Thief megathread: Oct 4th patch discussion

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

STAY ON TOPIC OF THIEF, NO LOW EFFORT OR TROLL POSTS

Thief

In addition to reworking the passive traits in the Acrobatics trait line, Meld with Shadows gets a slight shave off its superspeed duration, targeting the strong performance of deadeye builds in PvP.

Traits

• Hard to Catch: This trait has been reworked. It now grants endurance when shadowstepping.
• Instant Reflexes: This trait no longer grants evasion when dropping below 50% health. Instead, it grants evasion after using an elite skill.
• Meld with Shadows: Reduced superspeed duration from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds in PvP only.

Specter

Specter is currently one of the most powerful specializations in PvP. The build has a lot of strengths, but the thing that stands out is the sheer amount of shroud health available, especially in combination with additional sources of vitality. We're reducing the shroud health by a significant amount, with the goal of making specters a bit easier to kill.

We do see specter's reduced initiative pool as one of the tradeoffs we want to revisit eventually, but given its current power level we didn't want to do so in this update. We'll be keeping an eye on the strength of specter going forward and will be looking for an opportunity to restore the lost initiative once it's less dominant.

• Reduced Shadow Shroud health scaling from 1.5 to 0.69.
• The squad UI now correctly displays Shadow Force in the party and squad UI while in Shadow Shroud.
• Enter Shadow Shroud is no longer usable when Shadow Force is too low.

Skills

Well of Bounty is another skill we wanted to make into a more reliable source of group stability, and to do so we've adjusted how it applies boons. Instead of picking from boons that the target doesn't already have, the skill will consistently apply the same boons on specific pulses, starting with stability on pulse 1.

• Well of Bounty: Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds in WvW, and from 20 seconds to 35 seconds in PvP. This skill now applies the following boons:
  • Pulse 1: Stability
  • Pulse 2: Might
  • Pulse 3: Fury
  • Pulse 4: Vigor
  • Pulse 5: Resistance

Traits

• Shallow Grave: This trait will no longer affect allies in Vapor Form. Reduced shroud-to-healing conversion from 100% to 33% in PvP and WvW. Reduced cooldown from 300 seconds to 120 seconds in PvP and WvW.

@Double Tap(thief to thieves, tagged you in this so we can start communicating as an underdog community, hopefully you can find the time to read through the concerns)

Edited October 6, 2022 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[GrizzlyTank.3145]

Oh hey, pvp ruining pve again.

 

That healing nerf is too much...

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Shroud nerf was way to heavy handed, especially for pve but also for pvp. Acro trait reworks add little, traitline still crap and will barely be used, such a waste. Ini cost increases that were implemented due to lazy balancing still remain, Preparedness still not baseline to open up build diversity within the class. Ricochet still not re-implemted.

Gj anet, keeping things fresh as always. Swap while merged with pet was good change and war changes going in decent direction but over all not really exciting patch imo. Can't wait for the 18th.

[Emolesbian.3170]

I'll try the kitten out for a few weeks first but just in case...

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health : This is an underground website gathering good infos about the game. Not so easily accessible but I'm a good person.

 

Anet if you need it, I share the link willingly.

[Kanok.3027]

Not sure if this was intentional, but seems the nerfs to Consume Shadows also rolled over into PvE. Tried desperately to heal by exiting shroud at clutch moments and I got, like, nothing back. Yesterday, however, it was working just fine and was pretty great.

[Bern.9613]

3 minutes ago, Kanok.3027 said:

Not sure if this was intentional, but seems the nerfs to Consume Shadows also rolled over into PvE. Tried desperately to heal by exiting shroud at clutch moments and I got, like, nothing back. Yesterday, however, it was working just fine and was pretty great.

That's because today they dropped a "rework". Check your traits, you're going to see some have changed fallen under the swing of the pendulum.

Edited October 4, 2022 by Bern.9613

[Nomad.4301]

5 Endurance per shadowstep from Hard to Catch is the biggest joke i've seen in a while from the balance team and that's saying something 😂

I genuinely think more people would run this in its old 300s CD form than now, Anet must really buy into the whole "thieves have infinite spammable shadowsteps" nonsense that people have been spouting since launch.

 

Edited October 4, 2022 by Nomad.4301

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Just now, Nomad.4301 said:

5 Endurance per shadowstep from Hard to Catch is the biggest joke i've seen in a while from the balance team and that's saying something 😂

As I said, traitline is still crap. Funny how anet nukes when it comes to nerfs but than gives us this useless crap lol. Ranger gets to swap pets while merged which is massive buff and thief gets 5 endurance on a Shadowstep lmao. I like the soulbeast change, am just saying it's funny.

[khogau.1985]

Anet, if you're targeting PvP and making changes, leave other game modes out of it. I just did IBS strikes to see how the shroud nerf affected gameplay overall. It feels bad now, got kicked out of shroud way more often, and was hard to keep doing usual rotation. Please also hotfix the skills NOT being greyed out while not having enough initiative to cast bug... 

[nopoet.2960]

You know what would be neat in the acro line,  some way to convert endurance to initiative.  Basically trade defense for offense. 

 

Been playing for a while now.  More often than not "Patch notes" just mean "Thief nerfs."

Edited October 4, 2022 by nopoet.2960

[Noc Rubu.5804]

35 minutes ago, Kanok.3027 said:

Not sure if this was intentional, but seems the nerfs to Consume Shadows also rolled over into PvE. Tried desperately to heal by exiting shroud at clutch moments and I got, like, nothing back. Yesterday, however, it was working just fine and was pretty great.

I thought this was a WvW patch?  hmmmm 🤣

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

The shroud nerf effects healing urself and allies as well as barrier support. You dont live long at all and cant much damage. Its broken.  Vitality increases shroud, yet shroud coefficient nerfed...useless now l, might as well autoattack.

 

No offense, but new guy im not impressed yet. Strike 1

[Kolly.9872]

22 minutes ago, nopoet.2960 said:

You know what would be neat in the acro line,  some way to convert endurance to initiative.  Basically trade defense for offense. 

 

Been playing for a while now.  More often than not "Patch notes" just mean "Thief nerfs."

It has been like this from 2012

Edited October 4, 2022 by Kolly.9872

[Player.2475]

You enjoyed playing Specter before this patch?
Too bad. You no longer heal your party with shroud more than you would with a single shadowstep, you almost never heal enough to give people barrier, and most of the time if you get hit once or twice during shroud, you'll lose it and have to spend the next minute regaining it!

Edited October 4, 2022 by Player.2475

[JaxLeo.7912]

27 minutes ago, Soupeod.5714 said:

I thought this was a WvW patch?  hmmmm 🤣

yeah, sadly this nerf was applied generally in all game modes

Edited October 4, 2022 by JaxLeo.7912

[Zacchary.6183]

My healspec build has 21k hp. The nerf has dropped max shadow force to 14k which is not enough HP to really do anything with. Consume shadows is useless with its 10% x 5 stacks, maxing out a potential heal at 7k assuming I don't get hit and pop out of shroud asap. A majority of Specter's healing capability came from shroud, but with that gutted as much as it is I don't see the point in even playing healspec (or Specter) anymore.

Thief has poor heal scaling, and so Consume Shadows was a nice way to bypass it. Requiring only vitality to increase its potency. But not only did the shadow force nerf hit its healing capabilities, but its barrier application as well since a majority of its barrier application comes from the Consume Shadows overheal and Shadestep barrier break combination. Specter's other source of barrier are mostly single target and pretty useless outside of a duo.  Shroud attacks may hit hard but its DPS isn't that spectacular. The Well of Bounty change was sound design-wise, but is now more useless in a group setting. And finally, force generation being percentage-based was not touched and therefore reducing the value of commitment required to fill your bar of shadow force.

Hard to Catch was actually one of the better traits in acro as it allowed a thief to cheat out of the beginning of a stunlock burst and hopefully use a dodge to avoid the rest of it. Even with its 5 minute CD it still had some use.  But now its "gain 8 endurance on shadowstep". This is paltry gains, especially since this would require thief to load up on shadowstep utilities to get much out of the trait. Though it might slightly supplement the line's vigor coverage, the only reason why I used Acro in the first place was Hard to Catch's anti-stunchain effect and Don't Stop.

Anet seems to be pushing thief gameplay towards shadowstep spam and I personally think this is a bad design path. Thief already annoys bad players with their shadowstep, stealth and evasion spam to the point all three mechanics were nerfed into obscurity in one way or another. I don't want to load up on shadowsteps to take advantage of these traits anet wants to push on us.

[nopoet.2960]

12 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Thief has poor heal scaling, and so Consume Shadows was a nice way to bypass it.

What if they increased the healing for consume shadows to 25% and it stacked it to 4 instead of 5?  That should help healing and maybe give some of the sustain back.  

[Carnifex.3275]

Boys.. no1 cares. Not like anet will listen 😄 Chill. Suck it up and relog to cVirtu. 

In all seriousness... it's just sad. Idk what else can you say. These nerfs shouldnt have happened in PvE at all. Atleast give us something in return then. Maybe more radius on Wells? Cuz alac spec isnt really used that often. Or more dmg? Cuz now we're dropping out of shroud alot more often which destroys DPS rota. Give some aoe heals? Cuz single target healing spec isn't really a thing, never even seen HealAlacSpecter. But somehow... we still got nerfed. 

Edited October 4, 2022 by Carnifex.3275

[Zacchary.6183]

10 minutes ago, nopoet.2960 said:

What if they increased the healing for consume shadows to 25% and it stacked it to 4 instead of 5?  That should help healing and maybe give some of the sustain back.  

Shroud is essentially useless with so little HP, so there is no point in staying in it. If they're going to nerf shroud HP they need to reverse Consume Shadow's nerf so Specter can have some semblance of support.

[Carnifex.3275]

2 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Shroud is essentially useless with so little HP, so there is no point in staying in it. If they're going to nerf shroud HP they need to reverse Consume Shadow's nerf so Specter can have some semblance of support.

At this point i don't even care anymore about alac specter. It's yet again just another DPS spec for Thief. So atleast give us back some damage and call it a day. With these changes it doesn't look like Anet will ever make Heal or Alac thief a thing.

Edited October 4, 2022 by Carnifex.3275

[Bern.9613]

1 hour ago, nopoet.2960 said:

You know what would be neat in the acro line,  some way to convert endurance to initiative.  Basically trade defense for offense. 

 

Been playing for a while now.  More often than not "Patch notes" just mean "Thief nerfs."

Initiative = more weapon skill usage = cringe = thief is op = 🤣😂 ANet is never going to let that happen.

[Carnifex.3275]

"We do see specter's reduced initiative pool as one of the tradeoffs we want to revisit eventually, but given its current power level we didn't want to do so in this update. "

So basically for DPS specter in PvE: lets wait 1.5 months to get 1 more extra #3 in our rotas. GG, well played, that should be sucha good change, it will totally make shroud nerf irrelevant 😄 

[Vismooth.4128]

4 minutes ago, Carnifex.3275 said:

"We do see specter's reduced initiative pool as one of the tradeoffs we want to revisit eventually, but given its current power level we didn't want to do so in this update. "

So basically for DPS specter in PvE: lets wait 1.5 months to get 1 more extra #3 in our rotas. GG, well played, that should be sucha good change, it will totally make shroud nerf irrelevant 😄 

And after that long, there would certainly be no more specter players to "enjoy" that "buff" either.
Positively thrilled to see the next playrate numbers update on wingman.

[AikijinX.6258]

On 10/4/2022 at 2:00 PM, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

We'll be keeping an eye on the strength of specter going forward and will be looking for an opportunity to restore the lost initiative once it's less dominant.

I have my reservations of this patch and have expressed it. But this vague-kitten comment makes me foam at the mouth. “Once it’s less dominant?” lol. So what is the time window for this? A week from now or a year from now, this is very vague and very irritating. Because as thieves, we know how to adapt and be successful with our class regardless of a ‘balance’.  But it seems like that is unfortunately to our detriment, because they only listen to the top 1-2 percentile of top Thieves. So theoretically we’ll never get this initiative restored or it won’t be until a very long time in the future.

Edited October 6, 2022 by AikijinX.6258

[keykey.9182]

2 hours ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

With the goal of making specters a bit easier to kill.

Thank goodness it's only a bit , I dread to think what would have happened if they went full commitment.

Nerf in PvE should have never happened. Such a random middle fing out of nowhere.....

Edited October 4, 2022 by keykey.9182