foste.3098

> @"Axl.8924" said: > Question then do you remember how druid was when it was first released? I remember that the cele avatar skills had absurd base healing values with low healing power scaling, that staff was a dumb aa spaming weapon with a mobility skill- ancestral grace which was an evade a heal and a blast, that lunar impact was a 2 sec daze, that cele avatar had 10 sec cd. I also remember that the biggest issue about druid itself was the druidic clarity & celestial shadow traits which together gave a easy way to kite during a fight by entering avatar -> dropping lunar impact -> exiting avatar which took less than a second and ensured the druid could leisurely rest himself before reengaging or just running away. I also remember that the dumbest part of it all were the pets which were either overtuned - smokescale which hit like a truck with every skill, or just badly designed and overtuned - bristilback which had a command skill that was a oneshot at close range but missed every single shot against targets that were not hugging the pet, same with its rain of spikes skill which missed every spike and did nothing unless a enemy was standing on top of the pet in which case it was an instagb. I also recall how most other ranger pets were total shit by comparison and how they are unable to even hit a moving target, which is still true today hence why you almost always see Hot or Pof pets being used in pvp/wvw with the exception of birds and cats which are the only 2 core pet families that can reliably hit moving enemies. So what's your point on druid? did you just raise it because of my icon?

One thing i will never understand about the feb mega patch is why did they nerf everything across the board? Why were skills/traits that had never been an issue since the games launch gotten nerfed? For example eviscerate has always had a scaling of 2.0/2.5/3.0 depending on adrenaline, so why change it? There are huge number of skills like that that got changed in pvp/wvw seemingly for the sake of slowing down the game, or reducing power creep. But in reality the reason for the powercreep and the fast time to kill was not that skills had to much scaling (although there were outliers) but that skills had become overbloated. For a good example look at bull's charge: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bull%27s_Charge Note the path of fire pre-patch of August 08, 2017, the skill got a triple damage buff and became an evade. Before hand the skill was a long knockdown, a long gap closer/gap creator, and a leap finisher that dealt slightly higher damage than 1st skill in the greatsword auto attack chain; all in all a an al-round useful and good skill, so why the fuck make it an evade and a 2nd stage eviscerate burst in addition to all the utility it had before? This is just the most clear example of skill bloating that lead to the powercreep but there are countless cases like that. So if the issue is idiotic bloating of skills why then blanket nerf damage across the board, leave the bloated skill design, and never follow through on further balance when it is clear that there are massive issues still? The dumbest part is if they wait to release the new expansion before deciding to actually do some balance, because that way the new elite spec are doomed to ether be broken op or broken useless since they are being set up upon broken foundation.

Whirling axe, it is by far the most versatile stolen skill but you need to be smart on how to use it otherwise it will do next to nothing. However when you use it at an opportune moment the skill just does allot of things for you: it can negate all targeted ranged damage thrown at you, it can make you untouchable in melee if you spin in a smokefield, it can do massive damage if you spin in a lightning field, and it is amazing at raw damage & cleaving when you are not under focus. The 2nd best skill from my experience is mace head crack, it just turns off a player for 3 seconds and deals decent damage; simple and effective.

- spvp changed so that when you enter a map your class is replaced with a stick figurine that only has 1 skill that deals 1 damage upon use. There, perfectly balanced, now every one is on a level playing field and no one can bitch about losing to poor balance.

> @"Math.5123" said: > Its almost as if trapper runes were added with DH. Meaning dh was very much designed around that rune in mind. > But hey, what do i know. Actually rune of the dragon hunter was designed to work with dh traps, seeing how dh traps are purely power and as the runeset gives power and ferocity and lots of might. Rune of the trapper was designed to work primarily with (the now deleted) thief traps as they were based on condition damage and cc, and due to the major fact that thief traps dealt no power damage upon triggering meaning the stealth from the rune would not have gotten removed by someone triggering said traps. Rangers were the 3rd class with traps, and theirs were a mix between power and condi. Now to run through some memories: thief traps got nerfed to do damage upon triggering in order to prevent stealth camping (this was done only when a thief managed to solo a literal raid boss with a trapper build), and later thief traps got removed altogether for preparations. Meanwhile rangers had a trap gm trait, one which allowed them to throw traps as if they were grenades, that enabled them to stack stealth by yeeting traps aside so they wouldn't get triggered and reveal the ranger. This trait got removed and reworked in to the skirmishing trap trait we have today. All of this paints a picture that this rune set breaks the trap utility type, and will be a HUGE issue if another elite spec gets traps as a utility skill. Rework the 6th runeset effect to something else; end of story.

> @"Terrorhuz.4695" said: > > @"UNOwen.7132" said: > > Shadowshot is not a heavy hitter and it doesnt hit anywhere *close* to 4.5k (4.5k is what *backstab* hits for.) > > Whatever thief > >  >  >  > > I play thief and ranger as my mains and i can tell you that in spvp shadow shot can only hit those numbers in 2 ways: situations where the target has lots of vulnerability or the theif has lots of might, both of which have to come from external sources since the class cannot stack them with d/p. Or by runing executioner & rune of eagle/inifltration/scholar stacked with some other scalable damage modifiers (lead attacks, no quarter, ect) and probably zerker amulet in which case we are dealing with a total glass canon. The reality of the matter is that on ranger i have a build which plays as bruiser with demolisher amulet and runes of speed, on which i can make my pet do 4-5k attacks every 4-10 seconds while playing defensively if i want. Or i can go role a melee decap build (s/d gs traited with quick draw) and chase theives across the map while actually being able to win duels on far nodes against mostly anything. When compared to other classes thief does not deal that much damage outside thier burst window, but to get that the thief has to heavily trait in to steal and damage leaving them glassy, literally the only thing thief can do well is disengage and run away. Also i like how the issue ppl have with thief is exclusively about d/p but the majority of the thread addresses the class as a whole when talking about how op it is; when in fact most of it is a total joke and will be unplayable if d/p gets nerfed.

Thief as a whole is not even close to being op or broken, it is specifically d/p daredevil that is carrying the class. Seriously try to play literally any other build (bonus if you play on 2v2 offseason event) not involving d/p and you will see just how disjointed the class is: -d/d is a burst set that has low utility so it get chewed up in pvp. -S/d has good utility but lacks burst and has a slow auto attack and low damage in general. -s/p is a joke after the February patch, it was a 1 button set that is now dysfunctional; nothing short of a rework of pistol whip will make this set see any play in pvp/wvw -p/p suffers from having mainhand pistol be a condition weapon and the off hand a 'utility' weapon while the dual skill is a power skill; the set has the same issue as s/p in that it is a 1 button set but at leas s/p was not trying to be some abominable hybrid. -p/d is a condi 'burst set' but most of its damage comes from traits and utility skills not the weapon itself (which is why s/d was in a condition build some time ago until panic strike got nerfed). This is the only other weapon set that core thief has which is not total trash. -short bow is a utility weapon that has a initiative sum cost of 23, now i understand that it has some of the most powerfull skills of any thief weapon but the approach they used to balanced them is just stupid. -staff is clunky to use mostly due to how skill 2 behaves (craps out when you use it against anything that is not stationary), otherwise it is a mediocre set that is predictable and overall worst than d/p so no one plays it (also it has the most synergy with acrobatics and that traitline got balanced out of existence). -rifle also got the anet balance treatment and now the most effective way to play it is to spam skirmishers shot and ignore the kneel mechanic, in other words a 1 button set but with a twist that sometimes you use the stealth attack. So not counting shortbow out of 8 total weapon sets (possible play styles) only 1 is good and functional without any broken skills or otherwise disabled due to anet balance, then another set that is ok at best. So in conclusion when ppl bitch about thief what they actually mean is d/p daredevil, and as soon as that gets nerfed thief ceases to exist in pvp and to an extent in wvw. Also think about this: what happened if the new expansion gives another class a mobility elite spec; doesn't have to be as mobile as daredevil let's say 80% of daredevil's mobility, but it can survive within a fight/teamfight and actually win 1 vs 1 encounters against players that are not already half dead? In this case thief as a whole ceases to exist.

> **Borezerker:** | **Gain:** Primal bursts, +300 to power/condi **Loss:** Normal bursts, -300 toughness > **Daredevil:** | **Gain:** Lower CD steal, endurance on steal, unblockable steal, and 3 dodges. **Loss:** 600 less range on steal than core.(4-1) > **Holosmith:** | ~~You can overheat~~ Just kidding, no tradeoff. (1-0) > **Renegod:** | No tradeoff. (1-0) Your view on what is and isn't a tradeoff is skewed somewhat, which is best exhibited by the specs above. The elite spec tradeoff is only what the 1st minor trait in the elite line does, and nothing else, which means the tradeoffs are the following: Burstzerker - gain berzerk & primal bursts but loses normal burst skills Dogedevil - gain 3rd dodge but gets steal replaced with swipe Yolosmith - gain photonforge but lose the toolbelt 5 skill (same for scraper, he gains function gyro and lose toolbelt 5) Rangerwanabe - gains new f skills but lose the core revenant f ability To me it seems that this is how anet views tradeoffs, a button on your ui that replaces another button. Because of this not all tradeoffs are equal across the board, for example dragon hunter and firebrand elite replacements of f skills are way better than core; same could be said for holo, and both revenant elites, and daredevil with steal -> swipe, but let's be honest daredevil is carried almost exclusively by unhindered combatant.

> @"KrHome.1920" said: > Infiltrator's Arrow spam got a 2 second nerf. Super "significant"! > > The skill was never meant to be a fast travel utility, but a reposition utility for the shortbow or what do you think why there is a blind on it? > > Since no thief actually cared for that purpose and everyone is just using the skill exclusively for traveling (that's an euphemism for resetting btw.) for 8 years now, it was time to reduce its impact a bit. All of this is true but there is one big issue, the entire class and all of its elite specs were balanced around the mobility of IA. I am fine with them nerfing it but i am not fine with just leaving the rest of the class as is, if their intent is to move thief away from a pure decap bot then they have to buff/rework the rest of the class to be able to actually fight and not just +1 players who are half dead.

Now we just need to wait 8 more months for them to actually balance the class around not having as much mobility and we will get to what the thief was advertised as to begin with: a glassy and slippery duelist.