Guild Wars 2

Travlane.5948:

evilapprentice.6379:

Why would it?

S/P is a direct damage weaponset, there isn’t a single ability in it that can stand to gain from taking condition damage. Why add 5 bleed stacks (at lets say 5 seconds), that do roughly 1k damage over 5 seconds (since you’re going to be focusing on power/crit/crit damage)?

i agree with what you are INTENDING but i would like to note there is no such thing as condition or direct dmg set. each set SHOULD be able to be used as either. sword is the only weapon that really cant be used as condi even tho every other weapon in game kinda can do both.

Weapon sets that can’t do condition damage
Thief
D/P
S/P

Warrior
A/A
A/S
M/S
M/M
GS
.
.
.
.
I mean, I could keep going, but why bother? It’s fine if a set is designed to do 1 kind of damage, its fine if a set is intended to do both, but S/P is clearly designed as a direct damage weaponset.

Oghier.7419:

I suspect they looked at Inf Return and noted that it’s the only weapon skill in the game that breaks stun. That anomaly is being corrected.

I think they may not have fully considered how sword builds will fare without it, however. The stunbreak may have been an error, but it is the one shining advantage that build has. Well, that and the fact that it’s not P/P

It does not break stun, so I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at. Did you mean it can be used while stunned? Because there’s a number of skills that can do that.

You’ll also note mesmer Staff 2 (Phase retreat) works in the exact same manner (an escape you can use while stunned that doesn’t break the stun). If you trait for staff, it’s usable nearly as often as IR is. It’s also functionally superior to IR in some cases (no need to set it up with a skill like IS, no circle to close to which can shut the skill down entirely).

Jumper and Mrbig pointed out the issue fairly well – IR was what made Sword MH playable – Not strong, playable. Without it, the spec will be scrapped. If this is part of a plan to rehaul sword into a well built weaponset with 5 skills worth using, bravo – but it’s silly to implement the change that renders it useless without any of the other changes to keep it as a functioning, competitive weaponset. Especially when you consider thief has he narrowest weapon set choices in the game already (Ele’s get attunements, Engi’s kits), AND only 2 of them are TPvP viable atm, soon to be 1.

A lot of us are still curious and concerned about the upcoming changes to Infiltrators Return (IR).

Many of the top players have laid out there arguments as to why this change seems like it will remove S/D as a TPvP viable choice, leaving thieves with a single option (D/P). I’ll link a few of their arguments below, but this doesn’t really represent how many people have explained why they believe this change is a bad choice.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/8#post3168211

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/8#post3168347

Can we have a discussion about how you see S/D remaining viable despite their arguments?

Can we have an update about how testing has gone? I’ve seen other classes receive reassurances about how testing to their changes has revealed that the specs will still work, and I’d love to hear how your internal testers are doing with S/D in the upcoming meta.

Thank you.

D/P – Blind blind blind blind blind blind blind. If you see zerkers stance up, Headshot and kite. If you see Zerkers stance AND stability, don’t bother til one both fades, because they’re immune to ALL your survivability mechanics.

S/D – Inf Strike/Return (Note – this advice void after dec 10th) when you see them using their CC weapon skills, save FS for earthshaker. Always swing around their back when you IS in – I’ve noticed it tempts warriors into using staggering blow or ES at bad times.

D/D – Good luck? This is a really poor matchup – need melee range and 1/2s to access stealth, DB is a kitten poor evade that’s going to do kitten damage for you if you’re Power/Crit, No access to blind outside stealth+a trait (which they can go immune to with Zerkers Stance), and any competent player will make landing a backstab a nightmare with Earthshaker, Staggering Blow and to a lesser extent Hammer Shock.

Always keep a Sbow as your second weaponset – choking gas to nueter their heals (be ready to dodge ES though, or else they’ll effortlessly cleanse it right of), and cluster bomb in CS so you can do decent damage and stack some weakness.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

ensoriki.5789:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

ensoriki.5789:

A lot of stuff they could play with but what Einlizers(?) been suggesting would be the easiest.

I agree that it would be the easiest but it doesn’t solve the problem, his suggestion is just a “band-aid” solution.

P/P and D/D needs surgery, not bandage.

It’s not really a bandaid.
Think an ADC in a moba, or well most “ranger” archetypes (like even our rangers shortbow) in typical mmos, or even FPS games with abilities where your “auto-attack” is the greatest long-term source of damage. It’s putting it into that sphere.
The other option is to keep the auto attack meagre to put emphasis on the abilities but at the moment the abilities I would say still don’t flow that well to make it meet that goal and it’s hard to do it right given we use a global resource.
Ergo ~ Increase the auto-attack to go towards a certain design (which is valid and not a bandaid), or increase other abilities towards another (which is also valid but would quite likely take longer).

I think either way they’d have to look at a couple skills again even if they did increase the auto-attack but P/P would feel the improvement faster if they started there.

Like I’ve already mentioned, the problem with Vital Shot is that this skill is shared between 2 weapon sets. Any changes to this skill to buff P/P will also buff P/D. Now that both weapon set has a decent auto-attack, why would any one pick P/P over P/D? Can you see? That’s the same situation we are in today, thus this is a “band-aid” solution.

Anet needs to separate P/P from P/D, D/P and S/P and the only way to do that is to give P/P its own 5 skill weapon set (same goes with D/D).

Take Body Shot for instance. The immobilize is useful for P/P, but P/D now have 2 movement impairment ability — can’t you see the problem there? It just made P/D much more better than P/P, so why use P/P?

What’s the issue with designing Vital shot and Unload so that it can be used equally effectively with a condition focus, a power/crit focus, or a hybrid setup? This is of course assuming they add something to unload that allows it to do both direct damage (already exists) and condition damage (would have to be added).

There is a finite number of attribute layouts (in PvP at least, so at minimum this would work as a PvP only split, but could likely work for PvE and WvW as well), so there has to be a direct damage value + attack speed + condition choice + base condition duration combination that would make vital shot and unload do enough damage in any setup to be competitive.

I’m not claiming this would be a spectacularly easy feat, but it’s all math using values they determined and have complete control over – it seems easier than a complete redesign to P/P and how Anet designed thieves dual wielding.

Of course, a complete redesign could also tackle P/P’s other problems (no mobility, very few defensive options for any available thief playstyle)

Chaszyrr.6479:

eliminate IR cast time could be traitable in SA traitline. There are so many good traits in SA that it would still be a nerf to have to sacrifice one.
And Travlane, some of those traits are so OP. It sounds cool but you would have to dumb down the values.

Why would you want to set up a weaponset that absolutely required points in a certain line? and SA of all things? There are no “must have” traits in SA for Sword MH, because Sword MH has no use for SA.

Traits should bring different flavors to weaponsets, not absolutely define them.

Smiley.5376:

s/d + p/p, good surv, good burst, interrupt and pretty much a safestomp(blind from p5 + stab from elite)…

d/p is to much “in your face” to be effective for a thief in my eyes
same applies to d/d

combine s/d with another weaponset and there you go

This might work in Hotjoin, but you aren’t a thief without a SBow in TPvP – the only role you fit is roamer, and it’s hard to roam without a Shbow.

Why would it?

S/P is a direct damage weaponset, there isn’t a single ability in it that can stand to gain from taking condition damage. Why add 5 bleed stacks (at lets say 5 seconds), that do roughly 1k damage over 5 seconds (since you’re going to be focusing on power/crit/crit damage)?

When suggesting changes to vital shot or body shot, please remember that P/D exists, as well as Sneak Attack – both are clearly set up for condition damage.

If you make a suggestion that turned Vital shot into a direct damage ability, you just killed P/D and made the stealth attack pointless.

I set up a 5v5 filter the day filters were released, and it’s literally the only page I ever check for PvP games.

I don’t see why the dev’s don’t sit down and do some math.

I’m sure there exists a way to tune the Direct damage Vital shot does so that
- In a power crit setup, the bulk of the damage comes from Vital shot itself, but it does slightly less than comparable skills, which is made up for by the low damage bleed you get (low damage because you’re power/crit focused, not condition focused)
- In a condition setup, the bulk of the damage comes from Bleeding, but the ability doesn’t do the kitten poor damage it does now.

Then you do the same thing with unload – by having it apply torment, bleed, burning, whatever.

Viola – you’ve solved the bulk of P/P’s problems (it still has very poor defense options for a thief weaponset, but one problem at a time), and turned P/P into a versatile weaponset – something that works well for Power/crit setups, for condition setups, and hell, even for hybrid setups!

Yes.

When they updated Sleight of hand to Daze + 20% faster steal recharge, it was pointed out bountiful theft (when slotted) will steal boons before Sleight of hand attempts to apply daze.

Most of us see the issues with a specific subset of these changes, and are only expressing our opinions. This isn’t the rambling of some random, inexperienced loudmouth on the forums – it’s reflected and represented by a number of top TPvP players.

I only hope you take those prognostications, generated from experience, seriously.

Stooperdale.3560:

Sanduskel you’re now up to 16 posts in this thread, none of which have said anything more than the first. Give it a rest.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/11#post3174287

Please, dont feed the troll.

rchu.8945:

the hate of S/D thief from developers is beyond comprehension. RIP S/D thief forever.

Likely not forever.

I don’t doubt that Anet has in mind changes to made S/D better, part of which involves limiting how good IR is.

The issue is, they’re implementing the IR change before they implement the other changes that will allow S/D to be competitive in the current and upcoming meta’s without instant IR.

It’s an extremely poor decision to make in my (and almost every top player’s) opinion, but it seems like its coming nonetheless. It’ll suck for a few months (Anet SOP), but hopefully it will spur ANet to make the changes Sword MH needs to keep it competitive without the need for IR in its current form.

Cost.6917:

Erzian.5218:

Skill, that renders the vast majority of cc skills useless and allows you to make up for 293824902380 mistakes at avoiding certain key skills, is getting fixed.

Are you talking about stability? No?

No no, if he was talking about stability he could have just said “all” instead of “Vast majority”, and “Makes you completely immune” instead of “useless”

People who’ve never played an S/D thief love to come talk about how broken it is.

Black Teagan.9215:

I have never used Opportunist and dont need it to have always a high inipool, that mean opportunist cannot be so strong.

Not interested in weighing in on this, just here to point out that this above statement is a blatant logical fallacy, and holds no value.

“I’ve never eaten a burger, and I’ve eaten a staggering amount of delicious food, that means a burger cannot be so delicious”.

Josh Davis.6015:

It’s worth noting that Tyler Chapman and I have tested a few variations of Hambow internally and it still does good damage. Like…really good. I think the main implication of the changes in PvP is that you won’t be able to run defensive runesets like Lyssa and do the same amount of damage as you did before – you’ll need to run offensive sets.

I’m glad to see the developers taking the communities reactions into account and taking the time to update the playerbase concerning potentially tremendous changes to a class.

Mrbig.8019:

Excalibur.9748:

Mrbig.8019:

Hype.8032:

Excalibur.9748:

key thing that keeps mesmer viable is phase retreat, which is basically shadow return. if that ever gets nerfed (.25s cast time added), i fear mesmer will be in the same state as S/D thief – completely not viable.

I don’t want staff nerfed anymore than IR but I think it’s worth noting that mesmers can be very effective while slotting 3 stunbreaks. Thieves kitten themselves quite a bit not taking shadow refuge…. so mesmers can handle stuns better and their skill remains safe from THA NERF HAMMMAAAHHH.

Shadow refuge should be nerfed too. Then we’ll see how much value the thief has in GW2

lol it would have no value whatsoever then.

That’s my point.

After mug nerf, thieves were in a ridicolous state where we were sub-par in EVERY ASPECT, still teams carried us.

Shadow refuge was the sole, single reason why thieves were brought.

Now that they’re nerfing the sole single reason why thieves are strong ( S/D, or rather a good, self sustainable build), i guess not even shadow refuge will be enough to justify a thief in your team.

If it is, then Shadow refuge deserves a nerf, and the thief profession the rehaul it needs.

Do you honestly trust Developers who

- feel ditching Sbow for Pistol OH (for ease of stomping, of all things) is a viable strategy for TPvP
- Proposed the IR change in the first place, and completely ignored the feedback from the community regarding the change
- Are reducing a non-stealth thiefs only defense mechanism
- Completely ignored the general issues with P/P and D/D, and the specific issues with P/D and S/P in what was supposed to be a huge balance patch

to rehaul the class effectively?

Cause I sure as kitten don’t.

Stooperdale.3560:

Sanduskel.1850:

Anet knows more about this class and they have much more data than we do. you need to trust them and not second guess their every move.

You’ve made a dozen posts in this thread saying exactly. Nobody has paid more attention to the 12th than to the 1st.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/11#post3174287

Brett.4305:

Zacchary.6183:

TL;DR The problem is not initiative regen, its everything else. If you really want to open up builds for the thief you should look at why we aren’t going with anything else rather than focusing on what we do use.

I hope that the developers read this and actually understand this.

Dev’s don’t want thief specs held hostage by 15 points in CS for opportunist, without realizing its actually held hostage by 30 points in CS for Hidden killer/Executioner and crit damage. It seems they have a very loose grasp on how the thief class plays, especially in SPvP.

Imagi.4561:

At this point, I think that even if ArenaNet doesn’t agree with the counterarguments that have been presented regarding the IS nerf, it should be postponed and perhaps put on the list for a future patch.

I’d actually like to see anets opinion on the counter arguments. All they responded to was a sarcastic comment about how IS/IR was now going to be useless, and it should be designed like Shadow Shot, instead of the myriad well constructed arguments concerning the change.

There has been a great deal of protest for this change and there are a multitude of other significant changes being implemented. I feel like this should be enough to warrant a delay until they’re in a position to do a weaponset overhaul, at which point it might not even be necessary.

I wouldn’t count on it – the vibe I’m getting is this change is happening, regardless how awful it appears to be.

phys.7689:

I can tell your very invested here, and i understand that, but lets try to be objective. Other stomp ensuring skills require the use of a 60 second cool down (base) utility that has a very high value in use, (usually invulnerability of some sort) The IR technique can be done every 22 seconds with steal, which is short cooldown, you can do it 3 times even without points in steal reduction by using a different utilities in addition to steal.

Every 22 seconds with steal and a grand master trait, otherwise its 22-35 seconds. And 5 initiative, lets not forget that. 60 seconds is a blanket number that doesn’t cover all cases – a guardian for example can generate stability for stomping every 30 seconds, faster than an untraited steal, and it doesn’t cost any weapon skills. An engineer can do it every 20 seconds. It’s not much more effective than just using Black powder, which doesn’t cost steal or any utilities, and only 1 more initiative – it’s also easier to set up, and useful for more than just yourself.
Bringing up “different utilities” doesn’t help your point, because other classes could bring 2 utilities that grant a combination of stability/immunity in the same manner.
Thieves have no access to stability, their defenses are all active, and generally built like glass by necessity to be effective. They can’t start a stomp with a huge health pool, protection, regen, aegis, and/or decently high armor like many other classes have the option to. A thief standing still for 4 seconds in any other situation is a death sentence, should thieves just not stomp?

Zacchary.6183:

evilapprentice.6379:

Zacchary.6183:

Sanduskel.1850:

Think we need to tone down the melodrama. certain elements were badly op’d. For the health of the game, Anet is fixing them. Thieves are fine now and will continue to be fine. Relax.

Well I disagree with you. Thieves are in a bad place.

Everyone disagrees with Sanduskel.

We should probably stop responding to anything he says in the thief boards at all, since he isn’t open to discussion. He only wishes to express his opinion which he considers infallible. His opinion has been acknowledged as extremely off base by nearly every single experienced thief who still frequents the boards (it might be literally every single one, I just don’t know for sure), so let’s just just all agree to skip his posts.

I disagree with your suggestion. Perma-enabling this OP behavior will only break the forums. ;D

I’m not looking to turn this into a Sanduskel bashing thread, but he is 100% committed to his opinion – he has no interest in discussing or learning – if you don’t agree with his opinion, you are wrong, regardless what your points might be. He’s either extremely misinformed and happy about that, or (much more likely) a troll.

Ignoring him entirely is the only option.

Zacchary.6183:

Sanduskel.1850:

Think we need to tone down the melodrama. certain elements were badly op’d. For the health of the game, Anet is fixing them. Thieves are fine now and will continue to be fine. Relax.

Well I disagree with you. Thieves are in a bad place.

Everyone disagrees with Sanduskel.

We should probably stop responding to anything he says in the thief boards at all, since he isn’t open to discussion. He only wishes to express his opinion which he considers infallible. His opinion has been acknowledged as extremely off base by nearly every single experienced thief who still frequents the boards (it might be literally every single one, I just don’t know for sure), so let’s just just all agree to skip his posts.

phys.7689:

Ichishi.9613:

So this is getting closed today without a single answer given?

he gave the answers, hes going to make vigor nerfs a little less so, ini changes are going through, to be honest they need to, the only thing ill say is some of the traits need sme addition effects or synergy so as to still be appealing outside of ini gain.

I agree that a lot of answers were given. I just disagree that we got an “answer” to the communities issues with IR, which is easily the most important of the changes (the init change is nice, but it wont be introducing P/D or P/P into TPvP, while the IR change will almost definitely remove S/D from our TPvP viable weaponsets, leaving us with D/P – SBow) – we were basically told it was happening, with no discussion based on our questions of how S/D was supposed to remain viable after the change. It’s not like a few random players are spreading doom and gloom – there are a number of long time, experienced players who are convinced this is an awful, awful idea.

IR he says must not mitigate stuns, or be used for stomps, which makes sense.

Why? Thieves aren’t gaining much in the way of survivability this patch (Assassins Reward has the potential to be good, but not amazing, and its a GM trait in 1 line, not like its Healing Signet we’re talking about here) – in fact, they’re losing survivability at every turn. Less vigor uptime for less evades (our only non-stealth based way to avoid damage), No more Perma Stealth (which I agree with 100%, but still results in a squishier thief), and No more IR teleporting you away from danger when one of the 50 CC’s that every popular meta class (except thief) can drop every 5 seconds tags you. They already reduced S/D’s survivability AND utility last month they they halved LS’s boon steal, so now S/D is as useless against boon bunkers as it was earlier in the year when FS was a non-split skill. Jumpers post (Here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/8#post3168211 ) is actually pretty accurate on that account – This is, nigh verbatim, my experience with every half decent bunker since the patch.

The Dev’s decided we don’t get stability or protection. They decided we don’t get to block, or go immune. They decided we should have 10.8k base HP. D/P at least has burst and blinds – what’s an S/D spec supposed to do, literally dodge every non auto-attack while they slowly kill their target (in comparison to D/P) in plain view? That’s what they’ve been trying to do, and the community cried so hard vigor uptime (the 1 defensive boon thieves have good access to) got nerfed.

I don’t get why they want S/D out of the meta so badly and I really don’t get how they can just annihilate the set against the opinion of several experienced players without even discussing it (though they still have a month to discuss it with us, I’m just assuming from the way the issue has been dodged thus far that we won’t be getting the discussion we want. I hope I’m wrong in that). It’s not as if S/D thief is super strong in the current meta – it’s mostly taken specifically because it allows them to not get 2 shot by current CC spam warriors – it’s still an uphill battle, but IR allows S/D thieves to actually have a chance.

They aren’t replacing it with any other options either. If these changes go through, its D/P, quit, or roll Warrior.

Arganthium.5638:

Sanduskel.1850:

Think we need to tone down the melodrama. certain elements were badly op’d. For the health of the game, Anet is fixing them. Thieves are fine now and will continue to be fine. Relax.

“Fixing”?! Yeah, because we needed more init regen to render half of our builds inviable… And the “stun break” on sword #2 which is the only way to avoid being eviscerated every five seconds by a warrior? Yeah, that needed “fixing” too.

What scares me the most is its fairly obvious Anets testing process is not very solid, to say the least. The attitude appears to be “This change is going in”, with absolutely no idea what it’s going to do to the thief meta. I mean, it was suggested that S/D was too powerful for stomping reasons, and we should bring another OH weapon to facilitate easier stomping. It seems the Devs have no idea thieves can’t TPvP without a shortbow in their OH. There’s also been 0 acknowledgement that thieves are the only class that can’t gain stability, and IR was the closest we’d ever get to avoid being obliterated every time we ate CC (which are dropping every 3 seconds in the current and foreseeable meta)

Its this startling lack of basic meta knowledge, combined with the poor testing process that just seems like thief is going to be a benched class between Dec and March.

Mrbig.8019:

Tarkan.5609:

any build will be viable: just go 30 in acrobatics and double sd (with energy sigills as the vigor will get nerfed) or double dp and unless u are out of combat, you’ll have 3ini/10secs – the 2 ini on stealth really just impacts perma-stealth-thieves in wvw, dd are probably more viable than before and the vigor nerf can easily be avoided with energy-sigills
so no problem for thieves in sPvP, I’m really looking forward to that patch because then I’ll try dd in sPvP again

Double S/D lol.

When did we go 4 months behind with the meta ? No shortbow, no thief.

Didn’t you see? The Devs feels nerfing the ridiculously imbalanced way in which S/D can spend 5 initiative AND A utility/steal to secure a stomp will encourage thieves to bring a secondary weaponset (Like Pistol OH) just for stomping! Obviously, if the developers feel this is viable, you must be mistaken on just how blatantly required it is for a thief to run Sbow.

JonPeters.5630:

Please respond to some of the more serious, well reasoned arguments concerning this change. There have been a dozen solid arguments as to why this is a bad idea, which take into consideration how S/D is forced to Spec and gear if it wants to remain effective, and also how thief was designed as part of the lowest Base HP pool in the game, with no way to block, go immune or psuedo-immune, no access to protection or stability.

When you make a statement like this, it is important to re-read the original post in general about how to give feedback. I appreciate the passion here, but literally this breaks every rule that I laid down.

How to give good feedback and what to expect.

• Be constructive. If you think a change may cause issues, say why and give examples. Try not to argue with others – make your point and then accept that other people may have different points of view.

This was done a dozen times – I was simply asking you to read some of those responses that were constructive and respond to them.

• Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!

Same as above – why flood the thread with arguments repeated a dozen times? I thought it would be easier to simply reference that these concise, constructive arguments had been made, and yet to be replied to

• Be specific. “I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B”. The more specific you are, the better we are able to understand where you’re coming from, what type of content you play, and it helps us to understand the context for your feedback.

Same as above

• Be objective. Keep in mind that just because you may not like something, that doesn’t make it bad. Others may have differing opinions. They may play a different type of content, or they may play a different profession, so be objective and keep in mind – we have to balance the game for EVERYONE, not just you.

The questions were concerning how S/D thief was intended to survive, with all the changes proposed and how it plays now – the posts were as objective as possible.

• Be respectful. This goes for your fellow community members as well as for devs. Respect the ideas and opinions of others.

How was I disrespectful? I was polite, used polite tone, was not dismissive or rude – all I did was ask you to respond to the IR changes and the communities arguments against it. In fact, Looking through your post history, I’ve seen you quote users who were more rude/dismissive to you than I have been, and continue to be, with no admonishment of their tone – that feels kind of like I’m being singled out.

• Be mindful of scope. These are the changes we are trying to get in for the Dec. 10th balance patch. That doesn’t leave us with time to rework entire classes, or redesign entire weapon sets with this update. Keep scope/work/time/resources in mind when you make your suggestions.

How is “Please don’t go through with your proposed IR change” not mindful of scope? If anything, my goal of not having IR get a cast time would reduce your workload.

• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.

Not nerfing something can hardly be called power creep – the skill has been nerfed in the past, but you’re not reversing a buff.

I just don’t see how “Please respond to some of the posts that have offered concise, constructive, objective, polite feedback mindful of scope” could be considered to have violated literally all of the rules you set out at the beginning of this thread. If that’s how I came off, I do apologize, it was not my intention. All I care about is thoroughly examining the IR changes before they go live.

Most importantly, I’d still really like a more open and frank discussion about what the proposed IR changes are going to do to thief – Here is a constructive, concise, polite opinion from a top player mindful of scope – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/8#post3168211

Tarkan.5609:

any build will be viable: just go 30 in acrobatics and double sd (with energy sigills as the vigor will get nerfed) or double dp and unless u are out of combat, you’ll have 3ini/10secs – the 2 ini on stealth really just impacts perma-stealth-thieves in wvw, dd are probably more viable than before and the vigor nerf can easily be avoided with energy-sigills
so no problem for thieves in sPvP, I’m really looking forward to that patch because then I’ll try dd in sPvP again

Its not like D/D’s problems will have gone away. Dancing Dagger will still miss stone-still targets 300 range away, CnD will still do awful damage for a 6 init commitment, and you’ll still have a condition based attack with a kittenty, ineffective evade smack dab in the middle of your direct damage weaponset.

Doesn’t bear discussing if it was OP or not.
D/P permastealth was clearly at odds with the way stealth was designed in this game, it was an abuse of poor playtesting, and I’ve said as much in the past. Be happy its fixed.

Hype.8032:

Jon replied to one of my posts confirming they think sword thieves will still be viable in tpvp. So, I think sword will eventually see other buffs ~6 months down the road when they realize it is not viable. Maybe it’ll be like nerfing mug only to buff it with a reduced steal CD. It’ll be a boring 6 months though.

None of us will still be here in 6 months if this change goes through. Even the most hardcore supporters will get bored with D/P – Sbow being the only option for serious play rather quickly (IMO of course). If there are future sword changes down the line, save this change for when those are ready.

I agree that S/D CAN work with the proposed IR change…if a bunch of other sword abilities are also tweaked. As proposed, it’ll ruin S/D til those changes even have the potential to bring it back up.

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

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

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

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

Jon

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

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

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

Please respond to some of the more serious, well reasoned arguments concerning this change. There have been a dozen solid arguments as to why this is a bad idea, which take into consideration how S/D is forced to Spec and gear if it wants to remain effective, and also how thief was designed as part of the lowest Base HP pool in the game, with no way to block, go immune or psuedo-immune, no access to protection or stability.

BobbyT.7192:

my understanding from all this is that teleport stomp is not the reason for the nerf, it’s just an unfortunate casualty.

From the front page, quoting verbatim. Bold mine, for emphasis

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
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.)

And a note, suggesting a thief carry pistol OH shows a startling lack of meta knowledge for a developer – thieves run Sbow offhand in TPvP, because its basically a requirement. Thieves are roamers…and that’s it – there is no effective roaming without SBow

Jon, I really appreciate all the attention you’ve paid to all the concerns on the board. Unfortunately, I haven’t really seen a well reasoned or convincing response to the Infiltrators return changes.

Can we please talk about the IR changes? They’re by far the most important, because they potentially cut TPvP thieves viable weaponsets down to D/P SB….and thats it. That’s huge, and terrifying.

I think this thread has generated a ton of good counterpoints, and I’d like to hear your thought process concerning them.

JonPeters.5630:

Imagi.4561:

BobbyT.7192:

The only thing black powder can’t provide is protection against carpet bombing down targets.
Keeping in mind we can still teleport stomp, with shadow step, but we are still giving up a utility/actual stun break to do.

From what I understand, using IS requires using a utility anyways, or burning your Steal.

Yeah you burn your steal (35-20s cooldown) with it, instead of burning shadowstep (50-40s cooldown.)

Jon

and that’s so powerful it needs to be nerfed?

Steal can be a huge part of a number of builds, depending on how you’re spec’d. It can
-Heal, do damage, and poison
-trigger Might/Fury/swiftness
-restore initiative
-trigger stealth

and sacrificing all that versatility (not claiming all those abilities happen when you steal, just that you can specc’d for some of them) for a stomp, plus 5 initiative is so strong it needs to be nerfed? On the only class that can’t go immune, with no access to stability, and the lowest base Health pool in the game?

I mean, this sounds extremely anti-thief to me.

Honestly, everyone talking about the opportunist changes don’t really appear to be taking into account the new base init regen bump.

Even if you aren’t a huge fan of the opportunist change, its hard to argue that its as detrimental as the infiltrators return change – one potentially slows down the init regen of Cs specs a bit, and the Other reduces our tpvp viable weapon sets by 50%, down to one weapon set. Does everyone want to run the same exact weaponset with nigh identical trait setups for the next 3 months?

JonPeters.5630:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon

Thanks for this Jon! I have some opinions concerning this,but I’m posting from a mobile device and will save them for when I have a real keyboard in front of me.

Now, can we please discuss the issues the community has with the Infiltrators return changes? These changes are far more pressing than the opportunist changes. They are far more far reaching, and I feel the communities counterpoints to this change are very well composed, and I want to understand if/why the devs feel these points aren’t good enough to nix the proposed change entirely.

Oraith.1732:

Still waiting for them to make hotjoins 5 v 5, and make the punishment more harsh for leaving and apply it to hotjoin. If they want 8 v 8 shouldn’t private-arenas be for madness like that?

Make a 5v5 only filter – that’s what I did, way back when they introduced it. I forgot 8v8 existed specifically because I haven’t seen it in months.

This is going to sound sarcastic, but I promise you its not.

People still play 8v8? Why? The game is balanced for 5v5 in PvP…why would you ever play 8v8?

Pawstruck.9708:

Just to clarify: Are you here just to drop the giant bomb on us and then leave, or are you guys actually looking for feedback here?

I don’t want to waste a lot of time trying to talk to people who aren’t listening.

Lets be fair – they have 8 classes worth of discussion to monitor. This post was just made today, it isn’t unreasonable to give them at minimum a few days to get back to us – the patch is still over a month away, we have time.

Kaizer.7135:

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

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

The CD is called initiative – if you spend it all teleporting away from stuns (Much different than breaking stuns, you’ll note) you have no initiative for anything else.

Just because you can press it quickly doesn’t mean there is no cost associated.

Maesk.8753:

As someone who has played sword a fair amount, when I saw JP say that you could telestomp someone with inf strike/return I had to do a double take. With roughly 1400 hours on my thief had I been missing this the whole time? So then I thought about it for less than a minute and realized it wasn’t even possible.

I’m going to have to agree with rav here and say that I also am convinced that no one on the balance team actually plays a thief.

I’ve never even considered spending 5 initiative AND steal/Inf sig to secure a stomp – not when I can use shadowstep for the same purpose if I’m dead-set on blowing a utility to secure a stomp.

Jae.9682:

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.
A. Prevent respawn on the team with more people so that it is always XvX. The advantaged team will still have an advantage until someone dies. But if the disadvantaged team knows this they can team up for that first kill.
B. No movement in spawn area for 30 seconds gets kick from match and loss plus 30 minute debuff that prevents requeue.

This seems just logical to me.

For hotjoin, when someone picks a team they are put into a queue until another joins on the other team. If someone leaves a match, prevent respawn on the opposite team.

Who wants to get locked out of a game to sit and watch because someone else didn’t show up?

Also, how do you decide who gets locked? What if its the other teams only bunker?

CD and Init bump are both bad ideas IMO.

They can reduce the range (between 600-900) down from 1200, or reduce the amount of time IR lasts before flipping back to IS – 8-10s.
Either of these changes (or maybe both?) would help alleviate issues the Dev’s claim sword thieves are causing. Shorter range means easier to close back to a thief after they escape a stun using IR, shorter IR uptime means more active porting back and forth to upkeep your escape button (and has the side effect of costing more init without directly affecting the init cost).

The “IS/IR makes stomping too easy” point doesn’t bear discussion…because it doesn’t exist. Having to spend 5 init AND a utility skill (the only way to use IS/IR to facilitate a stomp) seems on par Or MORE expensive than other classes who can simply use an ability that grants stability to secure the same stomp.

Wintel.4873:

evilapprentice.6379:

And No, 30-60 seconds can decide the entire game between matched opponents. Take 2 equally skilled, diversely populated teams – who wins, the team with a 30-60s head start, or the other team?

The team which isn’t 1 player short?

Which is both teams. How can we further narrow down who we think we’ll win?

Oh I know, I’m gonna bet its the team who didn’t have a disadvantage for the first 30-60s of the match. If you think that has no impact on the game, you’re kidding yourself. People are joining solo q for a chance at winning – no sane player is going to willingly handicap their chances before the game even starts for them.

I know you’re a fan of your own suggestion, but it has issues.

Wintel.4873:

evilapprentice.6379:

Who’s going to click Accept knowing, for a fact, that the team they’re joining was at a disadvantage for at least 30 seconds?

Any sane player who doesn’t want to keep sitting in queue for another 4-7+ minutes in the queue. I’d certainly do it.

If 5 players are ready to go within 30-60 seconds after the match starts, the match still has a perfectly equal chance to go in ANY direction. This is Solo Queue and skill + coordination are the primary factors. That being said, the main reason 4v5’s are so bad is because of the 3-node conquest gameplay. It’s very difficult for a 4-man team to spread themselves out and hold points while doing objectives like orbs/svanir. The mere presence of the 5th person changes all that.

As long as the 5th player is there and ready to go within the first 1 minute of the match, things will be as good as fair and anyone can win.

Any sane player is going to want a fair matchup, a chance to discuss strategy with their teammates, etc – jumping onto a team that is almost certainly losing, with no idea what roles everyone has taken (you can guess based on class, but that’s not always accurate) seems like a kittentier proposition that waiting an extra 5 minutes for a chance at a fair match IMO.

And No, 30-60 seconds can decide the entire game between matched opponents. Take 2 equally skilled, diversely populated teams – who wins, the team with a 30-60s head start, or the other team?

Summation of counterpoints thus far:

Initiative changes
Most like the faster base init regen. Many feel opportunist was over nerfed, and feel a 3s ICD is more fitting. My personal feeling is that Opportunist, Quick Recovery and Kleptomaniac should gain secondary effects (I’ve made suggestions concerning those secondary effects in this thread) to keep them from being bland and underpowered, and to help differentiate thieves specced in these trait lines more so than “Slightly faster init regen under certain conditions”

Infiltrator’s Return
Most feel this will kill Sword mainhand completely in TPvP. Sword MH needs to run Glass cannon to remain effective, relies on evading nearly every attack to even survive, and its worth noting that thieves have no access to stability. Your second point doesn’t make much sense, as the only way to use IS/IR for stomps is to use steal/a utility in conjunction with it, and 5 init + a utility/steal is a hefty price to pay to secure a stomp. Concerning your comment about bringing value to other stomp methods (Pistol OH was mentioned), Shortbow is a requirement for thieves in TPvP – roamer is the only role we are capable of filling, and without shortbow thief makes a very poor roamer. It’s also our only option for AoE heavy team fights. Lets also note that Black Powder tends to secure stomps just as well, for 1 more init and no need to use a utility skill. so I don’t see any need to nerf IS/IR for ease of stomping (which again, doesn’t exist in the first place)

Infusion of Shadow
Almost universally regarded as a good change, and a long time coming. No need to discuss this further.

Flanking Strikes
A fairly minor point – it isn’t worth taking over Uncatchable, Thrill of the crime, or Long reach, and none of those are so good as to warrant Master tier. Ultimately not very important, considering how drastically the other changes will affect the class.

Vigorous Recovery & Bountiful Theft
Some still disagree that these need to be nerfed at all, since Evasion is the thiefs primary survival mechanic. We don’t get protection or Aegis, and the dev’s themselves have stated that thieves trying to spec for survivability gain too little in defensive gains when compared to how much offensive capability they sacrifice (though this statement is old, and its possible Dev opinions have changed on this). I’m personally happy to see the proposed reductions at 25% and 33% respectively, rather than 50% even if I don’t think a nerf is really warranted in the first place – that seems more like the “Shave and see” balance philosophy that Anet uses than a 50% reduction would be.

Hard to Catch
It doesn’t matter what tier this trait is in, no one is taking it. It doesn’t break stuns (a minor point), and the RNG of the teleport makes it so that a skill can potentially be harmful (the major point)- no one wants to waste a trait slot on something potentially harmful, especially one we have no control over.

Last Refuge
Same issue as Hard to Catch in that it’s potentially (and almost always) detrimental, only more annoying because you can’t avoid taking it if you put any points into SA. At least it’s not being touted as a “survivability buff”.

Other long standing issues ignored
D/D still has a sub-par evade, condition based attack in the middle of a direct damage weaponset. P/P is still awful. PW seems like a bandaid more than a fix. When we see S/X being nerfed into uselessness (In our opinion, based on proposed changes), this is hard to ignore, since we have so few effective weaponsets as it is.

If anyone feels I’ve forgotten something, or misrepresented the communities reaction (I do have some unavoidable personal bias here, of course) please send me a PM and I will amend this list – try not to quote and correct it however, as the point is to give the Dev’s a single post they can reference when taking our opinions into account.

Who’s going to click Accept knowing, for a fact, that the team they’re joining was at a disadvantage for at least 30 seconds?

magom.3275:

JonPeters.5630:

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

About point 1* most classes have Stability or Invulnerability, which make them inmune to stuns and trows, and beside of this, they have their own stun breakers too. Thieves has non of this features and that is why many of us use Infiltrator´s return, is like our stability, so my question is if you are gonna to remove stability from the other classes to make it a fair enough change to us?

This is a good point I don’t think has been hammered on enough.

Every other class in the game has access to stability besides thief (please don’t mention Daggerstorm as a counterpoint – that is not a way for thief to gain stability, its there so a 90s CD elite isn’t instant CC bait). Some classes have stunbreakers which also grant stability when used. You decided to gives thieves no access to stability – I feel an ability that allows you to teleport but remain stunned seems a fair tradeoff for the inability to gain stability via class skills.