“Hands up, Don’t Nerf.”
“Thief Lives Matter.”
Thief is hated on principle and name alone.
Nice social experiment Anet performed to prove it.
I think you are 100% on to something here.
Imagine a world in which Mesmers received more denial and CC akin to their GW1 cousins instead of stealth. Acrobatics stayed the same pre-feline grace nerf but with additional condi cleanse and a little GM rework that we asked for and should have gotten. And the elite spec was Assassin which dealt with completely overhauled and thus better venoms &/or traps.
That would be one heck of a fun, balanced profession and game. Anet would even have their precious E-sports slice of pie too I’d wager.
But nope. We are stuck with sub par content and awful design decisions one after another. You kitten off the intelligent portion of your community, you know, the ones that aren’t 10 years old or refuse to use critical thought and would rather mash buttons to steam role the game to distract them from their skritt life. Top that with putting people in charge that have no idea what they are doing with the added bonus of removing things so they can re-add them later on and charge money for it, and you have a broken, unbalanced Guild Wars 2 populated by sheeple that buy pet rocks.
You can kowtow all day to your precious casual market. But someday you’re going to hit a brick wall and realize you’re catering to the lowest common denominator and all your innovative, radical, boundary pushing ideas need to be dumbed down and watered down to appeal to your precious casuals. At that point you might as well switch over to making lame app games for smartphones.
I can only shake my head at Anet so much before a neck injury happens.
(edited by Odyssey.2613)
Q: If Thief won’t cut it what will you roll?
A: The cursor over the uninstall button.
There’s better things to do with my time/life then waiting around hoping a company will stop screwing me over, and over, and over, and over, and over…
If they don’t give a crap, then why should I?
(edited by Odyssey.2613)
Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.-Karl
Dear Karl,
I’m going to try to be as blunt and polite as possible…
First: I accept your explanation, as it’s rational and based in logic. Thank you for taking the time to come here and explain. However, why wasn’t this said 3 months ago when ricochet disappeared and it was pertinent? Instead we were fed some bogus line about ’purity of pistols". This is a perfect example of why players complain about lack of ANet communication.
Secondly: I think you guys seriously missed the boat on the pistol traits. I have no ‘meta data’ to point to, but in my experience, no thief picked a RNG pistol cripple trait, ever. It was super weak and competed with way better traits. Especially when there is a weapon sigil available that does the same thing, but better.
Last but not least: From a generic game stand point, it would make a lot more sense to me if you provided a direct single target damage increase option, or a less direct damage but increased multiple-target role players could choose from (ala build diversity, something your game severely lacks). Prior to ricochet’s removal, we had this option.
For a game that toted “play as you want”, you guys sure love to delete, nerf, and limit things to the point of being a 1-trick pony. (D/P). Telling us our bullets can’t ricochet while at the same time being fine with guns that shoot poison and glue makes us pull our hair out. Do you understand why so many of us are frustrated now?
My idea is better:
1.) Find player QQing about thief.
2.) Find out their main’s profession.
3.) Get on said profession.
4.) Kill player QQing about thief with their own profession.
5.) ??
5.5) Sell harvested tears to drought stricken California.
6.) PROFIT
Fixed that for ‘ya. I’ll be waiting for my cut in the mail.
The community cried big salty tears over stealth for years. Thief got nerfed and hamstrung into the dirt. Then the devs gave Mesmers tons of additional stealth and are now BOSS. What did the community do? Cheered and stole mommy and daddies credit cards to buy pet rocks.
This leads me to believe the vast majority of the community are idiots.
(edited by Odyssey.2613)
So did they ever comment on Ricochet ever yet?
They did. “too much RNG and it took away from the purity of pistols.”
It making any lick of sense is another issue entirely.
Why would they ever want to comment with attitudes like this?
It must be all our faults because of our salty language and not because Anet doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing and the community caught wind of it.
rolls eyes
Zero-
That resume was fantastic. If you can manage to be slightly moar unimaginative and even lazier than Karl, I think the gig is yours fo’ sho’.
Another guild wars veteran has left the building….
And another two have returned to play. lol
Dream on.
I had one my posts flagged and removed and got awarded two “infraction points” .
SO THEY DO READ OUR STUFF. ALL OF IT.
Yup. Same! That’s partly why I’ve been banned 5 times. That and I’m past the being civil part. I’ve lost all patience and now am as blunt as I can be. Thief has been on a steady downhill path ever since launch. Never once has it leveled, or went uphill.
ohhh maaan
. So it is safe to assume they did read mine, but somehow still did not delete it. I loled a little for link you sent and the irony behind it.
another bad news.
BTW it’s not gonna be us this week: Straight in from TwitterI wonder if it will have access to reveal… I mean it’s a torch….
To be fair though, some warrior players were really disappointed. :/ I would be too.
Rest assured it will. And since it’s Warrior we’re talking about, all they’ll have to do is wave it back ’n forth real quick to cause it. Range: 25,000
Rumor has it thieves are getting the riding crop weapon and ball gag mask because evidently all the Justin Bieber haircut sporting emo adults @ Anet took the afternoon off and went to the early screening of 50 Shades of Gray.
That’s what I heard….
^ Vagabond would be a cool name for a melee staff thief, by the way.
Knowing the creative geniuses over @ Anet, they will undoubtedly name it something like the:
Staffholder (low high concept)
or
Dragonstalker (high concept)
or
Dragonstaffthumper (super high concept)
or
Dragonshadower (ultra high concept)
or
Purity of Pistols Defender (so high concept no mortal will being to understand this)
The reason for so many views with no official response is because like many of us have pointed out, there are severe flaws in the Dev teams logic and thinking. Anet’s left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.
So instead of contradicting themselves further in kitten, the Justin Bieber-hairdo-sporting-emo-adults will continue to do what they do, further ruining a once great game with their misguided sense of fun and lack of logic.
I’m sure an over zealous mod will come by and ban me a 6th time for saying the truth.
Or a contradictory white knight will come by and try to tell me how wrong my opinion is because… their “feels”. Oh well. Either way it’s bound to be more fun than the heap of a grindy, unbalanced mess GW2 has become. I’ve quit going on a month now with 0 regrets. Wish I would have done it 1.5 years sooner with the rest of my guild/friends list!
It’s nigh time we start holding the dev’s accountable, specifically by name.
By doing so it’s harder for them to hide behind generic terms like “team”, & “devs”.By the same token, I think it smells that players can hide behind their account names and attack the devs or cry about each other with no accountability.
Post player real names. And possibly email. Hold players accountable for their comments, too.
(Hint: WoW tried to do this, it didn’t really end well. Now project that back onto your idea again…)
Uh, if you ever made an E-purchase, they already have that information on us, and more.
What I said and what you suggested are two entirely different things, but I think you already know that.
Last I checked players weren’t making poor design decisions and then expecting dev’s to purchase that poor design.
Show some respect will you? cough cough swine
Lmao. Great way to talk to your guild mate.
Overall, the person who “re-designed” the trait line was completely drunk when he was working on it. cough cough the screw up who forgot the trait names during livestream. cough dipkitten….
Pot, meet kettle.
Anyways, getting off topic.
_________________________________________________________
Acro needs a total rework from the ground up, imo. It just isn’t salvageable in it’s current state. Hopefully, by someone new that isn’t currently on the unbalance team.
Devs nerfing everything on Mesmer except what needs to be nerfed. Predictable.
I got news for you-it isn’t exclusive to Mesmers only.
_______________________________________________________
It’s nigh time we start holding the dev’s accountable, specifically by name.
By doing so it’s harder for them to hide behind generic terms like “team”, & “devs”.
Show them we know who’s responsible for what and we are not happy with their sub-standard work and flawed approach!
We see what’s going on. They are arbitrarily making large, drastic changes instead of small, specific tweaks in order to give them something to work on, naming it balance changes & fixes, and calling it a day for 6 months.
The sheer amount of diversity and choices are just staggering! Thanks Colin Johanson!
/s
I think checkers has more build diversity. At least you can become ‘crowned’ when you reach the other side.
LOL@ all you feline grace/Acrobatics lovers.
Garbage trait in garbage tree is garbage.
If only ANet had some kind of forum they could use to communicate with us……
They do.
It’s called Reddit.
Franxi, it’s becoming fairly evident the balance team has no clue what they are doing.
Like I’ve said before, Thieves have had issues, but for the most part these flaws were well hidden from the unkeen observer. What the explatives did was basically rip away the veil masking those flaws, instead of fixing them.
Thieves needed more condition removal. What did they do?
Reduced condition removal.
Thieves needed more build diversity. What did they do?
Combined almost everything into 1-2 lines.
Thieves needed more weapon improvements. What did they do?
Pigeon-holed Thieves into even fewer options.
Thieves needed better team support. What did they do?
Gave venoms 1 additional charge.
Thieves needed better options outside of Shadow Arts/Stealth. What did they do?
Gutted the alternative line to Shadow Arts/Stealth.
Everyone cries about stealth and how Thief/stealth needs nerfs. What did they do?
Gave even more stealth-to Mesmers. And everyone rejoiced.
Buffing buffed things and nerfing nerfed things. This is becoming an Anet trend and it just boggles my mind.
What makes things so much worse is when questioned on things, the devs seem to panic or go into deer-in-headlights mode, giving incredibly vague, even sometimes down right condescending answers.
They have turned their game into a burst or bust. Any and all strategy or skill has gone out the window. Now whoever can close rank fastest and hit first wins. It’s appalling what they’ve done to their own game.
I’m convinced the driving force for creatively ensuring us the best possible Guild Wars is long gone. Meaning they don’t really care about the lore or legacy, they are more concerned with making money and less about what makes Guild Wars, Guild Wars. So they pump out these bad, and god do I mean bad, updates every 6 months that totally bork balance and put the game on it’s head. They create a false sense, an illusion, of new content, better balance, and more things to do. And GW2 players eat it up. Thus the song and dance continues.
I have had nothing nice to say about Anet for a long, long time now. I’m glad some of you are finally coming around and seeing things for what they actually are. This game had so much potential, but it is being driven down the toilet so fast it’s almost comical. At this point in time, I think Anet should just go for broke by bringing back Trahearne and reintroducing Kormir, then reveal they have a love child and this love child holds the key to defeating all the elder dragons.
I no longer enjoy playing this game. The fun just isn’t there. I only log in for daily crafting/APs and to talk to friends and that’s it. I gave up on Thief and refocused on my Necro. But now I’ve come to see the huge glaring issues Necro has. So I’m at the point of throwing my hands up because all my energy and efforts seems to feel wasted. I have a sneaking suspicion HoT is going to be a shiney polished deuce, with a little lore sprinkled on top. It might be the death knell. The saddest thing for me will be the young newcomers with no knowledge on how great things once were compared to the deuce they are playing.
(edited by Odyssey.2613)
Let's have 3 different borderlands instead
in WvW Desert Borderlands Stress Test
Posted by: Odyssey.2613
Don’t tell me that after 3 years they still can’t prevent hacking.
After 3 years they still can’t prevent hacking.
lol
TL:DR
Dear Anet,
Please nerf rock, paper is fine.
Sincerely yours,
Scissors.
I believe it’s been mentioned that the AI is getting a rework for HoT. Hopefully this is the case
Don’t hold your breath.
This explains why I spent the past 3 hours picking Revenant after Revenant up off the sandy ground in the Silverwastes.
Seriously, there should be an achievement for Revenant Revives. I’d be at tier 12!
So far, not impressed at all with the class. Looking back at the latest patch and the Necro/Thief debacle, can’t say I’m surprised by the Rev. Incompetent balance team is incompetent.
Welcome to Arena Net’s logic regarding Thieves.
Introducing kittened-Off-Odyssey’s List of Common Sense Fixes & Approaches For Thieves That Should Be A No-Brainer but Seem To Elude Even Arena Net’s Best & Brightest:
(yeah, I’m fed up with Anet)
- Assign someone with knowledge to balance Thieves. Send the Thief guy back to the Warrior cubicle & go find someone off the street.
- Shrink the Health Pool gap by giving Thieves more HP.
- Fix Disabling Shot’s (SB#3) laggy backwards evade animation. Make it smooth.
- Give back some of Shortbow’s bite.
- Give Thieves some form of better range.
- Reset Acrobatics & start over from scratch. You’ve messed up.
- Abandon the Vigor obsession. Bring back Feline Grace.
- Bring back Ricochet. Delete Ankle Shots if you must.
- Revert Shadow’s Embrace.
- Fix Shadow’s Rejuvenation.
- Fix Mug+Hidden Thief combo-interaction. Seriously, you re-introduce it every patch.
- Lower Cloaked In Shadow. It is no where worthy of a GM spot.
- Rethink ALL Critical Strikes’ Master traits. They are lack-luster.
- Increase Death Blossom’s evade time frame.
- Give Withdrawl’s promised 10% healing increase.
- Rethink Dagger Training.
- Rethink Potent Poison.
- Buff Trickster so Bountiful Theft has competition.
- Cut Roll For Initiative’s recharge & gain in HALF.
- Fix Scorpion Wire by giving it the same one the Thieves Guild assassin uses.
- Make all Thief traps circular like Ranger’s & buff their effects in the process.
- Quick Pockets needs to include &/or become a weapon swap reduction trait.
- It may be time to totally rethink the Steal mechanic. Melee range boon stealing or F3-F5 weapon bundle? I would rather be rewarded by defeating my opponent with strategy & wit rather than who can surprise who first in a 5 second battle.
- Definitely time to rethink Venoms. They are awful outside Venom Share.
- Change Shadow Protector’s Regeneration to Protection.
- Buff Vital Shot.
- Rethink Body Shot.
- Rethink Unload’s damage & utility. Perhaps drain all initiative & base increasing effectiveness on each initiative lost?
Looks like Ghotistyx drank the purity of pistols kool-aid…
As I’ve previously pointed out.
- It WASN’T too hard to balance. They basically never touched it.
- It WASN’T too much RNG. They have RNG everywhere in their game, especially Thieves.
- Purity of Pistols is a bullkitten condescending high concept answer for when they really don’t HAVE an answer.
Get it?
(edited by Odyssey.2613)
Aaaaand this is a text book example of the un balance team clearly NOT thinking things through, when it’s the most important aspect of their role. Chilling Darkness was a combination of too hard to balance, too much RNG, and took away from the purity of wells.
ArenaNet LLC.: Fixing hang nails – one severed hand at a time since August 28th, 2012.
The fix was a nice one. I still agree it has absolutely no need for an ICD though, if Necromancers want to be an idiot and double dodge just for bleeds then who cares.
I’m beginning to hold the opinion of Anet cares because the game seems to be designed more and more to hide from the player how truly bad they are.
The problem is, the dev responsible for Thief is also responsible for 1 or 2 other professions as well, and doesn’t really care much about the Thief. He even admitted on a Twitch presentation that he hadn’t touched the Thief or it’s skills for 2 weeks and couldn’t remember much about the new changes.
+1
By the six gods be kittened does it ever show.
The lack of an option to purchase vendor items in bulk is a decided pain. Perhaps Anet has avoided putting one in because they fear their target player base cannot count higher than one?
/sarcasm
Bulk and spam buying removed from game because it was too confusing for new players.
And also purity of pistols.
Jon_Peters:ricochet was a mix of too hard to balance, too much RNG, and reduced purity of pistols.
- You hardly ever tweaked it.
- Look around your game, you have RNG everywhere.
- Thieve’s pistol rounds cannot ricochet because that takes away from the purity of pistols.
Meanwhile Engineer’s can fire poison darts, lightning bolts, jets of flame, & glue.
I believe they said they done this so skills match what they say it does.
If a skill says it moves you 900 you go 900, swiftness made you overshoot this number with slows making it go less than stated.
I think this is why decided to go ahead and gut mobility.
Or they could have added tooltip descriptions to say it’s reduced or propelled by movement speed. : O I thought Anet love tweaking tooltips? :’ )
Basically what you’r saying is Anet changed the game around to match tooltips instead of editing tooltips to match the game?
This is ….. sad.
Not to mention extremely …weird.
I think you two should go head-to-head with your PPs and see who comes out on top!
Someone, I don’t remember who-but credit goes to them, mentioned cutting Roll For Initiative stats in half, giving Quick Pockets a weapon swap reduction, and Scorpion Wire act as a shadowstep. Those were pretty elegant yet simple solutions to some major problems.
Acro needs to be totally rebuilt from the ground up.
Ricochet needs to be merged or added back in somewhere. Their reasoning for removing it is complete BS and everyone can smell it.
Hello thieves! Take some time from instagibing me and talk about the new specializations! Either answer my questions directly or simply post about what you feel is important for the devs to know about the new changes.
Questions:
- A lot of thief builds got rolled into one (Panic Strike + Exe + Shadow Arts + Venom + Trickery Thief is possible!). How do you like the fact that thieves can do this?
- I’ve heard some people say they don’t like the critical strike line. Do you agree and why?
- I’ve also heard some people say that S/D is dead and that acrobatics sucks. I tried out a build with Don’t Stop and Hard To Catch and had trouble dying but still got some kills! How do you feel about S/D and Acrobatics? Have you tried the line?
- Thief got some new condi traits. Have you tried making a condi build and how did it go?
- Improvisation vs Executioner. Which wins for you?
- Dagger Storm and Thieves Guild got turned into a trick and a deception. Are you taking them now that they can be traited?
1. The combination of lines was well done, IMO. It feels like traits are in the line they belong, and weaker traits were rolled into more powerful ones to create traits actually worth taking…for the most part at least. There are some real stinkers, but that’s a separate discussion.
2. I -love- the CS line, but there’s some conditions to that statement. No quarter is basically perfect – it’s unique, it gives the thief incentive to stay in combat, and it’s powerful as a GM trait should be. The minors are good, and the adept line has some choices, but the master line is an absolute joke – nothing competes with Practiced tolerance, that should be fixed. I also feel like part of CS’s strength is how underpowered SA is.
When everyone saw SA, they lost their minds, but they didn’t take into account how miniscule the healing of Shadow Rejuv is considering the new damage capacity across the board, the opportunity cost of sitting in stealth, and how useless Shadow’s embrace is if it doesn’t cleanse a condition on entering stealth. CS is basically a default because it adds MUCH more damage than SA adds sustain – if the 2 were more even, CS would still be good, but less attractive.3. S/D is dead, there’s no doubt to that, even if your personal experience was positive. Acro is a joke in its current state. Ranger and Engineer get better dodge traits, which is strange considering those professions have actual access to protection and stability, blocks, immunity type skills, better condi cleanse, and better sustain across the board. The old S/D dodged like crazy, but because it needed to – no iteration of the thief class has ever had passive sustain or defenses. It’s always been active, and the current acro is basically worthless – 1 mistake means your death. Vigor uptime isn’t even viable without BT from trickery which locks you in two traitlines if you want to go S/D, and it doesn’t come anywhere close to pre-patch dodge capacity, and damage has gone through the roof! Less dodges for more damage doesn’t work.
4. I haven’t bothered with a condition spec. Burning is roughly triple the damage of any other condition, and thief has zero access to it. Their access to any condition that isn’t bleed is middling at best, and without consistent access to a variety of damaging conditions to beat all the cleanses flying around, it just doesn’t feel worth it. Pressure striking is in a weird place, since it looks like a great trait on paper, but has almost no practical use – what thief condi spec has access to interrupts? A condi spec wants bewildering ambush over SoH, and P/D is the only functioning condi spec thieves have (which means no interrupts from Sword MH or Pistol OH). The huge damage nerf to potent poisons was also disappointing – 10% increased damage and 33% increased duration doesn’t compete with improvisation in any spec or format.
5. Executioner, hands down. Improv isn’t a bad trait, it’s just that with damage the way it is currently, thieves don’t have the luxury of taking a trait that doesn’t either make them hit harder or 100% guarantees better survivability. If spec diversity ever opened up to allow a thief that wasn’t 100% focused on downing opponents, Improv might have a spot, but currently executioner is essentially a requirement for being effective.
6. No, BV always wins. Thieves only viable role is still that of the highly mobile roamer, and nothing DS or TG offers makes up for their CD’s in comparison to BV.
Thanks for posting this, I hope my input matters.
I am +1’ing this because they articulated it so well.
Thief is in dire straights and needs love urgent.
I’d be happy if they’d just stop nerfing my first and favorite profession.
- Not good. Less build diversity.
- Yes. The traits look lackluster.
- S/D isn’t dead, but it is on life support. Acro is dead on arrival. The only thing worthy in Acro was the dodge traits. Acro didn’t need nerfing, it needed better condi removal to better compete with SA. Acro sucks now.
- I logged in and ran around in WvW for a bit before being really depressed and logging out. The whole game is out of whack for the first time since beta. Didn’t really bother with trying a condi build.
- Depends on the situation.
- We took them before. Dstorm always played a large part in dealing with the LB pewpew noobs.
tl;dr
Bad, bad, bad update.
Non of my thief friends are pleased. Everything that didn’t need to happen, happened, and everything that should have happened, didn’t. I’m glad I rerolled to my Necro. Thief is in an abysmal state currently. Logging on my thief is just depressing.
Jon and Karl’s methodology appears to be avoid first hand experience, rely on second hand hearsay, buff already popular options, and nerf under performing options. But above all, quash fun when ever it is found.
This reminds me of Dragonhunter. It’s juvenile and not creative. They proceed to tell us it actually is creative because it’s a “high concept” and if only we understood high concepts. I explained to my friend the Dev’s explanation why ricochet was removed and he said: “Huh? What does purity of pistols even mean? Don’t they realize bullets can ricochet?”
Purity of Pistols. Another High Concept term for an answer when they don’t actually have an answer.
My suggestion for Acro: As some people said before, make feline grace restore 15 endurance on a successful evade. Increase endless stamina to a total of 100%. Maybe even give us a better condi removal option.
Anet, please listen and make the right decisions with thief.
SIGN!
And then we would be back to square 1. Except this time we won’t have good condi removal in SA to fall back on.
So we would be even worse off. Hard to imagine but it’s true. lol
Acros dead on arrival and needs a complete overhaul. Top to Bottom. 1 or 2 tweaks here and there isn’t going to cut it. Currently we dodge like Dr. Rick Marshall in Land of The Lost.
Dear Social Justice Warriors,
Please stop trying to turn this game into a big political message.
This game has enough problems without having to be further dragged down by political correctness.
Sincerely,
Everyone who just wants to play the game.
People who think they’re smart are already starting to play the ‘if you need more condi removal use the new tricks’ card. Take away good reliable condi cleansing for high recharge mediocre cleansing and be perplexed at the uproar. This will be the clueless casual’s new mantra, just watch.
I knew this would happen. Way back when I said we should be worried about SA when they take another balance swing at it with the nerf bat.
Between SA, Acro, & the ricochet purity of pistols high concept bullkitten, I’ve given up and re-mained Necro.
Anet employees need to seriously stop playing their main Warriors and make an “all Thief week” at the office before they let anyone play whack-a-mole and try to call it Thief balancing.
I’m usually not one of those types that likes to flaunt the I told you so, but
I told you so. =(
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/new-changes-to-thief/first#post5000884
My top right corner needs more event status labels. I have half an inch of unused space between events and minimap. This window of visibility needs to be filled ASAP.
Agreed. It’s no longer an option as far as I’m concerned. The very nature of dynamic events pretty much requires you to bring weapons that have reliable aoe damage in order to compete. P/P as single target?
I’m gonna go super cereal on you guys for a second here:
Not only that^ but also compounded by the fact that if you think about it, usually when one goes for dual pistols, it’s exactly because they have multiple targets.
They KNOW this fan base. Really. They know us.
Ughh. I just threw up in my mouth a little.
Really Otaky? Really?
Thousands of posts, hundreds of pages, double digit threads, spread across forums, facebook, twitter, & reddit, explaining in fine detail the grievances….
And yet, after all that, still doesn’t understand the “…crying about character slots at all.”
Not agreeing.
You don’t have to agree.
Agreeing and understanding are two different things.
But doesn’t understand at all….
at all
and still comments anyway.
This is what floors me. Not that who’s right or wrong, if you agree or disagree, but what I outlined above. But your blanket statement is rad too brother. Right on, right on.
January or February? JANUARY OR FEBRUARY?
Make up your mind!
Also: I like how quickly this careened off-topic and turned into e-kitten fashion war.