[Re: Nerfs] History Lesson

[Zacchary.6183]

With Infiltrator's Arrow and initiative gain being nerfed in PvP, I would like to give a brief history lesson on what happened the last time the thief profession's staples were touched without any compensation. Back before elite specs, Thief was a regular target of player-complaint-based balancing. This caused the balance team back then to whittle down the profession's effectiveness over time, eventually drawing on the concerns of Thief mains. At one point, when concerns that thief was being overnerfed came to a climax, the balance team did something incredibly underhanded.

It started off with thread meant to collect the concerns of thief players. It was fine for the first few pages, but eventually it turned into a discussion between thief players with no interaction from the team. The Thief community was getting increasingly angry. When it came time for patch notes, not only did the thief receive more nerfs, but we also had fluffy word changes done to the tooltips without any functional changes to the skills themselves. What happened afterwards was an exodus from Thief to Warriors and Guardians(?), both the darling professions at the time.

The reason this happened was not only due to a betrayal of trust but an unwillingness to listen to the people who actually play the profession. This could have been avoided if the team actually played Thief, which it was common knowledge they didn't, and had an active interest in balancing them. But instead it took an exodus from the profession to prompt this. The whole reason why it was not being played was due to a snowball effect stemming from this lack of knowledge. First off, the mechanics made it a weird profession to play and it could be really powerful in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. It's simpler to use a rotation rather than manage resources. When it's effectiveness got nerfed into the ground, there was nearly no incentive to play it. Anet doing so would not only prove this but it would show the flaws of judgement cast upon it and the team would have to roll back nerfs, thus bringing back the ire of the player the nerfs catered to.

Now, that was back then and circumstances have changed. But the concept is still the same. If Anet wants thief's mobility nerfed, they will have to compensate by buffing another aspect of defense. This means either through stealth or evasion, because the thief only has active defenses. The patch notes showed otherwise, however. Again, I just want to remind everyone.

*And just a disclaimer, I am not ragging on the current team. It's been years and the company is changing all the time. So the actions of those back then don't apply to the team today, but it is still imperative to know where this perspective can lead.

[BeepBoopBop.5403]

I have no doubt that all those people that worked for Anet at the time were laid off anyway. Just lay off the rest of the company IMO, do it NC Soft.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

Consider our current balance head is an elementalist main, it doesn't particularly surprise me anymore to see thief get the shaft patch after patch.

[Zacchary.6183]

@NorthernRedStar.3054 said:our current balance head is an elementalist mainOh goodie.

[Exitus.3297]

When my friend told me about the nerfs, I seriously thought he was trolling.

Then I looked at them and not only did they nerf Infiltrator's Arrow, gutting its mobility, they did it in the most uncreative way possible. On top of that, instead of giving Thieves something to work with in terms of defense to compensate for said nerf in mobility, they nerfed their defense. These nerfs were completely out of the blue. If I had to guess where they were gunna nerf the Thief next, I would said it would have been Shadow Arts due to how much some of the traits that contribute to perma-stealthing are used as a crutch.

It isn't even just about these nerfs (or how out of the blue they are). Remember back on the February Patch when they basically annihilated the Acrobatics traitline, giving the only decent traits 300 seconds? Remember back when everyone was saying that they are just going to be "placeholders" until they can find something better to do with them? They're still there, untouched, virtually unusable in any PvP scenario. Meanwhile, in the land of Deadeye, their PvP rotation literally consists of spamming Skirmisher's Shot over and over until they hit 7 Malice with Maleficent 7, get off a stealth attack, and rinse and repeat ad nauseam. It has been this way since February and it has yet to be touched. The sad part is that the only reason Deadeyes do this is because it is the only realistic way they can do significant damage. I could go on

Then the OP mentioned that there are no Devs that play Thief. I have no idea how true this is, but at this point I don't doubt it. No Dev in their right mind who even plays Thief would even let this slide.

I thought for awhile about what other alternatives I could take, and to be quite honest. I'm a Thief main, and I primarily play this game for the PvP. I want the game to work. I want Thieves to be in a good spot, but not overpowered. I was willing to give this balance team a chance, but I think I'm just done with this game now. It's obvious based on the balance team's trend that ongoing balance issues are going to get ignored, while pumping out changes that don't make any sense.

(P.S, to the OP, Most of the people I know who swapped out of Thief went to Power Rev or Holosmith, mostly the former)

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

at this point im considering putting the game down too, someone quote me if they are with me. its about time another game gets boycotted. - they need to start the skills over from RELEASE day then buff them accordingly or add nifty effects.

[Helicity.3416]

@NorthernRedStar.3054 said:Consider our current balance head is an elementalist main, it doesn't particularly surprise me anymore to see thief get the shaft patch after patch.

At the same time, elementalist gets crowded out of all team roles in wvw, so he must not play that game mode at all...

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

@"Exitus.3297" said:When my friend told me about the nerfs, I seriously thought he was trolling.

Then I looked at them and not only did they nerf Infiltrator's Arrow, gutting its mobility, they did it in the most uncreative way possible. On top of that, instead of giving Thieves something to work with in terms of defense to compensate for said nerf in mobility, they nerfed their defense. These nerfs were completely out of the blue. If I had to guess where they were gunna nerf the Thief next, I would said it would have been Shadow Arts due to how much some of the traits that contribute to perma-stealthing are used as a crutch.

It isn't even just about these nerfs (or how out of the blue they are). Remember back on the February Patch when they basically annihilated the Acrobatics traitline, giving the only decent traits 300 seconds? Remember back when everyone was saying that they are just going to be "placeholders" until they can find something better to do with them? They're still there, untouched, virtually unusable in any PvP scenario. Meanwhile, in the land of Deadeye, their PvP rotation literally consists of spamming Skirmisher's Shot over and over until they hit 7 Malice with Maleficent 7, get off a stealth attack, and rinse and repeat ad nauseam. It has been this way since February and it has yet to be touched. The sad part is that the only reason Deadeyes do this is because it is the only realistic way they can do significant damage. I could go on

Then the OP mentioned that there are no Devs that play Thief. I have no idea how true this is, but at this point I don't doubt it. No Dev in their right mind who even plays Thief would even let this slide.

I thought for awhile about what other alternatives I could take, and to be quite honest. I'm a Thief main, and I primarily play this game for the PvP. I want the game to work. I want Thieves to be in a good spot, but not overpowered. I was willing to give this balance team a chance, but I think I'm just done with this game now. It's obvious based on the balance team's trend that ongoing balance issues are going to get ignored, while pumping out changes that don't make any sense.

(P.S, to the OP, Most of the people I know who swapped out of Thief went to Power Rev or Holosmith, mostly the former)

For what it's worth; I've never seen an Anet dev play thief. N-E-V-E-R. I knew about the upcoming Consume Plasma nerf, but I had no idea they'd also be nerfing Sap Essence (one of the few remaining actually hard-hitting thief skills). I'm confused as to why, if Signet of Agility was such an issue , they couldn't just up the cooldown by 5-10 seconds? Then again, considering how limited its use is with its current cooldown as things stand... And people are actually out there talking about it as this 'superb condi cleanse', when it literally only does that while granting an added (now half a ) dodge. It's not like it's a stun break.

I really am not much of a fan of deadeye's gameplay pattern. But that's the road Anet's pigeonholing me onto.

[Exitus.3297]

@NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

@"Exitus.3297" said:When my friend told me about the nerfs, I seriously thought he was trolling.

Then I looked at them and not only did they nerf Infiltrator's Arrow, gutting its mobility, they did it in the most uncreative way possible. On top of that, instead of giving Thieves something to work with in terms of defense to compensate for said nerf in mobility, they nerfed their defense. These nerfs were completely out of the blue. If I had to guess where they were gunna nerf the Thief next, I would said it would have been Shadow Arts due to how much some of the traits that contribute to perma-stealthing are used as a crutch.

It isn't even just about these nerfs (or how out of the blue they are). Remember back on the February Patch when they basically annihilated the Acrobatics traitline, giving the only decent traits 300 seconds? Remember back when everyone was saying that they are just going to be "placeholders" until they can find something better to do with them? They're still there, untouched, virtually unusable in any PvP scenario. Meanwhile, in the land of Deadeye, their PvP rotation literally consists of spamming Skirmisher's Shot over and over until they hit 7 Malice with Maleficent 7, get off a stealth attack, and rinse and repeat ad nauseam. It has been this way since February and it has yet to be touched. The sad part is that the only reason Deadeyes do this is because it is the only realistic way they can do significant damage. I could go on

Then the OP mentioned that there are no Devs that play Thief. I have no idea how true this is, but at this point I don't doubt it. No Dev in their right mind who even plays Thief would even let this slide.

I thought for awhile about what other alternatives I could take, and to be quite honest. I'm a Thief main, and I primarily play this game for the PvP. I want the game to work. I want Thieves to be in a good spot, but not overpowered. I was willing to give this balance team a chance, but I think I'm just done with this game now. It's obvious based on the balance team's trend that ongoing balance issues are going to get ignored, while pumping out changes that don't make any sense.

(P.S, to the OP, Most of the people I know who swapped out of Thief went to Power Rev or Holosmith, mostly the former)

For what it's worth; I've never seen an Anet dev play thief. N-E-V-E-R. I knew about the upcoming Consume Plasma nerf, but I had no idea they'd also be nerfing Sap Essence (one of the few remaining actually hard-hitting thief skills). I'm confused as to why, if Signet of Agility was

such an issue

, they couldn't just up the cooldown by 5-10 seconds? Then again, considering how limited its use is with its current cooldown as things stand... And people are actually out there talking about it as this 'superb condi cleanse', when it literally only does that while granting an added (now half a ) dodge. It's not like it's a stun break.

I really am not much of a fan of deadeye's gameplay pattern. But that's the road Anet's pigeonholing me onto.

Pretty much.

The most frustrating to me personally isn't even the nerfs in and of themselves. That's dumbfounding, but what's frustrating to me personally are the non-thief players that just seem to think this change is warranted on sole basis that Thieves needed a nerf. They don't realize what the consequence of this change is going to be.

Either Thieves are going to keep using Shortbow and find a way around the cost, or they won't use Shortbow and find another means of Mobility. I know some Deadeyes that got really good with Death's Retreat that are probably going to be fine. As for the Thieves that will keep using Shortbow, I can almost guarantee they are all going to do the same thing. It now takes 8 seconds instead of 6 seconds to regen the initiative to cast Shortbow (assuming there are no other sources of Ini regen). Guess which trait happens to restore 1 Initiative every 3 seconds? Shadow's Rejuvenation. When before it was an optional trait that was just really strong (and imho was a crutch, but that's just me) will now be borderline mandatory to make up the difference. That means Thieves are going to spending a lot more time in stealth to get that bonus.

What's super ironic is that the same players that are saying the nerf is justified are the same ones that are complaining about the stealth uptime, not realizing what they've just done.

[Keitaro Dragonheart.9047]

@Exitus.3297 said:

@NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

@Exitus.3297 said:When my friend told me about the nerfs, I seriously thought he was trolling.

Then I looked at them and not only did they nerf Infiltrator's Arrow, gutting its mobility, they did it in the most uncreative way possible. On top of that, instead of giving Thieves something to work with in terms of defense to compensate for said nerf in mobility, they nerfed their defense. These nerfs were completely out of the blue. If I had to guess where they were gunna nerf the Thief next, I would said it would have been Shadow Arts due to how much some of the traits that contribute to perma-stealthing are used as a crutch.

It isn't even just about these nerfs (or how out of the blue they are). Remember back on the February Patch when they basically annihilated the Acrobatics traitline, giving the only decent traits 300 seconds? Remember back when everyone was saying that they are just going to be "placeholders" until they can find something better to do with them? They're still there, untouched, virtually unusable in any PvP scenario. Meanwhile, in the land of Deadeye, their PvP rotation literally consists of spamming Skirmisher's Shot over and over until they hit 7 Malice with Maleficent 7, get off a stealth attack, and rinse and repeat ad nauseam. It has been this way since February and it has yet to be touched. The sad part is that the only reason Deadeyes do this is because it is the only realistic way they can do significant damage. I could go on

Then the OP mentioned that there are no Devs that play Thief. I have no idea how true this is, but at this point I don't doubt it. No Dev in their right mind who even plays Thief would even let this slide.

I thought for awhile about what other alternatives I could take, and to be quite honest. I'm a Thief main, and I primarily play this game for the PvP. I want the game to work. I want Thieves to be in a good spot, but not overpowered. I was willing to give this balance team a chance, but I think I'm just done with this game now. It's obvious based on the balance team's trend that ongoing balance issues are going to get ignored, while pumping out changes that don't make any sense.

(P.S, to the OP, Most of the people I know who swapped out of Thief went to Power Rev or Holosmith, mostly the former)

For what it's worth; I've never seen an Anet dev play thief. N-E-V-E-R. I knew about the upcoming Consume Plasma nerf, but I had no idea they'd also be nerfing Sap Essence (one of the few remaining actually hard-hitting thief skills). I'm confused as to why, if Signet of Agility was

such an issue

, they couldn't just up the cooldown by 5-10 seconds? Then again, considering how limited its use is with its current cooldown as things stand... And people are actually out there talking about it as this 'superb condi cleanse', when it literally only does that while granting an added (now half a ) dodge. It's not like it's a stun break.

I really am not much of a fan of deadeye's gameplay pattern. But that's the road Anet's pigeonholing me onto.

Pretty much.

The most frustrating to me personally isn't even the nerfs in and of themselves. That's dumbfounding, but what's frustrating to me personally are the non-thief players that just seem to think this change is warranted on sole basis that Thieves needed a nerf. They don't realize what the consequence of this change is going to be.

Either Thieves are going to keep using Shortbow and find a way around the cost, or they won't use Shortbow and find another means of Mobility. I know some Deadeyes that got really good with Death's Retreat that are probably going to be fine. As for the Thieves that will keep using Shortbow, I can almost guarantee they are all going to do the same thing. It now takes 8 seconds instead of 6 seconds to regen the initiative to cast Shortbow (assuming there are no other sources of Ini regen). Guess which trait happens to restore 1 Initiative every 3 seconds?

Shadow's Rejuvenation.

When before it was an optional trait that was just really strong (and imho was a crutch, but that's just me) will now be borderline mandatory to make up the difference. That means Thieves are going to spending a lot more time in stealth to get that bonus.

What's super ironic is that the same players that are saying the nerf is justified are the same ones that are complaining about the stealth uptime, not realizing what they've just done.

What these players are really after, is the deletion of the Thief class entirely. "There's a playstyle I don't like? Oh we can't have that! Nerf it Devs!" Selfish players thinking only of themselves to the detriment of everyone around them, and the game itself. Once they achieve this, which class will next be on their chopping block, I wonder? Certainly not their own, of this you can be sure!

[Zacchary.6183]

@Exitus.3297 said:

@NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

@Exitus.3297 said:When my friend told me about the nerfs, I seriously thought he was trolling.

Then I looked at them and not only did they nerf Infiltrator's Arrow, gutting its mobility, they did it in the most uncreative way possible. On top of that, instead of giving Thieves something to work with in terms of defense to compensate for said nerf in mobility, they nerfed their defense. These nerfs were completely out of the blue. If I had to guess where they were gunna nerf the Thief next, I would said it would have been Shadow Arts due to how much some of the traits that contribute to perma-stealthing are used as a crutch.

It isn't even just about these nerfs (or how out of the blue they are). Remember back on the February Patch when they basically annihilated the Acrobatics traitline, giving the only decent traits 300 seconds? Remember back when everyone was saying that they are just going to be "placeholders" until they can find something better to do with them? They're still there, untouched, virtually unusable in any PvP scenario. Meanwhile, in the land of Deadeye, their PvP rotation literally consists of spamming Skirmisher's Shot over and over until they hit 7 Malice with Maleficent 7, get off a stealth attack, and rinse and repeat ad nauseam. It has been this way since February and it has yet to be touched. The sad part is that the only reason Deadeyes do this is because it is the only realistic way they can do significant damage. I could go on

Then the OP mentioned that there are no Devs that play Thief. I have no idea how true this is, but at this point I don't doubt it. No Dev in their right mind who even plays Thief would even let this slide.

I thought for awhile about what other alternatives I could take, and to be quite honest. I'm a Thief main, and I primarily play this game for the PvP. I want the game to work. I want Thieves to be in a good spot, but not overpowered. I was willing to give this balance team a chance, but I think I'm just done with this game now. It's obvious based on the balance team's trend that ongoing balance issues are going to get ignored, while pumping out changes that don't make any sense.

(P.S, to the OP, Most of the people I know who swapped out of Thief went to Power Rev or Holosmith, mostly the former)

For what it's worth; I've never seen an Anet dev play thief. N-E-V-E-R. I knew about the upcoming Consume Plasma nerf, but I had no idea they'd also be nerfing Sap Essence (one of the few remaining actually hard-hitting thief skills). I'm confused as to why, if Signet of Agility was

such an issue

, they couldn't just up the cooldown by 5-10 seconds? Then again, considering how limited its use is with its current cooldown as things stand... And people are actually out there talking about it as this 'superb condi cleanse', when it literally only does that while granting an added (now half a ) dodge. It's not like it's a stun break.

I really am not much of a fan of deadeye's gameplay pattern. But that's the road Anet's pigeonholing me onto.

What's super ironic is that the same players that are saying the nerf is justified are the same ones that are complaining about the stealth uptime, not realizing what they've just done.

The whole point is to make thieves killable to them. That's why they do it.

[Yasai.3549]

@NorthernRedStar.3054 said:Consider our current balance head is an elementalist main, it doesn't particularly surprise me anymore to see thief get the shaft patch after patch.

Well more specifically, a Weaver main.They just nerf batted Tempest for no reason.

[ArcanistSeven.8720]

yeah when those acro nerfs came i pretty much quit pvp im going for my WvW legendary ring and im sure as shit not taking my thief in there with nerf to SB

[Urjel.5634]

Thief has been meta in spvp for almost the entire time of gw2 history. The only period of time, when thief wasn't part of the meta, was right after HoT. More about that further below. Infiltrators arrow at 8 initiative is still an incredibly powerful skill as most of its uses aren't to reposition yourself during a fight but the disengage or travel around the map and in those situations it is still the best mobility skill in the game. You don't need to use any other weapon skill in these situations, which essentially makes it an 8 second cool down teleport with 900 range. The arrow has some activation and travel time so you effectively don't get the full 900 range blink but it is still very good. All commonly used leaps and blinks on other classes have either a lower range and comparable "cool down" or higher or comparable range but a higher "cool down" - even ignoring the fact that IA gives vertical mobility which leaps do not.Contrary to what I have often read in these forums, the nerf also doesn't just come out of nowhere. While infiltrators arrow hadn't been nerfed until only recently, the skill was always very strong (and many would argue: too strong) but that's not the point here, because the skill doesn't exist in a vacuum anyway. From the top of my mind, here are a few things that have changed and influenced the balance of IA and thief since it's original release:

• Core gw2 day's thief had no permanent swiftness which balanced out the sb mobility. The SD thief build which eventually became a thing had swiftness, but gave up most parts of stealth in return.
• Daredevil was released and provided not only permanent swiftness but also additional mobility due the dodge covering more ground. However, this originally wasn't an issue as herald was so broken that it completely eclipsed daredevil and even after the first herald adjustments, the overall power level was so high that daredevil wasn't problematic (but part of the meta), e.g. druid had good mobility and was ridiculously tanky while still providing good damage in small scale fights and having access to low CD stealth to escape from +1s.
• The shadow arts rework 1,5 years ago (mind you that it sounds long but is only a couple of balance patches due to the scarcity of those), which made the traitline meta changed the initiative dynamic. Since your steal stealthes you and so does hide in shadows which was indirectly buffed and sees a lot more play, stealth requires less/no initiative and that leaves you with more initiative for infiltrators arrow, further pushing thief mobility.
• The February patch greatly reduced damage across the board which made it even harder to punish the class as a good burst is usually not enough to kill the thief anymore, thus they have the option to stealth up and disengage. The reworked shadow arts (a defensive traitline) being meta now, exacerbates the issue.

Thief is still part of the high and top tier pvp meta game and perfectly viable everywhere else, so there is no reason to "compensate" the class. Of course, it would be nice to have more duelling prowess or a brawler build or something, but the issue with that is, that you have other classes for that. The more classes you have that do the same thing, the more classes are going to be excluded at a high level as with increasing competition, the weaker options will be pushed out of the meta game (You can see this with the sidenode builds for engieneer, ranger and warrior. Depending on the current patch and the skill level, they might all the viable but at the top, one of them will often be the superior choice). Thief has its mobility niche which is why it has been and still is dominant in pvp. It also has other upsides/niches which are often ignored in discussion but are very relevant at higher levels of play. It is among the best options to repeatedly (headshot) interrupt and the only class to reliably interrupt people as traited steal is instant and removes aegis and stability before applying the daze, thus guaranteeing the interrupt. Additionally, choking gas is a strong skill to deny "manual" rezzes in fights. Thief provides a lot if it is played well and by that I don't mean stellar mechanical or rotational gameplay but utilising your tool kit instead of being bloodthirsty or trying to be the coolest duellist. It doesn't provide much if you just want to run in an brawl but if that is your goal, you picked the wrong archetype.

[Sylvia.4870]

@Zacchary.6183 said:With Infiltrator's Arrow and initiative gain being nerfed in PvP, I would like to give a brief history lesson on what happened the last time the thief profession's staples were touched without any compensation. Back before elite specs, Thief was a regular target of player-complaint-based balancing. This caused the balance team back then to whittle down the profession's effectiveness over time, eventually drawing on the concerns of Thief mains. At one point, when concerns that thief was being overnerfed came to a climax, the balance team did something incredibly underhanded.

It started off with thread meant to collect the concerns of thief players. It was fine for the first few pages, but eventually it turned into a discussion between thief players with no interaction from the team. The Thief community was getting increasingly angry. When it came time for patch notes, not only did the thief receive more nerfs, but we also had fluffy word changes done to the tooltips without any functional changes to the skills themselves. What happened afterwards was an exodus from Thief to Warriors and Guardians(?), both the darling professions at the time.

The reason this happened was not only due to a betrayal of trust but an unwillingness to listen to the people who actually play the profession. This could have been avoided if the team actually played Thief, which it was common knowledge they didn't, and had an active interest in balancing them. But instead it took an exodus from the profession to prompt this. The whole reason why it was not being played was due to a snowball effect stemming from this lack of knowledge. First off, the mechanics made it a weird profession to play and it could be really powerful in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. It's simpler to use a rotation rather than manage resources. When it's effectiveness got nerfed into the ground, there was nearly no incentive to play it. Anet doing so would not only prove this but it would show the flaws of judgement cast upon it and the team would have to roll back nerfs, thus bringing back the ire of the player the nerfs catered to.

Now, that was back then and circumstances have changed. But the concept is still the same. If Anet wants thief's mobility nerfed, they will have to compensate by buffing another aspect of defense. This means either through stealth or evasion, because the thief only has active defenses. The patch notes showed otherwise, however. Again, I just want to remind everyone.

*And just a disclaimer, I am not ragging on the current team. It's been years and the company is changing all the time. So the actions of those back then don't apply to the team today, but it is still imperative to know where this perspective can lead.

Even though there have been times for nerfing to the class already, some people never feel satisfied with any of them until the class doesn't exist in their eyes and always cry in the game chat or on the forums after being defeated or outsmarted by capable, clever thief players(not with cheating, pure abilities). There are always complaints from them, new and veteran on the class every year. ''Too long for staying in the shadow. Too many times for evading an enemy's attacks. Too much for travelling from one spot to a distant location. Etc.'' I have completely got accustomed to such complaints from those who don't play the class mainly.