Im going to give you the benefit of the doubt and think you meant you’d like both more traits and to make it so the 5/15/25 traits aren’t locked in and are selectable in the same way as the rest.
Which for some I guess wouldn’t be a bad idea as some of those traits are questionable at best (here’s looking at you last refuge)
However I think in total that would open up to many powerful combinations with the current traits alone.
A step back for an overpowered mechanic is a step in the right direction. CnD/Backstab was overpowered and the developers balanced it. Balance happens, you guys really need to get over it.
What about all the other stuff that got nerfed along with CnD/Backstab? The stuff that wasn’t “overpowered”
Yeah balance happens, but this isn’t balance, this is just blanket nerfing and hoping for the best.
well the stealth nerf only really effects people utilizing it offensively, though does have a fair impact on p/d conditions that try to utilize sneak attack for bleed stacking (before hand you had a base 5 stack of 4 second bleeds that gets reapplied every 4.5 seconds, your now at every 5.5 seconds)
Not sure where the 10s cooldown on caltrops comes from, they reduced the duration not the cooldown so it now lasts 10 seconds with a 24s cooldown (with the 20% tricks cooldown trait)
Overall condition builds got slightly nerfed at least options wise if not exactly damage wise.
it was dagger auto attacks (wild strike and lotus strike specifically)
and at some point I will have to properly sit down and try and work out max possibles, quick calcs never get me to numbers others state (last calc got to 3983 power with 200 on kill food, 25 might stacks, blood lust, sharpening stones etc) I must keep missing things, dropped 110 from zikorys calcs and almost a thousand from googles…
I don’t think a thief can have that much power…with full might and bloodlust stacks along with all ascended infused with +5 power. The most I could squeeze out was 4093 power and thats with plate of Truffle Steak Dinner which grants 200 power on kill…
Edit: It didn’t factor in the signets passive power so 4093. Fixed above.
I did say my calculations weren’t 100% accurate, pretty sure you can squeeze a few % more crit damage out somewhere and I didn’t include some damage boosts, so that damage most likely is possible.
The point however is that it would take complete specialization of your build to hit that, to the point where outside of that damage you have nothing else going for you.
Yet people state those numbers and claim every thief hits that and totally ignore the penalties and the fact that not every thief is in identical builds.
It would very much be like complaining about being killed by a 100 blades warrior and then asking for the entire profession to be nerfed.
indeed may be possible but complaining about an entire profession because of whats technically possible makes no sense, specially when you don’t also calculate what they loose and the circumstances needed to obtain that possibility
How is everyone getting hit with 6k mugs? I run a 1.2k toughness thief and Mug hits me for about 3.5k…I mean if your running GC expect to be hit hard…
its because they take the full out zerker thief hits, add a little extra to them and then think there the average thief hits.
And even then they are only concerned about the burst nature in pvp and not the fact that its on a 45 second base cooldown and such.
There was someone complaining about 3k auto attacks against 3k armour when my (albeit not 100% accurate) calculations put the required stats for that at around 110% crit damage and 4289 power which I don’t think the average thief runs with :/
I most likely won’t change my PvE build much, the caltrops change hit it a bit but mostly its still functional and can still pull out some fancy tricks.
The change they went with hasn’t limited my bag o’ tricks as much as the one they first intended to do.
In pvp, who knows theres lots of options that still work, albeit not many of them “thief” like.
However the amount of issues that crop up with proposed/enacted changes makes myself and perhaps others really question the thought behind them.
When they make a change that makes certain traits no longer work correctly or become a hindrance or loose all potency, when they make a change that cripples already borderline builds/weapon sets and when the change doesn’t actually address the perceived issues. This is what makes me question the thought put into these blanket changes.
I personally get effected by most changes but no singular change cripples me, they do however overall lower my own options and strengths in game. Im sure I will still be able to do everything I did do (not being a major stealth user and caltrops wills till work well enough for me) just at a lower level before while other classes that where already ahead get further ahead.
I cannot help but marvel at a patch that nerfs thief in PvE and nerfs warrior in PvP. Do the developers even play this game? Do they even talk to anyone who plays this game?
From what I understand they talk to some pvpers and we all know how rational and concerned about balance against them pvpers always are in games
It was a really stupid nerf that hurt PvE thieves…
This nerf hasn’t hurt my PvE thief at all.
I’m going to repeat something I said back when life-steal food was “nerfed” (i.e. balanced): if you build your character around a single skill, trait, boon, or consumable then you’re setting yourself up for a aggravation should the day come your gimmick build nerfed.
The issue is that the changes are not about specific gimmicks, there global blanket nerfs that don’t actually address the perceived issues, instead they damage a variety of builds that were not an issue.
Eventually nerfs like these are going to stack up and damage any builds, gimmick or not. Heck the caltrop duration nerf came out of no where and effects builds I’ve never heard a complaint about..
The changes are not the death of the thief that some people claim, but they are something that causes worries with how they are implemented with very little thought on all the knock on effects they will have and gradually chip away at the entire game not just thieves.
I still have yet to hear a reasonable reason why stealth is considered OP, its strength is situational at best :/
All I ever hear is that its makes thieves risk free and they can do mad damage with stealth and how it allows them to escaped undamaged and lots of things along those lines which makes me wonder if I haven’t installed the wrong game…
im not sure dungeons have any scaling with the number of players, they will always be the set designed for 5 player teams.
I do imagine that some at least would be possible with fewer depending on class and set up and personal CoF1 for instance could probably be done by many duo’s but I’ve never really tried and doubt many have as its generally not too hard to get a full team for most.
Some do have definite requirements, usually at least 3 people (CoE and some fractals come to mind)
nah that would be addressing a specific problem not a blanket nerf to an entire mechanic effecting almost every build for a profession, best go with the old plan and at the same keep the new plan.
</sarcasm>
I proposed similar things before, namely making it so if you do nothing but CnD all but the first CnD does no hits, so your stealthed but doing nothing while still being totally vulnerable. But Anet and other people like above prefer blanket nerfs that effect lots of other things making them broken and useless
we actually have a fair bit of group utility, just not the sort that gets us invited into speed runs and single target DPS there are still better classes than us (warriors for instance)
the issue with reducing effectiveness is the whole having to calculate in the big cooldown as well.
It does fantastic damage that adds a great deal in burst situations, however the moment that burst doesn’t finish the target its now massively underpowered for the simple fact that it most likely won’t be up again in that fight.
That 45 second base cooldown sort of wrankles any way to change it simply and doing indepth changes is not the current style for balance.
unfortunately while they still believe rolling out blanket changes is the way to go nothing will change, very rarely will an issue be with an entire mechanic, its usually how that mechanic works with 1 or 2 skills but instead of looking into ways to balance those changes they take the “easy” road and just blanket it with a change that usually barely effects the 1 or 2 actual issues while hitting everything else usually much harder.
When you have so many variations of builds, so many different skills that work with things in different ways and so many traits and other little things that effect or get effected by it the moment you decide to blanket it you either have to work out the effect that change is going to have on every single one of those combinations or not care/think of that and punish people for not being the problems.
Couple this with the painfully slow content updates which regularly fail to bring anything new to the game (southsun lul), content thats locked to only certain people (guild missions only for big guilds) my faith in Anet is rapidly running out.
And its not like I even get hurt that much by the nerfs even the old planned nerf would at most have annoyed me that I was now limited in choice, its just the fact that the changes almost never seem to be fully thought through. Though with the way they are chipping away its not long before any spec gets crippled
Champion troll in caledon forest swamp with 3 stacks of defiant, basilisk works
Champion rotting ancient oakheart in queens dale with no stacks of defiant but just unshakable on no effect, still immune to other CC and no defiant stacks generated.
Legendary Statue of Dwyna in malchors leap, with unshakeable only and no stacks of defiant no effect, with stacks of defiant basilisk works, with no stacks of defiant AFTER having recieved stacks of defiant and lost them basilisk venom works.
So yeah appears rather random, im sure it will still work as it did before as I never actually tested these before.
Seems as long as they get stacks of defiant (that are designed to block that many CCs) basilisk works ><
Sounds to me like someone has been worked over by a P/D Thief a time or two I feel your pain, I really do… That’s why I rolled one !
Na, I have absolutely no problem with them, they are kitten poor against S/D. But they are generally for people who don’t like to get their hands dirty, and that is what a lot of the outcry is about in the forums. Also Mug>C&D>BS, which was supposed to be addressed, was not. Nothing that is ACTUALLY a problem with the class, as per the SotG, was actually touched, which is a massive disappointment to anyone that plays the game with tact.
Unfortunately thats what blanket nerfs do, they never address the actual issues they just weaken the entire profession, even if they do happen to slightly inconvenience the actual problems the cost is other options and valid uses get hit far far worse.
Just tested it on the champion risen giant in straits of desolation, has the unshakeable buff, basilisk venom lands, changes the colour, icon pops up, giant continues to fight and move, so yeah seems no longer works on them
Every trait you have got nerfed by 25%, so did your damage and survivability.
Neither 25% or 33% is remotely accurate unless a player lives almost solely in stealth which pretty much nobody does.
This combo is just as viable with just as much damage: Steal/Mug, BS, HS, HS, HS.
Sure there are thieves that live in stealth but those are primarily griefers. All they did was add 1 second of out of stealth damage when coming out of a stealth attack. It will have an effect but not nearly 25%.
Unfortunately thats basically them saying “we don’t want thieves to be flexible”. If its used defensively its the only defensive skill that if you have multiple utilities for is punished if try to use them too often.
Tbh overall I’m not really sure anet really puts much thought into many of their changes, so many new content and other changes have been poor at best and never fully thought through. This is just another example.
This comment just shows so much of the vast majority of players who play the class: I shouldn’t have to pick and choose like ~every other class~.
As someone else said, you either use it to go in for the kill or use it to get out… not for a “i’m just going to hang around”… make a choice.
how does it? putting in nerfs that mean certain choices are no longer valid does not promote having to pick and choose it actually promotes NOT having to pick and choose because you have less valid options to choose….
And your statement has basically no connection to my previous one… where did I state to use it just to hang around? I just stated that if used defensively with the previous change it would be the only defensive skill that punished you for having more than 1 instance of on your bar by allowing you to burn a cooldown without the gain you where after.
Theres more uses for repeated stealth than CnD cheese that people hate so much, just like theres more uses for offensive stealth than just backstab.
I do have to say though, I pretty much called it, when a few people where getting excited and called everyone who though revealed on all stealth ends was a bit much noobs and how they wouldn’t be effected by it and thus it was a good change.
I pretty much said that chances are the actual patch would hit them far harder and what do you know… its like im bleeding psychic ><
That said neither nerf was a good idea, this one punishes those that actually fight in a way we most likely didn’t need after culling, the other punished people that liked a bit of flexibility and utilized multiple utilities at times, neither effects the cheese or the exploits to the degree that makes it ok to nerf everyone else at the same time.
Maybe this will just serve to make it even more apparent (as if it wasn’t already) how totally kitten MH Pistol is and how badly it needs fixes.
Thief PVE in general underperforms in large part because Stealth is not adequate to compensate for their defensive weakness, and they aren’t particularly offensively strong relative to other professions. Why things like their horrendously bad downed state have never been touched is beyond me.
Specially with the previous nerf meaning stealth was a reverse stun rather than an escape mechanism in pve, you’d go stealth come out 3 seconds later and the mobs would still be straight on you, often even if the rest of your team was pounding on them.
The one good thing is that at least your not penalized for having more than one stealth skill, but both the previous incarnation of this change (reveal on all stealth drop) and this one of an extra second on revealed was most likely unnecessary once the culling changes where made in pvp, sure there was/still is some cheesy/exploitative plays but neither change would prevent them because both changes where a blanket nerf to the entire mechanic rather than a targetted patch to those effects.
Hopefully either the 1 extra second will turn out to be mostly negligible but in a way that opens the way for the skills that get hit hard by it to be improved or they’ll realize it really was unnecessary and revert the change.
yeah the 1 second longer revealed totally wrecks sneak attack, its bleeds already ran out before you could reuse the skill unless you stacked bleed duration ><
when a developer states “looking at them” or “we’d like to” it means that 90% chance that will be the last you’ll ever hear of it.
Sometimes this is actually because of valid reasons such as they couldn’t get them to work, sometimes its just false promises, which is which rarely gets clarified
I have just loged into forums to write same comment. It really makes no sence at all. They might as well rename it to daze now, couse even its name doesnt make sence now. Oh well, one more useless elite now. For all the qqers that might comment, im not a big fan of basilisk, becouse I dont play burst build, therefore i rarelly use it, but i do give a fk enough to comment.
Again it has NOT been changed to a daze, it is still a STUN.
The change is that before it used to both Stun and Immobilize, this meant that when someone used a stun breaker they would still be immobilized and unable to move, they have now removed the extra immobilize from it so that it is now JUST a stun which means a stun breaker will remove it completely, it does NOT mean they can now move around while stunned as the stun still prevents movement like every other stun.
nope they cannot move during the basilisk stun however they can move after using a stun breaker which they couldn’t before because it used to apply both a stun and an immobilize
unfortunately PvE is often left out of the thinking process where balance is concerned, oh sure they attempted to when they nerfed quickness massively (1 second more duration on a minute cooldown move thats had its effectiveness halfed, wheee)
PvP tends to be way more vocal and of course the changes effect both sides of the fight which are (potentially) paying customers.
I’ve never seen a game that hasn’t had its pve demolished at some point due to pvp changes that the developers just failed to actually think about, I don’t see why GW2 should be an exception.
that said these changes haven’t quite done that, theres a wide negative effect, they’ve pretty much managed to nerf every single thief build in some fashion this patch but not to a game destroying degree YET.
I really hope mobs aren’t going to wander around while under basilisk venom. It was actually quite fun to freeze them under a bucket of lava in the dredge fractal!
nah it still stones them, it just means stun breakers will work on it without needing to pop something to clear immobilize also.
I still think you should look into more specific changes.
For example lots of people find CnD spam and smoke field combo abuse out of combat to be silly.
CnD could be looked at in a way where you put something like a debuff called “feint” on its use, lasts 8 seconds while you have the debuff any other CnD do no damage (but still stealth) and refresh the buff, revealed clears the debuff, this would allow thieves to still burn their initiative to escape but prevent trolling new players that don’t know whats happening with 1 hit every 3-4 seconds.
Combo fields could be adjusted just by making a sucessful combo count as a landed hit thus preventing someone hopping back and forth across a field away from everyone for a long stealth duration.
But meh personally never encountered either of these just something I hear people complain about.
but hey! at least healing seed (because thats totally a thief skill!) is a tiny bit wider and dodge caltrops are a bit bigger! we are really gonna pwn with these buffs!
so yeah after all that they put in a stealth nerf but one that actually effects people using it offensively and no effect on the cheesers everyone was getting hyped at being destroyed ><
Well played Anet! Well played ><
At least we no longer go negative endurance with haste… that said thats a lot of overall nerfs to everyone
Seriously man, the argument isn’t about having NO AR at level x( u say 40-49 for max).. It’s about the necessity of the AR provided by the amulet bought by laurels at said level. Last postand deleting all in about twenty minutes as we are WAY off topic.
well let me give you the calculations then, jade maw agony is undodgable and hits 9 times, at level 40-49 with the full 45 AR from a full set including the amulet you will take 18% of your health per hit for a total of 162% of your health that would be enough to down you and a good chance to defeat you without heals (which are massively reduced during agony), without the amulet at 40 AR you take 24% per tick for a total 216% of your health it may just be survivable if you happen to have a really big heal or some other thing to try and push it back a bit but in most cases you are going to die completely.
this, compared to the 12% damage you take per tick with no AR at 10-19 is a big difference.
and of course then when your at 50-59 even with the full 45 AR possible at the moment I don’t believe its survivable anymore.
well that depends what other AR gear you have, but 40-49 would be the point where the full 45 starts becoming important.
If the amulet would be ALL you have try 20-29 with no AR you most likely will not survive a jade maw encounter without being revived by those with AR.
But I will say this isn’t just me trying to whine about how laurels are needed, its just a fact that you need certain amounts of AR to pass certain levels and that ANET designed it to be that way.
Though I guess technically you don’t need laurels to get an ascended amulet but you do have to grind a triforge amulet and upgrade it, it being the singular other option to laurel amulets.
I never said they did BUT if you actually read what I was responded to the statement wasn’t “But you don’t need the laurel gear for anything I particularly care about” the statement was
“Additionally there’s absolutely no reason whey anyone ‘needs’ to complete the dailies. Laurels are nice, sure, but they’re not needed to gain items that are absolutely needed to complete any content in the game, they’re just another avenue.”
which is untrue because anyone who wishes to do higher level content does in fact need the laurel amulet to achieve enough agony resistance.
So before you go on about MY reading comprehension why don’t you take your head from your rectum and actually read yourself.
no you actually need the amulet if you wish to do high level fractals, that 5 AR that you can get from it is needed for them.
Anet intentionally made it so you need to get more ascended gear the higher you go, if you miss one at some point you will not physically be able to proceed
And they did state that they did not beleive you needed it to complete certain content not the entire game. I just corrected stating that without it you will reach a limit which you cannot pass in the Fractals of the Mist dungeon which happens to be content… in the game…
I feel your pain, I really do… That’s why I rolled one !
. It really makes no sence at all. They might as well rename it to daze now, couse even its name doesnt make sence now