Damage Nerf By the Numbers

[KrHome.1920]

> @"lkilian.1854" said:

> Mortal like the rest of us? Like warrior's double endure pain, necro barrier spam, guardian aegis uptime, engi miniature elixirs, ranger's double stone signet, elementalist's arcane shield and water sustain, or mesmer stuff you said? Revenant would be the only with right to complain here and even then it has many ways to mitigate damage and the capability of using 2 heal skills in few time. Every class has damage mitigation skills, and thief needs them too because it is one of the squishiest classes. Even then, thief's evades are active unlike many other professions that limit that function to using a skill and facetanking damage.

>

> I can see why you no longer play thief because it looks like you have no idea.

I said it months ago: **Classes that can always reset or run away, should not be a strong duellist.** A class that can't be killed should also not be able to kill anyone.

 

End of story.

 

In the same posting I said that I would appreciate it when ANet would give teef more fight presence defense to survive cleaving and maintain constant pressure to be less dependant on burst, but ONLY WHEN they nerf its ridiculous mobility. Only then teef could fill other roles than +1 and decap without being overpowered.

 

In the last patch they nerfed teef damage, which is great, because teef lost nothing of its mobility in this patch. The metabuild is now a balanced +1 and decapper! Good job!

 

And it's not like you don't have options:

 

You want damage? Play staff and assa signet. Oh you can't stealth or teleport anymore and lost agility signet condi cleanse and endurance gain? Deal with it!

 

You want more burst than dagger or sword gives you? Run P/P second weapon set! Oh you can't SB5 anymore to reset after every misplay? Deal with it!

 

L2P the fucking game!

 

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

> @"KrHome.1920" said:

> > @"lkilian.1854" said:

> > Mortal like the rest of us? Like warrior's double endure pain, necro barrier spam, guardian aegis uptime, engi miniature elixirs, ranger's double stone signet, elementalist's arcane shield and water sustain, or mesmer stuff you said? Revenant would be the only with right to complain here and even then it has many ways to mitigate damage and the capability of using 2 heal skills in few time. Every class has damage mitigation skills, and thief needs them too because it is one of the squishiest classes. Even then, thief's evades are active unlike many other professions that limit that function to using a skill and facetanking damage.

> >

> > I can see why you no longer play thief because it looks like you have no idea.

> I said it months ago: **Classes that can always reset or run away, should not be a strong duellist.** A class that can't be killed should also not be able to kill anyone.

>

> End of story.

>

> In the same posting I said that I would appreciate it when ANet would give teef more fight presence defense to survive cleaving and maintain constant pressure to be less dependant on burst, but ONLY WHEN they nerf its ridiculous mobility. Because damage, fight preesence (which has a huge impact in team fights) and mobility at once is just overpowered and a slap in the face of other classes (except mirage with is in the same boat as teef and shares its bad design).

>

> In the last patch they nerfed teef damage, which is great, because teef lost nothing of its mobility in this patch.

>

> You want damage? Play staff and assa signet. Oh you can't stealth anymore and lost agility signet condi cleanse and endurance gain? Deal with it!

>

> You want more burst than dagger gives you? Run P/P second weapon set! Oh you can't SB5 anymore to reset after every misplay? Deal with it!

>

> L2P the kitten game!

>

 

Because core thief doesn't have the mobility to just disengage outside of short bow. Only pistol offhand and dagger offhand provides damage mitigation. And after that everything is just sticking onto people.

 

DD provides that in 5 but it doesn't go far. And DE in standing 4.

 

DD has the bulk of thief's mitigation by providing the only on demand block in thief's kit. The replacement for Felines Grace after it was ripped out of core thief. A utility that interrupts and works as expected all the time. And everything on staff.

 

It seems like people bitch about a very tiny part of their kit without realizing WHY most thieves always use those tiny pieces. We don't have a lot of damage mitigation, and dying is the worst thing you can do in PvP.

 

If you can't kill a thief and want to blame it on mobility or their ability to avoid damage without ninty percent of the junk others have, you got horribly out played.

[Kageseigi.2150]

> @"KrHome.1920" said:

> You want damage? Play staff and assa signet. Oh you can't stealth or teleport anymore and lost agility signet condi cleanse and endurance gain? Deal with it!

> You want more burst than dagger or sword gives you? Run P/P second weapon set! Oh you can't SB5 anymore to reset after every misplay? Deal with it!

> L2P the kitten game!

 

Wow, superiority complex much?

 

> @"Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497" said:

> Because core thief doesn't have the mobility to just disengage outside of short bow.

> ...

> DD has the bulk of thief's mitigation by providing the only on demand block in thief's kit. The replacement for Felines Grace after it was ripped out of core thief.

> ...

> If you can't kill a thief and want to blame it on mobility or their ability to avoid damage without ninty percent of the junk others have, you got horribly out played.

 

^ This.

 

I don't have either expansion. I'm limited to Core Thief. I don't have a single block. I don't have 3 dodges. I don't have x/P Stealth outside of D/P. I don't have Staff. I don't have Rifle. I don't have Malice. I don't have Pulmonary Impact.

 

I've built for full "sustain" to be able to fight in PvP. There's wasn't much sustain to begin with before HoT, and it has only gotten worse.

I've built for full damage to be able to fight in PvP. It used to have decent effectiveness before HoT, but it doesn't anymore.

And yes, I've even run without the mobility of Shortbow, but my lethality didn't improve, and my sustain actually dropped.

 

I'm still wondering who came up with the Thief design in this game. The only thing it was good at was being a glass cannon in melee. However, in today's AoE-spamfest, just entering into melee range can very well be a death sentence. And why a burst from P/P should even compare to one from D/x, I have no idea.

 

I'm a very aggressive Thief. I build for damage. I go DA/CS/T, usually D/P. I used to run Berserker or Assassin. I'm not a Stealth camper. I go for kills.

What I discovered is that my glass cannon shot tennis balls against all of the passives in the game. My D/P doesn't protect me from duration AoE's or multi-attack skills or Stability or immunities. I can't even take Bountiful Theft because I'm forced into Trickster just to survive conditions.

So what does my Shortbow's mobility do for me? It means that I MAY have a chance to survive my ineffective kamikaze attacks. It also locks me out of any effective offense for 10 seconds, so I'm forced to run away.

 

But what happened to glass cannon D/P with just this patch? It lost 30% of damage on its first two AA attacks. It lost 4 seconds of cooldown on Roll for Initiative (5 without Trickster).

Yeah, a 10-second cooldown reduction on Assassin's Signet is nice. But I prefer Haste for it's stun break, condition cleanse, and lower cooldown with Trickster. And I can't combine the two because Roll for Initiative and Shadowstep are absolutely required due to condition cleanses and the nature of stuns on a glass cannon (breaking isn't enough, you actually have to evade or teleport out to avoid the killing blow).

 

Alas, I'm actually testing the potential of a Wizard-Trapper/Venom build that slots Thieves Guild. If that isn't a messed up reality, I don't know what is.

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

> @"Kageseigi.2150" said:

> > @"KrHome.1920" said:

> > You want damage? Play staff and assa signet. Oh you can't stealth or teleport anymore and lost agility signet condi cleanse and endurance gain? Deal with it!

> > You want more burst than dagger or sword gives you? Run P/P second weapon set! Oh you can't SB5 anymore to reset after every misplay? Deal with it!

> > L2P the kitten game!

>

> Wow, superiority complex much?

>

> > @"Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497" said:

> > Because core thief doesn't have the mobility to just disengage outside of short bow.

> > ...

> > DD has the bulk of thief's mitigation by providing the only on demand block in thief's kit. The replacement for Felines Grace after it was ripped out of core thief.

> > ...

> > If you can't kill a thief and want to blame it on mobility or their ability to avoid damage without ninty percent of the junk others have, you got horribly out played.

>

> ^ This.

>

> I don't have either expansion. I'm limited to Core Thief. I don't have a single block. I don't have 3 dodges. I don't have x/P Stealth outside of D/P. I don't have Staff. I don't have Rifle. I don't have Malice. I don't have Pulmonary Impact.

>

> I've built for full "sustain" to be able to fight in PvP. There's wasn't much sustain to begin with before HoT, and it has only gotten worse.

> I've built for full damage to be able to fight in PvP. It used to have decent effectiveness before HoT, but it doesn't anymore.

> And yes, I've even run without the mobility of Shortbow, but my lethality didn't improve, and my sustain actually dropped.

>

> I'm still wondering who came up with the Thief design in this game. The only thing it was good at was being a glass cannon in melee. However, in today's AoE-spamfest, just entering into melee range can very well be a death sentence. And why a burst from P/P should even compare to one from D/x, I have no idea.

>

> I'm a very aggressive Thief. I build for damage. I go DA/CS/T, usually D/P. I used to run Berserker or Assassin. I'm not a Stealth camper. I go for kills.

> What I discovered is that my glass cannon shot tennis balls against all of the passives in the game. My D/P doesn't protect me from duration AoE's or multi-attack skills or Stability or immunities. I can't even take Bountiful Theft because I'm forced into Trickster just to survive conditions.

> So what does my Shortbow's mobility do for me? It means that I MAY have a chance to survive my ineffective kamikaze attacks. It also locks me out of any effective offense for 10 seconds, so I'm forced to run away.

>

> But what happened to glass cannon D/P with just this patch? It lost 30% of damage on its first two AA attacks. It lost 4 seconds of cooldown on Roll for Initiative (5 without Trickster).

> Yeah, a 10-second cooldown reduction on Assassin's Signet is nice. But I prefer Haste for it's stun break, condition cleanse, and lower cooldown with Trickster. And I can't combine the two because Roll for Initiative and Shadowstep are absolutely required due to condition cleanses and the nature of stuns on a glass cannon (breaking isn't enough, you actually have to evade or teleport out to avoid the killing blow).

>

> Alas, I'm actually testing the potential of a Wizard-Trapper/Venom build that slots Thieves Guild. If that isn't a messed up reality, I don't know what is.

 

Core thief was amazing in PvP when the game launched. He was designed to do it very well, and it was often recommended to never solo a good thief. The kit offered quite a bit of build diversity, and you weren't shoehorned into taking Trickery every god damn time so you always had three trait lines available. Just about all weapon sets were worthwhile despite many lacking utility.

 

Now after a crap load of nerfs, and buffs to other classes, and questionable changes to our traits....

Pistol Pistol isn't really that great because we no longer have a unique trait for them. Ricochet was great.

Dagger Dagger fell out of popularity because it's incredibly hard to get value out of the bleed from it with amount of survivability other specs have.

Scorpion Wire which used to be really awesome though unreliable had basically fell out of existence cuz Anet never fixed it.

Thief's traps aren't too useful these days as some specs do now have means to break out of them easily.

Dagger Storm fell out of use because of the 1 stack of stability.... Yeah, nice of you to decrease the cool down time when you didn't even update the stacks of Stability. This ability was nice even for power builds because it was really good in outnumbered fights.

Basilisk Venom used to be MUUUUUUCH worse. Thankfully the kindest thing Anet has done for a thief was making it one of our few ways around aegis.

Sword Pistol was admirably broken, and I don't mind the nerf it got back in Launch.

It feels like absolute shit to miss a backstab thanks to the one second cool down, because of the behavior it had with Aegis. I'd rather get a 1 second cooldown for backstabbing aegis, and no cool down for missing. Because in Anet's eyes, everyone is standing perfectly still with their backs to the cloaked thief.

List goes on.

 

[Belishine.7493]

i am feeling like in wvw thief got boned in the bumm just becouse they want the thief to be harder to play but instead make us almost useles in wvw becouse now our dps in wvw so low. as a thief i exstect a thief to be number 1 in single target dps in the game and have the ele number one for aoe dps. but the nurf to all our dps makes us soo week we cant do jack for soloing and makes thief worthless to play becouse of the horible changes made in this patch. i do not mind if you try to fix thief to be more in line with other classes but nerfing it into the ground is sowing a seed of mistrust with you anet and thiefs. so in the futer ples ples think and test your changes to thief before trying to mess us up in wvw and pvp ok.

[omgdracula.6345]

If only Anet set up some soft of test server for players to hop on and test changes.

[Tinnel.4369]

> @"omgdracula.6345" said:

> If only Anet set up some soft of test server for players to hop on and test changes.

 

No incentive, they can use us as live testers for free.

[omgdracula.6345]

> @"Tinnel.4369" said:

> > @"omgdracula.6345" said:

> > If only Anet set up some soft of test server for players to hop on and test changes.

>

> No incentive, they can use us as live testers for free.

 

Yea but so could any game really. I mean shit even PUBG has a PTR

[Tinnel.4369]

> @"omgdracula.6345" said:

> > @"Tinnel.4369" said:

> > > @"omgdracula.6345" said:

> > > If only Anet set up some soft of test server for players to hop on and test changes.

> >

> > No incentive, they can use us as live testers for free.

>

> Yea but so could any game really. I mean kitten even PUBG has a PTR

 

That's my point. :) If there was a consequence to using your players as live testers it would probably be changed. This is the model they chose and the community /it's dollars haven't driven a rethinking of the model. Personally, I think one factor is the fact that there's no monthly subscriptions to ebb and flow with the players satisfaction or lack thereof with the state of balance. Everyone already bought the game/expansion and micro purchases must be flowing at an acceptable rate independent of balance.

 

I think all game modes are frustrated by the testing method and even further by the pace at which adjustments are made. However, I think competitive play feels the pinch a little harder than PvE (I'm biased to WvW/PvP, so no doubt I could be totally wrong here). You're just playing the game differently between the game mode types with different expectations/investment.

[Belishine.7493]

i do have a realy big question why the hard nerf for wvw on thief? if you want to hit thief soo hard then i want to see mes get hit just as hard as thief for wvw becouse now they runing unchecked and made a good class to counter them useless and the logic is not makeing any sence one the massive nerf to thief at all. i would like to see why you hate thief so mutch right now anet like for reals. if you do not get your game straitend out im sarry to say but i will have to leave becouse every time i start to get a toon i like you nerf the hell out of them so that i cant do jack to anyone. if you balance thief think like this if i change something on a class will it kill the class or be more balanced? if it kills the class then dont make the change its simple but for reals 40% dagger nerf and sword is not a way to balance thief at all its asking to loss players from the game that play thief. if the damage was only 15% less then pve i would be ok becouse it means i am still stong in wvw and can still do the added preshur need to help win big fight but this just makes me not even not want to touch thief in wvw becouse its way to mutch of a hit to our only use of preshure.

[SpeedDemon.4926]

I agree with Belishine... Thief is my favorite class but now it is unplayable. WvW and PvP was last content to play on thief but after nerf it is pointless. I hope that this nerf it is only joke and next path will restore previous damage from dagger and sword.

[Clownmug.8357]

The numbers for dagger AA are basically the same as before the first HoT balance patch. Why is it considered unplayable now?

[Alatar.7364]

> @"Clownmug.8357" said:

> The numbers for dagger AA are basically the same as before the first HoT balance patch. Why is it considered unplayable now?

 

Because since then (those several years back) one more Expansion came out and whole meta went in to gazillions of Protection Boons, near-insta-kill AoEs and Heals so massive that it would even ressurect Tybalt?

It is now more then ever needed to have the DMG, even though you consider that the Powercreep ... creeped pretty much everything, but nerfing Thief right now was the worse idea except LS, that was valid.

If you think about it: Warrior - High DMG, High Sustain, Medium Mobility / Mes - High DMG, High Sustain, High Mobility / Thief - Low DMG, no Sustain, High Mobility, the "Fairness" ratio seems a bit off to me here. You could say that claiming Thief has low DMG is overshot, but actually it is not, DMG is the only thing Thief ever had for a Fight, now just about everyone who doesn't run Healing Power has higher DMG which is ridicolous cause I just can't stop thinking about the several Anet claims of "We want Thief to be the ultimate 1v1 profession". I could swear I read Anets article just before HoT came out that claimed "We want Thief to have the highest single target dmg" (or somthing like that) which not only never happened, and is still not happening, but it is actually going backwards.

[Clownmug.8357]

That comparison isn't really fair. Mesmer is ridiculously op right now so that's a high bar to set, and warrior has always been ridiculously easy to play, so it's just a universal punching bag for balance complaints.

[Kageseigi.2150]

> @"Alatar.7364" said:

> DMG is the only thing Thief ever had for a Fight, now just about everyone who doesn't run Healing Power has higher DMG which is ridicolous cause I just can't stop thinking about the several Anet claims of "We want Thief to be the ultimate 1v1 profession". I could swear I read Anets article just before HoT came out that claimed "We want Thief to have the highest single target dmg" (or somthing like that) which not only never happened, and is still not happening, but it is actually going backwards.

 

^ This is what I don't understand. Not only is damage the only thing the Thief had, it was SINGLE-TARGET damage at that. Pathetic AoE damage. No defense other than complete avoidance of getting hit. And the Thief has historically been a MELEE fighter. These days, not only is the Thief outgunned at range, but it is absolutely outmatched in melee.

[Alatar.7364]

> @"Clownmug.8357" said:

> That comparison isn't really fair. Mesmer is ridiculously op right now so that's a high bar to set, and warrior has always been ridiculously easy to play, so it's just a universal punching bag for balance complaints.

 

I hope this is not a "_This doesn't count_" comment, because I could go on about Engineer, Ranger and Necro as well, not to mention it doesn't really explain why is this going on. I could get over the nerf to AA dmg if it was done properly, but lowering first Two chains and then go like "All things considered it is actually only 15% because the 3rd was not hit! Not so bad, huh Guys?!" is bordering with intended demagogy. As was said many times, 3rd chain hardly ever lands (EVER), so the numbers are truly far worse.

Thief is nigh Rev state here, only comparasion I have no idea about would be Ele.

I wanted to stay clear of this Thread as I definitely don't want to sound like "Thief unplayabale now" because it is not unplayable, yet it now truly is in a very unnecesarily underperforming spot.

[Kageseigi.2150]

> @"Alatar.7364" said:

> I could get over the nerf to AA dmg if it was done properly, but lowering first Two chains and then go like "All things considered it is actually only 15% because the 3rd was not hit! Not so bad, huh Guys?!" is bordering with intended demagogy. As was said many times, 3rd chain hardly ever lands (EVER), so the numbers are truly far worse.

 

Exactly. We would have been better off if they normalized all three of the Dagger's AA attacks to .8 damage coefficient. The first would have remained unchanged, the second would have been very slightly weakened, and the third would have suffered most of the change... a 27% reduction.

 

Even if you did the same to the Sword, normalizing all three AA attacks to .8 coefficient, you would have ended up with a slightly larger reduction overall, but would be able to at least get more damage in during practical combat.

[Icy.2186]

Main concern i have regarding this patch and thieves is that, as some already mentioned, single target damage is what thief is about. When comparing a high hp pool class with a lot of blocks, stabilities, regens, super heals and god knows what else, thieves having to evade for their life already makes it an uphill battle most of the time.

Quite frankly, all the abilities and utilities aside, i dont believe thief kills any class NEARLY as fast as that class kills thief just raw damage/EHP pool wise. And if were really going to talk utility all of thiefs utility is just running away, which sadly doesnt quite work as well when nearly every class and subclass regens to full the second you blink and then you fail an evade and get 1shot because of your measly hp pool.

 

While thief usually has the role of running around and +1ing and being speedy and what not, after so many hours spent of just having to run away from most solo targets, leaves you feeling kinda empty inside. Anet, when it comes to conquest, appears to be so incredibly scared of thieves mobility that soon thief will be nothing but a toggle stealth, infinite INI character that does nothing but decap and cap with shortbow.

And be that as it may, i dont see why these nerfs have to go so heavily into WvW as well. Thief is absolutely worthless when it comes to zerging other than spamming poison fields, rarely, because a couple of aoes which usually have a bigger range than shortbow will kill him anyway. Thief usually ends up in small groups or solo where as in conquest thief relies on outnumbering which means that we have the same balance decisions for 2 game modes where thief doesnt quite fulfill the same role nor fight in a similar fashion.

 

And a splash of my saltyness over the pulm impact nerf. Why? On one hand Anet wants to promote more proactive gameplay by reducing the strength of passives, on the other hand they nerf a trait which rewards proper timing / prediction and usage of an ability. Id understand if pulm impact did damage on any type of daze, but is occasional ~2k damage on a ~17k hp class too big of a reward for being active? At the end of the day it is a decent chunk of thiefs damage since thief cannot really stand there and AA trade with anything. Slight reduction is one thing, but the huge cut that pulm impact has taken might be a step too far.

 

And all the class changes taken into the effect, you walk into conquest to +1 a mesmer with your warrior buddy and you both get oneshot in the same time.

Better reduce pulm impact damage and make a class that struggles even under good fighting conditions ( due to the nature of active damage avoidance over ezpz mitigation and regeneration ) struggle even more.

 

[Fat Disgrace.4275]

I Dunno, at least in wvw it isn't as bad than in PvP. At first it felt very weak but after some tweaks to my gear with some extra power it's not as bad as I thought and can still hurt people though stupid tanky builds do take a lot more effort now

[Belishine.7493]

its funny you say its not that bad but when you run full zerker and you go from 3.2k damage to 1.5k damage in the same gear and build then ya its a issue for shure. its like kicking the thief in the balls and saying now hit me. you now cant do proper damage so im just letting you know how i play and why this cant keep happining to thief.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I don't play thief in WvW, but as a Rev I can conclude that any time a thief beat me, it wasn't because of a high auto attack. It was because of their damaging evades (lotus blossom, vault, flanking strike), their blind fields, and their CC. The only time a thief would unload a full AA chain is if I was locked down with venoms, and even then it was a single dagger rotation.

 

Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it seems kind of strange to nerf thief auto damage like this.

[DeceiverX.8361]

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> I don't play thief in WvW, but as a Rev I can conclude that any time a thief beat me, it wasn't because of a high auto attack. It was because of their damaging evades (lotus blossom, vault, flanking strike), their blind fields, and their CC. The only time a thief would unload a full AA chain is if I was locked down with venoms, and even then it was a single dagger rotation.

>

> Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it seems kind of strange to nerf thief auto damage like this.

 

Since the buffs with HoT to to thief AA, it was out-damaging every other aspect of the kits which made aggressive skill use literally pointless.

 

The change would make sense if they nerfed all outgoing damage or boon access across all professions to near-core-game levels. The problem is they haven't done the latter, so it feels really weak because of the other powercreep when in all reality it's still stronger than prior to HoT.

 

It goes to show just how substantial the powercreep is.

[Platanos.8107]

on April 3 2018, I checked the tooltips and indeed the % nerf to dagger auto chain is indeed 14.5%.

[saerni.2584]

Yeah the confusion was with the whole chain being nerfed by 14.5%.

 

Individual parts of that chain were, however, nerfed more than 14.5%.

 

So we end up with people seeing noticeably smaller numbers (especially because the nerf was heavily weighted to the front end of the chain).

[BeepBoopBop.5403]

Felt like something was way off with the lack of damage recently, good find Jinks