Guild Wars 2

After reading the balance preview, I see a mix of good and bad ideas.

Good
-Base init regen bump
-Death of D/P perma stealth
-Assassins reward being buffed
-Sundering strikes now sounds like a useful trait, in a line that needed useful traits.

Bad
-Inf return cast time
-Init traits remain where they are – the point of better base init regen is to give us more trait options that help define the spec, not leaving them in place just kittentier.
-Evasion reduction without offering us some other survivability options. If anet feels thieves evade too often, they need to offer us some other way to survive in fights – just nerfing vigor uptime leaves an already squishy class with less options. Combined with the Inf return cast time, it seems S/D will become completely unforgiving.
-Absolutely no attention paid to P/P or Death blossom, PW change seems like a bandaid more than a fix.

So, what do we do? We make a stink.

The point of posting this preview was to give us a chance to voice our opinions on the changes, so lets do so. Most importantly, do so with in the confines of the posted rules. Don’t be rude, overly dramatic, make threats, etc etc etc. Be polite and concise, back up your opinions, offer solutions, but post. Post constantly. Let them know what their mistakes are, and suggest better ways to make the changes they’re proposing (because those changes are, for the most part, being made – lets just hopefully nudge them in the most intelligent direction)

If this sounds silly to you, you haven’t played a thief long enough – since release we’ve been hit with a wave of ridiculously stupid changes (4s revealed in PvP, Dagger OH nerf, etc), all from the communities endless kittening about how impossible thieves were to kill. Some players still complain about Heart seeker, if you need any further convincing. Lets try and use that same power to our benefit for once.

It’s unfortunate that S/D, my main set will take yet more nerfs, but I think this is a good start to cutting down the level of cheese of this class. I don’t want to play a class everyone hates. I want to be good in PvE, WvW, dungeons, PvP, zerging, GvG , all modes like the warrior.

The nerfs seem pretty drastic to me (inf. strike, and opportunist stand out) but I’m sure we will get compensation as I still have faith in ANET.

Decent overview of the changes. Feeling for evasion/sword.

They gave us hard to catch (HTC). It’s so uber that even the thief is confused as to where he randomly got teleported…

ANet hates thieves.

Excalibur.9748:

It’s unfortunate that S/D, my main set will take yet more nerfs, but I think this is a good start to cutting down the level of cheese of this class. I don’t want to play a class everyone hates. I want to be good in PvE, WvW, dungeons, PvP, zerging, GvG , all modes like the warrior.

The nerfs seem pretty drastic to me (inf. strike, and opportunist stand out) but I’m sure we will get compensation as I still have faith in ANET.

The opportunist change isn’t so bad, when you consider the fact that base init regen is now faster. It’s dreadfully boring though. Why not change opportunist to something more interesting? Regenerating 0.2 init per second when you’re constantly critting seems like a really boring, kittenty 15 point minor trait – just change it entirely to be something interesting and useful for the crit line.

These are good changes and about time.

I agree with everything evilapprentice said and they were my exact thoughts when going through the notes. I would also add that the nerf to opportunist will probably result in about the same init regain for thieves who currently trait it (so most builds). Only builds that don’t use opportunist will see a noticeable buff in init regain.

Already mentioned the vigor uptime thing on about page 4 of the thread. Pistolwhip reduction between the stun and flurry again? How much time was there between the stun and flurry in the first place? More sword nerfs. Oh well.

Edit: an afterthought, they seem to be pushing mainhand dagger even more with the vigor nerf. Gaining endurance on autoattack is going to become a lot better.

evilapprentice.6379:

So, what do we do? We make a stink.

You will NEVER make more of a stink than thieves made for themselves from the perspective of seven other class communities.

Perma-stealth needed to die in fire.

Off-meta builds get some love with faster general initiative gain and a few scattered buffs to traits that have nothing to do with stealth-heavy builds. Thieve experience more risk from certain types of builds while still remaining hands down the class most capable of disengaging from any fight at will.

The endless refrain to people driven to the brink of hysteria by thieves’ bloody IMMORTALTY via stealth has been “learn to play”.

Learn to play.

Nike.2631:

evilapprentice.6379:

So, what do we do? We make a stink.

You will NEVER make more of a stink than thieves made for themselves from the perspective of seven other class communities.

Perma-stealth needed to die in fire.

Off-meta builds get some love with faster general initiative gain and a few scattered buffs to traits that have nothing to do with stealth-heavy builds. Thieve experience more risk from certain types of builds while still remaining hands down the class most capable of disengaging from any fight at will.

The endless refrain to people driven to the brink of hysteria by thieves’ bloody IMMORTALTY via stealth has been “learn to play”.

Learn to play.

Something else will be complained about. “Initiative regen will give S/D #3 spam too many evades” or something similar…. Thieves will always be complained about. Even S/P in its current state gets complained about.

D/P needed to be nerfed. It was way over the top.

That being said, why aren’t we seeing any fixes to skills that are bugged/broken/not quite working right?

They are making changes to Assassin’s Reward. For kitten’s sake, could they at least fix it so when you use it with CnD, it counts as 6 init used towards healing, and not the bugged 5?

They could at least make the skills we have work properly, if they are going to nerf/buff/change them.

I swear, it seems like the devs get together, come up with ideas and write them on a piece of paper, and throw them into a bowl to pick from sometimes.

Nike.2631:

evilapprentice.6379:

So, what do we do? We make a stink.

You will NEVER make more of a stink than thieves made for themselves from the perspective of seven other class communities.

Perma-stealth needed to die in fire.

Off-meta builds get some love with faster general initiative gain and a few scattered buffs to traits that have nothing to do with stealth-heavy builds. Thieve experience more risk from certain types of builds while still remaining hands down the class most capable of disengaging from any fight at will.

The endless refrain to people driven to the brink of hysteria by thieves’ bloody IMMORTALTY via stealth has been “learn to play”.

Learn to play.

People will always complain because in the end they have no desire to learn. They want their kills handed to them and so long as they want that they are going to be bad players.

If I was anet, I would make sure:

1.) At least one of my devs mained every profession.
2.) Those developers theorycraft the kitten out of those profession and give me reports on the condition of every stat, skill, profession exclusive and trait.
3.) Once a month, we collaborate about metas between professions and sand them down so that they don’t remain a meta.
4.) That the classes enjoyment is based on the playstyle instead effectiveness. This means that everything will be effective in everything more or less, depending on the class.
5.) That once the classes are close to how I like it, that they are not touched again until additions are made and the devs tell the screaming little kids THEMSELVES “We are not going to be doing anything to this profession until we add something to it. If you are having trouble with a profession, the best way to learn how to fight one is to either train with your friends in sPvP or roll one. Again this profession is good where it is.”

Because I would rather see something working right than just shut little kids up.

evilapprentice.6379:

Bad
-Inf return cast time
-Init traits remain where they are – the point of better base init regen is to give us more trait options that help define the spec, not leaving them in place just kittentier.
-Evasion reduction without offering us some other survivability options. If anet feels thieves evade too often, they need to offer us some other way to survive in fights – just nerfing vigor uptime leaves an already squishy class with less options. Combined with the Inf return cast time, it seems S/D will become completely unforgiving.

-Inf return cast time
This is actually a good thing. This means S/D thieves would actually have to use stealth (dagger 5) to pull off Shadow Return flawlessly – not easy to do when you’re stunned (but you still can use shadow return w/o stealth), which is a good thing. It also demands other specs other than S/D : S/D which is pure cheese. Anything that brings more skill usage other than skill 3 and the occasional skill 2 in S/D is a good thing. Tactical Strike is still trash tho and S/P is hit with this, but not hard. Most good S/P builds I’ve seen are used more as a side-weapon for other weapons like Shortbow.

-Init traits remain where they are
They are making a broad change with general increase in init regen, while reducing the effectiveness of certain init regen skills. I think its too early to see how it will “flow”, but it looks promising to me. d/p perma-stealth (and perma-evasion s/d thieves) is for players who are bad at the thief class anyway.

-Evasion reduction
I don’t think decreasing vigor duration is going to be THAT bad. It will be a pain for S/D thieves sure, but I’m fine with that. They need to think more about what they are doing during a fight.

Overall, I’m skeptic about this patch, but I’m not on the sky-is-falling bandwagon. If this patch introduces more need for team co-ordination, then I’m all for it. The major thing I’m kittening about is the changes to Ranger. Unbound spirits as a major trait? Wtf?

Zacchary.6183:

Nike.2631:

evilapprentice.6379:

So, what do we do? We make a stink.

You will NEVER make more of a stink than thieves made for themselves from the perspective of seven other class communities.

Perma-stealth needed to die in fire.

Off-meta builds get some love with faster general initiative gain and a few scattered buffs to traits that have nothing to do with stealth-heavy builds. Thieve experience more risk from certain types of builds while still remaining hands down the class most capable of disengaging from any fight at will.

The endless refrain to people driven to the brink of hysteria by thieves’ bloody IMMORTALTY via stealth has been “learn to play”.

Learn to play.

People will always complain because in the end they have no desire to learn. They want their kills handed to them and so long as they want that they are going to be bad players.

If I was anet, I would make sure:

1.) At least one of my devs mained every profession.
2.) Those developers theorycraft the kitten out of those profession and give me reports on the condition of every stat, skill, profession exclusive and trait.
3.) Once a month, we collaborate about metas between professions and sand them down so that they don’t remain a meta.
4.) That the classes enjoyment is based on the playstyle instead effectiveness. This means that everything will be effective in everything more or less, depending on the class.
5.) That once the classes are close to how I like it, that they are not touched again until additions are made and the devs tell the screaming little kids THEMSELVES “We are not going to be doing anything to this profession until we add something to it. If you are having trouble with a profession, the best way to learn how to fight one is to either train with your friends in sPvP or roll one. Again this profession is good where it is.”

Because I would rather see something working right than just shut little kids up.

I wish developers would post some wvw and spvp videos of their Thief build ideas~ kinda like what League of Legends does with Champion spotlights. I’m very curious about how they play and how they want to and think they should play.

Doggie.3184:

Zacchary.6183:

Nike.2631:

evilapprentice.6379:

So, what do we do? We make a stink.

You will NEVER make more of a stink than thieves made for themselves from the perspective of seven other class communities.

Perma-stealth needed to die in fire.

Off-meta builds get some love with faster general initiative gain and a few scattered buffs to traits that have nothing to do with stealth-heavy builds. Thieve experience more risk from certain types of builds while still remaining hands down the class most capable of disengaging from any fight at will.

The endless refrain to people driven to the brink of hysteria by thieves’ bloody IMMORTALTY via stealth has been “learn to play”.

Learn to play.

People will always complain because in the end they have no desire to learn. They want their kills handed to them and so long as they want that they are going to be bad players.

If I was anet, I would make sure:

1.) At least one of my devs mained every profession.
2.) Those developers theorycraft the kitten out of those profession and give me reports on the condition of every stat, skill, profession exclusive and trait.
3.) Once a month, we collaborate about metas between professions and sand them down so that they don’t remain a meta.
4.) That the classes enjoyment is based on the playstyle instead effectiveness. This means that everything will be effective in everything more or less, depending on the class.
5.) That once the classes are close to how I like it, that they are not touched again until additions are made and the devs tell the screaming little kids THEMSELVES “We are not going to be doing anything to this profession until we add something to it. If you are having trouble with a profession, the best way to learn how to fight one is to either train with your friends in sPvP or roll one. Again this profession is good where it is.”

Because I would rather see something working right than just shut little kids up.

I wish developers would post some wvw and spvp videos of their Thief build ideas~ kinda like what League of Legends does with Champion spotlights. I’m very curious about how they play and how they want to and think they should play.

+1, yes plz ANET show us how thief is supposed to be played to be viable in both tpvp and wvw

Doggie.3184:

Zacchary.6183:

Nike.2631:

evilapprentice.6379:

So, what do we do? We make a stink.

You will NEVER make more of a stink than thieves made for themselves from the perspective of seven other class communities.

Perma-stealth needed to die in fire.

Off-meta builds get some love with faster general initiative gain and a few scattered buffs to traits that have nothing to do with stealth-heavy builds. Thieve experience more risk from certain types of builds while still remaining hands down the class most capable of disengaging from any fight at will.

The endless refrain to people driven to the brink of hysteria by thieves’ bloody IMMORTALTY via stealth has been “learn to play”.

Learn to play.

People will always complain because in the end they have no desire to learn. They want their kills handed to them and so long as they want that they are going to be bad players.

If I was anet, I would make sure:

1.) At least one of my devs mained every profession.
2.) Those developers theorycraft the kitten out of those profession and give me reports on the condition of every stat, skill, profession exclusive and trait.
3.) Once a month, we collaborate about metas between professions and sand them down so that they don’t remain a meta.
4.) That the classes enjoyment is based on the playstyle instead effectiveness. This means that everything will be effective in everything more or less, depending on the class.
5.) That once the classes are close to how I like it, that they are not touched again until additions are made and the devs tell the screaming little kids THEMSELVES “We are not going to be doing anything to this profession until we add something to it. If you are having trouble with a profession, the best way to learn how to fight one is to either train with your friends in sPvP or roll one. Again this profession is good where it is.”

Because I would rather see something working right than just shut little kids up.

I wish developers would post some wvw and spvp videos of their Thief build ideas~ kinda like what League of Legends does with Champion spotlights. I’m very curious about how they play and how they want to and think they should play.

I support the heck out of this. Would love to see an Anet dev running Thief through a zerg haha or just to see how they roam/play.

Chicago Jack.5647:

evilapprentice.6379:

Bad
-Inf return cast time
-Init traits remain where they are – the point of better base init regen is to give us more trait options that help define the spec, not leaving them in place just kittentier.
-Evasion reduction without offering us some other survivability options. If anet feels thieves evade too often, they need to offer us some other way to survive in fights – just nerfing vigor uptime leaves an already squishy class with less options. Combined with the Inf return cast time, it seems S/D will become completely unforgiving.

-Inf return cast time
This is actually a good thing. This means S/D thieves would actually have to use stealth (dagger 5) to pull off Shadow Return flawlessly – not easy to do when you’re stunned (but you still can use shadow return w/o stealth), which is a good thing. It also demands other specs other than S/D : S/D which is pure cheese. Anything that brings more skill usage other than skill 3 and the occasional skill 2 in S/D is a good thing. Tactical Strike is still trash tho and S/P is hit with this, but not hard. Most good S/P builds I’ve seen are used more as a side-weapon for other weapons like Shortbow.

-Init traits remain where they are
They are making a broad change with general increase in init regen, while reducing the effectiveness of certain init regen skills. I think its too early to see how it will “flow”, but it looks promising to me. d/p perma-stealth (and perma-evasion s/d thieves) is for players who are bad at the thief class anyway.

-Evasion reduction
I don’t think decreasing vigor duration is going to be THAT bad. It will be a pain for S/D thieves sure, but I’m fine with that. They need to think more about what they are doing during a fight.

Overall, I’m skeptic about this patch, but I’m not on the sky-is-falling bandwagon. If this patch introduces more need for team co-ordination, then I’m all for it. The major thing I’m kittening about is the changes to Ranger. Unbound spirits as a major trait? Wtf?

I agree that d/p permastealth needed to go (should have been done a LONG time ago) and that something needed to be done to the dual s/d 3-spamming build. It kind of sounds like you’re suggesting then that s/d thieves go back to a variant of the stealth stun build from a year ago. There are reasons that’s no longer used- it also got nerfed to no longer be effective in pvp.

Dual s/d builds were cheese, but these changes hurt all the other players who used s/x builds in other ways as you have also pointed out. S/p is already in a bad spot, and any s/d builds that don’t use the 3-3-3-3 build are barely viable as is now if played well. The main concern is that our tools for survivability continue to decrease without compensation.

So I’d really like to hear from you, what builds are left in this brainless aoe-everywhere, ai-everywhere, condition- and stun-spamming meta? D/p blackpowder autoattack will be alright under some situations (fighting melee on point), but too static and hardly viable in others; d/d is out- no survivability nor utility and can’t cap points, p/p- nuff said, p/d- doesn’t work in PVP (and is also pretty cheezy), sb?- meh…

d/p was broken

a bunch of classes got flat hard nerfs to vigor/endurance regen too, except mesmer/guardian

Doggie.3184:

Zacchary.6183:

Nike.2631:

evilapprentice.6379:

So, what do we do? We make a stink.

You will NEVER make more of a stink than thieves made for themselves from the perspective of seven other class communities.

Perma-stealth needed to die in fire.

Off-meta builds get some love with faster general initiative gain and a few scattered buffs to traits that have nothing to do with stealth-heavy builds. Thieve experience more risk from certain types of builds while still remaining hands down the class most capable of disengaging from any fight at will.

The endless refrain to people driven to the brink of hysteria by thieves’ bloody IMMORTALTY via stealth has been “learn to play”.

Learn to play.

People will always complain because in the end they have no desire to learn. They want their kills handed to them and so long as they want that they are going to be bad players.

If I was anet, I would make sure:

1.) At least one of my devs mained every profession.
2.) Those developers theorycraft the kitten out of those profession and give me reports on the condition of every stat, skill, profession exclusive and trait.
3.) Once a month, we collaborate about metas between professions and sand them down so that they don’t remain a meta.
4.) That the classes enjoyment is based on the playstyle instead effectiveness. This means that everything will be effective in everything more or less, depending on the class.
5.) That once the classes are close to how I like it, that they are not touched again until additions are made and the devs tell the screaming little kids THEMSELVES “We are not going to be doing anything to this profession until we add something to it. If you are having trouble with a profession, the best way to learn how to fight one is to either train with your friends in sPvP or roll one. Again this profession is good where it is.”

Because I would rather see something working right than just shut little kids up.

I wish developers would post some wvw and spvp videos of their Thief build ideas~ kinda like what League of Legends does with Champion spotlights. I’m very curious about how they play and how they want to and think they should play.

We should bump this.
Or can we simply pretend that?

Zerbo.5381:

I agree that d/p permastealth needed to go (should have been done a LONG time ago) and that something needed to be done to the dual s/d 3-spamming build. It kind of sounds like you’re suggesting then that s/d thieves go back to a variant of the stealth stun build from a year ago. There are reasons that’s no longer used- it also got nerfed to no longer be effective in pvp.

On the contrary. I don’t know what S/D will do since I don’t play it in its current state – its too mind numbingly boring and easy. Secondly, I don’t think S/D will be permanently dead (again I’m not on the sky-is-falling bandwagon). They just won’t be able to maintain the mindless unrelenting amount of pressure they once had. I look at that as a good thing. The main role of S/D is to have sustainable dps pressure, but in its current form it’s too over-the-top without any need to think about what you’re dodging. Or even if you’re dodging things. Also, this is more of an aside, for some reason most people seem to have it in their heads that Shortbow is trash for anything else other than a defensive set – this is SO incorrect. So ultimately if this forces people to try and find cross-weapon combos for these brainless thief builds, then I’m all for these changes.

In terms of S/P, I have no clue. I’ve only found a few people who can make it work for them – using it more as a side weapon for shortbow, but that thing is just “wonky” from the get-go.

Zerbo.5381:

So I’d really like to hear from you, what builds are left […]

D/P trickery doesn’t rely at all on just sitting in blackpowder. It also doesn’t rely at all on perma stealthing. Hell, it doesn’t rely on running D/P all the time and never weapon switching (or rather never needing to weapon switch). If played correctly, it uses both weapons equally as efficiently. It doesn’t have perma vigor or evades ether. It still does great. The only reason why many people don’t run the manly build D/P trickery over S/D is because S/D is so stupid good right now. S/D in its current state has almost single-handedly shut out certain classes from the metagame. If this change ether forces S/D thieves to watch what they’re dodging, or forces them to peel if they’re not, then I’m all for it.

As for the other issues in the meta right now, it’s too early to tell what the new patch will bring. I’m not getting my hopes up, I’m a skeptic, but we’ll see.
——
In terms of WvW, this is great news. Roamers might actually have to think about some type of teamwork instead of durping through blackpowder fields all day.

Which s/d spec are you referring too exactly? There are a couple and not all of them use just dual s/d. In fact, the dual s/d lost popularity a while ago. I personally use s/d and d/p on my main build, and many others do indeed use shortbow as their OH set. These sets take a lot more skill to be good at than I think you realize. At least that’s the way it has been for me and I’ve tried almost all possible thief builds I’ve seen or could think of. Because of thief’s squishiness, he always has to be dodging if not in stealth with the current meta of aoe ai, condition, stun spamming everywhere. The only exception is black powder, which is only effective in melee range.
How do you use d/p if you don’t rely on blackpowder?
D/p is barely viable (many say it isn’t), and you’re the first I’ve seen in a while saying shortbow is so great as a main weapon. I’m curious why this is, so please share your sb build/tacs. Theoretically, even if you have some amazing build that no one else has been able to make successful yet, why should we then be limited to just that one viable weapon? S/d was the only thing that could effectively keep up with the current meta, and now it’s getting nerfed again. Maybe with other professions’ changes the nerfs won’t have a major effect, but I highly doubt that.

S/D is stupid good right now? Is that why all the s/d thieves in tpvp play warrior? I play d/p trickery based most the time but s/d won’t have the dps to compensate for the nerfs it has received lately. Anet is turning it into more of an arms race build rather than sustain and it doesn’t have the dps to win in that situation. The change to sword #2 is my only real complaint about the changes. There are obvious other complaints like them doing nothing to make other builds viable. Pistol main hand is viable in tpvp now? no? why?

Zerbo.5381:

Which s/d spec are you referring too exactly? There are a couple and not all of them use just dual s/d. In fact, the dual s/d lost popularity a while ago. I personally use s/d and d/p on my main build, and many others do indeed use shortbow as their OH set. These sets take a lot more skill to be good at than I think you realize. At least that’s the way it has been for me and I’ve tried almost all possible thief builds I’ve seen or could think of. Because of thief’s squishiness, he always has to be dodging if not in stealth with the current meta of aoe ai, condition, stun spamming everywhere. The only exception is black powder, which is only effective in melee range.
How do you use d/p if you don’t rely on blackpowder?
D/p is barely viable (many say it isn’t), and you’re the first I’ve seen in a while saying shortbow is so great as a main weapon. I’m curious why this is, so please share your sb build/tacs. Theoretically, even if you have some amazing build that no one else has been able to make successful yet, why should we then be limited to just that one viable weapon? S/d was the only thing that could effectively keep up with the current meta, and now it’s getting nerfed again. Maybe with other professions’ changes the nerfs won’t have a major effect, but I highly doubt that.

I think he’s just talking about 10/30/0/0/30 d/p + sb. Watch caed play for examples. There are a lot of 1v1’s where she stays in sb the whole time (like against mesmers). New or low skilled thieves don’t realize how strong shortbow can be.

What I’m confused by is the difference between Anet’s stated balance method (“Shaving”), and the actual way they go about making changes.

Was Dancing dagger losing 50% of its damage sound like a “Shave”?
How about CnD losing 33% of its damage (in pvp)
Or Our vigor traits losing 50% of their effectiveness?
Or LS doubling in cost, then losing 50% of its boon steal?

PW and cluster bomb were “Shaved” when they lost 15% of their damage.

When I hear “Shave” I think 15-25%. Take a little away, see if it makes a difference, then take more if needed the next time a patch rolls around. 50% losses to start with don’t sound like “Shaving” to me, they sound like lazy nerf hammers.

Perma stealth was an abuse of mechanics. it needed a shearing.

Sanduskel.1850:

Perma stealth was an abuse of mechanics. it needed a shearing.

Please read the very first post, where I placed “The Death of D/P permastealth” in the “Good” section.

If you can’t be bothered to read before you comment, don’t post.

Sanduskel.1850:

Perma stealth was an abuse of mechanics. it needed a shearing.

Dear god, you really do have only one note to play………but then again i agree, permastealth needed a fix. Which they did and they’ve also managed to shave of the rest of the tree with it (keeping in with the shear/gardening theme).

Please read the very first post, where I placed “The Death of D/P permastealth” in the “Good” section.

If you can’t be bothered to read before you comment, don’t post. [/quote]

If you’ve been on this forums for any period of time you would know by now that Sandy has only one train of thought he expresses here regardless of the topic at hand: that permastealth is the devil and perma evade or whatever build he’s using is the best thing ever compared to the filthy permastealth…..wait that makes it 2 thoughts.

You seem upset. It was a good patch. lot’s of good, a little bad. can’t win them all.

Sanduskel.1850:

You seem upset. It was a good patch. lot’s of good, a little bad. can’t win them all.

We have never won any. o.O

Excalibur.9748:

I don’t want to play a class everyone hates. I want to be good in PvE, WvW, dungeons, PvP, zerging, GvG , all modes like the warrior.

Oh god, you are funny.

This is getting off topic.

If we could please ignore the trolls and focus, It would be appreciated.

This change to Infiltrator’s return is absurd… with the amount of stuns going around the battlefield and conditions, Infiltrator’s return shouldn’t even be touched. From my experience the overall biggest counter I see from most players that play s/x is bunkers , heavy conditions, and stunlockers( which will probably be changed in the next patch so maybe not). Ofc it varies from player to player but from what i have seen that is what kills s/x the most or gives it a hard time. Giving it a cast time is kitten. This will kill off s/d and s/p. I honestly don’t see what Anet wants s/x role to be anymore. They are treating this like the shadow trap nerf. This is a main hand special it doesn’t need a cast time to go back to a previous location. I agree shadow trap was over the top with its uses but the cast time was agreeable with its range of return. Infiltrator’s return has a small range of return which is fine and does not need a cast time at all. I want to know why are we nerfing this now even tho we previously nerfed it 3x already..what changed? Did we not want thief to evade at all? s/d is i want to say a balance build while s/p is more offensive with some mobility to it. I’m guessing its just the fact these weapons break stun too much and clear conditions to fast….

I’m going to guess whats going to happen when this hits. s/d , s/p will pick up hard catch to try to cope with the nerf so it may go 0/20/30/20 or 20/20/10/20 or 0/30/10/30 to counter this nerf. Who knows somebody might get creative ,but cast time on Infiltrator’s return is just going to kill it. I hate to say it but when its going to come to dodging stuns, pistol whip or flanking strike probably be more viable to dodge it than using Infiltrator’s return, if our dodge energy is gone.

In all honesty if they are going to go through with this.. then they should bring back the 5000 range in Infiltrator’s return and add two condition cleanse. If they added this in then i will be fine with this change. Even though i will still stand and say putting a cast time on Infiltrator’s return is absurd still.

If a dev would post and elaborate on the reason for this nerf, just maybe the thief community could come up with better ways to fix this with supporting feedback.

Its paradox absurd and so on because i love this game but that nerf will be too much… Thieves have no place anymore now!!! After the patch there is only choice reroll or quit button simple … Maybe in next year ill return but its random.. Great game indeed but those nerfs.. Anet why so much hate!!!

Hype.8032:

Is that why all the s/d thieves in tpvp play warrior?

People, not just people who played thief, play warrior right now because it’s the highest level of stupid good.

However, to put it lightly, as much as people on this whole gw2 forum think 5-man warrior teams are the new meta right now, they’re not.

For example, as much as supcutie would love to run his mesmer in a tourny, he knows he can’t so he runs S/D thief. It provides the least amount of work/risk to reward right now. Even if D/P takes more skill to run. This is the primary reason why so many upper-level people are complaining about the game right now – it takes no skill => it’s not competitive => it’s boring.

Hype.8032:

I play d/p trickery based most the time but s/d won’t have the dps to compensate for the nerfs it has received lately.

By bringing down the amount of initiative regen they can attain, the idea is that the good players will not have trouble sustaining dps pressure while the bad players will and have to peel more frequently.

It’s on dec 10th. We all have no idea how these changes, not just thief changes, will play with one another. Or even if some of them are actually going to arrive on the due date. To me, this is a promising change to the class, as well as other classes, but I’m skeptical as always.

YEA, MAKE A STINK !!

pfffffftttttt, excuse me.

Agree with Chicago. If you think these changes through, they could open up new possibilities that are impossible right now due to perma etc builds.

^ Not when those possibilities all suck.

Sanduskel.1850:

Agree with Chicago. If you think these changes through, they could open up new possibilities that are impossible right now due to perma etc builds.

Yeah! i can’t wait to start using Hard To Catch like they proposed! /cutwrist -.-

I’m gonna be so happy when they finally nerf your perma stealth OP class.

JonPeters.5630:

To be clear, this is not impacting the utility skill, just the sword #2 toggle. The reason is because of risk vs reward. This is a very rewarding skill with currently little risk associated.

Phew made it to page 26. I’ll be at work in about 20 minutes at whih point I’ll address some of the bigger Ranger, Thief, and Warrior discussions.

So we got a (lame) response to IS, now we just wait to see if they’ve considered ANY of our concerns in the wall-of-text post.

Zanshin.5379:

I’m gonna be so happy when they finally nerf your perma stealth OP class.

Feel free to celebrate right now. The crying minority has effectively killed the profession and can now have their free kills handed to them by said profession.

I really hope this was what you wanted.

Zacchary.6183:

Zanshin.5379:

I’m gonna be so happy when they finally nerf your perma stealth OP class.

Feel free to celebrate right now. The crying minority has effectively killed the profession and can now have their free kills handed to them by said profession.

I really hope this was what you wanted.

Of course it was. They never cared for balance. They just wanted to win. If winning meant classes that weren’t their own got nerfed in to uselessness, fine by them.

Don’t bother with a guilt trip. This is EXACTLY what they wanted.

Zacchary.6183:

Zanshin.5379:

I’m gonna be so happy when they finally nerf your perma stealth OP class.

Feel free to celebrate right now. The crying minority has effectively killed the profession and can now have their free kills handed to them by said profession.

I really hope this was what you wanted.

I will continue to disagree that removing perma stealth will hurt this class. It was an abuse of a mechanic as stated in the explanation from Mr Peters. Get some perspective for the health of the entire game, not just our class.

Auesis.7301:

Zacchary.6183:

Zanshin.5379:

I’m gonna be so happy when they finally nerf your perma stealth OP class.

Feel free to celebrate right now. The crying minority has effectively killed the profession and can now have their free kills handed to them by said profession.

I really hope this was what you wanted.

Of course it was. They never cared for balance. They just wanted to win. If winning meant classes that weren’t their own got nerfed in to uselessness, fine by them.

Don’t bother with a guilt trip. This is EXACTLY what they wanted.

Next on the guillotine is the warrior. We’ll see how that kitten turns out. lol :D

Sanduskel.1850:

I will continue to disagree that removing perma stealth will hurt this class. It was an abuse of a mechanic as stated in the explanation from Mr Peters. Get some perspective for the health of the entire game, not just our class.

First off its my class, not your’s. You havn’t shown me you know enough about this profession yet.

Secondly, I am thinking about the game. Having a class nobody uses more than 5% of the game with is considered a massive waste of programming. If they can’t make this profession enjoyable again they might as well delete it because nobody is going to play a profession that requires more way effort for the same reward.

as posted before on other threads:

thieves only surival is stealth and dodge, nerf to any of them means more dead thieves (as if they don’t die already too much); flatout nerfs like that are silly, if they gonna nerf vigor and stealth like this they could have at least buff base suvival

in the world of condi meta, CC spam and perplexity runes we have to rely on stealth and trait dropping condi; buff to mesmers and engis is actually much bigger nerf to us than any nerfs they listed under thief section :/

Zacchary.6183:

Sanduskel.1850:

I will continue to disagree that removing perma stealth will hurt this class. It was an abuse of a mechanic as stated in the explanation from Mr Peters. Get some perspective for the health of the entire game, not just our class.

First off its my class, not your’s. You havn’t shown me you know enough about this profession yet.

Secondly, I am thinking about the game. Having a class nobody uses more than 5% of the game with is considered a massive waste of programming. If they can’t make this profession enjoyable again they might as well delete it because nobody is going to play a profession that requires more way effort for the same reward.

Pardon me, but you don’t speak for all people who play the thief class. Neither do I. However, others don’t share your negative view. I think it’s hyperbole to state that nobody will play this. Based on what I’ve read, I certainly shall.

Certainly people will, but as time goes on they will come to realize that thieves are not going to offer any satisfaction so long as the profession remains useless.