My money is currently on daggerwin.

What do you guys think is the next nerf for thief?

swipe range to 300 along with useless daredevil stolen skills.

Acro nerfs to make elite specializations look more appealing.

"Daggerwin" (love that, lol) is so cheesy and kind of deserves a hit (at least prevent point contribution), but I think thief (all specs) should be left alone for once. Anet should focus on what's really broken.

Wait, I mean NERF TEEF! YEAH!

Probably some Sword and Acro nerfs because that is the way Anet thinks.They won't realize people play it because it's the only viable meta build left, so they nerf it to "promote" build diversity, instead of doing something that would actually promote build diversity.

Knowing how the team balances they will nerf DD staff dps even more and in the description state that this change was to enforce DD role as a brawler.

Probably gonna do some irrelevant changes to P/D condi builds. That's what they mostly do when they got no idea what to do. They take useless skill from the off-meta build and buff it or even nerf it to "promote diversity". At this point if they won't re-roll steal to 1200 and won't apologize teef community.. that's it. I'm flippin the table. Other then that... they can always just take Dagger skills and buff it 0.001% and nerf Sword skills by 0.001% dmg.. to "promote" D/P again. That would seem somethin that Anet would do.

What i would do. Give Daredevil back 1200steal. Give extra vitality on picking Daredevil in general (extra 3000HP atleast). Un-nerf exhaustion on dodge. And.. then that extra vitality would compensate for nerfing D/P into the ground so we can pretend to be some kind of "brawler" while ticklin ppl with our Dagger skills. Or give no vitality and un-nerf D/P. Stability on steal? Maybe? No? Too much probably.. Someone make me a balance dev for teef i'll make us best again lol.

i dont think there should be any nerfs for thief... Perma evade DD Vaults for 17k is annoying but now it has to stay close which gives somehow counterplay. The teleports range is a little bit excesive in my opinion and they should be reduced in some skills, it makes the class very forgiving as allows any player to hit and be able to teleport to the other corner of the map if anything went wrong.

Hammer Revenant with the 5-7k unblockable piercing autos are still a thing thou.

Thief would be in a much better place with some nerfs to other professions.

Dagger storm isn’t OP so much as the elite getting reset makes it happen very often. I expect an adjustment to improv rather than Daggerstorm.

Pistol main hand and P/D still need buffs. I’m not sure why people think P/D buffs are useless (a buff moves that play style closer to meta which should be a good thing). It’s also not a zero sum game where P/D buffs lead to nerfs elsewhere. If Daggerstorm gets nerfed it will be nerfed on its own merits.

Last night I was with a group in wvw fighting another group just outside of their spawn as we just took there keep. Group was about 15 or so a side. I was stealthing with a SA d/p DD build and harassing the group. I was literally a annoying misquote even with zerker mixed with marauder and assassin sig lol I'd backstab and land a bunch of hits and have to disengage cuz the opponent would just stand there taking it until obe or two of their allies jumped me lol. I downed a few that were already almost dead so there that but u know it's bad when a warrior etc just stands there while u unload on them like get outa here fly lol. 2960 power + assissin sig should at least make a dent in something if u wailing on it lmao than u get hit twice and ur dead. It was fun trolling the team but disheartening being a joke to them or a mild annoyance popping in nipping at them that disengaging lol they might as well make a role in wvw as a delivery person and have thief run supplies to camps for their participation points lol they at least be fast at it.

It might be unpopular but if ANet were to do a meaningful nerf to the thief, this would be a nerf to the bursty stealth attacks from riffle and dagger, replacing the extra damage by some conditions/boons/CCs. Something like:

• Backstab/malicious backstab: Back damage are no longer higher than front damage, instead you daze your target for 1 second and apply 5 stack of vulnerability for 8 seconds if you attack from stealth.
• Death judgement: reduced damage by 50%, now you also stun and corrupt up to 5 boons into chill (2s) on your target.

That said, they can also continue on their trend with some ridiculous yet vicious nerfs like:

• We felt that the thief had a bit to much access to stealth, thus we decided to change black powder so that it now leave a dark field instead of a smoke field.
• Thiefs traps are pretty unique in both effects and form, after carefully pondering on the pro and cons we decided to give them their own unique category: thiefs traps are now booby traps.

I know what they gonna doThis is how it is gonna look like

In this Balance patch we would like to focus on overperforming abbilities of some of the older traits that could make Thief class to overperform a bit in certain areas

All Evades on DD are now gonna apply ExhaustionBase initiative cost of all Attacks 3 is now increased by 2You deal critical hits to weakened foes now but you will be able to apply weakness only once each 3rd attackBoon duration of Swiftness is now increased by 20% we would like to reduce Fury duration by 20% so we can balance this buff to the classBasic dagger skills seem to be underperforming as of late so we are going to buff the output of some of its skillsCloack and Dagger nowhas its basic dmg increased by 100 and each time you use it succesfully you will gain 5 might this skill now has increased cast time to 3/4 secWe would like to encourage the usage of some of the very first dagger attacks we had at hand in the very begining of our game just to refresh some repressed memories for you so if you run dager in main hand and you use your attack 3 skill your 3 skill will now change to [Twisting Fangs] until you use this skill we are going to increase the base power dmg by 200 and remove bleed stacks from it the cast time of this skill is now reduced to 1/4 of a secondWe also think that the s/d core thief has been overperforming as of late so we are going to reduce Swords Attack 2 range to 600 and as a TRADE OFF if you use it you will gain Vigor and Regeneration for 2 seconds this attack no longer imobilizes your foe only cripples themWe would also like to reduce the CANCEROUS Staff builds in the game so we are gonna break all the staffs in game in half so basically your range of everything staff uses is reduced by 3/4 of its previous range

Yea sounds about right.GG EZ see ya next B. Patch :D

@saerni.2584 said:

the way you said ADJUSTMENT TO IMPROV sent a few shivers down my spine since Adjusting doesnt necessarily mean buff it also can mean nerf and i dont rly think we as thieves could handle if other attacks beside Unload had more ini cost than they do now

@Dadnir.5038 said:

• Thiefs traps are pretty unique in both effects and form, after carefully pondering on the pro and cons we decided to give them their own unique category: thiefs traps are now booby traps.

Whoever dares even thinking of nerfing traps better stay the heck away from my traps or i am gonna get AngeryMy babies were as they are since the launch do not screw up the only good thing that is still as it used to be and thus it still works (except for Shadow trap that one is dumb)

@Jack Redline.5379 said:

@saerni.2584 said:

Oh I meant nerfs. I like DS as an elite. A full reset on that elite has a little too much RNG and a little too much impact. Nerf/change that and buff the rest of Thief to where it needs to be in the current meta. That would be what I’d do.

@saerni.2584 said:

@Jack Redline.5379 said:

@saerni.2584 said:

what would you nerf on DS tho? Evade frame? movement speed? projectiles? even the whirling axes we get from warior give us projectile reflecion and do cause way more dmg and do cast projectiles if within any fieldonly difference is those axes dont have evade frame and we all know that the DS is only casted when it is needed the 90 sec CD is scary enough to make ppl think before they reset.I have never viewed DS as too much of an OP skill atm i would say that DS is actually the single only Elite we have that can be compared in terms of dmg with basic AA from any other class

@Jack Redline.5379 said:

@saerni.2584 said:

@Jack Redline.5379 said:

@saerni.2584 said:

there are plenty of tears about it still.

I'm thinking if they nerf it, it will be shorter duration and proabably a shorter CD.

Improvisation will probably get nerfed instead as someone mentioned.

@Crab Fear.1624 said:

Improvisation will probably get nerfed instead as someone mentioned.

I mean I know it is possible but I stil hold my hopes high enough to hope that Anet is not such bunch of the D's

"We felt that S/D core thief was getting too much play and over preforming in its role."

• "Infiltrators Strike" distance reduced to 600. "Infiltrators Return" has been replaced with "Infiltrators No valid path to Target". Upon activation there will be no path to target and steal will go on cooldown.
• The unblockable on swipe created too many opening for DD as a brawler. Instead it now gives 3 stacks of bleeding. To balance this, the thief will now also kick themselves in the balls repeated for 2 seconds, dazing you and applying 4 stacks of confusion.
• The initiative system was over preforming. Initiative has been reduced to 1, all skill costs remain the same.
• Stealth is one if not the most powerful effect in the the game. With thief's plethora of ways to access it there needed to be a draw back. Thief now how the passive debuf when going into stealth of "Steath OP: Get knocked down for 2 second every 2 seconds while in stealth."
• Fixed a bug were steal would connect too often. Will now properly give "No valid path to target" 50% of the time as intended.
• Infiltrators arrow now has a 40 second cast time.
• Fixed bug. Can no longer eat foods cooked with flour
• Revealed is now considered a boon and gained upon landing steal.
• Daggerstorm will now delete your account upon use.
• Main hand pistol will now apply 2 stacks of bleeding.

"These changes should put thief in line with its intended role of being ineffective."

Update

"We forgot to include one change"

• Bug Fix: There are no longer any valid paths to any targets.

@"Zexanima.7851" said:"We felt that S/D core thief was getting too much play and over preforming in its role."

• "Infiltrators Strike" distance reduced to 600. "Infiltrators Return" has been replaced with "Infiltrators No valid path to Target". Upon activation there will be no path to target and steal will go on cooldown.
• The unblockable on swipe created too many opening for DD as a brawler. Instead it now gives 3 stacks of bleeding. To balance this, the thief will now also kick themselves in the balls repeated for 2 seconds, dazing you and applying 4 stacks of confusion.
• The initiative system was over preforming. Initiative has been reduced to 1, all skill costs remain the same.
• Stealth is one if not the most powerful effect in the the game. With thief's plethora of ways to access it there needed to be a draw back. Thief now how the passive debuf when going into stealth of "Steath OP: Get knocked down for 2 second every 2 seconds while in stealth."
• Fixed a bug were steal would connect too often. Will now properly give "No valid path to target" 50% of the time as intended.
• Infiltrators arrow now has a 40 second cast time.
• Fixed bug. Can no longer eat foods cooked with flour
• Revealed is now considered a boon and gained upon landing steal.
• Daggerstorm will down delete your account upon use.
• Main hand pistol will now apply 2 stacks of bleeding.

"These changes should put thief in line with its intended role of being ineffective."

These actually seem like legit changes the balance dev on thief would consider.This is like the non thief communities wish list right here lol.Course they will still cry op.

@"Zexanima.7851" said:"We felt that S/D core thief was getting too much play and over preforming in its role."

• "Infiltrators Strike" distance reduced to 600. "Infiltrators Return" has been replaced with "Infiltrators No valid path to Target". Upon activation there will be no path to target and steal will go on cooldown.
• The unblockable on swipe created too many opening for DD as a brawler. Instead it now gives 3 stacks of bleeding. To balance this, the thief will now also kick themselves in the balls repeated for 2 seconds, dazing you and applying 4 stacks of confusion.
• The initiative system was over preforming. Initiative has been reduced to 1, all skill costs remain the same.
• Stealth is one if not the most powerful effect in the the game. With thief's plethora of ways to access it there needed to be a draw back. Thief now how the passive debuf when going into stealth of "Steath OP: Get knocked down for 2 second every 2 seconds while in stealth."
• Fixed a bug were steal would connect too often. Will now properly give "No valid path to target" 50% of the time as intended.
• Infiltrators arrow now has a 40 second cast time.
• Fixed bug. Can no longer eat foods cooked with flour
• Revealed is now considered a boon and gained upon landing steal.
• Daggerstorm will now delete your account upon use.
• Main hand pistol will now apply 2 stacks of bleeding.

"These changes should put thief in line with its intended role of being ineffective."

Update

"We forgot to include one change"

• Bug Fix: There are no longer any valid paths to any targets.

Nice one. Thanks for the laugh. :joy:

What do you even nerf in Acro at this point? Instant Reflexes is the only piece that is really obnoxious and even that had its ICD blasted.

Daggerstorm has a fat target on it though.

@Ensign.2189 said:What do you even nerf in Acro at this point? Instant Reflexes is the only piece that is really obnoxious and even that had its ICD blasted.

Daggerstorm has a fat target on it though.

Yeah, two main things busted with DS IMO:

1. Double dipping via Improvisation RNG
2. Still contribute to point contribution while evading and forcing everyone else off node. Bit too strong for stuff like Capricorn bell.

Otherwise, it's okay compared to some other elites.

@Dadnir.5038 said:It might be unpopular but if ANet were to do a meaningful nerf to the thief, this would be a nerf to the bursty stealth attacks from riffle and dagger, replacing the extra damage by some conditions/boons/CCs. Something like:

• Backstab/malicious backstab: Back damage are no longer higher than front damage, instead you daze your target for 1 second and apply 5 stack of vulnerability for 8 seconds if you attack from stealth.
• Death judgement: reduced damage by 50%, now you also stun and corrupt up to 5 boons into chill (2s) on your target.

That said, they can also continue on their trend with some ridiculous yet vicious nerfs like:

• We felt that the thief had a bit to much access to stealth, thus we decided to change black powder so that it now leave a dark field instead of a smoke field.
• Thiefs traps are pretty unique in both effects and form, after carefully pondering on the pro and cons we decided to give them their own unique category: thiefs traps are now booby traps.

have u ever played DE to tell smth like that? Better u asked for deleting this spec than redesignin it in such way.

Another prediction about anets joke of a balance team is maybe they'll extend the reveal radius around campus and keeps etc so it's even more useless than it is in wvw. If they were gonna make so many reveal spots maybe dont leave a espec dependent on stealth. DE is literally the most clunky garbage e spec I've ever played in a mmo lmao u literally spend most ur playtime jumping through smoke fields and using elite stealth skills on a constant basis to stack an amount of stealth that last any decent amount of time instead of oh u know enjoying the game. the devs are something else in this game. They should just delete DE or totally over haul it at this point all because cry babies on other classes whine while they play there powercrept class that have their own op garbage in spades like massive damage aoe and sustain scourge/fb,super burst with crazy sustain with cc on top holo's and warrior and revs, crazy burst rangers with unblockable from 2000 range. Yeah perma stealth DE maybe wasn't healthy but neither in the WHOLE roster of classes lmao could go on but whatever,games a joke now.