Guild Wars 2

Einlanzer.1627:

blah blah blah. Actually, you are, pretty much everything you said here is grossly misinformed.

Elaborate. Although I don’t really care since I’m pretty comfortable with Thieves’ PVE atm.

I’m also totally fine to let everyone in the world think thieves are bad in PvE, maybe we’ll get an unreasonably great buff that way like Warrior’s Discipline banners.

Molch.2078:

I agree on anything writen here in favor of the thief, but the damage part. Thief has the highest single target damage. (Only ele + Fiery Greatsword can outdamage them) But thats it. Warrior has way more AoE and much better offensive support (+ 40% damage for the entire team? Anyone?), two things you need in dungeons, too.

For a smooth run, a good thief is nice to have, but at least one warrior ist almost a must.

Yeah our cleave kinda sucks.

Einlanzer.1627:

Thieves aren’t that great in PvE. Anyone who says they are is in denial. That does not mean that they are either unplayable or unenjoyable, though.

They have a melee focus but go down really easily in zergs
They have a pretty lousy downed state
They lack proper threat reduction
They are not really offensively stronger than any other class
They don’t have amazing support builds. Venom sharing is about it and it’s meh.
Their ranged options are fairly underwhelming

It’s really simple – the Thief’s toolset benefits them more in a PvP setting than it does in a PvE setting. Nowhere is this more obvious than in their downed state.

Go down easily in zergs…really? Because usually zergs in pve are trash mobs that we can just blindlock forever and take 0 damage. Then proceed to cleave them with auto sword #1 or pistol whip, if things get hairy infiltrator out for a sec and go back in…

Pretty lousy downed state…I do 3k bouncing daggers, I can rally off mobs pretty fast. That’s even if I go down in the first place. I think we actually have some of the better tools while downed like a shadowstep and stealth…when there is a party wipe we end up surviving.

We lack proper threat reduction…what does this even mean? Stealth = no more threat on you. If you mean for the party…well sorry we can’t Aegis everyone like guardians do but we can keep a constant Weakness on mobs, u can look up Weakness does if you are interested.

They are not offensively stronger than any other class? Another false information, man I wish DPS meter was introduced in the game. Here’s an example for you, warrior’s average 100B is 25k in 3 seconds, with 8 sec cool down. Our backstab chain does 7k+13k in a second, with 3 second cool down…math.

We have no great support builds….we don’t need it. No body needs support builds if they are good. Use utility skills depend on situation and you’ll be fine. I’m glass cannon dps build and my shadow refuge and smoke screen does their jobs just as well as a support thief. We support by gimping enemies, sorry u can’t see them cuz there’s no orange boon icons over your skill bar.

Ranged options…Clusterbomb – spammable 7k AOE, trickshot does alot of total dmg if there’s more than 1 target. Single target fights spammable unload is fine, could be better but still fine.

But what do i know, I’m in denial.

You can keep a set of Ruby orb armor and a set of Scholar rune armor.

Think ahead before each fight and try to remember how you usually fare in this fight. If you think you wont be touched, go scholar.

If it’s too clunky to swap all those armors…then do what I do:
Scholar Runes x 6. A spare Helm and Aquabreather that has Ruby Orb in it. This way you retain the Scholar x 5 bonus underwater and on land you just adjust by switching your helmet.

Scholar Rune x 6: 165 Power, 8% crit dmg, 10% more dmg while above 90%HP.
Scholar Rune x 5 + Ruby Orb: 185 Power, 14 precision, 10% crit dmg.
Ruby Orb x 6: 120 Power, 84 Precision (4% crit rate), 12% crit dmg.

Depending on the party you are in, your crit rate will be hard-capped at 100% anyway so the 84 precision advantage of Ruby Orb is irrelevant in my scenario. So it’s down to 65 power vs 2% crit damage…pretty sure difference is negligible.

Again. Thieves are fine.

Our damage mitigation is superior dodging and mobility rather than taking shots in the face.

If you have trouble vs karkas…go easy mode and S/P them. Start by interupting their spike spam with a pistol whip, then lay down a blackpowder and auto attack it to death. U don’t even need to dodge…

In dungeons, never be the first person to hit bosses. Aggro management is key. Let someone else take aggro and you just backstab chain him to death D/D. Range battles we have 3~4 extra dodges with SB3…shadowstep shadow return for further juking…We are king of mobility. Be proud of that.

Imbune.5497:

Idk…you mentioned a thief+guard, what if you had two guards? Two casts of empower and hold the line=party wide protection around 10s, regen around 14s, 25stack of might for 10s. Water fields? Two hammer guards w/hold the line=protection, aoe healing, regeneration (+additional aoe condi removal if traited or soldier runes). Weakness is nice, but is it worth missing out on the above benefits? I’m not sure. Blind fields are very nice in open world pve but in most dungeons the party tends to scatter during encounters (especially if there isn’t a guardian/warrior there) resulting in mobs moving from your field or you being unable to place it effectively in the first place…just seems a bit situational and more like a luxury than anything else in my experience. Exploiting the game through stacking as you said will help blind fields be more effective, but then again a sword/gs guardian can aoe blind roughly once every 10/12 seconds-two guardians and you can do aoe blind once every 5s or so minimum (in addition to the 10s protection and regen from hold the line), so is taking a thief over a guardian for blind fields worth it? Hmm…again, not too sure.

The OP spoke about pve so mentioning pvp is irrelevant.

Don’t take it to be me saying the thief is utter crap in pve-I like the playstyle quite a bit and a good player with a thief will still be contributing more to the party than a bad player with a guardian, but whenever I consider the contributions another class can make (I focused on guardians since you mentioned them) I’m hard-pressed to find validity with the thief.

Regarding the topic-I don’t think a damage increase will solve anything, well not in any meaningful way for anyone who has the mental fortitude to do dungeons other than cof 1 and not make up excuses abut ‘efficiency’ for skipping bosses they obviously can’t handle.

Is the thief worthwhile in pve? Well if I happen to know two players are of equal playing skill and one is a necro the other a thief I’ll take the thief over the necro-it’s not worthless, but a long way from being impactful imo.

So it’s a Guardian VS Thief comparison now? On top of that you are just comparing their ability to stack defensive buffs? I’m not saying thief is overall better than a guardian in terms of party support that’d be a lie. Guardians are the #1 demanded class on high level fractals for a reason (Although not for the reasons you stated, most people just want their SoA, WoR, Aegis). I brought up Guardian to show thieves how to work in sync with them, not to compare them…

Pretty sure stacking + blinding is not an exploit…and you’re comparing AoE blind once every 10 seconds/5 seconds versus PBAOE blind every 1 second ticked indefinitely with no cooldown? If players learn how to LoS pull mobs or have Mesmer/Guardian pull them with focus/gs, it’s pretty easy to stack. I admit though, Guardians can be almost just as effective with blinding if traited 15 in precision line and spam VoJ.

My belief is that, PVE at endgame level (Fractal 48~50), is all about dps and mitigation via dodges and utility skills. That’s why a lot of high lvl fractal speeds are all zerk spec. That’s also why Guardians are favored because they have Aegis which totally saves people’s butts when they botch a dodge here and there. They also have wall of reflection and shield of avengers which makes certain projectile heavy fractals/bosses very easy. In my opinion you only need 1 Guardian for all that. Thief is also viable because of stealth to save people 10mins on their run and they have their own anti projectile wall on a shorter cooldown than WoR.

Since PVE is what it is, any composition can work at efficient level. My primary party consists of War / Necro / Guard / 2x Thieves which technically leaning on the side of subpar. We’re also mostly GCs that die to 1 hit pretty much especially the thieves with our 11k HP. Our clear time for FoTM 48 is around 80mins which is on par (a lot shorter if we get short fractals like water, uncategorized, etc). I pug too sometimes and i notice FoTM 48 has some of the best pugs. Cuz its mostly people confident in their skills that pug FoTM48s….and regardless of their class they bring good to the team.

Btw, OP did mention PvP in one of his posts which I quoted, and I threw my pvp comment just to help out.

TL,DR Play more, dig deeper.

Backstab Chain is usually self sustaining when it comes to initiative…
If you somehow find yourself low on initiative often during the combo add Infusion of Shadow from SA traitline if you are going x/x/10/x/x…you should be on full initiative before every CnD at this point.

Nyctimus.4109:

Ensign.2189:

Thieves could use a bit more damage on their basic attacks and other non-burst skills, but not too much. Their damage isn’t quite on par with Warriors, but it’s not that far off.

The big problem is the lack of good team buffing utilities. The big edge Warriors and Guardians have is the wide variety of shouts and banners that buff the damage and defense of the entire team; Thieves have nothing to compete with that.

That’s my main point, is that we have NO buffs to offer people. We can offer stealth res, and medium damage, but really to be balanced in PVE we should be able to offer HIGH damage/stealth/slipperyness.

It would make us more of a team player, because we would bring superior DPS to the table. That would mean that in lieu of supporting the team through buffs, we would be picked up for supporting the team through damage.

I reckon this is something that needs to be implemented, I feel kind of powerless to warriors and guardians in PvP, I have to slink around in stealth/keep away from the fight so much that the few hits I land don’t contribute much. But if those few hits were high damage, then I wouldn’t feel so bad about having to spend 1/2 my time in stealth/dodging.

I mean, obviously a bunker thief would feel different, but I think they would still benefit massively from a pve damage boost as well.

Thanks for your input, guys.

But we do offer utility if the person and the team understands combo fields and blind and weakness conditions…

Combo Finisher -
Cluster Bomb is hands down THE best combo finisher in the game. Guardian can lay down Purging Flames and we can apply Might x 15 on the entire party. If the guardian is cooperative and use Empower that’s another 12 Might on top of it. Instant cap might stacks. In Water fields we can heal the party for up to 8k…with no healing power…same concept.

At 15 points into Deadly Arts trait, when we poison foes we Weaken them. Think of Weakness as a 25% damage reduction from enemies…and our Weakness last long if you apply it through our Choking Gas skill…and big AoE. Higher level fractals this can save people from being 1 hit by regular mobs…

Blind, we can apply them in small bursts in large AoE via Dark Fields, but better yet we have Black Powder pistol offhand skill. It works best when we LoS pull a bunch of enemies and stack together to cleave them…it’s a party immunity for PvE because of how slow the enemies attack.

And about our damage? We are the highest dps for single target in the game…I won’t ask for more.

I play a pure GC thief (30/30/x/x/x) at level 48 fractals, premade, pugs, done them all with relative ease and contributing my share.

For PvP, you can always go S/D and feel more contributive to your team in team fights. Ever since Larcenous strike was introduced, fights vs bunkers has gotten alot easier because we can steal their Regen/Protection/Vigor easily. With stealth builds, backstab still hurts alot…you just have to commit to it…When i use stealth backstab builds (D/P) I usually go very glassy but I deal insane damage.

Anyone know if this is being fixed?
In my case it’s clipping with my Arah light shoulder piece. Pretty sure this happens to a lot of other armor sets too.

Expansions are good.
Paying $40 for new content is way better than paying $40 for insert gem store items…

Gilosean.3805:

penatbater.4710:

I’d rather that you lose those stacks if you unequip your weapon with the sigil stacking thing,

That would be terrible for eles, because each attunement change counts as a weapon swap. Even though we’re still using the same weapon.

Think he meant un-equiping. Weapon swap are swapping between 2 sets of equipped weapons.

Either way though, it’s stupid to lose stacks when you unequip, especially for Ele / Engi since they only can have 1 set equipped at a time. So you either pick stacking or something good. I don’t think 0 ~ 250 power is worth sacrificing some other good sigils out there…so stacking sigils will be kind of useless. Maybe if they made it we gain 5 stacks per kill like in pvp then it’s worth it having on offhand….

It just sounds like “I don’t want to make effort to maximize my damage potential…so make it effortless for everyone at the cost of reducing their damage by 10%”

Here’s a suggestion, buy 1 weapon and a lot of +10% sigils (they are cheaper than most food that people use…) and just apply them over each other whenever your gonna run a certain dungeon for awhile. Basically, treat them as consumables/potions because they are just that cheap…

I prefer to determine reward by time.

Time spent vs Reward obtained.

Sure, premade FoTM 48s loses its ‘challenge’ after you run it a few times, but it is still a good chunk of your time. 1 Hour minimum time investment, longer depends on what fractals you get…If it’s not premade (PUG), it can even fail after investing a significant of time.

Most FoTM48 runs i get a total gold value of 1gold ~ 1.5g after I sell to npc and salvage rares. If I get dredge or ascalon I can get more loot but those are some of the longer fractals too which adds time to the run. I’d have to hope for Charged Core or Lodestone drops to up my gold. From Fractal lvl 1 to 48 I think ive gotten 11 charged cores and 9 onyx. Exotic armors are account bound, collect 4 and put them in mystic forge for a chance of getting 2g~5g.

In 60mins you can speed run 3 paths of any dungeon besides Arah. That is a minimum 2G before considering any loot or tokens. CoF P1 is ridiculous dont even want to get started on that.

Fractals bosses need to start dropping generous chunks of silver like regular dungeon bosses…Otherwise you are only doing fractal 48s for that tiny chance of getting your desired fractal skin…and once you get it, you are done.

Um…I rather they buff every other dungeon’s Time:Reward ratio than nerfing CoF’s…

Simply killing CoFP1 will result in:
-some people will just ragequit because other forms of farming gold in this game is simply too boring or too inefficient. (“why not just play and enjoy the game?” cuz most players have already done 1000+ hrs of ‘playing and enjoyin’ the game, they are now more interested in finally having a legendary, and legendary requires money, and this is the most fun and efficient way of making that money)

-some people will go 4W1M the next easiest/efficient things that’s there. I’m guessing COE is a good option due to the drop rate of Charged lodestones. Then Charged lodestone market will crash, so it wont even be efficient anymore. More players ragequit.

People will always find the best setup for making money. And there will always be certain preferences and exclusions…that’s how MMOs are. COF farming is at least more fun than farming vials of karka blood or armored scale or corrupted cores or whatever…at least for me. I feel like a bot when i farm those items in open world, when i do CoE i feel like im actually playing the game.

Doesn’t happen often. But sometimes when I try to swap utilities and misclick by a millimeter and use a skill and gotta wait for its CD before swapping again…I wish there’s a feature under Options to disable being able to use skills with mouse click

Also when I right click to move camera I still want to see my mouse cursor…please have a check box to Hide mouse cursor while rotating camera.

Sebrent.3625:

Very nice list Orpheus. The power of Black Powder is hard to overstate in PvE as it is just so darn good.

At 40+ fractal, can’t boss or miniboss pretty much 1 shot anyone though? :-p

I think the primary reasons Guardians are so good in fractals are:

• Aegis allows them to botch a dodge/block/etc. without being 1 shot
• They have the largest selection of projectile blocks/reflects of any class in the game
• They can’t so much as wipe their butt without someone nearby getting a boon ;-)

Depends on the attacks the bosses use. But zerker thieves die to a lot of things zerker necro/warriors don’t die to.

Guardians are the core of the party. I don’t think there is any room for argument there.
I’m blessed cuz I play thief and my fiancee plays guardian so my botched dodges are covered by her Aegis.

Thief is fine in PvE.

Strengths:
- Melee Single-Target DPS is great, higher than Warrior if allowed to backstab chain.
- Cluster bomb synergize with Guardian. Empower + 5 Clusterbomb in Purgin Flames is 25 stacks of might to all. Overall best combo finisher in the game.
- Decent Ranged DPS.
- Evasive, access to 5~8 dodges (Shortbow #3, Signet of Agility refill)
- Stealth – the only way to shave chunks of time in speed runs. Depends on situation, Mesmer portal is better.
- Anti-projectile – Daggerstorm, Smoke Screen.
- Black Powder – Super dmg mitigation on nonchamp trash mobs.

Weakness:
- Requires player to dodge almost everything. Since zerk thief only has 11k HP. At Fractal 40+ every boss or miniboss can 1 shot you.
- Lacks boons and overall group buffs unless we sacrifice trait points for them. Unlike Warrior’s Banners which is just as effective used by pure berserker spec…

I’d say we are totally fine. We bring a lot to the table, but the catch is you have to play well and not die due to the fragile nature of our class.

Travlane.5948:

Sifu.6527:

Orpheus.7284:

The tooltip for sword autoattack has gone berserko…

and my actual attack numbers (pve) was 3.5k x 2, then crippling strike hitting 6.5k~7k with berserker gear and only 10 points in Deadly Arts…

Was there a hidden buff somewhere? or has it always been this powerful?
I know DPS wise its not THAT great as the autochain is quite slow, so its not much stronger than a pistol whip’s dps

My backstab does 1,000,000 damage to a bunny. So what? Stop posting numbers from killing lowbies…

yeah sorry it usually does like 1.5k per attack and 3500 max on 3rd. realistically with a decent bersker build and 15k hp to make it playable. if running a 0 30 20 20 0 or of sorts…its more like 1200 1200 2700 which zerk geawr. and im willing to say almost half of auto attacks miss if not sometimes more due to the incredibly slow speed of them. they are so slow you could dodge the first strike then roll dodge again on the 2nd and again on the 3rd. :P

I was talking PvE. I’m switching around often between 20 30 10 10 0 and 10 30 20 10 0 for fractals and dungeons. 3.5k is more like my first 2 hits…and 7k is my 3rd. Arah, Fractals, etc…

Your figures were pretty dead on for PvP though.

Either way, even at 3.5k x 2 and 7k, that’s only 14k per chain. DPS wise it’s still lower than Backstab combo and slightly higher than Pistol Whip. I just haven’t been paying attention to Sword autoattacks thats all as I used sword only situationally for its utilities. The tooltip damage should have been enough to tell me the 3rd hit hits like a truck.

Brassnautilus.2941:

you got buff’ed
ask your party why they gave you might n fury

Um first of all before getting all witty up in here… Fury only gives me more crit chance. So my peak numbers aka Crit would not change from Fury. I’d take some time and study what boons do.

I specifically paid attention to my boons and their conditions, I had no bloodlust stacks, barely any might stacks, like 3 or something, and enemy had around 5 vulnerability stacks average from our warrior’s rending strike passive.

Maybe I just never paid attention to it’s autoattack figures. You’ve all kindly answered my question of it being a buff or not. much appreciated.

Sifu.6527:

Orpheus.7284:

The tooltip for sword autoattack has gone berserko…

and my actual attack numbers (pve) was 3.5k x 2, then crippling strike hitting 6.5k~7k with berserker gear and only 10 points in Deadly Arts…

Was there a hidden buff somewhere? or has it always been this powerful?
I know DPS wise its not THAT great as the autochain is quite slow, so its not much stronger than a pistol whip’s dps

My backstab does 1,000,000 damage to a bunny. So what? Stop posting numbers from killing lowbies…

Ok maybe i should have been clear on my target – the first time I noticed the damage was on a level 38 Fractal Run at the Bloomhunger boss fight a few days ago. I’m usually a Backstab spammer in PvE but during the month where Reveal got to 4s I started using sword, while it was good, I never noticed its damage going up to 7k on the 3rd hit of its autochain. Arah mobs took around the same damage…basically most enemies with nonexceptional toughness such as Lupi. Even against Lupi my damage was 2x higher than the DPS thief that soloed him awhile back and we have around the same spec…so thats what led me to think if it was a recent buff. If there isn’t, then there isnt. I guess it’s just the Signet buffs and Warrior Banner buff recently that made the damage so outstanding.

Only thing I don’t like about it is the fact Laurels can not be obtained any other way.
Every other “Daily Rewards” can be obtained (farm karma, buy mystic coin off TP) except Laurels.

I think a majority of players try their best to do their dailies even without the temptation of Laurels because it has a chance of giving them a Black Lion Salvage kit (which is around 300 gems in value). It’s also a good chunk of exp on a character that needs it.

If i remember correctly, Anet was working on another way to obtaining Laurels through achievements? Can someone confirm?

Raine.1394:

As we really know nothing about the underlying odds and given they are free to change over time…

We do have something to go on. The market price of precursors, and the market price of level 80 rares/exotics.

If a precursor is generally 500g. Usually it means you should be able to get it via the Mystic Forge for slightly under that. People usually only sell when they can make a profit.

I think a lot of the precursors on TP are made via Mystic Forge by people with thousands of gold. They can buy enough rares/exotics to RNG enough to balance out the probability. When you flip a coin 10 times u may get 10 tails, when you flip it 100000000 times, more likely than not u’ll be getting closer to a 50/50 rate. If you don’t get a precursor with your first investment of 500g, doesn’t mean you won’t get Two precursors on your next 500g investment.

or something

My RNG so far.

320G on 1000ish Rare Daggers.

Ended up with around 80~90 Exotics.

Ended up with 2 exotic which in the end i sold on TP so I can still afford to waypoint.

Will RNG again when I have money.

I refuse to buy Precursors because I don’t sit well with giving my hard earned in-game gold to some random dude that ‘got extremely lucky’ or some prick that likes to monopolize and manipulate TP.

@WonderfulCT – Combos like that may at best need skill-specific tweaks, not a generic 50% nerf to Quickness. (Besides, stun break)

@Auesis – Can not compare to GW1. Totally different game. Quickness in GW2 (at its original state, not this 50% thing) was supposed to be a short burst, and it’s up to the players to find the best opportunities to use them.

@Caedmon – That makes Warrior skill Frenzy even more risky to use in conjunction to its 50% reduced armor. Drawbacks are already there for most of the skills it’s related to, Time Warp is just an anomoly.

Question for PVE players out there…what are some of these “challenging content” that the patch notes were talking about that were made trivial due to Quickness? I’ve ran every dungeon path (multiple times) and currently at L20+ FoTM and what from what I’ve seen, most bosses are already trivial to begin with, and the better designed bosses does not become “trivial” just because I hit Frenzy button on my Warrior or Haste on my thief…I’ve been thinking about this since the patch hit and I’m almost certain now that it’s just a filler excuse for nerfing quickness in PvE as well because they can’t be bothered to segregate PVE/PVP mechanics.

Only things I’m concerned about is the balance team and the direction of the in-game economy.

The balance team rarely discusses their reasoning behind their buffs and nerfs and that lack of communication is creating a lack of faith.
Economy…not enough supply, too much gold.

Sifu.6527:

Orpheus.7284:

wookie.8934:

Mixchimmer.7230:

Meanwhile, in the land of warriors (Pre-Banner Buff) … 32K crits on a 6 second cooldown. This isn’t my picture, I saw it over in the warrior forum.

This is why dungeon groups with only warriors are so much more efficient than any other group. Between all their shouts, they can easily reach 25 stacks of might, all their auto attacks (including the mesmers) inflict vulnerability keeping the mob at constant 25% extra damage, and then the obvious time warp.

I think maybe the only reason I think the nerf to our PvE damage/viability is so unfair is because of stuff like this.

Bah, who knows.

You do realize he has 25 stacks of might? Right?

You also realize that warriors versus most thieves is an easy kill for a thief? Right?

You do realize that 100b in SPVP is laughable? Right?

Please…

You do realize that we’re talking about the PvE aspect right? Keep your PvP/WvW comments out because most of us don’t care how Warrior VS Thief goes in PvE. Point is when they nerf stuff like this for PvP/WvW, PvE should not suffer.

Meanwhile in the land of Mesmer, you can portal through the fire trap. How come I can’t do that on my thief. However, I can stealth my entire group in the raving asura fractal and bypass those stupid harpies. How come a warrior can’t do that! Stop kittening over a small nerf (it could’ve been worst). Go check the ranger forum if you want to feel better.

Let’s do this over shall we? I understand every class has things they can do and can not do. We can come up with different scenarios all day. All classes however, do damage, and this is a damage nerf to Thieves in PvE that seemed unaccounted for by the balance team. This is not a ‘small’ nerf, it’s at least a 25% DPS reduction for most thief rotations whether you are P/D or D/D…and this is not “kittening”, it’s an attempt to get an answer from the balance team why they think a 25% dps nerf is fair for thieves.

I have a Ranger too, so no, I won’t feel better. The unreasonable Quickness nerf however, should be treated on a higher priority than this as it affects many more classes and perhaps destroyed a fun mechanic in the game.

Bastar.8012:

I think it’s a bad reason to nerf quickness because some players can’t react to the damage spikes it gives on time. I think situational awareness is vital in PVP, as I’m sure you’re all aware.

I have never seen a problem with quickness. I would say Time Warp was a little OP in PVE, and if they were set on nerfing quickness, which they obviously were, then they should have nerfed the duration of it, specific to skills such as TW, and not the effect as a whole.

Double speed was awesome and fun, 50% just seems lackluster now.

“Double speed was awesome and fun.” So true. I don’t feel that adrenaline rush anymore when I hit Frenzy on my warrior in tough situations (i.e. Ascalon Fractal mobs), I’d try to Frenzy burst in there as long as I can and try to get out alive, sometimes I succeed, sometimes I get too greedy and die. That risk/reward feel was thrilling nonetheless.
That feeling is pretty much lost forever. Frenzy isn’t even on my utility bar anymore. Rather use boring banners, at least they don’t fail.

Fyrebrand.4859:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Personally I think they should just set up ‘sectors’ for nerfs like this, so they only hit one aspect. For example, I personally felt that this nerf should have only hit the sPvP ‘sector’ alone, and if they DID want it to hit dungeons, than make it so that in dungeons Time Warp is either not accessible (not smart IMO), or reduce the duration of Time Warp to 5 or 6 seconds. You guys did this before in GW1 from what I’ve heard, so why not do this sort of thing here?

Ugh, that sounds like the worst thing ever. Who wants to keep track of any number of different “versions” of their skills, depending on where they are and what they’re doing? It’s bad enough that SPvP flat-out disables certain skills.

Based on the description of the nerf in the patch notes, they wanted to change Quickness in both PvP and PvE. It’s better that they keep skills functioning the same way in all cases. I understand that any given skill can drastically change in viability depending on the situation (open-world PvE, dungeons, SPvP, WvW, etc.) but it’s their job to find a clever way to balance their skills in the best way over all — not our job to memorize 6 different versions of each skill and what they do on different maps.

It’s not our “job” to memorize 2 different versions of each skill, it’s something you’d want to know if you want to play that aspect of the game. You can ignore it and stay clueless about what it does, it just helps if you do try and actually learn the rules. When you play cards, do you think it a ‘job’ to learn a new variation of the game?

In an ideal scenario, yes, it’d be best to keep the skills the same for all aspects of the game without ruining balance. But that is difficult to do.

Sil.4560:

You think that’s bad, take a look at what it means for warrior in competitive play.

Well apparently, according to them, a big reason for the nerf is because bad players can’t dodge a frenzy 100b on time…so this was actually their intention. Terrible decision, but clearly intended.

But their argument for PvE side of the nerf just felt like something they made up…trivialize challenging battles, i wish they would elaborate, with examples, etc.

Dante.1508:

Mesmer still is Overpowered, but my poor ranger….now its just kittensauce.

Yeah. Pet swap / QZ was one of Ranger’s core mechanic to keep the profession in the picture when it comes to DPS.

The more you think about it, the more thoughtless this nerf appears to be. This has to be an April Fools joke, it just has to be…if not, I’m really worried for the future of GW2 when it comes to balancing.

“•Reduced quickness from 100% attack speed to 50%.
As we push to improve balance in both PvE and PvP, a few mechanics in the game will be receiving updates to promote fun and balanced play. In the past, quickness has granted double the action speed normally available to players. In PvP, this speed gives most players almost no chance to react to incoming abilities and allows for massive spike damage in extremely short periods of time. In PvE, the increased attack speed can trivialize a lot of content that would otherwise provide a good challenge. Therefore, we are reducing the speed that quickness allows by half of its current potential while slightly increasing the duration on player-activated skills.”

This nerf just feels like a lazy way out. Not all Quickness-granting skills are balanced. Frenzy, Haste, Quickening Zephyr are all pretty balanced because of the vulnerability drawbacks they have. Passive Quickness skills like “Critical Haste” or “Sigil of Rage” are already kind of lackluster due to lenghthy internal cooldown.
When you make the Quickness mechanic only half as fast as before, it doesn’t justify those skills drawbacks anymore. It destroys the skill in its very nature.

For PvP: Should never balance something because certain players “can’t react on time”, because most good players could deal with it.

For PvE: What contents are you referring to that is ‘trivialized’ due to Quickness (not read as Time Warp). CoF Path 1? A 4s duration skill on a 60s cool down, even if people utilized the full 4s for that 2x DPS, should not “trivialize” anything that isn’t already “trivial”. In most cases of challenging encounters, very rarely is a player able to use the entire 4s of their skill to DPS.

I think Time Warp was the only thing that “may” be the only skill that make Quickness look overpowered. It provides “AOE” quickness with no drawbacks. Cooldown is irrelevant as bosses are usually spaced 4 minutes apart.

Note that: When 1 player uses Frenzy/Haste/QZ, that’s only double damage for 4 seconds for that 1 player. Time Warp is 10 seconds of double damage for ALL players, effectively doubling total damage output as a party. That can take down half a trivial boss’s HP (Sear Effigy for example in CoF1) within first 10 seconds of the fight! I’ve seen players, over time, crumble to Searing Effigy’s pressure because they never learned how to dodge its simple telegraphed attacks, because they think “Oh the fight is so short I already did my job DPSing in Time Warp doesn’t matter now its almost over”

The culprit is not Quickness, it’s Time Warp…

I know it’s probably too much to ask to change specific encounters to make it harder for players to just abuse Time Warp(sure did a great job in that area for some of the Fractal Bosses though ^^) , but please reconsider with this flat 50% nerf with nothing to compensate (1s extra of swinging 50% faster is not even worth that 1s extra of drawback).

My suggestion here is to make Quickness come in 25% or 50% stacks. Then adjust individual Skills, Traits, and Sigil accordingly to grant different # of stacks. If that’s too much work, just revert the change and simply nerf Time Warp.

wookie.8934:

Mixchimmer.7230:

Meanwhile, in the land of warriors (Pre-Banner Buff) … 32K crits on a 6 second cooldown. This isn’t my picture, I saw it over in the warrior forum.

This is why dungeon groups with only warriors are so much more efficient than any other group. Between all their shouts, they can easily reach 25 stacks of might, all their auto attacks (including the mesmers) inflict vulnerability keeping the mob at constant 25% extra damage, and then the obvious time warp.

I think maybe the only reason I think the nerf to our PvE damage/viability is so unfair is because of stuff like this.

Bah, who knows.

You do realize he has 25 stacks of might? Right?

You also realize that warriors versus most thieves is an easy kill for a thief? Right?

You do realize that 100b in SPVP is laughable? Right?

Please…

You do realize that we’re talking about the PvE aspect right? Keep your PvP/WvW comments out because most of us don’t care how Warrior VS Thief goes in PvE. Point is when they nerf stuff like this for PvP/WvW, PvE should not suffer.

Mixchimmer.7230:

Henrik.7560:

Auesis.7301:

Henrik.7560:

Cry more, you cant see how overpowered you are, you deserve it. Finally those poor defenseless classes who take 6k, 5k, 8k (and if manage to survive) go “what the heck” then they get another backstab and die.

This isn’t even a PvP discussion, and you’re bringing your incessant whining in to a place where it is not warranted.

You are the reason I hate the MMO community in general. Shoving your nose in areas of the game that you are clearly completely clueless about and pretending that you are even slightly knowledgeable. Your complaints are not even SLIGHTLY relevant here. Go cry in sPvP or WvW forums instead. People like YOU are the reason PvE elements fall to pieces.

You’re almost as bad as Columba. Please leave. Now.

You are the one who doesn’t see it. Thieves can’t do that sequence since their stealth is debuffed for once, and by the looks, you are unhappy that i am happy about being nerfed. Nah, im not sooking, im crying for joy that they got nerfed!!! You don’t understand how overpowered you thieves really are.
And yeah, I know you are a thief, any other class wouldn’t whine the way you did.
~Bye! I won’t be reading your next post because its just gonna contain more whining!

This dude is everything that’s wrong with the thief forums. Coming in here and making a post for the sake of drama alone -_-. I wish there was some sort of preventative measure to this kind of unproductive bull-crap.

Definitely need subforums for PvE/PvP, like guru. Prevents that type of garbage.

Rhysati.4932:

With the way the game is designed it would only make logical sense to balance things differently across these three drastically different styles of gameplay.

However, that will never happen. Why? Because it triples the work load of the developers and there is no way they are going to sell that to their bosses/share holders.

Even Blizzard flat-out refused to do this for PvE/PvP and they’ve got the money and dev teams to spare. Any and every game that tries to have these sorts of drastically different styles of gameplay need to pick one of them and say: THIS is what we are balancing around. The other modes are for fun and will never be properly balanced.

It’s the same way MOBAs are balanced as well. They add new maps and game-modes but tell everyone that balance will always be focused around what they feel is the core focus of the game(your standard 5v5 team map).

They’ve already done this though. They have the resources. Also IMO i think veteran player discussions offers a lot of free human resource…

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

I can’t see any issues with having the skills different in PVP than in PvE.

WvW though…

It’s kind of expected that new players could walk out of PvE into WvW and continue to expand their skills and whatnot. If suddenly their weapon effects were slightly different or some skills were disabled or changed, it could be a problem. Depends on how large of difference the skills have really. Reducing AoE damage for example could be fine in WvW, as it wouldn’t affect the use of skills for newer players.

I can ensure you that new/low level players in WvW is not even considered when making any balance changes. “Really want to level in WvW? Follow a zerg and complete events.” is their answer to your concern.

Adaneshade.2409:

Honestly, I’ve noticed no effect whatsoever on normal gameplay. If this is affecting you so badly, you were leaning way too heavily on that stealth crutch.

It’s not a crutch. It’s just C&D→ Backstab chain is the highest dps chain we have that can come remotely close to Warrior DPS. It’s raw numbers.

WvW players already got what they cried for, no culling.
I remember they said WvW was supposed to be “Huge, Imbalanced, PvP”
I don’t even know why WvW need to be balanced based on the small roam encounters. It’s not even what it’s about.

Kage.2389:

Okay. So “a lot” is obviously an exaggeration. You know what I meant.

Not even close…even before the nerf we can only outdps warriors situationally, and only against single targets. You’ll laugh at your own statement if there was a DPS meter implemented in the game.

Warrior’s most damaging rotation has not been nerfed since release. If you play warrior you know what it is.

The more I think about it the more I think this is an April Fool’s joke.
Maybe on April 1st there will be an “April Fools!” thread and reverts all the changes…
This nerf is just so unreasonable I’m going crazy.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Anet will continue to buff warriors until they are the only class in the game. at that point they can declare that they have achieved perfect class balance.

Didn’t you notice that every month a new letter is added to the name of the game? After next month it’ll spell out Guild Warriors.

It will make balancing easier, and no more collateral damage.

For past few months I thought Anet is able to do the impossible and balance PvP/WvW without affecting general PvE. Unfortunately I was dead wrong.

I think after today, most of us will realize blanket nerfs/buffs are bad for GW2.
PvE and WvW/PvP just plays way too differently and the playerbase in each area have different concerns and priorities that often conflict with one another. It only makes sense to balance them separately.

Iruwen.3164:

Orpheus.7284:

Please revert Quickening nerf and just nerf Time Warp instead…most mesmers are fine with this Quickening nerf so they should be fine with a half duration Time Warp as well since it’s the same thing.

Wat. No. It’s not even close to being the same because of the way time warp works (1 second ticks) and because it’s an elite skill on a freaking 240 second cooldown.

The 240 cd is actually quite irrelevant as most boss fights are spaced that much time apart. So basically every boss fight you get to use it on the entire party. That said, if they nerf Time Warp’s duration, they would need to lower the CD.

This patch nerfed thieves so bad, that when I clicked Summon Thief Guild Elite, nothing happened. Then I got a mail saying the Thief Guild disbanded.

Okamakiri.8746:

Wing.5819:

The change does reduce backstab dps. But ONLY backstab dps; you’re total dps does not take a 1/4 hit.

It’s likely more than 1/4 hit. They’re taking a 3s chain and stretching it into a 4s chain, with maybe first AA attack added in the 1s gap (there is a pause between AA chains). Add the reduction of might stacks from “Hidden Assassin” and we’re easily looking at 25%+ loss in DPS. Not to talk about the survivability loss with now less healing in stealth, less condition removal, less aggro management.

Right. I didn’t even think about the defensive aspect of it. The loss in damage alone already had me QQ’ing hard lol.

I play both Warrior and Thief a lot and I was already feeling that Warrior is just overall superior in damage dealing, with an inherent large hp pool to offset mistakes made. Thief comes close second in damage and only limited to certain situations (20% from executioner when <50%, behind the target at all times, single target only)…so it was already quite unfair to begin with…Now this…ugh.

Increase backstab damage in PvE (not WvW, not PvP) by 25% and maybe I’ll be somewhat satisfied.

Wing.5819:

I wasn’t disagreeing with your overall assessment, just clarifying. ;-)

I know. I just thought you had an alternate combo I may fall back on in these hard times. lol

Sad thing is, this change will probably not be reverted…and instead next month patch we will get something to make up for it like the dagger dmg +5% trait becomes +10%…or something silly.

I made a thread on this, but yeah, you can think of it as 1 less backstab every 12 seconds…

Wing.5819:

The change does reduce backstab dps. But ONLY backstab dps; you’re total dps does not take a 1/4 hit.

True. But I think at melee range the backstab chain was the only reason we were even somewhat close to warrior dps (on single target). Let me know if there’s another alternative that came close to backstab spamming.

Don’t say condition damage because Warriors have a natural 1000+ condition damage from 30 points in Arms and 20+ might stacks (35 condi dmg per stack), they do nice condition damage without even trying.

This is the first patch that I totally disagree with, thus reacting so much on forums…I play all 8 classes too so I’ve been pretty tolerant to all the nerfs to certain classes up til now.

- Quickeness nerf…uncalled for in PvE. Time Warp was the only thing that made this mechanic remotely broken. Fun factor also suffered.
- Thief Revealed nerf…drastically reduced melee damage output. Again, something meant for WvW players but PvE players suffer for it.
- Engineers…Fortunately this is one of my less played profession but I wish they Rest in Peace. Last patch with the global cooldowns was already pretty bad and this one i think put the last nails in the coffin with the totally revamped Kit Refinement.