Guild Wars 2

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking

“Enjoying success requires the ability to adapt. Only by being open to change will you have a true opportunity to get the most from your talent.” – Nolan Ryan

Major change is triggered when people face a significant discrepancy between what they expected and what actually happens during change. People adjust to change, not by learning to like what is taking place, but by forming new expectations that can lead to success under the new conditions.

So let us not dig our own graves, even so before the actual changes are made.
On the other hand, discussions of what we can do to counter these changes I support (if they even hit live).

I know we get nerfed all the time, but some changes were, and will be, needed – even if we don’t like the changes. We adapt. Human nature. That’s why we live and not the neanderthals.

i see you learned the art of quoting. I am jealous.

Adapting to different circumstances is what Thief does on a daily, We can’t afford to face tank anything, so we find ways to work around, and cope.

that attitude is great but what you’re doing is just being pushed arounded
you take whatever is thrown at you instead of standing up to it

there’s only so much we’re willing to adapt
sooner or later we’ll all narrow down to 1 similar build because everything else
won’t be viable or soem other classes will do better

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” – Charles Darwin

The following fits GW2 quite good, since so many buffs/nerfs appear to come out of nowhere, like it was just as RNG as the loot system. <3

“Survivors aren’t always the strongest; sometimes they’re the smartest, but more often simply the luckiest.” – Carrie Ryan

“Momma said life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your gonna get.” –Forrest Gump

“When in doubt, go for the kitten joke.”
-Robin Williams

Not to be that guy but we wiped out the neanderthals….they don’t exist because we killed/absorbed them…

Im just sad there is nothing to really look forward to in the patch for Thieves. Venoms and P/P are still gonna suck, Invigorating Precision and Assasin’s Equilibrium will still suck. The two hit cleave on daggers is all that’s there really.

Honestly… there is not much adaptation needed after this patch. Everyone is overreacting. Anyone who uses dagger main hand got buffed – we didn’t need the cleave but thanks anyway! Using shortbow #4 in stealth while not getting revealed is not a big deal… who can you kill using only shortbow. Sw#3 change is controversial but still something you can work around. I will literally be changing nothing about my build.

Where did you all hear about the changes for thief?

Frusen.3761:

Where did you all hear about the changes for thief?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Skill-Bar-Thief-preview-changes/first

i adapted, i rerolled engi and warrior…

no adapting gonna help vs devs willing to delete every builds for sake of of promoting venoms

Allow me to rebut your quotes with a story…

There was a man named Joe who was newlywed to his wife, Sarah. They’ve only seen each other intermittently for a year, but they both felt that it was meant to be.

For the first year, they’ve experienced their fair amount of concerns with each other’s habits and pet peeves. One day, Joe decided to sit down with Sarah and talk about their differences and how they can adapt to their varied lifestyles. This, however, failed quickly as Sarah was sure that she was not at fault; that Joe just needed to humor her simple requests, suck it up and then everything would be okay. For a few months, Joe did just that.

But Sarah showed no concern for his emotional well being and kept doing her regular habits while Joe was left to his restrictions. In fact, Joe’s revamped habits bugged Sarah’s friends so much that Joe had to compensate further. Joe felt this was highly unjustified and unfair, but Sarah would not have any of his gripes. So Joe decided to speak up once again instead with an ultimatum: “You know, I am getting tired of you and your friends dictating how I go about my day. So instead of changing my lifestyle to suit your’s, I am going to give myself as much freedom as you give yourself.”

This merely turned their lives into an escalating war where both Joe and Sarah would spend the next few years limiting eachother’s access to everything.

It all came to an end when Joe found his bank suddenly empty, his vehicle repossessed and his name taken off everything he owned. He never came home from work the next night, which bothered Sarah. She called him for an explanation but all she got from him was, “Check your email.”

She found a large .pdf of divorce papers with an attached note saying, " I love you, but you’ve made it obvious that you don’t love the real me. I am willing to change to make it work between us. But if I am the only one committing then this is not a relationship I want to be part of.

Moral of the story: Yes, you should always be adapting. But you should never be the only one to adapt. If after adapting so much you cease to be what you were, then you might as well not have been in that situation in the first place.

This is true with every relationship even between developer and player. Asking thieves to continue to adapt after a few years of doing just that with little to no room for compromise will only turn players off. Anet learned this last year I think.

mompen.7952:

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking

I like challenge of overcoming difficult stuff, but I play this game for fun, the moment it becomes a job to overcome Anet’s higher plans, I will simply look for fun elsewhere.

I do however feel sorry for the new players coming to this class, you can see several threads asking for help already. Even in the game, some players ask me for tips and tricks on how to get better at playing thief. Their problem is low dmg and poor survival, and I honestly don’t know what to advise them anymore. Spend 1000+ hours on thief so you don’t die the instant some sneezes on other side of the map? Most end up with p/d condi or hop onto another class. We can tell ourselves how good we are for playing “high skill class” but it won’t change the fact that thief class is lacking something.

Your attachment needed small adjustment.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

mompen.7952:

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking

I like challenge of overcoming difficult stuff, but I play this game for fun, the moment it becomes a job to overcome Anet’s higher plans, I will simply look for fun elsewhere.

I do however feel sorry for the new players coming to this class, you can see several threads asking for help already. Even in the game, some players ask me for tips and tricks on how to get better at playing thief. Their problem is low dmg and poor survival, and I honestly don’t know what to advise them anymore. Spend 1000+ hours on thief so you don’t die the instant some sneezes on other side of the map? Most end up with p/d condi or hop onto another class. We can tell ourselves how good we are for playing “high skill class” but it won’t change the fact that thief class is lacking something.

Your attachment needed small adjustment.

The thief class is lacking a different approach from the players. Yes it has issues that needs to be resolved. Personally, i think the answer lies in venoms and traps. Not building around them (only works for groups) but including them to enhance the bigger picture.
That and relying less on huge numbers on every strike.
If you want huge numbers on every strike, you’re better off as a zerk GS warrior or glassbow ranger. Those are the only two “safe” choices for obvious reasons. You can say what you want, but it is no longer possible to scoff at the ranger. It has slowly become a seriously well rounded class.
I recently rolled my thief into WvW, i main a ranger and has played over 1600 hours on it, out of those, nearly 1500 is spent on WvW roaming, yet i rolled out my thief and met a trapper. Ive played trapper myself and probably spent 200 hours or so with that build, i know how it works, what make it work, how to deal with it (in theory). However you quickly realize that the tools for beating a trapper is just not there. You can spam blinds, spam stealth, backstabs, but in the end you simply cannot outcleanse the application of conditions fast enough and there isn’t any HP to “soak it up”.
Same with a perplex engi i met. The conditions is manageable but my own high rate of attack forces me NOT to attack or else ill destroy myself in mere seconds.
Warriors, while on my ranger i can destroy them in seconds if i want, in most cases i do not even need to swap out my longbow to deal with a warrior, yet with the thief, it is a long, grueling uphill battle where one immob or stun will completely ruin you.

The thief class is strong in the hands of good players indeed, i am certainly not good with the thief, i’d say ive barely crawled up to somewhere below average, yet i already “met the wall”, and i cannot be bothered to scale it simply because i know i can log my ranger and do the exact same thing just better, faster and with more mistakes before i die.

There is nothing wrong with adapting, the problem is thieves are expected to every single patch. The dev’s are biased. the patch notes is all the proof you need.

the complaining will never stop, look at the upcoming changes to FS. we are hearing “why would you give thieves even more evade” They fail to realize that it won’t be as bad as it was at launch you had to set +int traits (which where nerfed) for the perma evade and since Fs won’t switch to Ls without a target, we get to look forward to a whole lot of 1 spam.

We need to get every thief together, log into spvp and purposely die. it’s the only way where going to get a slight buff.

mompen.7952:

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking

meh, adapting to change is not a measure of intelligence, else all the revolutionary inventors are fools.

Adapting implies that someone else did all the thinking, analyzing, considering, and testing to make the change and you’re simply taking the easy way out by just reacting to what personally affects you.

Intelligence is the ability to proactively make a change.

In a high crime neighborhood, intelligent people proactively change their environment by moving to a safer neighborhood, not adapt by using their friend as a meat shield when bullets starts to fly.

So when you read, see, or hear a Thief proactively trying to make a change, that is a sign of intelligence. A lot of the changes mentioned for the September Patch was already perceived by intelligent Thief community way before ArenaNet acknowledge their mistake. However, there’s a lot more work to do and for the record — I refuse to adapt to their B.S.

fun fact, in wow devs also constantly nerfed rogues and everyone said “deal with it”, “adapt”… untill rogue population dropped to 1% and you couldn’t find a single rogue at lv 90 to open you a lockbox because barely anyone played one… and devs were like “uhhh we can’t figure out why rogue population is so low”…

it seems like anet devs are doing exact same thing

Anet will keep nerfing this class until the qq is no more. And when’s that going to be? Probably never. After they nerf one thing, people will just move to cry about the next thing they themselves are unwilling to adapt to and learn to play against. It’s been like that since the launch, and I honstely don’t see it ever changing. Acro used to be considered a crappy traitline, but with a lot of the other things nerfed, see where we are.

It doesn’t really matter if 20% of the community are not pleased with the changes, as long as the 80% who don’t like to play against thieves are happy. They will keep doing this charade with the excuse of ‘making things more skillful’, all the while buffing and promoting mindless faceroll gameplay for a lot of other classes.

Thief will certainly not be unviable after the patch, but it will raise the skill floor while not really raising the skill cap. As mentioned, a lot of people are already struggling with the thief class, as it has a higher skill floor than most of the other classes to pick up.

In a sense, adapting does not really take reak intelligence. It’s making the adaptation happen that is intelligent, and adapting over and over again is what they call love of the class enough to overcome the changes thrown at you.

/thief since betas.

The nerfs to thieves are minimal. Stop whining.

Ovid.7135:

The nerfs to thieves are minimal. Stop whining.

Based on what?

The issue is that every single patch there is nothing but massive thief nerfs and some tiny buffs to traits/spells that nobody uses and will use anyway because they fundamentally bad designed… People are getting tired.

Simple example for current patch:
- with current BP a warrior fighting thief has to back off 1 step out of BP to do dmg (or pop zerker) thus rewarding warrior that is aware of BP range and making counterplay…

- noob warrior will just sit in BP and wonder why he doesn’t hit anything

- after patch, even noob warrior can just stand in BP and continue to attack since BP won’t do much anymore except being source for stealth for dp

And here is the problem, next patch rewards players facing thieves for being bad while thieves have to be even better than now to make up for nerfs.

This been going on every single patch: every thief has to play like top player while every other class can play completely poorly for same result… how is it fair? It is like thief player has to get degree at university to get same payment as some dude w/o any degree doing nothing but drooling on keyboard.

If anet wants to raise skill floor and skill cap so badly, sure! I welcome it… but please do it for EVERY class and not only thieves specifically.

Besides all that, what kittenes me off personally is how anet cares sooo much and does everything that nooby warriors (insert any class here) can beat ANY thief but apprently give 0 kittens (yes, cats) and 0 attempts in fixing bugs that been plaguing thieves for very very long time (teleport bug, ports on stairs, steal bug, sb bug etc.)…

I am sure at least 30% of my deathes in pvp were because shadow step failed due some lil invisible rock on the floor… did anet care a tiny bit to fix that? Apparently not.

Cynz.9437:

Simple example for current patch:
- with current BP a warrior fighting thief has to back off 1 step out of BP to do dmg (or pop zerker) thus rewarding warrior that is aware of BP range and making counterplay…

- noob warrior will just sit in BP and wonder why he doesn’t hit anything

- after patch, even noob warrior can just stand in BP and continue to attack since BP won’t do much anymore except being source for stealth for dp

And here is the problem, next patch rewards players facing thieves for being bad while thieves have to be even better than now to make up for nerfs.

This is exactly the same thing I was discussing with my guildies earlier… Anet implies the Black Powder nerf will increase smart play from the thief’s part, but this change will only dumb down combat and let scrubs who are stupid enough to stand in a puddle of blind to steal deal decent damage. It’s not just warriors, any class can just dive in fearlessly into the BP now. Will this lead to smarter play from the thief? Probably no, since the blind is getting nerfed, thieves will probably just jump into stealth earlier to mitigate damage.

This has been brought up many times, but a simple fix for Black Powder could’ve involved changing the projectile from blind to vuln. That way, Black Powder could’ve maintained its role as melee mitigation, but it would’ve been easier to stop the thief from stealthing from a distance. And with half its effectiveness cut in shreds, anet doesn’t even compensate it with lower initiative cost or anything?

What’s the point of nerfing it anyways? D/P could be made viable with a good team, but it was far from dominant, and even then it was among the hardest specs in all of pvp . S/P was heavily overshadowed by S/D and D/P already. P/P pretty much lost the point of it getting buffed in the first place, since now its only defense is entirely shafted.

Sometimes I do wonder if anyone in the balance team even mains a thief.

Ritt.3069:

Cynz.9437:

Simple example for current patch:
- with current BP a warrior fighting thief has to back off 1 step out of BP to do dmg (or pop zerker) thus rewarding warrior that is aware of BP range and making counterplay…

- noob warrior will just sit in BP and wonder why he doesn’t hit anything

- after patch, even noob warrior can just stand in BP and continue to attack since BP won’t do much anymore except being source for stealth for dp

And here is the problem, next patch rewards players facing thieves for being bad while thieves have to be even better than now to make up for nerfs.

This is exactly the same thing I was discussing with my guildies earlier… Anet implies the Black Powder nerf will increase smart play from the thief’s part, but this change will only dumb down combat and let scrubs who are stupid enough to stand in a puddle of blind to steal deal decent damage. It’s not just warriors, any class can just dive in fearlessly into the BP now. Will this lead to smarter play from the thief? Probably no, since the blind is getting nerfed, thieves will probably just jump into stealth earlier to mitigate damage.

This has been brought up many times, but a simple fix for Black Powder could’ve involved changing the projectile from blind to vuln. That way, Black Powder could’ve maintained its role as melee mitigation, but it would’ve been easier to stop the thief from stealthing from a distance. And with half its effectiveness cut in shreds, anet doesn’t even compensate it with lower initiative cost or anything?

What’s the point of nerfing it anyways? D/P could be made viable with a good team, but it was far from dominant, and even then it was among the hardest specs in all of pvp . S/P was heavily overshadowed by S/D and D/P already. P/P pretty much lost the point of it getting buffed in the first place, since now its only defense is entirely shafted.

Sometimes I do wonder if anyone in the balance team even mains a thief.

They claimed that they do play thieves m(s/d) in pvp a lot althrough not necessary main.

Not that it matters, balance is done based on numbers probably not actual dev experience.

Cynz.9437:

Ritt.3069:

Cynz.9437:

Simple example for current patch:
- with current BP a warrior fighting thief has to back off 1 step out of BP to do dmg (or pop zerker) thus rewarding warrior that is aware of BP range and making counterplay…

- noob warrior will just sit in BP and wonder why he doesn’t hit anything

- after patch, even noob warrior can just stand in BP and continue to attack since BP won’t do much anymore except being source for stealth for dp

And here is the problem, next patch rewards players facing thieves for being bad while thieves have to be even better than now to make up for nerfs.

This is exactly the same thing I was discussing with my guildies earlier… Anet implies the Black Powder nerf will increase smart play from the thief’s part, but this change will only dumb down combat and let scrubs who are stupid enough to stand in a puddle of blind to steal deal decent damage. It’s not just warriors, any class can just dive in fearlessly into the BP now. Will this lead to smarter play from the thief? Probably no, since the blind is getting nerfed, thieves will probably just jump into stealth earlier to mitigate damage.

This has been brought up many times, but a simple fix for Black Powder could’ve involved changing the projectile from blind to vuln. That way, Black Powder could’ve maintained its role as melee mitigation, but it would’ve been easier to stop the thief from stealthing from a distance. And with half its effectiveness cut in shreds, anet doesn’t even compensate it with lower initiative cost or anything?

What’s the point of nerfing it anyways? D/P could be made viable with a good team, but it was far from dominant, and even then it was among the hardest specs in all of pvp . S/P was heavily overshadowed by S/D and D/P already. P/P pretty much lost the point of it getting buffed in the first place, since now its only defense is entirely shafted.

Sometimes I do wonder if anyone in the balance team even mains a thief.

They claimed that they do play thieves m(s/d) in pvp a lot althrough not necessary main.

Not that it matters, balance is done based on numbers probably not actual dev experience.

balance is a mix. If based on numbers alone, rangers would never get buffed EVER. Because statistically they should be doing fine cuz pet does damage (on paper pet is awesome).
Welcome to reality, pets dun hit, pets die, pets are a nuisance more then a boon most of the time. Thieves are not getting the middle finger this patch, BP nerf will not sink the class, bad play will.

PP will still not be great (it needs raw damage increase more then speed increase) and SD will still rock everyones socks….

Intelligence doesn’t mean any of these things and has nothing to do with adaptation. Steven Hawkings is silly and a fool/tool. Thieves will be fine. We still have final number tweaks to see as well as whatever profession balance changes they haven’t showed. Also, non-balance changes as well.

We didn’t kill off Neanderthals either. They were 100% regular humans.

mompen.7952:

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking

mompen.7952:

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Ha w king

“Enjoying success requires the a bility to adapt. Only by being open to change will you have a t r ue oppo r tun i ty t o get the most from your talent.” – Nolan R yan

So what you’re saying is…
Re-roll a warrior.
Right?

Maugetarr.6823:

mompen.7952:

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking

It’s okay…
Jayden made it pictorial for you.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

…

mompen.7952:

but by forming new expectations that can lead to success under the new conditions.

I feel like there is a subtle message here. P/D theif for everyone!