Guild Wars 2

AshinDreidon.3861:

Cynz.9437:

wouldn’t be venom share thief better off with condi spec?

I run venom share with Barbarian amulet/jewel and as s/d shortbow. This is just my personal preference, but I think the vit from Barb helps with the sustain. Since a decent amount of utilities need to be devoted to venoms, I think s/d and high vitality rounds out the build a bit and keeps it safe while still outputting decent damage. The vitality boost makes up for the lack of acro spec.

After patch S/D won’t be viable, especially on a venom share build.

Just go P/D ( or even P/P) with carrion/rampager ( with the new buff to sundering strikes it may be quite good) and just spam body shot with your venoms while your teammates annhilate your opponent ( as long as you cycle your attacks, simply to avoid cleansing the whole immo stack).

New thief meta, probably the only possible one after 10th december.

Venom share.

Nothing more.

D/P burst will be effectively buffed, the point is that with so many stuns-condies running around, staying out of the fight spamming with a nerfed shortbow won’t be good enough, since GS mesmers can do pretty much the same sustained damage from MORE range while also giving strong support via CCs ( diversion), portal and null field, while ALSO being able to burst effectively from 200 range ( while also being one of the most effective counters to wars, and even more after the damage nerf).

Shadow refuge is still an ability able by itself to guarantee a place for the thief, but sincerely going DPS is futile since your DPS is subpar when compared to other dps classes ( mesmer above all), same for your utility.

Venom share will be worth tough, at least till they nerf immo stacking.

Source: main thief, alt mesmer-necro, believing to play them very well.

Hyxorcisten.5786:

Justin ODell.9517:

@garethh.3518 – I don’t agree with you as far as something being a flop, but I will say that the progress we’ve made so far is only part of the puzzle that we need to complete before we can consider PvP to be successful.

Teamqueing leads to facing people that arent even on the leaderboards becomes everyone quit, we still havent gotten anything from having been the best at the game since gokitten release now aside from 400ish in dollars. Not a single top player, regardless of skill or charisma can get anywhere close to a twitch partnership due to how abyssmally viewed this game is.

EU couldn’t get the bloody tech oturnament going because it couldnt even get enough teams to play for it, and they looked everywhere and would accept bad teams. They’d also accept pugs.

Every single feature, from matchmaking to custom arenas to your absolutely hilarious leaderboards (azhene enjoying that r1 man) are completely broken beyond belief or extremely sub par even when compared to indie games.’’

Fact is, even with all the technical issues to the games mmr etc we’d never hit an esport status on the games worth alone because the balance don’t understand the game well enugh to do their job which leads to the frusterating gameplay and insanely low skillcap we have today =).

Could you repeat that pvp isnt a flop after reading this and you see us reaching an esport?

BADUUMMMM TSSSSS

Hyxorcisten for president !!!

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mrbig.8019:

Excalibur.9748:

— Shadow Return — this skill is certainly a culprit for a strong build but adding a cast time is going to have negative long term effects for thief sword builds — fear a thief with their stunbreak down after they use Infiltrator’s Strike = gg

Lol shadow return never did anything against fear ever since they removed the stunbreak. You still keep on running even after you port back.

Not true.

Fear is a condition, and it has also a very high priority.

Shadw return cleansed fear if it didn’t proc burning with a dhuumfire crit. Same for signet of agility.

But it’s not the point: instant shadow return allowed the thief to teleport away from necros-engie condi spam after a stun/wars stunlocks, now it won’t be possible anymore.

basically you’l be dead after the first stunbreak. If this is the case than there’s no point in bringing sword over a dagger ( since dagger deals more damage).

Sad part is that dagger is not capable to handle common meta builds ( reason why most D/P lovers quit the game, also due to D/P being one of the highest skill cap sets in the whole game).

thief won’t be viable after this patch.

So you will have many many dodges, more initiative (base) and still a stunbreaker. And you are saying 1 stun after the first stun and you are dead? If you get hit by several stuns like an idiot even when you will still have insane amounts of evasion then you really do suck. The game is dead because of skilless builds like s/d thief. Maybe this change will mean people actually have to dodge what you do rather than just rely on an OP teleport to get out of every bad situation

Acro S/D thief ini regen will be nerfed, math is your friend.

You’re talking like if you are not able to beat thieves on your necro.

Strange part is that a well played necro still wins against a thief, with inf strike current iteration.

This because Necro-ranger-war-engies are by far stronger than thieves anyway, and their presence in a team is much more impactful ( the moment when the meta assets and eles are no more present).

You always talk about nerfing, now you’re happy that the thief wil be happy.

TBH i would have been happy too ( altough this nerf is a terrible way to handle the S/D thief problem) if other meta builds had been nerfed too.

They won’t ( at least not enough) and thief is the only proff receiving the nerf hammer, basically making us disappear from the meta.

I’m not raging because i think it’s time for us to be underdogs after being at the top of the food chain for a good amout of time, what i question is the reason behind these changes.

This kind of nerf to the sword and the increased ini regen rate buff show clearly that aNet made terrible mistakes balancing the thief, and the result is that nobody likes it ( not even thief players).

Instead of nerf hammering like a boss, i think it would be better if they totally rehaul the profession, since it’s clear it’s not balanced and never will.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Hype.8032:

Can someone from Anet answer this question: do you plan for sword thieves to be tourney viable after this patch?

If the answer is no then please just come out and say it.

Yep, we do!

How?

legit question, since it won’t be viable.

Just like we said from leaked patch notes regarding dhuumfire that necros would completely dominate the meta.

They still do it.

Current wars exist due to them.

We’re still experiencing the effect of the “dhuumfire patch”.

2. Inf strike-shadow return

You’re killing sword thieves with this change.

Again, S/D thieves were not OP when compared to Necro-Engi-War-Spirit ranger which are still dominating the meta, unless you’re running heavy spike comps ( that still are not that viable).

Those professions won’t be nerfed enough.

You’re taking from us our only viable option while increasing our “potential” offensive options by increasing ini regen.

The point is that thief offense HAS NEVER BEEN THE ISSUE, the issue was THIEF CAPABILITY TO SUSTAIN HIMSELF.

With this nerf you’re taking it away from us, because not even the most skilled thief can resist to such condi spam-AoE spam-Stun spam meta: we’re dead in 2 shots, with or without inf strike.

3. Flanking strikes.

If you’re moving it, it needs to be buffed. The point however is that nobody will care about tricks because they’re simply underwhelming and, again thieves need to slot defensive utilities in order to stay alive

We’re not wars, nor engies, nor necros, nor spirit rangers.

keep this in mind, because it seems you’ve forgotten it.

4. Vigor

Removing heavy vigor uptimes is always a good thing. But you need to remove them from other professions too, otherwise the change makes no sense, and it’s just a no brainer nerf hammer against the thief.

Sorry for the long post.

JonPeters.5630:

I couldn’t find a thread to place this in. Here is a summary of what I have seen discussed on the thief changes and some more clarity into what our initial thoughts were and where we stand currently.

Initiative changes
We believe this is one of the most controversial but important changes this patch. The important thing to understand is that we have been and will playtest this a lot more before we push this change. The default rate of initiative regeneration was simply to low and was causing players to either take traits to suppliment it, or to have their effectiveness suffer. This is something that has to change. What these changes intend to do is to increase the power of every single thief build that is not running these traits, and to ever so slightly reduce the maximum amount of initiative you can have per second if you min/max those traits. I know its easy to theorycraft what is going to happen here and there is a lot of danger in that. It is hard to get a sense of this change without playing it, and believe me if I could I would let everyone test a change of this magnitude and gather some more empirical and data driven feedback, but currently our resources are limited, but we still believe that this is a change whose time has come. We will monitor it very carefully when we do release it to make sure it is working as intended.

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.)

Infusion of Shadow
For basic use this trait’s functionality is not going to change. By many players it was being used to grant some initiative when going into stealth. However there were some abusive builds that were using this to maintain very long stealth uptime without having to use their utility skills. The problem with this is that it lets them recharge those skills while in stealth, which takes away the risk associated with using them. We are ok with thieves blowing their cooldowns to have longer stealth, and we are ok with theives bouncing in and out of stealth, but we were not ok with thieves maintaining long duration stealth through abusing a single trait.

Flanking Strikes
I agree that this move may be overkill on the thief. We are currently discussing undoing it. The main motivation was that we really wanted to move Trickster to adept tier to encourge use of those utilities, and the most obvious candidate to move up was Flanking Strikes. This isn’t how we should be making that decision, so we will discuss this and get back to you.

Vigorous Recovery & Bountiful Theft
I’ve seen a lot of talk about this as well, and discussing this already this morning the current vigor is a bit too high, but we may have overdone the reduction. I was thinking about going back to 5s or 6s on Vigorous Recovery, and going back to 10s or 12s on Bountiful Theft.

Thanks,

Jon

I know my comment will get lost and you’ll never read it, but i’ll give it a try.

I consider myself a failry skilled thief.

I’m consistently top 200 in solo q and used to be top 200 too in team ladder before team queue became a ghost town.

I used to play against the best players in EU and still do it in solo queue, altough it’s a whole different world.

Without smurf accounts.

What you’re doing to the thief is a slap in the face.

1. Initiative changes

During thief profession life, you changed Ini regen tons of times ( yes i’m a beta player) till you decided to balance THE WHOLE PROFESSION on a certain regen ( 0.75 ps).

By increasing it, you’re basically saying you were wrong in everything. Now you nerfed the thief several times in order to balance it regarding the “max possible ini regen rate” and all your calculations were done basing on it.

Now overall max ini regen will be nerfed.

Our skills have been nerfed ( PW, HS, Mug, OH dagger, Tactical strike).

There’s no point in having more ini to spend if those skills you spend your ini with have no purpose.

And since you’re destroying the sword, we’re left with D/P, which is subpar and unmeaningful in PvP, due to current meta.

main reason why condi meta exists.

But hey, they nerfed mark of blood, now we’ll be fine

jmatb.6307:

Well very few people are really going to miss the S/D thief anyway so I’m fine with only a few dedicated people being able to make it work

So let’s just kill a build because people don’t like it ( they did it with burst thieves already).

On a sidenote:

I dislike necros fear spam
I dislike spirit rangers ( most of all)
I dislike engi bomb spam
I dislike warrior’s faceroll stun spam
I dislike guardian’s 40% stability uptime and almost uninterruptible block heal.

Plz remove them aNet.

loseridoit.2756:

If I were you I probably will post a support ticket to Anet.

Give your specs and etc and write a much better detail description of your lag problems.

Its one thing to say you have lag, its another thing to give ANet the proper data to diagnose either yours or their server problem

tech support is already full of people crying for the lag.

This is happening only in PvP for me, and it’s happening at prime time and has been like this from last update ( in my server, seafarer’s rest, people is complianing about lag issues too).

jmatb.6307:

I don’t think S/D is gonna be taken out entirely.

Lyssa, Sig of Agility, and Feline grace still give you plenty of dodges, it’s just that you can’t engage/disengage whenever you want with no consequence with Sword 2.

It’ll still be a tough fight vs. a good S/D player

You don’t understand it seems.

S/D thieves were NOT OP.

A perfectly played S/D thief always had fair match up against engies ( without elixir R ress), NEVER had a chance against hambow wars, fair match up against necros and low chance to win against a spirit ranger.

Obviously at the skill cap.

There’re videos of Ventari (necro) completely owning Sizer ( one of the current top S/D thief both in solo and team queue) and this just to show that even with Inf strike current iteration, the S/D set was barely enough to face current meta builds.

S/D fault was to completely shut down eles, since GS-Staff mesmers can easily win against S/D thieves too ( while common Sword/* was just dead meat, and infact it was a combination of both S/D thieves and condi pressure keeping mesmers out of the meta) and being unfun to play against.

Now at the second stun we will be dead, because even with S/D we’re squishy and get dropped with a single burst.

When i play my necro i already eat alive thieves ( simply because thief is my main and i know its animations/timing) and a single fear is enough to put so much condi pressure on him to eat half his life bar, and thieves are currently able to port away at will.

On 10th december patch, sword thieves will just die at blink, due to the massive condi spam-AoE spam-Stun spam the meta is currently filled of.

Hype.8032:

Josh Davis.6015:

It’s definitely a possibility. We can try to nudge the meta in certain directions with changes, but ultimately it comes down on the players to establish it.

Guards, for example, have less access to condition removal than they did in the previous ‘bunker meta’ because of the fix to Pure of Voice. That said, with the proposed changes in the Dec 10th patch, I think we may see even more teams opt for bunker support outside of guardian. Not because guardian is sub-optimal, but because other professions will be able to fill that roll with varying flavor. (Engineer might be able to debunk points easier than other bunkers, but provides little AoE stability. Engineer support is seeing a buff so we could see some interesting things there as well…)

Also, S/D thief is taking a hit, which was the main build keeping mesmer and elementalist out of the meta for a long time. It’s hard to predict, but I’d like to personally see a more power-orientated meta surface.

/Grouch rambles on a Sunday morning…

Just call it like it is, S/D thief is being taken out of the meta completely.

thanks god i can still play my mesmer/necro.

Josh Davis.6015:

It’s definitely a possibility. We can try to nudge the meta in certain directions with changes, but ultimately it comes down on the players to establish it.

Guards, for example, have less access to condition removal than they did in the previous ‘bunker meta’ because of the fix to Pure of Voice. That said, with the proposed changes in the Dec 10th patch, I think we may see even more teams opt for bunker support outside of guardian. Not because guardian is sub-optimal, but because other professions will be able to fill that roll with varying flavor. (Engineer might be able to debunk points easier than other bunkers, but provides little AoE stability. Engineer support is seeing a buff so we could see some interesting things there as well…)

Also, S/D thief is taking a hit, which was the main build keeping mesmer and elementalist out of the meta for a long time. It’s hard to predict, but I’d like to personally see a more power-orientated meta surface.

/Grouch rambles on a Sunday morning…

Next patch will totally kill all sword thieves.

Since we’re here, what are your plans regarding the thief profession ?

How is a D/P thief ( the ones you’re blatantly pushing us toward to) supposed to survive in this AoE spam-condi spam-stun spam meta ?

Do you really want us to play venom share only ? ( which is totally broken, by the way )

confirmed it happens in PvP only. i had to go to Lion’s arch to test it and aside the common FPS drop, latency is just fine.

Can we do something about it ?

Excalibur.9748:

— Shadow Return — this skill is certainly a culprit for a strong build but adding a cast time is going to have negative long term effects for thief sword builds — fear a thief with their stunbreak down after they use Infiltrator’s Strike = gg

Lol shadow return never did anything against fear ever since they removed the stunbreak. You still keep on running even after you port back.

Not true.

Fear is a condition, and it has also a very high priority.

Shadw return cleansed fear if it didn’t proc burning with a dhuumfire crit. Same for signet of agility.

But it’s not the point: instant shadow return allowed the thief to teleport away from necros-engie condi spam after a stun/wars stunlocks, now it won’t be possible anymore.

basically you’l be dead after the first stunbreak. If this is the case than there’s no point in bringing sword over a dagger ( since dagger deals more damage).

Sad part is that dagger is not capable to handle common meta builds ( reason why most D/P lovers quit the game, also due to D/P being one of the highest skill cap sets in the whole game).

thief won’t be viable after this patch.

My ping is 12.

The game is lagging like a freak with no real reason.

I’m afraid to play ranked matches.

Excalibur.9748:

jmatb.6307:

Using this chart if you add up the total and the boosts from klepto and opportunist, it’s still higher than current, and not even including the bonuses from infiltrator’s signet.

You must have read the variance column and gotten mad or something that chart actually disproves your argument.

No it’s lower….

Did you even read the topic or you just skipped to the chart?

Initiative Regen
The passive Initiative regen will work exactly as shown on the spreadsheet, but active traits, like signet use, won’t unless you burn your signets every single time they come off cd… but it still shows how the change will effect (affect?) your ini gain on use.
The Total (2 Sig) etc. are just showing the regen with 2, 3, 4 signets equiped and again burning them exactly as they come off cd.
Opportunist is a 33% nerf in Initiative gain no matter what Crit Chance you have whether it is 4% or 100%. However the higher your crit chance, the more ini that 33% nerf becomes. If you run a high crit build, this is a significant nerf, more on this below.
Anet has mentioned that they want to reduce our dependence on Ini regen traits, yet for an S/D thief (10/30/0/30/0) running 1 signet and using Quick Recovery and Signet Use along with 65% crit change, you effectively lose about .02 ini per second… while keeping the same traits under the new proposal.
Remove Quick Recovery from your trait selection and you lose .12 ini per second. This new proposal doesn’t free you up to choose a different trait at all, it just shifts your regen around. You have to keep Sig Use and Quick Reco just to stay where you were pre-patch.
The guilty party here is Opportunist, don’t nerf this trait and you’ll actually free up a select-able trait and achieve what you’re trying to do.

Going by the chart, the net nerf is -0.12 ini/s if you add up the total variance changes.

I agree that it would be a big buff if opportunist did not get such a huge nerf. But as it stands it’s still a net nerf.

I would have done the same spreadsheet, thanks god someone beat me on it and saved my time

High ini regen builds received a massive nerf but, at the same time, burst builds and trickery burst builds received a good buff, basically they’re reducing ini regen variance when specced for it.

The issue is that in order to let eles play ( mesmer is already in a good state with the war meta shifting) sword thieves will be totally destroyed with this patch: vigor nerf, ini regen nerf, Sword BRUTAL nerf without any compensation an without nerfing meta proffs ( necro-war-engi-spirit ranger) to a useful degree.

Wars are brought in teams due to their AoE CCs ( unnerfed), not for their damage

Engies are brought in teams due to their AoE CCs ( unnerfed), AoE condi ( unnerfed) and point control ( unnerfed)

Necros are brought in teams due to their CCs ( unnerfed), AoE condi stacking ( VERY sligthly nerfed, since the cuplrit is sigil of geomancy and not mark of blood) and condi burst ( unnerfed, since the problem with signet of spite is not how many bleeds it stacks, but how many CONDIES it applies, overwhelming any non global condi removal)

Spirit rangers are brought for their massive support ( very slightly nerfed) and ress ( unnerfed)

If these builds are kept like this, there’s no point in bringing a thief simply for Shadow refuge ( which was a problem anyway).

So with a single patch they’ll get rid of two huge problems (team stealth oneshots and evade spam thieves) by completely removing the thief profession.

Thanks god we still have venom share.

Hype.8032:

Narcarsis.5739:

They’re buffing thieves, not nerfing them. Possibly too much.

Mind sharing why you think that way? I’m starting to wonder if 25/30/0/0/15 might be worth taking over 10/30/0/0/30 now.

the reason why thieves went for trickery and D/P was the ability to burst 3 times as much than standard burst build thanks to Steal CD on 21 secs.

After mug nerf there was no point to go for full damage and still there is not.

The problem is that they totally gutted thief sustain without addressing the reason why thief sustain ( which is great in the S/D acro build) is STILL not enough in the large majority of cases ( necros-wars-engies-spirit rangers).

What i hate the most is that they choose for the nerf hammer for everything instead of bringing down acro thieves in the proper way.

And the worst part is that they REALLY believe Hard to Catch is any good.

Oh god.

Excalibur.9748:

Mrbig.8019:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Thieves are definitely receiving buffs for builds that lacked on initiative regen. Sword MH is pretty much being shafted, but 1/4s cast time is still pretty quick, you can dodge stuns with that. I can name several stuns right now that can be avoided with it. Obviously the direction they are going with the sword main hand is, if you are caught, you are caught, in that .25s you manage to get away you are rewarded with your life.

The vigor nerfs are acceptable, questionable why bountiful theft got changed but who knows, maybe it will get reverted.

And of course, initiative nerfs are going to happen when they increase the base initiative regen, not to surprising. Thieves overall were buffed, maybe some new builds can come to fruition.

The issue is that even with the cheese following shadow return instant nature, S/D thieves are barely on par with current meta proffs, which are not getting nerfed enough, while the thief is getting gutted.

Now thieves won’t be on par anymore.

if they nerfed hard engies-wars-necros-spirit rangers than i would have been fine with these brutal nerfs to thieves, but since it didn’t happen, i’m not fine at all.

I was the first advocating for an Inf strike nerf, but what is going to happen on 10th december is beyond silly.

the inf strike nerf you wanted, isn’t what everyone else wants. this is the nerf everyone else wants. they want to prevent shadow return being used to trivialize CC.

i agree with you that S/D is not viable anymore though.

Since CCs are so overabundant, there’s no point in in gutting the only efficient option a profession has to deal with them ( since if you play */P you’re getting eaten alive by other professions such spirit rangers, necros, engies, hambow wars and all the ridicolous AoE spam /Aoe condi spam which is acutally what PvP is about).

The ini buff is pointless if you do not have any efficient set to play with. Now swords are being removed from PvP, dagger is subpar.

We’re left with venom share and body shot spamming, hoping our teammates will make good use of the 30 secs immo.

This is no cheese at all, well played aNet.

/sarcasm

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Thieves are definitely receiving buffs for builds that lacked on initiative regen. Sword MH is pretty much being shafted, but 1/4s cast time is still pretty quick, you can dodge stuns with that. I can name several stuns right now that can be avoided with it. Obviously the direction they are going with the sword main hand is, if you are caught, you are caught, in that .25s you manage to get away you are rewarded with your life.

The vigor nerfs are acceptable, questionable why bountiful theft got changed but who knows, maybe it will get reverted.

And of course, initiative nerfs are going to happen when they increase the base initiative regen, not to surprising. Thieves overall were buffed, maybe some new builds can come to fruition.

The issue is that even with the cheese following shadow return instant nature, S/D thieves are barely on par with current meta proffs, which are not getting nerfed enough, while the thief is getting gutted.

Now thieves won’t be on par anymore.

if they nerfed hard engies-wars-necros-spirit rangers than i would have been fine with these brutal nerfs to thieves, but since it didn’t happen, i’m not fine at all.

I was the first advocating for an Inf strike nerf, but what is going to happen on 10th december is beyond silly.

Silentshoes.1805:

dwest.7145:

I play a mes/ele/necro and am a casual Spvp’er (No WvW). I just read through the upcoming balance notes and am curious as to why thieves are potentially being nerfed. Just from my play experience I don’t see thieves over represented or particularly hard to deal with. This is certainly not WOW status where they burst you down in one second even when I’m on my ele. I am genuinely confused, what am I missing? Is there a super troll spec or something that I haven’t gone up against?

As a mesmer, I assume you haven’t had the “pleasure” yet of a thief starting in stealth where you are not even aware they are there, stealing/mugging you with a basilisk burst , taking all you mesmer health in your light armor in about three hits.

Sure, you say, just “simply” hit your stun break and quickly deal with the thief. Easier said than done. And your stun break might just be on cooldown.

I play mesmer/necro as alt and i eat thieves alive.

Yeah, S/D thieves too.

Just press you distortion skill, you have it always available even if your stunbreak is on CD.

Chaos storm awards you with almost perma aegis while the storm is in place.

Adapt, stop playing your Mh sword shatter build.

Narcarsis.5739:

They’re buffing thieves, not nerfing them. Possibly too much.

As a sword thief, i disagree.

And my ping is 12, so it’s absolutely not my fault.

Fix this, the game is unplayable.

Peow peow.2189:

In this condi meta where we have necros and engis galore, you guys know how conditions can really be a game breaker for thief if you dont remove them fast enough. This has caused us to go into the SA tree in order to get the condition removal trait.

With the nerf to infiltrators and the agility signet as well as shadow step being on a long cd (way to slow to reliably remove condis)

EVERY thief build will have to have 10 in SA for the condi removal and possibly a set of lyssa runes to help with this.

10 trait points wasted because arena net has nerfed us and not given us an alternative way to do this.

Unless I am missing something here, I see this as a huge problem for all thief builds as these trait points could be better spent in other trait lines with the upcoming changes however will be necessary due to the current meta.

you’re absolutely wrong.

No thief in this meta will ever go into SA; Pain response in acrobatic, Shadow return from In strike and lyssa runes are everythign a thief needs in order to face engies and necros ( infact the match up against those 2 classes has always been a 50-50% IN ACRO S/D THIEF CURRENT ITERATION).

With Shadow return nerfed, any S/D thief ( or S/P) will be dead meat to any half decent engi-necro ( Warriors as well) with all other thief options absolutely not optimal in the current meta.

The thief is doomed, but not for the reason you listed .

NevirSayDie.6235:

It happens both ways. Since the matchmaker forms one full team first and then starts looking for the other team, you can easily get on the “second” team even from a very high rank if you queue at the wrong time.

That’s what happens most of the time.

When i don’t play at prime time, i usually end up on the “bad team” and my team gets facerolled ( it usually ends up with people on a spectrum of 1-20 rank), altough being “top” ranked.

These games usually lead to massive leaderboard rank loss ( enough to drop me to 300-400 ) and everyday i log in knowing i have to make my whole way to top 200 again, simply because i can’t always play at prime time and because i want to play ranked matches.

My experience is a good example showing why this game punishes you for playing and rewards people for not playing.

Auesis.7301:

I don’t understand where you’re going with Thieves. You say builds designed for being slippery/evading a lot are too strong, but where does that leave us? Design philosophy has stated MULTIPLE times in the past that Thief was SUPPOSED to be slippery, SUPPOSED to be mobile, SUPPOSED to be hard to catch. Now, you’re saying they can’t have that? What are we left with? Pigeon-holed back in to D/P that barely functions in this meta, or Cluster Bomb spamming because meleeing is pointless?

- It’s nice to see that Pistol Whip is getting some love, but it’s still going to collapse dead as soon as it comes across any Retaliation (which is EVERYWHERE), and the stun needs to function at 1 second again to allow any damage to land at all. This skill still needs love.
- Boosting base Initiative regeneration is a step in the right direction, but why keep a bunch of traits like Opportunist and make them awful now?
- Removing ICD on Sundering Strikes is nice.
- Infusion of Shadow change was necessary.
- Adding a cast time to Infiltrator’s Return is a complete disaster. You would totally eviscerate ALL Sword builds for PvP and WvW. The loss of mobility from the instant cast of this skill means that a MASSIVE amount of mobility for S/x is gone.
- All the changes to Vigor are CRIPPLING. You say you don’t like classes having access to large amounts of Vigor, but Thieves have an entire trait line that operates around the concept of evasion! Vigor and evasions are our lifeline at this point, because stealth in sPvP is in a dreadful state (speccing for it will violently destroy any of your DPS and make you dead weight when trying to contest points). You must NOT change Vigor in this way.
- Changing Assassin’s Reward to Grandmaster guarantees that nobody will ever use it. – - Quick Pockets and Assassin’s Reward were pretty much destined to work together if you weren’t using Quick Recovery, and now that’s out. Slightly increasing the healing will not have anywhere near enough of an impact on survival.
- Hard to Catch is still an absolutely terrible trait and you need to rework it completely before trying to coax us in to using it. You have no control over where you end up, the cooldown is long and you don’t even lose the disabling effect.

I just want to ask, what builds do you see as being viable in sPvP now that you intend of crippling most mobility, which is all Thief ever had going for it there?

That’s exactly what i said in the Pvp version of this thread.

this patch will totally kill thieves, especially Sword ones, since we’ll get crushed among condi spam and stun spam.

Reducing mark of blood by 1 bleed changes nothing if not for necros spamming from afar,without touching the worst offender : runes of geomancy.

Reducing Hammer stuns damage changes nothing if you can disable whole teams while yours is killing everything.

if these changes will go live, we’ll see thieves completely removed from any form of PvP, even WvW.

moreover, we’ll see mesmers everywhere, since they’ll become even more powerful than they were in the first times.

OMG, thieves were the only thing keeping absurd DPS classes away, next meta will be shocking.

ensoriki.5789:

shimmerless.4560:

Trickery burst is quite high and certainly the highest of any spec that sees play.

It’s lower than the previous 25/30/x/x/15 which is what I’m speaking towards. DA investment is going to be a bit more attractive now, so thieves may consider returning to it for their D/P.

D/P trickery offers slightly less burst at the cost of more “burst executions”.

It’s a more sustained version of common burst build, since you can burst effectively 3 times on a 21 secs time frame, with a good daze-boon stealing-high fury uptime added to the mix, while losing about 10% of the total damage ( 15% if we use improvisation instead of dagger training).

Since mug brutal nerf there’s no point to go for full damage builds, the ini issue was really not relevant at all since common burst thief has always been about shortbow spam till you see someone at low HP then “BOOM burst”.

The problem relies in condi spam, something that is not being addressed, and stun spam.

With so many condies/stuns on a point, a thief can’t take part in greater fights aside from shortbow spam.

D/P trickery burst is not strong enough to face ANY decently played meta build ( a single combustive shot is enough to deplete almost all thief HP pool if he stays near the point, and zerker stance totally neglects D/P blinds).

My proposed change regarding Inf strike was to make it usable ONLY if the thief is in range to do the attack ( 600), otherwise it would have failed and placed the shadow return under thief’s feet, this in order to avoid the thief from jumping from a target to another, when focused, by simply pressing twice the same button ( which is the main issue about S/D at high levels).

Now lockdown builds ( necro-wars-engies and soon mesmers) will be able to destroy Sword thieves at the second disable.

Due to the abundance of CCs and conditions currently going into PvP, thieves will soon have no place if these changes go live.

repost for blank page bug

ensoriki.5789:

I didn’t include something because I wanted to see how it goes however might as well.
In a couple other settings a skill like Inf strike even with a cast time and well while it no longer stuns breaks it does still currently function under a stun.
Having the cast time is fine, they may have to down the line consider letting it function while stunned.
Tbh I do feel you are over exaggerating a tad however Big.

it will surely not work while stunned.

It’s just like eles: i usually swap to air and do my burst combo + blind as soon as i get stunned by a war, but you can’t cast Phoenix while stunned ( 1/4 sec cast time).

Shadow return worked just like all instant skills, on 10th december it will no longer be instant, with all the stuff that goes with it.

Again, i wanted Inf strike to get nerfed and posted tons of threads giving ideas about HOW TO PROPERLY nerf it.

If this change goes live, all Sword sets will be killed, unless they strongly nerf condi burst and warrior stuns.

D/P trickery is not strong enough due to how overwhelming conditions still are ( engies and necros above all, spirit rangers following) and due to how prominent those classes are.

The thief is doomed, i’m not exaggerating.

ensoriki.5789:

I didn’t include something because I wanted to see how it goes however might as well.
In a couple other settings a skill like Inf strike even with a cast time and well while it no longer stuns breaks it does still currently function under a stun.
Having the cast time is fine, they may have to down the line consider letting it function while stunned.
Tbh I do feel you are over exaggerating a tad however Big.

it will surely not work while stunned.

It’s just like eles: i usually swap to air and do my burst combo + blind as soon as i get stunned by a war, but you can’t cast Phoenix while stunned ( 1/4 sec cast time).

Shadow return worked just like all instant skills, on 10th december it will no longer be instant, with all the stuff that goes with it.

Again, i wanted Inf strike to get nerfed and posted tons of threads giving ideas about HOW TO PROPERLY nerf it.

If this change goes live, all Sword sets will be killed, unless they strongly nerf condi burst and warrior stuns.

D/P trickery is not strong enough due to how overwhelming conditions still are ( engies and necros above all, spirit rangers following) and due to how prominent those classes are.

The thief is doomed, i’m not exaggerating.

ensoriki.5789:

Copypasta-ing
My thoughts are this, the sword is a hit & run/in & out weapon set at its base, it’s what connects S/D and S/P on a frequent level. Infiltrator’s strike is the Swords identity.
I feel atm, Thief would be better off molding the two Sword sets with that in mind. So I propose changes to Infiltrator’s strike

1. Keep that idea of a cast time on Shadow return, that can work.
2. Reduce the duration of Infiltration to 6 or 7 seconds.
3. Increase the power co-efficient of Infiltrator’s Strike, consider removing/reducing the immobilize (consider)
4. Revert the range 1200 range limitation on Shadow return.

With that in mind these two changes to the off hands
1. Increase the velocity of the Dancing dagger projectile so it’s a more reliable snare
2. Have Black Powder, as a ground-target, strengthening it as a support skill.
3. Increase the duration of Cloak and Daggers vulnerability.

Infiltration lasts long, it allows you ample time to commit to a fight while having an escape. Reducing it gives you time to fight, but you have to then decide if you’re going to use your initiative to pop out, or if you are going to stay in and lose the escape. With half the duration, that becomes more of a reality, with half the duration the distance you travel from the return point significantly decreases meaning the 1200 range limit is not necessary, especially given the cast time. To put S/x as a hit & run set, it needs damage to stay as that threat on the outskirts, it has it to be sure but with a shorter infiltration time it’s flexibility in doing that damage decreases. For example dodging 3 times takes a sizeable amount of time from your infiltration duration if infiltration is only 6 or 7 seconds.

For the Off-hands. Changing Black Powder puts that in a much more supportive position, For all 3 /P sets. Given typically (well excusing D/P) that /P sets do not stealth naturally, a defense against ranged assault is really necessary unless they put out ridiculous counter-damage. The one-tick shot isn’t a real deterrent at the same time, its simple enough to take advantage of.

Dancing dagger just isn’t reliable enough of a snare to start. If stripping the immobilization of Inf strike is considered in exchange for that skill doing more damage, the distinction is that S/D excels at sticking at targets to targets relative to S/P because of that /D choice as well as defensively due to FS and CnD. S/P of course in exchange would be potent at disabling opponents (ground target Black powder, the lovely head shot, and some PW stun) and shredding them if it does get its hands on them (PW).

I think that is really emphasizing weapon set identity while playing to the class profession identity that was given last year if they still are valid for discussion. S/x does heavy damage when it pops in (inf strike hitting harder + normal rotations), but it’s not in for long or its forced to stay.

Finally, you guys did some great stuff with traits but…what about potent poison? Seriously? Sharp, lettuce be cereal who runs Potent poison in general?

THAT kind of Inf strike nerf means that a thief will be insta shotted at the second stun.

Before you could teleport away from a necro fear, removing it ( since it is a condition and, unless Doom procced burning, it’s always first priority), now you won’t be able to di it, basically being dead meat for any half decent necro.

You can’t always predict a stun, you can’t evade war’s stuns since they have so many it’s ridicolous.

NO DECENT PLAYER EVER will ever take Hard to Catch since it’s random and procs when you really don’t need it, overall you can’t control it so it’s horrible ( just think at mesmer magic bullet bouncing and dazing you from nowhere and PUFF you wasted your 30 secs ICD teleport).

Add this to Mesmer’s daze buff and we are just focusing the game even more on an unfun CC meta where the thief has no place unless built for venom share ( which is already ridicolously strong) with the only difference that now we have no good set to play that build with ( sundering strikes buff is making me think to play it with P/P but i don’t really think it will work).

If other classes are not nerfed consistently ( especially condi classes and wars), the thief will have no place in tPvP ( both solo and team) on 10th december, mark my words.

Unless we play venom share: in that case we may find some spot in team queue.

MAYBE.

thief will be killed. Totally killed.

S/D needed a nerf, now you killed basically everything a thief will be able to do, forcing us into D/P trickery which is absolutely not capable to handle meta builds, even after the upcoming nerfs to wars, necros and spirit rangers and totally killing any Sword build.

i am astounished, this is the most ridicolous nerf hammer i’ve ever seen, altough i can agree with the “reasoning behind” ( reducing thief need to go deep with traits in order to get initiative).

Lordrosicky.5813:

Here is a list of things that you should nerf:

1, Dhumfire – icd
2, Doom – duration
3, Signet of Spite – duration
4, Healing signet – heal
5, staggering blow – cast time
6, Automated response – 90% not 100%
7, Healing turret – cast time
8, Zerker stance – 90% not 100%
9, pin down – bleeds
10, combustive shot + cleansing Ire – radius
11, Spirit of nature – health pool
12, spirit of sun – passive proc
13, Inf Strike – not moving people to somewhere without line of sight
14, Larcenous strike – remove evasion from flanking strike
15, feline grace – add 10s icd
16, Shadows refuge – cooldown
17, mark of blood – 1 less bleed
18, necro scepter auto attack – lowered durations
19, emphatic bond – 20 second icd
20, critical infusion – 15s icd
21, incendiary power – 20s icd
22, Lyssa runes – 60s icd

I am sure there is more. But this would be a good start.

The logic would be to reverse the power creep which made everyone quit, and to actually add skill and FUN back to the game by not having as many builds which are frustrating to fight against because of passive bs or because of uncounterable things like cc chains, mass evasion and Ai spam.

Problem = most of this stuff is things you actually buffed. So you need to have the guts to admit you made mistakes and reverse alot of these changes.

Leave thief balance to someone who actually has any insight of the profession, instead of naming random skills asking for nerfs.

Regarding the rest, i pretty much agree with everything.

Romek.4201:

agree – push – /sign

whatever – but remove this and dont trie to fix it – you waste only our time and spoil the fun we could have with your game

the worst part is when i refuse to play lame builds on skyhammer and my team nerd rages on me.

“dumb thief reroll to necro !!! logs in power necro”

I would never go beyond mesmer on this map because i hate to lame on my opponents, and i hate to bring my teammates with me.

The sad part is that i lose from 50 to 80 ranks with every skyhammer loss ( thanks to god awful matchmaking) and it’s getting annoying and frustrating.

bump because i’m tired to get paired with scrubs while being top 200 ( and losing ranks that took me hours to achieve), losing 70-80 ranks per loss.

It’s not that the ladder has any importance anyway, but having to play with bad players and be yelled at , at the end, because i don’t do what they think i should do ( when they obviously have no idea what to do) is beyond frustrating.

so fun to face teams full of guards-engies-wars

But the best part is when a thief scorpion wires you from stealth into death.

Pro skill

Dahkeus.8243:

Take a look at the forums. People have been asking for a way to get PvE rewards from PvP for a long time.

Now, I don’t think that getting trick-or-treat bags instead of gear is the most elegant way to do this, nor do I think it addresses the problem of not being able to really earn any gold from doing sPvP, but the crossover isn’t inherently problematic.

Personally, I think it would have been best if they had have given a choice between gear and trick-or-treat bags.

The problem is that trick-or-treat bags suck even as a PvE reward.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Staff necro will always feel great in hotjoins because the aoe means you’ll tag everything, so you’ll score a lot of glory. That doesn’t really mean anything, though.

In general, standard condi necros are still extremely strong but don’t get used much because it’s very risky to take one in a competitive match. They’re fairly vulnerable to focused fire and have limited usefulness outside of mid teamfights. So they’re a build that does amazing in the right matchups, or given a strong team, but you don’t see many in solo queues anymore.

In top 200 EU solo queue you see only Necros, Wars and Guards. Sometime a lucky engi-thief gets into it.

The bravest bring mesmers, but really THE BRAVEST.

Forsaker.9213:

from a necro point of view , i dont like this whole necro changes but this only what makes necro vaible atm , so the only way to fix everything is nerf verything,Gw2 reached high lv of power creep , lets say we gonan nerf wars and necro , then ele will be OP becose he can make 15-25k dmg dependand on armor and u basicly cant avoid it , ofc that was only example. Every class atm have some OP thing.

And i woud like to see devs remove burning from necro and even cut down the whole dmg of burning but at the same time they need to bring back the terror dmg , u need to remeber that necro atm is the easiest target to kill and every good pvp guy will agree with me , u gonna say that necro have DS or plague , DS can drop realy fast when u focus necro , plague its our elite and we necro need to use his elite to be able to survive the foucus when other profesions have blocks , prema vigor , stability , ton of evades etc so i think its fair.

Basicly anet need to start nerfing everything with small steps , becouse atm if they nerf one clas like war other will become OP just becouse they were buffing everything since realese.Nerf condi dm , nerf direct dmg , nerf AOE.

This guy.

I also agree with Ventari, warrior is nothing more than the product of the ridicolous power creep ongoing with this game.

NERF EVERYTHING TO DUST.

Blackjack.5621:

Conditions are not meta, necros are not op. Stop living in the past.

Immobilize is a condition.

Bring more mesmers and cry less.

On a serious note:

What it making wars broken is not they’re OP but that they’re passive and braindead effective.

Healing Signet, Cleansing Ire on Longbow, Zerker stance and stuff like this is basically full cheese mode.

I would also make wars lose an adrenaline stack when the burst skill misses.

Forsaker.9213:

So we know that devs gonna work on MM and some rewards relative to your place on leeder.

My question is , are u planning to reward ppl before u gonna fix and rester the ledder?

In my opinion it should be:
1.Fix
2.Restet
3.Reward

1 Azshene.1798 15 0 100.00% Desolation
2 Twinpeaks.4832 18 3 85.71% Gandara
3 RaynStargaze.6510 17 3 85.00% Desolation

This is top 3 on ledder on EU , ppl just play few games and then stop playing/switching on second acounts without any punishment , on the other site we have ppl who are playing almoust every day and they are getting punished for it.

you forgot people syncing, like the one we faced in that match ( i was on your team).

And it’s not even their fault, since very few play and matchmaking puts them all on the same team against less ranked people ( me and you were the only ranked people in our team, just to inform you).

Ah, and don’t forget skyhammer.

Everytime i get on that map i lose 70-80 ranks thanks to the broken matchmaking.

OP is quite right though exaggerating.

MM necros are extremely powerful.

Not only this map is utterly crap, IT EVEN ALSO SEEMS TO BE BUGGED IN THE ROTATION !!!!

In 2 days 80% of my games have been in skyhammer, i dropped by 300 ranks thanks to this map and my stubborness to not lame the crap out of it like everyone else do.

Can we pls do something about it ?

lost again 2 matches against full cheese comp.

1 loss is equal to 5-6 wins thanks to broken matchmaking.

Every skyhammer match i lose 2-3 hours of my life.

REMOVE THIS kitten.

vangedas.7358:

Most often skill has nothing to do with this map. At least what happens to me is I am fighting someone else when a stealthed thief comes from behind and scorpion wires me to death. There’s no counter or skill involved, just pure abuse of bad map mechanic.

This without accounting flamethrower-bomb-toolkit engi on cannon, which is a pure joke.

1. rewards and incentives ( this is also regards social ones such leaderboard)

Population needs to grow. Many players ( especially at the top) do not play because there’re no actual rewards and incentives, especially since you can keep your leaderboard rank by simply not playing.

Leaderboard and rewards need to be redesigned in order to advantage players FOR PLAYING, not for not doing it.

This is seriously top priority.

2. Balance

This is extremely important. Current meta is based on passive procs, passive healing, stuns and dodge spam, the less skill based meta of history.

Balance needs to be done in order to promote skill based playing and in order to increase build viability for all classes.

Imho almost every class aside maybe the engi should be nerfed more or less to the ground, just like you did with immortal cantrip eles some months ago.

3. Fast development and infrastructure

Patches need to be more frequent, gamebreaking bugs should be fixed asap ( svanir runes, mace block bug and shattered strenght are just examples of course) and we need a better competitive infrastructure ( team leaderboard, for example).

Without this basical infrastructure PvP will never grow.

Amaterasu.6280:

It’s not just heal signet that makes warriors so strong at the moment – it’s a combo of things:

- awesome passive healing via signet
- more stability than a guardian
- berserker stance
- cleansing ire which acts as a better condi clear than most classes’ utilities. Remove 3 condis with each full bar of adrenaline is crazy when most utilities in other classes remove 1-2 and they are on 30-60s CDs
- being able to build for defense while having on par damage with a lot of burst builds which would require them to sacrifice all their defense.

The fact that the typical cc warrior has 0 points into their power line, and can dive 30 into their defense line and still put out ridiculous damage…is a big problem. I main a thief, and if I tried to build like a warrior, not only would I not have as much defense as a warrior, I wouldn’t have as much vitality nor would I do a fraction of a warrior’s damage.

As I said, it’s a combo of things.

If you try to run the same exact build but with healing surge, you’ll feel squishy as kitten.

Healing surge needs to be nerfed, and adrenaline skills need to go on full CD when they miss ( without losing the adrenaline) .

Warrior problem is now solved.

Nomin.5901:

I don’t mind it actually, yes it IS somewhat cheap, BUT! It changes the pace and tactics, making it different from all the other maps. And I don’t mind a bit of variety ^-^
And variety means that you cant waddle into sky hammer with 0 stability and 0 knockbacks. Just bring one or the other for then that que pops and you should be good.

No.

it doesn’t reward skill.

It is ALWAYS abused.

How can it still be ON SOLO QUEUE altough you’ve said it’s a broken map ?

Pls explain .

My experience after going up to >top 500 is completely opposite.

Unless you play at prime time ( something very hard for me since i have training sessions during it) and even around 22:00 – 23:00 pm ( that should be late prime time after all) i will get matched with scrubbity scrubs having literally no idea what they’re doing.

Both in the opposite and my team.

Very often among 10 players i was the only one ranked, and a single loss could drop my rank by 70-80 positions.

The point is that “at the top” ( at least here in EU) very few dare to play, because no one really cares ( dunno why -.-‘’’) and climbing the ladder is ridicolously hard unless you get a good lucky winning streak ( since you earn little when you win and lose a lot when you lose the match).

Overall solo queing is a terrible experience for both ranked players and casuals.

Sidenote: i’m currently around 300 with a 70% win ratio. This explains it all.