Guild Wars 2

Caffynated.5713:

Right now thief has a few very significant balance issues.

The big three are initial burst with essentially instant CnDMugBackstab for damage that can instakill anyone except a bunker, quickness and the ability to repeatedly restealth after unloading on an opponent.

1. Steal has to interrupt any skill that is in use when it is activated and it needs at least a 1/2 second aftercast. This will give people who are attacked about 1 second to register that they’re in danger and do something about it before CnD -> backstab ruins their day.

2. Quickness is a broken game mechanic, not just for thieves but for anyone who has it. You can’t take a game with numerous skill combinations that kill in seconds and then make them happen faster than a normal human can see, process and react to it.
Normal human reaction tests for something as simple as clicking a mouse button when a red dot appears on a black screen is .2 – .25 seconds. Add in the need to identify something specific (e.g. what skill your enemy is activating) and it becomes longer. Quickness lowers the threshold of many extremely lethal actions to faster than a human can recognize and respond to them. That’s a broken mechanic and bad game design. Quickness should not function in PvP or WvW.

3. Thieves should only be able to re-enter stealth if their initiative is full or nearly full. Right now, they can come out of stealth with both guns blazing for 3 seconds, and then just restealth while they regain their initiative and get ready to do it all over again. Their opponent has little time to actually fight back as the burst damage potential of the thief leaves most players on the defensive to begin with. It’s difficult to do a lot of damage when you spend the 3 second revealed debuff dodge rolling and using stun breakers to escape instant death. This change would force thieves to make tactical decisions about how they’re going to handle a fight. They can break stealth and burn their initiative in an attempt to kill their target outright, or they can be more tentative with mostly autoattack and maybe a low init attack or two before restealthing to assess the fight.

Less important is the low skill floor of abilities like Heart Seeker. Right now, HS is an auto tracking never miss when in range easy mode ability. I can literally point my camera away from my target and attempt to run away while spamming 2 and the ability still works 100% of the time. That is the antithesis of skilled gameplay. HS should be changed to work like the elementalist dagger skill Burning Speed. The thief would leap directly forward in the direction he is facing and if his path crosses his target then he scores a hit. This is both more interesting and engaging for the thief player and gives a counter play option to avoid the attack to the receiving player.

You’re take on thieves is very, very off IMO. Your first point is just impossible. You’re talking about taking our class ability (which without traits is basically just a 45s CD gap closer) down from kind of bland to straight up bad. Your suggestion would nerf every single thief build in the game to stop 1 spec, something Anet’s been doing and the thief community has not enjoyed. I wont weigh in on whether or not Instagib needs to be nerfed, but if it does, Anet has to find a way to nerf glass cannons that won’t ruin the more moderate builds.

As for 3, stealth is already limited enough. Its short duration, has a CD (via revealed), and access to it isn’t guaranteed (its on dagger OH for half your standard initiative bar, can be accessed via utilities/one of our heals, or via combo fields). Limit it any further, and you’ll have to buff thieves survivability somewhere else, and we’ll turn into dodgy medium armor warriors.

Concerning quickness, yeah, its silly. Its too easy to mitigate the downsides (Sig of agility for thieves, endure pain for warriors, etc), and it’s just a bad idea.

Symbiont.2168:

some of our dual skills seems lackluster; shadow shot and shadow strike.
unload is too easily dodged, my suggestion is to make the initial shot do the most damage.

Shadow strike is actually nearly perfect from a design standpoint. If P/D wasn’t completely reliant upon CnD→sneak attack (alot of people are pointing out that it appears Pistols autoattack fires about half as quickly as it should, which would really reduce our reliance on sneak attack), you would use Shadow Strike tactically to open up gaps when CnD wasn’t a good option. Of all the times I’ve used it, it’s done exactly what you’d expect to (as opposed to day D/P with the root issue, or P/W doing less damage than AA), compliments the design of D/P well, and actually does decent direct damage for the init cost (when running a carrion ammy and decent power).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/We-would-like-answers-Please/first#post756749

Here’s my feedback, in a separate post I started days ago. (Ignore the questioning tone, seeing as I’m just putting it here to air my take on thief patch changes)

tl;dr: Your nerfed Dagger OH into the ground to weaken instagib specs. It had the greatest impact on more balanced specs, hurting our DPS to survival ratio enough to make alot of specs a poorer choice. We would be better off going instagib after the patch. You made sure to nerf Dagger OH (which we’re nearly forced into using, due to Pistol OH specs have issues), but you didn’t bother to touch the issues plaguing our other weaponsets, details about this in my post.

Our “survivability compensations” were lacking. Blinding powder change was necessary, as it was wholly inferior to SR in 95% of situations, scorpion wire (and all other ranged abilities) still get mysterious obstructed issues over open ground, and you didn’t bother to look into our severely underperforming utilities (traps and venoms).

tl:dr tl:dr: Dagger OH nerfed, no weaponset fixes to allow us to try pistol OH specs. survivability compensations were inadequate, to the point where they werent really survivability compensations.

Boloth.6879:

Dual.8953:

I love the part where every point you’ve made is infringed by every esport I’ve seen played on the tournament level.

Let’s try this another way:

The six items I listed are the leading causes of dominate strategies in video games. For those of you who don’t know dominate strategies are bad design.

And even if GW2 was the most balanced PVP game in the history of ever it’s hard for players and spectators to take it seriously as a competitive game when it allows players to be stunned then one-shotted by an invisible warping opponent, turned into a moa bird then killed by an army of NPCs, be forced to fight against an immovable invincible bunker that reflects damage for free, or require you have your own personal posse of FotM gankers in order to fully experience the game. One reason why PvE is so popular is because PvEers generally don’t have to deal with that kind of stuff.

Can you include these kinds of things in your game? Sure, many designers do, but it would be better if they didn’t because they don’t add anything to competitive play and balancing around them is really, really, really, really hard.

I’ve never seen a game (single or multiplayer) that has been improved thanks to the things I mentioned.

The issue I’m having with this is, without those things…well, what do you have? In what way can the game be fun, interesting, and engaging without those things? It certainly seems like, if that game was feasible, it would exist, right? I mean, you’ve described stripping basically all the “Flavor” out of the game, leaving every class exactly the same (Except maybe you get to choose your level of focus in offense, defense, and support). That game sounds a -hell- of a lot easier to program and design than any modern MMO, I’m thinking if someone could make that fun, it’d already exist.

I’d argue against point 6 – everyone pays a price for missing or mis-using a skill – either its on CD, or you spent Initiative, or your locked out of that attunement, etc… Even if an ability makes you completely immune (like say, mist form) using it too early or too late can be the mistake that ends the fight. Maybe I’m not thinking of it in the right light, can you describe something from GW2 you feel is a “Safe” action?

I’d also argue against point 5. If it’s not a team game, why bother making an MMO? Furthermore, I remember (before paid tourneys), when the really strong teams were emerging in free tourneys, they were generally the teams that -knew- how to make use of their combo fields. This is the only MMO I can really think of (of those I’ve played) that encourages team play beyond the normal “Focus fire”, “I’ll use my big CC to stop him” or “Hit the guy when i put the heal debuff on him”. Combo fields encourage you to use them when your team can take advantage of them, rather than just using your abilities as fast as possible.

These are all from an SPvP perspective

Assassin’s Singet – 5/10 (Doesn’t bring anything we don’t already have, unless you’re running D/D glass cannon, in which case helps with big crits)
Infiltrator’s Singet – 8/10 (My favorite stunbreaker for nearly any spec. Can be used as a gap closer or stunbreak, and regen’s init when not in use)
Singet of Agility – 8/10 (For a Power/Crit spec that doesn’t want to go complete glass cannon (Soldiers over berserker’s), this helps bump your crit 4-5%. Full endurance refill with a heavy acrobatics build and a Shbow will let you dodge across an entire map if need be. Great for dropping 10+ stacks of bleed)
Singet of Shadows – 4/10 (OOC movement speed is amazing, otherwise meh. It is nice to blind downed players mid-stomp so they miss their interrupt though)

Spider Venom – 2/10 (You’re almost definitely using a Shbow or have 5 points in DA, mostly worthless outside leeching, and even then, requires too many traits to be effective)
Skale Venom – 2/10 (Mostly worthless)
Ice Drake Venom 2/10 (Mostly worthless)
Devourer Venom 5/10 (Can mean death for your opponent if using glass cannon. For other specs, its helpful, but hardly intimidating)

Tripwire – 2/10 (Watch your opponent Block/immune/dodge roll through it and laugh)
Needle Trap – 2/10 (See Tripwire)
Shadow Trap – N/A (Haven’t had enough time with the new version to judge)
Ambush – 6/10 (Can’t be dodge rolled through to ignore, so that’s a plus. 1/2 of a theives guild for 20s on a 35s CD isn’t so bad, but I’ve had a hard time not taking better utilities )

Roll for Initiative – 8/10 (If only it broke Immob/chill/cripple/stun BEFORE the dodge roll, like it probably is intended to, it would be perfect. Nice to get you out of a jam, and give you 6 init for jumping back into the fight or playing defensively til something you need comes off CD)
Blinding Powder – 4/10 (Lower CD makes it more useful, but unless you’re looking to run a very stealth heavy build with little other tricks, SR blows it out of the water)
Shadowstep – 6/10 (Great for making an escape, but otherwise meh IMO. The condition removal happens on return, so if you’re trying to escape a clusterkitten of AoE, you wont be dropping any conditions. Potentially drop 2 stuns, but won’t happen often as the “Return” mechanic only lasts 12s.)
Scorpion Wire – 5/10 (If it worked flawlessly (no unexplained obstructed, always pulled your target to you) it would be a 8/10. Until then, nothing is more infuriating than counting on an ability only to watch it fail)

Shadow Refuge – 9/10 (Amazing, but opponents are learning how to counter it, and without stability, getting knocked out of the effect is too easy)
Caltrops – 7/10 (Powerful cap denial and signet of malice healing source for a conditions/stealth heavy build, otherwise mediocre)
Haste – 6/10 (Doubling attack speed for a burst build is hard to argue with, but any CC applied to you, or your target using an immunity/block skill ruins your day)
Smoke Screen – 7/10 (Solid ability all around, but hard to find a slot for it in any build I’d like to run)

NevirSayDie.6235:

I understand that it hurts to receive a direct nerf with no compensation, even though I rarely play a thief.

But I am consistently seeing more good tournament teams use two thieves now than I ever had before the patch. Why? Because with the bug fixes to bunkers, roamers are more viable.

The only area in which thieves saw a net loss in effectiveness with the last patch is the area of crushing inexperienced players. (They are still the best profession at it, though.) In competitive games, thieves are equally as viable as before, or slightly more viable.

(Yes, I realize there are issues with build diversity—but this post is about effectiveness in the best builds, not how many equally effective builds there are.)

tl;dr? Thieves are now less frustrating to new players, and equally or more effective against experienced teams. Diversity issues remain.

Diversity issues are a big part of the overall issue I have. My complaint isn’t just that dagger OH was nerfed fairly hard (Maybe it was necessary; I don’t feel that it was, but who knows, I’m not a playtester or a game designer). My complaint is just that our broken weaponsets remained broken, it’s a combination of the 2. If I dislike the OH Dagger nerfs (and I do, it feels like I’m spending alot of init for very little damage in an S/D build), I can’t just say “Oh, i’ll just switch to pistol OH”…because the pistol offhand specs have varying issues that have been known about since launch (or introduced by Anet, like the PW nerf), and still haven’t been fixed/adjusted. They didn’t just nerf Dagger OH, they nerfed Dagger OH without fixing Pistol OH, leaving us with no options.

Nerf’s happen ALL THE TIME in MMO’s, I’m more than used to it. In those games though, I tend to have other spec/weapon options. I may not like the new spec/weapon option as much as my original, but i generally can’t complain that multiple abilities don’t work, or that my auto-attack is a better option than one of my activated abilities intended for dealing damage…or that they’re as poorly designed as P/P is at the moment.

Edit: To add, what really makes this annoying is that alot of the fixes are so simple. Infiltrators strike is a teleport to target attack that doesn’t root you on hit…fixing D/P’s dual skill shouldn’t be difficult. Rangers have an ability that is exactly like Flanking strike, only it works on moving targets (as far as I can tell, I tested this a long time ago, maybe this isn’t true anymore). Yeah, there would still be issues (P/P requires a redesign, which requires playtesting, that’s not something that can be fixed quickly IMO), but it’d be a huge boost to confidence if the smaller, easier things could finally be taken care of.

Its honestly a bit infuriating to see designers can find the time to post on things like this (not to be rude, but svanir’s always been like this, its nothing new. It even says “awards on last hit” when you highlight the bosses) when the community has some pretty pressing questions concerning the latest patch which are being ignored.

If you do manage to find time (this is a sincere request, not sarcasm), please check this out
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/We-would-like-answers-Please/first#post756749
(yes, I am the author of this post)

I think most of us would like to see more variety. Even if conquest and balance were perfect, you’d eventually get bored playing the same maps over and over again.
CTF probably wouldn’t work (Put stability on an Ele or Thief and you’ll see why). TDM and Arena would be fun options, at the very least.

What I really don’t understand is the lack of a King of the Hill map set.
-Its not so different from Conquest (you’d have to change the rules for capturing a point, but there are lots of options here) meaning it isn’t a big departure from the current meta
-It would be more fun to watch (people are either fighting, or scrambling to get back to the fight)
-It offers more opportunities for comebacks and strategy. The current Conquest maps have little comeback potential when playing between 2 coordinated teams of equal-ish skill. Gameplay can be close, but a few mistakes and a 50 point gap will usually mean a loss. If your team gets stomped in KoTH, you can figure out what happened, adjust your strategy, and try again.

Dacromir.6207:

evilapprentice.6379:

I tested with mesmer sigils and got nothing. I didn’t slow the video down, I just eyeballed it, but 43% (10 points in DA) should push the daze over 2s, and it doesn’t.Visually, I saw no difference between 33% longer daze and no daze duration increase (just in case DA’s condition duration doesnt apply for some reason), and 33% should be easily identifiable even visually.

I’m assuming you meant mesmer runes here, not sigils. It may be that those are broken (I’ll test when I get home today), but Sigil of Paralyzation definitely pushes the daze up to 2s (1.95s by my measurement, assuming there’s slight delay for the daze icon showing up). Condition duration does not apply, because stun/knockdown/daze/etc are counted as control effects as opposed to conditions.

evilapprentice.6379:

Also, your math doesn’t make any sense – 15% of 1.5s is .225, resulting in a a 1.725 long daze. Unless of course you have 15 points in DA, and it applies for you.

Yeah, math has always been wrong with the Sigil. With a 2s base, it raises the daze to 3s even though it looks like it should go to 2.3s. My theory is that the sigil actually applies a 30% bonus in stead of 15%, and that Arena-net’s rounding is wonky so that it always rounds up. That would explain 2s -> 3s (2.6s, rounded up to 3s) and 1.5s -> 2s (1.95s, rounded up to 2s).

Yeah, I never bothered with para sigil because I liked Mes runes and wanted my weapons free for other things.

I don’t understand the rounding issue though – the only condition I’ve ever monitored the duration closely was bleeding. Bleeding doesn’t round, you get exactly the time you expect, though it only ticks on the second, so 5.9 seconds of bleeding does the same damage as 5 seconds.

Even though bleeding is a condition, and daze is a control effect, I would have assumed Anet would treat them the same (the duration you get is the sum of your base and multipliers), rounding them up or down seems silly, especially with an effect like daze or stun.

It’d be a hell of a lot easier in Anet was more transparent on their design, but for now we’re just left to guess.

Eduardo.4675:

evilapprentice.6379:

Dacromir.6207:

Adein.2031:

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

How closely have you actually tested this? I’ve heard several people mention it, but I wanted to test to be sure. I recorded some video of me using the daze on PvP golems and sparring NPCs. I slowed it down to 10% speed, and the daze icon lasted a little over 19 seconds with Sigil of Paralyzation. I replicated this several times. I’d peg the daze duration as ~1.95s with the Sigil. You may want to test this yourself more closely.

Mrbig.8019:

S/D is currently unplayable, like every other power/crit build, unless you go totally glass cannon, unviable by default.

Very good work with this patch.

It’s still playable. You still get a spammable stun break, great mobility and gap closing, and frequent 2s dazing. It’s still our most defensive weapon set by far. You just need to adapt to the lower damage, and maybe bump up the damage on your gear a bit to compensate.

I tested with mesmer sigils and got nothing. I didn’t slow the video down, I just eyeballed it, but 43% (10 points in DA) should push the daze over 2s, and it doesn’t.Visually, I saw no difference between 33% longer daze and no daze duration increase (just in case DA’s condition duration doesnt apply for some reason), and 33% should be easily identifiable even visually.

Also, your math doesn’t make any sense – 15% of 1.5s is .225, resulting in a a 1.725 long daze. Unless of course you have 15 points in DA, and it applies for you.

Things might just be buggy now – I’ve seen people complaining how poor the leeching venoms scaling buff is, but kitten if I know from personal experience, since leeching venoms heals me for the same exact amount for me regardless what my power is when testing in the mists.

Ur maths are brilliant… daze is not a condition, so its not affected by deadly arts; before,the sigil of paralyze or mesmer runes were giving 3 secs duration to daze,and i believe its intended coz daze cant stack in duration, so the devs must have built an internal mechanic that makes this 2 items affect daze without making it stack, but for this to be visible,the sigil and the runes must have been coded to provide a substancial increase.
Misinformation is the mother of all whiners, how many ppl have already came to this forum complaining about s/d daze not stacking and been reduced from 3 secs to 1.5 secs?? many, many, many…
Im preparing a thread on misinformation, in a couple days will be ready, ull have a blast, whiners!!

I was under the impression that daze was treated as a condition, my bad.

When I tested the Mes runes, I was getting absolutely no additional time (I don’t need a stopwatch to tell the difference between 1.5s and 1.995s); considering my experience with leeching venoms, I’m assuming the code was just buggy (I tested shortly after the patch was applied, and have not retested recently), not purposefully spreading misinformation.

Dacromir.6207:

Adein.2031:

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

How closely have you actually tested this? I’ve heard several people mention it, but I wanted to test to be sure. I recorded some video of me using the daze on PvP golems and sparring NPCs. I slowed it down to 10% speed, and the daze icon lasted a little over 19 seconds with Sigil of Paralyzation. I replicated this several times. I’d peg the daze duration as ~1.95s with the Sigil. You may want to test this yourself more closely.

Mrbig.8019:

S/D is currently unplayable, like every other power/crit build, unless you go totally glass cannon, unviable by default.

Very good work with this patch.

It’s still playable. You still get a spammable stun break, great mobility and gap closing, and frequent 2s dazing. It’s still our most defensive weapon set by far. You just need to adapt to the lower damage, and maybe bump up the damage on your gear a bit to compensate.

I tested with mesmer sigils and got nothing. I didn’t slow the video down, I just eyeballed it, but 43% (10 points in DA) should push the daze over 2s, and it doesn’t.Visually, I saw no difference between 33% longer daze and no daze duration increase (just in case DA’s condition duration doesnt apply for some reason), and 33% should be easily identifiable even visually.

Also, your math doesn’t make any sense – 15% of 1.5s is .225, resulting in a a 1.725 long daze. Unless of course you have 15 points in DA, and it applies for you.

Things might just be buggy now – I’ve seen people complaining how poor the leeching venoms scaling buff is, but kitten if I know from personal experience, since leeching venoms heals me for the same exact amount for me regardless what my power is when testing in the mists.

Brutalistik.6473:

evilapprentice.6379:

Brutalistik.6473:

Usually skillful players just adapt and find a new build rather than complain. If the nerf was very bad where it affects everything then I can understand.

The same goes for newcomers…they just usually adapt to find a new build than complain.

You’re aware that thief has a huge number of issues with their narrowest-in-the-game weapon choices, right?

D/P’s dual skill is useless, its a gap closer that roots us on hit. P/P is non-viable; body shot is a waste of initiative (you will never use it), the auto attack and dual skills are at odds with eachother, and the spec has no way to access stealth, a thief’s main survivability mechanic. The S/P PW nerf places PW at less damage than auto attack, which roots us (a highly mobile class), and nothing prevents a target from walking out of the last 2 swings; it’s nearly useless outside of haste-PW spam. S/D was serviceable, but flanking strike is a joke (mediocre damage and doesn’t hit reliably on moving targets due to piss poor pathing).

So, that more or less locks us into dagger OH, which just received substantial nerfs with no reduction in init cost. Know what spec was affected the least? D/D glass cannon…the spec the CnD and Dancing Dagger changes were made to address. Oh yeah, the S/D daze lost .5s base, and is no longer affected by any condition duration abilities (not even the trait line which explicitly does so, and this was unmentioned in the patch notes). Shbow lost 15% on cluster bomb. As far as I can tell, the leeching venoms “buff” is an elaborate inside joke (i’ve seen reports of roughly 30 more health per venom proc between 1000 power and 2000 power, but can’t test successfully because it doesnt change for me regardless what my power is). We received almost no survivability compensations for massive loss in damage

Soooo, that leaves D/D glass cannon as our best option. Every other functional build lost more in the patch. Some of us don’t want to play an instagib spec, because its so binary.

So they just need to hotfix some of their weapon combos you just listed there so everyone can branch off the D/D Glass cannon spec. I hope that happens to because it will bring flavor to the thief class.

For players complaining about burst damage even when they high defense. They should work on that issue right there. If I have over 2k defense and still my health bar depletes dramatically because of a the burst damage attack. Then to me that’s truly unbalance and bad enough I’m suffering doing sustain damage, but that was my choice because I wanted to survive more.

I didn’t do much in the BWE’s, but I believe that all of the issues I listed above have been around since launch or earlier (aside for the changes like PW nerf and so on). There’s been no acknowledgement of the issues, or any discussion as to how/when they’ll be fixed. Players are starting to lose heart, and its especially frustrating watching a huge chunk of the playerbase cry because we only roll 1 of 2 specs, when they honestly have no idea whats going on.

shrewd.5319:

These people need to stop the obsession with s/d.

EVERY SINGLE BUILD THAT USES DAGGER OFFHAND GOT NERFED. Try to wrap your tiny brains around that.

If you want to cry about the daze reduction, which was needed and doesn’t hurt s/d at all (only for the unskilled), then make your own thread. A 2 second daze is plenty, and not hard at all to land.

Most of us thieves are rightly complaining about the ludicrous nerf to Off-hand Dagger, which affects every single thief that uses it.

It was an effective 1.5s reduction. It lost .5s base, and is no longer affected by mesmer runes, para sigil, or points in Deadly arts. This might be a bug, we don’t know (no one is talking to us.) I think a .5s reduction isn’t a huge deal if the condition duration boosts get back into the mix, but losing both is a bit overkill.

And S/D players are complaining about the Daze in addition to losing a kittenload of Damage on both their offhand skills, because of the OH Dagger nerf. The entire spec was nerfed across the board, seeing as it wasn’t a burst damage powerhouse, and their targets are now dazed half as long – if you claim that doesn’t change the way S/D plays, you’re 100% incorrect.

Lastly, Please try to speak more respectfully to your fellow players, whether you agree or disagree. I politely asked that in the initial post.

S/D is seeing some issues since the nerf. I had rolled it about a week prior to patch, and was really enjoying it, getting into the swing of it. It was solid when well played, fun, and challenging. With the patch, it’s Meh at best. I generally use Shbow and poison to whittle my target down (and force them to use a 33% less effective heal), then switch to sword for the kill.

Honestly, I switched back to S/P and so far am loving it. If you ignore PW (not running haste) the same way you ignore flanking stike 95% of the time, you have plenty of init for your other tools. Head shot spam isn’t exactly an effective use of your Init, but targets panic when they’re low and have a heal and 2 skills interrupted in a row. If you can work a stealth utility into your bar (or are using HiS), you’ve still got access to tactical strike when you absolutely need it.

Can we have something, Anet Dev’s? I’d like think I’ve been polite and measured in my request. I’m not claiming the sky is falling, I’m not calling you incompetent, and I think my take on the changes is fairly accurate.

Even if your response is just to let me know this is what you intended, I’ll at least know you’ve acknowledged my points and disagreed. I won’t understand how that could be, but at least we won’t be totally in the dark as to whether or not this is a trend you are intending to continue.

Yeah, its projectile reflect instead of evade now (which is why we have to watch out for rifle butt)

Honestly, switch to Shbow and whittle them down.
When they switch to rifle, steal and use Whirlwind axe (be careful for Rifle butt, or whatever their melee KB is). Only switch to D/D when they’re in Burst range.

Xom.9264:

evilapprentice.6379:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

1) Wiki is my friend , logic is even my best friend

Quick Pockets when u change weapons u get 3 Inenactive (no stealth needed)
Quick Recovery:Gain 2 initiative every 10 seconds ( no stealth)
Hastened Replenishment: You receive 4 initiative when using a heal skill. (prefered with withdraw heal) ( no stealth needed)
Infitrator singet 1 every 10 sec (no stealth needed)

Initial Strike: Attacks with the first weapon-skill slot have a 7% chance to regain 1 initiative. (screw it > too low chance)

Dodge > 2 attacks with dagger > deathblosom > repeat
Try it in sPvP

2) So we have <<ur kind of ppl>> , telling us to L2p and we cant say anything to u ?
Becase i told the guy to L2P and get some defensive cds of toughness i am the bad guy here ?
Oh sorry i should spell slowly to the Theif population and explain them , what is defensive cds or Soldier amulet
Too bad there is not an Intelligence Stat in GW2 , cause Thiefs would have the lowest score …..

……….

I know that warrior class abilities are called burst abilities, and they’re based off of adrenaline, but I still know I’m not qualified to hop on the warrior forums and tell people who’ve been playing warriors for months how to play them better, so I don’t try to. Doing so would just make me look silly.

This is not the warrior forum also as a pro thief you seem to be claiming….you going to tell me caltrops conditions builds dont crush warriors?

Thiefs complaining they are weak is the most massive L2P issue I have seen in any MMO ever. Heck based on a 3 min skim of guru forums and looking at skills I made a caltrops condition build and dominated poor warriors. Thiefs have been dominating with a simple rotation and type of spec against everything for too long and never had a reason to try other specs there burst specs was/are THAT OP.

Show me a serious Ele, Eng, Necro, Ranger that has not tried eversingle spec combo gear runes possible just to try and be competative.

Huh? I was citing going to the warrior boards as an example, not making any claim to anything. That was pretty clear, not entirely sure how you could have missed that.

Also, when the point of PvP changes to “killing warriors”, I’ll agree that a good P/D conditions build with caltrops owns. Seeing as that isn’t the goal (its capture point, in case you were wondering), its still a solid spec, but it has its weaknesses just like every other build for every other class of the game.

In addition, you’ll see that my posts on this topic were centered around how D/D instagib is one of our only viable builds atm (P/D conditions being the other, though its weak in TPvP), due to nerfs that weakened every other spec option worse than it did instagib, and our limited weapon selection due to bugs and poor weapon design. I also pointed out that I dislike and dont play instagib, due to its simple, binary nature.

If you’re just going to skim for the part of my post you think you can get pissed about, without reading the rest, you’re going to make a post that makes no sense.

shrewd.5319:

This game is a complete failure. I did not want to accept it, but the evidence is clear.

There is certainly work to be done, and there are things I’m disappointed in, but to label it “a complete failure”, and further claim that “evidence is clear” seems like a dramatic overstatement.

Trust me, I get where you’re coming from. I can’t make heads or tails of a bunch of the decisions in this last patch, but I’m going to give it a little time and cool off before I hop on the boards and claim the sky is falling.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

1) Wiki is my friend , logic is even my best friend

Quick Pockets when u change weapons u get 3 Inenactive (no stealth needed)
Quick Recovery:Gain 2 initiative every 10 seconds ( no stealth)
Hastened Replenishment: You receive 4 initiative when using a heal skill. (prefered with withdraw heal) ( no stealth needed)
Infitrator singet 1 every 10 sec (no stealth needed)

Initial Strike: Attacks with the first weapon-skill slot have a 7% chance to regain 1 initiative. (screw it > too low chance)

Dodge > 2 attacks with dagger > deathblosom > repeat
Try it in sPvP

2) So we have <<ur kind of ppl>> , telling us to L2p and we cant say anything to u ?
Becase i told the guy to L2P and get some defensive cds of toughness i am the bad guy here ?
Oh sorry i should spell slowly to the Theif population and explain them , what is defensive cds or Soldier amulet
Too bad there is not an Intelligence Stat in GW2 , cause Thiefs would have the lowest score …..

Yeah, you’re not really getting it, you’re just digging yourself deeper, so I’m just going to be as blunt as possible.

This isn’t about knowing how to spell initiative or what it is, or going on a wiki to type out a bunch of traits and ability descriptions. You very obviously do not know how thief works. This makes you singularly unqualified to judge their dodges and evasive abilities in comparison to protection, aegis, stability, and immunity skills.

You -think- you know how thief works, and regardless how politely I try to tell you you’re wrong, you’re unflappable in your beliefs. You don’t play the class, but you feel you’re qualified to explain to me how it could be played more defensively.

I know that warrior class abilities are called burst abilities, and they’re based off of adrenaline, but I still know I’m not qualified to hop on the warrior forums and tell people who’ve been playing warriors for months how to play them better, so I don’t try to. Doing so would just make me look silly.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

So i should check the wiki next time , in order to correct my vocabulary and oppl take me serious eh ? :P
Evasive attacks doesnt neglect any kind of attacks ? Like dodge ?

You can’t recall the classes main mechanic, but you claim to know it well enough to sit here and tell me thieves have enough dodges and evasive attacks to make up for the complete lack of defensive boons and immunity skills.

My point is, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve lost some fights to some annoying stealth spam thieves, had your incorrect opinion validated by other thief hating players on the boards and confirmation bias, and rather than take someones opinion and think it through, you bash it because it came from a thief. You don’t really know what you’re talking about, but in your heart you know its wrong because a thief said it, and “they’re OP”.

Right or wrong, nobody would take me seriously if I said “Man, warrior keeps owning me with his good sword whenever he uses bunch o swings, or whatever its called”.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

evilapprentice.6379:

We don’t get protection, aegis, stability, or any immune skills. Our only real “oh kitten” button is shadowstep, and that doesn’t make us immune, it just lets us escape the fight (most of the time)

Doghe + evasive attacks = no damage
U have many traits that restore the incective or whaterver is called
Plus dagger main attack combining with a trait that restore a small perscentage of the didge bar , helps u migrate a lot of damage

“Incentive or whatever is called” very clearly points out what you know about the class. Your opinion is very, very far off.

There isn’t a subscription fee for this game, so the number of PvE’rs isn’t quite as important as in other MMO’s. Give us PvPers something to spend money on (private servers, a way to use our dye’s in PvP so we actually care about Dye packs, hell, anything) and actual, solid PvP and I’ll gladly drop 15 bucks a month into Anets account.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Yiyojin.3241:

1: Thief takes insane damage when get hit.

U know that the rest of the classes get insane damage too when hit , without toughness ?
What stoping u , getting more toughnesss or more defensive CDs ?
Less whining from the Thief suporters amd more L2P , would be apriciated too :P

You’re aware that the rest of the classes in our HP class (the lowest in the game) are known for their bunker builds, right? Their low base HP is mitigated by immune skills, access to defensive boons, and great healing.

Running a high toughness thief doesn’t make much difference – I know because I run one (soldiers jewel and 30 points in the toughness tree, basically the tankiest you can make a thief and still do damage). We don’t get protection, aegis, stability, or any immune skills. Our only real “oh kitten” button is shadowstep, and that doesn’t make us immune, it just lets us escape the fight (most of the time)

Your unerring disapproval of anything a thief player says because of your hatred of the class shows clearly, because your utterly confident in your 100% uninformed, incorrect opinion.

Brutalistik.6473:

Usually skillful players just adapt and find a new build rather than complain. If the nerf was very bad where it affects everything then I can understand.

The same goes for newcomers…they just usually adapt to find a new build than complain.

You’re aware that thief has a huge number of issues with their narrowest-in-the-game weapon choices, right?

D/P’s dual skill is useless, its a gap closer that roots us on hit. P/P is non-viable; body shot is a waste of initiative (you will never use it), the auto attack and dual skills are at odds with eachother, and the spec has no way to access stealth, a thief’s main survivability mechanic. The S/P PW nerf places PW at less damage than auto attack, which roots us (a highly mobile class), and nothing prevents a target from walking out of the last 2 swings; it’s nearly useless outside of haste-PW spam. S/D was serviceable, but flanking strike is a joke (mediocre damage and doesn’t hit reliably on moving targets due to piss poor pathing).

So, that more or less locks us into dagger OH, which just received substantial nerfs with no reduction in init cost. Know what spec was affected the least? D/D glass cannon…the spec the CnD and Dancing Dagger changes were made to address. Oh yeah, the S/D daze lost .5s base, and is no longer affected by any condition duration abilities (not even the trait line which explicitly does so, and this was unmentioned in the patch notes). Shbow lost 15% on cluster bomb. As far as I can tell, the leeching venoms “buff” is an elaborate inside joke (i’ve seen reports of roughly 30 more health per venom proc between 1000 power and 2000 power, but can’t test successfully because it doesnt change for me regardless what my power is). We received almost no survivability compensations for massive loss in damage

Soooo, that leaves D/D glass cannon as our best option. Every other functional build lost more in the patch. Some of us don’t want to play an instagib spec, because its so binary.

Cal.1985:

@Dacromir
Very wrong math – you cannot compare two skills that are different i.e. Sword attack from stealth has a daze attached to it.
Please think before post. Raw dmg is one thing, additional buff/debuff/conditions also counts. Please take this into consideration before you start making “math”.

What you are saying does not apply.

OP is not comparing D/D Damage to S/D Damage. He’s making a comparison of D/D damage pre and post patch, and a comparison of S/D damage pre and post patch.

A change intended to lower D/D’s raw spike DPS had a higher % change on S/D players, who are not considered Spike damage powerhouses (because they aren’t). That is the point of this post, and a big source of frustration for PvP thieves.

SPvP perspective:
In hotjoin, they’re great. TPvP, not as much.

In a conditions build, they’re rather amazing cap denial against non bunker builds. If you want to be a terror in hotjoins, they’re great. In a hectic melee, its easy to miss caltrops for a few seconds and eat 6 stacks of bleed, but anyone who’s been playing more than a few weeks will exit the area quickly.

In TPvP, Conditions thieves are weaker overall (since the popular ele and guard bunkers can drop your conditions rapidly and last forever regardless). Dropping caltrops on a cap might help, but a good team will just keep their bunkers on, cleansing, and knocking your team off the point.

Scorpion wire is a good substitute in a smaller skirmish (assuming they fixed the issue with scorpion wire failing to pull your target to you over completely open ground. If they didn’t, its worthless due to randomly not functioning properly.)

If you’re using Signet of malice as your heal, Caltrops are nigh necessary, its one of your biggest healing sources.

I would drop the agony rune in your pistol – 35% longer bleed is no better than 25% for pistol bleeds (25% gets you the full extra second, anything over 25 and less than 50 does absolutely nothing).

You can stun break out of a PW stun. there is no way to break daze. also, you can only stunlock when using haste, whereas you can daze someone whenever you stealth.

Let’s be honest, nearly permadazing a target is kind of overpowered, and against the spirit of the game. We weren’t designed to have access to a stun lock, so ATM, the tactical strike change seems fair. this is why I claimed it wasn’t a big deal. daze length not being affected by mesmer runes and so forth seems off however, because a 2s daze isn’t anywhere near as bad as a 3s daze.

The biggest slap in the face however was your complete lack of effort for our other weaponsets. We’re locked into using D/D, P/D, and S/D because our other weaponsets have glaring issues. P/P is a confused build without access to stealth (our primary survival mechanic), and worthless skill in the 2 slot, and an autoattack that doesn’t mesh well with its dual skill. Nobody plays it becuase it just isn’t viable. D/P is ruined because our primary gap closer roots us on hit – let me repeat that; our GAP CLOSER ROOTS US ON HIT – I don’t know if this is a bug or a design choice, either way its useless, the gap opens right back up…because we were rooted on hit. S/D is in use atm, despite the fact that flanking strike is a joke, primarily because we have so little working weapon options.

The cluster bomb reduction also reeks of kittening everyone to nerf glass cannons. The damage is rather good, but due to the travel time, its not an ability that can be “spammed” most of the time. I’ve seen glass cannons hit for 6-8k with the ability, so it probably needed an adjustment, but maybe one that only affects glass cannons.

The compensation we received for this massive loss of damage on our only working weaponsets? The blinding powder change was necessary, not a buff. Blinding powder was completely inferior compared to Shadow refuge in 95% of situations prior to the patch, seeing as they had the same CD and shadow refuge was 10 times as powerful. Cutting the CD to 40s was a good choice, but it wasn’t a buff, it was a fix to a poorly performing skill. Smoke screen is bigger now, thank you for that. Scorpion wire got a range increase, thank you for that. That’s the end of our “Compensation” section, sadly.

So, in short, our primary OH (Primary, Again, because its part of all our functioning weaponsets) lost 50% and 33% damage, with no reduction in initiative cost. Our broken/non-functioning weaponsets were not touched. The ability buffs intended to compensate us for massive damage nerfs were inadequate. This is the second time you’ve failed to properly address burst, and instead just weakened all us non-burst thieves. Please stop spitting in our faces.

Note: If you’re going to respond in either support or disagreement, please keep it civil. I am a person, the Dev team is made up of people. I’m trying to express my disappointment, and perhaps actually get an explanation that will shed light on my confusion. This post isn’t meant to be a rage dump for children to call people names.

Is the current trend of punishing all thieves in an unsuccessful attempt to nerf burst going to continue? Because so far it is incredibly disheartening.

When the playerbase was crying about Pistol Whip -> Quickness, your answer was to reduce Pistol whip damage. This reduced Pistol whip near/below our auto-attack chain. When you use Pistol whip without quickness, your opponent can literally walk out of the last swings (they might have to dodge roll if you’ve crippled/chilled them). This results in No-one using Pistol whip anymore, because without quickness its a joke – we don’t need a kitteny cast time stun when we have Head shot, and who wants to let our opponent know we’ll be ready to be stunned/immobilizied/KD’d because we’ll be standing in place for a full second, swinging at the air? If we still wanted to run Pistol whip-> Quickness, it would work, people just don’t because whenever haste is down we’d only have auto-attack to do damage.

When the playerbase was crying about the instagib chain (Mug->CnD->Backstab), you mind-bogglingly decided to nerf CnD by 33%. This had a small impact on Instagib, and huge impact on everyone not running complete gas cannon. Look at the boards – most thieves and players are still pointing out how well instagib works, and now those of us who dont want to run cheese specs are paying the price. We’re paying 6 initiative for an attack that does 67% the damage it used to.

When the playerbase started crying about Dancing Dagger, you decided to cut the damage in half. That’s a third of our initiative bar for a skill that does what trickshot does, with a cripple, and now less damage. Dancing Dagger is a pretty Meh utility for chasing a target, or starting a fight off with a cripple (anyone with half a brain knows if a thief is chasing/approaching you with dagger OH, and you see him start to do something, you dodge, because its either Dancing Dagger or CnD->Steal/Inf sig). If the skill is going to cost 4 init, it needs to do better damage (probably not the damage it was doing Pre-patch, but definitely not 50% less. The damage should have probably been reduced 15-25%). If you want to make it a pure utility skill, remove the cast time and cut the init to 3, this way opponents can’t see the ability coming a mile away, and we aren’t dumping 1/3 of our initiative bar for kitten damage.

Losing .5 seconds off of tactical strike isn’t a big deal, honestly. (Edit: Its been pointed out to me that sigil of para is working, so a bunch of stuff I had here concerning it is no longer true). A 10% damage boost on an attack that did kitten damage isn’t much, TBH – tactical strike is a CC tool, not a damage tool. That would be like if you increased Headshot or Black powder damage by 25% – it sounds like alot, but it really isn’t because the base is so low.

omgdracula.6345:

Rukia.4802:

omgdracula.6345:

Rukia.4802:

Condition builds are a joke, obviously no one plays a thief over at head quarters. Maybe this should change.

You are horridly mistaken if you think they are a joke. Scorpion Wire to caltrops with the uncatchable trait and death blossom is EASY 25 stacks of bleed, pop spider venom mid fight, shortbow to keep poison on if cleared GG. An aware Bleed thief will own a glass thief every time.

Lol shadow’s embrace would render that build entirely useless. I haven’t once died to a condition thief, not once. But I also don’t run glass cannon, and I know anything can own a bad one. In a balanced setting though conditions are nothing short of a joke.

Shadow’s Embrace is more or less useless. Bleeds and the Poison are constant. P/D what are you gonna do CnD when you can’t touch me? You obviously are not that dumb to think good condi thiefs are dumb enough to let you stealth with CnD. Plus with ridiculous init regen. You’re just mad because Dancing Dagger got nerfed.

A) Shadows embrace is wonderful. It truly is. It’s hands down the best way to drop conditions, and definitely the only way we have to drop a bunch of conditions.

That being said, Condition damage thieves are great in hot join. I ran 0/0/30/20/20 P/D for a long, long time and I loved it. It’s not so great in Tourneys though. Ele and Guardian bunkers will take literally forever to down. You can beat burst specs, but 1 mistake and your usually pasted, while your opponent can make multiple mistakes and still survive (since your damage is so slow and steady). In the “Focus target, next” coordination of paid tourneys, bleeds don’t have a chance to shine.

Your cap denial is ok with caltrops, but nothing compared to the KB/KB/KD/Launch chains guardians and ele’s can pull off. So yeah, condi thieves are fine, but in the current meta, they’re weak in tpvp. I was hoping this patch would change some of that, but meh, kittenandwich.

Eduardo.4675:

I dont think u got the devs idea. It was a preemptive nerf, just to prevent future cries from meta shift. In case u dont know, dancing daggers has a brutaly fast activation time, its 1/4 secs + travel time, it hits the target usually within half a sec, and its not that easy to dodge, i rarely miss it, and u should also know that it has some kind of bug that more often than not makes the “ripple” hits(or bouncing) do more dmg than the first hit, wich sometimes resulted in brutally increasing the final dmg output,its like that similar bug with rifle warrior where piercing killshots gain power as they perfurate subsequent targets (u should read this as, its prone to exploiting, and we all know that there is no exploiters,right?). The dmg is insane when the enemies accumulate, and if they nerfed the BS combo, wich REQUIRES some few button presses, positioning,etc, the meta would eventually shift to a new form of heartseeker: dancing daggers spam. An Assassin (thief) is suposed to preform stunts like the backstab combo,it has allways been like this in other mmo’s, and im in favor of staying this way, however,one button kills is cheese… that cheese is the reason i dont play death blossom cond build,for me spaming 3 is cheese, specially in that infamous UNICORN build. The meta, if BS was nerfed, would now be either dancing spam,or daze lock spam. In the first, the QQ’ers would come here and say"nerfnerf, 1 hit kills", in the second, the permalock would bring “OMG, Anet, what did you have in mind when u allowed a thief to perma lock me into oblivion?”…
This is my take on this patch, the also powerful P/D setup was actually improved, but that setup takes a lot more time to kill and leaves the victim with a chance to survive and beat you, if he is skilled enough, unlike the very similar S/D setup, wich dazelocks…
Also, on cluster thingie, it was somewhat powerfull, allowed a thief to do a lot of dmg in a weapon set that has the #3 skill, wich is a evade backwards ohsheet button, followed by a shadow step skill on #5, ,without the half a second delay of having to swap weapon. Think of the new map, and a thief spaming cluster safely from above, already in a map that benefits their shortbow so much…
Look, im a thief, its my main, i only opened 2 slots yet,one for thief and one for mesmer, wich i opened to understand that class, so dont think im one of the whine crowd, i looove thieving like a boss!!

Again, I’m not claiming these are the end days, but your take on Dancing dagger is really, really off. Maybe you’re playing people who don’t understand the mechanics (not being rude, explanation below. assume OH dagger, Sword or Dagger MH)

In any small scale skirmish, if a thief isn’t in melee range, and you see him doing something, you dodge. Why? He’s doing 1 of 2 things –
1) Dancing Dagger
2) Preloading CnD for steal/inf sig.
2a)Maybe he’s HSing if he’s close enough, dodge still works.

You’re running away from a DD thief outside melee range and you see him doing something? Dodge, Dancing Dagger misses. Thief coming at you out of stealth, you see him doing something? Dodge, Dancing Dagger misses. It gets a bit harder to dodge the closer you get to your target, but Inf strike and HS are now generally (not always, but generally) superior options to DD when you get that close.

If you’re talking about a hectic, particle effect heavy fight, then sure DD is hard to see and dodge. So is everything else ranged.

Lopez.7369:

Cut them some slack. They have two people working on class changes.

That sounds like a staffing/money flow issue, not a “cut them some slack” issue.

As was also already pointed out, class changes have nothing to do with abilities that do not function as listed/at all/have unintended issues.

Eduardo.4675:

evilapprentice.6379:

I see alot of people talking about the nerfs – is anyone else as disappointed and annoyed that we didn’t receive a single fix?

My list is above (Shadow shot, flanking strike, P/P in general, ranged attacks obstructed for no reason, adding venoms still suck, traps still suck, PW still roots and does sub par damage without quickness)

We’re still basically locked into Shbow and either D/D, P/D or S/D, because our other weapon sets have GLARING problems. Every single one of those specs use Dagger offhand, which now does terrible damage for non-glass cannons.

Fixing those bugs was the only bad thing is this patch, specially the channel>follow that thief bug.

I disagree. 50% damage nerf to Dancing Dagger is over the top – the skill still costs 4 initiative, and has a slow travel time (its rather easy to dodge). Increase the travel time and reduce the init to 3, and I’m fine with it.

CnD doing 33% less damage is just a terrible idea all around. It’s intention was obviously to nerf insta-gib builds, but does almost nothing to nerf them. 1 skill out of 3 doing 33% less damage just means you’ll probably need to hit HS once. Instead, every thief who didn’t want to run insta gib now has a 6 init ability that does 33% less damage.

I’m not claiming the game is ruined. I’ll still play. But Anet has set a disturbing trend – every single thief change (besides changing HS % thresholds) has been wildly off the mark. Nerfing PW to counter Quickness->PW builds? Nerfing CnD to counter Insta-gib builds? They’re nerfing every thief spec to counter extreme burst, rather than just toning down extreme burst. It’s stupid, poorly planned, and extremely worrying.

Edit:The icing on the cake is they just keep nerfing our small pool of working weaponsets, rather than fixing the issues with the broken/poorly designed ones so we can expand as a class.

I see alot of people talking about the nerfs – is anyone else as disappointed and annoyed that we didn’t receive a single fix?

My list is above (Shadow shot, flanking strike, P/P in general, ranged attacks obstructed for no reason, adding venoms still suck, traps still suck, PW still roots and does sub par damage without quickness)

We’re still basically locked into Shbow and either D/D, P/D or S/D, because our other weapon sets have GLARING problems. Every single one of those specs use Dagger offhand, which now does terrible damage for non-glass cannons.

You might have checked the post time for our posts – I started this before DeeJays was up. Now that I’ve seen the “Consolidated” post, I’m posting there instead.

I Love people who feel the need to put others down without applying logic.

They didn’t fix a single issue our other weaponsets had.

-Shadow shot still roots on hit, nullifying its ability to close gaps.
-Flanking strike still misses on moving targets (need more testing on this, but that’s my first impression).
-P/P got absolutely nothing. Body shot now works as intended, but its still a sub-par skill. I’ve seen the math on the boards – PvE it might be great, i don’t know, but in PvP, its a waste of initiative.

Ranged attacks are still being obstructed for no reason (Further testing needed, still just a first impression).

The CnD nerf is just baffling. In an attempt to nerf insta-gib builds, they’ve nerfed an ability across all specs. Why not reduce the damage/change the effect of Mug, as countless people have suggested? Now non-glass cannons have a much kittenier 6 init skill, in a (poorly thought out, ineffective) attempt to nerf glass cannons.

4 Init is a ton of initiative for a utility skill, especially if you’re not playing a spec that has 15 base init, or gains 3 init on steal, or regenerates an additional 2 init every 10s. Dancing dagger was probably doing a little bit too much damage, but a 50% nerf is just ridiculous. Reduce the cost to 3 init and increase the travel speed, then its a utility skill. Now Dagger OH does crap damage – D/D now Only has backstab, autoattack, and HS to do damage. Expect to see a kittenload more HS spam from DD players, because that’s it for doing damage.

Edit: Obstructed is indeed still happening on Ranged attacks (primarily DD and trick shot, but also Disabling shot) for absolutely no reason (in range, open ground between me and the target)

Oh, before I forget – still getting obstructed on ranged attacks. kittening hilarious.

Shadow shot still roots
Flanking strike still does subpar damage and appears (not fully tested) to suck on moving targets.
Their fix to body shot was just…hilarious.
P/P got no love.
They decided the issue with Mug->CnD->backstab was CnD and nerfed it for across the board.
Tactical strike (Our fallback once they improperly nerfed the wrong skills in an attempt to what I can only assume as “balance” things) has had its daze reduced.
They buffed Leeching venoms without re-examining venoms as a whole.
Dancing dagger still costs 4 init, but now does less damage than trick shot.

Just… Wow. I knew nerfs were coming…but we were expressly told we could expect a boost in some areas to compensate for said nerf. I was not aware that more nerfs could be used to compensate.

And not examining a -single- issue we have with our other weapons sets (Shadow shot, flanking strike, P/P as a whole) is just a kittening slap in the face.

It looks like complete kitten, but I won’t judge a book by its cover. We’ll see how I feel after trying it out for a few days.

With any luck, they’ll be discouraging/nerfing bunkers in the patch (along with extreme burst). Otherwise, hopefully they’ll add a “Most time spent inside a controlled node” top player stat.

Be patient. You will be killed, alot. Things will feel cheap, ALOT. Every time you ask yourself “How the heck did [insert class here] do that?” go look it up in a skill builder. Understanding how/what common class specs do is a big part of how you’ll be playing. You don’t want to let a GS wielding warrior hit you with a bola, you dont want a shbow thief keeping you at max range, etc etc.

Edit: You might also want to talk to some friends/other eles/guildies to get a spec or 2 that is solid. Most of the frustration I had in the first week was based around running AWFUL specs and not being sure what was going wrong.

Find a Duel server (join one with guildies or ask In the Heart if anyone knows of any open ones) so you can 1 v1 people, learn there class and spec, what to expect, etc…

GankSinatra.2653:

What if he said ‘Other Changes’?

It’s probably just me being nitpicky, but the language just seems off to me. Rather than just putting 5v5 maps under their own little header, and something along the lines of “you’ve asked for it, we’ve delivered”, they treat it like a sidenote. Probably not intentional of course, but subconsciously it’s poorly laid out. Whatevs, 5v5 hot join will be nice for actually testing Tourney specs.

5v5 sounds awesome. Don’t get me wrong, but does it concern anyone else that something the boards has been clamoring for nigh unanimously (5v5 hot join) Was tacked on at the end under the “Smaller Changes” section?
It’d be like if they were giving a presentation, and spent an hour talking about their newest helmet skin, and then right before walking off stage they mutter “Oh yeah, there’s some new game types, TDM, Capture the flag, GvG, you know, other smaller stuff”.

Edit: Topic got moved. Original title was “Tonnes of Bug fixes”
If I am not mistaken, I think that was the term used.

Can we see this list? Because all the debilitating thief bugs, in addition to randomly obstructed ranged attacks, are still there.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Archaon.6245:

Every class can play a role, guardians bunkers and support, eles bunkers, support and some dmg, eng again bunkers and support, thieves can’t play good bunkers…they can only go for pressure (bleed, daze etc) or spike (BS)…sure that if someone wants to play a single target spike spec on a class not designed for it, and he dies vs someone who has everything made for it…it’s just normal

U never know , until u try :P
U can equip ur Soldier rune + get the Feline Grace + the Wild strike + any other evasive atack(death blossom + aply bleeds) or daze or black powder pistol attack and make a rotation .
+ Traits that restore Initiative , and try to bunk :P

You absolutely cannot play a bunker thief (at a TPvP level at least). I’ve tried at least 50 different combinations of traits, runes, utilities, playstyles…etc.

That’s not to say a thief cant be survivable – the problem is your biggest “bunker” style abilities trigger from being in stealth. Can’t hold a point in stealth, can’t bunker.

We also have no access to protection or aegis, and unless you want to dagger storm and immediately dodge roll, stability. Even at max toughness and good healing power (Shamans ammy with toughness/vit runes), you melt without consistently stealthing for regen and condition cleanses.

Our other defensive mechanic (being very mobile/dodgy) pulls you off the point too much.

I’m eager to start playing/be disappointed/come to the forums to rage (whichever applies), and it seems there is some confusion as to when its dropping. Anyone know for sure?

Yes, thieves already have signets. Unfortunately, adding anything else to venoms feels like either a bandaid or too powerful. Poisons inflicting multiple effects would certainly help a little with the cleansing issue for classes with constant/high amount of cleanses, but classes that cant just strip conditions like crazy might be overwhelmed.

Perhaps if venoms also did additional damage on application?