ixon.2496

100% this was done to nerf potential Spectre self sustain. Again fudging core to balance elite specs.

Invigorating Precision: The percentage of life-stealing from critical strikes has been reduced. Previously thieves gained 10% of the critical-hit damage plus an additional 10% with fury. Now they gain 4% of the critical-hit damage plus an additional 2% with fury. PvP Splits Smoke Screen: Reduced field duration from 7 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only. Hide in Shadows: Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP only. Blinding Powder: Increased cooldown from 40 seconds to 50 seconds in PvP only. Shadow's Rejuvenation: Reduced base healing from 219 to 158 in PvP only.

Most likely players would be falsely flagged due to poor connections/lag spikes, as soon as they desync/resync and change positions suddenly.

There are still days till the expansion, should have just left 2v2 up.

Feels great having my legendary PvP armor progress halted for a week for no good reason. With no warning. I only needed 25 more ascended shards for my second last piece.

So much for them being more transparent with communication, could have at least mentioned it in the last balance blog post

Well there could be a boon applied with the lifeforce generation, basically stealth without the invisibility, similar to carapice, but it switches on weapon skills and traits as though you were stealthed. That fixes the trait conflict. I'm purely theorizing since people are going to complain so much about a stealth healer nomatter what happens. People just hate it that much

Honestly i think it would have been more interesting if stealth skills were converted to life force generation as the spectre feature. It could justify thief being tankier support, thief could still apply stealth to allies but unable to stealth themselves, instead building up their life force so they could tank the focus turned on them.

Clearly this is a L2P issue.

I've already pointed out that there is counter play. Thief is not some unstoppable god.

Thief does have counterplay in the form of reveal, which is defintely not available enough to professions. As for openers, guard has always been the counter to that with agis, and its very disingenous to say thief is the reason people play so tanky. 1. Conquest itself promotes playing tanky builds to contest and hold points. 2. It's more effective since the damage reduction in the feb 2020 patch. 3. A thief in stealth isnt decapping the point, any aoe pressure pushes them off the point too. Very easy to make a thief waste their time. Trapper DH or Trapper Ranger can destroy a thief or completely ruin their decap rotations. I have no issue vs thiefs on a 20k hp condi ranger. 100% thief has some balance issues, but honestly i think you are exaggerating the problem.

1. Thief are still top of mobility, however that gap has closed considerably. 2. It was always a bad design choice add evade on top of stealth, but the intention was to give team fight potential. Which didn't pan out. Thief is frustraiting to fight with certain builds, blinding powder and smoke are and issue with being able to pressure them. Plus stealth, plus evades. But without these things thief becomes irrelevant in a team fight, since damage was reduced across the board. First people complained thief done too much damage, then they were too fast, then they were too evasive, then they were too invisible. And you know what through all these metas, i was never bothered by thiefs place in it. Some builds just couldnt deal with them, some melted them into the ground.

They break the core profession design with each elite spec. At launch thief was a squishy cannon, damage numbers were way too high, but i do miss dagger/dagger power builds. Timing your backstabs and kiting. Then they introduced revealed, creating a direct counter to stealth, nerfed backstab crits, and added delay to missing or after being blocked. So the overall flow got worse and survivability went down. Then comes daredevil, evasion ontop of stealth. Yknow, just to doubly annoy your enemy. But thief became somewhat fun again. *Whack* nerfs. Shortbow 5 gets killed. Initative costs go up. Thief has never been "unplayable" like warrior, but it has never gotten actual buffs to anything that underperforms in its traits, venoms got a slight buff with the sharing but they are so underwhelming nobody uses them same goes for changing traps into preperations (because of trapper rune and no other reason) , its generally just nerfs to the things it does effectively.

Should add switching profession after matchmaking to that list, since you are manipulating the algorithm

Because the only thing its accomplished is make shadow arts MORE mandatory to make a skill worth using. So many other ways they could have dealt with it, reduced its stealth duration even. Its another in a long line of weird or just poorly thought out decisions. Thief has always been contentious in pvp, it was busted powerful at launch. But since then its never had any improvements to its useless traits. Thief is so shoehorned in build choices. They even changed thief traps to preparations rather than get rid of trapper ruins. Just so many weird decisions. I'm not going to give anet hate for it, its just disheartening, i stopped maining thief a long time ago because of how limited it is in build crafting to actually be effective.

I disagree, you can be a good source of regen for your team depending if you run the heal trap or Jiricanda pet. Frequently have top healing for my team as soulbeast trapper, even without the Jiricanda. Also stomp denial with shortbow 5 and needle trap. Depending how you play and build you can be very supportive while still dishing out damage.

Better ones that GW2 do though.

They had already lost 2 on the mid fight so it was 5 v 2. After the enemy won, 2 of them went to close, one sat on mid, while i was decapping far two came after me. The rest of my team respawns and goes straight to close, 4 v 2. And even then they struggled, zero focus on targets (the usual) wasting 3 minute on close . And its situations like this that come up so often. Your teams decisions during a match have such an impact on how you can play, even making it impossible to carry. Sure i can join them at close, but at that point our full team fighting 2 bunkers at the one point is just a huge loss of points and time.

Well there isn't any other option, so can't blame the players for the system they are given to work with. Once you reach your rank peak, you'll either get 50/50 wins or massive loss streaks then win streaks keeping you exactly where you were over a large enough number of matches. When you can no longer climb all there is to do is farm. As for the "Get good" argument, whats the incentive? Slightly more pips. If you watch the leaderboards, the people at the top get there and play as few matches as possible to maintain their rank. There were 4 legendary ranks last week, checked again yesterday then there were 2.

What annoys me most is the disparity in pip gains, especially when farming for ascended shards/legendary armor. 18 wins can fill up the repeatable byzantium track. It would take 60 losses to do the same, 36 or even 40 id be fine with. But every loss thats out of your control is costing you major progress, time and effort. Its no wonder people get so toxic when they have no say on who they have on their team.

God forbid putting together a team in a competitive game

Exact same situation today, i've played since launch and mained thief for about 90% of my time in PvP. I cap close, run and decap far. Whole team wipes in mid. I have to leave far as a LB ranger and Mesmer chase me and a Engi bunkering on Mid. Whole team goes to defend close for a 4v2. Wasting a good 3 minutes while i can't decap due to pressure from the other 3 enemies. Who gets called a bot, me. Then spam targeted by my own teammate. Who proceeds to afk on the buff. I've carried games with decap, even if its still a loss. But the mentality and lack of awareness is just mind blowing.

Premade vs premade. Seperate Queue or Off season. It would be nice to have the option to be competitive as a party without time gated AT's or going unto unranked which isn't very useful as practice fighting build crafters and pugs. I dont think solo/duo queue should be removed. Just that 5 man should be enabled seperately and see how it goes. With the state things are in already its not a massive risk or a huge undertaking. Something needs to change for PvP, more than just balance, and i think that would be a start.

In EU right now there are 4 people in legend rank. Not even enough for one team. At least with 5 man, even off season 5 man, people can aim to climb there and genuinely influence their chances with communication, chosen team comp and strategy. This dice roll of team composition and random teammate quality removes so much of the players ability to influence the outcome. That isn't competitive. There is only so much you can do to carry a team to victory, and thats without afk/throwers tipping the scales. As it stands the ladder it completely pointless. And its not due to population size, it's by design.

Name a single successful ranked competitve game that limits your party to 2 and forces you to play with random teammates.