Thief worries me. It will dominate hard.

S/D thief is the main thief build now and it got relatively minor changes aside from instant reflexes which just increase the skill cap, but the build was not reliant on that all that much.

Auto damage got reduced but sword 2 got increased, and RFI got a slight nerf and upper hand. That’s it for a top tier meta build.

To prove my point let’s look at thief matchups:In 1v1 thief only loses to holo, scourge and druid. It has the capability to teamfight and is the best and only real counter to firebrand. one of the best mobility in the game after d/p thief.This is prepatch. This gets better.

Post patch, druid and holo sustain gets nerfed HARD. Thief being able to pure 1v1 those might still be questionable, but they’re easy prey for its +1 capabilities which are the best in the game as of now (maybe d/p will beat it at that post patch, but will fall short on other things).Necro also gets nerfed pretty hard, so will become less prevalent and thief might not even need to worry about them much.This puts thief with positive matchups across the board, getting even better with rune of surging removed that was one of the most common ways to catch a thief with his burning hat.

Now what i think should be done is simply a damage reduction on the sword 3. It is unblockable 2 hit chain with an evade and boon rip with no cooldown (cost yes but technically spammable). This attack can hit for 1-2k + 4-6k. That’s absurd coupled with steal (which you got 2 of, but it makes acro attractive so it should stay).

Just either increase the cost, or reduce the damage of sword 3. Too strong as is. Or give it the revenant treatment and slap a cooldown on it OMEGALUL

The sword 3 boon steal behavior should probably get normalized, like bountiful theft.

Currently, you steal all stacks of boon and whole duration with sword 3. With bountiful theft, you only get 1 stack with a set duration. I think they really should make sword 3 behave the same as bountiful theft.

As for S/D thief in general, I guess it depends on how D/P becomes after the update. People will go D/P if they can kill things easily and as you said, D/P probably beats S/D.

S/D exists because d/p couldn't +1 and kill firebrand...but firebrand is constantly nerfed and who knows how removal of magi will effect this spec. If firebrand is dead in meta then d/p is back in meta. Although it would be still seen sometimes - out of every F2P core builds S/D is still most viable.

With so big changes incoming in class balance I don't know if we can say now that something should be nerfed more.

There was literally one-two thieves in most comps in the AT monthly. Another flavor of the month build that will take the heavy hand soon.

maybe with the nerf to fb and druid dp thief will be relevant again and people will leave sd.

Which does not make thief worse but even better.

Don't forget that SD is core acrobatics, which is getting hit pretty hard too.

Thief has always been in the meta, and still has the same weaknesses. SD is much slower to rotate, and loses a lot in disengage potential. I'm always much more worried about good DP thieves rather than SD thieves.

Classes will be easy prey for a +1 thief? Sounds exactly what should be happening. I'm all for removing the ability of any classes being able to easily 2 v 1. If this patch can make that happen, it may be one of the best patches in a long time.

the +36% damage buff to shadow shot is ridiculous, maybe not for pvp, but definitely for wvw. this skill is already one of the strongest in the game, it does not need a buff of any sort.

can we nerf Essence Sap as well while we at it? thnx

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:the +36% damage buff to shadow shot is ridiculous, maybe not for pvp, but definitely for wvw. this skill is already one of the strongest in the game, it does not need a buff of any sort.

Yeah I dunno. If that goes live then the devs are clueless.

@"Miles Smiles.8951" said:can we nerf Essence Sap as well while we at it? thnx

/Proceeds to reduce the damage for revenant downed skill 1 "Essence Sap"

@BeLZedaR.4790 said:This attack can hit for 1-2k + 4-6k. That’s absurd coupled with steal (which you got 2 of, but it makes acro attractive so it should stay).

As a Thief main, I'd like to inform you that Larcenous Strike can crit for over 7k using the meta build on targets that don't have any extra toughness.

S/D Thief also has more evasion uptime than Mirage which is something that a lot of people don't seem to realize.

I just want them to bring down S/D a notch so I can have a reason to actually play D/P again.

With the nerfs to fb (assuming that's why everyone jumped to s/d) then s/d should be reverted. Flanking strike should be blockable again, leave the AA but remove the 20% on LS. Dunno what to say about SE. It's nice but OK in some cases, especially with da line.

What if all Thief duel wield skills are made ammo skills (2 ammo probably)? This prohibits shadow shot spam (with the upcoming buff), DD death blossom evade spam, flanking strike evade spam, and unload spam all in one go. Buff other skills if this makes the weaponsets too weak (most probably pistol/pistol).

The build isn't top tier meta because it's an amazing op build, it was meta because it had a couple tools to counter bunker meta.

Bunker meta is obviously dead with these changes so even if they didn't nerf thief at all sd thief would still be gone, but it still did get nerfs

i get that you don't like thief but the build isn't op and it's not going to be op after the meta shifts away from it and it receives nerfs on top of that.

Btw, are you aware you can actually avoid damage from sd 3 by simply walking sideways? I can't think of another skill that behaves this way in all of gw2 where simply WALKING (not dodging) to the side avoids the hit.

No, sd is not going to dominate anything after the meta, I'm surprised there is enough lack of knowledge that people even consider sd meta at all

@"Quadox.7834" said:What if all Thief duel wield skills are made ammo skills (2 ammo probably)? This prohibits shadow shot spam (with the upcoming buff), DD death blossom evade spam, flanking strike evade spam, and unload spam all in one go. Buff other skills if this makes the weaponsets too weak (most probably pistol/pistol).

You know I proposed the idea a while back that because thief has no CD on it's weapon skills only initiative it means they can effectively spam the most effective tool at their disposal. The best example is "headshot spam" though in reality it's more like headshotting all actions because it had such a low cost for such a high gain. This in turn essentially makes thief balance really awkward because you can't make skills really good on their own otherwise it just gets spammed till nobody has any fun at all and on the other end of the spectrum you end up with a lot of fairly niche or weak skills in general or they have such a high cost that they're rarely used.

Coupled with that is the necessity of taking trickery for those extra 3 initiative. In my opinion this should be removed and put in baseline, it's too hard to balance between a thief having normal resource pool and 25% more, they didn't make this mistake with Rev and it seems they really learnt the lesson from thief.

I like the idea of ammo for thief though, I can see an iteration of thief where all or some of it's skills have ammo instead of an initiative system so they can recharge between fights and front load/double up on certain skills while +1. It's just a shame the ammo mechanic came now and not at launch.

@apharma.3741 said:

@"Quadox.7834" said:What if all Thief duel wield skills are made ammo skills (2 ammo probably)? This prohibits shadow shot spam (with the upcoming buff), DD death blossom evade spam, flanking strike evade spam, and unload spam all in one go. Buff other skills if this makes the weaponsets too weak (most probably pistol/pistol).

Alternatively, Anet could look at a system wherein thief weapon skills don't get ammo counts, but get a unique "cooldown" of a couple seconds. You can use the skill when its on cooldown, but the initiative cost goes up by 1 everytime you do this, to a set maximum. This maximum should probably be something like 3-5 initiative above the regular cost of the skill, and resets completely once you allow the cooldown to run its course. This would allow a thief to continue to spam their weapon skills like they can now, but it would punish them more than it currently does, by costing even more initiative than it currently does.

I also agree that the extra 3 initiative from trickery should either go baseline or be removed entirely and have initiative costs re-balanced accordingly.

@Legatus.3608 said:The build isn't top tier meta because it's an amazing op build, it was meta because it had a couple tools to counter bunker meta.

Bunker meta is obviously dead with these changes so even if they didn't nerf thief at all sd thief would still be gone, but it still did get nerfs

i get that you don't like thief but the build isn't op and it's not going to be op after the meta shifts away from it and it receives nerfs on top of that.

Btw, are you aware you can actually avoid damage from sd 3 by simply walking sideways? I can't think of another skill that behaves this way in all of gw2 where simply WALKING (not dodging) to the side avoids the hit.

No, sd is not going to dominate anything after the meta, I'm surprised there is enough lack of knowledge that people even consider sd meta at all

Are you bronze?

@Velimere.7685 said:

@BeLZedaR.4790 said:This attack can hit for 1-2k + 4-6k. That’s absurd coupled with steal (which you got 2 of, but it makes acro attractive so it should stay).

? We had years of d/p dominance, a few months of s/d and it's time to go back??? Tone it down, but please no more free stealth spam 311111 build for a little longer..

@Legatus.3608 said:The build isn't top tier meta because it's an amazing op build, it was meta because it had a couple tools to counter bunker meta.

Bunker meta is obviously dead with these changes so even if they didn't nerf thief at all sd thief would still be gone, but it still did get nerfs

i get that you don't like thief but the build isn't op and it's not going to be op after the meta shifts away from it and it receives nerfs on top of that.

Btw, are you aware you can actually avoid damage from sd 3 by simply walking sideways? I can't think of another skill that behaves this way in all of gw2 where simply WALKING (not dodging) to the side avoids the hit.

No, sd is not going to dominate anything after the meta, I'm surprised there is enough lack of knowledge that people even consider sd meta at all

I assume you mean LS and not FS? Then Yeah LS has a habit of missing more then it should. I even panned my camera down and missed a golem trainer with LS while I was mucking about in PvP lobby

Am I the only one that thinks that making both flanking and larcenous unblockable was a bad idea? Obviously I'm biased as a guardian player but a well-played s/d thief literally hardcounters the entire guardian class no matter how skilled the player.

Anyway, the combination of damage, unblockability, spammability, sustain and mobility of s/d thief leads me to think that something should be nerfed. Imo, since d/p has an established role as burst, I think s/d should be pushed more towards a dps/bruiser role rather than burst and that the damage of larcenous should be the focus of balancing rather than nerfing sustain of s/d thief.

Here are some suggestions and why:

• Make Larcenous blockable: Would stop s/d thief from hardcountering the entire guardian class. A thief could still wait out a block, use basi, or auto attack (to remove aegis) to work around larcenous being blockable.
• Reduce the amount of time larcenous strike is available to be used after flanking strike: This could be done in tandem with another nerf or buff.
• Add a cd to larcenous: a short cd would stop the spammability and force a s/d thief to rely on auto attack a bit more.
• An alternative to the above - increase initiative cost of larcenous strike by 1 or 2: would stop spam a bit.
• Reduce the damage on larcenous, increase damage on flanking: This is a rather simple fix that would maintain some dps and decrease burst.

@Arcaedus.7290 said:Am I the only one that thinks that making both flanking and larcenous unblockable was a bad idea? Obviously I'm biased as a guardian player but a well-played s/d thief literally hardcounters the entire guardian class no matter how skilled the player.

Anyway, the combination of damage, unblockability, spammability, sustain and mobility of s/d thief leads me to think that something should be nerfed. Imo, since d/p has an established role as burst, I think s/d should be pushed more towards a dps/bruiser role rather than burst and that the damage of larcenous should be the focus of balancing rather than nerfing sustain of s/d thief.

Here are some suggestions and why:

• Make Larcenous blockable: Would stop s/d thief from hardcountering the entire guardian class. A thief could still wait out a block, use basi, or auto attack (to remove aegis) to work around larcenous being blockable.
• Reduce the amount of time larcenous strike is available to be used after flanking strike: This could be done in tandem with another nerf or buff.
• Add a cd to larcenous: a short cd would stop the spammability and force a s/d thief to rely on auto attack a bit more.
• An alternative to the above - increase initiative cost of larcenous strike by 1 or 2: would stop spam a bit.
• Reduce the damage on larcenous, increase damage on flanking: This is a rather simple fix that would maintain some dps and decrease burst.

Why are you picking on this? LS was unockble for ages, it's the recent change to flanking strike that's made s/d pretty dominant now as it use to be blockable which made it a lot harder to proc LS in the first place. Couple unblock flanking strike, the CD reduction on RfI and upper hand everyone just spam #3 with little worry of iniaitve problem.

@Mr Godlike.6098 said:S/D exists because d/p couldn't +1 and kill firebrand...but firebrand is constantly nerfed and who knows how removal of magi will effect this spec. If firebrand is dead in meta then d/p is back in meta. Although it would be still seen sometimes - out of every F2P core builds S/D is still most viable.

With so big changes incoming in class balance I don't know if we can say now that something should be nerfed more.

Honestly with the pi and dagger damage nerf I’m not sure s/d will be swapped out for d/p

@Arcaedus.7290 said:Am I the only one that thinks that making both flanking and larcenous unblockable was a bad idea? Obviously I'm biased as a guardian player but a well-played s/d thief literally hardcounters the entire guardian class no matter how skilled the player.

Anyway, the combination of damage, unblockability, spammability, sustain and mobility of s/d thief leads me to think that something should be nerfed. Imo, since d/p has an established role as burst, I think s/d should be pushed more towards a dps/bruiser role rather than burst and that the damage of larcenous should be the focus of balancing rather than nerfing sustain of s/d thief.

Here are some suggestions and why:

• Make Larcenous blockable: Would stop s/d thief from hardcountering the entire guardian class. A thief could still wait out a block, use basi, or auto attack (to remove aegis) to work around larcenous being blockable.
• Reduce the amount of time larcenous strike is available to be used after flanking strike: This could be done in tandem with another nerf or buff.
• Add a cd to larcenous: a short cd would stop the spammability and force a s/d thief to rely on auto attack a bit more.
• An alternative to the above - increase initiative cost of larcenous strike by 1 or 2: would stop spam a bit.
• Reduce the damage on larcenous, increase damage on flanking: This is a rather simple fix that would maintain some dps and decrease burst.

I'm actually really OK with it being unblockable, I'm also really OK with the stealing of boons, full duration and everything because there needs to be some punishment for heavy booners. Only thing that needs toning down is the power damage as LS can hit pretty insane numbers for a build that uses barely any damage mods. Drop the damage down a bit and improve the reliability of it's hits and flow would be very nice so it can duel and rip boons.