Guild Wars 2

Okay, so … I took a nice hiatus, very glad I did … because as a thief main, this game has become increasingly frustrating and less fun to play with almost every balance patch that has come out, save for like one or two … maybe?

So, more towards topic … I didn’t think it was possible for Shortbow to be nerfed even further (IE: Into becoming useless) after Arenanet added that god awful additional evade animation to SB #3 (which if I’m not mistaken they toned it down a little bit, made the additional animation a bit shorter? It was absurd when it first went live, but then again, what does arenanet ever do that isn’t a so called “shave” that they claim they’re all about doing with their “balance” and whatnot?) I understand why they did it, and it makes sense, but like always … they over do it instead of “shaving”.

That isn’t quite what I’m talking about right now, though. Evade spam thieves are exceptionally annoying, (like a lot of other crap in this game) and I’m actually glad that SB #3 spamming noobs now have to try harder to survive … eh, still not that hard to run as a thief, but whatever -

Anyway … the nerfs I’m talking about now are these “Maximum number of targets hit” nerfs, and I realize this applies to more than just thief, but it blows my mind what they did with cluster bombs.

Undetonated – hits 5 targets. <—- Sigh, whatever … lame but maybe manageable.
Detonated – hits 3 targets. <—- Wait, what? Why? What the hell kind of decision making … no wait, nevermind … why am I even asking this? This is Arenanet I’m talking about here … after awful patch and more awful patches and the fact they can’t fix their game breaking bugs within ANY kind of a reasonable amount of time, this should not be a surprise to me at all.

I’m just left with saying this, thanks, Arenanet … (Arenanubs, forget it, that’s all you are to me now as developers who literally do anything they can to kitten on the spvp community). Because any thief wishing they could use the condition damage portion of shortbow and wish they were effective, can now kiss that little slim ray of hope goodbye.

Shortbow was obviously overpowered in damage anyway, I mean all these P/D + D/P thieves and S/D + S/D thieves that were running around, neglecting shortbow and all it’s glorious overpowered godliness! OBVIOUS overpowered weapon is obvious, amirite? Too many thieves uh … … using … it … especially in spvp! >_>

So anyway, right!!! Shortbow definitely needed more nerfs to cluster bomb, less targets specifically, drastically less! So this brings me to the part why I was recently wondering while in game … why detonating cluster bombs against minion masters, noskill turret spamming engies, spirit rangers, was so much harder to handle if not feeling impossible, why was I dealing such low damage? (And this is during 1v1’s mind you, not even team fights … where this problem is infinitely exasperated and quickly becomes completely worthless)

So … I found out that detonated cluster bombs are being absorbed by the endless clones, spirits, turrets, or minions, and I’m barely phasing whatever class I’m targeting because well … I can’t stack bleeds (much less, damage) with a shortbow anymore because the bombs just get eaten up by all the random kitten on the field and … well, Shortbow was already kinda weak, oops, I mean INCREDIBLY OVERPOWERED* so it obviously needed more nerfs and well, here we are. Another weaponset that is now useless in spvp XD

Let me just say, for the record, that I’ve been through every nerf / patch on my thief since pre-launch and I have 4,000+ games in SPvP (and the three buffs to my particular build, one of which was a fix, another was a global change for everyone, and the last was just d/d costing less initiative because it sucks, as it currently does, except now more so because it’s limited to 3 targets, rofl), and none of the nerfs, not even Lyssa’s being changed to garbage, effectively ruined my build or stopped me from being able to have some fun with the build … in fact, when the sigil changes came in, my build felt pretty good, hard to use, but at least solid.

This, however, tears it. Shortbow has literally been kitten on and has received NOTHING but nerfs since launch, and most specifically now, this maximum targets trash, especially on detonated cluster bombs, is the nail in the coffin. This already weak weapon is now at most, utility for #5 to get around, and maybe drop a poison field before swap and that’s likely it. I used to argue that SB was a viable option with non believers but now it is an utter joke … I’d rather play full melee builds now. (Actually I’d rather just not play, this game isn’t getting better, it’s just getting worse)

My build is effectively dead because of Arenanet and their ability to support “build diversity”. Because you know, the best way to make improvements to the game is take the things that are good, or in this case, almost good … and then ruin it as hard as they can so that other options seem more appealing because the level of suck is similar if not worse after the changes. -_-

Freakin’ … ehl … oh … ehl … what a joke, I wish I had never wasted my time with this game and it’s SPvP community which is just full of trolls, kids, trash talking baddies and … yeah, seems appropriate for this game’s caliber now that I think about it. However last but certainly not least, especially these weak developers that don’t even understand the meaning of the word balance, and while we’re at it they don’t seem to understand what “shave” means, either.

Have fun, fellow thieves, being pigeonholed into a less and less dynamic class that seems like it is headed straight towards “Burst or Bust” and I don’t even know if those options are even good anymore. I have no fun playing this game now, and I already struggled to have any level of fun PvP’ing when my build was (barely) viable because … Arenanet. That’s all I need to say about that, so without further adieu …

Fuhk this game.

P.S. Please bring the torches and flame me on the way out if you like. The more the bridge burns for me, the better! I’m sick of Arenanet and their monetized garbage for a game in which they threw around the word ESports to make money and then left the PvP’ers high and dry. Absolutely no respect for them, whatsoever.

I always thought detonating it should hit 15 targets since you lose the blast finish part of the ability

This is really fun to read

@T Raw: You make a good point IMO

@Axelwarrior: I’m glad I could at least provide some entertainment with the last of my time spent here.

All baddies complain about anymore is how thieves run away because that is all that is left of the profession. Also only profession that don’t have 1200 range anymore.

I actually want to focus a little more on what Axelwarrior pointed out …

Undetonated cluster bombs having blast finishers where as detonated cluster bombs do not.

The “trade off” here was, from my experience, the fact detonated bombs have more potential damage through more bleeds. I know the front load damage is indeed slightly higher for raw damage, but that seems to me like it is related to the damage differences that consistently happen between say critting one of three detonations vs a crit undetonated cluster bomb. The crit undetonated bomb obviously deals more damage in that situation and could have been done in some kind of beneficial field on top of that.

So … IMO, it is easier to lose raw damage (not even including fields like fire) through detonations than undetonated bombs because of crit chance, especially if you run a build like mine that has about a 1/3 chance to crit pre-fury.

And part of why ^ is so much easier to lose out on damage is also because of the fact the bombs spread apart on detonation. So, if you don’t detonate low to ground you are much less likely to hit your target with all three. (can you say added skill cap, anyone, someone, please? I know it’s small, but it’s still another layer that at least makes it more … engaging, sort of.)

But now the trade off seems like dealing inferior aoe damage was the best way to compensate for all that “added bleed damage” which really seems as though turrets, minions, clones, and any team fight in general were not kept in mind during this change.

Just … for a moment, visualize even a 3v3, not even a full fledged team brawl … You & two others are up against a mesmer and a guardian, and a ranger. Between just the mesmer and ranger, you can expect at least +1 target from ranger (if not more) and consistently 1-3 clones + the occasional phantasm or two, with the fact they are mixed in with the ranger mesmer and guardian bodies. And you can only hit 3 of them … and chances are, you are going to hit / put bleeds on targets that don’t matter meaning you won’t actually be able to do any bleed stacking on targets that matter.

Even if it were at 5 targets, this would still be pretty iffy, but three is an incredibly bad decision, no matter what kind of logic was in place for it. You are now better off switching to a melee weapon and putting yourself in harms way than spamming detonated, (hell even undetonated) cluster bombs while hoping you’re going to be even remotely effective in a team fight.

I understand they want to nerf AOE damage but wow … I mean, maybe changes like this as a whole will work for mesmers, minion masters, turret engies (because turrets = skill), and spirit rangers and even thieves who bring two or three fake thieves along with them for the ride because there’s numerically speaking, less cleaves happening at once …

But kitten , did they have to make a weapon set completely useless in the process of global game changes? Absolutely no compensation, just additional nerfs? (Because remember, shortbow was super duper amazingly and sinfully OP and everyone was crying about it! )

Truthfully speaking though, I can’t even see shortbow being used as raw damage viably anymore, let alone condition damage which is now IMO completely useless even in a multitude of 1v1 settings. If I did give any amount of kittens to play this game anymore, I’d probably just switch to spamming S/D and being bored with the only two styles of play left.

I didn’t even add in the fact that condition cleansing also effectively gimps all that “added bleed damage” on top of everything else that’s already been mentioned.

Bah … too many factors working against SB now for it to be any good. Must have been exactly what Arenanubs wanted.

Umm, just to make sure. You realize that each of the three ‘bomblets’ from cluster bomb have a 3 target limit? Which makes cluster bomb able to hit a max of 9 targets. This is how the skill has functioned since launch.

@OP: People spammed the #3? Where? I never saw it spammed in WvW, and in sPvP I was usually the only thief there.

I’m feeling it too OP. On my condi thief build, since it has very poor burst and no cleeve, Short bow and specifically Cluster Bomb was the only thing I really had for multi-target damage. Especially when trying to fight off PU Mesmers.

This and the horrid decision to remove the ability to mug and stealth on steal really diminishes my thief. This is my one and only fully ascended character. Being Condi, it was always worthless everywhere but, in WvW. Now it’s not really worth taking in there either.

The question though is was CB supposed to be doing 3×3 AoE? Certainly each individual bomb should have it’s own AoE radius and at least hit 3 targets each. Otherwise they should be little heat seeking missiles then. Oh, and CB’s movement speed should be seriously increased as well.

I wasn’t expecting my thread to have discussion going on, this is a nice turn out by comparison of what I expected. XD

@Taiyetos: Yes, I am aware of how cluster bombs with your explanation could theoretically hit 9 targets … but that is still working with the same numbers of only being able to hit 3 maximum target with detonated bombs. That’s the issue, detonating bombs makes them worthless compared to undetonating them. Oh and by the way, that is NOT how it has functioned from launch, trust me. I’ve used Shortbow pretty much SINCE launch, and it wasn’t limited to three targets. Not sure where you got your information but … anyway.

Back to what I was saying. Undetonated bombs can’t stack bleeds the same way detonated ones could, but if you consider condition cleansing and even a blast finisher from cluster bombs inside a poison field from shortbow, the most you can stack for conditions is 3 “reliably” speaking anyway. (poison weakness and bleeding) – but that’s not much layering when you consider how strong condition cleansing is / can be.

Not only do you lose out on immediate damage through detonating cluster bombs because it hits less players or targets, thus stacks less bleeds and well … shortbow just sucks now, period. The weapon needs some serious love if it wants to be anything remotely competitive.

@Dewolf: I think I smell a little sarcasm in there … XD … I feel the same way … shortbow used to be a solid go-to option for mesmers, necros, rangers … but now I’m finding my single target melee to be more effective against a mesmer than trying to fight it with a shortbow which feels kitten near pointless against a good mesmer because between stealth, teleports, dodges, and clone + phantasm spam (yay passive gameplay, pro!) I can’t do much with the shortbow anymore, it feels like a dumb choice to use now in pvp.

Yeah … considering how trash clusterbombs are now, especially detonated ones, the speed of this now garbage weapon set needs to be adjusted – or they need to revert this global change, because honestly shortbow was good because it could aoe … but now that it pretty much can’t, it’s pretty much crap – like utility caltrops in a team fight now. XD

Utility caltrops capped at 5 targets … so okay, got ranger spirits in there, some clones, a phantasm, maybe some minions, oh gg there are no players taking damage from the field they’re standing in because … Arenanet is brilliantly bad at PvP balance and design.

DeWolfe.2174:

I’m feeling it too OP. On my condi thief build, since it has very poor burst and no cleeve, Short bow and specifically Cluster Bomb was the only thing I really had for multi-target damage. Especially when trying to fight off PU Mesmers.

This and the horrid decision to remove the ability to mug and stealth on steal really diminishes my thief. This is my one and only fully ascended character. Being Condi, it was always worthless everywhere but, in WvW. Now it’s not really worth taking in there either.

The question though is was CB supposed to be doing 3×3 AoE? Certainly each individual bomb should have it’s own AoE radius and at least hit 3 targets each. Otherwise they should be little heat seeking missiles then. Oh, and CB’s movement speed should be seriously increased as well.

Wait, you’re having trouble with mesmers on thief?

Know their cooldowns, and take out phantasms, avoid pistol stun, continually apply poison (and condition strings if youre condi, which mesmer should literally be the easiest class for you to face as a p/d condi thief )

Also, don’t use shortbow anywhere besides PvP .. it’s only good for teleporting and applying group combat burst from distance and poison field for downed enemies while your team cleaves.

Please learn2play

Anet just wants us all to play riffle warrior and kill shot for more than any backstab

I have a hard time determining if they do these kinds of patches out of ignorance (because only one dev plays a thief and he is a mesmer) or if they just don’t like the profession.

blitzkrieg.2451:

Please learn2play

You have not earned the right to use that phrase in my domain, Mr. Ranger.

Jesiah, I have also been using the short bow since Beta weekend 1. Let me be clear, Detonate Cluster has never changed. Beyond tooltip changes there have never been any functionality changes. Take a look at the patch notes or the wiki change history. Cluster Bomb has had two changes that don’t relate to your problem. First in November 2012 a reduction of 15% in PvP. Second in June 2013 the range of Cluster Bomb was reduced to 900 from 1200.

Tayetos,

If you’ve been playing that long, too, then you obviously don’t have the experience I do having used a shortbow as my primary & starting weapon for my rotation and style of play since I first tried out a shortbow during beta weekends myself.

I can promise you that detonated cluster bombs have always hit more than 3 targets, up until whatever recent patch changed it, because I distinctly remember playing around in the target golem range where there’s a ton of them stacked together and seeing how many bleed #‘s I could get to pop up by using my aoe on them. Compared to now, where I can reliably hit only 3 and the same 3 if I aim in the same location even in the middle of them … it’s a rather vast difference compared to not so long ago. How are you unable to tell the same, is what I’m wondering?

If that’s not enough, there’s also all the time I spent leveling in Harathi Hinterlands (40 to 80 because it was profitable and is the only reason I hit 80 on my thief) during that stupid holograhpic wings event (in which the wings turned out to be a huge disappointment in stealth) which mind you was done by me primarily with shortbow because the aoe was effective.

I’ve never taken it off, and if I’m not mistaken, I could hit more than even 5 targets with detonated cluster bombs, I could be wrong in that because it’s hard to tell when you hit at least 5 targets (out of sometimes 10+) with 3 bomblets in a group of centaurs that I would aoe down simultaneously. And I’m pretty sure with the way I pulled centaurs and fought primarily with detonated cluster bombs, I would’ve found that only being able to hit 3 detonated would have been weak compared to undetonated, because I’ve of course tested both, and you could say that I’ve done so quite extensively.

So no, I’m sorry, but you are actually the one who is wrong here. Just because the Wiki lacks previous and literally unlisted information in the game until now, doesn’t mean detonated cluster bombs were always 3 targets as you are saying. -.-;

I’m going out on a limb here but … You quite honestly sound like some arenanet employee trying to defend themselves while disguised as a player so as to preserve / hide just how much of a horrible nerf this was to shortbow because Arenanet lacks so much insight and know-how with PvP to actually balance PvP properly.

Just sayn’

I do find Arenanet to be like … that.

Edit: And lol … sir, I’ve been through those nerfs. I remember them both, I was present and playing when both came in. I wasn’t happy with either, but found that it didn’t really ruin my effectiveness.

The max targets however, did, and that is why I actually said something about it. If you were actually a thief that was previously able to make good use of a shortbow, then you’d understand too, but I’m afraid very few do because it’s already such an undervalued weapon, especially in spvp – and now it will be even more so obsolete.

If anything it may have needed some love, not even more nerfs.

@OP

Wow. You must be a really old timer if you remember the days when ANET did balance patches.

I don’t understand what are you talking about.

" Number of Impacts: 3"
" Maximum Targets per Impact: 3"
I just went to mists and tested it. 9 hits.

And it worked like that since first time I tested thief – last stress test.

I’m also unsure if you’re not just being misled by a tooltip update (they can be low priority…) because the skill feels as it always has for me.

I do wish we’d see more class balancing going on but I suppose with the game pricing model they have to make content choices.

I think the very first thing you said honestly sums up everything here, that or I’m just a convoluted mess who’s going to stop trying soon, either way … >_<;

“Number of impacts: 3” I’m not talking about this since this has always been.

“Maximum Targets per Impact: 3” <—- Is new and I know detonations could hit more than 3 targets previously, that is what I’m saying.

And honestly, I’m wondering if they were even capped at a maximum of 5 targets, same with undetonated cluster bombs. That is the only thing I’m unsure of, but I know for a kitten ed fact that detonated cluster bombs could hit more than 3 targets at once, there’s no way I would not have noticed that in all my experience playing.

Let me put it this way. The difference in this change is so vast that I hadn’t even read any patch notes when I logged in and played two or three spvp hotjoin games as to feel out any possible changes, and promptly went back to the mists to figure out WTF was wrong with my build when previously, it felt “fine”.

Without even looking at patch notes I already knew something was different, so I started by looking through runes, sigils and traits – I only found the 2% nerf to runes of strength, no big deal really. But when looking through my utilities and weapon skills, sure as hell … I found in the very least of we’re talking about here, a tooltip change in my utilities, and then this continues on towards both my weapon sets and voila … I hence pinpointed the reason why shortbow is now garbage in a team fight and pretty bad a few “1v1” situations as well.

And last of all, to support this … I have a screenshot that through the amount of initiative shown on screen, the in flight cluster bomb being detonated, 5 ticks of bleed damage going off simultaneously, and then at least 6 npcs that are roughly the exact same health with evidence of being hit by detonated cluster bombs (6 stacks of bleed on my target = 2 detonated cluster bombs) … that could essentially prove what I’m saying. -.-

Pic related to above, sorry for quality, this is all I have out of my several hundred screenshots that could come even remotely close, I never thought I’d have to use them for backup so you know … http://tinypic.com/r/30sbxbb/8

I have a screenshot with 9 targets all poisoned and choking gas is supposed to only have 5 targets maximum … but this doesn’t prove much because I could’ve just spammed poison cloud. I was just searching for anything I might have to back up what I’m saying here.

Bah … I don’t have anything else to say really. I think I’m going to just drop it here. I’m just sad that shortbow feels like trash now. And really I didn’t expect my thread to get even 1/10th this much attention.

It’s been fun.

I might be wrong since i played theif mainly in Cb and shortly after,but CB detonation did not cost any ini or just one(my memory is bit blued here),any way when they nerfed range they also nerfed ini cost as well(if remembr correctly it was due to some venom aura heals or somthing where detonatng haeald for heafty amount), that im sure of…
As i said ,I did not play for a while so didnt track all the changes so well.