Guild Wars 2

Thief
>Pistol Whip: Reduced damage by 15%.
>Basilisk Venom: Increased stun duration to 1.5 seconds. Stun breakers now

Basilisk venom just become a little more awesome.

Still pretty useless due to the long cast time. By the time it finishes casting, a thief would be at half health already in PvP.

Essentially, thief’s got nerfed yet again due to bad players complaining.

Why? Imo was useless and even more now, waste the elite in a skill that everybody can just break.

Is funny how anet nerf the thief more and more everyday, one day they will just delete the class from the game.

Good job ArenaNet, make are unique ‘stone’ ability now breakable, meaning the immobilize venom is now better, making this the most useless Elite in-game. As well as nerfing Pistol Whip that done like, the same damage as unload, I hope this will be last nerf instead of catering to noobs.

seriously another thief nerf?! whats the chances of thief ever using basilisk venom? 15% damaged reduction? really? is this really even necessary? Anet never diff from the others i guess.. too much hope ive placed.

OK just wanted to update something. Pistol whip barely does damage now. Anet’s completely oblivious of what they are doing.

I like how they keep nerfing kits blindly, but they have yet to do ANYTHING to address the kits that need work (P/P and S/D).

Tell me, why exactly are people praising Arenanet as the best MMO developer ever? I see nothing here to put them above any others.

IMHO Anet should have taken a look at quickness and not Pistol whip but i’m slightly biased to the devourer+Pistol whip combo so =P

At least my venom share is still an asset to the team.

Curious about basalisk now wonder if it’s worth dumping my “Suddenly Thieve’s” Build for a full venoms build.

Gee Warriors still hit 25k with a single ability but our ability that did 6k dmg got nerfed yet again….

and our only partially viable elite got nerfed to total uselessness..

Just when I was thinking about leaving my S/P set and replacing it with a different one, this feels like a “come on do that” from a-net :P

Lokheit.7943:

Just when I was thinking about leaving my S/P set and replacing it with a different one, this feels like a “come on do that” from a-net :P

I think at this point D/D backstab spamming is our only real option in PVE.

Woo hoo……

As someone who has never played a thief, it’s pretty awesome to go to the thief boards every time an update hits them. And the same can be said for every other profession. It’s a whining, cry-fest.

They’ve got a stronger elite that can be countered, which leads to far more interesting gameplay than a weaker, uncounterable skill. And they got the much-needed nerf to a skill that was being abused. That’s it. Simple. The former is stronger with skillful play, and the later forces you to play more skillful.

I’m absolutely sure bigger thief changes will come, because a conditional buff to an underused skill and a much needed nerf to one of the most abused skills is not going to prevent from over half the pvp community rolling thieves. :P

Also, no warrior can hit for 25k with a single skill, ever, and warriors attacks are slow, predictable and easy to recognize. Unlike a thief, which can spam quick attacks, kill in 3 seconds, and hide in stealth every few seconds, to spike you again if it hasn’t killed you already.

<Non Thief player here. Only dabbled with it ~3 ranks or so to learn the class.

Don’t know why they hit Pistol Whip builds, when Backstab was more LOLSIES.

And Mesmers remain pretty much unchanged.

They didn’t do anything to actually nerf the problem with thief.

Pistol Whip will still stun lock and destroy you with Haste. It will still do a ton of damage, even at 85% of its normal strength.

Basilisk Venom sets up for a Backstab directly after. This nerf won’t change anything because there is no way to get out of Basilisk Venom with a Break stun the immediate second that it is placed on you, so it’s still going to be setting up for Backstab. And if break stuns are on CD or they don’t have one, it is now effectively buffed.

They need to completely rework Basilisk Venom, if not remove and replace it. It’s only useful on Backstab builds, and it’s being abused to instantly kill someone. Then there’s Pistol Whip, whose problem lies with the ability to stun lock you without any chance of you retaliating. These problems will still persist and the complaints will still ensue.

It’s amazing how freaking clueless you people are, P/W needed a nerf, i was full freaking exotic in WvW one week ago with acrobatic build and i got one shotted by P/W, so you either roll a warrior for damage play a build other than P/W spamming or kitten

About B/V, they need to remove the cast time, that is all. Stun breaker is quite useless in this game since most stuns last 1-2 sec and by the time you activate one the stun duration already ends.

I use neither so no nerfs for me!

Dagger Storm > all elite skills.

And Pistol Whip already sucked before the nerf anyways.

“Yeah, lets use a skill that roots us in place for 2 seconds and is easily dodgable.”

I’ll keep owning on my D/P backstab build with Dagger Storm :-)

Kraven.4936:

If you’re playing this game for damage, you might as well reroll to warrior. You’re tankier and hit a lot harder.

@aNet,

Fire the guy who’s doing the balancing for you. Clearly, he has no idea what’s he doing.

Thats the who point of a thief to deal high burst damage in a short amount of time to make up for their terrible survivability. Honestly for every nerf ArenaNet does to theives damage they need to increase their survivability by that much cause I’m getting sick and tried of this. It’ll be a matter of time when this class become just not worth the hassle of playing, which it’s somewhat of a hassle already.

Diago the issue was haste when it came to pistol whip. Because you could Haste+Pistol whip+Pistolwhip before the stun wore off, normal pistol whips damage was strong but not amazing.

Now before you jump into the “Your just mad cause you got nerfed.” I’m not a pistol whip thief, never liked the build and never found it beneficial to the team.

Now as for warriors what he means is the warrior who Sword-chucks to immobile, charges to knockdown and 100 blades to kill. This is insanely strong and i’ve been 1 shotted by it, it’s on par with the busted Haste pistol-whip set and needs to be looked at as well.

Truly though you should learn the internal mechanics of a class before you outright call it OP.. Hang around in these forums a bit if your having trouble with thieves, I did the same in the mesmer forums. =D

DiogoSilva.7089:

As someone who has never played a thief, it’s pretty awesome to go to the thief boards every time an update hits them. And the same can be said for every other profession. It’s a whining, cry-fest.

They’ve got a stronger elite that can be countered, which leads to far more interesting gameplay than a weaker, uncounterable skill. And they got the much-needed nerf to a skill that was being abused. That’s it. Simple. The former is stronger with skillful play, and the later forces you to play more skillful.

I’m absolutely sure bigger thief changes will come, because a conditional buff to an underused skill and a much needed nerf to one of the most abused skills is not going to prevent from over half the pvp community rolling thieves. :P

Also, no warrior can hit for 25k with a single skill, ever, and warriors attacks are slow, predictable and easy to recognize. Unlike a thief, which can spam quick attacks, kill in 3 seconds, and hide in stealth every few seconds, to spike you again if it hasn’t killed you already.

You are who is crying here, you looks like one of those warriors than can land 100b+frenzy+throw bolas in a thief and come to say that they dosent hit hard when with that combo a warrior can kill almost any class in game. The problem was not the pistol whip, the problem in almost all the classes is the quickness. And about the elite, careful, 1s stun (now 1,5s breakable)=useless.

I don’t really get the pistol whip nerf… It’s still going to be OP with quickness while becoming even more useless without quickness. They really should have left thief skills alone until they rethink the quickness buff.

You cannot haste and chain pistol whips.

If the opponent of the Thief spams dodge, there’s like a .5 second gap where you can dodge a Pistol Whip, even with haste on.

Regardless, I don’t care, I don’t use the useless skill, even more useless now.

Martym.6971:

You cannot haste and chain pistol whips.

If the opponent of the Thief spams dodge, there’s like a .5 second gap where you can dodge a Pistol Whip, even with haste on.

Regardless, I don’t care, I don’t use the useless skill, even more useless now.

And any pistol whip thief worth his salt is using devourer venom to hold you in place so you CAN’T dodge away.

WereDragon.6083:

Martym.6971:

You cannot haste and chain pistol whips.

If the opponent of the Thief spams dodge, there’s like a .5 second gap where you can dodge a Pistol Whip, even with haste on.

Regardless, I don’t care, I don’t use the useless skill, even more useless now.

And any pistol whip thief worth his salt is using devourer venom to hold you in place so you CAN’T dodge away.

If a Thief is using D Venom, they are sacrificing a lot of survivability for a useless venom to get a garunteed kill on one person vs surviving multiple targets.

The scenario is haste right? What does he have to survive? Shadow Refuge D venom and haste? Thats a garbage combo especially in WvW.

Anyone that’s had a chance to test so far: If you have basilisk venom and pistol whip stun on you and then use a stun break, does it break both of them in one fell swoop?

bwillb.2165:

Anyone that’s had a chance to test so far: If you have devourer venom and pistol whip stun on you and then use a stun break, does it break both of them in one fell swoop?

D Venom is an immobolize not a stun, to prevent a dodge, which is useless unless in a 1v1 scenario.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Gee Warriors still hit 25k with a single ability but our ability that did 6k dmg got nerfed yet again….

and our only partially viable elite got nerfed to total uselessness..

Umm PLEASE tell me what ability that is….. full out specced into dmg/pwr the highest i have ever crit for with HB was 13.5k and that was on another glass cannon, also the build was just for testing the dmg, it is in no way viable for real tournament play….. so yeah stop screaming for nerfs, that is exactly what got your class nerfed.

shalmont.2539:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Gee Warriors still hit 25k with a single ability but our ability that did 6k dmg got nerfed yet again….

and our only partially viable elite got nerfed to total uselessness..

Umm PLEASE tell me what ability that is….. full out specced into dmg/pwr the highest i have ever crit for with HB was 13.5k and that was on another glass cannon, also the build was just for testing the dmg, it is in no way viable for real tournament play….. so yeah stop screaming for nerfs, that is exactly what got your class nerfed.

Warriors dmg is nuts, but I have to disagree with B Venom being the only viable elite.

Dagger Storm = amazing.

Thieves Guild, Dagger Storm, and Basilisk Venom are all good in different situations.

Thieves Guild is good in small skirmishes, like 5v5 or so. It’s also great in PvE.

Basilisk Venom is great 1v1, and synergizes really well with Backstab builds.

Dagger Storm is only good in huge zergs for the AoE. If you’re using it 1v1 for anything other than the projectile reflection, you’re basically asking to die. I swear people don’t realize it reflects projectiles. I can just jump into a zerg, use Dagger Storm, and laugh when everyone just tries to kill me with range.

PW was never a problem,

It was quickness that’s the issue.

Krathalos.3461:

Thieves Guild, Dagger Storm, and Basilisk Venom are all good in different situations.

Thieves Guild is good in small skirmishes, like 5v5 or so. It’s also great in PvE.

Basilisk Venom is great 1v1, and synergizes really well with Backstab builds.

Dagger Storm is only good in huge zergs for the AoE. If you’re using it 1v1 for anything other than the projectile reflection, you’re basically asking to die. I swear people don’t realize it reflects projectiles. I can just jump into a zerg, use Dagger Storm, and laugh when everyone just tries to kill me with range.

I tend to use shadow signet soon as I jump in a zerg, then use Dagger Storm, you can prolong it that way an extra second.

Martym.6971:

bwillb.2165:

Anyone that’s had a chance to test so far: If you have devourer venom and pistol whip stun on you and then use a stun break, does it break both of them in one fell swoop?

D Venom is an immobolize not a stun, to prevent a dodge, which is useless unless in a 1v1 scenario.

Sorry I meant basilisk venom… trying to do too many things at once :p

Chris.8290:

You are who is crying here, you looks like one of those warriors than can land 100b+frenzy+throw bolas in a thief and come to say that they dosent hit hard when with that combo a warrior can kill almost any class in game.

See, it’s quite the contrary. While the thieves are top tier at the moment, I actually play one of the current weakest and most broken professions of this game, the Elementalist. You know, that profession that dies faster than a thief (same health, less armor), without stealth like a thief (although it has more defensive skills at the cost of damage, okay, I’ll have both draw here), and takes twice the skills, twice the time and twice the effort to deal as much damage as a thief, with no elite skills worth using and a downed state that is worst of the seven professions. This talking solely about power builds (elementalists are fairly decent when specced to be defensive). I’m the exact opposite of a greatsword warrior.

But I do stand a chance against greatsword warriors far better than against thieves. Warriors are predictable and easily counterable. They don’t take half of my HP while remaining invisible, and don´t take the remaining half by spamming the same skill over and over.

aNet, doesn’t see the self root and the awful animation time on PW. Of course PW is great with haste, that’s undeniable. But then again, what isn’t?

Seriously? I just don’t get it. Neither of these nerfs make any sense in terms of balancing and all they did to BV was make it worse than DV due to the remaining cast time and .05 second difference.

As for PW, it’s now even worse in PvE and Quickness still remains a problem across all classes, yay.

DiogoSilva.7089:

As someone who has never played a thief, it’s pretty awesome to go to the thief boards every time an update hits them. And the same can be said for every other profession. It’s a whining, cry-fest.

They’ve got a stronger elite that can be countered, which leads to far more interesting gameplay than a weaker, uncounterable skill. And they got the much-needed nerf to a skill that was being abused. That’s it. Simple. The former is stronger with skillful play, and the later forces you to play more skillful.

I’m absolutely sure bigger thief changes will come, because a conditional buff to an underused skill and a much needed nerf to one of the most abused skills is not going to prevent from over half the pvp community rolling thieves. :P

Also, no warrior can hit for 25k with a single skill, ever, and warriors attacks are slow, predictable and easy to recognize. Unlike a thief, which can spam quick attacks, kill in 3 seconds, and hide in stealth every few seconds, to spike you again if it hasn’t killed you already.

“the latter forces you to play more skillful”

Do you realize how ignorant you are?

Have you looked at a S/P thief’s skill bar?

Pistol Whip is the ONLY SKILL on the entire bar that does considerable damage.

Everything else is situational and built around control. Interrupt, Blind, and Immobilize/mobility. Your bread and butter skill for damage was what was nerfed.

It does 1/2 of the damage of 100b, now more like 1/3.

If they’d taken that damage and added it to head shot, maybe I wouldn’t be complaining.

But as it is, I just lost 15% of my total damage.

There’s no way to “play smarter” than to not use that weapon set, at all.

Kraven.4936:

aNet, doesn’t see the self root and the awful animation time on PW. Of course PW is great with haste, that’s undeniable. But then again, what isn’t?

What Anet sees is that you evade all attacks when doing PW, so it cancels out with the root and long animation.

Macovan.3650:

Kraven.4936:

aNet, doesn’t see the self root and the awful animation time on PW. Of course PW is great with haste, that’s undeniable. But then again, what isn’t?

What Anet sees is that you evade all attacks when doing PW, so it cancels out with the root and long animation.

You only evade during a small part of the total skill activation. Without haste, you can easily die while casting it.

Kraven.4936:

In summary, this what happens when you don’t play your own game. Welcome to aNet’s balancing: Heads, you lose, tails, I win.

No, Isaiah Cartwright plays the game

.. he plays Warriors and Guardians.

Shocking that those are the 2 most desirable classes for dungeons.

Am I the only one who likes to play with skill, Crit/acrobat build and go around jumping and hitting by side to all enemies?

Cond damage is easier because of spam 3, going invi and repeating, but i cant stop loving the endless dodge rolls.

Devildoc.6721:

No, Isaiah Cartwright plays the game

.. he plays Warriors and Guardians.

Shocking that those are the 2 most desirable classes for dungeons.

I stand corrected. It’s just sad that they’re trying to get rid of thieves.

Knyx.5926:

I think these devs at a-net should return to get their high school diploma or GED at least.
They reduced the damage but didnt fix the bug that made it self root on a mobility class?
A 5 year old would know better.

It’s not a bug, for the slight invincibility frame that you get, I think the self-root is just fair.

Wrong. It is a bug. ANY self root on ANY ability on a class designed around mobility is a bug (and oxymoron), If there is a part of the ability that makes it too strong while mobile in the design phase; you tweak that part, you do not slap on a self root. This is like design 101, I don’t think any MMO has ever made that mistake. Ergo bug

Knyx.5926:

I think these devs at a-net should return to get their high school diploma or GED at least.
They reduced the damage but didnt fix the bug that made it self root on a mobility class?
A 5 year old would know better.

It’s not a bug, the root is intentional, just like the roots on blurred frenzy and 100b.

Isaiah Cartwright needs to be fired though.. His blatant favoritism of the warrior class and heavy handed nerfs in both GW1 and this game are just absurd for someone toting themselves as the ‘balance’ dev.

S/P has ONE damage skill, unless you count auto attack.

Nerfing that outright without replacing the damage elsewhere is just stupid and heavy handed.

Devildoc.6721:

Knyx.5926:

I think these devs at a-net should return to get their high school diploma or GED at least.
They reduced the damage but didnt fix the bug that made it self root on a mobility class?
A 5 year old would know better.

It’s not a bug, the root is intentional, just like the roots on blurred frenzy and 100b.

Isaiah Cartwright needs to be fired though.. His blatant favoritism of the warrior class and heavy handed nerfs in both GW1 and this game are just absurd for someone toting themselves as the ‘balance’ dev.

S/P has ONE damage skill, unless you count auto attack.

Nerfing that outright without replacing the damage elsewhere is just stupid and heavy handed.

It is a bug, unless you are saying the devs are mentally challenged (to the point someone has to dress them and feed them in the morning).
Since I doubt that is the case, it is a bug.
100B= Warrior. Warrior is not supposed to be a mobility based class, ergo working as intended.

Blurred Frenzy= Mesmer definitely not a mobility class, ergo working as intended.

I laugh at people who use pistol whip in PvP. It didn’t need a nerf.

ArenaNet REALLY needs to just remove haste instead of destroying all the skills that synergize well with it. It’s ridiculous that they keep nerfing skills because they are too strong with haste, completely destroying those skills for people who don’t use haste with them.

Quickness is ruining this game’s pvp. Oh and I guess I should switch to using unload in pve now too since skills aren’t split between pve and pvp. Pistol whip is now useless since unload does almost the same damage now and is MUCH safer to land.

No explanation for Pistol Whip nerf Arena.Net?
You gave Guardian players the courtesy of explaining where you wanted Retaliation to go, yet you don’t share the same courtesy with Thieves?

There’s no real point to thief in this game, warrior does everything better and can take hits. Most mmo devs fail to balance rogue vs warrior, a few have done it well tho, this game not so. The class has no direction at all.
They spent a few years designing the pvp system and then nerf it very quickly based on whines, they have no confidence in their creation and admit to their failure quite fast.

Man, you guys need to stop with this over emotional complaining.
Clearly no one here has experience in game development nor in balancing a game.
If you want to have it your way that isn’t happening.
Stop constantly accusing Anet like you know what you’re talking about.

Anet balanced something that was being used very well by players better than any one of you drowning in your tears.

Pistol Whip when used well, by “good” players, hits way to hard
No I haven’t had problems with it, I usually avoid stuff that could kill me.
I have seen solid S/P builds take down really tough warriors and guardians in no time.

sheesh enough with the nonsense!

The lack of responsibility in this thread is astounding. While I unfortunately feel it is moot to even mention, it’d be best for most of you to take a moment and really think about what you are saying – and I direct this to people on both sides of the argument.

To ya’ll whining about Pistol Whip being OP:

Pistol Whip can hurt quite badly with haste, but once haste is gone that spec is done. Counter this and you win. And to be honest, if you aren’t running with stun/condition removal you are begging to get eaten by this spec and all specs like it. Complaining about this spec is silly. It’s just plain silly. Don’t waste time whining – go spend it learning how to handle glass cannons. And for the love of god, stop faceplanting into melee range with a Thief you see running at you with S/P. Most of the time I don’t even see people try to get away from S/P thieves until it is too late.

I also notice that a lot of the whining comes from OTHER glass cannons! What do you expect? If you’re sick of dying to glass cannons then spec more defensive. You cannot have it all.

To people whining about Pistol Whip being nerfed:

15% damage? If that hurts you then you are obviously amazingly reliant upon a single skill to kill for you. One hit wonder specs are great if you can sneak up on people silly/inexperienced enough to stay in melee with you. What if they’re clever enough to get away? What exactly do you have once your single skill has been used with Haste? You have over half a minute where you do what? The S/P Thieves I fight spend that half a minute trying to run or dying. If this is to the extent you can utilize your skills then in my opinion you need to practice with your class more. Throwing all of your eggs in a single basket can go well and it can go very very badly. Some food for thought there. There is more to Thief than being a glass cannon if you endeavor to search for it. If this nerf just plain kills it for you then you are doing something wrong.

To the people whining about Basilisk Venom being nerfed (buffed?):

There are two other great ultimate skills. If you just cannot stand Basilisk Venom getting a realistic change then use something else. Or maybe now you people that are whining about Pistol Whip being nerfed can use Basilisk to force your opponent to blow their stun removal. And hey, if they don’t remove it, then no harm done to Basilisk to begin with. In fact, you still have that .5 second buff to the duration!

P.S. Forgot to add this. Stop trying to cast Basilisk Venom in combat with 5 people hitting you. It’s not smart. Go into stealth or something.