Guild Wars 2

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Updates

2012
September

• Heartskeer: Reduced damage of the 100%-50% threshold by 20%. Damage thresholds changed. Old: 100%-66%, 66%-33%, 33%-0%. New: 100%-50%, 50%-25%, 25%-0%

October

• Assassin’s Signet: This skill has been updated to grant 15% damage for 5 attacks rather than 50% damage for one attack.
• Pistol Whip: Reduced damage by 15%

November

• Dancing Dagger:This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%
• Tactical Strike: This skill’s damage has been increased by 10% in all formats. This skill’s daze duration has been reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds in PvP.
• Cluster Bomb: This skill’s damage is reduced by 15% in PvP.
• Cloak and Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.

2013
January

• Spider Venom, Devourer Venom, Ice Drake Venom, Skale Venom, Basilisk Venom, Assassin’s Signet
  The number of uses on this skill’s effect will now decrease if an attack lands or if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable.

March
*Stealth: The duration of Revealed has been increased to 4 seconds when coming out of stealth via an attack.

• Quickness: Reduced from 100% attack speed to 50%. (All professions)
• Caltrops: Reduced duration from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Basilisk Venom skill: No longer immobilizes targets in addition to stunning them.

April

• Mug: Can no longer critically hit.
• Trick Shot: First arrow is no longer heat-seeking.
• Stealth: The duration of Revealed has been reverted to 3 seconds in PvE._

There has always been a flavor-of-the-month (or week, or day) complaint meta/campaign regarding Thieves. Some targeted complaints have actually resulted in a matching Thief nerf . Thieves have received many nerfs on skills/traits/utilities that had no previous (perceived) issue, and without any rhyme or reason given as to why.

I would opine that the majority of complaints on the (“OP”) state of Thieves are based on perception versus reality coupled with (garbage in, gospel out) misinformation.

Please refer to this list for the reality and correct information.

“What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy.”

As a follow on, the Thief profession is supposed to excel at single target (one-on-one) direct damage. So, why have the majority of our nerfs resulted in overall damage reduction? That being said, why are there still so many complaints about how we do damage?

Alright I don’t know about the entirety of this list: maybe some of these nerfs were just too hasty. I personally question the Pistol Whip change, especially in light of how quickness has been altered game-wide. But.

xmtrcv.5236:

October

• Assassin’s Signet: This skill has been updated to grant 15% damage for 5 attacks rather than 50% damage for one attack.

This one absolutely had to happen, and the compensation in the way the new active works is excellent.

Softspoken.2410:

Alright I don’t know about the entirety of this list: maybe some of these nerfs were just too hasty. I personally question the Pistol Whip change, especially in light of how quickness has been altered game-wide. But.

xmtrcv.5236:

October

• Assassin’s Signet: This skill has been updated to grant 15% damage for 5 attacks rather than 50% damage for one attack.

This one absolutely had to happen, and the compensation in the way the new active works is excellent.

I am not saying that any of the nerfs listed were uncalled for, just offering a list and perspective of how Thieves are to play / play against today versus what it had been before.

I do agree with you on that particular change, though. :)

What I find so funny is that the Devs stated (in the April SotG) that they thought the BASE DAMAGE of thief attacks was too low, necessitating heavy investment into certain traitlines in order to get competitive damage.

…errrr, the base damage is low because the Devs themselves nerfed it into the the ground. I truly don’t understand the logic here.

its because they where also under the impression thief skills where spammable and that we some how got more base skill uses than others so to counter the speed at which we could attack/reuse skills they clearly had to lower the numbers…

Then of course someone noticed initiative was more restrictive in this manner than regular cooldowns for the most part.

Phenn.5167:

What I find so funny is that the Devs stated (in the April SotG) that they thought the BASE DAMAGE of thief attacks was too low, necessitating heavy investment into certain traitlines in order to get competitive damage.

…errrr, the base damage is low because the Devs themselves nerfed it into the the ground. I truly don’t understand the logic here.

What I find funny is, the Devs admitted that thief base dmg was sub-par and claimed they were looking into boosting the base dmg…. in every patch, thief dmg has been reduced… INCLUDING THIS ONE!… no not base dmg in this patch, but the inability for Mug to crit does, in fact, reduce the output of dmg a thief can do. And you are right, if they are so concerned about the base dmg a thief does as being poor in comparison to other classes… then why did they nerf the base dmg in the first place?

Ruggan.4102:

Phenn.5167:

What I find so funny is that the Devs stated (in the April SotG) that they thought the BASE DAMAGE of thief attacks was too low, necessitating heavy investment into certain traitlines in order to get competitive damage.

…errrr, the base damage is low because the Devs themselves nerfed it into the the ground. I truly don’t understand the logic here.

What I find funny is, the Devs admitted that thief base dmg was sub-par and claimed they were looking into boosting the base dmg…. in every patch, thief dmg has been reduced… INCLUDING THIS ONE!… no not base dmg in this patch, but the inability for Mug to crit does, in fact, reduce the output of dmg a thief can do. And you are right, if they are so concerned about the base dmg a thief does as being poor in comparison to other classes… then why did they nerf the base dmg in the first place?

hypocrisy in it’s truest form ….. hahaha
even they don’t know what they are lying anymore

Okay this is just my opinion, and some changes and nerf’s are warranted. While I think the majority are poor decisions. The hypocrisy is indeed obvious.

In actual reality, right now, you have to play way better than your opponent in most cases to achieve an equal result.
^ This is a result of constant unwarranted nerf batter with no compensation. (Thus them admitting base damage is low)

Thanks everyone who is gracious enough to complain about this class at every tick and turn cause it wasn’t a free kill!

I read somewhere that anet wants thief to be the top burst class, as it stands right now. It is not, thief is easily rivaled in this by a proper phantasm build, maybe even a GS Warrior with haste buff and Axe off set for eviscerate.

This class’s main role was damage, it has very little defense outside of being king of escape. Taking its damage away slowly but surely, just makes this class feel like an empty shell.

“Thieves are adept at the art of stealth. They utilize surprise shadow and shadow to get closer to their enemies, and they’re deadly in one-on-one combat.”

Thieves are hardly the only class adept in stealth, but okay statement is still true. They just forgot to mention its by far not the only one. (say hay Mesmer!)

Deadly in one-on-one combat. What a big freaking joke. In PvE my warrior can do everything my thief can 2-3x better. And slowly but surely QQ is turning thief into a watered down mud-stomped class in PvP (which also carries out to PvE).

all this patch did for me is turn my wvw thief that I used shortbow to roam in zergs useless. This is cause I can’t be a front line fighter as I just melt and now my short bow no longer hits anything in a zerg unless its skill 4

xmtrcv.5236:

2013
January

• Spider Venom, Devourer Venom, Ice Drake Venom, Skale Venom, Basilisk Venom, Assassin’s Signet
  The number of uses on this skill’s effect will now decrease if an attack lands or if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable.

That was a buff. Without this the venom share wouldn’t be viable.

Frenk.5917:

xmtrcv.5236:

2013
January

• Spider Venom, Devourer Venom, Ice Drake Venom, Skale Venom, Basilisk Venom, Assassin’s Signet
  The number of uses on this skill’s effect will now decrease if an attack lands or if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable.

That was a buff. Without this the venom share wouldn’t be viable.

wwwwwwwwwwwwwhat?

Travlane.5948:

Frenk.5917:

xmtrcv.5236:

2013
January

• Spider Venom, Devourer Venom, Ice Drake Venom, Skale Venom, Basilisk Venom, Assassin’s Signet
  The number of uses on this skill’s effect will now decrease if an attack lands or if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable.

That was a buff. Without this the venom share wouldn’t be viable.

wwwwwwwwwwwwwhat?

Before the patch when you activated a venom and you swinged in the air just pushing #1 without hitting anything (therefore getting “miss”) the effect of the venom disappeared just like if you already applied it or you got blocked, blinded etc.

That patch just said that the effect of the activated venom no longer disappears if you don’t hit anything.

Phenn.5167:

What I find so funny is that the Devs stated (in the April SotG) that they thought the BASE DAMAGE of thief attacks was too low, necessitating heavy investment into certain traitlines in order to get competitive damage.

…errrr, the base damage is low because the Devs themselves nerfed it into the the ground. I truly don’t understand the logic here.

They nerfed the base damage in response to combinations thieves were doing and basically went around nerfing the external combinations by hitting the weapons.
They nerfed Pistol Whip in response to hasted pistol whip gibs at release, then they later nerfed quickness obviously this leaves Pistol whip in a nerfed state.
They nerfed Cluster bomb because the aoe was strong, granted it was considering Shortbow doesn’t really “rely” on anything to be efficient.

CnD and the like were nerfed partially because of Cnd-Mug. Mind you had they nerfed Mug to begin with, those nerfs may not needed to of happened or could have been less drastic.

Essentially they didn’t want (it appears) to nerf our utility skills/traits or we’re very cautious about doing it so so they hit our base damage instead.
Now what always should’ve been nerfed has been nerfed, and we’re left with damage issues. Where Dancing Daggers is a pretty bad skill, Cnd isn’t as monstrous and the vuln stacks aren’t enough of a steroid.

First of all, when they say base damage, I don’t beleive they are talking about Crit Damage as being apart of the base damage…hince the BASE part…however thats odd because a core mechanic of Thief is dealing constant Crit damage…so…I dunno lol.

I’ve been fine with all the nerfs, but the SB nerfs have always rubbed me the wrong way :/

Frenk.5917:

Travlane.5948:

Frenk.5917:

xmtrcv.5236:

2013
January

• Spider Venom, Devourer Venom, Ice Drake Venom, Skale Venom, Basilisk Venom, Assassin’s Signet
  The number of uses on this skill’s effect will now decrease if an attack lands or if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable.

That was a buff. Without this the venom share wouldn’t be viable.

wwwwwwwwwwwwwhat?

Before the patch when you activated a venom and you swinged in the air just pushing #1 without hitting anything (therefore getting “miss”) the effect of the venom disappeared just like if you already applied it or you got blocked, blinded etc.

That patch just said that the effect of the activated venom no longer disappears if you don’t hit anything.

but venoms were healing 625 hp then, now it’s 325+0.2 healing power
and -625 to enemy hp but now we have 325+0.0175*attack power…meaning 325+35 at 2000 power…
care to discuss about that nerf also ?

DanH.5879:

but venoms were healing 625 hp then, now it’s 325+0.2 healing power
and -625 to enemy hp but now we have 325+0.0175*attack power…meaning 325+35 at 2000 power…
care to discuss about that nerf also ?

I was specifically talking about the “buff” (The number of uses on this skill’s effect will now decrease if an attack lands or if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable). If it was a buff, it shouldn’t be in that list.

Frenk.5917:

xmtrcv.5236:

2013
January

• Spider Venom, Devourer Venom, Ice Drake Venom, Skale Venom, Basilisk Venom, Assassin’s Signet
  The number of uses on this skill’s effect will now decrease if an attack lands or if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable.

That was a buff. Without this the venom share wouldn’t be viable.

Nothing was buffed. It was a bug fix. Or simply redefining what a “hit” means.

EDIT:
Having it on the list is not enough reason to call it a buff. In the recent patch, they included the CnD bug fix that I’ve mistaken for a buff.

Frenk.5917:

Travlane.5948:

Frenk.5917:

xmtrcv.5236:

2013
January

• Spider Venom, Devourer Venom, Ice Drake Venom, Skale Venom, Basilisk Venom, Assassin’s Signet
  The number of uses on this skill’s effect will now decrease if an attack lands or if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable.

That was a buff. Without this the venom share wouldn’t be viable.

wwwwwwwwwwwwwhat?

Before the patch when you activated a venom and you swinged in the air just pushing #1 without hitting anything (therefore getting “miss”) the effect of the venom disappeared just like if you already applied it or you got blocked, blinded etc.

That patch just said that the effect of the activated venom no longer disappears if you don’t hit anything.

oh ok so ….didnt state all of it. now i get it

The base damage change is supposed to come hand in hand with our newer survival and utility tools. It isn’t that our damage is too low. It’s that our base damage is too low which over-prioritizes crit as a stat in every non-condition build. You have to dump everything in to tons of it to deal decent damage, and that’s inconsistant with the majority of other class’ viable damage builds where a “balanced” build also pumps out decent damage.

The theory here is that nerfing our burst (and everybody’s burst for that matter) is an effort to slow down combat a bit. Without that OMGWTFBBQ burst, the base damage of several skills comes back up so that they’re more viable initiative uses along with their utility uses leading to a better ability to initiatiate, sustain, and actually win a prolonged fight.

The thing is, to make it all pan out a large portion of the critical strikes tree would need to be gutted because, let’s face it, increasing base damage so that you CAN use less to do the same damage… also means that if you keep all that crit you just burst faster.

Maybe some kind of tradeoff trait in a non-critical trait line would better handle it. something like “Your critical chance is halved. You deal 25% more damage” or something like that (albiet something more carefully balanced than the three seconds it took to think that up.)

Also keep in mind they’ve admitted we have a crapton of just plain bad traits, and we’re going to start seeing the warrior treatment of combo-traits and trait upgrades to further strengthen build diversity.

basically, the idea is that we should have the option of crit stacking straight damage builds, but that we should be able to build to contribute in other ways.

I like this idea, but it’s a tricky situation when considering crit, initiative, and a whole host of other things. I’d like to see stuff like viable stealth trapper builds, viable debuffer builds, viable CC/soft control builds, etc. Basically, think about the GW1 ranger’s PvP roles, There was a spike option, but it wasn’t used a lot because spike rangers couldn’t do much else when specced to spike. The did, however, excel at dot pressure, skirmishing, debuffing, and running. We have a ranger class in GW2, but in the meta the ranger isn’t the same animal, and its place in the meta is much more akin to the GW1 spiker ele (while our GW2 ele fills a nuker/zoner ele role, etc.)

Thieves should have the stealth burst option and it should be viable, and, as they said, should be the best burster in the game. However we should also have some other roles that we don’t totally suck at too.

Pop stealth back to 4 seconds, No reason to lower to thief skill cap to nothing. now you can basicly play 0-30-30-0-10 or 10-30-or whatever gets you on 3 seconds is a joke.

I did about just as fine with 4 seconds, i do suppose a lot of newbies QQ´ed about them having to learn how to use their class with dodge and blind.

There are other tweaks Anet does to alter some stats here and there without making an patch note of the change. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. One such example is the reduction of backstab damage over time, especially in Wvw but also in pve. Cleave was reduced to only 3 targets from all mobs in range. Sword, pistol, and LDB bleed damage have all seen significant downgrades which do not have patch notes but were “tweaked” massivley. Sit down after a hard week to relax and see the main skill for your build was reduced by 500 damage, and no on seems to care or bother to publically acknowledge the fact. It’s very disconcerting, as a thief, to notice.
Also a great source of frustration is that thief players have little reward given back for near flawless effort. It’d be similar to Anet releasing this great game in August but 60% of customers decide to go buy SWTOR despite all of the dev’s planning and hard work and in ignorance of gameplay or facts. Whether its pleasure or business, no one enjoys being cheated especially due to prejudice.
To notice tweaks, You simply have to play over time and watch stats/numbers. I’m glad warrior doesn’t also get handled this way or I’d quit due to outrage. It’s just disheartening to see my favorite class abused because some people threw up ignorant picket signs and nobody important decided that gross concept error might be a cause for discredit.

Edit: Try Google this, it says “:in pve.” That means sPvP and tpvp still have 4sec revealed. I don’t know about wvw.

xmtrcv.5236:

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Updates

2012
September

• Heartskeer: Reduced damage of the 100%-50% threshold by 20%. Damage thresholds changed. Old: 100%-66%, 66%-33%, 33%-0%. New: 100%-50%, 50%-25%, 25%-0%

October

• Assassin’s Signet: This skill has been updated to grant 15% damage for 5 attacks rather than 50% damage for one attack.
• Pistol Whip: Reduced damage by 15%

November

• Dancing Dagger:This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%
• Tactical Strike: This skill’s damage has been increased by 10% in all formats. This skill’s daze duration has been reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds in PvP.
• Cluster Bomb: This skill’s damage is reduced by 15% in PvP.
• Cloak and Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.

2013
January

• Spider Venom, Devourer Venom, Ice Drake Venom, Skale Venom, Basilisk Venom, Assassin’s Signet
  The number of uses on this skill’s effect will now decrease if an attack lands or if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable.

March
*Stealth: The duration of Revealed has been increased to 4 seconds when coming out of stealth via an attack.

• Quickness: Reduced from 100% attack speed to 50%. (All professions)
• Caltrops: Reduced duration from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Basilisk Venom skill: No longer immobilizes targets in addition to stunning them.

April

• Mug: Can no longer critically hit.
• Trick Shot: First arrow is no longer heat-seeking.
• Stealth: The duration of Revealed has been reverted to 3 seconds in PvE._

There has always been a flavor-of-the-month (or week, or day) complaint meta/campaign regarding Thieves. Some targeted complaints have actually resulted in a matching Thief nerf . Thieves have received many nerfs on skills/traits/utilities that had no previous (perceived) issue, and without any rhyme or reason given as to why.

I would opine that the majority of complaints on the (“OP”) state of Thieves are based on perception versus reality coupled with (garbage in, gospel out) misinformation.

Please refer to this list for the reality and correct information.

“What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy.”

This is the inevitable result of people sucking and complaining about it! My pistol whip is now only usable in conjunction with Signet of Malice. I bet next thing they are going to be complaining about after stealth is the power of s/p’s 1 combo.

Why am I even playing thief anymore?!

EDIT: I know why…. Integrity.

Now the game just needs more skills with “Revealing” tagged on and a nerf to backstab OR a buff to all the other stealth skills.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Now the game just needs more skills with “Revealing” tagged on and a nerf to backstab OR a buff to all the other stealth skills.

Arrow carts now reveal. Good show Arenanet! How about some P/P nerfs to seal the deal?

Ekemeister.8905:

Edit: Try Google this, it says “:in pve.” That means sPvP and tpvp still have 4sec revealed. I don’t know about wvw.

Nope, its 3 seconds in wvw again now don´t know how many boring thiefs that keep fighting with CnD, heal up and remove condition in stealth then repeat til they give up bashing on my warrior, It might just be one second, but that one second was the one second that decide if you screwed yourself over or did well.

PopeUrban.2578:

The base damage change is supposed to come hand in hand with our newer survival and utility tools. It isn’t that our damage is too low. It’s that our base damage is too low which over-prioritizes crit as a stat in every non-condition build. You have to dump everything in to tons of it to deal decent damage, and that’s inconsistant with the majority of other class’ viable damage builds where a “balanced” build also pumps out decent damage.

The theory here is that nerfing our burst (and everybody’s burst for that matter) is an effort to slow down combat a bit. Without that OMGWTFBBQ burst, the base damage of several skills comes back up so that they’re more viable initiative uses along with their utility uses leading to a better ability to initiatiate, sustain, and actually win a prolonged fight.

The thing is, to make it all pan out a large portion of the critical strikes tree would need to be gutted because, let’s face it, increasing base damage so that you CAN use less to do the same damage… also means that if you keep all that crit you just burst faster.

Maybe some kind of tradeoff trait in a non-critical trait line would better handle it. something like “Your critical chance is halved. You deal 25% more damage” or something like that (albiet something more carefully balanced than the three seconds it took to think that up.)

Also keep in mind they’ve admitted we have a crapton of just plain bad traits, and we’re going to start seeing the warrior treatment of combo-traits and trait upgrades to further strengthen build diversity.

basically, the idea is that we should have the option of crit stacking straight damage builds, but that we should be able to build to contribute in other ways.

I like this idea, but it’s a tricky situation when considering crit, initiative, and a whole host of other things. I’d like to see stuff like viable stealth trapper builds, viable debuffer builds, viable CC/soft control builds, etc. Basically, think about the GW1 ranger’s PvP roles, There was a spike option, but it wasn’t used a lot because spike rangers couldn’t do much else when specced to spike. The did, however, excel at dot pressure, skirmishing, debuffing, and running. We have a ranger class in GW2, but in the meta the ranger isn’t the same animal, and its place in the meta is much more akin to the GW1 spiker ele (while our GW2 ele fills a nuker/zoner ele role, etc.)

Thieves should have the stealth burst option and it should be viable, and, as they said, should be the best burster in the game. However we should also have some other roles that we don’t totally suck at too.

I think the builds you mentioned would all be both fun and viable. Unfortunately, they need a lot of help in both the traits and utilities departments. Hopefully that’s coming down the line sometime.

To the point I bolded, I think the easiest solution would be to separate the precision bonus from the crit-damage bonus on the CS tree. By speccing 30 into CS you automatically get a higher chance to crit and a higher damaging crit. This split appears in other professions, and could open up some interesting avenues to balance out some builds.