Thief nerfs; how do we feel about that?

It's been almost a month since thief got nerfed in some substantial ways. We've got plenty of time to see the effects of the patch on the overall flow of the game, and decide whether or not the game has improved or not. Let's gather some opinions about what happened

1) Initiative cost for Infiltrator's Arrow was increased from 6 to 8, which reduced the overall mobility on the map for the whole class2) Signet of Agility now refills 25% of endurance; half a bar instead of the whole bar it did before3) Essence Sap got its power coefficient halved4) Consume Plasma still grants all the boons, with a much lower duration

Were the nerfs too much? Since the patch the amount of thieves in matches seems to have dropped substantially, do we miss our stealy friends?

Personally I started seeing 1 thief in each team again near the end of the season ( what a shocker )while I cant speak for essence sap, since as a mesmer ima plasma dispenser but I can speak for plasma.Lowering stab to 1 sec made huge difference, its bearable now but its still the strongest stolen skills, but this might be intented to begin with so whatever.IA, 7 ini could be enough, its hard to say. Thief is still the fastest boi around but its easier to punish massive mistakes, I would mind IA going down to 7 I THINK.Signet of Agility seems like a way for them to try and nerf DRD dodge spam but hit core skill instead, if they want drd to dodge less then lower their dodges from 3 to 2 instead of hitting core skill. Again, I would mind revert if they nerf DRD.

Consume plasma and Essense Sap nerfs: I'm okay with those.

SoA nerf was unnecesseary, but its still a bloated signet so I don't really care.

IA nerf is a meme. Increasing initiative costs was a bad idea in 2015, and guess what it's still a bad idea 5 years later. Nerf the skills effects instead, rifle deadeye is already a degenerate 2 spamming bot, why do you push every other thief spec in that direction aswell?

In my opinion when a profession feels very strong in a game mode it should still feel strong after a nerf and it shouldn't feel out of meta. Some nerfs are definitely taking the Thief out of meta in the mobility department and I don't agree with that.

Yeaaahhh buddy delete thief

Actually just force it into S/D forever

This poll in a Teef hating community...

Nobody cares anymoar anyway

Was in need of nerfs? Yes. Was it nerfed proper way? No.Its like you go to a doc with leg infected by gangrene and he decides to cut it off. Problem is he cuts left one, while the right one is infected. Ups

SoA shouldntve been nerfed and the Deception trait shouldve been, once that trait is nerfed then it should be awhile before people look to nerf Thief more to see where it stands.

@Grimjack.8130 said:SoA shouldntve been nerfed and the Deception trait shouldve been, once that trait is nerfed then it should be awhile before people look to nerf Thief more to see where it stands.

exactly, people literally have no idea how prominent daredevil is right now in team comp.like every single class is replaceable and expendable in front of thief.

also, people don't realize how thief has been a key member of meta continuously for 1 year + now (can't tell for 2nd year because i quit the game at the time), not even rev and holo has managed to do so.

@felix.2386 said:

@Grimjack.8130 said:SoA shouldntve been nerfed and the Deception trait shouldve been, once that trait is nerfed then it should be awhile before people look to nerf Thief more to see where it stands.

The deception trait was already nerfed before this along with multiple other things in Sa, ppl don’t notice these and when all of a sudden the build underperforms, which in many cases both condi p/d and d/p are vastly underperforming atm, they think it’s unfair. There’s now options that don’t depend on baby spam and I’m happy abou that as a thief main

You forgot the option of "A nerf was needed, but the the thing that needs nerfs was untouched."

Thief needs nerfs, but in the Stealth department.No other part of Thief (except maybe Consume Ectoplasm) needed the nerfs it got this month.

@"Fueki.4753" said:You forgot the option of "A nerf was needed, but the the thing that needs nerfs was untouched."

Thief needs nerfs, but in the Stealth department.No other part of Thief (except maybe Consume Ectoplasm) needed the nerfs it got this month.

I've tried to keep it simple, in hindsight I even forgot the option "thief was already underperforming and needed a buff if anyting".

Which is my mesmer bias showing, you may permaban everyone who played thief in the last six months and I wouldn't lose one minute of sleep.

poll results are a shocker, teef #1 loved spec

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Poll shows why the games pvp is failing hard and why anet even remotely listening to its vocal community is a huge mistake. Any class a gw2 pvp player finds challenging to fight or does not like in general is automatically OP and needs deleted from game. This playerbase more than deserves its dwindled population, it's actually funny and enjoyable to see gw2 pvp fail these days :) more than deserved lol.

The mode is unplayable, condi ticks harder than power while only having to be applied once.I'm not saying more nerfs would be good for play ability, just good keks.I can go into gold 1/2 with all turret engi spamming buttons, but power DH falls to silver.Please nerf DH moar.

I hate fighting thief more than any other class. From a fun perspective, thief is easily the least fun class for me to fight.Yet despite being biased against the class, I don't agree with the nerfs. Bloating ability costs isn't the right way to go. It just makes trickery more mandatory than it already is.

I would rather Anet made stealth less frustrating to deal with than nerf thief's mobility. Even playing as thief feels bad because, unless you're built for stealth yourself, you're going to be at a disadvantage against other thieves.

@"Fueki.4753" said:You forgot the option of "A nerf was needed, but the the thing that needs nerfs was untouched."

Thief needs nerfs, but in the Stealth department.No other part of Thief (except maybe Consume Ectoplasm) needed the nerfs it got this month.

Thief is a paper, you spit on them and they die, without stealth (that COSTS A LOOOOOT of initiative), thief wouldnt survive against everysingle class for more then 5 secs.

Thief cant 1x1 against nobody, except mes on high plat+ or other thief, so what you want more?So thief will not be able to make decaps from UNGUARDED nodes or disengage too? Why a person would play such a class?

@anjo.6143 said:

@"Fueki.4753" said:You forgot the option of "A nerf was needed, but the the thing that needs nerfs was untouched."

Thief needs nerfs, but in the Stealth department.No other part of Thief (except maybe Consume Ectoplasm) needed the nerfs it got this month.

to gank people ? thief is a roamer, he catches disengaging low HP targets, ganks nodes that are 1v1 or decaps empty nodes. if you played thief as decap bot then you played it wrong, and the fact that it carried people anyways was mainly the reason why it was nerfed.Untill you think about thief from a perspective of sidenoder you wont understand why thief was OP, where all your hard work in 1v1 is undone since thief took 10s out of his time to come and +1 you, you are forced to give up everything you worked for. and even if you win, you cant leave since thief will come and decap you, and you are stuck with 0 good options. If you stay you are afking on a node getting nothing done, and if you leave you will have to go back in 20s since thief will decap it.Even in MAT you will see sidenoders struggling to make a decision to leave or stay since there is no real good choice only 2 bad ones.

@anjo.6143 said:

@"Fueki.4753" said:You forgot the option of "A nerf was needed, but the the thing that needs nerfs was untouched."

Thief needs nerfs, but in the Stealth department.No other part of Thief (except maybe Consume Ectoplasm) needed the nerfs it got this month.

If they reworked Shadow Arts to properly work as a defensive trait line, rather than being over-stuffed with stealth junk, Thief would have more survivability.

No good options to select from. As I pointed out earlier some of the most ‘common complaints’ generally seem to stem from a bad point of view. For me I would want the option of- I think it’s a good direction and mechanically thief can survive also maybe a few other things could use tweaking but even a surface change such as this is not bad would be an option id select. But none of the options presented really represent what I think

@Fueki.4753 said:

@anjo.6143 said:

@Fueki.4753 said:You forgot the option of "A nerf was needed, but the the thing that needs nerfs was untouched."

Thief needs nerfs, but in the Stealth department.No other part of Thief (except maybe Consume Ectoplasm) needed the nerfs it got this month.

Thats what it used to be. It was useless. So they made it into a damage traitline, and only now does it see play. Traits wouldnt fix thieves survivability issues, as they mostly come down to poor active defenses.

@Fueki.4753 @"UNOwen.7132"

SA was always a stealth line. It used to be better sustain because you could take Shadows Embrace and the Deception cooldown trait. But whatever.

This "oh it's OP because damage" is actually a complaint that thief was able to take it and pick up some minor damage boosts from a "sustain" line. But, SA is just a stealth oriented line with more sustain boosts than offensive boosts. That SA is/should be only a pure sustain line is a common misconception among the general pvp player base.

I'd point out that in a meta where damage is reduced the sustain offered by a line like SA is fairly attractive. It's not that thief damage from the line is too high. It's that people just don't like fighting stealth gameplay.

@"UNOwen.7132" said:Thats what it used to be. It was useless.That's why I wrote "properly work".If it was useless it didn't properly work.

@saerni.2584 said:SA was always a stealth line.It's that people just don't like fighting stealth gameplay.

And this is why I think Shadow Arts is in dire need of a complete rework, along side with the Stealth mechanic itself to make it even slightly less unfair to fight against. Stealth offers far too much with hardly any drawbacks.It doesn't even have a minor visual or audible clue when someone is stealthed nearby, which it ought to have.

@Fueki.4753 said:

@"UNOwen.7132" said:Thats what it used to be. It was useless.That's why I wrote "properly work".If it was useless it didn't properly work.

Oh no, it worked properly. The problem is a passive defense traitline isnt going to solve Thieves defense issues. Thieves issue is poor active defenses. You can make an Engineer build that has massive damage reduction and is more or less a walking wall, that aint gonna save it if it doesnt have good active defenses. It worked as a defensive traitline. That is why it was useless.

@saerni.2584 said:SA was always a stealth line.It's that people just don't like fighting stealth gameplay.

I mean stealth is pretty much only good when used out of active combat, as its too easily punished otherwise. And Im not entirely sure how you fix that. Even if you slap on a max duration (Which you should), it will will be useful for bursting unexpectedly.

It doesn't even have a minor visual or audible clue when someone is stealthed nearby, which it ought to have.

That wouldnt really help, thief usually jumps in with steal, so by the time you would have that cue, its already too late.

@UNOwen.7132 said:(...)That wouldnt really help, thief usually jumps in with steal, so by the time you would have that cue, its already too late.

What? No, they don't. Steal probably is the one most powerful interrupt in the game. Save it if you can!

thief is fine until anet not nerfing d/p p/d . If they nerf pistol skills its gonna kill class for most people, because most of thief players can only play with pistol as main or as off hand , not as d/d or s/d