Exitus.3297

They're both pretty good. I like Leeching for the poison uptime (it lasts just long enough to get to Lotus Strike in the AA chain).I also like Flickering Shadow in fights where I know I'm going to get dogpiled the second I'm revealed.

I agree. I called personally called for the same Backstab and Heartseeker changes back when they first revealed the patch that nerfed Backstab (and everything else). I also agree on PI, although I would push it a tad bit further personally. Revealed is the only iffy one. I can't really get behind it in sPvP because Stealthing for long periods of time is, in my experience, not actually a good move anyway. I would be more behind it for WvW if it weren't for how Scouts and marking currently works. No Quarter is neither here nor there for me. The issue with Critical Strikes (in PvP) is that it is a very strong damage traitline. It can make Marauder stats on Thieves feel like they actually have Berserker stats (at least when they crit, which they do even more). The problem is that, other than Invigorating Precision, it doesn't really much in the way of utility. In PvP, damage is nice, but doesn't get you too far unless you back it up with Utility/Survivability. At least, that is what tends to be the case with Thieves.

The thing that made the least sense to me was the nerf to the scaling scaling of the Life-Leech procs, because that is apparently their nerf to "particularly Egregious condition builds".... Even though both Power and Condition builds used it. They then tried to legitimize the obvious nerf to Power builds by slightly buffing the critical-strikes traitline... A traitline no one will still take (other than testing purposes) because it isn't that good of a traitline in PvP unless you want to use a pure-glass meme build.

I did not forget that at all... In fact I specifically mentioned it: And in my Hypothetical skirmish, I only included 2 successful interrupts... 1 from Steal at the beginning and 1 from Headshot to interrupt a Heal skill; situations in which any Thief would aim to land an interrupt regardless of whether they had Impacting Disruption. If you see any important skill getting casted and you decided to not use Headshot because it cost initiative, then I don't know what to tell you. I can think of plenty of situations in which I would cast a Headshot even if I didn't have Impacting Disruption. Even then, Headshot is not the only potential interrupt in your kit. In fact you can even get a pair of back-to-back interrupts with Basilisk Venom and Swipe by themselves, and not even touch Headshot. Headshot may have been the primary source of PI, but it wasn't the only source. You seem to be approaching it as "Does PI do enough damage for me to spend initiative specifically to use it?" Instead of "How much more overall damage does this trait add to my fights even if I play normally?" This was what my hypothetical fights were meant to showcase. If you spam Headshot specifically to get PI damage in it's current state, then yes, the trait is awful. If instead you only use Headshot when necessary to land interrupts, then all the trait does is keep you from losing more damage than you normally would (after all Headshot's damage is even more abysmal). After all, how is Headshot a waste of initiative if you landed the interrupt you were aiming for anyway? At that point the question becomes "What damage adds up more? A 0-15% damage boost based on my Endurance level? Or extra damage on Interrupts when I need them?" The reason I take this approach is because this is how I think ANet approached it, especially considering Stability sources are gutted in this meta (they didn't want Thieves spamming it). My goal here is to show ANet it is still too weak even with their own design philosophy. My hope is by showing ANet them reasonable numbers that they may take a look at it (instead of screaming endlessly into the void that are the Thief forums asking for 300% damage buffs that will never happen).

I've made a thread me too time ago.. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/97849/save-pulmonary-impact#latest It would be just fine if it would be able to make 1-1,5k damage. I actually did a bunch of calculations on this. I'm technically replying to your post, but bear in mind I responding to many people here on how much it could be buffed. Also beware this response may be long because I've been doing a lot of thinking and number crunching... So the first thing to be aware of is the formula for Power Damage (I only include this because it is surprising how a lot of people don't understand it). Weapon Strength x Power x Ability Coefficient/Target Total Armor (this includes Toughness from items and the stat) This is a very simplified version of the damage formula. Of course, this damage formula expands when you include % damage modifiers and of course critical damage. It important to understand that base damage does not technically exist for Power Damage. It is also important to note that Tooltips for skills display a number as if you were hitting a target with 2600 armor. Keep that in mind for what I am going to say going forward because I am going to reference tooltip values a lot. Moving on... So I decided to compare Havoc Specialist (5% increased [Power] damage per missing bar of endurance, up to 15% for 3 missing bars) to Impactful Disruption (applies Pulmonary Impact on a successful interrupt). For this comparison, I decided to use the values in PvP if the Thief were wearing a Berserker Amulet and Scholar Runes. This would give 2375 Power, 225% critical damage, 48% critical chance (56.5% with Signet of Agility). This also results in a Impactful Disruption tooltip value of 474, meaning it would do 474 damage against a target with 2600 total armor and assuming you have no other multipliers active. Important Weapon Tooltip values include: Backstab: 1519 (half that from front)Basic attack combo total: 1321Shadowshot: 1107Headshot/Black Powder: 211Heartseeker: 844 > 1265 > 1687 All of these abilities of course are subject to critical damage modifiers, in this case for 225% total damage (for instance, Backstab would crit for 3418 damage) (keep in mind I am not including values from Life Siphon attacks in Shadow Arts as these are not affected by any multipliers. Also keep in mind I am not including any other % modifiers because PI is affected by those as well) So it begs the question... How much damage does the Thief have to do at each tier of Havoc Specialist to deal an extra 474 damage? Tier 1 (5%, 1 bar of endurance missing): 9480Tier 2 (10%, 2 bars of endurance missing): 4740Tier 3 (15%, 3 bars of endurance missing): 3160 To give a bit of context, at the first tier, you would need to hit with approximately a Black Powder, Heartseeker (while the target is below 50% health), Backstab AND Full basic attack combo, and every single attack would need to crit in order to reach the damage of a single Pulmonary Impact. Obviously, having full endurance = 0% increased damage. Conversely, at 15%, a single Backstab crit outshines the damage of a single Pulmonary Impact by a little bit (511 extra damage vs 474), and any damage beyond that is just extra. In fact, a Backstab + Full Auto Attack combo at this tier is literally the equivalent 2 Pulmonary Impacts assuming every single hit crits. Obviously, Tier 2 is somewhere in between. At Tier 2, you would need somewhere in the realm of 2 Shadow Shots and both would need to also be critical hits. You may have noticed that in each example, I always assume that every single attack that is capable of critical hits will critically hit. I do this for 2 reasons: The first is because there is no way of knowing which attacks will crit, and it is therefor mathematically easier to assume all attacks will crit (which most will if the Thief has Fury) than to assume none will. The second reason is to give obvious leeway to Havoc Specialist, implying that Pulmonary Impact may actually be better than what appears in my hypotheticals. For example, if in the first example NONE of the attacks were a critical hit, than Pulmonary Impact's damage would be inflated (imagine doing an entire BP > HS + Steal > BS > AA combo and only scoring 215 more damage compared to PI's 474) So this point you can see where the 2 traits start to compare. Keep in mind, again, that I am giving a lot of leeway to Havoc Mastery. The reality is that you need to keep in mind several things... For Havoc Specialist:1) Not every attack will be a critical hit, and it is the critical hits that inflate the damage of Havoc Specialist.2) Havoc Specialist is dependent on how much Endurance you are missing, meaning attempting to get the most out of this trait could get you in trouble.3) Conversely, any trait/ability that restores endurance (Endurance Thief, Dagger attack chain, Vigor, etc) actually make it harder to get the most of Havoc Mastery (it is almost unrealistic to expect to get the full 15% damage boost with a Steal > Backstab combo). Meanwhile, for Pulmonary Impact:1) The damage is much more consistent, not being reliant on Critical Hits for it's damage while also being unaffected by Weakness.2) Instead, how much you get the most out of this trait depends entirely on your ability to land interrupts (this does not mean you have to sue Headshot more than normal to get the most of it) Here is a hypothetical skirmish to add more context in comparing these 2 traits... Imagine you are pretty comfortable at landing interrupts. You are entering into a +1. You approach in stealth and you do a Steal > Backstab and successfully interrupt and land a Backstab crit (while also upping your Endurance on the steal). You follow up with a basic attack chain, adding in a dodge or 2 to move around, then notice they are going for a Heal skill (let's pretend it is a Necromancer, easy interrupt). You Headshot, boom, you interrupt it. He's now a bit below half. You BP > HS > Backstab. Boom, they're down. With luck, you crit on all of the important skills, but maybe with a few attacks in your auto-chain not being crits. If you take this scenario and apply the Impactful Disruption trait to it, pretty simple, 2 PI's go off because 2 interrupts. That is 948 (474 x 2) more damage (this number is actually going to be a lot higher because the Necromancer's armor is going to be 1888 assuming no added toughness and you will also have % modifiers. The real total damage will be ~1500. But let's just pretend the Necromancer has 2600 armor for the sake of the next example...) If you took Havoc Mastery, obviously it would depend on your endurance value. If you were at 1 bar of missing endurance (+5%) when you landed Swipe (meaning you started with half of your endurance, which isn't unreasonable I think), then that Backstab is going to do 3582 damage (+171 damage from normal). If you followed up with a dodge (now at +10%), and Wild Strike + Vigor doesn't put you back to 1 bar of missing endurance, then basic attack chain will deal 3269 damage (+297 damage from normal). Now let's say you are about to gain an endurance bar by this point, so you dodge before you used the next ability, Headshot then Black Powder. These abilities do the same damage, and assuming they both crit, will deal a total of 1044 damage ( +94 damage). You then Heartseeker while they are below Half and you are missing 2 bars of endurance (+10%), it crits for 3130 (+284 from normal). You then Dodge again to position for a Backstab, and we will assume that this also crits and you will be at 0 full bars of endurance, resulting in a +15% damage boost. This Backstab will deal 3930 (+512 from normal) In this hypothetical skirmish, Havoc Mastery gave the Thief a total of 1358 extra damage, as opposed to PI giving the Thief an extra 948 (again, this is pretending the target has 2600 armor. Any multipliers besides Havoc Specialist would also have to be applied to PI). The difference... isn't as big as one would expect. In this hypothetical, one thing to take notice of is that I am being incredibly generous to Havoc Specialist, because I am assuming the Thief is critting 100% of the time, which they certainly won't. In a real example, I can guarantee you that several of those attacks won't crit. If, for example, the only attack that didn't crit was the last Backstab, that 3930 damage (+512 from normal) would actually be 1747 (+227 from normal). That would mean the total would be 1073 instead of 1358, making it much closer to PI in this example. You would get a similar result of several of the other different attacks didn't crit instead. So what does this all mean? It means Impactful Disruption may not be as weak as one would expect when compared to Havoc Specialist if the player is comfortable at landing interrupts at the right times, but is still at a small disadvantage regardless since 1) the damage is still lower and 2) it requires more skill to successfully land an interrupt. If I had to take a guess at how much of a buff PI would need to be on par with Havoc Specialist, I would say ~30-40%. Sorry for the wall of text... If something seems wrong or doesn't make sense, please let me know.

I hate to necro this thread but I figured I should bump it to see where people stand on it.

I was just playing PvP on my Thief a few minutes ago and the game randomly crashed out of the blue. This game never crashes for me. Something is up with this patch.

Agreed. 7 initiative cost for this skill they could have just as easily rebalanced is silly. As other posters have said, this just pigeon-holes Thieves into Trickery even harder. Even with Trickery the cost is too harsh.

I certainly don't disagree with your idea. My only real issue is that land successful Headshots with S/P or D/P was reallllly satisfying with Impactful Disruption... I would want to keep that fun factor with such a rework.

Not really much else to say. The 66% nerf to PI was way too much. I get ANet wanted to tone down the damage from CC, but this isn't like Lightning Rod (which now does more raw damage, applies Weakness and can Crit) where any CC application will proc it. Impactful Disruption at least requires good timing. When sharing the same column as Havoc Specialist, what's the point? I'm not asking for the thing to be buffed back where it was. It just needs some help in my opinion. EDIT: After thinking about it, a good place I guess it could be is ~40% stronger than Lightning Rod (Elementalist Grandmaster trait). That's roughly how relatively strong it was prior to the February patch. The upside is that it has more raw damage, but the downsides being that it needs to be an actual interrupt, doesn't apply Weakness and can't be a critical hit. Since it is not a Grandmaster trait, this seems fair to me. I posted some numbers below but... Wall of text and math. You've been warned.

I just tested it again today. The bug is now just suddenly gone. They just dropped a patch so I wonder if it got fixed.

I really don't want to post this because I know a lot of Thief players are going to give me grief for it. In addition to the 540 Power the Assassin's Signet active gives, it also provides a multiplicative 15% damage boost. I discovered this doing some number crunching earlier, so I have the numbers to back this up. If you pick up a Thief and you run Marauder + Scholar Runes, resulting in 2175 Power and 198.3% Critical Damage, a Backstab on a Heavy Dummy with no damage modifiers (other than the Scholar 6-set bonus) will net you a 2894 Critical Hit (assuming you are running Shadow Arts, Daredevil and Trickery with no other modifiers active). As such, the Assassin's Signet provides an additional 540 Power (totaling 2715 Power). Keep in mind, the bonus 540 Power is instead of the passive 180 power, not in addition to. 2715 / 2175 = 1.248 (meaning that the damage is increased by 24.8%)So, that 2894 damage Crit should be increased to 3613 (rounding up). However, I found this is not the case. The Backstab instead did dealt 4155, which doesn't make sense.2894 x 1.248 =/= 4155. Here is what does make sense...(2894 x 1.248) x 1.15 = 4155 (rounded up) Once I took the 15% increase into account, the numbers started making sense. This is the case no matter what Amulet/Set bonus the Thief uses. Keep in mind I have no idea how long this bug has been around. It is very possible that this bug came about during the last balance patch when they changed the cooldown. Then again, it could have been around ever since it got changed from a 15% damage boost to a raw 540 Power. It's hard to tell. If it has been around awhile, I haven't noticed it before (and I number crunch a lot).

This patch was literally meant to address the fact that cheese builds exist and that the damage numbers were out of control. Now they made it so only cheese builds like this are allowed to exist. Necro may be a core example to this problem but they sure heck are not the only class that is just plain frustrating to fight.

It's funny you think Thieves are the problem in this patch.

They nerfed all if not most of the damage in the game. As much as they said they would give the same treatment to healing and sustain, they really didn't. It's definitely going to be a bunker meta.

Based on the numbers the balance team gave, PI is definitely getting overnerfed. The problem is that the numbers aren't right. In PvP modes, Mug does very slightly more damage than PI with Marauder stats. Mug does 1,187 while PI does 1,183. You can take a look if you don't believe me. Yet, the Patch notes say that Mug is getting reduced from 1.5 to 0.75, and PI is getting reduced from 2.0 to 0.75. These numbers don't make sense because they imply that PI currently does 33% more damage than Mug... When Mug actually does very slightly more damage than PI. One or both of these coefficients is incorrect, either Mug's 1.5 or PI's 2.0. I'm not sure which. ANet is basing their numbers off of what the Wiki says and the Wiki isn't always correct.

My primary point is the current changes screw up the dynamic between the skills. My numbers were a result of me trying to keep the overall numbers on the nerfs the same but shifting the numbers around so the dynamic between the skills remains unchanged, which happened to result in the Auto-attack and Backstab nerfs being not quite as hard. If the Power Coefficients I suggested are too high and need to be lower, so be it. If your main argument here is for the "dynamic of the skills to remain unchanged", then I feel you have no argument at all. These skills will have their uses, they were already stated in this thread and it doesn't look like HS spam will suddenly overpower everything else. BS is still instant, still out of stealth, still doesn't care about 25% hp requirement. I don't see much of a problem atm.How do you read even a portion of what I wrote and feel I have no argument at all? I'm not trying to be contentious here, but I could just as easily throw that back at you by saying that the mere insistence that the dynamic won't change (that people won't spam Heartseeker) isn't an argument. I looked at the numbers and came to my conclusion, not the other way around, then provided the numbers that made me come to that conclusion. I will make it clearer for you: If Backstab gets nerfed, Shadowshot gets nerfed and the Autos get nerfed, but Heartseeker did not, then Heartseeker got a significant relative buff, no? If Heartseeker ends up doing similar damage to Backstab on targets at or below 50% health, and it is less risky (and less difficult) to perform those Heartseekers due to everyone else's damage getting nerfed, what is keeping the Thief from using Heartseeker over and over? It fills both roles of a gap closer and an execute, and you have more Heartseekers to pump out than the enemy has dodges. I also never said Backstab would be useless. I said it wouldn't be as worth using over Heartseeker at certain thresholds of health, given the amount of resources it takes to actually enter stealth. This is why I argue for the dynamics of the skills to remain unchanged: because the current dynamic makes sense. If you still think that Thieves won't be incentivized to spam Heartseeker after the patch drops, then I would like to hear why. So far the only thing I can personally think of is if the Thief is running Shadow Arts so they get plenty of Leeching procs in addition to boonsteal on Stealth Attacks.

My primary point is the current changes screw up the dynamic between the skills. My numbers were a result of me trying to keep the overall numbers on the nerfs the same but shifting the numbers around so the dynamic between the skills remains unchanged, which happened to result in the Auto-attack and Backstab nerfs being not quite as hard. If the Power Coefficients I suggested are too high and need to be lower, so be it.

Big damage at or below 25%, I am 100% in agreement with you. At or below 50%... Basically that is where my concern is. Why not press 2 over and over at that point? It's the highest dps option the Thief has at that point and it is less risky to carry out due to the nerfed damage of everyone else.

Yes, that is what you do NOW because that is how the dynamic currently works with the balance between those skills. My point is that dynamic will change because those skills are getting nerfed while Heartseeker is not. Shadowshot is getting its cost increased by 1, de-incentivizing its usage. Two Heartseekers after the patch will have the same range as Shadowshot (900), cost only 1 more initiative, and do significantly damage if both hits connect (more than double if below 50%). It will still do more damage even if only one hit connects. Once a target hits 50%, Heartseeker will then do slightly less (but very comparable) damage to Backstab and cost very little resources, and allowing you to stick to targets because it is a gap closer. After all, assuming the target is at or below 50% health, why spend 9 initiative or use a cooldown skill to land a nerfed Backstab when you can expend the same resources to do significantly more damage by just pressing 2 three times? Because all other damage is being reduced (making it less risky for an opponent to counter-attack), why wouldn't you use a non-nerfed Heartseeker over and over once they hit 50%? You become able to stick to them very easily and once they hit 25%, Heartseeker literally becomes the hardest hitting skill in your kit. As an Opener, sure, Backstab will still be useful (albeit less useful), but only as an opener and nothing else. There is nothing incentivizing the Thief to use it ever again in the fight (at least not for damage) unless they are running Shadow Arts (which improves Stealth attacks dramatically with the Leeching hits and Rending Shade if you choose to run it).

This is incorrect. You have to look at more than just the coefficients -- you need to look at the base damage of the skill. Backstab's back base damage (880) is higher than HS's 50% (550) and 25% (734) base damage. So even though Backstab's coefficients has been nerfed, it's still a higher source of damage than HS. EDIT: You also need to consider the nerfs on all healing skills, which means, the Backstab damage will be more impactful. There is no such thing as a base damage for Power skills. Utility/Trait skills simply don't go off of the same Weapon Strength. Utility skills and Traits they go off of a completely multiplier that is shared across all classes (I believe it is 700 but I am not 100%). Most Weapon strengths (in sPvP) hover around 900-1000 (although it is different for 1-handed and 2-handed weapons, which ANet even stated in the patch notes). That's why skills like Mug/Pulmonary impact can have an absurd Power Coefficients and still do less damage than Weapon skills with the same Power Coefficient. E.G: Mug has a Power Coefficient of 1.5, but Heartseeker on Targets below 50% is also 1.5. Yet, Heartseeker will do significantly more damage because they are not working off of the same Weapon Strength value. It has nothing to do with having a lower Base damage. The Formula is literally: (Power Coefficient x Weapon Strength x Power)/Target Armor (assuming it is not a critical hit). Nowhere in that formula does it imply that the skill has a base damage. In that formula, if that "Power Coefficient" value drops from something like 1.0 to 0.01, you are literally nerfing the damage of the skill by 99%. This isn't League of Legends or WoW where every skill has a base damage + a power scale. On top of that, Every tooltip in the game uses the "Target Armor" value of 2600 as a placeholder. That means if you have a Weapon Skill such as Backstab state it deals 2000, it is saying it will do around 2000 (depending on the roll of the Weapon Strength) to a target that has 2600 total Armor (Armor from items + Toughness). That's why you see people land absolutely absurd numbers that go way beyond what the tooltip says on squishy targets: they have less armor than what the tooltip is working off of. This is how you can literally reverse-engineer Backstab's damage: Assuming you are in sPvP, using a Marauder Ammy and Power Rune (2225 total Power), this is what the formula would look like for Backstab (keep in mind it uses the median value on the Weapon Strength's Range, ~925 in sPvP for 1-handed weapons): 2225x 925 x 2.4/2600 = 1899, which is roughly around what Backstab's tooltip value is (keep in mind I am ball-parking this on pure memory). If you don't believe me, go make a Warrior, use Rampage, and look at skills 2, 4 and 5. They literally do single-digit damage because a few patches ago (I forget which one) they reduced the Coefficients on all of them to 0.01. If it was true they all had a base damage of some kind, they wouldn't be doing single-digit damage. If you think there are base damage values then you must be reading the Wiki value thinking that the Damage values listed are the "Base" damages. This is technically incorrect because the values listed on the Wiki are the values as if the player had 1000 Power, and this is because every player (at level 80) has a base 1000 Power. Meaning, no Ability has a base Damage value, but every player has a base Power value. Another way you could test this, if you don't believe me, is to go into the game and equip gear that gets you as close to 2000 as you can get. Read the Tooltip of your skills (doesn't matter which ones). Now remove all of your gear that has Power on it so you land at 1000. I promise you that every single one of those skills' tooltips just dropped by ~50%. So that means that if Backstab is getting its Power Coefficient reduced by 25%, its overall damage is getting nerfed by 25%. EDIT: I see you have already correct your position on this after I posted this (I see I didn't scroll all the way down before replying). Still, I want to leave this post here because I want people to see in detail how damage values work.

Hey all, I have been meaning to write this for a few days now. There several concerns I have with the new Power Coefficients that will be hitting the Thief in the next patch (if they stay as they are). My concerns revolve mostly around how the new numbers will shift the dynamics of the class. Let me explain... First let's start with the Dagger: It's auto-attacks got nerfed by 33%, bringing its overall Power Coefficient from 2.35 (0.6/0.65/1.1) to 1.566 (0.4/0.433/0.733). Backstab is also getting its Power Coefficient reduced from 2.4 to 1.8, with the justification that Pure-damage abilities should be at around 2.0 with some exception. Heartseeker, however, didn't get touched at all remaining at Power Coefficients of 1.0/1.5/2.0, depending on the target's health threshold. This means that at 50% health, Heartseeker will do comparable damage to Backstab and will actually do more damage once the target goes hits 25%. On targets above 50% health it will do more damage than Double Strike + Wild Strike combined whereas before it did not. This is a problem because it is going to incentivize that Thieves spam Heartseeker, which I don't think anyone wants to see. This is why: Before Patch:Above 50%: Does some damage and has a gap closer, but not as much damage as a quick Double-Strike -> Wild Strike combo. Mainly used with Black Powder for the Stealth.Below 50%: Does more Significant damage, may be worth using over Shadow Shot if the target is not in melee but close enough to reach with Heartseeker.Below 25%: Heartseeker is straight up now worth using for damage if I have the resources and can get aggressive without dying. After Patch:Above 50%: Worth using over Shadow-Shot (which will cost 5 initiative after the patch) if the target is close enough. Does more damage than Double-Strike -> Wild Strike combo but maybe not worth the resources.Below 50%: Not as hard-hitting as Backstab but close enough. Most certainly worth using repeatedly over any other skill if you have the resources.Below 25%: Lol this is the hardest hitting thing in my kit, may as well 2222222222. (this is more realistic to achieve because it will be less risky to do with all of the other class nerfs) This is why these number shifts don't make sense. ANet said in their notes they wanted to tone down abilities that "did more than one thing" but nerfed the damage skill that only does one thing at melee range with a position requirement and ignored the gap-closer with a Leap Finisher. With that said, here are my suggested Power Coefficients:Backstab: 2.0 (~16% damage nerf), 1.0 from frontHeartseeker: 0.8/1.2/1.6 (20% nerf)Auto-attack chain: 0.48/0.52/0.88 (20% nerf) This will retain the dynamic between these 3 abilities, where Heartseeker never does more damage than Backstab but gets close when targets are low, where the auto-attack is almost always worth using over Heartseeker on high-health targets unless you need the Leap Finisher, and Backstab is the hardest hitting ability there (as it should be). The justification basically being that the numbers on the Auto-attack and Backstab are getting a slight increase at the cost of a noticeable nerf on Heartseeker. I believe this is fair (especially since the Auto-attacks hit like wet noodles before anyway) But then we have to think about the Sword, as it got a similar treatment to the Daggers where most of everything in its kit got nerfed... Except Larcenous Strike for some reason. That gets to retain its 1.36 Power Coefficient (1.63 on Boonless targets) for some reason (although Flanking Strike got a 33% nerf). Simple enough, to keep the Sword on par with the Dagger, we would have to give it the same treatment: shift the damage numbers around a bit: Auto-attack chain: 0.48/0.48/1.04 (20% nerf as opposed to a 33% nerf)Larcenous Strike: 1.1 (1.32 on targets without Boons, ~20% nerf on both counts)Tactical Strike 0.9 (down from 1.0, 10% nerf)(Was left untouched by the upcoming patch) The dynamic here is that Larcenous Strike has always done a tiny bit more damage than the final attack in the auto-attack chain (on targets with Boons). Since the auto-attacks would have to be buffed to keep up with the Dagger, it would make sense to nerf Larcenous Strike down to an acceptable level in return. Tactical Strike seemed already a bit under par, but didn't make sense to me for it to do as much damage as a Frontstab when prior it never has before. Then there is Shadowshot and Cloak and Dagger… I'm not really sure what to do with Shadowshot. ANet in the past has tried to buff its damage at the cost of increased Initiative (a nerf to mobility without a loss in overall damage). However, since ANet is trying to slow down the game, increasing the Initiative by 1 would simulate the "feeling" of an increased cooldown. I personally would rather keep the initiative cost the same and nerf the damage, but that is just me. As for Cloak and Dagger, maybe a small damage nerf to put it in line with other abilities and that's it. Now let's get to the Rifle... Considering how Malice works, it is somewhat hard to tell how the dynamic between its skills shift. Double Tap and Three Round Burst didn't get nerfed quite as heavily as the other abilities, with Three Round Burst now having a significantly higher Power Coefficient than Death's Judgement (1.5 total vs 1.1 after the patch). The only thing I would do differently is nerf those two skills slightly more and nerf Death's Judgement slightly less, but taking into account Malice stacking it may not be an awful idea to keep it this way (that is, if you are at all okay with the idea of nerfing everything). I'm not going to get too technical on this one because I think at this point you know where I am going with this. Those are really all of my thoughts. I'm willing to expand on it. The summary is basically that the new numbers shift the dynamics of the skills on Thief in ways that don't make a lot of sense. EDIT: I'm noticing some people getting hung up on my suggestion of 20% nerfs when all other classes are getting 33%. Just keep in mind that the numbers I came up with were just a result of keeping the overall nerfs the same, just shifting the numbers around so that the dynamic between the skills remains in check (which is why I suggested nerfs on abilities previously not nerfed). Basically, the logic was "Hey, this skill over here is getting nerfed reasonably hard, but this skill over here isn't getting touched. I'm just going to balance these out..." If the skills needed to be nerfed a little more than I suggested for balancing purposes, that is fine with me. EDIT 2: It just occurred to me I never talked about Pulmonary Impact, but that may be a topic for another thread.

They aren't nerfing it as hard as you think. The 2.0 Power Coefficient is wrong. Mug and PI do the same damage in PvP (maybe off by a very tiny bit). Go take a look at their tooltips in game if you don't believe me. Still, they are definitely overnerfing it regardless.

Then vote on it ya dingus lol

It would make more sense if they only nerfed Mug and Pulmonary Impact by 30% instead of by half, but also apply the 30% reduction to the heal. Mug is going to get severely overshadowed by Leeching Venoms for damage otherwise. PI has been through enough as it is to justify nerfing it by another half.