Guild Wars 2

i like how people are saying that P/D got nerfed cause of CnD, because thats what that build relys on for dmg right.. >.>, if so i guess thats why those people dislike the build. If anything, I can pew pew people that much faster now

@Doom
They said culling was fixed,go to structered pvp section, they made a post there.
@loading
They have no idea what they talk about, that build had a massive buff, with the aid of blinding powder buff. Now we only wait 2 auto attack before C&D again. Almost 33% less waiting time to sneak attack again.

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.

A) Shadows embrace is wonderful. It truly is. It’s hands down the best way to drop conditions, and definitely the only way we have to drop a bunch of conditions.

That being said, Condition damage thieves are great in hot join. I ran 0/0/30/20/20 P/D for a long, long time and I loved it. It’s not so great in Tourneys though. Ele and Guardian bunkers will take literally forever to down. You can beat burst specs, but 1 mistake and your usually pasted, while your opponent can make multiple mistakes and still survive (since your damage is so slow and steady). In the “Focus target, next” coordination of paid tourneys, bleeds don’t have a chance to shine.

Your cap denial is ok with caltrops, but nothing compared to the KB/KB/KD/Launch chains guardians and ele’s can pull off. So yeah, condi thieves are fine, but in the current meta, they’re weak in tpvp. I was hoping this patch would change some of that, but meh, kittenandwich.

Devildoc.6721:

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.

Really? You mean to say you have it worse than rangers, who’s only viable weapon is pretty much the shortbow autoattack?

It’s an utility skill. It’s made to cripple. Before, thieves could pull off ridiculous damage AND cripple up to 3 enemies constantly with a single skill. Do you know what other class can do that? Mesmer, if he manages to pull out 3 berserkers and keep them alive, and even then not nearly as well.

Every other class has a fairly large cooldown on their cripple and the damage isn’t anything amazing.

Get used to this feeling. It’s the feeling of having a skill in your weapons that doesn’t do great damage. Every other class has skills like this. You don’t get a spammable skill that does massive damage and cripples.

Stx.4857:

Seems odd to buff Blinding Powder, Scorpion Wire, and Smoke Screen, some of the good utilities already. Yet leave many of the crappy utilities untouched.

What utilities do you consider crappy?

Not baiting you here, I’m genuinely interested in your perspective

i feel really disgruntled about the S/D nerfs, which almost all of these are. no nerfs to the silly 18k backstab combo builds in conjunction with this is totally mind-blowing. it’s as the devs went “we have all this data that thieves are using swords instead of daggers—and they’re pushing 4 instead of _2!”_ that’s what it feels like. the CnD nerf obviously hurts S/D thieves more than it does BS combo thieves.

No fix to the pathing for S/D 3, no P/P buffs, and our build selections are even less diverse than they’ve ever been. More backstab combo one-trick-pony thieves to come. Is this a job well done?

dancing dagger probably did need a nerf, but not half effectiveness. it carrying to pve makes me upset too.

feels like diablo 3, man.

Eduardo.4675:

Psikerlord.2569:

33% damage reduction on CnD… ahhh don’t know if that will change the current burst problem much? Dancing dagger wow 50% down. Mug dmg unchanged. Interesting blinding powder got 40s cooldown, now maybe it can compete with SR. I am surprised no real buff to pistols from what i can tell? Otherwise i suppose nothing too drastic here. CnD steal precast still possible. hmm. guess this is supposed to be quick 3s down on glass cannon game. I reserve judgment until playing 2nite and see how these changes interact with other class changes in PvP (looks like guard healing nerfed, not sure about water ele)

There was a buff to pistols, body shot is now quicker,and most important, the sneack attack before required 3 autos before reapllying C&D, now its only 2 and a very slight delay on C&D… BUUUUUUFFFF!!

Dude please!Sneak Attack was always like that and they broke it in the last patch because of some imaginary “fix” of Backstab bug. Now they merely revert what they messed up.An concerning Body Shot……..WoW that is my top one ability in whole Universe.I will name my first born “Body Shot”.

I really don’t know why you guys are all up in arms about some nerfs. Backstab wasn’t really touched, only the combo did. It’s an easy spec to counter anyway, so they nerfed the skill to go into stealth to lower the effectiveness of some builds too (P/D, S/D). If you get insta gibbed by a backstab thief, it is USUALLY always your own fault to not see it coming. The nerf to tactical strikes daze was needed, there was no incentive to use other skills other than dump most of your ini into cnd for tac strike. I mean, it’s still good to do with the nerf, but you have more choices now in my opinion.

I believe the dancing dagger nerf should have been a bit lower, and not this harsh. It was a bit strong though, and punished players who would attempt to rez down people because of the high damage and 2 bounces it did. In a non-glass cannon s/d build it would do 2k-3k per bounce, thats a lot. 1k~ish damage seems about right though. (Also cluster bomb was a bit too strong too.)

Also with the “unblockable” skills it made me love Flanking Strikes just a bit more. Now they just need to fix the pathing!

Still wish they’ll fix Shadow Shot so it doesn’t make it a self-rooting gap closer anymore.

I don’t understand the heavy nerf on Dancing Dagger myself aswell…25% was enough, hell I am generous enough to give 30% damage nerf a chance xD but 50? Holy…. Anyway, the builds will not be shifted to anything else, Dagger/dagger will still be the bomb. Pistol/Dagger will still pewpew bleed people to death….No general pistol buff so that Pistol/pistol will be used more than the other builds, not even in pve.

Our already good utility skills got buffed, WOOOT, deception line was already omfg I love you skillz!
Our crappy venoms and traps(apart from shadow trap) haven’t recieved much loving, so there is still maximum stealth/escaping in utility skills(Deception)on a Thieves skillbar.

On the other hand….WARRIOR RECIEVED MORE BUFFS WOOOOOOOOOOOOT, Kill shot kill shot kill shot pew pew pew dakkadakkadakka unchanged! xD

As a loyal S/D thief I did not expect so many “fixes” for this weapon set.

Daze duration from Tactical strike was a logical fix as it allowed us to daze lock opponents!
(Most of them would just stand still, try to spam skills and wonder what was happening to them during the fight …)

Dancing Dagger is now a waste of initiative for me, as I am running Crit 30/Shadows 20/Acrobatics 20 so with 12 initiative I will rather wait a bit for another Cloak and Dagger.

I was expecting a Cloak and Dagger fix but more in the line with stealth duration.

10% damage increase to Tactical strike is welcome but does not balance out the damage reduction from our two dagger skills at all …

What I am really upset about is their ignorance towards FLANKING STRIKE ?

Flanking Strike needs a fix for a while now (since BWEs), yet they seem to ignore it for some reason…
Buffs from way back (Boon removal and damage buff) were great additions, but they did not solve the main problem, which is skill pathing/animation!

There are numerous constructive suggestions from players here on the forums raging from simple animation fixes to thoughtful redesigns of the skill but… well… ?

I will still continue to play S/D and wait patiently for Flanking Strike fix.

Till then YAY to more Cloak and Dagger and Auto Attack spam!!

Regards,
Aetaru

I am very upset that thieves keep getting the short end of the stick. STOP NERFING MAH THIEF god dangit. I’m seriously sad they kittened me again….. and warrior still have not been nerfed….. wtf there is a reason my guild is half warriors now.

I am going to stick to my current burst build. I really hoped that P/P would be fixed so I could use them instead of short bow which although it is very useful it’s not that fun. Also P/P looks cooler

In general I expected some challenges but I hardly got any.

I shouldn’t be as surprised at the hate for the Dancing Dagger nerf as I am. I honestly thought it bizarre how much damage it was capable of dealing to a pair of targets beside each other, and have thought so for a long while now.

I hoped to see a few changes to Traps overall, since I feel like they’re our weakest utility skill category, but given how limited the changes were to most classes I guess ArenaNet just isn’t at that point yet. The change to Shadow Trap is pretty solid though.

Softspoken.2410:

I shouldn’t be as surprised at the hate for the Dancing Dagger nerf as I am. I honestly thought it bizarre how much damage it was capable of dealing to a pair of targets beside each other, and have thought so for a long while now.

I hoped to see a few changes to Traps overall, since I feel like they’re our weakest utility skill category, but given how limited the changes were to most classes I guess ArenaNet just isn’t at that point yet.

They could at least reduce initiative cost I think

So ArenaNet has destroyed a build that I loved s / d…daze was the only thing that made this build competitive .. someone has checked how long now daze with sigil of paralyzation or ruin of mesmer?

I get the nerf to Dancing Dagger, as it used to be a bit ridiculous but I also think they should reduce the initiative cost to match. I mean it does less damage than Tactical Strike does now and that is if it hits the same target twice. I’m just glad a lot of the nerfs don’t apply to WvW where I play S/D primarily.

Turbolence.3842:

So ArenaNet has destroyed a build that I loved s / d…daze was the only thing that made this build competitive .. someone has checked how long now daze with sigil of paralyzation or ruin of mesmer?

In SPvP? Neither sigil nor runes have any effect, so it’s a set 1.5 seconds.

In WvW/PvE, it’s the same as before (2.67 seconds with Sigil).

Unfortunately, this has led to me using different builds for SPvP and WvW, since abilities are extremely different now between the two settings, which I finds very strange.

I think the off-hand dagger updates may make them sub-par to the off-hand pistol skills.

Heres my logic behind that, found through a comparison of the weapons’ 4th and 5th skill.

Dagger#4- I found this skill handy as a group utility and for retreats.
But offensively, it lacked the value of the 1/3 burst dps it robbed from me(4 initiative).
And if used on a single fleeing target, it could often be out-ran or evaded.
The only reason I favored this utility was because it could be bounced to do light damage on 2 targets.

Pistol#4- Again, I really only used this as defense or support.
The 4 initiative cost was too much burden on the burst dps.
And although the interrupt is much more useful than ‘chill’, it was single target and the damage is tiny.
The thing I liked is it is fast-paced and near impossible to evade.

Dagger#5- I liked that this let me stealth repeatedly when traited properly for it.
The skill needs a second to charge and is easy to miss with, and at 6 initiative cost, that can be painful.
But if you are skilled and can outmaneuver your foe, you can set up for a backstab,
which is really the objective of the whole routine.
(Just hope ya don’t get cc’d before this 1 second bar charges)

Pistol Skill#5- This skill burdens dps a fair bit as well, weighing in at 5 points.
And unlike CnD, there’s not a damage compensation.
But the great thing is that its easy to use, and is never wasted.
The blind is nice, but the most valuable thing you can use it for is to ‘leap combo’ for
stealth.
Its a more reliable way of stealthing than CnD, as it doesn’t require you to actually hit anything.
It’s also nice to approach your target in a stealth leap rather than having to chase them in melee.

Weighing the skills, I’d say the damage was the real equalizer between the weapons.
The pistol skills seemed like higher functioning utilities that were more reliable and easier to use.
But if you were skilled enough to outmaneuver your foe, more raw dps could be obtained from the dagger.

Now that they’ve nerfed one skills damage by 50% and the other one by 33%,
I wonder if they haven’t unbalanced the weapons?

Nothing interesting for P/P, so still playing unload spammer in spvp.

Body Shot: This skill now allows players to activate other skills sooner after the ability ends.
Still crappy skill….

Scorpion Wire: This skill’s range has been increased to 1200.
They should have fixed that it actually lands first then increasing the range….

Dancing Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%.
Why is this a pve + pvp nerf?
Cloak and Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.
Don’t really care for this one, but still why can this be a pvp fix only an DD not?

Where is the shadow Refuge fix?
Leaving it to early still removes stealth.

Shadow Trap: This skill no longer shadowsteps the thief when the trap is triggered. This skill now has two additional abilities: The first ability becomes available when Shadow Trap is cast and will destroy the current trap. The second ability, Shadow Pursuit, becomes available when an enemy triggers the trap. The thief may choose to activate this ability and shadowstep to the enemy that triggered the trap. If this ability is not activated after 10 seconds, the ability will fade and Shadow Trap will be available
this one looks really interesting to be honest.

Overall kinda a meh patch for us.
All the BS Glass cannon thiefs have fun playing unnerfed : D

with this patch, the thief is literally doomed.

Glass cannons thieves have never been a problem ( they were only for nubz in hotjoin and w3), but with those nerfs they totally screwed balanced/pressure builds.

As an S/D player, i was expecting the nerf on tactical strike ( still it got hit too much, they could simply put the daze cap on 2.5 secs instead of the buggy 3 secs) but the nerf on Dancing Dagger and C&D totally destroys balanced/pressure builds, whose now have nothing to deal damage if not their autoattack.

Balanced backstab builds are screwed ( since those rely on constant medium-high damage with C&D+backstab, not on a single damage combo like the glass cannon builds) damage S/D builds are screwed, S/P builds were already screwed.

Now the only decent options we have are P/D venom share and D/D condi damage.
And since in tourneys there are better defenders than the thief, the only really good build we have is P/D venom share/cond damage.

They compensate with nothing.

In PvP, Blinding powder will never be used if not by nubz or by stealth stacking builds, if you don’t run with Shadow Step ( or, in some niche builds , RFI) + Shadow refuge you are hopeless.

Venoms scaling with power won’t make power venom share builds viable, neither will make P/D power builds viable.

Shadow trap is still sub-par to portals, still it needs triggering by an enemy to activate.

No bug fixes with stealth ( channeling following you everywhere, pets following you everywhere etc).

No fixing/changes on bad skills ( Flanking strike pathing/being too slow to hit reliably, Shadow shot root on stab making it useless as a gap closer etc…)

A good portion of our Utility skills is still worthless, if not in some niche builds.

Basically the thief has been removed from competitive play.

Maybe some thieves will overcome this with their skill ( like retri paladins were able in WoW Tbc), but as soon as people will reach the skill platau, the thief will be destroyed by EVERY CLASS.

Again, the thief would be better off totally reworked: nerfing the class so hard doesn’t make any sense.

They’re going into the whack-a-mole game they were so afraid of.

When I read Body Shot I was thrilled thinking on a skill revamp… then I was like: meh, still not going to use that one.

My biggest concern (at least of the skills that I use in my build as I don’t use many of the changed ones): 50% less damage for Dancing Dagger? O.o It was semi-good for damage, specially when you had 2 enemies paired when I loved to backpedal and throw 2 or 3 of them but… 50% is a bit nasty, now it ONLY serves for the crippling, and at 4 initiative, I’d rather use C&D (technically 4 ini. thanks to infussion trait).

If the idea is to make Dancing Dagger only an AoE cripple, I’m fine with that, but then the initiative cost should be reducted as we’re paying the same for much less.

C&D was good damage, but it wasn’t a skill you would spam. In this case I guess the damage won’t affect us that much.

The only pro for me is that as I use a conditions + support build with both Leeching Venoms and Shadow Refuge, I was considering jumping from Carrion to Shaman/Apothecary (new Shaman equivalent for PVE) as that one still offers good condition damage and empower the heals, but with Leeching Venoms now dependant on Power (I don’t understand why, they’re included on the Healing Power after all), I guess that pretty much solves the dilema and I stay on Carrion.

Except if I’m wrong and what the patch note means is the Thief’s (healing) power, but I think it was based on that even for your allies before this patch.

Dont have a problem with any of the stuff.

Loving the Blinding Powder Buff, was one of my favourite Utilitys before and now its even better

Yes, changes were made to other classes too but they were mostly all buffs…
Look at the Mesmers, The Prestige now hits for double, and our Dancing Dagger hits for half. Come on…
And what about the Cluster Bomb nerf? The arrow already takes ages to hit the enemy and now it does even less damage.
This class is becoming a joke.

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
Backstab has suffered a minor incoviniece, (LOLOLOL), dazelock build was nerfed (sneaky anet,1 step ahead of whiners,this was most powerful build,this and pistol/dagger, props to balance team!!), blinding powder is now AWSOME, weird trap reworked, slight nerf to cluster but nothing special, another preemptive nerf on dancing daggers (sneaky developers, again props to them!!),i dont know (yet) if leeching was buffed or nerfed, nice ranged buff on wire,and speacially, buff to P/D!!
LOL,we were buffed!! i knew it!!
Allow me to laugh more:MUAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!

I knew about these builds for a long time and that Anet was turning people off the game all this time by not touching them (apart from their thief buddies). Really no sneakiness ore insight needed to see the effect of them. Regardless, some still say 3 second kills are easy (dying quickly without reacting/no cooldown up is ok, but Anet devs think random class skills are op and require changes that don’t kill players in 3 seconds-it’s a freaking ridiculous situation and people just shake their heads and put up with it).

RetroSamus.9860:

Where is the shadow Refuge fix?
Leaving it to early still removes stealth.

As far as I can tell, it’s supposed to work this way.

I could see that it might be a bug that it removes stealth that’s obtained by other means, but it seems reasonable to me that if you leave the shelter you lose its benefits. Complain too much and perhaps they’ll remove the stacking of the stealth it generates, which leaves you stealthed way beyond its duration.

Hermes.7014:

Yes, changes were made to other classes too but they were mostly all buffs…
Look at the Mesmers, The Prestige now hits for double, and our Dancing Dagger hits for half.

You don’t play any other profession, I see. Or even read other forums.

Mesmers are laughing at the Prestige’s 100% increase because it’s the direct damage part of it, not the burn damage, which doesn’t fit into the builds that would use the Prestige. Other than that, what other buff did Mesmers get?

Same with Elementalists: there’s perhaps one outright buff to them, a bunch of tooltips being changed to match what the skills already do, and a couple of significant nerfs. Some may argue that one of the nerds (Evasive Arcana) was needed, but it went so far as to eliminate blast finishing even from the one Evasive Arcana spell that actually is a blast finisher.

Poor pathing affects, as far as I can tell, one Thief skill, which many people don’t like on its own. Poor pathing renders several Elementalist core skills unreliable, and it’s not clear that the fixes AN is touting actually fix these issues. Now that Mesmers require LOS to cast phantasms — probably a reasonable nerf — poor pathing (which affects what the game considers LOS) means that phantasm summoning is unreliable in certain terrain.

So no, Thieves didn’t get the short end of the stick.

I’m also not saying that AN did a great job. I think it’s pretty obvious that several of the nerfs were things that were easy to do, but not actual fixes, and it’s obvious that several game-breaking skill bugs in each class weren’t actually fixed. And it’s not clear AN actually knows how to fix them (or perhaps they’re baked into the core of the game and are unfixable).

I do like that AN can buff/nerf skills on a PvE/PvP basis, which will hopefully keep us mainly PvE’ers from getting nerfed into the ground because of PvP imbalances, and keep PvP’ers from getting nerfed because of PvE exploits.

seldomseenkid.2850:

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.

Lawl, P/D is quite powerful but i’m glad only a few use it as there won’t be a ton of people crying nerf in regards to it’s strength. Then again people were crying about D/D builds and that didnt really get a nerf so. lol.

Rukia.4802:

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..

Condition thieves are pretty awesome…. log some time with one before you pass judgement. If you’ve played one and still find it weak, you are playing it wrong.

Division.9618:

Devildoc.6721:

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.

Really? You mean to say you have it worse than rangers, who’s only viable weapon is pretty much the shortbow autoattack?

It’s an utility skill. It’s made to cripple. Before, thieves could pull off ridiculous damage AND cripple up to 3 enemies constantly with a single skill. Do you know what other class can do that? Mesmer, if he manages to pull out 3 berserkers and keep them alive, and even then not nearly as well.

Every other class has a fairly large cooldown on their cripple and the damage isn’t anything amazing.

Get used to this feeling. It’s the feeling of having a skill in your weapons that doesn’t do great damage. Every other class has skills like this. You don’t get a spammable skill that does massive damage and cripples.

Virtually every other class, now I don’t play a ranger, so i wouldn’t know them, and if they aren’t this case they should be fighting it…

all of their weapon skills are higher damage than their autoattack, even taking dps of the entire chain into account. Autoattack for them, is something they do while waiting on cooldowns, or in between skills, but it’s never their best dps option.

Thieves, depending on your weapon, autoattack has now become the biggest dps skill you have. it essentially defeats the purpose of initiative, which was designed so that thieves could do burst damage. Autoattack initially, in beta, and at launch, was intended to be something a thief falls back to when initaitive is low, or while they’re waiting for the opportune moment to burst. Because our skill use per minute is lower than any other class because of the shared nature of our resource, our autoattack was buffed to make sure our sustained dps didn’t fall behind everyone else.

Now, as they’re stripping away damage from skills…

we won’t be able to burst using initiative anymore, autoattack becomes our primary damage.

It breaks the class’s original design.

Mrbig.8019:

with this patch, the thief is literally doomed.

Glass cannons thieves have never been a problem ( they were only for nubz in hotjoin and w3), but with those nerfs they totally screwed balanced/pressure builds.

As an S/D player, i was expecting the nerf on tactical strike ( still it got hit too much, they could simply put the daze cap on 2.5 secs instead of the buggy 3 secs) but the nerf on Dancing Dagger and C&D totally destroys balanced/pressure builds, whose now have nothing to deal damage if not their autoattack.

Balanced backstab builds are screwed ( since those rely on constant medium-high damage with C&D+backstab, not on a single damage combo like the glass cannon builds) damage S/D builds are screwed, S/P builds were already screwed.

Now the only decent options we have are P/D venom share and D/D condi damage.
And since in tourneys there are better defenders than the thief, the only really good build we have is P/D venom share/cond damage.

They compensate with nothing.

In PvP, Blinding powder will never be used if not by nubz or by stealth stacking builds, if you don’t run with Shadow Step ( or, in some niche builds , RFI) + Shadow refuge you are hopeless.

Venoms scaling with power won’t make power venom share builds viable, neither will make P/D power builds viable.

Shadow trap is still sub-par to portals, still it needs triggering by an enemy to activate.

No bug fixes with stealth ( channeling following you everywhere, pets following you everywhere etc).

No fixing/changes on bad skills ( Flanking strike pathing/being too slow to hit reliably, Shadow shot root on stab making it useless as a gap closer etc…)

A good portion of our Utility skills is still worthless, if not in some niche builds.

Basically the thief has been removed from competitive play.

Maybe some thieves will overcome this with their skill ( like retri paladins were able in WoW Tbc), but as soon as people will reach the skill platau, the thief will be destroyed by EVERY CLASS.

Again, the thief would be better off totally reworked: nerfing the class so hard doesn’t make any sense.

They’re going into the whack-a-mole game they were so afraid of.

Finally, someone that knows what they’re talking about. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to get across, balanced builds needs that constant medium damage since we have no burst like glass does. This hurts nothing but balanced… ANet has no freaking clue what they are doing.

Rukia.4802:

Finally, someone that knows what they’re talking about. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to get across, balanced builds needs that constant medium damage since we have no burst like glass does. This hurts nothing but balanced… ANet has no freaking clue what they are doing.

That was my feeling as well. It feels like they nerfed 10% of the Thief population instead of fixing the reason that 10% of us play with these specific skills.

Now the daze nerf is something I was expecting. That daze-lock combo was just too easy to pull off against people who have no idea what you are doing. I’m also not surprised they focused in on Dancing Daggers, as it did a whole ton of damage in the proper circumstances (I had no idea the increasing damage for multiple hits was a bug!).

People are saying the Tactical Strike nerf is too much….but I disagree. I may be wrong but it seems that ANet deals in .5 second intervals from what I can tell. I can’t think of anything that lasts for .25 or .75 seconds, at least. Despite that, being able to rune the daze up to 2 seconds is fine. an extra .5 seconds can be a world of difference in this game so you can’t convince me that’s not enough. That being said, I would have loved to have seen the reduction in daze duration compensated with a bit of extra damage to make the skill combo still worth using.

Dancing Daggers, on the other hand, is now pretty kittened. Yes, it dealt too much damage and yes, a 4-hit cripple is still ok as it is BUT the 50% damage is now negligible. I would have rather had the bounce reduced to 2 and the damage kept at 100%, to be honest. It’s not often that I need to cripple 4 people but it’s very often that I would use it on 1 person as a ranged damage skill with a cripple perk. It was a go-to as it is the only stay@range skill on the S/D bar.

Overall, it feels like ANet is pushing us all towards */P, which is not good at all in sPvP, or a D/D burst build.

I wish I enjoyed using Venoms :-(

Judas.5432:

I wish I enjoyed using Venoms :-(

Venom builds are actually nerfed…

Leeching scaling was changed, but the implication in the patch notes that it went up isn’t accurate. They took the opportunity to scale it down across the board – typical venom player will see roughly ~150 less damage per leech.

Also, Dancing Dagger is often the best ability for applying poisons…

The one good thing is a lot of them run P/D and stealth too, and at least Sneak Attack got fixed regarding the Revealed debuff reapplying with each shot.

I’m not really complaining, though. The changes could have been a lot worse if A-net had listened to forum campaigners.

Devildoc.6721:

Virtually every other class, now I don’t play a ranger, so i wouldn’t know them, and if they aren’t this case they should be fighting it…

all of their weapon skills are higher damage than their autoattack, even taking dps of the entire chain into account. Autoattack for them, is something they do while waiting on cooldowns, or in between skills, but it’s never their best dps option.

Thieves, depending on your weapon, autoattack has now become the biggest dps skill you have. it essentially defeats the purpose of initiative, which was designed so that thieves could do burst damage. Autoattack initially, in beta, and at launch, was intended to be something a thief falls back to when initaitive is low, or while they’re waiting for the opportune moment to burst. Because our skill use per minute is lower than any other class because of the shared nature of our resource, our autoattack was buffed to make sure our sustained dps didn’t fall behind everyone else.

Now, as they’re stripping away damage from skills…

we won’t be able to burst using initiative anymore, autoattack becomes our primary damage.

It breaks the class’s original design.

There’s a lot of truth to this conceptually, however I would just note that we’re not quite that bad off, yet.

Top basic dps for each weapon set is still limited by initiative, at the very least via combo.

D/D – CnD→Backstab (or Heartseeker)
D/P – Blackpowder→HS→BS
P/D – CnD→Sneak Attack
P/P – Unload
S/D – CnD→TS (this is probably the set most slanted towards autoattack currently)
S/P – Pistolwhip
SBow – point blank Clusterbomb shotgunning

We’re not yet to the point where simple autoattacking is our best recourse for dps on any of the weapon sets. Although, I do agree with you that thieves are becoming more and more dependant on autoattacks and how it fits in with class design philosophy.

evilapprentice.6379:

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.

A) Shadows embrace is wonderful. It truly is. It’s hands down the best way to drop conditions, and definitely the only way we have to drop a bunch of conditions.

That being said, Condition damage thieves are great in hot join. I ran 0/0/30/20/20 P/D for a long, long time and I loved it. It’s not so great in Tourneys though. Ele and Guardian bunkers will take literally forever to down. You can beat burst specs, but 1 mistake and your usually pasted, while your opponent can make multiple mistakes and still survive (since your damage is so slow and steady). In the “Focus target, next” coordination of paid tourneys, bleeds don’t have a chance to shine.

Your cap denial is ok with caltrops, but nothing compared to the KB/KB/KD/Launch chains guardians and ele’s can pull off. So yeah, condi thieves are fine, but in the current meta, they’re weak in tpvp. I was hoping this patch would change some of that, but meh, kittenandwich.

I shred all those classes pretty easily with conditions. It is more about timing when you’ll stack. Ele’s rarely have trouble with. Guardians are more or less cake. I personally don’t have problems with those classes, and with high mobility and stun breaks you’re way too mobile to really be shut down easily.

I wish they would just come out and tell us what build or weapons to use, so we get used to one, for then a week or so.

I personally don’t give a crap if they nerf pvpv or wvw to do a one or 2 pt per “skill”.
I’ll never play that part of the game, should let pve be separate.

Don’t use backstab or pistolwhip, rarely stealth never seems to work for more then a sec, still get hit by npc’s anyway. All classes were supposedly viable… not s/d or p/p I’m guessing now.

Shortbow is really weak, was weak before also. Why make it even worse ?

I’m not going to comment on the Lost Shores update until it’s done. However, in light of the unexpected and rather hardcore nerf that the S/D set (my favourite) has got, allow me to chime in with one thing:
The damage nerf would have hurt the set less if Flanking Strike were fixed / changed in any way that’d make it good at dealing damage to players.

Well, I would have been fine with it if they only modified it so that the second strike isn’t a fancy move, just a hit that deals increased damage if you’re attacking your target from the side or behind. Flanking, after all.

Daeqar.8965:

Top basic dps for each weapon set is still limited by initiative, at the very least via combo.

D/D – CnD->Backstab (or Heartseeker)
D/P – Blackpowder->HS->BS
P/D – CnD->Sneak Attack
P/P – Unload
S/D – CnD->TS (this is probably the set most slanted towards autoattack currently)
S/P – Pistolwhip
SBow – point blank Clusterbomb shotgunning

We’re not yet to the point where simple autoattacking is our best recourse for dps on any of the weapon sets. Although, I do agree with you that thieves are becoming more and more dependant on autoattacks and how it fits in with class design philosophy.

You’re simply wrong on this, mathematically. For S/P and S/D auto-attack is higher DPS than either of those initiative-using options. In both cases you give up the conditions of sword auto attack, and for S/D your listed combo also gives up the AE capability of the auto attack. The initiative combos do have uses (evade/interrupt on PW, stealth/daze on C&D→TS), so they’re not terrible, but a decision to use them over auto is a decision to decrease your damage output.

Furthermore, P/P’s high DPS option depends on build. Unload is relatively low damage, doing less DPS than sword auto attack or dagger auto attack when specced towards power/crit. When specced towards condition damage the already weak Unload falls behind pistol mainhand auto attack.

Daeqar.8965:

Devildoc.6721:

Virtually every other class, now I don’t play a ranger, so i wouldn’t know them, and if they aren’t this case they should be fighting it…

all of their weapon skills are higher damage than their autoattack, even taking dps of the entire chain into account. Autoattack for them, is something they do while waiting on cooldowns, or in between skills, but it’s never their best dps option.

Thieves, depending on your weapon, autoattack has now become the biggest dps skill you have. it essentially defeats the purpose of initiative, which was designed so that thieves could do burst damage. Autoattack initially, in beta, and at launch, was intended to be something a thief falls back to when initaitive is low, or while they’re waiting for the opportune moment to burst. Because our skill use per minute is lower than any other class because of the shared nature of our resource, our autoattack was buffed to make sure our sustained dps didn’t fall behind everyone else.

Now, as they’re stripping away damage from skills…

we won’t be able to burst using initiative anymore, autoattack becomes our primary damage.

It breaks the class’s original design.

There’s a lot of truth to this conceptually, however I would just note that we’re not quite that bad off, yet.

Top basic dps for each weapon set is still limited by initiative, at the very least via combo.

D/D – CnD->Backstab (or Heartseeker)
D/P – Blackpowder->HS->BS
P/D – CnD->Sneak Attack
P/P – Unload
S/D – CnD->TS (this is probably the set most slanted towards autoattack currently)
S/P – Pistolwhip
SBow – point blank Clusterbomb shotgunning

We’re not yet to the point where simple autoattacking is our best recourse for dps on any of the weapon sets. Although, I do agree with you that thieves are becoming more and more dependant on autoattacks and how it fits in with class design philosophy.

S/P: Pistol Whip does less DPS than autoattack chains (Pistol Whip has a longer total animation), haste and doing it twice in a row because you can nail most people with the stuns almost back to back is the only PVP use.

S/D: C&D + TS does less than autoattack chains, the daze, not the damage was the use here… it used to be somewhat good damage because of C&D.

Shortbow: if you’re at any distance the flight time of cluster bomb results in less damage over time than autoattacking, especially now in PVP. It can still hit more targets which is a plus but the main reasons to use cluster bomb are its blast finisher ability, the fact that it’s 1200 range and has a high arc that can hit people where your autoattack cannot.

Pistolwhip is fine with haste, stun + dmg = great. For the longest time i resisted using haste, figuring it would be nerfed/removed from game, etc… but it appears the devs want us to use it for burst.

Umbra.5180:

I wish they would just come out and tell us what build or weapons to use, so we get used to one, for then a week or so.

That’s exactly what they’ve done with the latest patch.

It’s pretty obvious ANet want everyone to continue using the FotM D/D BS build.

Most thieves here were asking for MORE viable builds, instead ANet turn around and nerf virtually everything besides the build that causes the majority of QQ in this sub forum.

It just boggles the mind and a clear indication that their balancing team really have no clue.