Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

Won’t the cast time not allow you to cast it while stunned though?

Edit: I would also like to thank you for sticking around in these forums to address concerns over the new patch notes. Last time they were given a month in advance, then they hit with little to no change or discussion. This is one of the best discussions we’ve had it the last year and few months.

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

(As a joke it’s an infinitely large % change to cast time: 360 ms/x ms=>? as x approaches 0)

Frenk.5917:

Dekk.3459:

I haven’t seen a post noting a change to SA IV would you mind linking that? Since that would be nail in the class coffin IMO.

That change has ALREADY been done several weeks ago.

That was a tooltip error at the time the last patch hit. The tooltip has since been fixed, but it was not noted in the last bug fixing patch.

Kaizer.7135:

Dekk.3459:

Kaizer.7135:

IS/SR needed a nerf, it acted as a stun break and a condition cleanse with no cooldown and 1200 range.

Warrior is my second main but he doesn’t even have a third of the play time I have on my Thief because they’re so easy to play. Which makes it really boring imo.

GTFO of thief forums. Most S/D builds dont use SA so there is not another condi removal you would trait or take opposed to many other builds. So again GTFO

Are you telling me if you don’t take condi removal you won’t be able to remove conditions!?

/mindblown

I think what he’s saying is most thief condi removal relies on a single trait. Our best utility condi removal is our best stunbreak so it has a competing role. Compared to warrior we have limited options for condi removal traits. If you like the warrior defense line, you can pick up CI, and if you like tactics you have access to lung capacity for condition removal. In addition, the powerful condi removal/prevention traits aren’t in direct competition with the best stunbreaks.

Edit: Another thought, is that they could reduce the range of return to 600 also which would still be a significant nerf but not entirely break the usefulness of S/X.

Any chance of a tweak to Dancing dagger any time soon? It gets obstructed over flat ground a lot lately and at close to max range it often says out of range once it reaches the target ev en though there was no red bar under the skill.

DesertRose.2031:

Nilgoow.1037:

Fitting a function to the respective curves shows that a thief with 57% crit hitting one target once every second will go from around 0.218/s to 0.113/s, a decrease of around half.

Assuming this and that the numbers in this thread are correct said Thief with Assassin’s Signet and two other Signets, 15 points in Trickery and using every Signet and Steal on recharge has slightly more initiative after the patch due to the passive 0.250 increase (if I haven’t miscalculated).

Going to have to agree with you (on opportunist change alone, I haven’t looked at anything else) but at least to 2 attacks per second it is a slight buff. I suspect for 3 and over there is a breakover point in critical chance that this will be a nerf to, but for my D/D power build in close combat it’s a buff. With SB in a zerg fight it is probably a nerf at some point.

Did you use matlab for that?

Ok Jon, I ran some more numbers and came to the conclusion that overall the initiative change is a minor buff (imo) for my D/D build. I still think it would be a nerf to builds that have more hits per second than the dagger auto attack. It’s not a definite buff exactly but for my 50% ish crit chance it’s a probable buff around 70% of the time and a nerf around 13% of the time. With fury its a buff around 60% of the time and a nerf around 22% of the time. It’s a weird change to the probability distribution that buffs the base and caps the top. I don’t want to keep taking the time to find the area under the curves (because I have to do it by hand) but I wanted to come back to say for only 2 hits a second it’s a buff (imo, at least at 70% crit chance). Whether the reduction in cap or the increase in minimum is a buff or a nerf is opinion, but at least there’s a numerical probability of the regen rate associated with it.

Still not happy about the vigor nerf. Neutral on this change. Still not happy that it’s rewarding less aggressive play but happy that it’s not in fact a nerf in disguise.

Kincaidia.3192:

No, the math says it will NOT work as good as it currently does. Godangit, where is all this “the math says it’s fine!” coming from when I haven’t seen a single graph, formula, or even detailed synopsis of it actually being equivalent?

Here is a graph of the probability of gaining initiative for 4 seconds of dagger autoattack. This change isn’t so much a nerf as a move to even out the gain of initiative while capping the current potential (which is a nerf in itself). It is not a massive buff and I tend to think it’s a minor nerf to aggressive playstyles and minor buff to relaxed playstyles which don’t keep up as much pressure. I am much more concerned about the nerf to vigorous recovery which was about a 66% uptime on the right build. Feline grace by itself is slightly worse than 100% vigor uptime. Those classes that have 100% vigor uptime also have access to ample amounts of protection, regen, and stability. I thought the point of combining FG with Vigor was to make up for the lack of our other defensive boons.

Edit: Four seconds was chosen as a baseline to round 2 rounds of dagger auto attack to which also coincides with 3 initiative regen on the current system and 4 on the proposed.

Edit 2: For 2 attacks and under, it a minor buff. Additional math is in the opportunist thread, but I don’t feel like posting more of the same info everywhere.

Yggdrasil.7940:

JonPeters.5630:

Opportunist
This trait was wildly overpowered. I there was a 15 point minor for any other profession that basically read: "Reduce cooldown of all weapon skills by 33% [….]

Sorry but I really don’t understand ! Was the trait bugged somehow ?

Even at 100% crit, you would need 3.3 hits/sec to gain 1ini/sec.
Fastest thief attacks are multi-hit ones

• Unload = 8hits/2sec = 4hit/sec
• PW = 8 hits/2.75sec = 2.9hit/sec
  Then D/D:
• Dagger auto = 4hits/2sec = 2hits/sec.
  All others skills generate far less hit/sec (because of cast time/ini cost)

Are you nerfing this trait solely because of PW and Unload ?

I really cannot figure out how many hit/sec I’m throwing (no parser/no combat log export) but as I do not play S/P or P/P I can feel that I’m far from hitting once a second…….
I only have ~50% crit => 0.5*0.3 =0.15 = 15% chance to proc Opportunist (6.67 hits needed) With the fastest attack I can use => Dagger auto (2hit/sec => 1 ini every 3.3 sec => 1/3.3 => 0.30 ini/sec)
0.75 + 0.30 ini/sec = 1.05 ini/sec.

And the new ini regen is now 1ini/sec permanently.

I really don’t understand the theorycrafting behind this nerf, unless you want to tone down the trait because of the new regen (1ini/sec vs 0.75/sec) but in this case, the trait was not OP previously.

If my theorycrafting is shaky, feel free to enlighten me, I really love numbers ;-).

Since you like numbers, that’s sort of a rough way to estimate. You’ll never actually reach a guarantee of opportunist triggering, but the probability of it not triggering lowers exponentially with each hit.

Let’s say you have a 100% crit chance to make this easy, meaning opportunist has a 30% chance of working and a 70% chance of not working. So the easiest initial calculation is the chance that opportunist doesn’t trigger within a given number of hits (because theres a cooldown order matters and permutations aren’t fun for quick calculations).

So looking at it:
At 1 hit the odds of opportunist not proccing is .7=70%
at 2 this becomes .7*.7=.7^2=.49=49%
at 3=34.3%

So at 3 hits you have a roughly 65% chance of gaining at least 1 initiative. This might come in the form of a single bouncing arrow so every shot into a zerg (at 100%crit chance) had a 65% chance of gaining 1.
If this did not happen, the odds of 6 hits not triggering it in a row becomes a measly 11.7%. So at 100% crit chance in zerg fighting with SB you could have a 88.3% chance of initiative regen/sec of at least (2*.75 + 1)/2= 1.25 initiative per second. (there is a slim chance of gaining more encompassed by that chance, but I don’t want to calculate it right now)

I’m just trying to argue that this trait is not OP and scales directly with more aggressive playstyles which it seems the devs want. Initiative should be buffed and this should either be turned into a major trait or have the cooldown extended to 2 seconds to limit the fastest auto chain to 1 gain per chain, but that is only if the devs really think that we need a nerf along with the change. I think this would put us on par with the other classes to buff initiative regen and do nothing to this trait since all of our weapon skills across both weapon set use the same global cooldown. With any other class the most you have to worry about using a skill is that it puts that skill on cooldown. With thieves, you have to worry about all the possible skills you can use after that one has either hit or missed, and if you blow all of your initiative on one weapon you can’t even swap to the other to gain those weapon skills. You’re stuck.

Heizero.9183:

Alright in an attempt to pull the discussion back into the main idea I had: I believe it is still a mistake to nerf it because in order to get any play out of this trait you HAVE to be actively engaged. period. if you are not striking the trait does nothing.

I find it hard to call a trait that relies on a notoriously squishy class to actively engage in open combat to be effective “profession breaking”.

If anything, giving us another reason to say “hey let me just wait until this ICD is up to come back into the fight” is less than ideal.

Well put.

Here is a probability distribution of the current opportunist with dagger auto attack (2 rounds; a total of 4 seconds and 8 individual hits not affecting the next time frame). As you can see its not really overpowered for regular attacking. What it is severely going to hurt is builds like S/P and P/P who can fit more than 8 attacks into a 4 second time frame. Those builds do not need a nerf right now. (to read it you need to know the region of at least X to Y initiative gain versus the total area under the curve).

(As a side note, I think what bothers me most about this patch is it rewards less active/aggressive play through this and HtC)

Yes, but it takes entirely glass armor and trait selections. There’s no real halfway point on it since backstab (from the back ) only has a multiplier of 2.4. What you’re depending on is all of your traits and the use of all of your utilities to deliver such a hit. Other abilities that are channeled and some that are not (see eviscerate) have higher multipliers meaning you can spec more defensively and still deliver a very big hit. As an example, my toughness specced warrior typically hits higher crits on eviscerate than my semi-balanced thief does.

Backstab (no Assassins Signet):1770
Backstab ( + Assassins Signet):1929

Evis (level 2, no Signet of might): 1960
Evis (level 3, no SoM): 2352

Evis (level 2 + SoM): 2141
Evis (level 3 + SoM): 2570

The Thief has 2011 base power
The warrior has only 1943 base power (and 3200 armor and 19500 health).

TL:DR Thieves are very dependent on traits for their damage leading them to either lose effectiveness in ability to kill when traited for sustain or vise versa.

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

It is an incredible buff to this profession and should not be treated lightly. To counter this imagine we took a few weapons and took away the cooldown portion of their trait. They would still be 5% better but other weapons would be 25% better.

Among the changes that is basically what it amounts to, with the exception of one change which I’ll talk about next.

Opportunist
This trait was wildly overpowered. I there was a 15 point minor for any other profession that basically read: "Reduce cooldown of all weapon skills by 33%, it would basically be impossible to run that profession without putting 15 points into that line. Because of this every thief build that is effective uses this line, which improves crit and crit damage. This pigeonholes this profession in a way that makes it frustrating for players and developers. This trait has to be closer to an 8% increase if we expect people to consider not taking 15 point in critical strikes.

By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to. There are a lot of good traits that simply will never see play until we make this change.

Hopefully this explains, in more detail, what we hope to accomplish here.

TLDR; Thieves with 15+ in critical strikes and no other initiative traits will be slightly less efficient. All other thieves will be equally or more efficient.

Jon

If it really is overpowered for a minor trait, switch it with something like practiced tolerance and then move that that new VI trait to the major line. Swap it with something like ankle shots so that a condi-pistol user doesn’t have to spec 20 into a line that’s not going to help them in the slightest. The result would help condi-pistol users and crit based thieves who still need the initiative regen to help the sustain of something like D/D.

JonPeters.5630:

I said it in he other thread but this trait has to get hit hard because it is breaking the profession. We need to push the effectiveness of this trait into base thief functionality. If any other profession had a trait that reduced weapon cooldown by 30% for all weapons as a 15 point minor we would have to balance around that. A single trait shouldn’t be holding thief balance hostage so we will steal from this trait, no pun intended, and impart the savings on to every build via base initiative regeneration.

Jon

The difference is though that it’s a 30% recharge to a single attack at a time. All of our weapon skills recharge in series while all other professions recharge in parallel. With each skill affecting the next that can be used, this helps to push some semblance of being on par with other classes’ inherent recharge rate, especially when the global cooldown is shared amongst both of our equipped weapons. When you look at this compared to something like a guard’s two handed mastery (I realize one’s a major and one’s a minor) it’s barely on par. Also in that same line guards can get perma-vigor for a 5 point minor trait. To get effectiveness thats the same /(slightly) better, we end up having to take at least 15 points into the line plus an adept major trait (which is getting nerfed). The base initiative regen boost is needed, but the simultaneous nerf is going to seriously affect power-crit builds which are already “meh” in a dire-condition meta.

vincecontix.1264:

S/x doesn’t have enough burst to force a bunker off point(though nothing can really kill a decent bunker with in a reasonably timer frame) and it gets countered by mesmers and it will be much worse after patch no point in learning now dude. D/x specs will be much better it almost all aspects of the game.

^^^^^ This. S/D had it’s advantage over D/X in that it could push bunkers off of points and kill them (after a prolonged fight if they knew how to use wards or time any abilities). The nerf to LS removed that advantage since you pretty much just pull off the disposable boons now (prot for hammer, retal, vigor….etc.). You wait for the abilities to wear off naturally now anyway so you might as well have poison on your autoattack to kill the regen and spike damage on top of it.

I don’t know if you’re going to come back and check this thread chap, but Dancing dagger really needs some help. Lately it misses/ is obstructed unless you’re within about 400 range, so it really makes sense to use heartseeker if youre D/D that is at least. Could you guys maybe increase flight speed by 30% like you did to arrows a while ago or adjust the skill to do something ….different?

I like the idea of giving another rollover skill to it really. Remove the bounce, keep the current damage and when it hits you get a roll skill for 15 seconds(lets just call it augury of death for now). The symbol could be something similar to impale for a warrior sword OH #4.

Augury of death would cost 2 initiative, be instant cast, shadow step you to your target, remove 1 condition, and deal no damage. I think this could help P/D and D/D because it would allow a real gap closer for both. It would be sort of the opposite of Infiltrator Strike/Return and promote more aggressive play with those two specs leading to more build diversity which it seems you are trying to promote right now.

Well, in an effort to stay positive this is the build I’m currently using. Does decent in both 1v1’s and picking off targets in a zerg. Add your preferred food when you look if you’re curious.

Last time the preview pretty much came out exactly as they posted it would, so here’s the foreseeable changes:

Base initiative increase
Opportunist nerf
Vigorous Recovery nerf
Quick Recovery nerf
Practiced Tolerance Buff

In light of the initiative changes, NOT including opportunist calculations it nets 9.5 initiative every 10 seconds. After the change it will net 11 initiative every 10 seconds. Both of those DO NOT include opportunist (so don’t jump on me whether it’s a boost or a nerf).

The only thing I’m pretty bummed about is the change to vigorous recovery which really helped this build out since the D/D evade skill is (subjectively) crap.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlYmiOHfy4E+5Ey2jdqC5JOFOVS1pgrsKA-jECBYLCikFQEBgUBAZPFRjtMsIas6aYKXER1A-w

Hype.8032:

Chicago Jack.5647:

Hype.8032:

How is that possible if s/d is so faceroll OP/easy? They both reward good play and punish bad.

This really is not hard to understand. One has perma-evade, the other does not. In one you have to be as unpredictable as possible, you have to land your interrupts on important skills and land your steals, you have to use cross-weapon combinations to pull things off effectively, you have to count dodges, you have to know when to go on the offensive and when to go on the defensive. In the other, you have to press 3 for dayz with a few 1+dodge thrown in with a 2 setup if something goes wrong. It is not hard to play s/d for similar reasons why it’s not hard to play a Warrior who doesn’t have to worry about activating his heal skill. Only Warrior is even worse of a cheese offender because he has a higher health pool, more armor, and a potential 3 condition condi clear on burst.

There is NO differentiation between a bad S/D player and a good one. Hopefully these changes WILL introduce some type of differentiation between a good S/D player and a bad one. Hopefully the bad ones will have to peel more often, reducing dps pressure. There are reasons why upper-level players left the game, and S/D theefs are part of that reason.

And d/p has blind/interrupt spam. I got within the top 200 in solo queue using d/p, I know it very well. I also find it a lot easier to fight against warriors with d/p than s/d. It’s not that hard to hit #5 and fight around that small circle. This change won’t make bad thieves peel more (they won’t be able to peel not having the pseudo-stunbreak). Also, you won’t see a difference between good and bad s/d thieves because no one will be playing it. Don’t believe me? I guess we’ll see soon enough.

S/D needs a higher skill ceiling and this isn’t helping it. Making tactical strike and dancing dagger worth using would achieve that though. But hell… that’d be a buff now wouldn’kitten

Like unsplitting it from PvE and unnerfing Dancing dagger so S1, 4, and 5 would be worth the initiative again? Thats how I was playing it in WvW but 1v1’s with a good boon bunkers became way too drawn out after the nerf to LS. Went back to D/P non-permastealth, but it doesn’t have quite enough damage (for my build) and ended back in D/D. This time my build is eating a nerf to vigorous recovery (which I think was targeted because of S/D). I’ll see how much it suffers with this nerf. Could be another stealth trap/ sic ’em situation.

Back on topic: S/D needs to be unsplit in PvP at the same time this change is instituted to make it work more harmoniously especially after the change to daze/stuns (looking as you TS). I doubt that will ever happen though.

Axe auto attack to half => eviscerate
Pindown => Combustive Shot => Arcing Shot
Sword Auto => Shield Bash => Final Thrust

in addition to stunlocking

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Oghier.7419:

D/D didn’t get nerfed. Increasing base initiative gain by 33% is a pretty big deal.

It’s more than a big deal. It’s a MASSSSSSSSSIVE buff to all thief specs.

Can we not nerf vigor access though? For a class thats supposed to evade/dodge more a 50% nerf to the effectiveness of our only defensive boon seems huge.

We will still have too many evades. The reasoning behind nerfing vigor literally said (paraphrasing) “thief is dodging too much.” This change won’t affect that.

Peow peow.2189:

imo infi strike needed this change. It was just to easy to stay alive unless you the player decided to over commit. WIth the change coming to PW S/D could be back in action

Any player who knew how to fight thieves though would just fight you over the place you ported from which was only 600 away unless combined with steal. Also since it doesn’t break channels anyone fighting you with a ranged weapon barely notices you did anything other than make their character pivot slightly.

Neoheart.2750:

The traits are being nerfed so that they cannot be used and abused along with the base ini buff.

Look at it this way, if your using a cheese build on d/p I.e perma stealth or s/d evade spamming then you’ve been nerfed. Otherwise it’s a buff.

What if you were one of the people hanging on to D/D with 15 in acro? That vigor nerf is going to hit pretty hard. In fact it will hurt double S/D evade spam less than the builds they are trying to push (which is SOP when it comes to thief balance anyway.).

evilapprentice.6379:

Snip

Opportunist -50% change to regain 1 init AND Strip 1 boon on crit, 5s ICD

snip

Woah woah woah! Do you want to put on a traited ICD what mesmer has on their sword auto attack?!!! Preposterous!

Shinjo.6092:

D/D thieves did not get buffed. The .25 increase per second in init regen gives us 1 more init every 4 seconds, which means we can do an extra CnD every 24 seconds. Considering how fast your life drops as a D/D thief, you’re most likely already running for your life when that 24 second mark rolls around and your target isn’t dead yet.

Not only that, the increase is negated by the huge nerf to Opportunist. At 50% chance in 5 seconds, I get an expected value of 1 init every 10 seconds, compare to the previous 30% in 1 second, which is approximately 4 init in 10 seconds (This is based on 100% crit chance, the gain is even worst for lower crit chance).

That is a drop of 3 init in 10 seconds. We recover 2.5 init in the same timeframe from the regen “buff”.

To add to this, we no longer get the extra init if we chain our stealth utilities from the nerf to infusion of shadows.

So yeah, I’d consider this a nerf for D/D too, especially if you’re running the 0/30/30/10/0 build, which the OP was running.

Not to mention if he was 0/30/30/10/0 he might have been using vigorous recovery which is eating a huge nerf. The stated reason for this nerf seemed to be related to S/D evasion builds, but again, it’s not going to hit their intended target, it’s going to hit the collateral builds harder. The vigorous recovery was really helting the survivability of my latest D/D build (0/30/20/20/0) but well see how it goes. Also no one seems to have mentioned it (or I missed it), but the nerf to opportunist is going to affect our ZvZ capabilities (the little we had) when our bouncing arrows and cluster bombs can only proc it once every 5 seconds now. Sorta depended on those to be able to use SB#3 in tough spots or keep up any semblance of DPS with cluster bomb.

Viking Jorun.5413:

For all intensive purposes, Braveheart was a warrior who fought because they killed his love. I don’t think we’ll ever be on his level.

The thief is our love! :P

Viking Jorun.5413:

Daendur.2357:

i’ll keep everything untouched.

I’m actually doing the same… Somehow the build I’ve been using has managed to avoid the nerf bat since February, and has only managed to grab some minor buffs here and there, as well as some pretty substantial ones. Steering clear of straight DPS builds seems to be the way to go if you want long-lasting builds.

Considering I was S/D balanced up till the last balance patch that’s not entirely true. Switched back to D/P and my playstyle won’t be nerfed during this round (except for the vigor part). 0/30/20/20/0 D/P+SB played like S/P is decent. We’ll see how it pans out. I already have a warrior and engi at 80 and a mes at 60. I’m not leaving, I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.

Nike.2631:

evilapprentice.6379:

So, what do we do? We make a stink.

You will NEVER make more of a stink than thieves made for themselves from the perspective of seven other class communities.

Perma-stealth needed to die in fire.

Off-meta builds get some love with faster general initiative gain and a few scattered buffs to traits that have nothing to do with stealth-heavy builds. Thieve experience more risk from certain types of builds while still remaining hands down the class most capable of disengaging from any fight at will.

The endless refrain to people driven to the brink of hysteria by thieves’ bloody IMMORTALTY via stealth has been “learn to play”.

Learn to play.

Something else will be complained about. “Initiative regen will give S/D #3 spam too many evades” or something similar…. Thieves will always be complained about. Even S/P in its current state gets complained about.

Already mentioned the vigor uptime thing on about page 4 of the thread. Pistolwhip reduction between the stun and flurry again? How much time was there between the stun and flurry in the first place? More sword nerfs. Oh well.

Edit: an afterthought, they seem to be pushing mainhand dagger even more with the vigor nerf. Gaining endurance on autoattack is going to become a lot better.

So I’m partially happy and partially bummed about the changes to thief.

No more gaining initiative with multiple jumps through black powder-yay!

Baseline initiative regen higher-yay!

Vigor uptime reduced in a Defensive traitline…..-do not like—-Eles, Mesmers, and guards can gain vigor on a crit 100% chance for 5 seconds every 5 seconds. I know we have feline grace, but alone that’s one more up front dodge than normal then after that it is slightly worse than the 100% uptime on vigor. It really finds it’s strength on the class supposed to survive by dodging when paired with other initiative regen, so this seems like a move in the wrong direction on vigorous recovery. This may be fine with the increase to initiative regen so weapon skill could be used in place of dodges, but if that happens could you make those weapon skills with evasion frames interrupt the current action. Nothing is more disappointing then using a weapon dodge but due to a previous aftercast or current ability it goes off after you’ve been hit by that one big attack.

No mention of putting reliable condition removal (not an icd trait) in the acrobatics line…-It would be nice to trait out of shadow arts entirely but the current condition spam meta won’t really allow that if you wan’t sustain instead of burst. Something like putting condi removal on dodge in a master tier (letting fleet of foot apply to all condis and severely reducing icd). Single condi removal on dodge would be similar to traited eles getting cleansing wave on dodge, without the health gain and only for personal use. If you used it for burst cleansing then it would still only clear 3 condis at that time and then leave you with no dodges for the fight.

Pistol Whip further reducing time between stun and flurry-yayish? The problem I have with this skill is that the stun takes long enough to fire that it can’t be used to actively interrupt or as a dodge like flanking strike can. Maybe having it work more like shadow shot where the first hit is almost instant would be a better way to go.

I don’t particularly care for another sword nerf. If “infiltrator’s return” is getting a cast time does that mean it can no longer be used as a port backwards while stunned? With all the knockback and fear going around it was at least nice to not be run off a cliff if it wasn’t truly breaking the stun.

Thanks for reading.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Kolly.9872:

The only difference is that in the case of warriors there are no false accusations. warriors are really OP

L2P noob. Make a warrior, play around with it. Find out what a warrior does by playing one yourself.

Am I doing this right? Thats an average of 42 minutes a day on the warrior since the game came out. They’re a little over the top right now, but as thief has been my main since day 1 I know what happens to classes when people cry OP loud enough and long enough warranted or not, which is why I’m hesitant to make such assertions.

It’s not stealthless, but D/D is viable in wvw at least. Test targets with a shortbow and poison them while evading attacks. Once their health hits somewhere around 50% switch and burst. The shortbow plinking will give you an idea of how much health/armor they have to determine whether or not to even try the burst.

The rest of the community is already on that. Something like the first 5 threads were some form of nerf warrior last time I checked.

@Sanduskel

Others lay out an argument as to why the thief is inferior to “X” either percieved or true. While not all of your posts are just “thieves are fine” and “lol I don’t need permastealth” your comments lack the reasoning behind them. An example of the format that would lead to more constructive discourse: “thieves are fine because on my [build] I can still accomplish [thing unique to thief]. Try this and modify it and you’ll see what I mean.” If people agreed or disagreed with you, you’d have far more sway than just saying “we’re fine, you rely on permastealth too much.”

Cool looking thieves you say? How about shadow demons instead!

They fixed the tooltip on SE, but it didn’t make the patch notes…..

Well, since I switched back to a D/D semi-burst build I have a feeling thats back up on the chopping block. Maybe reduced radius of shortbow AoE skills too. I’ll leave this here though, after not having to play against it for so long a lot of people don’t know how to play against D/D anymore.

I’d like to know also (seriously not being sarcastic). During the SotGs all we see how excited the devs get of the buffs/changes coming to other classes then hear how 1 of our 2 specs (the evasive one not the blind/stealth spam one) is just a little too effective. It’d be nice if one of the devs who main thief could handle the previews or maybe one of the SotGs to give a voice to the thief.

Been watching this thread for a while, but wanted to wait till I had more playtime with the patch underneath my belt before I decided. A-Net pretty much said they want us to burst. The S/D sustain build I was running got nerfed (again) while leaving D/D and D/P untouched. Try a D/P build played like an S/P build. This round of balancing was frustrating because they removed some of our options, but I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet on my thief. I will keep leveling alts though as I’m not sure they’re done with their balancing.

PVT for armor only at the most. More than that really starts limiting your damage. The survivability you gain from more than that starts to hurt you because it gives people more time to react and you really need to keep up the constant pressure.

Alternatively if you aren’t great at dodging the big attacks yet PVT armor with zerk everything else is a great intermediate step. 25/30/0/0/15 is a good damage spec, but I prefer more dodges so right now I’m 15/30/0/25/0 which is still (slightly less) good damage but survivable till you learn the ropes. Vigor on heal (acro III) + feline grace + withdraw will keep you alive for a very long time.

D/D and S/P both work well in PVE at this point. Keep a SB in your secondary slot to get to people to rez faster.

Well, it might be your build at this point. I’ve been using S/D for about half a year now and nerfs to 3/5 abilities across the board and an additional one in PvP is sorta hard to swallow, but this weekend I came to the realization that A-Net doesn’t want us to try to sustain in combat. We’re just supposed to hit hard and fast then get out. Our escapes are alright comparatively speaking. I mean I can escape better on my thief than on my warrior, but I often don’t have to escape on my warrior. What we do excel at though is sticking to a single target that your team has called out, and if you can’t kill them, you can pester them so they contribute less to their team.

Drop the sustain build. You won’t outlast the majority of other classes while maintaining decent damage. Go for a burst or modified burst build and you’ll find your niche.

Until they fix the sword builds I’m sticking with D/P 15/30/0/25/0. PVT armor, zerk everything else. Minimal stealth, alright initiative regen (acro IX), the ability to interrupt stomps, blind stomping, and the ability to stick to your target like glue. D/P #3 is your best friend.

tl; dr: Our role is now the blind spam (and stealth spam if you like that style) that everyone hates. If nothing else, stick with the class to troll harder.

For all other playstyles (balanced, bunker, condispam, control, etc) other classes fit the bill better.

Maderas.9741:

Maugetarr.6823:

So quick question just so we can clear this up. How much armor do you have? You keep saying you’re full dire exo, but under 3k armor. I don’t consider armor high until they hit about 3100. That would be why we asked for a full screenshot in the first place.

With exotic Dire armor/weapons and ascended Rabid accessories you sit around 2700 armor. I don’t even know that it’s possible to hit 3100 armor as a medium armor wearer unless I either a) severely kitten my damage output and basically go full bunker or b) invest heavily into the toughness trait line; neither of which I think is a reasonable price to pay simply so that I don’t instantly die to any glass cannon thief who happens to look in my direction.

Ok, just to clarify further then, what class are you? You said 2700 armor as a medium armor wearer.

Maderas.9741:

keenlam.4753:

So OP got ganked by a thief while busying doing something else and not paying enough attention. No breaking news here. It happens quite often in WvW.

For a class that is specifically designed to rely on the element of surprise to prevail, I think it’s working as intended.

Get over it, learn from it and be more cautious next time.

By “not paying enough attention” you must mean “a thief came across someone engaged in a fight and got a free kill, because it’s completely reasonable that the only way to not be instakilled by a thief is to reserve every single one of your dodges and stunbreaks for the off chance that some thief might decide to try to gank you.” Doesn’t matter if you’re running toughness/vita gear or building tank; no, if a thief expends the effort to use Steal on you and you don’t time your dodge perfectly, you deserve to be slaughtered in seconds. Balance.

Incurafy.6329:

And another person wholly incapable of reading that he meant 3000 armour (as seen in the calculations), not toughness, which is exactly what you claim to have had.

I’m not even going to bother replying to your previous post, it’s just so full of bullkitten that it would be a waste of my time to even try and reason with you.

How about next time you take a screenshot of the entire screen, including your equipment and stats so that we can actually know what the hell you’re talking about? Your OP had literally no information and then you got all defensive and cried foul when you were called out on your bullkitten.

I also find it absolutely hilarious that you refuse to acknowledge the fact that you weren’t killed without time to react and had at LEAST four seconds to react, lol.

Learn to play, it’s as simple as that.

I’ve never once claimed to have over 3000 armor or toughness, so I really have no idea what you’re even talking about. Again, you are wrong. My OP had the combat log, and I listed what equipment I was using. I’m not taking individual screenshots of every single piece of equipment + tooltip so you all can immediately start accusing me of finding them online, doctoring them, or having taken them on a different character. Like I said, it’s already been established that you will keep moving the goalposts to support your viewpoints. Why should I waste the effort?

I also like how my reaction window keeps shrinking. First it was seven or eight seconds, then five or six, now you’re saying four.

So quick question just so we can clear this up. How much armor do you have? You keep saying you’re full dire exo, but under 3k armor. I don’t consider armor high until they hit about 3100. That would be why we asked for a full screenshot in the first place.

Burnfall.9573:

With sincerity, i believe everything the Op stated including his/her factual evidence.

To the thief class; without being in denial, you clearly know that the Op is telling the truth.

My question to the thief class, how many more evidence will it take for you to finally believe what you’ve done is wrong and need to be fixed?

Seriously,

I have been killed so much by this class, I’ve become immune to their 1-2-3 kills.

So what i’ve been doing lately is, whenever i encounter a thief or thieves, i just stand there and give them my body, afterall; it’s not worth fighting for what is already dead.

Oh, you’re one of those rangers that doesn’t bother dodging, blocking, knocking back, fearing, immobilizing, dazing or attempting any of the other myriad of skills rangers have to counter thieves? Explains a lot. Again, roll a thief so you can see what others do to counter you.

Maderas.9741:

Maugetarr.6823:

Maderas.9741:

Maugetarr.6823:

Maderas.9741:

Ghostwolf.9863:

And why on earth should toughness and vitality stacking be acceptable if there wasn’t a counter? As Jesus would have said; as the counterer counters you, you shall counter the counterer by dodging at the right moment, using blocks, stunbreakers etc.

This is probably what the thief that gibbed you were using.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onzIWX-AQV8

And this thief is far above the average thief you find in WvW.

So what counters glass cannon thieves if toughness/vita builds don’t? I thought condition damage was supposed to counter defenses, not raw burst.

1 dodge (not the backstab but the telegraphed C&D)

You’re being disingenuous and you know it. Dodging the first Cloak and Dagger does not allow you to “kill the thief with autoattacks”.

No, I’m not. But I’ll give you the same advice that we give all the people who come here. Make a thief with the same build. Try to pull this off yourself. It probably was the yski’s build so the link is already there. When tanks hit you back with 3k autos on your 11-14k healthpool you’ll see it can be countered with a dodge and autos. If you want to really have fun, throw in an immobilize and watch the thief squirm.

I’m not going to level a thief to 80 and grind out full exotic with ascended trinkets just to prove what’s already plainly visible in that screenshot. As someone else already said, the build isn’t nearly as hilariously broken in sPvP because of the lack of stat bloat.

Stat bloat goes both ways.

Maderas.9741:

Maugetarr.6823:

Maderas.9741:

Ghostwolf.9863:

And why on earth should toughness and vitality stacking be acceptable if there wasn’t a counter? As Jesus would have said; as the counterer counters you, you shall counter the counterer by dodging at the right moment, using blocks, stunbreakers etc.

This is probably what the thief that gibbed you were using.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onzIWX-AQV8

And this thief is far above the average thief you find in WvW.

So what counters glass cannon thieves if toughness/vita builds don’t? I thought condition damage was supposed to counter defenses, not raw burst.

1 dodge (not the backstab but the telegraphed C&D)

You’re being disingenuous and you know it. Dodging the first Cloak and Dagger does not allow you to “kill the thief with autoattacks”.

No, I’m not. But I’ll give you the same advice that we give all the people who come here. Make a thief with the same build. Try to pull this off yourself. It probably was the yski’s build so the link is already there. When tanks hit you back with 3k autos on your 11-14k healthpool you’ll see it can be countered with a dodge and autos. If you want to really have fun, throw in an immobilize and watch the thief squirm.

Maderas.9741:

Ghostwolf.9863:

And why on earth should toughness and vitality stacking be acceptable if there wasn’t a counter? As Jesus would have said; as the counterer counters you, you shall counter the counterer by dodging at the right moment, using blocks, stunbreakers etc.

This is probably what the thief that gibbed you were using.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onzIWX-AQV8

And this thief is far above the average thief you find in WvW.

So what counters glass cannon thieves if toughness/vita builds don’t? I thought condition damage was supposed to counter defenses, not raw burst.

1 dodge (not the backstab but the telegraphed C&D)

Maderas.9741:

Clumsy.6257:

2. D/p sacrifices somewhere close to 1/3 our damage (haven’t tested except by paying attention to my Backstab hits) to have the traits for perma-stealth.

So instead of doing close to 30,000 damage in the span of a few seconds, you’d do 20,000?

Much less actually as it would more than double the time it takes to stealth (not including after cast). Furthermore you most likely lose out on a 10% damage boost from your initiative dropping below 6 to pull it off. Also if it failed you would not have the initiative left over to restealth or use shortbow to run.

Fungalfoot.7213:

Maugetarr.6823:

Edit: To further explain what is meant by “you can’t spam stealth and be glass cannon”: It takes investment in non-offensive traitlines to be able to spam stealth. What you most likely got hit by was a 3(4) signet thief. It literally takes dodging the 1 big hit and then auto attacks will kill them as all of their utilities are dedicated to offense and used in the span of about 2 seconds.

Let’s not kid anyone here, even when investing points in defensive traitlines a thief in full zerker still hit like a truck. Especially in WvWvW with ascended weapons. Stats are more leveled in SPvP and it isn’t as big of an issue there. It’s also kind of stupid to expect people to somehow magically dodge invisible attacks just at the right moment. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Unless you have a lengthy evade or block your two dodges won’t get you far. In group fights it’s just not going to happen.

Actually thieves don’t hit very kittence you start investing in their defensive traitlines relative to other classes. Go read through the damage coefficients and you’ll see what i mean. What makes the thief damage seem outrageous is a bunch of damage modifiers (in the offensive lines) coming together simultaneously.

Edit: HxAxRxD OxNxCxE apparently trips the profanity filter……