Guild Wars 2

As many of you know recently a developer came on a thread inferring that a backstab nerf to thief was inevitable. This was made in regards to a thread where a warrior wanted a nerf because he took a 8K damage hit (keep in mind, any thieves running full glass cannon to achieve that type of damage are probably all too familiar with taking 6K+ damage from warriors and other glass cannon builds). By doing this, anet is essentially turning a thief’s only glass cannon build into a glass cannon build with the cannon part. This is not the right way to balance things. These constant nerfs need to stop for thief. Enough is enough. Anet, if you’re reading. Answer me this question : Why do you feel the need to nerf a glass cannon thief while not nerfing 100 blades + frenzy combo that can do more damage than 8K damage dealt from warriors that aren’t entirely glass cannon.

Thieves who are against this nerf need to speak up. If you are against this, make your own thread, so anet can hear us out, because our pleads are not being prioritized, compared to the few who make pleads for nerfs. If we don’t speak up now, the thief class is going to be destroyed. The nerfs are not going to stop. Stealth is next, then condition damage.

where have you been? the stealth nerfs came first lol

I can assure you they are coming again dear sir.

The upcoming nerf is completely justified.

100b is easy to avoid, plus it pretty much requires the use of a CC and Frenzy, which means that this burst has a 60 second cooldown, while the Thief can keep pumping backstabs every 3 seconds.

Also, if the combo has failed the Thief can easily disengage and try again in a few seconds with all his health and Initiative recharged.

100B is only easy to avoid if the warrior doesn’t use knock down, in which case they usually do, you’re dead before you get back up. Thief can pump backstabs out every second, if they have any stealth skills left. CND is not a viable option for continual backstabs because it destroys initiative and heartseeker would be more useful if your first “chain(which requires at least 40 seconds of cooldown)” is sucessful. Unless he trades a utility skill for blinding powder, I doubt it’s likely they continue pumping out backstabs. I would much rather heartseeker from stealth if they are under 50% hp.

100% agree. We must speak against this constant nerfing of thief. Thief is becoming only “glass” instead of "glass-cannon. Im becoming angry when i read these QQ topics on forum and developers are only puppets which dance how these QQ kids play and cry here. I 100% guarantee you that after these kids reach their goal and thief is useless they will QQ about other classes like warrior, mesmer, necro…etc until only their class will be OP and other profesions useless. Its only what they want: kill all other without any work and make other classes with no power.

I am a thief, and this nerf is 100% justified. It hits way to hard, and the sheer popularity of this build prevents any class other then a Warrior/Mesmer/Thief to wear a beserkers amulet unless they have a death wish. Honestly i can’t wait for this change and i hope they nerf it into oblivion so i can have my class back, before it as deemed Overpowered by everyone and their grandmother.

If they nerf some dagger skills i hope they will buff pistols or bow which are really weak in compare with daggers. If developers something nerf they must something buff so the class is balanced and not only nerf, nerf, nerf until class is useless.

Some thief fans got too attached to their overpowered toys, and are having a hard time accepting that they must be toned down to the power of other professions. They come to the forums whining that the devs shouldn’t listen to the whining of others.

The nerf is coming regardless. Let’s get some more viability for sword and pistol builds.

Doomdesire.9365:

As many of you know recently a developer came on a thread inferring that a backstab nerf to thief was inevitable. This was made in regards to a thread where a warrior wanted a nerf because he took a 8K damage hit

It was a guardian, and I strongly doubt they are basing the nerf on that one thread.

Doomdesire.9365:

By doing this, anet is essentially turning a thief’s only glass cannon build into a glass cannon build with the cannon part.

Basing this entirely on nothing but your own sky is falling melodramatic posts.

Doomdesire.9365:

Answer me this question : Why do you feel the need to nerf a glass cannon thief while not nerfing 100 blades + frenzy combo that can do more damage than 8K damage dealt from warriors that aren’t entirely glass cannon.

If you’re going to make a case for your own class, it generally helps to justify your use for it and not “Wahhh well they get that, why is that fair?”

Particularly when what you’re talking about is easily avoidable/couterable.

Doomdesire.9365:

Thieves who are against this nerf need to speak up. If you are against this, make your own thread, so anet can hear us out

Awful idea, wow. I’m all for getting yourself heard, but everyone making your own thread is a freaking stupid idea.

Runcore.5107:

If they nerf some dagger skills i hope they will buff pistols or bow which are really weak in compare with daggers. If developers something nerf they must something buff so the class is balanced and not only nerf, nerf, nerf until class is useless.

I’d love it if they actually buffed the sustained damage of P/P, made Body Shot worth using (cripple + damage would be nice, or a knock back), and sped up the animation on Unload.

It’s completely justified. I rolled a Thief main, and my usual build is a mix of damage and survival with S/D + SB. I tried the Backstab combo build and I felt sick at how it roflstomps so hard on anyone who blinks at the wrong moment. It’s not unavoidable, but it’s FAR too unforgiving. As long as they implement an adjustment correctly, I have no problem with it. Perhaps I might see some actual variation in Thief builds for a change.

As much as I loved the backstab build it needs a nerf, before the signet change I was doing 14k+ back stab with 5k+5k steal + cnd now its 10k+ backstabs.
Well as long as they don’t touch my bleed build I’m happy.

I kind of want to say let the nerfs happen, as long as they buff another side of the thief. This will give me more time to play with my victim beyond instantly destroying them unless they are bunker build, and give me more practice in when to dodge.

On the otherside, I also know when we, the thieves, are nerfed, the players on the opposing end will have nothing to use as an excuse for dying. Though they will continue to cry and never accept the fact that it is the most adaptable player (like species) that survives, and will continue to cry for nerfs because they are too unskilled to beat good players in general (for all classes).

Obligatory – “The Nerfs are Coming”

Jonathan, as long as you are hearing out the entire community, even if nerfs ensue, I will be happy.

Forgive me, but I just feel as if it’s only the pleads of those who want nerfs that is being heard as if the devs only read the title…

@Edelweiss the bs combo does not refresh every 3 seconds. Not even close. It isnt just cloak and dagger run around backstab. There are other skills that you need to burn in able to do it.

I will speak up against unjustified nerfs.

But for now I remain silent.

You can’t backstab every second. I wouldn’t mind a slight nerf (e.g backsab crits), but atm it’s pretty much all the thief has going for it. Other classes are better at escaping or doing constant damage. All the thief has atm are its hard hitting crits and some nice support skills. Ranged is particulary weak, they need to revamp that before nerfing damage.

Nerfing the one aspect thief still excels at, might ruin the class. If they want to nerf it, they need to take a good hard look at a lot of other aspects.

EDIT : just read somewhere that they WILL buff thieves in other areas, might be a good thing then!

Uncalled nurfs yes justifed nurfs no backstab is wildly strong
My main is a thief but anyone would have to admit it hits way to hard

As a thief running Dagger+Dagger, I always felt the Backstab was a little out of place. In judging “what’s the best skill to take advantage of a stealth-focus”, Backstab won (pistol’s Sneak Attack seemed great too). I definitely find it to be a great skill. It is also thematically great.

But Dagger for Thief seems more ideal for getting bonus effects out of your skills, which a raw damage multiplier is less interesting at.

Backstab is so easy to land (in my experience), and my frequent stealth is met with little retaliation, so personally I favor changing the Backstab to some different effect. Now, moreso than any other stealth-attack, Backstab is most thematically appropriate for “deadliness”. So I’m not suggesting some long-duration Poison or additional Vulnerability, those lose the theme. But there’s other ways to have it be deadly without being a damage multiplier.

Personally, I’d like to see an animation of the backstabbed player drop to his knees then to the ground (functionally identical to Knockdown), but no such animation exists presently. (I haven’t experience with inflicting knockdown, so that’s probably not a balanced suggestion anyway)

The problem with backstab nerfs is that you really can’t take more than 10% off the top without screwing up the entire incentive structure of the different dagger skills, and 10% off the top of backstab isn’t going to stop the lolspikes.

Cloak and Dagger and/or Mug are going to need to be hit as well. I focus on Mug the most since it’s merely a trait, is a big instant damage it that combos with everything, and is on a long cooldown, so hitting Mug has the least collateral damage.

It’s not like Cloak and Dagger needs a 1.5 ratio to be a good skill either.

How much you can “take off the top” depends on what you replace a straight damage nerf with. If backstab was reduced to, say, the damage of a <25 % Heartseeker but had some additional effect that made it worthwhile, it’d still be useful and balanced.

I’m really, really against nerfing the thief because then it’ll just be every class has the same semi-tanky/bunker build.

Let me keep my glass cannon. That’s the entire reason I started thief; there are definite ways to counter one, and they should simply be a priority target in pvp/etc. I die when you look at me; that’s fair. :P

I’m okay with the thief dps nerf. But hopefully other dps builds from other professions get nerfed too

they did someting to thief that now ranger keep aim on us when we hide … and mesmers keep without the right nerf… only thief gets nerfs …

Overarching all of this is this general issue that tanky builds dominate, and that very high burst damage is needed if every fight isn’t going to devolve into a bleed stacking contest.

At the same time, the sort of burst you need to blast through tanky builds totally eviscerates world PvE farming builds.

I do think that the C&D/Mug/Backstab combo needs to lose a good chunk of damage, but it probably won’t be dropped to a level that will stop complaints without a pretty thorough rework of their combat pacing.

Ensign.2189:

Overarching all of this is this general issue that tanky builds dominate, and that very high burst damage is needed if every fight isn’t going to devolve into a bleed stacking contest.

At the same time, the sort of burst you need to blast through tanky builds totally eviscerates world PvE farming builds.

I’d disagree on both accounts. In the case of the former, “kill them before they have a chance to take action” is a very poor counter to a tank enemy. The fact that it is seen as a viable solution at all means that something is off. The whole purpose of a character building heavily defensive is to draw fights out to give them a chance to wear down their opponent, pouring on more offense to continue to instantly end fights is not, and should not be, the logical counter to that behavior.

In the latter, most of the high-burst setups people are using in PvP are completely unviable in PvE. PvE rewards constant ability to kill enemies at a quick and safe pace, whereas PvP (at least in this situation) rewards a single quick kill followed by a period of recuperation.

Tulisin.6945:

Ensign.2189:

Overarching all of this is this general issue that tanky builds dominate, and that very high burst damage is needed if every fight isn’t going to devolve into a bleed stacking contest.

At the same time, the sort of burst you need to blast through tanky builds totally eviscerates world PvE farming builds.

I’d disagree on both accounts. In the case of the former, “kill them before they have a chance to take action” is a very poor counter to a tank enemy. The fact that it is seen as a viable solution at all means that something is off. The whole purpose of a character building heavily defensive is to draw fights out to give them a chance to wear down their opponent, pouring on more offense to continue to instantly end fights is not, and should not be, the logical counter to that behavior.

In the latter, most of the high-burst setups people are using in PvP are completely unviable in PvE. PvE rewards constant ability to kill enemies at a quick and safe pace, whereas PvP (at least in this situation) rewards a single quick kill followed by a period of recuperation.

Yes, the purpose of a tank build is well, to have massive defense and wear them out, but is it not the purpose of a glass cannon build to be the opposite of that? Too deal massive damage with almost no defense?

@Doomdesire, Thank You, this is what i have been trying to do since the pistol whip nerf. Thank You for speaking out and rallying other people to speak up. I’m sure if enough actual thieves speak up against these nerfs, Anet will have to listen.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Paranoid.9542:

Doomdesire.9365:

Thieves who are against this nerf need to speak up. If you are against this, make your own thread, so anet can hear us out

Awful idea, wow. I’m all for getting yourself heard, but everyone making your own thread is a freaking stupid idea.

Ya, no need for multiple threads – it’ll just clutter the forum. One thread is sufficient.

How about keeping that same policy for the ones wanting the nerfs, eh? This forum is often almost nothing but cries for nerfs, to the point where players of the class cannot have a discussion.

Edit: In fact, just delete ALL of the people demanding nerfs. That’s not what this forum is for.

“How about keeping that same policy for the ones wanting the nerfs, eh? This forum is often almost nothing but cries for nerfs, to the point where players of the class cannot have a discussion.
Edit: In fact, just delete ALL of the people demanding nerfs. That’s not what this forum is for.”

I second this,
My post calling for the new backstab nerf thread to be deleted got deleted, so unfair

Agreed, this forum is taken hostage by the people demanding nerfs. There are not 6 threads in this subforum’s first page that are on topic and discus matters surrounding day to day playing a thief character.

I can understand the talk about bunker builds… it’s not that backstab and thief damage should be nerfed, but the effect of toughness has to get better.

Rock is supposed to beat scissors not because scissors are dull but because rock is hard.

Rock is apparently not hard enough IMO.

I think the current damage done to “paper” is what should be expected. Thieves should be a hard counter to casters., and warriors and guardians should be a hard counter to thieves. The fact that they’re not I think is an issue with toughness/armor not being good enough.

“How about keeping that same policy for the ones wanting the nerfs, eh? This forum is often almost nothing but cries for nerfs, to the point where players of the class cannot have a discussion.
Edit: In fact, just delete ALL of the people demanding nerfs. That’s not what this forum is for.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Tulisin.6945:

I’d disagree on both accounts. In the case of the former, “kill them before they have a chance to take action” is a very poor counter to a tank enemy. The fact that it is seen as a viable solution at all means that something is off.

A character that both cannot be bursted out and has powerful sustain is a glaring balance problem. It’s essentially the same problem as being instagibbed by the Thief – your game is irrelevant, because I can always force terms. In the case of instagib, you die before there is any meaningful back and forth; in the case of the super tank, the fight is forced to be an attrition battle, which they are designed to win.

100-0 burst is crazy bad for the game, but 50-0 burst is a very important part of a balanced game. There needs to be a balanced point that meets both ends.

Tulisin.6945:

In the latter, most of the high-burst setups people are using in PvP are completely unviable in PvE. PvE rewards constant ability to kill enemies at a quick and safe pace, whereas PvP (at least in this situation) rewards a single quick kill followed by a period of recuperation.

In principle, sure. In practice, you have essentially no control over your skill bar on a given character, and the difference between high burst and high sustain damage is in which buttons you press in which order. Your high burst D/D set-up is firing off C&D into backstab to open a fight; your high sustain set-up is…to C&D into backstab whenever your initiative is full and auto-attack in between. If you’re on a Warrior, PvE means you get to use Hundred Blades without pushing Frenzy first. The builds and gear are essentially identical (barring magic find gear for uber event farming).

I took 12k damage from 100B, either combined with knockdown/quickness. It’s pretty crazy, because thieves have 10-13k HP, while that warrior has 18k. I can’t believe the amount of whine coming from other professions. If you want to nerf thief, nerf warrior first.

In case you didn’t know, thieves can only pull that “burst damage” every 45 seconds with every skill going into it, and after that they can’t do anything elset.

Objectively thieves are currently the most overpowered class – you can’t try to deflect that. Nerfs have been inevitable since launch and you’re lucky its taken this long.

Need to stop listening to whiners and let the population of the game become better. 70% of this population don’t even know how to play there class even if they think they do.

Dramatic changes should at least wait till January.

We will see how this plays out. I have never seen the outlandishly high numbers the whiners complain about, even in WvW when attacking underleveled players my highest backstab was about 8k. Granted, I’m not fully exotic as of yet but at the moment I don’t feel that a nerf is justified.
The change to Assassins Signet was a good one imo so I will withhold my judgement until the changes appear in the patchnotes.

As a condition damage style of play isn’t really fun for me personally if the nerf is to harsh I will probably switch over to my Mesmer, which hit 70 yesterday, or I’ll just go Warrior for the lulz.

Burst dps build is only powerful against bad to average opponents. I can prove it to you whenever you want, just bring me a skilled player and you will see that this build loses against them.

I have no idea which build could beat these skilled players I have encountered, if not this build. And getting it nerfed? Then this build won’t even be able to defeat average players and thieves would become a support class.

Also: Other classes have block/immune damage abilities(+ their dodge) which make the thief choose the correct timing to attack. Thief has nothing to protect except stealth which you can still get damaged from.

+Crit Damage needs to be fixed before you touch backstab.

idk why i’m even posting, i can’t see myself playing this game for much longer, these devs are clueless.

Protip: Saying your viewpoint is objective doesn’t make it so.

when you have +100% or more from crit dmg, then it is NOT THE BACKSTAB’s problem they hit so hard.
NERFT TO CRITS !!

People love to complain about getting bursted down by glass cannon thieves, but they dont usually mention how fast that same thief splats on the floor once hes out in the open.

It is so easy to avoid being backstabbed in combat, its hilarious. And even if you do get caught by suprise, if you dont have a stunbreaker on your bar to get out of basilisk/devour venom, thats your fault.

Backstab zerker thieves spend 2 out of three utility skills, sometimes an elite skill, blow their steal cooldown, and also use half their initiative on that opening burst. You cant really nerf the damage on that investment too much or else no one will play the spec at all, because if it fails to kill their target, often times they will die.

GC thieves die so fast in battle from simple AE damage, random conditions, and ranged attacks, there has to be a payoff for speccing that way. The payoff is huge burst.

Personally, I prefer not to play that way. I mix toughness/vitality in with my power/prec/crit damage, and I can survive being opened on by the dreaded steal/cnd/backstab combo just fine through use of my stunbreakers, kiting, and dodging.

I play all classes in pve,most are 60-80lvl, so i can’t speek for pvp, but i don’t think this is a pvp forum. If i want substained dps i go W, if i want suport i go ele or G mostly. If i want spike dmg, i go thief(still around 11k hp though),but keep some tricks to live longer. If anet nerfs the dmg i really dont see any reason for me to log on my thief. If a thief goes down in 3-4 hits, he must be able if he does all correct, to kill faster. Otherwise, its a free kill to others. And i’ve have tried other builds, they are fine, but that doesn’t mean that a spike build must go away….And still if i don’t get the target to 1/2 hp, i will have to use other things to stay alive. It feels too glassy in pve, so i think in pvp thief will be a lot more easy to kill. If ppl want to live after a full spike, and still be able to have a ton of dps, they want to be op., or simply kill the thief/spike.

But i must say i am really disapointed with anet, going for nerfs because of the cries/trolling while there are other problems/bugs that, i feel are far much more important for the game. Things like necros’ issues, maps geting empty etc, that can kill the game.

First of: Thieves need a single change, pre-casting CnD before steal should not be possible. Please fix this to create some extra reaction time (about 2 seconds extra) instead of the 0,5s you have now.

The sheer incompetence of players complaining about backstab thieves after all the nerfs so far is too kitten high.

A backstab thief is a one trick pony, high risk/high reward. If you fail (which really does happen vs a proper player) you are as good as dead. 100b Warriors are exactly the same. If I run into a 100b warrior (I have 14k hp with a berserker/valkyrie build) and my stunbreaker is up I know I will win that fight because after dodging/breaking his stun/100b its over for him/her.

People are starting to become insanely stupid with requesting not to die to a glass cannon one trick pony build when they themselves are a glass cannon build.. I.e. I don’t do 5k steals (hell I don’t even have Mug), don’t do 5k CnD’s and don’t do 8k backstabs. However I still burn down a glass cannon Ele/100b warr/ranger in a matter of seconds BECAUSE IT’S A GLASS CANNON BUILD.

I hope ANet is more sensible and won’t listen to people crying about stuff that can be countered. Glass cannon = High risk/high reward = The thief wins or dies miserably after blowing through 2 CD’s and sometimes even an elite.
If ANet listens to the casual crying playerbase I will promise that we will be back here in a month with glass cannon builds crying about how condition thieves are OP because they die to it and can’t do anything about it cause all their skills are built for pure DPS and not a single survivability skill is on their bars.

I will never complain about 100b warriors doing 14k on me because my stunbreaker wasn’t up and my evade was late. You don’t hear me complain about being Moa’d and burst down in seconds by a full glass cannon Mesmer. You work with it, spec for it and try to make sure you learn to recognize builds so you can avoid the problems in the future.

Thieves of the world unite!!! Let’s go into the forum warriors and mesmers, and how do they, ask every day of the nerf to their professions … But I know, we will not because we are thieves .. we fight in the shade, we have honor, dignity, and above all despite all future nerf us we will always be stronger than them!!! ahahahahaha