Guild Wars 2

Swagg.9236:

Swordskills
Sword/Dagger combo skill
[Flanking Strike] (3-1)

• Damage reduced from 252 (0.75) to 244 (0.75).

[Larcenous Strike] (3-2)

• Now has a 10-second cool-down.
• Now steals up to 2 boons.
• Damage reduced from 365 (1.5) to 314 (1.0)
• This chain skill always remains active for 3 seconds, even if it is not off cool-down.

… this as an example …..

If you rly want to tell us you were “balancing” the thief, you failed.
Cool-downs making Initiative useless …. and you also want to decrease dmg Output of nearly every skills, also decreasing escape Options but giving nothing real into surviability.
Where did you take your foundations of These “Balance” changes for the Thief, also for other classes?! I saw your open more threads for other classes, too.
For gods sake this will never come true.
Devs already said, We feel that the Thief is in a decent place right now

oh plz, we already have tons of flame threads about “OP” thief….
l2p means, you have to learn your enemy, too
at last, your sweety “mesmers”(or other classes) get nerfed by ANET and not by Thiefs ….. we also get nerfed by every patch …..

Thedenofsin.7340:

……
Now that two of the best Mesmer players, …. have quit playing Mesmer

the whole world exitstence Ends NOW
…
nope, sun is already coming up

PS: vain

I think any GC builds which not using stealth anyway.
I love the challenge playing against other classes and outplaying their builds by simply doding powerful attacks and kite them into my attacks.

NOOO,
if you want nerf dodge on s/d , then do a Change to flanking strikes , but leave Feline Grace alone because not every thief playing with stealth and dodging is the ONLY OPTION for us to avoid dmg!

where are the pistolwipe changes, you guys promised?!
Thief with only 12 INit. Need a better manage on their inititative bar, a promised separated pistolwipe would increase that.
DO we now have to wait several weeks for these Little class changes?

I feel warriors will also get permavade like thiefs if they can get every 5 secs +50% endurance refilled ….. I dont want that, because they already can have dodgeroll-crit-dmg over 1.5k …. horrible

by the way ….. WHERE ARE THE THIEFS CHANGES?
I want the promised pistolwipe changes and the "other good things, the thief will have " you talked about in the last livestream.

a doubtful idea,
well look from another view of your Point:
I Play with 12 INitattive s/p build (which alsready has high cost init. skills)
I wouldnt use it because of the Point of Managing INitiative wiseley and in high engage combat you could mistakenly activating that skill and wasting INit. on “low conditions” which will get instant punished by you Opponent.
I would prefer a Change on #2 sword but more into the direction of Transfer 1 condition to your Opponent ….. after all These nerfs. Maybe we get something good at the next Balance patch …. maybe … or not … or never.

very interesting notes,
but plz explain burning on autoattack, never seen this
also my respect for going separating stealth and give a favourable opinion to stealthless thiefs

Phantaram.4816:

No other class can do that much raw damage with that much mobility and still bunker points 3v1 for large periods of time.

Some things that could be looked at to balance it.

1. Too much damage (I feel like this one is never brought up but the amount of raw damage an S/D thief can do is insane, and none of it is on a cooldown. Their burst and consistent damage are all the same thing, they are constantly doing both.)
2. Too much dodging
3. Lyssa runes

Bring up whatever else you think could be looked at balance wise for an S/D thief.

if this post were from another Player , the community would also troll you
but its @Phantaram!!!!!!!!!
rly not meant bad but explain Situation more, you mean you+2of your teammates werent able to kill a thief which is only doing dodgerolls or is he doing only 33333333 with his s/d build or did he also using stealth ….?! Did you played your staff ele?!

I mean I go with the Attention of an evade on flankingstrikes is a bit to much to handle and if you dont have much hardCC or much dps , also the effect of using Lyssa on ….realy Evvvvery build which has acces to low cd elite
BUT nerving dodge mechanic on thief would also nerf stealthless builds which skill effort is very high and not high rewarded when playing against 3 Player.

hooma.9642:

Arkantos.7460:

Evade mechanic on thiefs is already balanced, as Long as there are not other utilies to avoid dmg,
the little amount of thiefs who use s/d 3333 to think to be “more effective” can be easily focused, because there are so many aftercasts that makes his “permavade” holey like a cheese

that kitten talk about aftercast gets old.. just a hint u can interrupt the aftercast.. go and watch seizer playing this noob build and evading 24/7 while doing enoug dmg.. or ask jumper to clarify about that.

i have nothing against evades.. but in my opinion 0.75 skillcoeefficient on a “spammable” evadeskill is just to much. either its a opener/util for larcenous strike or its a attackskill. both is just to much regarding no cooldown thx to iniative.

the same goes for pistolwhip. it doesnt need an evade.. either i have my target in front of me and stunned or not. pistolwhip is not for standing in the crowd to spam “safely” dmg skills.

and to clarify.. 0.75 is 0.05 less than the first 2 autoattack skills.. the gap is to close for that much survivability and utility.

seizer like this ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3o2fB_ADjc …..
Play wisely and you can Counter s/d build, shure not with every class or every build …

who cares butdd …. no Picture of finisher …..

Evade mechanic on thiefs is already balanced, as Long as there are not other utilies to avoid dmg,
the little amount of thiefs who use s/d 3333 to think to be “more effective” can be easily focused, because there are so many aftercasts that makes his “permavade” holey like a cheese

cant see it, link disabled?

@Cynz
scroll back , I already postet some modified Suggestion

explanations, excuses, no real suggestions, is there anything ppl can bring on to this thread, except real suggestions to fix the nearly mindless stealthspamming d/p set,
like a warrior defending his nearly OP HS …. nothing else

Cynz.9437:

…..lastly i am honestly not sure if you really do tpvp, i couldn’t find you name on any leaderboards….

i myself been hanging around rank 250-300 ……

this sentences sounds more like …." I have no more arguments to comment so I have to give an advice on my rank to get you know, my skill and knowledge is even higher then yours" ……

this is not the Topic of this thread
by the way, you over 380 now,
and also, leatherboard is nothing or do you want to tell us, that the higher rate you get, the more skill/knowledge you have ….

rly could say it again and again
are you rly that focused on such an expensive skill?

I mean, Splitting into 2 skills will give you more hit and run Options, it will also increase your Option to manage inititative bar when not having 15 init at all.
Also they said nothing about increasing aftercast times or else, but to get real they said something about increasing stun Duration on dec 10th patch notes.
It could also be very possible to simple double pushing 3,3 to gain same effect like the PW now.

I approve the Change.

they should add also some more utilies/elite skills as well and MASSSSSSIVE Balance changes ….
its very sad , pvpler getting such the run-around

also very dissapointed, they had a more then a month, after watching Twitch.tv it realy seems that there final changes at last came out today ….

whats the big time-Thing about changing HS of warriors from 100% to 92% effecients …. as already discussed

Anet will Change/nerf permastealth soon or later, thats a fact.
(just like the HS of warri, the 8% is just the beginning)

But I think, @Geiir had a good attempt idea to solve the Problem with the high rate which (mostly) wvw) thiefs using, to get stealthed again and again and also stacking stealth.

But be true to yourself first, you have 3 utilies, 1heal (HiS, SR, BP, ST) which can give you stealth anytime. And you can also use the d/p Combo or + shortwbow to get stealth again and you can also dodge.
Also for a high skilled Player it is simply very difficult to Counter the annoying part of your gameplay which simply contains of running into stealth when getting over 10% dmg again and again.
This is the same reason of annoying gameplay when playing against permavade thiefs before dec 10th patch …
And finally, they nerfed vigor,
instead of nerfing s/d #3 skill in the right direction.

Some less strong Version of @Geiirs Version:

- Black Powder still be as it is but darkness field instead of smoke field (no stealth here)
- you have the Option to stack stealth with Smoke Screen

otherwise, at the end, simply wait until anet could do some bigger nerfs on your stealth, which is not listened in Balance forums and this could hurt a lot more …..

^^ I hope devs reading here

better add vitality as dmg reducer like toughness to direct dmg

EverythingEnds.4261:

Dee Jay.2460:

I do honestly wonder what feedback they base these types of changes on.

Anet just baffles me to no end.

I think the way they implemented unlocks was more like this:

ANet Guy A: “Hey, why dont we make them to unlock Skills for PvP?”
ANet Guy B: “Sure”.

[ some times later]

ANet Guy B: “Hm, they dont seem to like it. Why did we implement this?”
ANet Guy A: “Dunno. Was just an idea I had.”
ANet Guy B: “Ok, kitten. Lets try to find an argument why we did this”
ANet Guy A: “How about: ‘We made it, so that new players arent overwhelmed with the skills’”
ANet Guy B: “Could work.”

~ The End ~

shortbow got its nerfs also like every other weaponset of the thief ,
if a thief were outplaying someone by only using shortbow, he must be very good or his enemies simply worse

Hammerguard.9834:

I don’t think Anet would want to give the strongest range dps in the game, stealth.

strongest range “dps” ….. did I missed here again?!

@Cynz: ah ok, that was your Point of interest
also assumed that you were playing thief , and also agreed to p/p as the last useful weaponset but thats the most reason why it Needs some love from devs, in both tricks and mobility or more relating on another dmg source …

Atherakhia.4086:

….Vitality: For every 100 vitality, reduce condi duration by 1%.
…..
Did I nerf it enough?

nerfing condi dmg should not be the right way, cause of condi meta, anet also said they want to improve control – and condi build

Toughness is the direct Opponent to direct dmg, but there is NO Opponent factor to reduce condition dmg. so suggets Vitality should decreasing % of dmg of conditions.
The ability to cleare conditions is in affect to your class in balancing compared to all other classes, same here for direct dmg, all classes having immunity …. excepting the thief.

Cynz.9437:

Arkantos.7460:

Vi Au.8341:

I believe there is a easier way to solve this problem. keep pistol 5 as a smoke field but change the order of priority of hit than stealth. So the chain would look like this: Black Powder – HS – Stealth – Hit.

It would be similar to how cluster bomb would reveal you if you blast a smoke field and hit a foe standing in it. This would allow thieves to stealth, get away regen or w/e but it would allow the opponent to counter the stealth by standing in the field.

I think this would allow for more interesting play from both side

but tell, how would that solve the Problem getting permastealthable?
thiefs would simply do the Hs+BP Combo on open field and stacking stealth again.
the new Change would simply prevent beeing permastealth because you cannot spam /stack stealth by using 6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6

@Cynz:
and what could be the most possible Thing they do after stealth…
indeed pressing 1 and then pressing 3 … dodge this ….and doing same Thing again or switching weapons…. dodge this

except to get backstab off you have to be in melee and behind the target, gl doing that while being chilled and crippled and your enemy having perma swiftness

it is way easier to dodge backstab than pistol channeled attacks

im sorry my english is lacking here, but to deal with the second one:
to dodge enemy BS is easy and also dodging channeling pistol attacks, because you can hear it and you know they are very expenxive initiative skills, so enemy cant use them very often and you have also the Option to simply interuppting them

reikken.4961:

my class’s weakness is taking too much damage and dying

warrior with active healskill, indeed

adding skill Points as reward by winning solo or Team matches as well

I think you mean the rate with which they can go into stealth.

the posted thread is centered around the source… d/p

Stealth by using x/d or otherwise stealing stealth by nearby thiefs/some rangerpets
or using blind powder/shadow refuge/shadow trap/hide in shadows- same number of stealth utitlies the mesmer has acces to

this thread plz
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Thief-Black-Powder/first#post3514266

[DEvs]
So warrior … healing Signet its realy realy strong in a bunch of ways …. so we double the passive!

lol toughness is already a dmg reduce factor
condition dmg should be decreased by investing into vitality

Vi Au.8341:

I believe there is a easier way to solve this problem. keep pistol 5 as a smoke field but change the order of priority of hit than stealth. So the chain would look like this: Black Powder – HS – Stealth – Hit.

It would be similar to how cluster bomb would reveal you if you blast a smoke field and hit a foe standing in it. This would allow thieves to stealth, get away regen or w/e but it would allow the opponent to counter the stealth by standing in the field.

I think this would allow for more interesting play from both side

but tell, how would that solve the Problem getting permastealthable?
thiefs would simply do the Hs+BP Combo on open field and stacking stealth again.
the new Change would simply prevent beeing permastealth because you cannot spam /stack stealth by using 6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6

@Cynz:
and what could be the most possible Thing they do after stealth…
indeed pressing 1 and then pressing 3 … dodge this ….and doing same Thing again or switching weapons…. dodge this

style.6173:

@OP: I very much disagree with your idea. P/P with access to stealth would be way too OP. It’s just not a good idea for a ranged set to get it. Instead the other skills of P/P should be buffed.

S/P should also NOT have access to stealth. It should be about controls and blinds.

well, to make builds and also all weaponsets/combinations avaiable
p/p now is very useless in stpvp, it indeed Needs buff, and get in mind that blackpowder Needs 6 init. at last …. spam 6 will not get stack stealth because of range attack and also spamming skills is already been punished by the initiative Change
But s/p having already acces to stealth with shortbow 2 Combo, after changing into pistol5 into darkness, all x/p builds gain same Attention to stealth like x/d
And getting ae blind on Combo is indeed much more useful then a simple stealth.

are you rly that focused on such an expensive skill?

I mean, Splitting into 2 skills will give you more hit and run Options, it will also increase your Option to manage inititative bar when not having 15 init at all.
Also they said nothing about increasing aftercast times or else, but to get real they said something about increasing stun Duration on dec 10th patch notes.
It could also be very possible to simple double pushing 3,3 to gain same effect like the PW now.
I think many thiefs take these Change in wrong way, watch the INitiative changes on dec10th …. so many qq about, what?…. at last it was a buff for all builds which dont use init. traits and a justified Balance to all skill spamming builds that rely on init. traits.

TheGuy.3568:

Arkantos.7460:

Arganthium.5638:

I like how the devs spent the absolute least amount of time discussing the thief.

I’m okay with the nerf to Choking Gas, but I think there are a lot of buffs thieves could use that would be far more useful than this nerf is.

As for PW… Not sure what to think about this yet. Unless there’s some kind of drastic change though, I don’t think splitting this skill up will help anything.

jon peters also talked about increasing daze effect of PW after Splitting,
however getting 2 skills will increase the effect to suprise enemies by not simple doing 1 Long Animation; also you can manage your initiative bar very well by not simply spending 5 INit. ….. maybe using flurry in a different/same way as mesmer
and ….
2 Signets on shortbow ^^ and rune-update …. more things coming 21th and I think maybe the first time buffs on thief will overshadow the nerf on choking gas

First off it is a stun. Second the issue us a simple one. It is hard enough to land a full PW as it is vs a good player you might get half. Any player will know that you’ll have to blow the flurry before you PW again. Vs a flat out nerf (which it may actually be) it just a hassle. If they do not up the stun then with the second cast you likely won’t land the flurry. They did enough when they fixed the after cast. That being said the cast on the flurry and the duration of the stun is what we really have to worry about.

at last, we have to wait till 21th

Arganthium.5638:

I like how the devs spent the absolute least amount of time discussing the thief.

I’m okay with the nerf to Choking Gas, but I think there are a lot of buffs thieves could use that would be far more useful than this nerf is.

As for PW… Not sure what to think about this yet. Unless there’s some kind of drastic change though, I don’t think splitting this skill up will help anything.

jon peters also talked about increasing daze effect of PW after Splitting,
however getting 2 skills will increase the effect to suprise enemies by not simple doing 1 Long Animation; also you can manage your initiative bar very well by not simply spending 5 INit. ….. maybe using flurry in a different/same way as mesmer
and ….
2 Signets on shortbow ^^ and rune-update …. more things coming 21th and I think maybe the first time buffs on thief will overshadow the nerf on choking gas

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Arkantos.7460:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

…

they would deal with it, if permastealth at the end gets killed

Sad part is that they’ll probably just move on to the next topic on thieves to cry about. Do you know that “perma-dodge” is a term starting to grow on forums now?

“IF” permastealth gets nerfed, and the only way of avoiding dmg relays on dodging, they wont nerf it untill a elite skill with 60sec is added which grant 5 sec immunity.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Only thing that I can imagine ppl crying about with this change is:
Blind/stealth stomp. Normally we have can either blind stomp, stealth stomp or ShS stomp. But this just combines two of our safeguard nets at once. Even if they did clear blind on time to use their downed CC, you’d be in stealth.

But other than that it sounds great for me

they would deal with it, if permastealth at the end gets killed

I would prefer a bit more professional/seriously talking about “important News”
I mean there were over 6000 ppl watching them

maybe , there will be some other good things appear on 21th, they said they cannot talk yet about All changes but we will have to wait
instead, eat buffood with 10% crit dmg for a slightly compensation

anets devs having different sights of the meaning of shaved ……

on warrior) shaving on healing signet 400 hp to 368- means 8%
on Thief) shaving on Vigorous Recovery 8s to 5s – means 37,5%

Watch here , if you want real way out of permastealth d/p

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Thief-Black-Powder/first#post3510479

confirmed-it get separated

nerfed by 8% .. what a nerf

Aberrant.6749:

The risk is being interrupted and having spent a lot of ini in the process with no reward. Stopping a bp->hs will wreck a thief and force them to start popping utilities to make up for it. It would be more forgiving if they didn’t have to hs through the field.

They also lose out on the c&d damage (doesn’t apply in sPvP where c&d needs a buff to make up for the higher risk though).

I go with changing into darkfield, but the stun on activating is indeed not neccessary because s/p is very static build, skill 2,3 already having short Position imobiliz.aftercast effects and adding skill5 with a selfstun would be not very good for mobility , also in respect to stealth thiefs you dont have to nerf more mobility
(you could Change the provided stealth effect instead of nerfing mobility, so stealth only if hit succes on targeted enemy)

increase interval Duration on PU by 2 sec

I know ist very annoying playing against permastealthable thiefs,. but
I dont played that much with darkfields, so tell me how it would provide p/p,s/p with stealth?
The combination of pistol5(smoke)+sh2= stealth;
dont know how darkness provide stealth here…. or did I miss something, plz explain.

I only know the blindeffect with finshers and the lifesteal on projectiles on darkness, which is very good and a very good reason for myself to approve that Balance Change

kyubi.3620:

Arkantos.7460:

kyubi.3620:

we nearly already get burn on every arrow when sunspirit is out + we got torch

SunSpirit is not needed, physícal laws allowing burning on every arrow by 100%

yea right… cept physical law dictate we cant throw lightning bolt out of a wooden stick neither does physical law can explain why we can shoot fireballs with our hands. Physical law doesnt explain either why when you stomp theres root shooting out of the ground and grabbing everyone.

indeed @kyubi, your a real fun killer

but to spend a real comment on thread:
shortbow already have a good assortment of conditions,
if you want more conditions on a weapon, plz choose a weapon and explain why its that much important to get torment on “that” weapon