Guild Wars 2

Reikou.7068:

After being really skeptical about the patch for Thieves, I must say at the end of the day I think thieves got a buff, specifically the D/P Glass 10/30/0/0/30, or old 25/30/0/0/15.

While we got the short end of the stick for additions, (the venom heal is terrible) the initiative regen increase is HUGE and really improve the combat viability of thieves in general.

Permastealth is still maintainable, albeit slightly more difficult.
Sword Mainhand’s Infiltrator’s Return got nerfed, which was kind of necessary.
S/D Larcenous got nerfed… but in the completely wrong way.
S/P Pistol Whip got buffed and its pretty good now. Unfortunately it still suffers from the same issues that it did before: It blends you on Retal and Confusion. Assuming your opponent has neither, this is actually a pretty solid option atm.

While obviously there are some issues to deal with, I think at the end of the day this is a step in the right direction.

Wow! Now I can play one of two extremely similar builds!

I’ve already written about all of the arguments against IR and how wrong they are. Furthermore, LS was nerfed into oblivion ages ago, and there was no mention of it in the patch notes anyways. S/P is just a gimmicky build that melts pretty quickly as long as you don’t just stand in place.

Luckily for me, I’ve focused more on WvW and PvE these past few months.

On the other hand, it’s not like my thief with ~270 skill points is going to be using Skelk Venom any time soon… No reason for me to buy that trash.

Whenever I’m not sure, Ogre’s runes tend to be a very safe and very logical choice.

I was a heretic before I saw this post, but now I have become a true believer.

Niels.5396:

All 0.25 second skills in gw2 are half a second in reality. The same goes for headshot (pistol offhand 4). It should be an instant skill but in reality it takes about 0.25 seconds for the shot to start flying. Just like Unload (p/p 3 skill) is said to be 1.75 seconds but it is 2,25-2,5 seconds in reality. Everything takes more time.

This is a core issue that has been around since the start of the game. I am sure they know this already but they are failing to patch it for some reason :\

Yeah, I know, but the change is 4x more than those .25 seconds. Also, it’s put in the skill queue, which wasn’t mentioned in the patch notes. :/

Disappointing, really.

Oh god.

Why. Just why.

Being the resident mathematician geek here, I guess I kinda have to read this. For future reference, though, you’d probably be best off recording your results at the very top in bold or whatnot, or making things less long-winded, or organizing your math better.

And now for the arduous task of reading this whole thing.

Elxdark.9702:

Bredgen.6721:

Elxdark.9702:

No, sorry but you’re just bad.

It is almost instant lol, but now you need to use it carefully and not spamming it like a kid.

I recommend you to watch this stream :
http://www.twitch.tv/sizer2654

He’s the best EU teef and probably the best in the class.

It is not almost instant. The main nerf from it comes from the fact that you can’t cast it and straight away enter the animation to cast shadow return. Now it’s like any other skill where it queue’s up.

For example, if you just started your auto attack skill but need to shadow return, your thief will finish his auto attack then start casting shadow return. This is like 1 second delay at least.

I don’t see why it needed a nerf in the first place. Maybe it gave thieves a bit of movement play and gave them access to getting away from sticky situations even through they are stunned. Unfortunately, thieves paid for that with the lack of access to stability. Now, we can only get out of 3 stuns, assuming you have all 3 of our stun breakers on your bar, which isn’t usually the case, and they are on long CDs.

I’m a teef and in my opinion the skill itself was too OP.

Before any nerf, it gave you a condi removal, stunbreaker, immbo,damage,infinite return range and gap closer, lol it was the most OP thing in the kittening game seriously.

Now this skill is finally FINE.

come on before the last patch it gave you the right to spam stunbreaks.

Condi removal- pretty much the only condi removal this weaponset has, or any build using it has

Stunbreaker- not really. Usually it wasn’t far enough away to count as a stun breaker, and even if it was, you’d usually have to spend 5 initiative total to get back into the battle. The point of stuns, however, is to lock down the opponent, keeping him/her from doing anything. This has a variety of uses, but the one that has been most (ab?)used by ANet and, in particular, Warriors, is using stuns to keep an opponent from reacting to a high-damage attack, or high-damage attacks. Since basically every warrior skill is high-damage (well, many, many of them are), this has tended towards being the strategy for most warrs. The process simply becomes

1. Stun
2. Burst
3. Clean (ie use utilities, cleansing ire, etc)
4. Repeat

Which, unlike similar patterns in the game, deals far more damage overall and/or allows the player using the pattern to absorb massive amounts of damage at the same time.

However, the necessary idea is that, in order for this cycle to work, one must be able to use his or her melee attacks while the opponent is stunned (melee tends to do the most damage). By being able to use infi return, we were able to break this cycle, which did not in fact “completely destroy the warrior” or anything they’ll tell you, but rather countered that particular method of play, forcing warriors to find a different and less comfortable way to play their builds.

On the other hand, look at Lockdown mesmers. Their goal is not necessarily to burst you into the ground while attacking you, but rather to negate some of your damage by keeping you unable to react. Against these, Infi Return was near useless, except in situations where the shadowstep would take you farther away than the 1200 range on a mes’ weapons would allow, but even then, that was a fairly minor nuance.

As such, I would not, in fact, call infi return a stunbreaker, but rather a counter to a particular, cyclical pattern that must be itself countered by a different method of play.

Immobilize: yeah, for only one second, with a small damage coefficient, and while costing 5 initiative to do with any degree of repetition… Anyhow, this is completely unrelated to the nerf to Infi Return.

Infinite Range: in retrospect, possibly a good change (I personally dislike it because it made the skill, and the game, far less interesting; I’d much rather see other classes get more mobility/immobilizing abilities [not just the immob condition] or otherwise generally interesting skills, but that’s just me), but this was nerfed months and months ago, so I have no idea why you’re bringing it up now.

Gap Closer: yes, one with 600 range… And it’s not like Infi Strike is the only skill with gap-closing abilities. Anyhow, this is again related to Infi Strike, not Infi Return…

So, really, there is no good argument for nerfing Infi Return; they all either are irrelevant to the skill anyways or are misgiven to various misconceptions about the skill and the game itself.

The thief sword skill (#2, follows Infi Strike) was patched and said to have a .25 second cast, but its cast is more like a second or so long. Please look into this.

~Arganthium

… It’s more like a 1 second cast.

That might not sound to bad to some of you non-thieves out there, but given as the skill is one of the sword’s condition removals, and as it is a vital skill to our mobility, this is a MASSSSSSIVE nerf.

Please look into this ANet, and please fix it.

Writetyper.1985:

THIS THREAD. THIS THREAD RIGHT HERE.

Please take note, anet. I am so sick of walking about on my engineer, seeing a necromancer, and thinking “Welp, that fight’s not going to be won, call for help and play to delay” and on the flipside seeing an ele or thief and thinking “Well, this shouldn’t take long, probably won’t even have to blow any cooldowns”. It’s not a good fight.

Skill>Counters, please.

Thief does not hard counter necro.

Stealthasaur.2198:

You dont know much about the thief obviously^ D/p is extremely strong after this buff. Like I said, its only a nerf for the low class shadow arts d/p thieves.

Thief is my main prof, go check out the thief forum…

If you know how to flip the TP, then you could’ve made money while playing sPvP. Still makes very little though.

Stealthasaur.2198:

Cant wait for this thief buff. <—No sarcasm. 10/30/0/0/30 is going to be even stronger now.

30 trickery has been rendered completely irrelevant to thief, and the 1 second daze for on steal tends not to be enough to justify going fully into that tree.

Stealthasaur.2198:

I cant understand why people think thieves are so bad….my thief is getting buffed, so is many of the top thieves builds. The only thieves getting nerfed are shadow arts and sword/dagger. Im looking forward to this thief buff.

The problem is that those are the only two other types of thieves outside of D/D and D/P, for the most part, and D/P is becoming irrelevant now because of the extra 3 init for stealth and the fact that you can’t stay in stealth for long periods of time with D/P any more. Thus D/D is the only “real” build left, and anybody who knows anything about thief knows about the disadvantages of playing a D/D thief.

tichorum.2415:

Looooooooooooooooooooooool

T3 thief and ele? Oh dear. You are misinformed. D/P thief is BUFFED. Ele is not T3.

First of all, even if thief is overall buffed, it has literally only two usable specs: one D/P build and virtually the same build but with D/D. However, there are other things you have to consider. For example, the change to Infusion of Shadow severely weakens what was anyways one of the few reasons to get D/P over D/D, and given that many other initiative traits were nerfed, the reason to take D/P over D/D has practically been nullified, so, in all honesty, D/D is virtually the only usable spec.

I’m not even going to mention ele to you; if you don’t think it’s T3, you’re just wrong, and that’s all there is to it.

jmatb.6307:

S/D was a joke b/c it could reset the fight with no consequence. Now they can be interrupted and S/D players will have to adapt to that. This will not break the build

You’re right, it’s already been broken. Try one out for yourself.

Eurantien.4632:

Spaced Invader.1823:

Noctis.4753:

Since thief is going to be the worst class in pvp now

“Going to”?
I challenge you to name a single class that’s worse than thief already.

Mesmer and Elementalist. That’s two.

Mesmer certainly isn’t worse than thief. Elementalist, however, is, quite obviously, although whether or not it will surpass thief in terms of strength after the next patch is still unclear.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Arganthium.5638:

[…]then your ideas[…]

You seem to keep avoiding the underlying answer to this: These are not my ideas, and quite frankly, no offense, I place more stalk with people like Caith than you. Quite frankly, it’s more than Caith and Helseth who have commented on the ridiculousness of S/D thief. All of the top players have different ways they’d like to solve the issue (I’m partial for jumper’s idea of actually making the whole skillset usable instead of just two buttons), but there is a rather wide consensus that S/D thief is pretty ridiculous as it is now and falls in the same league as any other noob-friendly build.

All I’m going to suggest is that you play either my S/D build or Jumper’s S/D build and see how “noob-friendly” the build is while still, y’know, managing to grab kills and score points.

Burnfall.9573:

who can live without a brain?

Indeed.

Dee Jay.2460:

Arganthium.5638:

Dee Jay.2460:

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

his math was…..flawed.

If the math is flawed, then by all means redo it and post your calculations. I’d be very interested to see them.

The math may be correct, but it doesn’t relate to game-play.

Most theorycrafting assume some sort of tank and spank scenario because real game-play has too many variables. But guess what, more so than in any other MMO you are constantly moving and dodging in GW2.

Especially in PvP which seems to be the biggest concern for most. And that’s where we will end up with equal or more Initiative to blow. And for every Dodge we lose because of the Vigor nerf we gain an extra Lancerous Strike.

So it’s really not as a cut & dry as people are making it out to be.

So you’re one of those people.

My first request would be for you to identify one of the “too many variables” that you identified, and then justify how theorycrafting cannot practically identify its effects.

Quite simple.

Someone calculates that we have less effective Initative now, due to the “Initiative on Crit” nerf. This is assuming we are standing still and constantly attacking a target.

Thus they conclude this is a nerf.

In practice however a S/D Thief for example might only have 50% DPS time on a target, maybe even less. The rest of the time is spent dodging, shadowstepping and stealthing.

Even in PvE I never sit and hit for longer than a few seconds at a time. So the theorycrafting doesn’t really apply. It’s not that it’s wrong, it just makes too broad assumptions.

I’m convinced we will have a much more comfortable Initiative cushion, especially in sPvP, than prior. In PvE it will be slightly less noticeable and probably feel more or less the same.

I don’t think we will actually find ourselves with less Initiative, exception being D/P.

Except that’s not how initiative (at least, from Opportunist) is/should be calculated; it should be calculated by the average number of hits per second, which would give a better idea of how many initiative per second you’re going to get from Opportunist in the long run.

I’m not going to stand on any particular side of the more initiative/less initiative debate, as the question in and of itself ought to be based in the context of individual builds than in the context of the profession in its entirety. What I will say, however, is that some builds, such as my own, are indeed going to be taking an initiative nerf overall, and that the Opportunist change is going to be a fairly significant nerf to initiative as well (can’t do the math quite precisely ATM, but I can tell from past experiences that it will be). In any case, don’t be too hasty to assume about a subject for which you seem to have so little knowledge.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Arganthium.5638:

You’re completely delusional.

Apparently Caith is completely delusional too.

Arganthium.5638:

[…]spam marks slightly more carefully.

Lol

Qaelyn,

Then play one of the myriad of broken builds out there and have fun for about 2 weeks. You’ll get bored of it eventually, we all have.

Helseth is a coward who hides behind his large audience for confirmation of his own dogmatic beliefs, and I truly feel for you if you’re one of his fanboys. Also, that video was four months ago, and if you or Helseth continues to believe that S/D is still spam (and it really never was anyways), then your ideas are seriously outdated and you should probably just stop talking.

roughryder.6071:

aLovedhater.4096:

i guess.. just thought little initiative gain that we didn’t need so badly though

33% increase initiative regen is huge in my opinion. plus if you run practiced tolerance you get an additional 2% increase to your vitality. Win win for the D/D thief.

Loss for every other type of thief, and for build diversity.

S/D is so easy and has so many evades that I died every 10 seconds with it in combat today.

Here’s what I think about the new heal skill.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Arganthium.5638:

S/D is in no way meta.

Lol, sure

S/D has single-handedly removed two professions from commonly being played in upper-level play.

No, it really hasn’t. Ele is bad for many, many other reasons beyond being “countered” by S/D (which hasn’t really countered anything since it got nerfed to only one boonsteal), and necro is still completely useable and is, in fact, one of our worst matchups. You’re completely delusional. There’s nothing for S/D to counter as far as necros go, except for making them have to spam marks slightly more carefully. Other than that, conditions completely eat S/D. There’s a reason why it’s rare to see a “true” S/D build nowadays

Slim.3024:

Arganthium.5638:

I’d say that that’s only partially true. IMO mesmer has very good matchups against warriors only because a lot of warriors are really bad at the game.

I was under the impression you were a numbers guy. Assuming Warriors are somehow worse players in general is nonsense.

Mesmers have the upper hand against Warriors, unless they insist on using staff and greatsword, which are two range weapons, and try to fight them on a node in close combat.

And even then, you can often win by pressuring them to follow you and often succeed in keeping the node contested as well. A Warrior who chooses to stay on the node is going to die without a chance to the off node pressure a Mesmer produces through phantasms and ranged damage. And that’s with a shatter centric build.

I am. I assume what I assume because warriors are arguable the most beginner friendly (and similar to classes in other MMO’s), so it would make sense that many warriors are bad for that particular reason.

EDIT: that’s not to say that warr somehow makes you bad, or that all warrs are bad. Obviously, neither of those statements are true.

Slim.3024:

Arganthium.5638:

So, y’all know how these work just remember to consider how different profs will be after the Dec 10th patch

Tier 1- meta or OP
Tier 2- average or near meta
Tier 3- below average or practically unusable

Also remember to order classes by number, i.e. 1. Mesmer is stronger than 2. Warrior

For example, here’s my list:

Tier 1:
1. Mesmer
2. Warrior
3. Necromancer

Tier 2:
4. Engineer
5. Guardian
6. Ranger

Tier 3:
7. Elementalist
8. Thief

And… Go.

I find this list very interesting, since the first tier is comprised of classes that basically counter each other. Mesmer counters Warrior, Warrior counters Necro and Necro counters Mesmer.

I’d say that that’s only partially true. IMO mesmer has very good matchups against warriors only because a lot of warriors are really bad at the game. Heck, if you look at my sig, I include something from the warrior forums- one warrior told me that he valued having one clone over a 7% (heavy armor over medium armor) damage reduction.

ronpierce.2760:

I think Necro with the spvp condi nerfs will be in Tier 2, and they’ll still get wrecked by CC. So…

Hmm.

I’ll have to check that out in the patch notes.

QR is also getting a nerf.

So, y’all know how these work just remember to consider how different profs will be after the Dec 10th patch

Tier 1- meta or OP
Tier 2- average or near meta
Tier 3- below average or practically unusable

Also remember to order classes by number, i.e. 1. Mesmer is stronger than 2. Warrior

For example, here’s my list:

Tier 1:
1. Mesmer
2. Warrior
3. Necromancer

Tier 2:
4. Engineer
5. Guardian
6. Ranger

Tier 3:
7. Elementalist
8. Thief

And… Go.

ahuba.6430:

Arganthium.5638:

Chicago Jack.5647:

…noob friendly…

…S/D teef does not need to worry about positioning because it’s virtually impossible to get them to peel.

I see that you’ve never played S/D before, or, at least, played one recently.

what? he isn’t wrong lol even if not as easy as many other cheesy builds, s/d still is pretty easy and positioning doesn’t matter much. It’s probably the most skillful meta build atm, and that should tell you how ridiculous the meta is right now rofl

I played my old S/D build in sPvP today and I got absolutely crushed. S/D is in no way meta.

And if you so that “positioning doesn’t matter much”, then you probably should’ve played it on the high end of tPvP back when it was good.

Darnis.4056:

you’ll set back balance into the Stone age.

Now now, don’t get your hopes too high up for a balance improvement.

Zero Day.2594:

Dee Jay.2460:

Last Refuge NEEDS to be changed. ANet knows this and has for the past entire year. But they’d rather mess around with active and passive Initiative than fix a trait that is broken and results in the Thief’s death more often than not.

…

Working as intended.

Chicago Jack.5647:

…noob friendly…

…S/D teef does not need to worry about positioning because it’s virtually impossible to get them to peel.

I see that you’ve never played S/D before, or, at least, played one recently.

Dee Jay.2460:

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

his math was…..flawed.

If the math is flawed, then by all means redo it and post your calculations. I’d be very interested to see them.

The math may be correct, but it doesn’t relate to game-play.

Most theorycrafting assume some sort of tank and spank scenario because real game-play has too many variables. But guess what, more so than in any other MMO you are constantly moving and dodging in GW2.

Especially in PvP which seems to be the biggest concern for most. And that’s where we will end up with equal or more Initiative to blow. And for every Dodge we lose because of the Vigor nerf we gain an extra Lancerous Strike.

So it’s really not as a cut & dry as people are making it out to be.

So you’re one of those people.

My first request would be for you to identify one of the “too many variables” that you identified, and then justify how theorycrafting cannot practically identify its effects.

Hmm. I played one today, and while it wasn’t so much faceroll cheese like warrior was (didn’t heal for nearly as much per second), it did manage to do lots of damage while taking a fair beating.

I wouldn’t call it OP, since I think that, atm, necro and warr are definitely OP and mesmer is close to being up there. As time progresses, though, that might change.

So I dunno.

There are two types of players: people who think that the new thief heal is good, and people who have tried thief venoms before.

I did better playing a warrior the other day where I only knew what about half of the buttons I was pressing did than I did today on my thief that I’ve build crafted and played with since the game was released.

I didn’t even know what build I was using for warr.

JonPeters.5630:

The reason we went with heal skills first is that we actually believe this is the highest impact area for build diversity.

So we’re adding more passive heals for build diversity?

Does that mean that we’re going to need to counter passive effects actively again?

What: Black Powder
Why: it’s perma blind cuz I don’t wanna step out of the field with my warrior, and thieves keep putting down another field like every other second.

Sons.5493:

Arganthium.5638:

To be honest, if you’re playing S/D and you think that it’s difficult for you to condi cleanse, then you’re just playing sword wrong and you’re probably little more than a bad player. Evasion and Shadow Return are practically the only two tools that I use to condi cleanse/counter (in WvW, mind you, since I have so little money; in sPvP I also use Lyssa Runes), and I do it with ruthless efficiency.

Well, it’s not that i’m the best but i ain’t the worst (Rank 232 in EU), but that’s not the point. Shadow Return is not Efective in terms of combat to be used as condition removal, by the simpel fact a dhuumfire necro will just apply 4-6 conditions in les that 6 seconds and after if u ever manage to remove them he’ll just reapply them but that also may be (as a lot of people stated) the current condi meta.

Anyway, seems like instead of buffing the thief cond removal (or in game cond removal in general for all classes that lacks it) we just have to wait for cond nerf?

Well, whether or not thief condi removal is good, condi nerf still needs to happen anyways. It’s insane what’s happening right now with necro condis, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a necro use marks strategically.

Why do I even argue mathematics with you people, when you’re the only ones that don’t believe that vitality is good against condi damage, when 400 health per second is “nothing”… Ah well.

wat

I don’t even play stealth, much less any D/X build.

#BurnfallSayings

Can you please put the thief heal into the “bad” column? It’s good in that it doesn’t break the game (unlike warr’s Healing Signet), but at the same time, almost nobody uses venoms, they’re so bad.

EDIT: I do agree with all of the things mentioned about how bad the new heals labeled “bad” are, though.

Pick your poison- condis (hope not, for your own sake given the pathetic state of the thief), S/D, S/P, or stealth?

To be honest, if you’re playing S/D and you think that it’s difficult for you to condi cleanse, then you’re just playing sword wrong and you’re probably little more than a bad player. Evasion and Shadow Return are practically the only two tools that I use to condi cleanse/counter (in WvW, mind you, since I have so little money; in sPvP I also use Lyssa Runes), and I do it with ruthless efficiency.

That being said, I do agree that Signet of Spite is quite possibly the most OP utility in the game; if a necro lands it on you, you’re probably dead (unless you have a really good escape card), and that’s all there is to it. There’s no way to consciously counter it, and the amount of conditions and the debilitation is so large that it becomes almost impossible to do anything but just stand in place and die. However, if I have it off CD, then I’ll instantly burn my Shadowstep for the condi removal. Doesn’t always save me though; still have 3 condis left on me.

EDIT: I will say, though, that many weaponsets and builds are inviable because of condition removal. Truth is, our utilities aren’t very good for removing condis (unless in extreme situations, like the Signet of Spite one aforementioned), so we have to either rely on traits or weapon abilities to remove conditions. Needless to say, this is very, very bad for people who either want to play a certain way or people who want to play a certain weaponset.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

^
Nothing but psychological.

I know, but that’s Lighter’s/the warrior’s argument. stealth is better than invincibility, and somehow you can deal damage while staying in stealth but you can’t deal damage when you’re invincible.

There’s also the clone argument where 1 clone is equivalent to more than 7% damage reduction.

Kagamiku.9731:

I’ll take having one extra clone with me at all times to confuse the opponent over 7%health reduction any day of the week. Mesmers can have three up at all times.

Silveirex.1893:

Arganthium.5638:

All I really need to say is that “perma stealth” is getting nerfed again this patch, and “blind spam” only happens when you stand inside a Black Powder field…

and warriors have soooooo much stamina that they can dodge all of them or run away crippled!

Omg you have to run out of a circle with radius of 180 that costs half/40% of a thief’s initiative and then you have to deal with the thief’s extremely limited ability to cripple foes? I pity you so much.

Warlord.9074:

The community accepted way of dealing with conditions is using cleanses. That goes for every profession.

Your argument is that A(condition damage) effects C (Vitality) so having large amounts of C lessens the effect of A becasue C is the only couter to A. And C is the only stat effected by A.

You argument is illogical. Because you left out B(condition damage) and D(condition cleansing from your argument. And you did not prove that C is the only stat effected by condition damage. When clearly B effects the damage A does and D nullifys the effects of A.

Please review your statements.

So you’re telling me that A and B are the same thing? This is hardly even an argument. But let’s put it this way:

Player 1 is playing Player 2. Player 1 is a warrior, and Player 2 is a necro with infinite health (for the purpose of discussing how to reduce condi damage). Let’s say that the necro deals 100 DPS in conditions. What is the only stat that can be used to decrease condi damage? Toughness doesn’t (that’s just a fact; if you really don’t believe it, then look it up on the wiki), and all of your other stats are irrelevant to damage dealt to you anyways, excluding Vitality. So let’s say that you have 1000 health as your base. At the rate that the necro is damaging you, you will die in 10 seconds (provided you don’t heal). However, if you up your health by 100 points of vitality (1000 points of health), then it will take you twenty seconds to die. Because 20 > 10, vitality stalls death, and that’s the entire point of taking damage reduction in the first place: to slow down your rate of death.

Also, why does D, condition cleansing, need to be a part of his argument? The argument is that vitality reduces condition damage indirectly, as I showed above. So what if you condi cleanse for, say, what would otherwise be 3 seconds? You would still die in 13/23 seconds. You’re just trying to mix variables up everywhere and hoping that the net result will be that you think that your argument is “logical”. You know what ceteris paribus is? It’s the scientific assumption used in all experiments that you will be holding all variables constant apart from the independent and dependent variables. Holding everything constant, then, as shown above, an increase in vitality decreases rate of death and thereby indirectly decreases condition damage.