Guild Wars 2

Hello Just wanted to bring something to everyone’s attention. So I’m a dedicated sword dagger thief. I love sword dagger, it’s my fav assassin build I’ve played in any mmo so far. “A master of stepping through shadow’s” “the Shadow Warrior”.

I understand the need for a nerf to infiltrator’s strike. A spammable stunbreak/condi strip/ teleport /escape I mean THAT’s strong. Keep in mind we thieves once caught are easily dispatched but never the less a spammable stun break is too strong ok, I agree. However you put a small cast time on it. I was worried this would be an issue with escaping the many speedy burst combo’s in the game, I logged in and tried it and it was cutting it close in my opinion but I didn’t complain. But then I realized after using it in live combat that it’s a self interupt. I was actually killed a few times. Not because I couldn’t break a stun but because I was repeatedly interupting my self from awesome combo’s we used to do with inf strike.

Here are a few things I we can’t do anymore do to the cast time:

1. Infiltrator’s return while mid cast on heal to juke the enemy trying to interupt.

Sometimes I’m being bum rushed while I heal so I fake them out and stand there casting as they rush in and then teleport.

2. Inf return dodge combo.
Sometimes people like to be real funny and put traps and wells or do 100b etc.on my return circle so dodging into return can help counter that if I’m paying attention.

3. inf return while casting cloak and dagger when I see someone waiting on top of my return.

I love doing this one and imo it takes skill and timing and is very rewarding when someone walks across your return circle and you port back and catch then with the tail end of your cloak and dagger.

4. Inf Return while mid cast on shadow refuge.
Another fun use of return, fun things like a team mate is about to be stomped next to your return and you start cast of refuge and and return stealthing him just in time and starting a revive.

5. inf returning while in flanking strike
Another way to return while dodging and a good way to conceal the follow up of larcenous strike

6. inf returning while mid cast on a venom to juke enemy from interupt.

Again sometimes starting the cast and then porting can confuse the enemy and cause them to hesitate on interrupt or to bum rush your current location thinking they’ll catch you in time because cast finishes.

These are all broken by the cast time that’s been implemented. I have a feeling maybe this wasn’t foreseen but it’s been turned into a self interupt which is gamebreaking in swordplay. Again I understand no being able to teleport while stunned but the cast time effects many things and combos not just stunbreaking.

It just feels clumsy and awkward and broken. It was a fluid dance of blades before. Poetry in motion (lol).

Thank you for your time and anyone plz feel free to add to it fellow thieves.

I use sp and I also like to pistol wip then ir when ppl are standing on ir circle and Black powder aswell.

This nerf really reduce the creativity of what a skilled thief can do.

Exactly. This nerf REALLY hurt our creativity with sword. I guess I kinda understand the stunbreak change but it needs to be redesigned so it doesn’t punish creativity and skill, again I’m guessing they didn’t intend for this change to effect in this way, not knowing so many things were connectd to it. I hope.

And the stun-escape (it didn’t break stuns) was only half of the argument for the change. The other half was the supposed ability to tele-stomp in pvp.

Now, I need to know…

I need to know, is there some kind of magical way to change where your shadow return circle is? Was it possible to be stomping someone, have them escape through whatever downed ability they have, and press #2 in some fashion to teleport you somewhere other than your return circle. Because if someone escaped to your return circle, they clearly deserved the bunny flag to the face.

I ask this, because I’d really, really hope that the lead designer of this game didn’t feed us a giant straw man to push through a change that ultimately tanks the skill ceiling and creative use of an ability. Then, in the same thread, argue that ranger swords needed to stay the same because the awkward mechanics promoted skillful play.

If I am wrong, and this did happen, just lie to me. Just lie to me so I feel better.

^ He acknowledged that it required also using Infiltrator’s, i.e. a utility to accomplish the tele-stomp, but still didn’t like it.

Interceptor.2653:

^ He acknowledged that it required also using Infiltrator’s, i.e. a utility to accomplish the tele-stomp, but still didn’t like it.

(clutches his Mesmer’s Blink and sobs) Oh god, you’re next. We’ve… (sniffle) We’ve been through so much together.

Maybe there’s still time. I must warn my kin! I must tell them to stop asking for daggers and mainhand pistol. I must warn them to stop using stealth. If we stop looking like thieves, we might just be able to throw them off the trail before it’s too late.

It was a really lame argument, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean the change to Sword #2 wasn’t warranted. I mean, offhand Pistol basically guarantees a stomps too; they didn’t nerf Black Powder.

Clockwork Bard.3105:

And the stun-escape (it didn’t break stuns) was only half of the argument for the change. The other half was the supposed ability to tele-stomp in pvp.

Now, I need to know…

I need to know, is there some kind of magical way to change where your shadow return circle is? Was it possible to be stomping someone, have them escape through whatever downed ability they have, and press #2 in some fashion to teleport you somewhere other than your return circle. Because if someone escaped to your return circle, they clearly deserved the bunny flag to the face.

I ask this, because I’d really, really hope that the lead designer of this game didn’t feed us a giant straw man to push through a change that ultimately tanks the skill ceiling and creative use of an ability. Then, in the same thread, argue that ranger swords needed to stay the same because the awkward mechanics promoted skillful play.

If I am wrong, and this did happen, just lie to me. Just lie to me so I feel better.

Did you even play S/D? Infil stomp was incredibly strong thanks to the low CDs on Infilftrators Signet and Steal. It was pathetic to use that as an excuse to nerf it though, especially considering invuln/stability stomps exist and are 10x more potent.

I really could care less about using it as a stomp technique. I have a slew of other ways to do it. It’s the synergy that I care about. It’s synergy has taken a mighty blow. But it’s strange I thought we were supposed to get some kind of interupt to deal with the inf stomping. Like a new mechanic. So it’s kind of a seperate issue. like when you return to an opponent you get knocked down or something….although since its not a stunbreak anymore they would be able to cc us and stop it I presume.

I really don’t think the change in Infiltrator’s Strike was needed at all. It was practically the best feature of sword/dagger and extremely useful for confusing and defeating other players. Not to mention that it was the only way to effectively fight stun builds or larger groups. It gave us sword/dagger thieves a tool to use against dagger/dagger thieves as well. See, the problem is that with sword/dagger you don’t have the ability to deal out massive damage in a short amount of time like dagger/dagger thieves. You need to stay in and hit a few times to deal effective damage. If things get hot, you need a way to get out of there asap. Dagger/dagger thieves have the ability to backstab for huge damage, cloak and dagger again, and repeat. This all happens so quick and makes dagger/dagger thieves deadly. Now that Inflitrator’s Strike has a cast time, it means you have to Return before taking heavy damage or getting stunned which also gives you significally less time to deal damage. As OP mentioned, the return interrupts any skills we are using and delays the time you have to heal. This means more damage from conditions. Once a thief is stunned they are screwed, sure you can say sword/dagger can use the same tactics as dagger/dagger and stealth+dodge to avoid that; however, as I mentioned before dagger/dagger have the luxury of being able to deal massive damage using the stealth and in a short amount of time while sword/dagger don’t. So the best option is to retreat if we get hit with stun while attempting to use our skill 1 chain.

A smart player knows about the sword/dagger’s Return and can keep track of where the thief ported from and know where they will port back. I fought several people like this and it made my Infiltrator’s Strike a challenge to use. With this nerf, it is practically useless as a retreat as we won’t even be able to do anything until the animation for the Return is done. My sword/dagger build which, before today, could take on any other class and build on equal footing is now considerably weaker and leaves me with precious few options while fighting. I relied heavily on Infiltrator’s Strike to confuse and fight enemies and now I can forget about it being an effective solo roaming build much less being somewhat usable in an outnumbered fight.

It seems like Anet doesn’t want people to use Sword/Dagger as we keep getting nerf after nerf. First, Infiltrator’s Strike lost it’s stun breaking ability. Okay, at least we can still avoid some damage by porting back. Then we lost the ability to remove two boons with Skill 3, now it’s practically useless to strip boons especially from guardians since they have so many. Now, we can’t even port back while stunned meaning we take tons more damage before being able to get away. If I had known, it’d be this bad, I would have preferred not having the faster initiative regen as I fought much better with less initiative as long as I could confuse the enemy with my trusty Return.

I really dislike the change to Infiltrator’s Return. It really breaks the flow of combat and Acrobatics builds have not really been compensated for the change. Hard to Catch is not a worthy substitute as it is worse in almost every conceivable way. A teleport in a random direction, at a time you cannot control, on a 30 second cooldown, that does not even break stun is not good enough for a Master level trait. Not when you have other master level traits that are literally build-defining (Leeching Venoms). I appreciate that Infiltrator’s Return may have allowed Sword thieves to be overly strong against control specs, but this is not a reasonable solution to the problem.

Before the patch landed I somewhat agreed with the methodology behind the cast time addition to Infiltrators Return. I have to say though after testing (just in PvE mind you) I’m not convinced that the cast time is really only 1/4 second as the tooltip states.

Just a simple test fighting a usually no sweat vet giant in Cursed Shore. He does a relatively long windup before a knockback attack, definitely more than 1 second telegraphed. I used to be able to initiate the fight with Infiltrator’s Strike, wait for the tell and return…no problem. Not anymore. Now as soon as I see him starting his windup I try to return and never make it in time. My hotkey is actually on my mouse and my reaction times are fast for everything else so I just can’t believe that it’s actually a 1/4 second cast time. It really takes about 1 second for the return to happen as far as I can tell.

It might be due to micro lag or maybe even a bug but it just doesn’t seem like what was advertised on the label. Very frustrating getting owned by such a slow mob…don’t even want to think about how this affects PvP.

EDIT: Sorry, I just saw there is already a thread specifically regarding this, I’ll post this there. Good to know I’m not alone though.

Thief was what i started as in gw2, and when they announced the patch stuff weeks ago that they were further nerfing infiltrator strike/shadow return i quit playing thief at that point i knew they were not going to stop nerfing is/SR which was one of the only enjoyable things about the thief that didn’t require stealth.

I have not logged onto my thief since this last patch, i have not even tried this massive nerfed is/sr because if i do i feel like i’ll probably delete my thief.

MADAIR.1948:

…..
These are all broken by the cast time that’s been implemented. I have a feeling maybe this wasn’t foreseen but it’s been turned into a self interupt which is gamebreaking in swordplay. Again I understand no being able to teleport while stunned but the cast time effects many things and combos not just stunbreaking.

It just feels clumsy and awkward and broken. It was a fluid dance of blades before. Poetry in motion (lol).

Thank you for your time and anyone plz feel free to add to it fellow thieves.

It was foreseen loudly and repeatedly by numerous members of the thief community, many of them top players, for the entire month and a half between preview and patch. Unfortunately it seems Anet decided to go through with the change anyway. I don’t understand why they decided to completely kill skilled play just to prevent stun escapes when they could have instead disabled IR while CC’d.

The SR->IR stomp reason that was listed in the preview doesn’t convince me – 5 init + a utility seems a fair cost to secure a stomp, especially on a class that can’t gain stability and relies on active evasion to mitigate damage. Even if this was deemed too powerful, they could have just disabled IR while stunned/stomping and solved the issues they feel IR had without gutting the skilled options that came along with it. It might have been more programming work, but IMO it’s better than gutting a MH weapon to the point where skilled play is no longer an option.

I really hope the dev’s read this. The synergy is so awkward now. Again no tele on stun in not my issue it’s the cast time breaking combo synergy. Please fix this, or at least respond!

S/D was the antithesis of skillful play. People clamoring that the nerf took away “skill” from the build need to honestly kitten what that word means. S/D was too forgiving, very similar to the current warrior builds. You could make mistake after mistake and still do well. That’s not skill, that’s broken.

Pyriall.5027:

S/D was the antithesis of skillful play. People clamoring that the nerf took away “skill” from the build need to honestly kitten what that word means. S/D was too forgiving, very similar to the current warrior builds. You could make mistake after mistake and still do well. That’s not skill, that’s broken.

Read OP’s post. If that doesn’t exemplify skilled play to you, I’m not sure what else to say to you. Many players just seem to dislike thieves because they can be frustrating to fight – frustrating to fight != forgiving, overpowered, or easy. S/D was a high skill cap build, probably thieves highest – the winners of the first cash tournament agree, most “top” players agree.

Fun Fact:
It took me weeks after the LS introduction to stand a chance against caed’s d/p trickery (you can see some early duels on my youtube)
I tried getting r50+ players to play this matchup, pitting blinx vs acandis both with absolutely 0 experience to d/p and s/d. The results weren’t even close blinx’s D/P completely demolished him.

I’d say its very similar to the game ‘DiveKick’, where its extremely simple (2 buttons) on the surface but an infinite amount of depth and mindgames.

And yes, precasting spells like CnD into infiltrators returns to make clutch escapes was one of the more advanced and fun aspects.

Jumper.9482:

Fun Fact:
It took me weeks after the LS introduction to stand a chance against caed’s d/p trickery (you can see some early duels on my youtube)
I tried getting r50+ players to play this matchup, pitting blinx vs acandis both with absolutely 0 experience to d/p and s/d. The results weren’t even close blinx’s D/P completely demolished him.

I’d say its very similar to the game ‘DiveKick’, where its extremely simple (2 buttons) on the surface but an infinite amount of depth and mindgames.

and if u see where this is going… they are going to dumb the class down…. up the defense/hp or something or give protection or aegis…idk yet but something defensively will change.

i notice that the best players in the game (skill wise) always play thief and engineer 2ndly. they are the two hardest to play but when played with a very high lvl of skill they are very strong.

for instance….if i play against a bad thief its and instant gank kill and ty for my bag. against a good thief im having a tug of war battle where i cant afford a mistake and same against engineers.

warriors are anets noodly noobie class where a good or badplayer is going to do roughly the same. seriously get a 2 month player to pvp on warrior thena 1 year player to do it on same build warrior. u will barely notice a difference other than perhaps a better timed dodge roll or 2.

Honestly, Anet is just trolling us. Powercreeping the kitten out of other classes while nerfing us continually. They knew this was a stupid idea based on our feedback.

evilapprentice.6379:

Pyriall.5027:

S/D was the antithesis of skillful play. People clamoring that the nerf took away “skill” from the build need to honestly kitten what that word means. S/D was too forgiving, very similar to the current warrior builds. You could make mistake after mistake and still do well. That’s not skill, that’s broken.

Read OP’s post. If that doesn’t exemplify skilled play to you, I’m not sure what else to say to you. Many players just seem to dislike thieves because they can be frustrating to fight – frustrating to fight != forgiving, overpowered, or easy. S/D was a high skill cap build, probably thieves highest – the winners of the first cash tournament agree, most “top” players agree.

Thanks man, I was about to say the same thing then saw your post. Please read the post people this is not a thread about just giving back original inf strike.

Thank you for your input.

Travlane.5948:

Jumper.9482:

Fun Fact:
It took me weeks after the LS introduction to stand a chance against caed’s d/p trickery (you can see some early duels on my youtube)
I tried getting r50+ players to play this matchup, pitting blinx vs acandis both with absolutely 0 experience to d/p and s/d. The results weren’t even close blinx’s D/P completely demolished him.

I’d say its very similar to the game ‘DiveKick’, where its extremely simple (2 buttons) on the surface but an infinite amount of depth and mindgames.

and if u see where this is going… they are going to dumb the class down…. up the defense/hp or something or give protection or aegis…idk yet but something defensively will change.

i notice that the best players in the game (skill wise) always play thief and engineer 2ndly. they are the two hardest to play but when played with a very high lvl of skill they are very strong.

for instance….if i play against a bad thief its and instant gank kill and ty for my bag. against a good thief im having a tug of war battle where i cant afford a mistake and same against engineers.

warriors are anets noodly noobie class where a good or badplayer is going to do roughly the same. seriously get a 2 month player to pvp on warrior thena 1 year player to do it on same build warrior. u will barely notice a difference other than perhaps a better timed dodge roll or 2.

@ Jumper
I agree. And the inf return combos imo are high skill cap too and so fun and creative for me. For instance that cnd return. I was running a shadow build wvw and returning into that stripped a condi, regen’d some hp, gave 2 stacks of might, and blinded that incoming attack…a lot of rewards for paying attention and staying on your toes. This is gone now and and reallly makes me sad.

@ Travlane
God plz no…no no no. I used to play wow. This became a meta. An arena match of quick kills where mistakes earned your death turned into 2 hour+ matches because everyone had heal ticks and healers and high resilience. In fact it got so bad they had to put a cap on the match times. I pray Guild wars 2 doesn’t go down that road. The dodging, the reflexes, thinking ten steps ahead in that very second, that’s what i want to play.