Guild Wars 2

Please think about nerfing Larcenous Strike, it is a very balanced skill right now and if you take away its utility it will be a very bad skill.

Larcenous Strike (1 Initiative.)
Stab your foe and steal and copy a boon from them.
Damage: 365
Range: 130
Unblockable

Larcenous Strike (1 Initiative.)
Stab your foe and steal life and a boon from them.
Damage: 365
Healing: X (I will let the developers decide)
Range: 130
Unblockable

Looks like a good fix.

yeah okay I guess I can live with that. Boon stealing is part of our sustain, through protection, regen etc., so putting a heal on that I could be okay with.

The problem is that two boons is too much against some classes, but barely enough against others. Most Guardians/Elementalists will easily shrug off 1 boon per LS, if you even land them 100% of the time given that they both have high vigor uptime.

In other cases, like Necro, Warrior, Ranger, you can easily steal fairly long boons from elites/utilities like Spectral Armor/Walk, Signet of Rage or Rampage as One, and I do feel myself that this isn’t entirely fair. It’s the worst on necros, at least with Rangers and Warriors it takes at least 2 LS to wipe the elite, which is easier said than done, unless they’re just standing there.

Mesmers/Engineers are somewhere in the middle, depends on their build. Other thieves you’re usually just exchanging boons with another S/D (lol), or they usually have a fair idea of your skills and avoid LS.

Having the boons on me, I like, but could learn to go without. 2 boons ripped would be alright, or 1 ripped 1 stolen.

I added a new idea, basicly you…

Steal the first boon, then copy the next.

It has the same power as it did before defensive wise, but offensive wise it isn’t as detrimental to the enemy.

I don’t like sword builds for whatever reason but I tend to agree that their philosophy of small adjustments isn’t being adhered to here. There are several options, remove 2 boons but only 1 is stolen by thief, give 2 boons to thief but only remove 1 from opponent. I think even if they reduce the cost of LS it is too big of a nerf. How exactly is this change supposed to promote diverse gameplay and get away from spamming #3?

to make this balance..
Larcenous strike (2 initiavie)
Stab your foe and steal 1 boon (retain 1 inititive on hit)

- so if i were the thief i wanna make sure my larcenous will hit 100% and i won’t gonna spam 33 unnecessarily and wasting my initiative… cuz i always gonna think. i shud or i must hit my larcenous so need to think twice before using it

this will also avoid s/d players to do unnecessary spamming their FS>Larcenous…

Coloxeus.3480:

to make this balance..
Larcenous strike (2 initiavie)
Stab your foe and steal 1 boon (retain 1 inititive on hit)

- so if i were the thief i wanna make sure my larcenous will hit 100% and i won’t gonna spam 33 unnecessarily and wasting my initiative… cuz i always gonna think. i shud or i must hit my larcenous so need to think twice before using it

Then you either have to dodge and have 0 offense and they heal or you use your auto attack and get hit once and go squish. Or you can dress more tanky and do no damage at all~ As it is now though you shouldn’t be wasting ini. anyways. Just keep moving towards them. o.O

It’s not going to effect spam in the way you expect because you’ll have to Larc strike even more often to get the tons of boons people use off them.

If I had to choose between the 2, I like the lifesteal version more because it would bypass protection which is mainly what I’m trying to pull off in the first place.

How about steal 1 boon and 25 endurance?

Currently moving it to 1 boon would completely destroy the S/D build, its barely viable now.

Having it steal one and copy the next would shave it down to 75% of how good it is, instead of down to 50%.

Excalibur.9748:

Looks like a good fix.

Ray.3780:

yeah okay I guess I can live with that. Boon stealing is part of our sustain, through protection, regen etc., so putting a heal on that I could be okay with.

The problem is that two boons is too much against some classes, but barely enough against others. Most Guardians/Elementalists will easily shrug off 1 boon per LS, if you even land them 100% of the time given that they both have high vigor uptime.

In other cases, like Necro, Warrior, Ranger, you can easily steal fairly long boons from elites/utilities like Spectral Armor/Walk, Signet of Rage or Rampage as One, and I do feel myself that this isn’t entirely fair. It’s the worst on necros, at least with Rangers and Warriors it takes at least 2 LS to wipe the elite, which is easier said than done, unless they’re just standing there.

Mesmers/Engineers are somewhere in the middle, depends on their build. Other thieves you’re usually just exchanging boons with another S/D (lol), or they usually have a fair idea of your skills and avoid LS.

Having the boons on me, I like, but could learn to go without. 2 boons ripped would be alright, or 1 ripped 1 stolen.

You thieves call an advantage having many boons at disposal, eles and guardians spend their day cursing at the idea of having to rely on boons in the first place.
I’d pay Anet with real life money to change my base HP to that of necro/ranger/warrior; these three professions live in a state of perpetual buffs chain ( especially warriors) in contrast to ele/guardian who live in a state of perpetaul nerfdom ( especially ele which get nerfed at least once every 2 patches with one patch bringing useless buffs to unused skills/utilities )

So my dear thief players…be glad your profession doesn’t rely on boons because :

1) You avoid being the target of nerfs over and over again
2) Your base stats and skill dmg coefficient are not below the ground level
3) You’re not plagued by the longest CD in the whole game

You want my boons? HAVE THEM..just give me a mere 5k base HP buff, I mean having 10k HP and protection counts something?..once that partially useful trait goes down..you get oneshotted by the 30k HP warrior who doesn’t need a short lived boon like protection

Arheundel.6451:

1) You avoid being the target of nerfs over and over again

O_O…….

Arheundel.6451:

1) You avoid being the target of nerfs over and over again

I could write a saga of your ignorance. Like seriously bro…

Zacchary.6183:

Arheundel.6451:

1) You avoid being the target of nerfs over and over again

I could write a saga of your ignorance. Like seriously bro…

You can save yourself the burden to write any saga and go directly reading the patchs notes since August 2012, you can then compile a list of nerfs for guardian/ele and thief…compare them and see for yourself which profession will come out on top as the most nerfed..ty

Arheundel.6451:

Zacchary.6183:

Arheundel.6451:

1) You avoid being the target of nerfs over and over again

I could write a saga of your ignorance. Like seriously bro…

You can save yourself the burden to write any saga and go directly reading the patchs notes since August 2012, you can then compile a list of nerfs for guardian/ele and thief…compare them and see for yourself which profession will come out on top as the most nerfed..ty

I don’t need to. As far as im concerned guards don’t have much room to talk. Thieves don’t have NEARLY as good healing or damage mitigation capabilities as the guardian and ele.

Instead we have stealth, dodging and blinds which are all DAMAGE AVOIDANCE. Avoiding doesn’t work all of the time, mitigation does. Guards don’t have to worry so much about evading because you got great access to regen, protection, blocks, condition cleanse (kittenloads of it) and plain healing (kittenloads of it).

EDIT: Let’s not forget the that anet stopped messing with the thief class so much a few updates ago. All we’ve really been getting are tiny changes, 1 buff/1 nerf and aesthetic polishes.

First of all, “boon hate” was Anet’s brilliant idea that is now exploding on their faces. If I remember correctly, this is not something we were asking for. We just need them to fix the pathing on FS.

Second, LS already got nerfed in the previous patch and getting nerfed again? Even after this nerf, I bet you, it’s still going to be a problem.

Third, Anet sees the problem and always doing a fix that brings in more problem. The problem with FS/LS from it’s first incarnation was the fact that LS becomes useable even if FS didn’t made a clean hit. So Thieves are pre-casting FS to gain access to LS on their first strike on the opponent. We’ve seen this to be a problem way before because a Theif can practically steal 4 boons right off the bat — and how did Anet fix this? Increase the cost of LS. facepalm

Forth, until they have someone in their design/balance team who actually play a thief and provide a first hand feedback, they will never get it right…ever!

Fifth, LS is not the problem here, it’s FS. If they require FS to make a clean hit before LS can become available, the spammability of LS will be contained. The cost to steal 4 boons will then be 10 init, instead of 7. And if FS was blocked, since it is not unblockable, LS will stay disabled because of the required clean hit.

This is simply based on observing other S/D Thieves and I knew from the start that this will be an issue — and here we are trying to clean up the mess. But seeing that they are trying to fix this the wrong way (again) no longer surprise me, but still makes my blood boils.

sigh ok I’m done.

S/D thief does not need another big nerf.. shave the int down to 1 and make it steal 1 boon and copy another.

Also another problem…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/CS-LS-IS-all-have-the-same-animation/first#post2795018

You can’t tell what your being hit with.

lol you guys say bout OPness of stealing 2 buffs while necro can change them all into conditions wtf?

Kenmei.7138:

lol you guys say bout OPness of stealing 2 buffs while necro can change them all into conditions wtf?

Then spread those conditions to five other enemies.. lol

Daecollo.9578:

Kenmei.7138:

lol you guys say bout OPness of stealing 2 buffs while necro can change them all into conditions wtf?

Then spread those conditions to five other enemies.. lol

And deal damage per condition. lol

i agree with giving it a heal. The problem with 2 boons was that it counteted some classes too hard. This will fix that and keep s/p viable.

Demonts.4593:

i agree with giving it a heal. The problem with 2 boons was that it counteted some classes too hard. This will fix that and keep s/p viable.

steal and copy a boon from them. (Stealing, then copying the next.)

I also agree that 2 boons against certain classes is too good, while against others it’s necessary. How about make it so it steals 1 boon and steals another if the target has more than 4 or 5 boons on them? If not I do kind of like the health steal idea, it’d make it more useful in PvE considering there aren’t too many enemies that actually use boons, although I do love using S/D against dredge.

Larcenous Strike (1-2 Initiative.)
Stab your foe and steal one boon, steal a second boon if the target has more than four (or five) boons on them.
Damage: 365
Range: 130
Unblockable

It seems like people have short memories on this subject though. Warriors and thieves got boon hate because burst was brought down to a point that boon bunkers could outlast anything thrown at them. So now were going to go back to the original flanking strike’s offensive ability (albeit with better pathing at least). Hopefully the boost to necros and engis will keep bunkers overall in check, but there certainly won’t be a fear of thieves killing bunkers by either bursting them to death or slowly removing their defensive capabilities.

All this change does is revert 2 thirds of the buff to FS and keep the path fixing. Not a big deal, and unlike what some other seem to believe, it fits perfectly with their philosophy of small changes.

Incurafy.6329:

All this change does is revert 2 thirds of the buff to FS and keep the path fixing. Not a big deal, and unlike what some other seem to believe, it fits perfectly with their philosophy of small changes.

It it’s mostly reverted then, it would be nice if they reverted the initiative cost back. It’s already going to slow down combat, might as well return that too.

also youre able to flanking strike the air and get the boon steal option, when just about every other class in the game has to hit you to get their attack chains to move to the next skill, jus sayin

Ryan.8367:

also youre able to flanking strike the air and get the boon steal option, when just about every other class in the game has to hit you to get their attack chains to move to the next skill, jus sayin

Most Thieves mainly only care about LS when people are either blocking or have tons of boons, otherwise they’d rather have FS pop up instead of having to dodge cancel LS for another FS to stay in (or buy time). So I’m sure most would actually consider that a buff especially if you’re fighting someone not relying on boons.

EDIT: Also keep in mind the fact that if it didn’t pull up LS on block (which is generally the same function as missing), then there’s be no point for LS to actually be unblockable…

Sir Vincent III.1286:

First of all, “boon hate” was Anet’s brilliant idea that is now exploding on their faces. If I remember correctly, this is not something we were asking for. We just need them to fix the pathing on FS.

Second, LS already got nerfed in the previous patch and getting nerfed again? Even after this nerf, I bet you, it’s still going to be a problem.

Third, Anet sees the problem and always doing a fix that brings in more problem. The problem with FS/LS from it’s first incarnation was the fact that LS becomes useable even if FS didn’t made a clean hit. So Thieves are pre-casting FS to gain access to LS on their first strike on the opponent. We’ve seen this to be a problem way before because a Theif can practically steal 4 boons right off the bat — and how did Anet fix this? Increase the cost of LS. facepalm

Forth, until they have someone in their design/balance team who actually play a thief and provide a first hand feedback, they will never get it right…ever!

Fifth, LS is not the problem here, it’s FS. If they require FS to make a clean hit before LS can become available, the spammability of LS will be contained. The cost to steal 4 boons will then be 10 init, instead of 7. And if FS was blocked, since it is not unblockable, LS will stay disabled because of the required clean hit.

This is simply based on observing other S/D Thieves and I knew from the start that this will be an issue — and here we are trying to clean up the mess. But seeing that they are trying to fix this the wrong way (again) no longer surprise me, but still makes my blood boils.

sigh ok I’m done.

Certain S/D builds will be able to spam FS like a lot of times in a row + the insane amount of dodges you will never be able to land a hit unless they trigger their LS so you got that window to damage / stun / immo them.

I dont find your idea bad or anything because you are right at the moment you can chain LS into steal very easily by precasting FS and use that as an opener (like you described, and instantly pretty much rip all your enemys boons), but your change just rises a new problem → even more evades.

KaiserCX.7103:

I also agree that 2 boons against certain classes is too good, while against others it’s necessary. How about make it so it steals 1 boon and steals another if the target has more than 4 or 5 boons on them? If not I do kind of like the health steal idea, it’d make it more useful in PvE considering there aren’t too many enemies that actually use boons, although I do love using S/D against dredge.

Larcenous Strike (1-2 Initiative.)
Stab your foe and steal one boon, steal a second boon if the target has more than four (or five) boons on them.
Damage: 365
Range: 130
Unblockable

Great Idea, and it makes sense.

KaiserCX.7103:

I also agree that 2 boons against certain classes is too good, while against others it’s necessary. How about make it so it steals 1 boon and steals another if the target has more than 4 or 5 boons on them? If not I do kind of like the health steal idea, it’d make it more useful in PvE considering there aren’t too many enemies that actually use boons, although I do love using S/D against dredge.

Larcenous Strike (1-2 Initiative.)
Stab your foe and steal one boon, steal a second boon if the target has more than four (or five) boons on them.
Damage: 365
Range: 130
Unblockable

This sounds great.

Boon hate should be implemented in a way that scales exponentially with the severity of the boon stacking on your target, as to punish boon spamming and not unfairly deny boon access to builds that don’t overuse them.

I would go farther and say steal 1 boon if 3 or less, steal 3 boons if more than 3.

Either that or make it target specific defensive boons like protection, stability, retal, regen, etc to make Thieves better bunker-busters.