Guild Wars 2

If you’re not going to lower the cast as well, (~.10s sounds reasonable to me) at least change how the mechanic works. Make it work like dodge does and take priority, ignoring the MASSIVE aftercasts on sword and cancelling any queued skills.

I literally can not think of any use for a 1-1.25s REACTIVE defensive skill when most 1shot skills in this game come out at .25-.50s. (besides most ele and mesmer bursts which are instant)

It should work a bit like Withdraw. No cast time, but doesn’t work while stunned. Then, it should take priority like you said.

Or, ya know, keep it instant but unusable while stunned. Maybe even not usable while stomping and takes priority canceling queued skills like jumper said. Think I’m gunna start complaining about mesmer using staff retreat + blink to stomp, see if that gets a cast time. Not that it needs one, just curious if that’s what it actually takes. How bout instead of listening to massive complaining from people who don’t play a class, you ask people who are level headed and play the class with respect what they think. Also, thank you Kensuda for making this terrible suggestion. Guardian main totally has the right to say what needs to change on a thief.

I know 3 buttons are a bit much for the majority of the playerbase, but I was hoping one day weaponkits like S/D could have 5 usable skills, yet they dumb it down to 2… Well, if you count autoattack as a skill.
This is probably going to be my last piece of advice for ANET. If this is what you envision for each class/spec, I’m not going to stick around any longer.

They could have easily implemented an interrupt on to fix the stomping issue since blinding powder already works that way.

Next thing you know, they’re going to remove the daze on headshot because “we didn’t like players using it to deal 400dmg from a distance. Don’t worry though, the way you use it will not change”.

….What?

I highly doubt they will listen. We had a whole month doing our best to convince them yet everything fell on deaf ears or it just went in through one ear and out the other.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I highly doubt they will listen. We had a whole month doing our best to convince them yet everything fell on deaf ears or it just went in through one ear and out the other.

The likelyhood of them reverting it isn’t very good either because of that. Changing it back would be admitting that they didn’t take our concerns (collaborative development) seriously, they didn’t playtest it enough to see the full effect of these changes, or both.

Jumper.9482:

If you’re not going to lower the cast as well, (~.10s sounds reasonable to me) at least change how the mechanic works. Make it work like dodge does and take priority, ignoring the MASSIVE aftercasts on sword and cancelling any queued skills.

I literally can not think of any use for a 1-1.25s REACTIVE defensive skill when most 1shot skills in this game come out at .25-.50s. (besides most ele and mesmer bursts which are instant)

already said this. just like shadow strike.

it’s a cruel test to see how many times you can nerf thief before they reroll or quit lol.

As someone already said, it should work as withdraw, without the cast time but you can’t use it while stunned or some control skill.

Bedlam.3562:

This guy doesn’t seem to be having any problems, or maybe EU players are just that much better?

http://www.twitch.tv/sizer2654

he just fought another thief and he lost lol.

I know he’s a good thief though…but even on stream he said he’s playing horrible.

My only hope here is the fact that they reverted 4 sec reveal back to 3 sec in wvw back in the day. Honestly the fact that its still 4 sec in spvp blows my mind and is single handedly the reason I don’t play spvp as much as I would like to. It probably also is one of the major reasons the “Jumper Build” got so popular. “oh, well stealth is really kitten in this game mode, what other defenses do thieves have? oh right, mobility, blinds, dodging, lets do that” -Most thieves. “Aw hell naw” -ANET.

Jumper.9482:

Next thing you know, they’re going to remove the daze on headshot because “we didn’t like players using it to deal 400dmg from a distance. Don’t worry though, the way you use it will not change”.

….What?

This has essentially been ANet’s logic over the past few months. For example:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Which is absolutely absurd; either way, it was just as able to be countered as any other teleport stomp.

Of course, that’s not to say that their first statement about IR being a “LOLstunbreakerz” is any more valid.

1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike style of play, like melee.

Because, honestly, the only reason that warrs hated the skill was because they couldn’t burst thieves for 5-10k damage at 300 range- at least, not quite as often. On the other hand, though, Mesmer lockdown builds could still function the same way they were designed to do so, and Hambow builds (which didn’t seem to have much of a burst anyways- they just seek to do lots of damage while simultaneously keeping you locked down) still were able to easily crush thief. Just to quote one more thing I’ve written about the subject,

Arganthium.5638:

Stunbreaker- not really. Usually it wasn’t far enough away to count as a stun breaker, and even if it was, you’d usually have to spend 5 initiative total to get back into the battle. The point of stuns, however, is to lock down the opponent, keeping him/her from doing anything. This has a variety of uses, but the one that has been most (ab?)used by ANet and, in particular, Warriors, is using stuns to keep an opponent from reacting to a high-damage attack, or high-damage attacks. Since basically every warrior skill is high-damage (well, many, many of them are), this has tended towards being the strategy for most warrs. The process simply becomes

1. Stun
2. Burst
3. Clean (ie use utilities, cleansing ire, etc)
4. Repeat

Which, unlike similar patterns in the game, deals far more damage overall and/or allows the player using the pattern to absorb massive amounts of damage at the same time.

However, the necessary idea is that, in order for this cycle to work, one must be able to use his or her melee attacks while the opponent is stunned (melee tends to do the most damage). By being able to use infi return, we were able to break this cycle, which did not in fact “completely destroy the warrior” or anything they’ll tell you, but rather countered that particular method of play, forcing warriors to find a different and less comfortable way to play their builds.

On the other hand, look at Lockdown mesmers. Their goal is not necessarily to burst you into the ground while attacking you, but rather to negate some of your damage by keeping you unable to react. Against these, Infi Return was near useless, except in situations where the shadowstep would take you farther away than the 1200 range on a mes’ weapons would allow, but even then, that was a fairly minor nuance.

As such, I would not, in fact, call infi return a stunbreaker, but rather a counter to a particular, cyclical pattern that must be itself countered by a different method of play.

Arganthium, Travlane and Jumper are some of the best thieves / theorycrafters we have! ANet should really start to listen to you guys, since you clearly know what you’re talking about – which ANet on the other hand does not…

i would love for ANet to actually listen to their community, or I fear that the thief will lose all of it’s good players and completely vanish from the meta..

If they are going to leave IR as is they should add 3-5 seconds of stability on Infiltrator’s Strike, but make it so it can’t add to duration if you already have stability (like how it works for Regen on our Shadow Protector trait, it won’t apply if you already have Regen). This will make it so you can’t spam it and have perma Stability.

Thieves are utterly useless and I strongly suggest to reroll, unless you’re like me who’s stuck in using it because I have legendaries on that character. They clearly don’t any devs that play the kitten profession while “balancing” things.

No stability for thieves (and anyone who claims , stunbreaks that have a 50 seconds cooldown versus 8 seconds cooldown with 3 seconds stun duration. And they call it balance. And then if when we question why the devs do that or even point out the mistakes made by , the mods come in to delete posts.

There has been nothing but utter disrespect to the players. Why bother asking for our opinions, when the MOST important change to our sword skills will render the thief profession using the sword weapon to be completely useless, and make it even worse than venom sharing builds?

Calling it a balance patch and then disappearing completely from the forums, again, utter disrespect to the players. This is the period where players deserve your assurance that you would look into things and a PROMISE to change things.

Double standards seem to apply ? (I still remember a certain wvw incident), and I won’t ever forget what the devs did for the past few months. There has been nothing but a series of bitter rejections in regards to the decisions ranging from living story to the wvw seasons to the balance patch.

Promises to “communicate” better with the community have been nothing but empty words.

The combination of S2 and Vigor nerfs this last patch with the buffs some of the other classes received mean it really is RIP S/D thief. I’ll still run it in solo queue/wvw because of how much fun it is, but S/D is no longer a meta build.

Excalibur.9748:

Bedlam.3562:

This guy doesn’t seem to be having any problems, or maybe EU players are just that much better?

http://www.twitch.tv/sizer2654

he just fought another thief and he lost lol.

I know he’s a good thief though…but even on stream he said he’s playing horrible.

You can’t post a video of sizer and say it represents most of the population. He is literally on the BEST sPvP team EU atm. And is probably one of the best S/D thieves atm as well (since I haven’t seen anything from Jumper in a long time). Sizer is an outlier in the statistic.

FeelsAlright.5860:

You can’t post a video of sizer and say it represents most of the population. He is literally on the BEST sPvP team EU atm. And is probably one of the best S/D thieves atm as well (since I haven’t seen anything from Jumper in a long time). Sizer is an outlier in the statistic.

actually it means that every other thief that can’t do what Sizer does simply needs to L2P. Sizer proves the build still has the potential to be good.

Balance should only be tweaked for players at the highest-level of play, because at any other level of play, it is simply a L2P issue. And while it is nice to have a semblance of balance while you are learning to play, it shouldn’t be a priority for balancing the game.

Reikou.7068:

FeelsAlright.5860:

You can’t post a video of sizer and say it represents most of the population. He is literally on the BEST sPvP team EU atm. And is probably one of the best S/D thieves atm as well (since I haven’t seen anything from Jumper in a long time). Sizer is an outlier in the statistic.

actually it means that every other thief that can’t do what Sizer does simply needs to L2P. Sizer proves the build still has the potential to be good.

Balance should only be tweaked for players at the highest-level of play, because at any other level of play, it is simply a L2P issue. And while it is nice to have a semblance of balance while you are learning to play, it shouldn’t be a priority for balancing the game.

Except NO other class is balanced in that way. It’s all balanced by the general population. Why should thief be any different?

Arganthium.5638:

Jumper.9482:

Next thing you know, they’re going to remove the daze on headshot because “we didn’t like players using it to deal 400dmg from a distance. Don’t worry though, the way you use it will not change”.

….What?

This has essentially been ANet’s logic over the past few months. For example:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Which is absolutely absurd; either way, it was just as able to be countered as any other teleport stomp.

Of course, that’s not to say that their first statement about IR being a “LOLstunbreakerz” is any more valid.

1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike style of play, like melee.

Because, honestly, the only reason that warrs hated the skill was because they couldn’t burst thieves for 5-10k damage at 300 range- at least, not quite as often. On the other hand, though, Mesmer lockdown builds could still function the same way they were designed to do so, and Hambow builds (which didn’t seem to have much of a burst anyways- they just seek to do lots of damage while simultaneously keeping you locked down) still were able to easily crush thief. Just to quote one more thing I’ve written about the subject,

Arganthium.5638:

Stunbreaker- not really. Usually it wasn’t far enough away to count as a stun breaker, and even if it was, you’d usually have to spend 5 initiative total to get back into the battle. The point of stuns, however, is to lock down the opponent, keeping him/her from doing anything. This has a variety of uses, but the one that has been most (ab?)used by ANet and, in particular, Warriors, is using stuns to keep an opponent from reacting to a high-damage attack, or high-damage attacks. Since basically every warrior skill is high-damage (well, many, many of them are), this has tended towards being the strategy for most warrs. The process simply becomes

1. Stun
2. Burst
3. Clean (ie use utilities, cleansing ire, etc)
4. Repeat

Which, unlike similar patterns in the game, deals far more damage overall and/or allows the player using the pattern to absorb massive amounts of damage at the same time.

However, the necessary idea is that, in order for this cycle to work, one must be able to use his or her melee attacks while the opponent is stunned (melee tends to do the most damage). By being able to use infi return, we were able to break this cycle, which did not in fact “completely destroy the warrior” or anything they’ll tell you, but rather countered that particular method of play, forcing warriors to find a different and less comfortable way to play their builds.

On the other hand, look at Lockdown mesmers. Their goal is not necessarily to burst you into the ground while attacking you, but rather to negate some of your damage by keeping you unable to react. Against these, Infi Return was near useless, except in situations where the shadowstep would take you farther away than the 1200 range on a mes’ weapons would allow, but even then, that was a fairly minor nuance.

As such, I would not, in fact, call infi return a stunbreaker, but rather a counter to a particular, cyclical pattern that must be itself countered by a different method of play.

i love how he says “put more risk on using a rewarding skill like infiltrators strike”

infiltrators strike is SUPER low dmg and a gap closer….and only a temporary one at that. so for 3 init u close a gap and do 1 sec immob which is usually only usefull for 2v1s to finish a runner. i mean yes its usefull but the rewarding part is IR….not IS….

Reikou.7068:

FeelsAlright.5860:

You can’t post a video of sizer and say it represents most of the population. He is literally on the BEST sPvP team EU atm. And is probably one of the best S/D thieves atm as well (since I haven’t seen anything from Jumper in a long time). Sizer is an outlier in the statistic.

actually it means that every other thief that can’t do what Sizer does simply needs to L2P. Sizer proves the build still has the potential to be good.

Balance should only be tweaked for players at the highest-level of play, because at any other level of play, it is simply a L2P issue. And while it is nice to have a semblance of balance while you are learning to play, it shouldn’t be a priority for balancing the game.

Actually, if you look at his games, many of his opponents seem to have that “flight” idea programmed into their minds mixed with a half-hearted attempt to fight back. Many of them also seem to ignore targeting him completely, and their combat skills are relatively lackluster. Furthermore, his build seems extremely suspect, which, presumably, means that he’s even luckier with his opponents than was implied before.

Arganthium.5638:

Reikou.7068:

FeelsAlright.5860:

You can’t post a video of sizer and say it represents most of the population. He is literally on the BEST sPvP team EU atm. And is probably one of the best S/D thieves atm as well (since I haven’t seen anything from Jumper in a long time). Sizer is an outlier in the statistic.

actually it means that every other thief that can’t do what Sizer does simply needs to L2P. Sizer proves the build still has the potential to be good.

Balance should only be tweaked for players at the highest-level of play, because at any other level of play, it is simply a L2P issue. And while it is nice to have a semblance of balance while you are learning to play, it shouldn’t be a priority for balancing the game.

Actually, if you look at his games, many of his opponents seem to have that “flight” idea programmed into their minds mixed with a half-hearted attempt to fight back. Many of them also seem to ignore targeting him completely, and their combat skills are relatively lackluster. Furthermore, his build seems extremely suspect, which, presumably, means that he’s even luckier with his opponents than was implied before.

i hate to be the one to say “bad opponents” on a video as it makes me feel like a hater…. but he is right here. seen some of his live play…i keep saying WTF is that other thief/player doing. really? why did he do that…wow. but thats me. idk.

Travlane.5948:

Arganthium.5638:

Actually, if you look at his games, many of his opponents seem to have that “flight” idea programmed into their minds mixed with a half-hearted attempt to fight back. Many of them also seem to ignore targeting him completely, and their combat skills are relatively lackluster. Furthermore, his build seems extremely suspect, which, presumably, means that he’s even luckier with his opponents than was implied before.

i hate to be the one to say “bad opponents” on a video as it makes me feel like a hater…. but he is right here. seen some of his live play…i keep saying WTF is that other thief/player doing. really? why did he do that…wow. but thats me. idk.

Perhaps so. I’ve never really watched him play, so I can’t comment too much on that. Perhaps its true, perhaps its not.

I’m simply saying that if Sizer is able to pull it off, other thieves should be able to do so as well. and even if Sizer is “an outlier in the statistic,” it doesn’t mean that the build is bad. It just means that everyone else needs to L2P.

If the day comes that S/D Evasion can really no longer be played at top level, then I will rephrase my statement.

FeelsAlright.5860:

Except NO other class is balanced in that way. It’s all balanced by the general population. Why should thief be any different?

No other class is balanced this way has more to do with the fact that anet’s balance team is incredibly incompetent and doesn’t know how they want to balance the game, than it being a good game-balance philosophy.

I don’t think anet knows what to do when it comes to thieves. They listen to the community too much in regards to thief balance. The reason that’s bad is because by design of a stealth class people are going to complain about it no matter what. They over nerf because if this. IR is not the first skill to get over nerfed.

Why do we have 4s revealed in pvp still, even after infusion nerf? Simply because people hate dealing with hidden enemies.

Lack of vision and lack of testing, it’s all it is.

sword #2 it’s one of those rare and interesting skills of the game that added depth. It still does but more than reducing it’s effectiveness, they made it clunky and lass fluid. just because like everything else…. they were lazy about it

teleport back at the start of cast and remove condi at the end of cast :/

Reikou.7068:

Travlane.5948:

Arganthium.5638:

Actually, if you look at his games, many of his opponents seem to have that “flight” idea programmed into their minds mixed with a half-hearted attempt to fight back. Many of them also seem to ignore targeting him completely, and their combat skills are relatively lackluster. Furthermore, his build seems extremely suspect, which, presumably, means that he’s even luckier with his opponents than was implied before.

i hate to be the one to say “bad opponents” on a video as it makes me feel like a hater…. but he is right here. seen some of his live play…i keep saying WTF is that other thief/player doing. really? why did he do that…wow. but thats me. idk.

Perhaps so. I’ve never really watched him play, so I can’t comment too much on that. Perhaps its true, perhaps its not.

I’m simply saying that if Sizer is able to pull it off, other thieves should be able to do so as well. and even if Sizer is “an outlier in the statistic,” it doesn’t mean that the build is bad. It just means that everyone else needs to L2P.

If the day comes that S/D Evasion can really no longer be played at top level, then I will rephrase my statement.

FeelsAlright.5860:

Except NO other class is balanced in that way. It’s all balanced by the general population. Why should thief be any different?

No other class is balanced this way has more to do with the fact that anet’s balance team is incredibly incompetent and doesn’t know how they want to balance the game, than it being a good game-balance philosophy.

mayb e so. but why is thief the only class that L2P is such an issue? why does everything have to be the most amazing player to make it work? see what i mean? even average players can make warrior/guardian/mesmer etc work in spvp/tpvp/wvw. its all passive

Geiir.7603:

Arganthium, Travlane and Jumper are some of the best thieves / theorycrafters we have! ANet should really start to listen to you guys, since you clearly know what you’re talking about – which ANet on the other hand does not…

i would love for ANet to actually listen to their community, or I fear that the thief will lose all of it’s good players and completely vanish from the meta..

Haha thanks though I don’t think that the problem is necessarily that they don’t listen to us, sadly, but rather that they just don’t know what they’re talking about.

Reikou.7068:

Travlane.5948:

Arganthium.5638:

Actually, if you look at his games, many of his opponents seem to have that “flight” idea programmed into their minds mixed with a half-hearted attempt to fight back. Many of them also seem to ignore targeting him completely, and their combat skills are relatively lackluster. Furthermore, his build seems extremely suspect, which, presumably, means that he’s even luckier with his opponents than was implied before.

i hate to be the one to say “bad opponents” on a video as it makes me feel like a hater…. but he is right here. seen some of his live play…i keep saying WTF is that other thief/player doing. really? why did he do that…wow. but thats me. idk.

Perhaps so. I’ve never really watched him play, so I can’t comment too much on that. Perhaps its true, perhaps its not.

I’m simply saying that if Sizer is able to pull it off, other thieves should be able to do so as well. and even if Sizer is “an outlier in the statistic,” it doesn’t mean that the build is bad. It just means that everyone else needs to L2P.

If the day comes that S/D Evasion can really no longer be played at top level, then I will rephrase my statement.

FeelsAlright.5860:

Except NO other class is balanced in that way. It’s all balanced by the general population. Why should thief be any different?

No other class is balanced this way has more to do with the fact that anet’s balance team is incredibly incompetent and doesn’t know how they want to balance the game, than it being a good game-balance philosophy.

Sizer is nothing special.

He used to get crushed by good players BEFORE and still will be right now ( surely not because he’s a bad player, but because the thief profession, and in particular S/D, was nothing special from the beginning).

for a reference

Cheese mode is simply sticking to their old comp because they don’t want to adapt again, and because, right now, there’s no competition even in EU ( and i dunno if it’s ever going to be again).

Thief sucks balls right now, worst prof right after ele.

Even burst S/P is better than S/D now, D/P too, and they both sucks.

Mrbig.8019:

Reikou.7068:

Travlane.5948:

Arganthium.5638:

Actually, if you look at his games, many of his opponents seem to have that “flight” idea programmed into their minds mixed with a half-hearted attempt to fight back. Many of them also seem to ignore targeting him completely, and their combat skills are relatively lackluster. Furthermore, his build seems extremely suspect, which, presumably, means that he’s even luckier with his opponents than was implied before.

i hate to be the one to say “bad opponents” on a video as it makes me feel like a hater…. but he is right here. seen some of his live play…i keep saying WTF is that other thief/player doing. really? why did he do that…wow. but thats me. idk.

Perhaps so. I’ve never really watched him play, so I can’t comment too much on that. Perhaps its true, perhaps its not.

I’m simply saying that if Sizer is able to pull it off, other thieves should be able to do so as well. and even if Sizer is “an outlier in the statistic,” it doesn’t mean that the build is bad. It just means that everyone else needs to L2P.

If the day comes that S/D Evasion can really no longer be played at top level, then I will rephrase my statement.

FeelsAlright.5860:

Except NO other class is balanced in that way. It’s all balanced by the general population. Why should thief be any different?

No other class is balanced this way has more to do with the fact that anet’s balance team is incredibly incompetent and doesn’t know how they want to balance the game, than it being a good game-balance philosophy.

Sizer is nothing special.

He used to get crushed by good players BEFORE and still will be right now ( surely not because he’s a bad player, but because the thief profession, and in particular S/D, was nothing special from the beginning).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3o2fB_ADjc

for a reference

Cheese mode is simply sticking to their old comp because they don’t want to adapt again, and because, right now, there’s no competition even in EU ( and i dunno if it’s ever going to be again).

Thief sucks balls right now, worst prof right after ele.

Even burst S/P is better than S/D now, D/P too, and they both sucks.

Thief should lose vs condi necro. We have no condi clears…

Or they should simply revert it. It was a nerf that never should have been conceived or thought up.

With IR nerf I really wish that theif got a build in Stun breaker as class mechanic that run in specific cool down.Maybe a dodge that drain complete endurance bar with timer on it.
At least dev can’t find excuse to nerf it since we already got vigor boon nerf.

I don’t understand where anet want thieves. They’re clearly not a support class, apart from venom share (a top tier trait), none of the thief abilities or weapon skills are group oriented.

The role of a thief is meant to be high single target damage and lots of escapes, this counters our very low hps/fragility. By nerfing stealth/vigor gain/introduction of abilities like sic em (really??? an ability designed specifically to negate thieves? Can we have an ability specifically to negate 30 clones or aoe condition spam??), they have eliminated this balance.

Now single target damage of pretty much every class is on par with the thief, yet they retain high armour/hp tables. I was up against a guardian who shredded my hitpoints with a few aoes, he didn’t even have to aim. To get the same damage i need to be in stealth and behind him.

None of our abilities really have utility, they’re just dps in another form. The only decent form of buff rip was nerfed into the ground.

The thief is great for killing up levels, or horrible players. Yet you go up against a well geared/played class of any other kind, chances are the effort you have to make as a thief will be 10x that of the other guy.

bump cause this nerf needs more negative attention. =]

phaeris.7604:

I don’t understand where anet want thieves. They’re clearly not a support class, apart from venom share (a top tier trait), none of the thief abilities or weapon skills are group oriented.

The role of a thief is meant to be high single target damage and lots of escapes, this counters our very low hps/fragility. By nerfing stealth/vigor gain/introduction of abilities like sic em (really??? an ability designed specifically to negate thieves? Can we have an ability specifically to negate 30 clones or aoe condition spam??), they have eliminated this balance.

Now single target damage of pretty much every class is on par with the thief, yet they retain high armour/hp tables. I was up against a guardian who shredded my hitpoints with a few aoes, he didn’t even have to aim. To get the same damage i need to be in stealth and behind him.

None of our abilities really have utility, they’re just dps in another form. The only decent form of buff rip was nerfed into the ground.

The thief is great for killing up levels, or horrible players. Yet you go up against a well geared/played class of any other kind, chances are the effort you have to make as a thief will be 10x that of the other guy.

This whole post right here.

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

phaeris.7604:

I don’t understand where anet want thieves. They’re clearly not a support class, apart from venom share (a top tier trait), none of the thief abilities or weapon skills are group oriented.

The role of a thief is meant to be high single target damage and lots of escapes, this counters our very low hps/fragility. By nerfing stealth/vigor gain/introduction of abilities like sic em (really??? an ability designed specifically to negate thieves? Can we have an ability specifically to negate 30 clones or aoe condition spam??), they have eliminated this balance.

Now single target damage of pretty much every class is on par with the thief, yet they retain high armour/hp tables. I was up against a guardian who shredded my hitpoints with a few aoes, he didn’t even have to aim. To get the same damage i need to be in stealth and behind him.

None of our abilities really have utility, they’re just dps in another form. The only decent form of buff rip was nerfed into the ground.

The thief is great for killing up levels, or horrible players. Yet you go up against a well geared/played class of any other kind, chances are the effort you have to make as a thief will be 10x that of the other guy.

This whole post right here.

i 2nd this. prolly 13240932nd this actually.

I still use my thief, occasionally, for trolling, with 25/30/0/0/15 PW build. My S/D sustain is not fun at all though in wvw. And that was the build I was having fun playing. Now… settlers/apothecary condi warrior. Now for a story:
Today I met a roamer thief. He jumped me and I used an elite skill, called /sleep. After he attacked me with all he got for around 10s and finally got my hp under 50%, I stroke back with all my conditions. He alt+f4-ed immediately after he got downed.
Something in this situation looks… not very balanced. Oh wait, I got it: /sleep skill op. Solution – nerf daggerstorm.

Since the last sword nerf I’ve only been able to use Infiltrator’s Strike as an opener/gap closer, immediately switch to d/d and hope to finish the fight with no reliable exit strategy. It’s just sad that I’m only able to use 1 skill (really only 1/2 of the skill) of an entire weapon since the Infiltrator’s Return is now just too slow (being qued behind any other slow sword attacks) to be relied upon.

My mesmer is a much better thief than my thief is now…and that’s just wrong.

Pavel.8531:

I still use my thief, occasionally, for trolling, with 25/30/0/0/15 PW build. My S/D sustain is not fun at all though in wvw. And that was the build I was having fun playing. Now… settlers/apothecary condi warrior. Now for a story:
Today I met a roamer thief. He jumped me and I used an elite skill, called /sleep. After he attacked me with all he got for around 10s and finally got my hp under 50%, I stroke back with all my conditions. He alt+f4-ed immediately after he got downed.
Something in this situation looks… not very balanced. Oh wait, I got it: /sleep skill op. Solution – nerf daggerstorm.

Sounds like you’re a Necro, and in desperate need of nerfs right next to Warrior.

Reikou.7068:

Pavel.8531:

I still use my thief, occasionally, for trolling, with 25/30/0/0/15 PW build. My S/D sustain is not fun at all though in wvw. And that was the build I was having fun playing. Now… settlers/apothecary condi warrior. Now for a story:
Today I met a roamer thief. He jumped me and I used an elite skill, called /sleep. After he attacked me with all he got for around 10s and finally got my hp under 50%, I stroke back with all my conditions. He alt+f4-ed immediately after he got downed.
Something in this situation looks… not very balanced. Oh wait, I got it: /sleep skill op. Solution – nerf daggerstorm.

Sounds like you’re a Necro, and in desperate need of nerfs right next to Warrior.

Reading is a good skill to have.

trying to make anet listen to reasonable balancing issues is an exercise in futility.

its sad that they can’t even accept that players can know much more of their game, the way more competitive genres like MOBAS, fighting, and rts games actually listen to their top players. and no, the ‘collaboration’ they said is very misleading and untrue, as anyone can see from the before and after proposed balance changes.

they just keep believing that they know balancing by themselves the best, when from what we seen how they play from the dev streams, that its simply not true.

They could of at least made both IS and IR remove 1 condition if they’re going to keep this nerf, since it craps all over swords already bad Cond removal. :o Not to mention less Vigor also makes sword weaker. Even the high evasion double S/D spec in Spvp was often totally wrecked by condition damage, even with the faster SR (even though you can’t use it a lot with that build), so I don’t see why not.

By the way, they got the suggestion for this change from a top play. A top Guardian player….. Just a heads up. Kensuda, thanks for suggesting such a pointless nerf. Still can’t believe it actually went through.

Arkitech.9158:

By the way, they got the suggestion for this change from a top play. A top Guardian player….. Just a heads up. Kensuda, thanks for suggesting such a pointless nerf. Still can’t believe it actually went through.

Well, they can’t let Guardian players go unhappy now can they?
I’ll remember this name as my most disliked in gaming then.

Doggie.3184:

Arkitech.9158:

By the way, they got the suggestion for this change from a top play. A top Guardian player….. Just a heads up. Kensuda, thanks for suggesting such a pointless nerf. Still can’t believe it actually went through.

Well, they can’t let Guardian players go unhappy now can they?
I’ll remember this name as my most disliked in gaming then.

He is honestly a really good player and a solid member of the community. Pretty sure the suggestion was a joke at first. That’s why I can’t believe it went through. Cool dude, but the fact that he suggested such a nerf still kitten es me off.

I wouldn’t place blame on any specific player. Bad ideas are given all the time, by all sorts of players.

The onus is on the Arenanet balance team for not realising that this idea was a horrible one.