it’s place? Evasion troll? Clutch interrupts? I love both of those things, but occasionally I’d like to down someone.

To answer OP:

How would I have fixed S/D? I’d leave trait-ed evades alone. Messing with traits has collateral damage for other weaponsets/builds. To fix S/D, I would increase ini cost of FS, as they did, but also increase it’s damage. I would reduce the damage of LS significantly, and make it more of a utility skill, so restore it to 2 boonrips, for instance, or maybe apply a non-damaging condition, or maybe even gasp clear a condi so we don’t have to keep going in to SA!

Edit: Or, screw it — I’d increase Ini on FS, increase damage on FS, and I’d remove attack damage from LS, and rename it from LS to SP (Soul Parry). As is now the case, SP would need you to successfully land a FS, if FS is blocked it would not allow SP.

SP would life leach a small amount and transfer 1 condi from myself, to the opponent. Now with Infil Strike and SP, this would be our anti condi, non-stealth set.

Well it’s interesting, I can’t see how S/D would work without the LS damage spike tho.(which isn’t actually THAT high but oh well)

Pretty much all the kills on thief in 1v1 relies on applying so much consistent, unavoidable pressure that gets your oppoent in a tizz, making them auto attack whiff at nothing but air and getting them to waste weapon skills and utilities in a “panic” of sorts.

S/D functions largely as before with the exception of facing classes that have access to block, which is like half the classes in the game. Medi Guard? Forget it, you have to play absolutely flawlessly just for a VERY slim chance at winning.
Engi? It was bad before, now…..ermagerd.
Bunk Guard? Was nigh on impossible before, and now it’s even worse.
Warrior? Not so bad, the 4s block is pretty annoying. The problem was the sheer amount of time it took to kill a decent soldier warrior before, which was also made ridiculously difficult by their ability to camp in preloaded combustive shot fields. Of course with this nerf, they are not so dangerous, but with OUR nerf coming in conjunction, its just resulted in a real trade off that hasn’t particularly favoured either class.

I disagree on S/D playing “largely as it did before”. Against players who don’t know what they’re up against, maybe. Against anyone who knows how S/D works? FS is a big, flashing sign that says “make me miss and you win the fight”. It’s a great way to watch a thief waste 4 init while avoiding both FS and LS with 1 evade/block/blind/etc.

Sure, you could use IS to increase the likelihood that FS hits, but now we’re talking spending 7 init just to have the possibility of spending an Init on LS, and you’re using your reactive dodge manuever on a target that (usually) can’t fight back JUST to get access to LS. Let’s also note that you’d usually use IS to land some AA to keep the pressure up while preserving init, so now the entire set is just a Init hog (since both the 2 and 3 skills have seen an init increase over various patches).

So basically, a weaponset that had “too many evades” according to forum QQ (hint, evades are the only defensive tool S/D thieves have) had it’s pool of evades in the long run very slightly reduced in number while also allowing them to be spammed further (which was a big part of the “too many evades” complaint), and had it’s damage gutted. S/D is now a glassy spec that can’t do any damage against competent players – it’s akin to twirling around in a tutu and tickling people with a large feather.

TrOtskY.5927:

evilapprentice.6379:

TrOtskY.5927:

Since S/D is dead now, I think we can all agree that ANet totally dropped the ball on this one. I personally haven’t even bothered playing thief since my intial post-patch playtesting, which is really sad because I love the mechanics of the class.

I think FS>LS needs to reverted fast or we are going to see nobody playing this build whatsoever soon. I am even seeing many thiefs running P/X builds in pvp at the moment, which is just worse than useless. There is no point in having mobility in shortbow if it means you are going to a point and fighting an enemy whilst strafing around, kiting and eventually dying whilst doing nothing productive. In short, pistol builds are really weak in PvP, and the patch did nothing to fix that.

The reason S/D was really a little teeny bit too powerful was clearly the access to evade. It was too kitten high. Once a S/D thief learned the basic attack/dodging rotation, they were very very difficult to even land hits on as a melee class. I believe this comes down to arguably the single most powerful master trait in the game.

Feline Grace

What on earth is with this trait? I say this as a thief player remember…. It’s cheap, requiring minimal trait invesment whist feeling like a GM trait – and gives a HUGE buff to the amount of damage mitigation a thief is capable of, essentially giving a thief a permanent +30% endurance regeneration that STACKS on top of vigor. Really? How can this possibly have been overlooked with regards to balancing? Outside of S/D, acrobatics are not taken very often, so it does not really harm different builds to nerf this trait. Alongside this, I don’t believe the nerf would have to be that much to have enough of an impact on how much the thief evades.

Keep in mind I am saying this as if we were still playing pre-patch and S/D was still the best PvP build going.

A slight nerf to endurance regen, say 10% rather than 15%, would have been probably significant enough to ever so slightly rein the acrobatics line in. Does anybody feel else feel that this would have been FAR FAR preferable to the horrendous FS>LS nerf?

I really just hope that Anet will revert this sooner rather than later (it will happen at some point, S/D is dying, and dying fast) so that they can get back to fixing the problems with the class.

Oh and while they are at it can they fix our teleports plz :’)

How does a thief with almost no reason to stealth (IE, an S/D thief) stay alive without evading?

Beside that point, Anet apparently has no issue with the amount of evades S/D thieves get – this change made them more spammable. What it did was kill damage by allowing other players to avoid both FS and LS by just avoiding FS.

This is my entire point and the entire point of the thread, it just seems to have gone completely over your head. If you think the access to ridiculous numbers of evasion frames was in no way a bit OP, then I guess you probably didn’t learn the rotations properly that quite literally let u perma evade while dishing damage. Did I say remove Feline Grace? No.

Literally Perma evade, really? If you honestly think S/D prior to this patch could “perma evade”, you’re not qualified to be talking about it, because you’re spreading falsehoods.

You could evade a whole hell of a alot if you were intent on being nigh-useless, but there wasn’t much gain in that. Go try double S/D with Quick pockets and energy runes – you’ll be dancing all around the battlefield…and do the kind of damage that regen could negate.

I never had a problem facing other S/D evade heavy thieves when I was playing. Perhaps it’s because I played the class and knew when my target was vulnerable. I guess a little bit of effort goes along way. It’s the same reason I don’t kitten about classes I don’t understand – I could just go roll one, try the spec, and see it’s vulnerable points, and if I don’t that’s on me.

If you want thieves to have even slightly less dodges, they’re going to need some access to the sustain tools other classes get – protection, better regen uptime on practically designed skills (lawl Pain Response), stability that can actually be used (lawl Assassin’s Equilibrium), maybe a block or something like that, and while I’m at it maybe Anet could stop kittening with our blinds (though thats a different weaponset) because as it stands a thief needs to avoid the majority of another players attacks (including their AA) to survive long enough to win a fight as S/D.

evilapprentice.6379:

TrOtskY.5927:

evilapprentice.6379:

TrOtskY.5927:

How does a thief with almost no reason to stealth (IE, an S/D thief) stay alive without evading?

Beside that point, Anet apparently has no issue with the amount of evades S/D thieves get – this change made them more spammable. What it did was kill damage by allowing other players to avoid both FS and LS by just avoiding FS.

This is my entire point and the entire point of the thread, it just seems to have gone completely over your head. If you think the access to ridiculous numbers of evasion frames was in no way a bit OP, then I guess you probably didn’t learn the rotations properly that quite literally let u perma evade while dishing damage. Did I say remove Feline Grace? No.

Literally Perma evade, really? If you honestly think S/D prior to this patch could “perma evade”, you’re not qualified to be talking about it, because you’re spreading falsehoods.

You could evade a whole hell of a alot if you were intent on being nigh-useless, but there wasn’t much gain in that. Go try double S/D with Quick pockets and energy runes – you’ll be dancing all around the battlefield…and do the kind of damage that regen could negate.

I never had a problem facing other S/D evade heavy thieves when I was playing. Perhaps it’s because I played the class and knew when my target was vulnerable. I guess a little bit of effort goes along way. It’s the same reason I don’t kitten about classes I don’t understand – I could just go roll one, try the spec, and see it’s vulnerable points, and if I don’t that’s on me.

If you want thieves to have even slightly less dodges, they’re going to need some access to the sustain tools other classes get – protection, better regen uptime on practically designed skills (lawl Pain Response), stability that can actually be used (lawl Assassin’s Equilibrium), maybe a block or something like that, and while I’m at it maybe Anet could stop kittening with our blinds (though thats a different weaponset) because as it stands a thief needs to avoid the majority of another players attacks (including their AA) to survive long enough to win a fight as S/D.

Literally perma evade within the rotation, yes. A good 10+ second window of being basically invulnerable whilst dishing out damage against melee classes. If you fight protracted, then you are doing it wrong. It does not take long for a thief to be able to get back into the “perma dodge” cycle once out of it. A thief merely needs to wait about 5-10 seconds outside of the enemy range then re-engage, and it is able to basically perma evade constantly if it plays the rotation properly.

We have blinds on S/D.
If you never (and you do claim, NEVER) have a problem facing S/D thieves as S/D, then please explain me how as to how you make one of the most laughably ridiculous 1v1 situations in the game a surefire win. Steal can be used at any time as a dual stun breaker and daze proc. It’s purely down to who hits who with dazes and who is lucky enough to be in evading steals and IS, who gets crits and who gets procs on sigils, it’s a horribly sweaty, almost skill-less, just spammy as HELL contest. Watching a S/D vs S/D as an example for GW2 combat is actually quite embarassing, it looks stupid and it is stupid. Thiefs teleporting all over the place, back and forwards, barely landing hit son each other and burning through their steals and gap closers at any given oppurtunity because trying to “wait out” the opponent on S/D is practically suicide. The rotation cycles for S/D evade last too long. There is almost no opening on the old builds, as long as the thief played smart. They tried to force an opening by making FS>LS more dependent on successive hits. It’s not a good fix.

I’m not saying this stuff as thief basher, I play thief for goodness sakes. We need to take a REAL look at this and not go around pretending that certain facets of certain builds aren’t a bit silly. The problem is they went about nerfing S/D in the completely wrong way. Semi-Perma evade within skill rotatiosn is actually totally impossible for any other melee build of any class to deal with. The only melee class/build I think that has a chance to deal with it is medi guard, but the thief can still take the initiative in the fight and if they are skilled a medi guard (prior to the patch remember) was still a relatively easy fight once you forced it to waste through the port cooldown and aegis.
I am saying all this because I WANT them to revert the changes, not because I dislike S/D.
Trust me, we are on the same team, you just gotta concede that S/D was way too good at what it was good at…. If you get me.

TrOtskY.5927:

The reason S/D was really a little teeny bit too powerful was clearly the access to evade. It was too kitten high. Once a S/D thief learned the basic attack/dodging rotation, they were very very difficult to even land hits on as a melee class. I believe this comes down to arguably the single most powerful master trait in the game.

I disagree. GW2 is not a game with only melee “class”, thus it is wrong for you to only focus on that.

Sure we may dominate a melee-vs-melee encounter, but that’s it. All other aspect of the game is not in our favor.

Feline Grace

What on earth is with this trait? I say this as a thief player remember…. It’s cheap, requiring minimal trait invesment whist feeling like a GM trait – and gives a HUGE buff to the amount of damage mitigation a thief is capable of, essentially giving a thief a permanent +30% endurance regeneration that STACKS on top of vigor. Really? How can this possibly have been overlooked with regards to balancing? Outside of S/D, acrobatics are not taken very often, so it does not really harm different builds to nerf this trait. Alongside this, I don’t believe the nerf would have to be that much to have enough of an impact on how much the thief evades.

I don’t understand your logic (if there’s any).

Your perception is too narrow. Sure if you take this trait out of context, then yes, it looks too good. But if you put it back into the game, this trait is nothing compare to Engineer’s trait Invigorating Speed (accessing with 2pts) and Rangers 3 evade skills using Sw/D that are in fairly low cooldown. Mesmer is even worst, not only they get 2.5s of evade with Sword main-hand, they also get Vigor on Crit and Vigor on Shatter.

If you think that Thief gets a perma-evade, you should really start to opening your eyes and take a good look around.

S/D was fine before they broke it when they added boon strip. It was a bone-headed move that is now have become a major problem and the weapon set being nerfed to the ground.

So do yourself a favor and research every profession before making ridiculous claims.

-made fire and air sigils behave as the same type so they cannot be combined
-lowered the might duration on power of inertia to 10 seconds
-reworked all the traits thief does not use in acrobatics to invent something new for a change
-took a sledge hammer to AE until it disappeared into the SA trait line(pun intended)
-removed the cast time on IR
-lastly, left FS-> LS alone because it wasn’t a problem :/

I’d consider sword buffed if they’d change LS to proc on block vs pre-patch sword. Also, CnD should have same dmg in pvp as in pve, no reason to keep it lower after steal nerf and ferocity.

TrOtskY.5927:

Since S/D is dead now, I think we can all agree that ANet totally dropped the ball on this one. I personally haven’t even bothered playing thief since my intial post-patch playtesting, which is really sad because I love the mechanics of the class.

I think FS>LS needs to reverted fast or we are going to see nobody playing this build whatsoever soon. I am even seeing many thiefs running P/X builds in pvp at the moment, which is just worse than useless. There is no point in having mobility in shortbow if it means you are going to a point and fighting an enemy whilst strafing around, kiting and eventually dying whilst doing nothing productive. In short, pistol builds are really weak in PvP, and the patch did nothing to fix that.

The reason S/D was really a little teeny bit too powerful was clearly the access to evade. It was too kitten high. Once a S/D thief learned the basic attack/dodging rotation, they were very very difficult to even land hits on as a melee class. I believe this comes down to arguably the single most powerful master trait in the game.

Feline Grace

What on earth is with this trait? I say this as a thief player remember…. It’s cheap, requiring minimal trait invesment whist feeling like a GM trait – and gives a HUGE buff to the amount of damage mitigation a thief is capable of, essentially giving a thief a permanent +30% endurance regeneration that STACKS on top of vigor. Really? How can this possibly have been overlooked with regards to balancing? Outside of S/D, acrobatics are not taken very often, so it does not really harm different builds to nerf this trait. Alongside this, I don’t believe the nerf would have to be that much to have enough of an impact on how much the thief evades.

Keep in mind I am saying this as if we were still playing pre-patch and S/D was still the best PvP build going.

A slight nerf to endurance regen, say 10% rather than 15%, would have been probably significant enough to ever so slightly rein the acrobatics line in. Does anybody feel else feel that this would have been FAR FAR preferable to the horrendous FS>LS nerf?

I really just hope that Anet will revert this sooner rather than later (it will happen at some point, S/D is dying, and dying fast) so that they can get back to fixing the problems with the class.

Oh and while they are at it can they fix our teleports plz :’)

You say this master trait feels like a grandmaster, well i think the fact that the acrobatics line doesnt even have a decent GM is good balance for that. Just change the feline grace to GM and give us some of the current crappy GM traits in that position. They just have to stop nerfing our weaponsets and have a better look at the traits first. So many useless and broken stuff.

NinjaEd.3946:

-made fire and air sigils behave as the same type so they cannot be combined
-lowered the might duration on power of inertia to 10 seconds
-reworked all the traits thief does not use in acrobatics to invent something new for a change
-took a sledge hammer to AE until it disappeared into the SA trait line(pun intended)
-removed the cast time on IR
-lastly, left FS-> LS alone because it wasn’t a problem :/