Guild Wars 2

—Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
—Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
—Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.

These are the three main noticeable statements that was stated that can affect P/W builds.

While I applaud Anet’s attempt to fix Pistol Whip and try to diversify new builds, the shadow return nerf is just too big of a liability now to play the very unorthodox weapon set.

Other Profession’s Sword flurry can still do it better.
Lose DPS for Assassin’s Reward, the healing will still be crap and you do not need 30% more boon duration as part of your build.

Does Sword Pistol still need to be nerfed?
Are the new buffs viable enough for us S/P thieves to look the other way?
What buffs do Sword pistol thieves really need??

Added another time cast on a break stun (Don’t forget shadow trap), this is the pioint.

They will add a time cast even on shadowstep, because kids don’t like they can’t kill us.

origano.5912:

Added another time cast on a break stun (Don’t forget shadow trap), this is the pioint.

They will add a time cast even on shadowstep, because kids don’t like they can’t kill us.

Yes exactly try out shadow trap the cast time on it is absolutely disgusting even though the proposed cast time on IS 1/4 sec the idea of having it on S/x most important skill is WTF!!!

I think the opportunist nerf is going to hurt alot more. Surprised you overlooked this. Its going to be a huge loss in initiative making s/p have less dps and survivability.

MyCondolences.8172:

I think the opportunist nerf is going to hurt alot more. Surprised you overlooked this. Its going to be a huge loss in initiative making s/p have less dps and survivability.

Your totally right I think the oppor nerf has been looked over in general and it really is a great trait that rewards offensive play style.

ok s/p is worthless after this pach reasons being:

The obvious: opportunist nerf which will hurt pve most of all seing how there you could hit up to 3 mobs at once with a crit chance no lower that 70% (if not 100%) so you would get about 3 ini per pw, not anymore.

The not so obvious is that the pw ,after the pach, will have a after cast time of 0.25sec but the stun lasts for 0.50sec meaning you get only one sword hit in before the stun ends (you get 3 instances of damage – the pw hits 9 times, one of which is the pistol stun ,but the sword flurry actually has 4 swings each dealing 2 instances of dmg so that one hit form the stun + 4 swings that each deal damage twice = 9 instances of dmg total – you can test this on the practise dummies in la), but befeore the octobre 15 nerf you had a cast time of 0.50sec and the stun lasted for 1.00sec so you had 0.50 sec to land 2 sword hits while they were stund ( 5 instances of dmg, 4 from sword 1 from stun). Now like i said you will only get one swordhit in (3 instance of dmg , 2 from sword one from the stun) cos you have 0.25sec of stun time when the flurry starts and before you had 0.50sec.

Another nerf to the set will be the infiltrators return 1/4 sec cast time (thath, like vincecontix said i doubt will actualy be 1/4 sec). This is a key element in s/p play style
(and s/d for that matter) and now if you don’t have cat like reflexes and a god like internet connection with next to no lagg ( lol wvw) good luck dodging incoming
earth shakers and bull’s charges not to mention you can;t use it while chaneling or while doing another action (such as withdrawing or dodging or while in a pw root)

Last but not least is the nerf to vigor. Do i need to explain this on?
Well i do ,since there is a slim chance a dev will read this and i am certain that whoever is balancing the thief is clueless. I get that thief dodge too much , but we are the second squishiest class in the game and after you nerf perma stealt (only thing done right in the upcoming pach) evasion is the only viable defence left , and this was always the only defence s/p had (a play style where you jump and stick on your opponent and try to outlast him by evading damage while interupting key skills of his own) and you nerfd it to the ground shaved it by 50%.

Just don’t bother with the set, the only thing you will be able to do post pach is spam black powder and auto attack while camping in it while occasionally headshoting a heal skill , this is coming from someone who used it more than any other weapon combination and i am putting it down after pach unles they recal the changes to at least the shadow return and opportunist (and make the godkitten pw stun last 1 sec flat!!!)

I was running an s/p initiative regen dodge build, but just from the title of that I think you can understand why I’ll be sticking exclusively to my condition build instead.

There is no discussion to be had. It’s time to change classes. Unless you guys really are going to continue playing Thief even though you know there will be another IS/SR nerf the next patch, and the next one after that.

Anet’s apparent goal was to create the most dynamic innovative and mobile+acrobatic play style with the sword on the thief. And then destroy that beauty slowly, and cruelly, to let you know that they run this shiot. lol.

See you guys in the Warrior forums

vincecontix.1264:

origano.5912:

Added another time cast on a break stun (Don’t forget shadow trap), this is the pioint.

They will add a time cast even on shadowstep, because kids don’t like they can’t kill us.

Yes exactly try out shadow trap the cast time on it is absolutely disgusting even though the proposed cast time on IS 1/4 sec the idea of having it on S/x most important skill is WTF!!!

It was enough to make me stop using it. Took it off my bar and added Shadowstep. Can’t wait till that utility has a cast time next though. /sigh

Too bad I can’t take infiltrators stike off my bar and put something better there instead, but this isn’t GW1. Preferably something that removed conditions since I wont be able to with shadow return anymore.

I like those changes. IS was op, it needed nerf.

I loved S/P in PvP before this latest patch, but even after an after cast reduction on Pistol Whip, I don’t see myself running anything but D/P. Dagger brings much more damage than sword and without a decent duration on a stun or the escape of what S/D did before, I don’t think I can really justify using a sword build in PvP.

On the bright side, S/P will be better than ever in PvE. I doubt it will still come close to daggers for single target fights, but it’ll be improved for clearing trash and may be worth taking on boss fights with the occasional add.

Another thread on S/P players, and yet so little replies.

Mention Daggers, and it fills up with replies.

Sad ArenaNet

On the bright side, S/P will be better than ever in PvE. I doubt it will still come close to daggers for single target fights, but it’ll be improved for clearing trash and may be worth taking on boss fights with the occasional add.

I doubt that with huge nerf to opportunist.

Even with the Sleight of Hand Daze and the 1s Immobilize on IS, it’s no longer possible to land more than a single swing with S/P in a PvP environment since your opponent will just walk away from you. The only way to land all your hits is using Devourer Venom and hoping your target doesn’t instantly cleanse it.

It’s still decent for PvE and clearing camps in WvW, but beyond that they need to figure out how they want the weapon set to be utilized by the playerbase or it’ll end up seeing less use than a Focus by Elementalists with one fourth of the utility.

Do we still have thieves who are still willing to play s/p after patch?

I will probably test it since it’s my favourite setup. But I doubt that I will stay on it for longer time :/

bladie.5084:

Do we still have thieves who are still willing to play s/p after patch?

I probably will, although i’ve been trying to find a different build recently. PW is great and all in dungoens but i feel its not “cloak and dagger”and want to find a good build that fits “thieves” better. Yet to find anything yet.

Found D/D to be about the same dps, involves alot more concentration and i lose the immune from PW/
S/D was fun in my test runs but i forgot to change builds so my dps was bad but it was a cool play style.
D/P also looks fun especially for pvp.
Pistols as mainhand just seem crappy to even bother with.

And i love shortbow as secondary.

bladie.5084:

Do we still have thieves who are still willing to play s/p after patch?

Well most likely since i don’t like any other sets apart from d/d and i am way to used to headshot to swap to s/d, which has ,in my opinion less utility (no blinds no interrupts unless you count c&d in to tactical strike which takes some time and is not a reliable interrupt , it only has got a boon steal going for it)

Probably worse than ever (i’d argue this set was the most balanced thief set before last nerfs, and maybe most balanced set of the whole game), then again i barely play anymore so i’ll let you judge.

I guess that this will help my S/P Perplexity build somewhat, depending on how useful that reduced aftercast really is. My trait spec is 10/0/30/0/30, so the changes to init on crit and Assassin’s Reward won’t really have an impact on me one way or another.

I would have rather had the full 1s on Pistol Whip back, though. Maybe I just will have to live with using Devourer? Meh.