Guild Wars 2

so yea, i agree nerfing the burst damage of the cnd steal bs combo, but where’s the buff to compensate?
bow and crippling dagger nerfed..? wat
changes are decent, but imho the spell nerfed/buffed are the wrong one

They didn’t fix a single issue our other weaponsets had.

-Shadow shot still roots on hit, nullifying its ability to close gaps.
-Flanking strike still misses on moving targets (need more testing on this, but that’s my first impression).
-P/P got absolutely nothing. Body shot now works as intended, but its still a sub-par skill. I’ve seen the math on the boards – PvE it might be great, i don’t know, but in PvP, its a waste of initiative.

Ranged attacks are still being obstructed for no reason (Further testing needed, still just a first impression).

The CnD nerf is just baffling. In an attempt to nerf insta-gib builds, they’ve nerfed an ability across all specs. Why not reduce the damage/change the effect of Mug, as countless people have suggested? Now non-glass cannons have a much kittenier 6 init skill, in a (poorly thought out, ineffective) attempt to nerf glass cannons.

4 Init is a ton of initiative for a utility skill, especially if you’re not playing a spec that has 15 base init, or gains 3 init on steal, or regenerates an additional 2 init every 10s. Dancing dagger was probably doing a little bit too much damage, but a 50% nerf is just ridiculous. Reduce the cost to 3 init and increase the travel speed, then its a utility skill. Now Dagger OH does crap damage – D/D now Only has backstab, autoattack, and HS to do damage. Expect to see a kittenload more HS spam from DD players, because that’s it for doing damage.

Edit: Obstructed is indeed still happening on Ranged attacks (primarily DD and trick shot, but also Disabling shot) for absolutely no reason (in range, open ground between me and the target)

Doggie.3184:

Thebeginning.7053:

Why would they nerf shortbow… Anet you have failed.

That was the only unbelievable nerf I’ve seen. It’s just cruel to nerf shortbow. Now it’s balance is upset and it’s going to need something to fix it, like faster bomb speed or longer range.

Just change it back in my opinion, i can’t handle that I’m a shortbow thief.

BabelFish.7234:

ens.9854:

50% damage reduction on dancing dagger?

It now does less damage than a shortbow auto attack and STILL costs 4 init?

Methinks they did not think this one through very much.

Yeah that was pretty silly in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong DD deserved a nerf but not that much of a nerf…

Oh, come on, it cripples four enemies for like 6 seconds or so.

Backstab is still grossly overpowered and P/P goes ignored yet again.

Sterling effort AN…

The one good thing is that almost nothing changed in WvW, since that doesn’t count as a PvP zone. I’ll just have to run seperate builds for WvW and SPvP now…

Ok just came back from battlefield and i dare to ask one question :
If CnD dmg reduction was aimed at bckstb build burst why i still get hit for 16k in steal+CnD+bs combo? (1400 toughness)
I am just pissed off because viability of s/d build is now completely ruined . Whats the point? All they had to do is to apply dmg reduction to mug50%, bs10% and CnD10%

Drakkonis.2768:

BabelFish.7234:

ens.9854:

50% damage reduction on dancing dagger?

It now does less damage than a shortbow auto attack and STILL costs 4 init?

Methinks they did not think this one through very much.

Yeah that was pretty silly in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong DD deserved a nerf but not that much of a nerf…

Oh, come on, it cripples four enemies for like 6 seconds or so.

Other classes have abilities that do the same thing, but they either have more damage or more AoE on it (with Phantasmal Berserker having both). Bladetrail and Phantasmal Berserker come to mind.

Before, I agree, Dancing Dagger did a ton of damage against two targets. But now it’s going to be completely awful. Dagger off-hand is terrible now. All you get is a low hitting cripple that bounces and has an insane initiative cost (1/3 or more than 1/4, depending on your traits), and a weak and hard to hit ability that stealths you.

Yeah, I’d rather use D/P. You may not have the instant distance closer stealth, but you have more utility, an interrupt, another distance closer (albeit an odd one), and a far, far more reliable way to stealth.

P/D was weak, it’s now weaker
P/P was bad and still is (0 utility, bad dps)
S/D was kind of weak and is now weaker(damage = auto-attacks , skill #3 misses on non-moving dummies)
S/P : decent,#3 skill is useless in dynamic fights

D/D : every single skill is good, just weaker dps now so you guessed it everyone and their mothers will still play with D/D and since Pistols are bad , you will still be forced to used a shortbow for its amazing range.

Arthrone.7964:

Ok just came back from battlefield and i dare to ask one question :
If CnD dmg reduction was aimed at bckstb build burst why i still get hit for 16k in steal+CnD+bs combo? (1400 toughness)
I am just pissed off because viability of s/d build is now completely ruined . Whats the point? All they had to do is to apply dmg reduction to mug50%, bs10% and CnD10%

Because they didn’t nerf where it was needed: Mug. Cloak and Dagger by itself wasn’t the issue. It was the combination of two abilities, which both hit roughly the same amount of damage. One of those abilities was nerfed by 33%, while the other one was completely left alone. In total, the burst didn’t get hit that hard. D/D is still usable, but Cloak and Dagger is pretty awful by itself now. The instagib combo still exists, as long as Mug and Backstab still hit as hard as they always did.

Against a glass cannon build, CnD will now hit for ~2k less (depending on specific build and utilities), so you can still get ~10k BS and 6.5k steals, now with 4.5k CnD, so the overall damage goes from ~18k (average theoretical number) down to ~16k, overall it’s a pretty poor nerf to sPvP and no change to WvW (where most of the complaints were coming from).

This is one of the most baffling changes I’ve seen in any MMO I’ve played, it didn’t solve the problem in any way it only lessened the problems effects by ~10% (due to no change in WvW).

evilapprentice.6379:

Expect to see a kittenload more HS spam from DD players, because that’s it for doing damage.

Yep, thanks for the idea. I’ve never used the heartseeker spam build, but the time has come, like it or not.

Arthrone.7964:

Ok just came back from battlefield and i dare to ask one question :
If CnD dmg reduction was aimed at bckstb build burst why i still get hit for 16k in steal+CnD+bs combo? (1400 toughness)
I am just pissed off because viability of s/d build is now completely ruined . Whats the point? All they had to do is to apply dmg reduction to mug50%, bs10% and CnD10%

cnd was only nerfed in spvp/tpvp, not wvw or pve.

btw , initiative regen wass changed ?

i feel it slower, not much just a bit

Is this the first time they’ve started splitting skills into PvE/PvP like this?

New series of tests before sleep:
Tactical strike daze duration in pvp is not increased at all by anything.
CnD nerf in pvp really only prevents glass cannon from dieing before backstab.

And leeching venoms scaling is like… Not noticable between 2k and 3.8k power. If it works at all. Healing not affected for sure.

I do not understand why anet IGNORES issues. And comes up with most ridiculous things. Illusion of effort?

ASP.8093:

Is this the first time they’ve started splitting skills into PvE/PvP like this?

No, it happened previously with the guardian skill “Save Yourselves” (5s duration in PVP, 10s or w/e in PVE.)

WvW = PVE.

-
Thanks for the tac strike/leeching change info!

oh and last thought. Seems most viable build soon (in anet’s vision) will be shortbow autoattack with venoms. It all goes to that.

Ichishi.9613:

New series of tests before sleep:
Tactical strike daze duration in pvp is not increased at all by anything.
CnD nerf in pvp really only prevents glass cannon from dieing before backstab.

And leeching venoms scaling is like… Not noticable between 2k and 3.8k power. If it works at all. Healing not affected for sure.

I do not understand why anet IGNORES issues. And comes up with most ridiculous things. Illusion of effort?

I guess I’m switching back to D/D? I thought they didn’t want so many D/D thieves.

Anyone else unable to pre-load CnD now? If so they really should have included that in the patch notes. Even tried basilisk venom to make sure they aren’t dodging and it isn’t working as before.

And yes disappointing, I had a small glimmer of hope that some alternative weapon sets would be buffed to being decent. Instead they hit 2 things really hard (CnD and Dancing Dagger), which now makes off-hand dagger people who aren’t GC BS’ers a lot worse.

So wait a second.
Is it right, that the backstab burst build hasn’t got any nerfs in WvW?
CnD reduction is only pvp?
Funny ^^

The QQ won’t stop with this page I foresee :/

@Katsumoto:
“Pre-loading” CnD still works for me.

Ichishi.9613:

New series of tests before sleep:
Tactical strike daze duration in pvp is not increased at all by anything.
CnD nerf in pvp really only prevents glass cannon from dieing before backstab.

And leeching venoms scaling is like… Not noticable between 2k and 3.8k power. If it works at all. Healing not affected for sure.

I do not understand why anet IGNORES issues. And comes up with most ridiculous things. Illusion of effort?

Haha. That line right there made my night. I think I’ll be able to sleep soundly tonight.

Vedam.6790:

So wait a second.
Is it right, that the backstab burst build hasn’t got any nerfs in WvW?
CnD reduction is only pvp?
Funny ^^

The QQ won’t stop with this page I foresee :/

@Katsumoto:
“Pre-loading” CnD still works for me.

I’ll try some more. First couple of times it was because apparently the update unlearnt the skill for me. Had to re-learn it lol.

SpaceCowboy.1398:

Eduardo.4675:

buff to P/D!!!

I don’t know if you are trolling or being serious while trying to be funny (I really don’t, sorry). How did P/D get buffed? CnD damage reduction? Dancing Dagger reduced by 50%?

Seems P/D got hit… what am I missing?

i don’t use those abilities for their damage

looks to me like we traded minimal damage for more time in stealth. that’s a buff

chapichapo.6354:

P/D was weak, it’s now weaker

hahahahahahaha. no.

This was a good patch for thieves; it will stop the whiners, the BS combo suffered another small hit, but nothing that will invalidate it, now i wanna see ppl complain that they die in 2 milisseconds to this combo…ppl are suposed to be reactive and think about theyr survivability, all the BS whine was mostly due to slow/inept ppl that did not invest in tufness/defense and did not wanna fill theyr utility bar with a stun breaker/any active defense skill. Now they cannot complain. Adapt or die.
As for the sad thieves (AKA sad pandas), u too adapt or die, if DD wasnt nerfed, the meta would shift there, to a build that maximized usage of dancing daggers, wich would be another form of heartseeker cheese way, im against BS complaints, but im not oblivious to cheesy builds where ure required to press only one button, that on top of the outrageous dmg, also excused the thief to steer his toon towards the enemy, like HS did. Dancing daggers is the same,1 button and no need to even steer, its ranged and will hit ur foe while ure safely afar, and on top it cripples them, too. It was, as i said above, a preemptive nerf, a precaucionary measure to avoid future outcries. The only real nerf was on tactical strike build, and as i was expecting, they made the duration go to 2 secs, as i said above it would be, and they removed the odd sigil of paralyze bug. This build was already too powerful, only ppl didnt realized it yet, but anet (again, a standing ovation to mr Chaplan and peers) knew what was going on. They gave us some buffs, namely pistol bleed build, and they made body shot more atractive, they reworked some utilities, blinding powder is now very good, shadow trap will be one of the funniest skills in game, they fixed scorpion wire (im betting that the skill will work much better now that it has more range). As for cluster bomb,it was too powerful when properly used in www,ure a walking ballista if u have a power/crit build and go about spamming that in zergs,i can understand why they did it,and it was the only bow nerf, btw, no IA nerf, that would be much worse (think of this new pvp map, and all the vertical advantadges that ull still retain, and think how it would be a thief spamming cluster from above…)
This patch will separate the wheat from the chaff.
Adapt or die.
I never die.

As a level 80 thief, I agree with every change (to the thief class) in today’s patch. The only possible exception would be the magnitude of the CnD nerf if there were accompanying D/D nerfs, which there were not.

-Haste is still too strong.
-D/D damage in general is still over the top ridiculous.
-The entire venom+mug unload with D/D is still probably the worst thing I’ve seen in MMO PvP.

S/D is still completely fine as a build. In case you didn’t know: S/D was allowing me (and other thieves) to daze people for 2.66 seconds leaving 0.84 seconds before the next CnD hits and another 2.66 second daze while still having completely viable DPS and survivability if not still above average.

S/D daze was bad, but not as bad as the venom-prep D/D unload build which just kills people instead of dazing them.

I’ve been playing a lot of both builds the past few days and I honestly know that if I had been on the receiving end of what I’ve been doing I wouldn’t even have GW2 on my computer anymore.

I can understand no change to mug dmg. Builds like shortbow main use it as their burst. If you reduce mug dmg you pigeon hole thieves even further into BS burst builds or condition builds. There is one great thing about this patch though – 5v5 hotjoin yay!!!

I see alot of people talking about the nerfs – is anyone else as disappointed and annoyed that we didn’t receive a single fix?

My list is above (Shadow shot, flanking strike, P/P in general, ranged attacks obstructed for no reason, adding venoms still suck, traps still suck, PW still roots and does sub par damage without quickness)

We’re still basically locked into Shbow and either D/D, P/D or S/D, because our other weapon sets have GLARING problems. Every single one of those specs use Dagger offhand, which now does terrible damage for non-glass cannons.

evilapprentice.6379:

I see alot of people talking about the nerfs – is anyone else as disappointed and annoyed that we didn’t receive a single fix?

My list is above (Shadow shot, flanking strike, P/P in general, ranged attacks obstructed for no reason, adding venoms still suck, traps still suck, PW still roots and does sub par damage without quickness)

We’re still basically locked into Shbow and either D/D, P/D or S/D, because our other weapon sets have GLARING problems. Every single one of those specs use Dagger offhand, which now does terrible damage for non-glass cannons.

Fixing those bugs was the only bad thing is this patch, specially the channel>follow that thief bug.

I don’t hate it. But it’s underwhelming. From a WvW player’s perspective, the mass of SPvP-only changes seems kinda ridiculous (especially since SPvP thieves can’t match WvW/PvE thieves’ massive crit damage — or magic culling invisibility — to begin with). Just having skills with different stats between the two kinda offends me.

Here’s what I would have preferred to see for a Backstab nerf: Add a more significant aftercast to C&D.

It wouldn’t really hurt S/D or D/D too much in protracted fights, since the thief would likely be using the time to try to maneuver into position anyway. But it would reduce the time-compression power of C&D→Steal→Backstab, which addresses the major “I can’t react to this in time!” complaint… well, for players who know enough to stun-break out of Basilisk Venom, at least.

More generally, any patch that doesn’t address the following is kinda punting on game balance, in my opinion:
- The Quickness mechanic as a whole.
- Culling (you’ve heard this gripe 1000 times).

Eduardo.4675:

evilapprentice.6379:

I see alot of people talking about the nerfs – is anyone else as disappointed and annoyed that we didn’t receive a single fix?

My list is above (Shadow shot, flanking strike, P/P in general, ranged attacks obstructed for no reason, adding venoms still suck, traps still suck, PW still roots and does sub par damage without quickness)

We’re still basically locked into Shbow and either D/D, P/D or S/D, because our other weapon sets have GLARING problems. Every single one of those specs use Dagger offhand, which now does terrible damage for non-glass cannons.

Fixing those bugs was the only bad thing is this patch, specially the channel>follow that thief bug.

I disagree. 50% damage nerf to Dancing Dagger is over the top – the skill still costs 4 initiative, and has a slow travel time (its rather easy to dodge). Increase the travel time and reduce the init to 3, and I’m fine with it.

CnD doing 33% less damage is just a terrible idea all around. It’s intention was obviously to nerf insta-gib builds, but does almost nothing to nerf them. 1 skill out of 3 doing 33% less damage just means you’ll probably need to hit HS once. Instead, every thief who didn’t want to run insta gib now has a 6 init ability that does 33% less damage.

I’m not claiming the game is ruined. I’ll still play. But Anet has set a disturbing trend – every single thief change (besides changing HS % thresholds) has been wildly off the mark. Nerfing PW to counter Quickness->PW builds? Nerfing CnD to counter Insta-gib builds? They’re nerfing every thief spec to counter extreme burst, rather than just toning down extreme burst. It’s stupid, poorly planned, and extremely worrying.

Edit:The icing on the cake is they just keep nerfing our small pool of working weaponsets, rather than fixing the issues with the broken/poorly designed ones so we can expand as a class.

PhoenixDown.5467:

Shortbow damage nerf – what were they thinking?!! Nerfing mediocre weapon…

Scorpion Wire – oh poor people in zergs and on the walls /insert evil laugh here/

50% damage reduction on dancing dagger?
It now does less damage than a shortbow auto attack and STILL costs 4 init?
Methinks they did not think this one through very much.

It’s a utility skill.

That’s really bad that for thieves their weapon skills are all “utility skills”

Every other class does the bulk of their damage via their weapon skills.

We do the bulk of it through auto attack.

evilapprentice.6379:

Eduardo.4675:

evilapprentice.6379:

I see alot of people talking about the nerfs – is anyone else as disappointed and annoyed that we didn’t receive a single fix?

My list is above (Shadow shot, flanking strike, P/P in general, ranged attacks obstructed for no reason, adding venoms still suck, traps still suck, PW still roots and does sub par damage without quickness)

We’re still basically locked into Shbow and either D/D, P/D or S/D, because our other weapon sets have GLARING problems. Every single one of those specs use Dagger offhand, which now does terrible damage for non-glass cannons.

Fixing those bugs was the only bad thing is this patch, specially the channel>follow that thief bug.

I disagree. 50% damage nerf to Dancing Dagger is over the top – the skill still costs 4 initiative, and has a slow travel time (its rather easy to dodge). Increase the travel time and reduce the init to 3, and I’m fine with it.

CnD doing 33% less damage is just a terrible idea all around. It’s intention was obviously to nerf insta-gib builds, but does almost nothing to nerf them. 1 skill out of 3 doing 33% less damage just means you’ll probably need to hit HS once. Instead, every thief who didn’t want to run insta gib now has a 6 init ability that does 33% less damage.

I’m not claiming the game is ruined. I’ll still play. But Anet has set a disturbing trend – every single thief change (besides changing HS % thresholds) has been wildly off the mark. Nerfing PW to counter Quickness->PW builds? Nerfing CnD to counter Insta-gib builds? They’re nerfing every thief spec to counter extreme burst, rather than just toning down extreme burst. It’s stupid, poorly planned, and extremely worrying.

Edit:The icing on the cake is they just keep nerfing our small pool of working weaponsets, rather than fixing the issues with the broken/poorly designed ones so we can expand as a class.

Me, I was hoping they’d bring offhand pistol skills UP in damage, to be on the same level as offhand dagger skills.

Yeah I get that skills have utility, but it’s just silly that the lowest amount of damage I can do on my class is to shoot someone in the head.

Looks like the route they’re going is to bring dagger skills DOWN instead.. so that autoattack is the biggest damaging skill thieves have. This statement will be true by Christmas.

As a dedicated thief player, and nothing but assassin player in GW1 I think everything was a needed change MINUS the 50% damage deduction on Dancing Dagger. That is just blatant overshooting. As people have stated they nerfed it without any deduction to the init cost which is kitteny. I am pretty stoked about the s-wire buff because I use it a lot and love it. Also to whoever asked this is not the first time they have pve/pvp versions of skills they did it in gw1 which was a great feature. Now if only they would add saving builds. In all I think we will be okay and I love everyone one of you. Don’t give up hope!

evilapprentice.6379:

Eduardo.4675:

evilapprentice.6379:

I see alot of people talking about the nerfs – is anyone else as disappointed and annoyed that we didn’t receive a single fix?

My list is above (Shadow shot, flanking strike, P/P in general, ranged attacks obstructed for no reason, adding venoms still suck, traps still suck, PW still roots and does sub par damage without quickness)

We’re still basically locked into Shbow and either D/D, P/D or S/D, because our other weapon sets have GLARING problems. Every single one of those specs use Dagger offhand, which now does terrible damage for non-glass cannons.

Fixing those bugs was the only bad thing is this patch, specially the channel>follow that thief bug.

I disagree. 50% damage nerf to Dancing Dagger is over the top – the skill still costs 4 initiative, and has a slow travel time (its rather easy to dodge). Increase the travel time and reduce the init to 3, and I’m fine with it.

CnD doing 33% less damage is just a terrible idea all around. It’s intention was obviously to nerf insta-gib builds, but does almost nothing to nerf them. 1 skill out of 3 doing 33% less damage just means you’ll probably need to hit HS once. Instead, every thief who didn’t want to run insta gib now has a 6 init ability that does 33% less damage.

I’m not claiming the game is ruined. I’ll still play. But Anet has set a disturbing trend – every single thief change (besides changing HS % thresholds) has been wildly off the mark. Nerfing PW to counter Quickness->PW builds? Nerfing CnD to counter Insta-gib builds? They’re nerfing every thief spec to counter extreme burst, rather than just toning down extreme burst. It’s stupid, poorly planned, and extremely worrying.

Edit:The icing on the cake is they just keep nerfing our small pool of working weaponsets, rather than fixing the issues with the broken/poorly designed ones so we can expand as a class.

I dont think u got the devs idea. It was a preemptive nerf, just to prevent future cries from meta shift. In case u dont know, dancing daggers has a brutaly fast activation time, its 1/4 secs + travel time, it hits the target usually within half a sec, and its not that easy to dodge, i rarely miss it, and u should also know that it has some kind of bug that more often than not makes the “ripple” hits(or bouncing) do more dmg than the first hit, wich sometimes resulted in brutally increasing the final dmg output,its like that similar bug with rifle warrior where piercing killshots gain power as they perfurate subsequent targets (u should read this as, its prone to exploiting, and we all know that there is no exploiters,right?). The dmg is insane when the enemies accumulate, and if they nerfed the BS combo, wich REQUIRES some few button presses, positioning,etc, the meta would eventually shift to a new form of heartseeker: dancing daggers spam. An Assassin (thief) is suposed to preform stunts like the backstab combo,it has allways been like this in other mmo’s, and im in favor of staying this way, however,one button kills is cheese… that cheese is the reason i dont play death blossom cond build,for me spaming 3 is cheese, specially in that infamous UNICORN build. The meta, if BS was nerfed, would now be either dancing spam,or daze lock spam. In the first, the QQ’ers would come here and say"nerfnerf, 1 hit kills", in the second, the permalock would bring “OMG, Anet, what did you have in mind when u allowed a thief to perma lock me into oblivion?”…
This is my take on this patch, the also powerful P/D setup was actually improved, but that setup takes a lot more time to kill and leaves the victim with a chance to survive and beat you, if he is skilled enough, unlike the very similar S/D setup, wich dazelocks…
Also, on cluster thingie, it was somewhat powerfull, allowed a thief to do a lot of dmg in a weapon set that has the #3 skill, wich is a evade backwards ohsheet button, followed by a shadow step skill on #5, ,without the half a second delay of having to swap weapon. Think of the new map, and a thief spaming cluster safely from above, already in a map that benefits their shortbow so much…
Look, im a thief, its my main, i only opened 2 slots yet,one for thief and one for mesmer, wich i opened to understand that class, so dont think im one of the whine crowd, i looove thieving like a boss!!

Eduardo.4675:

evilapprentice.6379:

Eduardo.4675:

evilapprentice.6379:

I see alot of people talking about the nerfs – is anyone else as disappointed and annoyed that we didn’t receive a single fix?

My list is above (Shadow shot, flanking strike, P/P in general, ranged attacks obstructed for no reason, adding venoms still suck, traps still suck, PW still roots and does sub par damage without quickness)

We’re still basically locked into Shbow and either D/D, P/D or S/D, because our other weapon sets have GLARING problems. Every single one of those specs use Dagger offhand, which now does terrible damage for non-glass cannons.

Fixing those bugs was the only bad thing is this patch, specially the channel>follow that thief bug.

I disagree. 50% damage nerf to Dancing Dagger is over the top – the skill still costs 4 initiative, and has a slow travel time (its rather easy to dodge). Increase the travel time and reduce the init to 3, and I’m fine with it.

CnD doing 33% less damage is just a terrible idea all around. It’s intention was obviously to nerf insta-gib builds, but does almost nothing to nerf them. 1 skill out of 3 doing 33% less damage just means you’ll probably need to hit HS once. Instead, every thief who didn’t want to run insta gib now has a 6 init ability that does 33% less damage.

I’m not claiming the game is ruined. I’ll still play. But Anet has set a disturbing trend – every single thief change (besides changing HS % thresholds) has been wildly off the mark. Nerfing PW to counter Quickness->PW builds? Nerfing CnD to counter Insta-gib builds? They’re nerfing every thief spec to counter extreme burst, rather than just toning down extreme burst. It’s stupid, poorly planned, and extremely worrying.

Edit:The icing on the cake is they just keep nerfing our small pool of working weaponsets, rather than fixing the issues with the broken/poorly designed ones so we can expand as a class.

I dont think u got the devs idea. It was a preemptive nerf, just to prevent future cries from meta shift. In case u dont know, dancing daggers has a brutaly fast activation time, its 1/4 secs + travel time, it hits the target usually within half a sec, and its not that easy to dodge, i rarely miss it, and u should also know that it has some kind of bug that more often than not makes the “ripple” hits(or bouncing) do more dmg than the first hit, wich sometimes resulted in brutally increasing the final dmg output,its like that similar bug with rifle warrior where piercing killshots gain power as they perfurate subsequent targets (u should read this as, its prone to exploiting, and we all know that there is no exploiters,right?). The dmg is insane when the enemies accumulate, and if they nerfed the BS combo, wich REQUIRES some few button presses, positioning,etc, the meta would eventually shift to a new form of heartseeker: dancing daggers spam. An Assassin (thief) is suposed to preform stunts like the backstab combo,it has allways been like this in other mmo’s, and im in favor of staying this way, however,one button kills is cheese… that cheese is the reason i dont play death blossom cond build,for me spaming 3 is cheese, specially in that infamous UNICORN build. The meta, if BS was nerfed, would now be either dancing spam,or daze lock spam. In the first, the QQ’ers would come here and say"nerfnerf, 1 hit kills", in the second, the permalock would bring “OMG, Anet, what did you have in mind when u allowed a thief to perma lock me into oblivion?”…
This is my take on this patch, the also powerful P/D setup was actually improved, but that setup takes a lot more time to kill and leaves the victim with a chance to survive and beat you, if he is skilled enough, unlike the very similar S/D setup, wich dazelocks…
Also, on cluster thingie, it was somewhat powerfull, allowed a thief to do a lot of dmg in a weapon set that has the #3 skill, wich is a evade backwards ohsheet button, followed by a shadow step skill on #5, ,without the half a second delay of having to swap weapon. Think of the new map, and a thief spaming cluster safely from above, already in a map that benefits their shortbow so much…
Look, im a thief, its my main, i only opened 2 slots yet,one for thief and one for mesmer, wich i opened to understand that class, so dont think im one of the whine crowd, i looove thieving like a boss!!

You’re saying this as if Thieves have infinite initiative so they can just use all those skills in succession.

Initiative is a SHARED resource, even across weapons.. When we run out all we can do is autoattack.

Eduardo.4675:

I dont think u got the devs idea. It was a preemptive nerf, just to prevent future cries from meta shift. In case u dont know, dancing daggers has a brutaly fast activation time, its 1/4 secs + travel time, it hits the target usually within half a sec, and its not that easy to dodge, i rarely miss it, and u should also know that it has some kind of bug that more often than not makes the “ripple” hits(or bouncing) do more dmg than the first hit, wich sometimes resulted in brutally increasing the final dmg output,its like that similar bug with rifle warrior where piercing killshots gain power as they perfurate subsequent targets (u should read this as, its prone to exploiting, and we all know that there is no exploiters,right?). The dmg is insane when the enemies accumulate, and if they nerfed the BS combo, wich REQUIRES some few button presses, positioning,etc, the meta would eventually shift to a new form of heartseeker: dancing daggers spam. An Assassin (thief) is suposed to preform stunts like the backstab combo,it has allways been like this in other mmo’s, and im in favor of staying this way, however,one button kills is cheese… that cheese is the reason i dont play death blossom cond build,for me spaming 3 is cheese, specially in that infamous UNICORN build. The meta, if BS was nerfed, would now be either dancing spam,or daze lock spam. In the first, the QQ’ers would come here and say"nerfnerf, 1 hit kills", in the second, the permalock would bring “OMG, Anet, what did you have in mind when u allowed a thief to perma lock me into oblivion?”…
This is my take on this patch, the also powerful P/D setup was actually improved, but that setup takes a lot more time to kill and leaves the victim with a chance to survive and beat you, if he is skilled enough, unlike the very similar S/D setup, wich dazelocks…
Also, on cluster thingie, it was somewhat powerfull, allowed a thief to do a lot of dmg in a weapon set that has the #3 skill, wich is a evade backwards ohsheet button, followed by a shadow step skill on #5, ,without the half a second delay of having to swap weapon. Think of the new map, and a thief spaming cluster safely from above, already in a map that benefits their shortbow so much…
Look, im a thief, its my main, i only opened 2 slots yet,one for thief and one for mesmer, wich i opened to understand that class, so dont think im one of the whine crowd, i looove thieving like a boss!!

Again, I’m not claiming these are the end days, but your take on Dancing dagger is really, really off. Maybe you’re playing people who don’t understand the mechanics (not being rude, explanation below. assume OH dagger, Sword or Dagger MH)

In any small scale skirmish, if a thief isn’t in melee range, and you see him doing something, you dodge. Why? He’s doing 1 of 2 things –
1) Dancing Dagger
2) Preloading CnD for steal/inf sig.
2a)Maybe he’s HSing if he’s close enough, dodge still works.

You’re running away from a DD thief outside melee range and you see him doing something? Dodge, Dancing Dagger misses. Thief coming at you out of stealth, you see him doing something? Dodge, Dancing Dagger misses. It gets a bit harder to dodge the closer you get to your target, but Inf strike and HS are now generally (not always, but generally) superior options to DD when you get that close.

If you’re talking about a hectic, particle effect heavy fight, then sure DD is hard to see and dodge. So is everything else ranged.

HEY Anet why not just REMOVE thieves from the GAME and let all of us thieves be warriors? how bout that for a suggestion?

PS: this is a QQ post so please listen to me your good at doing that aight?

I’ll just leave this here since no one replied to my topic

With the incredibly silly nerfs to DD and C&D.
Are we even playing the same game as ANet? I am seriously confused here.
All this does is hurt balanced builds, glass cannons will still be bursty with BS, mug, and C&D. I essentially got a 50% damage reduction to any and all of my D/D balanced builds. Now I’ll be completely USELESS in terms of damage unless I spec glass cannon. Pure glass cannon.

Condition builds are a joke, obviously no one plays a thief over at head quarters. Maybe this should change.

Maybe you should take suggestions from people that know how to pvp and not from people that are angry because they entered W3 in starter gear and got hit with a 40k backstab or died on a glass cannon in spvp by… wait for it…. another glass cannon.
I am so disheartened right now. Truly seems you have no idea what you’re doing. This isn’t good, the future looks bleak.

E-sports is not going to happen, in fact the very thought is a joke if this is the kind of update we can expect on class balance.
Patch notes have taken all of my “what.” Don’t even want to log in for the event. Sad.
Blackops 2 time, later.

Added: I’ll go so far as to say Blizzard wouldn’t even dig a hole this deep, the changes are borderline insanity, you clearly have no clue what you are doing! I am actually infuriated by these changes, can’t believe they are so bad it actually put me in a bad mood.

Well, as i said, i rarely miss it, so…
I use:
1) Pistol/dagger, obvious cond build, dd is rarely used here, only for the eventual gap closing, this build has little power to boot from;
2) sword/dagger, i have more usage here, but mostly as finisher,rarely used, IS is a reliable gap closer (the best, actually), then i dazelock and auto, i wont waste my ini in dd spam and be left out of C&D to allow dazelock, so, as i said, its a finisher (very much like heartseeker, see?)
3) BS combo, dd is not required here, if im using it, i did something very wrong there…

And as battles go, they mostly are hectic, yes, too may mesmer pets and stuff.

Rukia.4802:

Condition builds are a joke, obviously no one plays a thief over at head quarters. Maybe this should change.

You are horridly mistaken if you think they are a joke. Scorpion Wire to caltrops with the uncatchable trait and death blossom is EASY 25 stacks of bleed, pop spider venom mid fight, shortbow to keep poison on if cleared GG. An aware Bleed thief will own a glass thief every time.

omgdracula.6345:

Rukia.4802:

Condition builds are a joke, obviously no one plays a thief over at head quarters. Maybe this should change.

You are horridly mistaken if you think they are a joke. Scorpion Wire to caltrops with the uncatchable trait and death blossom is EASY 25 stacks of bleed, pop spider venom mid fight, shortbow to keep poison on if cleared GG. An aware Bleed thief will own a glass thief every time.

Lol shadow’s embrace would render that build entirely useless. I haven’t once died to a condition thief, not once. But I also don’t run glass cannon, and I know anything can own a bad one. In a balanced setting though conditions are nothing short of a joke.

Rukia.4802:

omgdracula.6345:

Rukia.4802:

Condition builds are a joke, obviously no one plays a thief over at head quarters. Maybe this should change.

You are horridly mistaken if you think they are a joke. Scorpion Wire to caltrops with the uncatchable trait and death blossom is EASY 25 stacks of bleed, pop spider venom mid fight, shortbow to keep poison on if cleared GG. An aware Bleed thief will own a glass thief every time.

Lol shadow’s embrace would render that build entirely useless. I haven’t once died to a condition thief, not once. But I also don’t run glass cannon, and I know anything can own a bad one. In a balanced setting though conditions are nothing short of a joke.

Shadow’s Embrace is more or less useless. Bleeds and the Poison are constant. P/D what are you gonna do CnD when you can’t touch me? You obviously are not that dumb to think good condi thiefs are dumb enough to let you stealth with CnD. Plus with ridiculous init regen. You’re just mad because Dancing Dagger got nerfed.

omgdracula.6345:

Rukia.4802:

omgdracula.6345:

Rukia.4802:

Condition builds are a joke, obviously no one plays a thief over at head quarters. Maybe this should change.

You are horridly mistaken if you think they are a joke. Scorpion Wire to caltrops with the uncatchable trait and death blossom is EASY 25 stacks of bleed, pop spider venom mid fight, shortbow to keep poison on if cleared GG. An aware Bleed thief will own a glass thief every time.

Lol shadow’s embrace would render that build entirely useless. I haven’t once died to a condition thief, not once. But I also don’t run glass cannon, and I know anything can own a bad one. In a balanced setting though conditions are nothing short of a joke.

Shadow’s Embrace is more or less useless. Bleeds and the Poison are constant. P/D what are you gonna do CnD when you can’t touch me? You obviously are not that dumb to think good condi thiefs are dumb enough to let you stealth with CnD. Plus with ridiculous init regen. You’re just mad because Dancing Dagger got nerfed.

Yeah I am but why are you trying to make it out like condition thieves are so great when they’re not?… I’m done with you

PS: shadow’s embrace is also constant… well, a 3 sec cooldown in between stealths. It’s a hard counter to any condition build.

You also act like dodging the oh so blatant death blossom is hard or something..

Pistol shots are a constant stack of bleed. You also have to be stealth for it to take place. What are you going to do when i stack other bs conditions before the bleed and poison? You get 1 condition off per stealth and poison is more or less constant with shortbow. Point is youll never lose the conditions. You stealth cool I stealth sneak attack auto attacks you stealth I do and repeat.

Drakkonis.2768:

BabelFish.7234:

ens.9854:

50% damage reduction on dancing dagger?

It now does less damage than a shortbow auto attack and STILL costs 4 init?

Methinks they did not think this one through very much.

Yeah that was pretty silly in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong DD deserved a nerf but not that much of a nerf…

Oh, come on, it cripples four enemies for like 6 seconds or so.

And? What’s your point?

The people I run with can do the same kinds of things on their classes. There was no reason to nerf DD, especially this severely.

Thief needs fixes, not nerfs.

Rukia.4802:

E-sports is not going to happen, in fact the very thought is a joke if this is the kind of update we can expect on class balance.
Patch notes have taken all of my “what.” Don’t even want to log in for the event. Sad.
Blackops 2 time, later.

I’m actually feeling the same way. I was anticipating this patch all day, and once it finally came and I saw the notes, I didn’t even play it after ’cause I just lost all interest.

OMGdracula,ure using a weird build there… death blossom, posion from shortbows, constant bleeds from pistol shots…what is your spec?? me wants that!!

I inboxed you good sir!

I’m kind of 50/50 on this patch. I feel as if the culling issues should be fixed. IMO that’s the most game breaking unbalanced area in wVw and spvp. The changes look decent though. The thief class definitely was not destroyed, however you guys have to remember that many changes were made to other classes, possibly affecting the viability of backstab. We’ll wait and see.