I’m actually rather fine with D/D – or better was, before some noob decided to shred thief into pieces. It’s not just D/D and P/P that sucks, it’s all about thief, D/P can just deal better with it.
He has a point actually but it does depend who/what you’re fighting
…..
Class balance atm stinks though and every class has it’s stupid stuff even thief.
Who has a point? I’m confused – you do know that I daggerstorm into groups of 15 alone and survive, right? It depends on when I’m doing this and to whom I’m doing it. (No, they’re not downed but I can only do it when they don’t expect it).
Yes, every class has got some OP stuff and everything of this needs to be gone.
I really should consider getting a psychological degree to get to the root of the problem people have with thieves
The other day:
X: “To all running thieves: Can you please uninstall?”
Me: “Can I stay if I walk?”
X: “NO!!!!”
Then I was watching a fight against a thief: The very same guy and 5 of us against him. He would’ve been very stupid to stay BUT OH NO HE RAN HE NEEDS TO UNINSTALL!!
What I’ve read is not that bad, although I’d like to have my extra vulnerability on CnD.
But in the end: can’t we just roll back the game to how it has been 2 years ago?
In case it’s unclear what I was getting at: A lot of these changes sound good but in the end it’s just more powercreep and it’s very uncertain where this game is headed.
I pretty much think that we can now hold a funeral for pvp and wvw.
Each team needs to take care of balancing their own game mode.
Wvw isn’t that much different from pvp – it would work if either of the modes were balanced and taken to the other mode – you don’t need independent balancing.
(It’s not that hard to get, right: we really don’t have any balance team at all – that is the root of the problem).
ETA: You have a different point of view than me – I’m a wvw player and know that we have no balance team in wvw and it would be stupid to really balance classes from watching wvw alone, because you have 1 vs x. Pvp would make more sense and all of us assumed that the game was balanced on pvp anyway, which it maybe was in the past, no idea.
If you now say that each mode needs their own balance team, then you would have a PvP balancing team and some PvE players who would pump more powercreep into the game. WvW would still be completely unbalanced.
The PvP team could become the “skills team” – that would actually make sense. As long as anet understands that they might have to tweak pve if they still don’t want a separation between the 3 modes. And that the PvP/then skills team would have to get into wvw at least a bit.
You get what’s happening and why I repeat the same stuff over and over, right? We actually already have what I said above.
Warrior: Peak Performance, Forceful Greatsword, Stick and Move and more
Defense: Spiked armor, Defy Pain, Dead or alive and so on.
Every class has got similar traits, which is basically ok, as otherwise we wouldn’t need traits at all, just that it’s too much and something is off with the damage calculation anyway and has been since June (last year).
And “builds” don’t really matter as you’re free to chose from 6 lines – so why do you need a premade build to have defensive and offensive traits?
ETA: I’m not using DA in wvw (I do so in PvE) – so this trait doesn’t “enhance my performance” as well – you make it seem as if every thief has got access to it and uses it wheras every other class needs a build to have defense against this extraordinary mean trait.
Ps. Personally, I like the thought of changing Rending Shade to an AoE boon-steal that activates on Reveal, so any skill can take advantage of it. Hmm, perhaps 2 boons per target within a 240-radius?
Thing is: this trait sounded good because it seemed as if it was something against all the passive protection flying around in game – a boonsteal at reveal won’t do much.
So in the end it looks as if we got a whole bunch of nerfs for nothing – cause don’t tell me that anyone who didn’t take a thief to raids would take them now (in two weeks when people have figured out that venom share is pretty useless). And the cooldown pretty much destroyed all stealth thieves.
I don’t think it follows that logic. Just like Bountiful Theft, it doesn’t need to have a successful hit or an attack to land. Unlike Larcenous Strike, where the boon strip is bound to the skill itself, Rending Shade is a trait, not a skill, thus LS needs to connect thus it was made unblockable. Rending Shade functions the same as Bountiful Theft.
Why don’t you guys try it?
I haven’t but my buddy did and he said it doesn’t work on aegis.
The balance team had made great changes to balance the META up for all game mode.
No, this game hasn’t been balanced for now 1,5 years – there were some minor shavings here and there but it’s still the same old same old.
The PvP team tried to make combat better for you but all they can do is playing with the runes.
I’m a wvw player – I only read the pvp forum for possible balance changes – so I know that nothing has changed at all.
I saw quite a lot of thieves in wvw today – they all died within seconds.
But then again: I was walking around, minding my own business and all of the sudden thief 1 jumped out of the bushes, then thief 2, 3, 4…
What they didn’t know was that 5 guys were taking care of my wellbeing – I had no troubles to clear out my inventory.
In the end: Deceiver is right: Small scale might become a problem – the rest won’t – so give it a week or two and most thieves will be gone again.
What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.
If you change the rules of the game by adding/removing sigils and runes it’s a bogus balance and all it does is to distort what is and what isn’t needed because the rules in PvE and WvW are different and actually based on the traits which you can’t touch. So PvP players think something else is needed than PvE and WvW players, the latter have to play against players who are by far more powerful than any mob in PvE, and at some point no one will know anything anymore.
(I hope you know what I’m indirectly saying – I’m not blaming you or the PvP team – thanks for clarifying this as I did wonder why “only” runes and sigils were tweaked)
I have had my thief much longer than i have had my necro. Also i have played more with thief, so what ever your point was, is not very valid.
I guess you know what my point is. I haven’t met any S/P thief in a while – no idea what your second set is, but S/P can live without stealth just fine, so of course this doesn’t affect you much.
Also: those who come to this forum and say “as a thief main I think this nerf promotes more skillful play” are usually the ones who want thief to be nerfed more – has worked in the past and likely will work now – that’s why I was asking.
ETA: And unfortunately that’s why I need to “ask” to highlight to the devs that people like this exist and that they shouldn’t blindly believe anything anyone says.
I play thief as a main char and this is really welcoming nerf.
As a non-meta s/p build, i have to pay attention what i do, instead of just mindlessly copying someone else’s builds.
Probably now 90% of d/p thieves will either qq on forum or spam #3 instead of adapting the situation.
That’s why you should learn the class, not just mindlessly copy metabuilds…
World selection is pretty much the first thing you have to pick in a new account, even before you make a character. Problem is new players often have no idea what this affects, and they won’t know if they made the right choice until they start playing WvW later.
Also, players often join PvE guilds first, and only later find out that those guilds are not on the same world that they selected back when they created their account. So to WvW with those guilds, they are stuck having to pay gems to transfer just because they made a decision early on that they couldn’t possibly have gotten right.
Giving each account 1 free transfer would relieve some of this pressure, since you could recover from a bad world decision without paying a fine.
You get that free transfer if you switch from free account to paid account.
It already is there and I guess it’s pretty common that people get a free account before buying the game nowadays.
Except for cheese builds, 1v1 is still really enjoyable in WvW
I disagree with that: I can get boons, heal etc. in blobs, I’m lucky if I’m getting them in small scale. (ETA: blobs are in fact more balanced because of this as in small scale you have to be lucky to have the right people around to get the “same” boons as your opponents – I hope that makes sense).
1 vs 1 isn’t enjoyable anymore because all hot builds are basically the old D/D cele eles – you are saved by your build, no matter how much and often you kitten up.
I tried scrapper for a bit (all my other characters aren’t elites, even my revenant isn’t) and passively killed people and had no idea how I even did that. It is boring and everything else but elites just isn’t viable.
We were a few ganking some others outside of SM yesterday and I downed a ranger, thanks to the newest implementation of a cooldown when missing an attack in stealth I was unable to stomp him, escaped his aoe with 50 HP and when I turned around he was standing and at 80% health – oh what fun! The heavy classes can all go full zerker because they’re saved by their traits – they hit me way harder than I can hit them, yet have more than twice my health and armor.
ETA²: And I get that to people running elites this might seem balanced, but ask youself how many times you’re saved by your passives.
I don’t think venomshare thieves will be used in raids. The raids I have been in the people in my DPS party were all over the place anyway and for some reason most people refuse to understand how thief works – I guess only 2 of the 5 will be in range for VS. And: Every HoT class usually brings enough CC to fight for their own.
So what they did is to destroy thief some more for no reason.
Where did this idea even come from anyway. Seems like a nerf out of nowhere. Don’t recall anyone complaining in the first place about thieves being able to backstab/etc multiple times.
Having a cd on the stealth attack is so awkward as every other skill in the thief’s kit doesn’t have a cd.
There was a thread a while ago 1 or 2 guys were complaining on this forum.
I guess because anet and everybody else thinks that VS being made baseline is “OP” they decided we need another nerf to “balance” it. Searched the forums and that was the only complaint in the past few months, other than trapper thief and condi D/D.
ETA: And yes, that are the reasons why I actually hate the GW2 forums – it’s a copy and paste matrix for the devs. In case of thief it’s mostly only nerfs though.
And: they needed VS outside of SA because people in raids think it’s a good idea to use it, but SA doesn’t have anything offensive anymore – so instead of reworking SA and make it useful again, they simply did this.
The nerf is actually terrible, especially for power D/D as we can’t just port and BS our enemy, we have to run after them. Turning after a CnD alone takes time – you only have one chance to get your BS in.
Also that I have to wait 1 s after a failed stomp is lethal.
I really don’t get what your problem is – what is your agenda? Silence everybody who enjoyed this game for a certain set and playstyle because you don’t understand how anyone can do that?
If you want me to play D/P I could as well play ranger or scrapper, or necro or or or – I don’t want that – because it’s no fun to me. I played this game for D/D thief and nothing else – I guess having 6 D/D thieves kind of proves that. And yes, there are stupid people like me around, for any set for any class.
ETA: And in case you think we all want D/P to be nerfed into the ground: No, that’s not the point: We want anet to realize that (I said it in another thread) D/P thief is okayish in comparison with any other class but completely OP in comparison with any other thief set. As long as anet doesn’t realize what D/P can do and how the traits and weapon skills fail every other set there’s no hope for anything else than D/P. You should try to see this as well, so you get where we are coming from and don’t need to second hand insult me like in your post above.
WvW has always had meta builds many of which were ridiculously OP.
Prior to HoT nearly every roaming build had stopped because the PU mesmer was utterly dominating 1v1 and were incredibly slippery. Prior to the trait changes, thieves rolled over pretty much every build and could clock near 20k on light to medium armored players out of nowhere.
Didn’t see that earlier.
Only ones I had troubles with were: D/D cele eles, Engineers before their elite was nerfed (oh my), some very good medi guards and ironically thieves since the dragon bash pvp event thingy in 2015 (the patch changed the way my D/D thief works and he now misses more often than he hits, especially thieves).
That alone was a mess, yes, but the game as it is now leaves you very little option as what class and build you can use – and that is boring. Solo roaming is lethal because you’ve got no chance if you’re outnumbered.
And: I’ve been a D/D solo roamer, valk/zerker with runes of strength – I never ran signets, I was running 06620 – my backstabs with 25 stacks ofbloodlust were around: 6-7 against heavy, 7-8 against medium, 9-10 against light. I know that with signets higher numbers were possible but speaking of what I was hit with: that was the absolute exception – in fact I haven’t been one shotted in wvw since the ferocity patch (even before not as I was running soldier’s back then).
A lot of good people of my server left and most left because the combat is messed up.
What I’d like to mention additionally: This also effects stomps made in stealth – really anet, this is a no go.
Revert this and see if anyone really complains about thieves being OP and what they have to say. It was only one person who complained that thieves can “chain backstabs” in the past half a year – there was zero reason to take it seriously.
ETA: Actually I’m having troubles even in PvE – it really goes that far that I don’t kill the mobs around mining nodes anymore (I used to kill everything) to spare me the hassle.
Right?
Reading through the patch notes I noticed nothing had really changed (except for the ele’s) and thought to myself…wow, how long til the next one again?
In WvW players are carried more by doing whatever it takes to outnumber their opponents, be it 2v1, 5v2, Zergv5, etc.
Not really, warriors and scrappers are fine on their own. You have a point though. And even that wasn’t as bad around one year ago. Being outnumbered didn’t mean an automatic loss back then, be it 1 vs 2 or 15 vs 25. (although stability was pretty bad, yes).
It doesn’t necessarily mean an automatic loss now considering most players in zergs don’t know how to fight that well anymore.
But I think the zerg meta won’t change unless ANet addresses it directly. There is no incentive to not zerg. You get the exact same rewards for rolling over everything as an 80+ person group as you do if you actually try and accomplish the same thing with a group of 3 or 4 players. Without any reason to not zerg up (read rewards, because we know what gaming communities are like) people will always take the easy way.
The only thing ANet can do is to encourage not zerging up by offering an incentive to run in smaller groups.
No, not anymore since they reverted stability partly back – but my main point was actually class balance which is important for large scale balance as well.
In WvW players are carried more by doing whatever it takes to outnumber their opponents, be it 2v1, 5v2, Zergv5, etc.
Not really, warriors and scrappers are fine on their own. You have a point though. And even that wasn’t as bad around one year ago. Being outnumbered didn’t mean an automatic loss back then, be it 1 vs 2 or 15 vs 25. (although stability was pretty bad, yes).
Truth being told: I’m done – I have no initative (haha) to argue anymore – it leads to nothing anyway.
At least I have 3 years worth of screenshots to remind me of the good times.
And btw: yes, you’re right with aegis and blind, but.. and there comes my first point in: I could explain the problem once more but I decide I’m just too tired.
ETA: Today, while I was trying to save a tower: CnD, back.. target moves, stealth gone, I’m dead.
I guess every thief knows what combat is like and how this cooldown hurts and why it hurts – enemy players aren’t pvp golems.
You have the question wrong: Before the nerf, why wouldn’t you just spam backstab without thinking? There was absolutely no reason not to since in best scenario it lands and in worst scenario it doesn’t and you try again immediately afterward while also likely removing an aegis or blind.
A failed BS didn’t remove blind or aegis as far as I know – you only could remove these boons/conditions unstealthed.
So: again: why did thieves have to try multiple times? We already answered that for you actually.
D/D was crap before, so I don’t see why ANet should care about breaking something that was already broken. And with D/D, you’re more likely to get screwed over by a block/blind preventing your CnD, wasting initiative than a backstab that you can try again a second later without any resource loss.
The question is why they don’t care about holding their players. It can’t be that hard to balance a game. They had now 1,5 years to do so (from announcing the traitmerge til now).
But then again, some things should’ve never been brought into the game, like engineers group stealthing (I hate it because I can’t time my stealth) and like reveal skills – hard to remove them now.
when in gods name would you ever backstab midair lmao are you for real
I think midair means the dagger, not the player.
And for me: I could never really make the stow weapon work – too many buttons. And I don’t know why I should go out of my way to be able to play this game halfway decently.
thanks that is what I was afraid of guess I am not coming back any time soon
4 months til the next balance patch
But I guess even less thieves will be around then to answer your questions.
At some point you might have to look for yourself…
haven’t played this game for a few years now came back to check out how my favorite class is going …..
you guys still getting ridiculous nerf after nerf ?
how is WVW ?
We’re dead.
If you fancy D/P and have/buy HoT you might still have a chance to not be a free lootbag, otherwise: don’t play thief.
Wvw is a general mess.
.. is the lack of balance and the power creep – it’s no fun to die to players that are carried by their builds. Or, as a matter of fact, play these builds and tap your own shoulder for no reason at all.
Yesterday’s balance patch was your (anet) chance to get this game back on track and to save wvw – you failed.
It’s really frustrating to play GW2 since June/HoT last year – and I don’t know if it really makes sense to create a game that’s frustrating.
You can add portable cannons, server linking whatever, it won’t change the main reason why people are leaving.
Interesting that they would think that they need venom share in raids… most raids won’t allow thieves even if they are running venoms because thieves in raids are absolutely useless.
One guild was very eager to get me so I would be in their raids – they had a reason actually. I can dish out a lot of damage, am a rather good player and had S/P as my secod set for the defiance bar.
Venomshare is kind of stupid, but it might work if the rest of the damage party knows how to make use of it – but most (PvE) players don’t know anything about thieves.
I guess this was anets try to justify thieves in raids – to make them more viable – unfortunately they justfied this “buff” with a bunch of massive nerfs and in the end it hurts pvp and wvw thieves – like usual.
I should add though, that I don’t mean to bash on D/P~ I just hate how this is the only viable weaponset our class has when I really enjoy the dagger offhand, closing in on an enemy and gaining stealth in a skillful way. SHOULD BE REWARDED, not punished.
That’s just, my view.
And it’s my turn to agree with you – D/P as it is is fine and maybe even slightly underperforming in comparison to other classes – but in comparison to every other thief set it’s ridiculously OP and that’s the problem.
But – it’s been more than 1 year. We’ve had 2 balance patches since and both just added to the powercreep (not in case of thief) – it seems as if all hope is lost.
And it will be another 4 months for the next power creep balance patch – wooohooo!
I’m the queen of offtopic, I know, but can you please stop to tell us that we need to L2P and justify D/P lengthy although you have no idea about any other thief set? This thread is about the latest nerf which I hope anet will make undone – but I know them; they won’t or will do so in about a year (with a bunch of nerfs, of course). When another x k of players have left. “Why don’t they like our game? Why is wvw dying, we’re making poll after poll!”
Make your own thread with blackjack and kittens. You could also use the wonky search and find that we’ve already discussed this (to death).
This is not about L2P even though if you feel like this is what you need to do feel free to do it, and I’ll stop defending D/P when you people will stop blaming it all on D/P and the 3 ability of the weapon set which is far from being anything like making the set overperforming or dealing too much dmg, or whatever else bs I’m reading about it.
Honey: You told me earlier that I need to learn to play D/P – that’s actually the set I started with (kind of) – you assume that you know more than me and I and others are telling you that you don’t. You make this obvious in every post. That’s totally fine but unfortunately it’s offtopic – so make your own thread and discuss it there, ok? I might explain to you why we brought this up in this thread in the first place.
Just make some new footage – I want to actually see you kill someone with D/D best more than one player.
I don’t get why you tell all others that they need to adapt and learn to play when these people mained D/D thief for years. (again, no snark – I probably should tell you this on TS so you get that I’m totally relaxed)
Make a video of real duels, cabbage – I mean that and there’s no snark behind this.
I know/knew quite a lot of D/D thieves and all have given up on this game – most long ago – I actually believe them more than you (again, no snark).
And if you watch my video you’ll find that I’m not using auto attack at all (the option, not the skill)
I’m the queen of offtopic, I know, but can you please stop to tell us that we need to L2P and justify D/P lengthy although you have no idea about any other thief set? This thread is about the latest nerf which I hope anet will make undone – but I know them; they won’t or will do so in about a year (with a bunch of nerfs, of course). When another x k of players have left. “Why don’t they like our game? Why is wvw dying, we’re making poll after poll!”
Make your own thread with blackjack and kittens. You could also use the wonky search and find that we’ve already discussed this (to death).
I’m curious if I’ll see more thieves in zergs – I somehow guess I won’t. I’m usually the only one in my zerg.
But then again, thief got nerfed heavily with this patch and I don’t really feel like logging in anymore.
In the end; Venoms being baselines helps mostly PvE players who think they need venomshare in raids – I wouldn’t be too afraid of it in wvw – because a) thief still is dead with one hit (ask a hammer rev to come and focus any enemy thief) and b) all venoms were nerfed heavily with this patch.
I would be surprised if anything would happen at all, it’s like the “Oh noz thief auto attack got buffed, now thief completely OP” everybody was running thief for a week – I haven’t seen many since.
Well, I’m sorry if this offends you and Jana, but I’ll repeat myself. If you use SS as your main dmg source with D/P you don’t know to play the spec. I’ll let you guys maybe check some of this person D/P videos and after you find where they use SS as a main source of dmg with D/P let me know. https://www.youtube.com/user/T3rissimo/videos
I’m giving this example cause this person seems to know what they are doing and you’d probably agree after watching. Thief with D/P have way better dmg sources than SS, trust me. Even 2 (another thing that shouldn’t be spammable) has better dmg than SS.
The problem is a bit deeper than your L2P advise.
SS is a “free” port, BP and HS is the “free source” of stealth for D/P – a D/P thief is no real melee thief but is able to port in and out – the reason why this set works and why D/P can take almost anything. SS does more damage than CnD which is way harder to land. It also has free blind and an unblockable port – all other thieves have to trait for all of what’s in this one skill.
Also a lot of the traits are now merged in a way that make them only useful for D/P as all other weaponsets relied on traits which D/P never did.
I know more about thief and D/P than you think – I don’t need to watch videos to learn how to play it
ETA: And again: I don’t want to destroy D/P, I want anet to realize that thief is still there because SS has got everything all other sets don’t have access to – and they should change that.
I do play D/P cause I like how it plays it’s actually the set that got me in love with thief in the first place…
That’s good for you – why do you deny me to play the set I love the most?
And the problem is: D/P is that “well” designed (= brainless) that it can survive anything anet throws at it wheras we other thieves have to quit the game.
And yes, if they haven’t realized it by now they likely never will – doesn’t mean I can’t say that the reason why thief is dead to a lot of people is that they pay no attention to D/P at all.
last time I played SA with my D/P set was when i realized SA doesn’t deal enough dmg to be a threat to any other well played profession, so your “hidden thief” argument is pretty weak. if they made SA a viable build for power thief I’d understand your argument, but for now SA is for running away of playing invisible ebola…
Step away from the SA “free stealth” trait line and you’ll see the issue with the thief, and the issue. Anyways Shadow Shot is actually a utility ability not a dmg one, so that argument is invalid too. Not sure how is it you play thief, but I guess one of us is the weird one here lol.
P.S. I’ve heard and experienced that staff thief counters D/P – you might want to try and master this one and get the result you wanted – to kill the D/P thief.
Then look the damage Shadow Shot does up – the skill does a lot, yes. And if you want defense you have to take SA – and in fact we were discussing SA, so I wasn’t off topic at all and don’t have to step away from anything. (ETA: Alright, that was in the other thread – still it wasn’t the main point I was making but an example).
Of course D/P can make use of any other traitlines, unlike other thief sets as they’ve got enough free cards.
I think you’re the weird one – try another set than D/P
ETA: And in fact if I wanted to counter a D/P thief, I’d go Scrapper or anything – that’s no argument – I want the set I enjoy the most to be viable again. Otherwise we all could just play the same class with the same build – doesn’t make sense, does it?
ETA: You mean Rending shades – I don’t see a use for that actually – but I’d probably have to try it. In the end it only works against aegis, all other blocks aren’t boons and there’s a lot of them around. And well a lot of people have got more than 1,2 or 3 boons.
If you want to deal enough dmg to be competitive SA is a lost cause even if it might be fun in some ways. The newly added trait won’t get you any dmg benefits it’s only 1 more defensive trait, which is not something SA lacked anyways. So now you’ll have to choose between healing tics in stealth vs 10% less dmg from enemies that don’t have buffs (which seems to me a fairly unlikely realistic scenario). Nothing that would boost your dmg so you can actually use SA in real fights (without considering the phantom ebola build, which is bs anyways).
SA does lack defensive traits – it isn’t a real defensive line anymore.
Hard to explain – back in the day you could use last refuge which now is a Major, so you have to decide whether you want to take Shadows Embrace or Last Refuge. Everybody who takes SA takes SE anyway, so last refuge and with that the reduced cooldown for hide in shadows is out of reach = you get a longer cooldown than before June last year = no one takes it anymore anyway. It was a good skill for D/D – also defensive.
Then we have: CiS as a major which collides with SRej and so on – the line has got half the sustain it used to have.
I don’t really see the benefits of the new trait either, but I didn’t test it as I rage quit the game pretty soon after the patch.
ETA: Last Refuge didn’t bother me – I guess my timing was pretty watertight – it only troubled me when I was lagging.
