Guild Wars 2

Now that I’ve had a couple of months to reflect on the shortbow changes (I didn’t want to post a knee jerk rage post), here’s what I think:

Thief is by far my favourite class in the game, and of all of the kits you can play on thief, I love using shortbow the most. It may not be the most damage (flat or condi), and it may not have the most range or the fastest attacks, but I always felt the shortbow kit just synergized so well with itself.

A while back, ANET rightfully decided that it needed to tone down the shortbow’s perma-evade — and their solution was to add a little scoot/shuffle after cast to the end of disabling shot that can’t be cancelled or dodged out of (you CAN however weapon swap out of it). During this after cast, the thief is a sitting duck for anyone/anything that has the timing (or the luck in some cases) down to chop your glassy head off.

Now, I still agree (as a thief main, that says something) that the evades were too strong, but now disabling shot really feels much worse (to the point that I don’t even want to use the skill) and as a result, makes playing shortbow thief feel much worse. I don’t think this was ANET’s intention, and I’d like to ask all of you thief players if you can think of another way to handle the perma-evade problem without needing to add an after cast to disabling shot. Perhaps adding a second skill use, similar to what they did with flanking strike on sword/dagger would work.

Fellow thieves, what do you think? (Please no thief still OP, why buff? posts)

The change to SB 3 was necessary.

For everyone whose fought a thief prior to the change, the abuse of SB 3 was very apparent. In trouble? No problem, swap to SB and spam 3 until you’re out of range. It was OP.

Having a huge amount of dodges/evades is THE biggest problem with thieves, particularly s/d thieves. It promotes laziness and but doesn’t promote good positioning + timing dodges.

I do think they need to fix the animation somehow, but I think the choice of making it evade in the first 60% of the frames is a solid decision. I think it should be done for all dodge/evade mechanics as well. Having full evade frames mean you really don’t have to time things precisely, thus promotes a lower caliber of player skill.

Amaterasu.6280:

I do think they need to fix the animation somehow.

What do you think would be a good way to do this?

Amaterasu.6280:

Having a huge amount of dodges/evades is THE biggest problem with thieves, particularly s/d thieves.

What does s/d have to do with shortbow #3?

Thieves have similar dodge/evade mechanisms as other classes while lacking the blocking and protection. Some other classes have free evades on their #1, while thieves’ weapon based evades always cost initiative.

frans.8092:

Amaterasu.6280:

Having a huge amount of dodges/evades is THE biggest problem with thieves, particularly s/d thieves.

What does s/d have to do with shortbow #3?

I’m sorry, but have you fought a s/d thief and tried to burst one down?

The ability to chain evades through SB 3 and dodges for a long period of time is the reason why acro thieves are considered broken. It made it impossible to lock them down.

Less now, after SB 3 nerf, but still, the dodges are present. By dodges I mean being able to chain 6-8 dodges simultaneously. 3 from regular dodges via feline grace -> signet of agility -> 3 more dodges -> withdraw -> dodge again. If you space these out and actually try to time the dodges, you can easily get 8-9 dodges out in a extremely short period of time. Now add the pre-nerf SB 3 to that…it’s hard to argue that it isn’t OP and overall just promotes low level gameplay.

the sober ninja.6539:

Amaterasu.6280:

I do think they need to fix the animation somehow.

What do you think would be a good way to do this?

I’m not sure honestly – the animation just seems to stutter at the moment…as if you are rubberbanding :/ They just need to make it a smooth animation.

They can’t change the duration of the animation because it cancels out the nerf to allow counter play…so they just need to change the animation itself to be smoother.

OR they could revert back to allowing full evade frames, but bump up the ini to 6 so that it’s no longer spammable.

What about just a shorter evade time? I’d be ok with that, you’d still be able to dodge the big damage skills and CC but you couldn’t spam it endlessly.

Amaterasu.6280:

frans.8092:

Amaterasu.6280:

Having a huge amount of dodges/evades is THE biggest problem with thieves, particularly s/d thieves.

What does s/d have to do with shortbow #3?

I’m sorry, but have you fought a s/d thief and tried to burst one down?

Yes and no. What does S/D have to do with Disabling Shot?

The ability to chain evades through SB 3 and dodges for a long period of time is the reason why acro thieves are considered broken. It made it impossible to lock them down.

It is the only defense available with Shortbow.

Now add the pre-nerf SB 3 to that…it’s hard to argue that it isn’t OP and overall just promotes low level gameplay.

Evasion and dodging is the only defense on the Shortbow. And since when is being able to be locked down a measure for balance? If anything, locking down any player should never be possible.

Have you actually tried this new shuffle? Have you seen how the change is described in the update notes? It says: “Fixed an issue that caused the player to stop moving momentarily when using this skill on opponents behind the thief”. It fixed an issue with movement? This isn’t fixing, or balancing, it must be a mistake.

Yeah, that bug isn’t fixed. It was still happening last night.

Bug is finally fixed now with last balance patch, and it feels much nicer. Unfortunately, hidden thief is now bugged with mug again.

SB3 is better, but you still can’t dodge during the moonwalk, which should be an option, except for Acro thieves.

That’s the thing about evades in this game. Evasion hardly has a middle ground due to the game’s limitations. Everything goes by 1/4 increments. So 1/2 second and up might be a bit much since it will turn short animations into a full evade. However dropping it to 1/4 second could in fact hurt it’s utility in being a on demand evade because 1/4s in this game is merely a blink.

Instead of turning the attack into a short self stun, they could have just increased the initiative cost.