Guild Wars 2

Okay so I rarely complain about nerfs, but this one’s kind of hit me home. LS’s nerf really stuck out to me when I was with my GF in a dredge area. I used to be able to steal their Protection no problem, but now I may need to invest at least 20 into trickery to be as remotely as effective as before. I can’t get at their protection because the single stack of Might is always in the way, and when there are a group of dredge, they simply reapply might before I can get off two LS’s (I know they aren’t doing it conciously)

I wasn’t for LS being nerfed in this way, an increased initiative cost would have sufficed in not making people spam it. Now one of my favourite ways to contribute to my team has been slashed, and it was one of the few ways I made a noticable impact in major boss encounters.

Now I realize that reverting LS and increasing init cost may not be a viable oftens, so as an alternative, could we change how LS prioritizes boons? I’d prefer it to go:
Protection, Stability, Might, Regen, Swiftness, Vigor, Fury, Aegis.

To any dev that may see this, thank you for your consideration.

Dual.8953:

Okay so I rarely complain about nerfs, but this one’s kind of hit me home. LS’s nerf really stuck out to me when I was with my GF in a dredge area. I used to be able to steal their Protection no problem, but now I may need to invest at least 20 into trickery to be as remotely as effective as before. I can’t get at their protection because the single stack of Might is always in the way, and when there are a group of dredge, they simply reapply might before I can get off two LS’s (I know they aren’t doing it conciously)

I wasn’t for LS being nerfed in this way, an increased initiative cost would have sufficed in not making people spam it. Now one of my favourite ways to contribute to my team has been slashed, and it was one of the few ways I made a noticable impact in major boss encounters.

Now I realize that reverting LS and increasing init cost may not be a viable oftens, so as an alternative, could we change how LS prioritizes boons? I’d prefer it to go:
Protection, Stability, Might, Regen, Swiftness, Vigor, Fury, Aegis.

To any dev that may see this, thank you for your consideration.

Bountiful theft is good for burst-stealing a few boons from a Boon bunker, but with LS now stealing 1 boon, the sustain is no longer there – boon bunkers are back to being able to generate boons much faster than you can strip them – even if you run bountiful with SoH, Nullification with high crit, Spam your LS’s and hit them 90% of the time. Even if you prioritized 1 boon for theft, the overall process is too slow to make much of an impact.

LS should work in the following way – on hit, steals 1 of the following boons if present – Protection, Vigor, Retaliation,Stability. In addition, steal (or strip) 1 boon at random. This way LS deals with boon bunkers without overpowering other builds that use swiftness/regen/might/fury/regen. That or Anet should just say they want Boon bunkers back to the power they were at before they introduced counters, because that’s what they’ve done.

Yah. The nerf wasn’t good for S/D. It only helped to reintroduce the boon tank. It has left the S/D still overly focused on LS because of damage and evade, but now, ineffective against boons.
They should have nerfed the damage and increased the cost.

We had this discussion on another thread a couple of days ago, but when I’m on my thief now I tend to stay in D/P (D/P +S/D combo) since the patch. The utility of S/D doesn’t really justify losing the burst damage of switching to it. At this point though I already have 2 level 80 alts and a couple more on the way. I’m not quitting thief as I find it the most fun, but it certainly sees a lot less play time after the last couple of balance patches.

As for S/D nerfing, I think they could have just reduced the damage without increasing the cost at all as it would have become situationally useful as a utility skill. You couldn’t spam it for damage anymore.

From 2 to 1 is a 50% nerf. Which means 3 boons from 15 initiative, instead of 6 boons.
If a warrior doesn’t manage to dodge a Larcenous Strike, we manage to counter their signet of rage using up all of our initiative.

The nerf didn’t only make it easier for bunkers to survive with S/D thieves nearby, it also made a large impact on thief survival. S/D steal builds was pretty much boon builds, and imagine all other boon builds getting nerfed to 50% less boons. O:

hmm if I would suggest something.

1. Steal 1 boon per 3 boons on target.
2. a) Steal 1 boon and an additional if the skill critical strikes, and in PvE steal 2 boons and one additional on critical strikes.
b) same but inverted, 1 less on critcal strike.
3. Revert back to 2.

at the very least it stopped the S/D thief QQ on the sPvP forums.

Excalibur.9748:

at the very least it stopped the S/D thief QQ on the sPvP forums.

People are distracted with Warrior QQ – the boards will suddenly find another facet of thief game-shatteringly OP as soon as they’re not getting chain stunned into oblivion.

evilapprentice.6379:

Excalibur.9748:

at the very least it stopped the S/D thief QQ on the sPvP forums.

People are distracted with Warrior QQ – the boards will suddenly find another facet of thief game-shatteringly OP as soon as they’re not getting chain stunned into oblivion.

lol the warrior QQ is very strong right now indeed

The best part is very little of the QQ focused on the 2 boons stolen – it was mostly complaints about “Evade spam” and for some reason, Infiltrators strike.

So they reduced LS back to 1 boon, which was proven useless for the first 10 months of the game when FS only stripped one boon from bunkers. A-net has some funny QA.

I agree with everyone here. In my estimation, Anet nerfed the wrong part of S/D and over-nerfed it at that! If any nerf was merited I’d say they should have reduced the damage of LS. By doing so, thieves would be spending less time 333333-ing and spending more time auto attacking. The use of FS and/or LS would then be used when the player gets more benefit from it than what’s lost from the lower dps. Lowering the boons stolen to 1 just promotes spamming 3 even more (even though the nerf was strong enough that the spec will be seeing less play anyways). So is reducing the amount of 3 spam by reducing the use of the weapon set considered a win for Anet?

ppl will never be happy, if they had changed it a different way, lowering the dmg, increacing the init cost or both ppl would cry and say “why not make it strip only one boon and leave the dmg and init cost as it was?!”

anyway, i think the change was good. from all available choices i think they did the best one.

as for pistol… i think that the auto-attack should have been the one buffed, not body shot nerfed…

Volrath.1473:

ppl will never be happy, if they had changed it a different way, lowering the dmg, increacing the init cost or both ppl would cry and say “why not make it strip only one boon and leave the dmg and init cost as it was?!”

anyway, i think the change was good. from all available choices i think they did the best one.

as for pistol… i think that the auto-attack should have been the one buffed, not body shot nerfed…

How was this nerf the best option when it leaves Thieves even less effective in PvE and promotes them only using 3 and dodge in Spvp? It feels very much like a step backwards for S/D. I remember a time when S/D users didn’t give a crap about their 3 skill, and made due with all their other skills. It feels like this has been inverted and now instead of using 4 skills, we’re encouraged to only use one or two skills. It also puts a lot of pressure on S/D thieves to focus on inti regen, rather then the relative freedom they had in builds when AA was their main source of damage.
At least, that how it makes me feel as someone who’s mained S/D since the betas.

Volrath.1473:

ppl will never be happy, if they had changed it a different way, lowering the dmg, increacing the init cost or both ppl would cry and say “why not make it strip only one boon and leave the dmg and init cost as it was?!”

anyway, i think the change was good. from all available choices i think they did the best one.

as for pistol… i think that the auto-attack should have been the one buffed, not body shot nerfed…

I agree that people would have complained regardless of the change, but that’s mostly because the change was unwarranted.

“2 boons stolen is too much” – it was enough to keep up with boon bunkers. 1 does almost nothing.

“It does too much damage” and a as a bonus “The evade spam is too much” – it does similar DPS to autoattack, which inflicts weakness and cripple. 5 initiative for an evade and 2 boon steal seems fair for an attack that does the same damage as pressing 1, and doesn’t come with cripple and weakness.

The only thing I can see is that giving LS enough boon steal to properly deal with boon bunkers might have been too much for DPS specs that rely on might/fury/swiftness/etc – I’ve already suggested how they could have properly “Shaved” LS, like Anet claims to do, rather than just straight up nerf it back into the realm of sub-par utility (While keeping the upjumped cost to boot!)

Dual.8953:

Volrath.1473:

ppl will never be happy, if they had changed it a different way, lowering the dmg, increacing the init cost or both ppl would cry and say “why not make it strip only one boon and leave the dmg and init cost as it was?!”

anyway, i think the change was good. from all available choices i think they did the best one.

as for pistol… i think that the auto-attack should have been the one buffed, not body shot nerfed…

How was this nerf the best option when it leaves Thieves even less effective in PvE and promotes them only using 3 and dodge in Spvp? It feels very much like a step backwards for S/D. I remember a time when S/D users didn’t give a crap about their 3 skill, and made due with all their other skills. It feels like this has been inverted and now instead of using 4 skills, we’re encouraged to only use one or two skills. It also puts a lot of pressure on S/D thieves to focus on inti regen, rather then the relative freedom they had in builds when AA was their main source of damage.
At least, that how it makes me feel as someone who’s mained S/D since the betas.

I think this stemmed from nerfing the C&D damage and the daze duration in PvP specifically, and the Dancing Dagger damage and Shadow Return across all modes. Unsplitting those skill may be useful as well, especially the daze since the rounding thing was modified, but I tend to think that the meta became 3333 because every other skill except autoattack was nerfed.

Kill it normally like other classes w/o good access to strip/steals then? Oo

In the spirit of RNG we could perhaps find a compromise between the pre and post-nerf LS by having it steal one boon and just removing another!

My suggestion for S/D is:

Flanking Strike: Cost: 3 Ini

Larcenous Strike: Cost: 5 Ini ; Steal 3 boons [or Steal 2 boons with the full duration]

Black Teagan.9215:

My suggestion for S/D is:

Flanking Strike: Cost: 3 Ini

Larcenous Strike: Cost: 5 Ini ; Steal 3 boons [or Steal 2 boons with the full duration]

Your suggestion is silly. This would turn a fight against an S/D thief into “Dodge LS to win”, or from the thief’s perspective “Save your initiative for skills that aren’t horribly overcosted”

LS was working as intended as far as a soft counter (not a hard counter, mind you) to boon bunkers – it should just be reverted back to how it was, or just shaved a little bit rather than having it’s utility nerfed into the ground.

Another suggestion, Give FS 1 boon steal/strip, and LS 1 boon steal.

evilapprentice.6379:

Black Teagan.9215:

My suggestion for S/D is:

Flanking Strike: Cost: 3 Ini

Larcenous Strike: Cost: 5 Ini ; Steal 3 boons [or Steal 2 boons with the full duration]

Your suggestion is silly. This would turn a fight against an S/D thief into “Dodge LS to win”, or from the thief’s perspective “Save your initiative for skills that aren’t horribly overcosted”

LS was working as intended as far as a soft counter (not a hard counter, mind you) to boon bunkers – it should just be reverted back to how it was, or just shaved a little bit rather than having it’s utility nerfed into the ground.

Another suggestion, Give FS 1 boon steal/strip, and LS 1 boon steal.

Do you (really) think my suggestion is worse, than the abuse of permaevades from Sword #3 how it currently is? The thief is a class, which should have skills to counter bunker or boonspammer, but thieves dont have it, and FS is actually to weak to counter these builds and 8 inis aren’t to expensive.

Another possibility is, to give FS 1 boon steal instead of LS and give FS an ability for +10% (?) dmg for every left boon on the enemy?

Black Teagan.9215:

evilapprentice.6379:

Black Teagan.9215:

My suggestion for S/D is:

Flanking Strike: Cost: 3 Ini

Larcenous Strike: Cost: 5 Ini ; Steal 3 boons [or Steal 2 boons with the full duration]

Your suggestion is silly. This would turn a fight against an S/D thief into “Dodge LS to win”, or from the thief’s perspective “Save your initiative for skills that aren’t horribly overcosted”

LS was working as intended as far as a soft counter (not a hard counter, mind you) to boon bunkers – it should just be reverted back to how it was, or just shaved a little bit rather than having it’s utility nerfed into the ground.

Another suggestion, Give FS 1 boon steal/strip, and LS 1 boon steal.

Do you (really) think my suggestion is worse, than the abuse of permaevades from Sword #3 how it currently is?

What permaevade? You mean the evade you can use, at max, 50% of the time if you absolutely spam the crap out of your 3 key (Which is a playstyle that won’t win any fights, mind you)? 50% != permanent. People need to stop crying about every defensive mechanic thieves get, unless they prefer GC thieves with protection, stability, aegis, and regen – by all means, I’d love to play a D/P thief built more like a warrior (for at least a little while until the OPness got old), because that’s where the QQ is pushing thief to.

The thief is a class, which should have skills to counter bunker or boonspammer, but thieves dont have it, and FS is actually to weak to counter these builds and 8 inis aren’t to expensive.

8 initiative is insanely expensive – I don’t understand how you could claim otherwise. I don’t quite follow what you mean with the first sentence, but old LS was a good soft counter to boon bunkers – you weren’t going to strip every single boon from a bunker with half a brain, nor should you have – it was a powerful tool that limited the usefulness of mindless boon spamming without completely shutting it down, which is actually a really good place for a counter – not OP, and not useless.

But what do you think about, to give FS 1 boon steal instead of LS and give FS an ability for +10% (?) dmg for every left boon on the enemy?

The basic idea (% more damage for each boon) could work and I like it, but % needs testing – warriors need to take a trait to get 3% more damage per boon (granted thats for all their attacks, instead of just 1 specific attack). The only issue I see with it is that Anet has nerfed thief burst and thief damage since day 1, I don’t see them increasing it significantly any time soon.