Guild Wars 2

Don’t worry, they’ll nerf the utility Shadowstep too, eventually. :<

I also still won’t be using Hard to Catch. I hate it as much as Last Refuge, but at least I’m not forced to use it.

Let me repeat that clearer actually.

I Hate Hard to Catch.

I HATE Last Refuge.

meow.

Ravoku.1852:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)
Jon

Infiltrator’s Return
First, point 2 is simply not true. I’m becoming more and more convinced that no one actually plays Thief on the balance team. It’s just that class where everyone on the team is like, “Well I’ve been playing my mesmer, been a few months since I’ve logged on my old thief…” plays their Thief for 10 minutes “Well that was nice, back to mesmer.”

Sir, the skill you are thinking of is the utility “Shadowstep”. It has a 50 second base cooldown with a stunbreak on the step and return, with the return removing 3 conditions (because they can’t just lay that right back on and twiddle their thumbs for a few more seconds, right?)
Here are the steps for the stomp you mentioned:
1. Start stomp
2. Shadowstep away (again, the utility skill)
3. Wait for stomp channel to almost finish
4. Shadow Return back just before channel finishes (did I say utility)

Now, its not impossible to do this using infiltrator’s strike, but you would need to:
1. Infiltrate into the downed player
2. Hope player is also a thief, and teleports where you came from
3. Do steps 3 and 4 from the Shadowstep method
OR (WHOA TWO METHODS)
1. Infiltrate on top of the downed player, so your return is at their location
2. Avoiding redundancy, use Infiltrator’s Signet on a faraway target
3. Do steps 3 and 4 from the Shadowstep method

Beyond this, being unable to return after incoming CC (which actually requires to have been set up beforehand, contrary to popular belief) will assure the thief’s death, especially if you have more than one stun. Why, we may die faster than Warrior before “You can make all the mistakes you want against power builds, honey” Signet.

Here’s the thing:
Thieves and Guardians both have very low health pools. Guardian has a plethora of defensive and healing abilities to both mitigate and recover from hits to counter this. Thief is supposed to be the opposite, using a plethora of mobility skills to counter this. Without being able to use mobility to avoid the damage, the thief will die much faster than any other class relying on a hard cooldown stun break because of this health pool

Push for Hard to Catch
Instead of saying this trait is garbage, like many have accurately stated already, I’m going to break it down for you using the G.A.R.B.A.G.E. system.

G.reat for getting yourself killed: it triggers with stability on, is not controlled by the player, AND does not actually remove that which it sets out to protect you from.

A.lready put all the reasonably useful points into that tree. Feline Grace is at 15, this would require 20

R.eally long cooldown compared to what it actually does, which previously could be managed by the player through smart use of initiative management and upkeep of setup requirement

B.oon isn’t that great because it’s only useful for travel out of combat in the context for having teleports and some leaps to close gaps, and stealth to escape

A.ssassin’s reward, which isn’t that great already, would easily beat out this skill in this tier even before the negligible buff. (yeah, lemme just grab some healing gear for my thief)

G.ood boon alternatives to support the thief mobility design, such as vigor, would be given a lower amount anyways in light of the recent vigor nerfs across the boar-OH WAIT, forgot about mesmer vigor.

E.veryone who actually plays the thief have always said how useless this trait has always been, yet here you are, acting like this is some amazing reworked trait when in fact nothing has changed about it functionally.

I end this section with two questions:
1. Did the guy who designed “Tow Line” (Thief spear #4) design this trait?
2. How many more weeks until “Tow Line” is finally renamed to “CC Yourself”?

Conclusion/Seriousness
Jon, after all I have said, I do need to add that most of what you said was very true and well thought out. Specifically, the change to Infusion of Shadow is easily one of the most fair and balanced changes to the thief. However, I can’t just stay silent when some of the points have revealed nothing but blatant neglect regarding balancing the thief to compete in a meta they already have virtually nothing they really do better than other classes. (Distortion stomp?)

TL;DR
Nothing new for people who actually play Thief.

Well, that’s one way to put it.

This balance preview presages the reduction in viability of many current thief builds and will most likely result in even fewer viable builds for thief in wvw and spvp.

You missed these:
#1: Teleport to target with sword.
#2: Start channeling the stomp.
#3: Teleport back with return skill.
#4: Wait for channel to reach the end.
#5: Shadowstep to target with shadowstep/steal/infiltrator
Sword+Steal being a cheap and viable solution.

I agree, however, that it does not warrant this kind of silly nerf..

Deathspike.1870:

You missed these:
#1: Teleport to target with sword.
#2: Start channeling the stomp.
#3: Teleport back with return skill.
#4: Wait for channel to reach the end.
#5: Shadowstep to target with shadowstep/steal/infiltrator
Sword+Steal being a cheap and viable solution.

I agree, however, that it does not warrant this kind of silly nerf..

Still takes a utility slot or 30 sec F1 ability to get the job done. =/

Deathspike.1870:

You missed these:
#1: Teleport to target with sword.
#2: Start channeling the stomp.
#3: Teleport back with return skill.
#4: Wait for channel to reach the end.
#5: Shadowstep to target with shadowstep/steal/infiltrator
Sword+Steal being a cheap and viable solution.

I agree, however, that it does not warrant this kind of silly nerf..

Yeah, I wanted to go on, but I was approaching the character limit and just said “avoiding redundancy” to cover at least using shadowstep as well. In this case, you’re blowing a utility or your steal to finish a stomp, so it’s not the most easily abused thing.

You deliver it hard, you deliver it thoroughly, and you deliver it justly. There is no refuting any of the points you made – as they are very sound. I hope like hell someone pays attention to this response of yours – as the methodology applied to it is something I’ve seen as a problem for all the classes across the board. It is as if there is a disparity of hope, belief, creativity and ingenuity that the team who created the game had, vs. the team I see running it now.

Doggie.3184:

Don’t worry, they’ll nerf the utility Shadowstep too, eventually. :<

You bet your sweet butt they will. OMG MY REPLY IS GOING TO GET ME AN INFRACTION AGIAN! OH MY!

LoreChief.8391:

I hope like hell someone pays attention to this response of yours – as the methodology applied to it is something I’ve seen as a problem for all the classes across the board.

This is exactly why I had to make this post. I’m glad there are players who can see this for what it is, and may we both make it through the next patch.

Tell me about nerfs to my mesmer which unplayble since Necros up.

Shensi.8563:

Tell me about nerfs to my mesmer which unplayble since Necros up.

Well, I recommend checking out shatter mesmer, phantasm mesmer, or (if you’re feeling particularly cheesy) tank condi mesmer builds to help out.

Archituethis.2560:

This balance preview presages the reduction in viability of many current thief builds and will most likely result in even fewer viable builds for thief in wvw and spvp.

I feel like Anet nerfs the OP builds and expects “fair” builds to pop up. That’s not how it works in this case. We have no other viable builds.

As someone who has played sword a fair amount, when I saw JP say that you could telestomp someone with inf strike/return I had to do a double take. With roughly 1400 hours on my thief had I been missing this the whole time? So then I thought about it for less than a minute and realized it wasn’t even possible.

I’m going to have to agree with rav here and say that I also am convinced that no one on the balance team actually plays a thief.

Maesk.8753:

As someone who has played sword a fair amount, when I saw JP say that you could telestomp someone with inf strike/return I had to do a double take. With roughly 1400 hours on my thief had I been missing this the whole time? So then I thought about it for less than a minute and realized it wasn’t even possible.

I’m going to have to agree with rav here and say that I also am convinced that no one on the balance team actually plays a thief.

I’ve never even considered spending 5 initiative AND steal/Inf sig to secure a stomp – not when I can use shadowstep for the same purpose if I’m dead-set on blowing a utility to secure a stomp.

Oh no most elusive profession with is gonna flat out gonna get buffed in all respects just by a number tweak in resources cannot stun break via weapons, so sad.

Andele.1306:

Oh no most elusive profession with is gonna flat out gonna get buffed in all respects just by a number tweak in resources cannot stun break via weapons, so sad.

pls go

Nicely said. If this doesn’t open up the devs eyes I really don’t know what will.

Deathspike.1870:

You missed these:
#1: Teleport to target with sword.
#2: Start channeling the stomp.
#3: Teleport back with return skill.
#4: Wait for channel to reach the end.
#5: Shadowstep to target with shadowstep/steal/infiltrator
Sword+Steal being a cheap and viable solution.

I agree, however, that it does not warrant this kind of silly nerf..

Using Inf Strike while channeling stomp cancels it whereas Shadow Return doesn’t. As mentioned by OP, the only way to do it is to HOPE the thief tele’d under your shadow return or start stomp, signet away by targeting another enemy and cast shadow return in time. No one really does either of these as they’re inefficient, a waste of CD’s and initiative, and you’d also have to be very very lucky.

coldhardt.3572:

Using Inf Strike while channeling stomp…

I never said to do that. I suggest you read my post again. Carefully.

Ravoku.1852:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)
Jon

Infiltrator’s Return
First, point 2 is simply not true. I’m becoming more and more convinced that no one actually plays Thief on the balance team. It’s just that class where everyone on the team is like, “Well I’ve been playing my mesmer, been a few months since I’ve logged on my old thief…” plays their Thief for 10 minutes “Well that was nice, back to mesmer.”

Sir, the skill you are thinking of is the utility “Shadowstep”. It has a 50 second base cooldown with a stunbreak on the step and return, with the return removing 3 conditions (because they can’t just lay that right back on and twiddle their thumbs for a few more seconds, right?)
Here are the steps for the stomp you mentioned:
1. Start stomp
2. Shadowstep away (again, the utility skill)
3. Wait for stomp channel to almost finish
4. Shadow Return back just before channel finishes (did I say utility)

Now, its not impossible to do this using infiltrator’s strike, but you would need to:
1. Infiltrate into the downed player
2. Hope player is also a thief, and teleports where you came from
3. Do steps 3 and 4 from the Shadowstep method
OR (WHOA TWO METHODS)
1. Infiltrate on top of the downed player, so your return is at their location
2. Avoiding redundancy, use Infiltrator’s Signet on a faraway target
3. Do steps 3 and 4 from the Shadowstep method

Beyond this, being unable to return after incoming CC (which actually requires to have been set up beforehand, contrary to popular belief) will assure the thief’s death, especially if you have more than one stun. Why, we may die faster than Warrior before “You can make all the mistakes you want against power builds, honey” Signet.

Here’s the thing:
Thieves and Guardians both have very low health pools. Guardian has a plethora of defensive and healing abilities to both mitigate and recover from hits to counter this. Thief is supposed to be the opposite, using a plethora of mobility skills to counter this. Without being able to use mobility to avoid the damage, the thief will die much faster than any other class relying on a hard cooldown stun break because of this health pool

Push for Hard to Catch
Instead of saying this trait is garbage, like many have accurately stated already, I’m going to break it down for you using the G.A.R.B.A.G.E. system.

G.reat for getting yourself killed: it triggers with stability on, is not controlled by the player, AND does not actually remove that which it sets out to protect you from.

A.lready put all the reasonably useful points into that tree. Feline Grace is at 15, this would require 20

R.eally long cooldown compared to what it actually does, which previously could be managed by the player through smart use of initiative management and upkeep of setup requirement

B.oon isn’t that great because it’s only useful for travel out of combat in the context of having teleports and some leaps to close gaps, and stealth to escape

A.ssassin’s reward, which isn’t that great already, would easily beat out this skill in this tier even before the negligible buff. (yeah, lemme just grab some healing gear for my thief)

G.ood boon alternatives to support the thief mobility design, such as vigor, would be given a lower amount anyways in light of the recent vigor nerfs across the boar-OH WAIT, forgot about mesmer vigor.

E.veryone who actually plays the thief has always said how useless this trait has always been, yet here you are, acting like this is some amazing reworked trait when in fact nothing has changed about it functionally.

I end this section with two questions:
1. Did the guy who designed “Tow Line” (Thief spear #4) design this trait?
2. How many more weeks until “Tow Line” is finally renamed to “CC Yourself”?

Conclusion/Seriousness
Jon, after all I have said, I do need to add that most of what you said was very true and well thought out. Specifically, the change to Infusion of Shadow is easily one of the most fair and balanced changes to the thief. However, I can’t just stay silent when some of the points have revealed nothing but blatant neglect regarding balancing the thief to compete in a meta they already have virtually nothing they really do better than other classes. (Distortion stomp?)

TL;DR
Nothing new for people who actually play Thief.

He didn’t said they wanted to remove teleport stomp from the game, now it force thieves to use a break stun skill with cooldown to do it.

Ravoku.1852:

He didn’t said they wanted to remove teleport stomp from the game, now it force thieves to use a break stun skill with cooldown to do it.

Except you never could do a tp stomp with just infiltrators strike/infiltrators return, you always had to ether use steal, shadow step (the utility), or infiltrator’s signet.
So to sum it up they are nerfing inistrike/return cos you can use a utility skill to secure a stomp like any other class.

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Since “2” is false we just have 1 situation where this is a truly impactful change.

So no big deal.

I personally feel extremely let down by John Peter’s responses to our complaints. As a class dedicated to avoiding damage through mobility and evades, we have never had permanent up time on vigor. Two of the most survivable professions in the game, guardians and mesmers both continue to have permanent vigor.

The worst part of it all, John did not respond to our worries for sword and brushed off our initiative complaints as if they were baseless worries. His response about opportunist would only have made sense if none of the other initiative gaining traits had been touched.

As this class currently stands, the only thing I can do, is to beg for a complete rework.

Look at this.
1) Infiltrate to the downed enemy
2) Throw a Shadow Refuge onto point you infiltrated from
3) Start channeling stomp
4) Steal if off cd, use it on a necro nearby.
5) Oh, what this a engi throwing a stability pot to secure a stomp for himself? Shadowstep under it.
6) Apparently stealing that necro applied some conditions to us. Shadow return to get rid of them.
7) 1 second has passed, people probably got bored swinging at your shadow refuge. Infiltrate back into refuge.
8) Signet to the target at the end of channel.
9) launch a fear stolen from necro. They should all flee in terror of your mobility and overpowered stomp securing skills. Since they tried to ress the target, they all get the longest fear from steal.

I know this is the Thief portion of the discussion but in general this whole “balance” patch sounds like the classes that need help are not getting it.

Why are sword thieves the target of this “balance”? I see one sword thief for every couple dozen D/D D/P thieves which are the menace every cries about. It’s an awesome way to play the class but like the OP stated thieves are supposed to be the mobility to counter the guardians defense/healing.

Please focus on the fact thieves can stealth, put a decent distance between them and combat, and full heal. Rinse repeat. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be able to do these things, just that my S/D S/P builds don’t need to be nerfed when I’m clearly the underdog build.

I understand almost all the thief changes that are coming, I even understand this one. A little…. But seriously swording in, starting stomp, returning, infi signet or steal to finish is one of THE MOST rewarding things I have mastered on my thief. I have practiced this maneuver relentlessly and its hands down one of my favorite things to do on thief. I’m so disappointing that this change is killing something I have worked so kitten getting good at. Setting up the perfect situation to get this stomp is not easy, having the cooldown ready at the end of a kill does not happen often. It is NOT broken or stupidly powerful, its just effective. I really hope this one change doesn’t go through. I love this stomp and am gunna miss it a lot.

Also, yay now we have another cast time weapon skill to randomly get interrupted and perplexed. Wonderful. Now I have to never use sword return while healing to avoid an incoming stun/interrupt. Now I have to break a habit that has taken a lot of practice to get good at.

Just like how I took a 2 month break for 4 sec reveal ruining the flow of my favorite weapon set, this will ruin the flow of so many things a thief does. And for the love of D/D please bring 3 sec reveal back to sPvP. its one of the main things that hinders the weapon set from being a viable choice as apposed to D/P. D/P has a 4 sec flow, D/D has a 3 sec flow. 4 sec reveal=no flow=supremely difficult to use is sPvP. Especially when you play sPvP and WvW and PvE like me and have to get used to the flow in WvW and then go to sPvP and get IMMUNE CnD’s over and over. Hate it so much. Nothing in this game makes me more angry than 4 sec reveal. The main reason I do not play sPvP as much as I would like to is 4 sec reveal.

Do any of you guys even play s/d? A good sword thief will almost always have the return on sword #2 available. If you down someone you’ll have that return available 80%+ of the time. Start the stomp, return, wait till the last second to avoid that daze/knockback and use your 24 second cooldown inf signet to secure it. This is extremely common and you can even do it through walls. So really it only costs 2 initiative and infiltrator signet (but since you’re traiting into signets giving +2 init it’s really only at the cost of a 24 sec cooldown).

If anyone cares to know my opinion, I’m betting the devs didn’t even realize they’d be eliminating this mechanic. They wanted to stop the return from working while stunned and they didn’t see this as an impact until people on these forums alerted them to it.

Hype.8032:

Do any of you guys even play s/d? A good sword thief will almost always have the return on sword #2 available. If you down someone you’ll have that return available 80%+ of the time. Start the stomp, return, wait till the last second to avoid that daze/knockback and use your 24 second cooldown inf signet to secure it. This is extremely common and you can even do it through walls. So really it only costs 2 initiative and infiltrator signet (but since you’re traiting into signets giving +2 init it’s really only at the cost of a 24 sec cooldown).

If anyone cares to know my opinion, I’m betting the devs didn’t even realize they’d be eliminating this mechanic. They wanted to stop the return from working while stunned and they didn’t see this as an impact until people on these forums alerted them to it.

A full use of infiltrator’s return will end up costing 5 initiative. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve waited, you still HAD to use another 3 initiative at some point 15 seconds prior to using the return. If you’re using it for a stomp, I imagine you’d have burned the 3 initiative a lot sooner than 15 seconds ago. I also don’t think it’s entirely fair to use a very specific major trait to defend burning a utility to get off a single stomp. I know I don’t use that trait.

If you have to burn a utility to secure a stomp, you’ve earned it

Best part is, ours isn’t even fool-proof (you can still CC use provided an ally hasn’t given stability). Mesmers have distortion stomping, during which they evade everything. Other classes, such as ele or guardian, can be seen using stability to secure a stomp. Thieves don’t have as much access to stability as others, and therefore need to be trickier about how they secure stomps. I don’t understand why the thief is suddenly the bad guy for trying to secure a stomp when others have their own methods.

You must have misunderstood me. Thief should definitely be able to stomp with this technique and it’s not fair that it’s being removed.

Hype.8032:

You must have misunderstood me. Thief should definitely be able to stomp with this technique and it’s not fair that it’s being removed.

Ah, I was wondering if this was the case. Your first paragraph just kinda sounded like you were trying to downplay what the thief has to use in order to pull off a secure stomp. Oh well, I think my “counter argument” made some good points with regards to securing stomps as it stands up to the methods used by other professions

Ravoku.1852:

Hype.8032:

You must have misunderstood me. Thief should definitely be able to stomp with this technique and it’s not fair that it’s being removed.

Ah, I was wondering if this was the case. Your first paragraph just kinda sounded like you were trying to downplay what the thief has to use in order to pull off a secure stomp. Oh well, I think my “counter argument” made some good points with regards to securing stomps as it stands up to the methods used by other professions

No worries I was just trying to get across that it is both common and not unjustifiably utility exhaustive to stomp in this manner. People were acting like it’s impossible or that no one ever does it.