Game Update Notes: August 20, 2024 (Thief)

[Asur.9178]

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Thief

• Using a lead attack skill will now always enable follow-up skills unless the skill is interrupted.
• Using a follow-up skill will now always enable finisher skills unless the skill is interrupted.
• Mantis Sting: Reduced the bleeding from 2 stacks for 6 seconds to 1 stack for 4 seconds in PvE only.
• Unsuspecting Strike: Fixed an issue that caused this skill to be affected by movement speed.
• Entangling Asp: Reduced the poison stacks from 2 for 6 seconds to 1 for 2 seconds in PvE only.
• Falling Spider: Increased the number of targets struck from 3 to 5. Reduced the bleeding and poison stacks from 2 for 7 seconds to 1 for 3.5 seconds in PvE only.
• Shattering Assault: Increased the number of targets struck from 3 to 5.
• Ashen Assault and Malicious Ashen Assault: Increased the attack range from 170 to 240. Reduced the bleeding and poison stacks from 4 for 8 seconds to 3 for 7 seconds in PvE only.

• Fixed an issue that prevented some spear skills from generating shadow force.
• Tactical Strike: Reduced the power coefficient from 1.33 to 1.1 in PvP only.
• Infiltrator's Return: Increased the initiative cost from 2 to 3 in PvP only.

Deadeye

• Mercy: Increased the cooldown from 30 seconds to 45 seconds in PvP only.
• Malicious Tactical Strike: Reduced the damage coefficient from 1.33 to 1.1 in PvP only.

Yup, sword is so strong that it needed nerfs in PvP to bring sword thieves in line with the other underperforming weapons, classes, and especs.

Edited August 20 by Asur.9178

[Isaac.1253]

Well...so the spear auto attack hasnt been buffed? 😕

Auto Attacking with the spear is a hard punishment...

[Geoff Fey.1035]

1 hour ago, Isaac.1253 said:

Auto Attacking with the spear is a hard punishment...

If you're using a power build there's almost no reason to ever use auto-attack.

• Skill 3 full chain costs 6 initiative and puts you into stealth.
• Stealth attack gives +4 initiative
• Initiative regains at 1/sec, whole chain taking 2-3 seconds

As long as you're hitting you're likely to always going to be gaining more initiative than you're spending by just doing 3-3-3-1 on repeat. Condi build is the exact same just replace 3 with 2 and need a utility skill that Stealths you.

If you're

• Deadeye, you're going to be drowning in stealth skills.
• Daredevil, you're going to be ruining lives with dodges.
• Specter, you got Shroud to make others weep.

[bq pd.2148]

missing the target cap increase for ashen assault in the patch notes, it was in the news post from august 7, is in the tooltip and actually works.

sadly malicious version did not get the target cap increase, neither in tooltip nor in execution. hoping this is 'just' a bug i made a thread in the bug forums, if that is their idea to balance down deadeye however, it is IMO the wrong skill to nerf the expert in stealth attacks.

have not tested the range increase, it is in the tooltip but not sure if it works for malicious one

Edited August 20 by bq pd.2148

[Zacchary.6183]

6 hours ago, Isaac.1253 said:

Well...so the spear auto attack hasnt been buffed? 😕

Auto Attacking with the spear is a hard punishment...

Its still critting 1500 per hit with 2400 power and 200% crit damage. Terrible. Going to shelve it until they fix the damage disparities on it.

Edited August 20 by Zacchary.6183

[FrancisN.9276]

That's it? A bunch of nerfs to condi without any buff to power coefficiency? I guess we have to wait until December patch.

[Isaac.1253]

13 hours ago, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

If you're using a power build there's almost no reason to ever use auto-attack.

• Skill 3 full chain costs 6 initiative and puts you into stealth.
• Stealth attack gives +4 initiative
• Initiative regains at 1/sec, whole chain taking 2-3 seconds

As long as you're hitting you're likely to always going to be gaining more initiative than you're spending by just doing 3-3-3-1 on repeat. Condi build is the exact same just replace 3 with 2 and need a utility skill that Stealths you.

If you're

• Deadeye, you're going to be drowning in stealth skills.
• Daredevil, you're going to be ruining lives with dodges.
• Specter, you got Shroud to make others weep.

You are absolutely right.

But I don't want to play like this the whole time:

Regarding auto attacks:

- Melee 1 should feel more impactful. It just somehow feels really weak. Power and condi wise.

- Range should at least have Pistol's (or at least Axe's) coefficients and stack duration ...or a chain? Spear 1 on range is slow and too weak.

 

Standing in front of a golem may feel nice with the spear, but in Open World (in the 3-4 hours I played yesterday) on the new map and the (new) rifts there are a lot of misses (through blind, dodge, increased movements of the new mobs). Making lead and follow-up attacks miss, lead to heavy decrease in DPS because follow-ups and finisher need preconditions (e.g. vulnerbility, weakness, cripple).

While misses of other weapons arent that punishing, because they still have a somewhat solid autoattack. (Still compared to other classes the condi weapons in terms of AA are still a joke).

 

I will stick to Axe/Dagger for now (or forever?) until they balance it a bit more.

[Geoff Fey.1035]

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While misses of other weapons arent that punishing, because they still have a somewhat solid autoattack. (Still compared to other classes the condi weapons in terms of AA are still a joke).

Spear is weighted heavily on chaining the skills. To increase auto-attack you'd have to decrease the skills effectiveness.

Yes, the blinds, blocks, and dodges that enemies employ are really dangerous to your flow, but the moment one of them gets crippled you can nuke their defiance bar from orbit (Skill 4), and if they don't have a defiance bar skill you can keep an enemy stunned for insane lengths of time.

It's really similar to Thief gameplay of stealthing and waiting to make that Backstab (Dagger) or Death's Judgement (Rifle), just instead of it being a setup+strike you are essentially setting up over a greater length of time.

I'm using Lord Hizen's Deadeye build (blinding powder instead of Caltrops); during SotO i used Axe/Dagger, now in JW I'm using Spear with zero trait changes and honestly I'm able to nearly facetank champions. Blinds/Blocks are your Kryptonite, but if you can finagle around them you're just laughing.

For mobs I've been considering swapping

• Premeditation for Payback and swap
• Relic of the Fractal for Relic of Atrocity (+15% lifesteal & damage)
• Blinding Powder going back to Caltrops

Chaining mobs down will mean you have nearly perma-venoms, meaning perma-lifesteal that does more damage and heals more, and near-perma cripple on enemies making Skill 4 always Daze (when needed) as well as bleeding AOE everywhere.

[Skullsox.9162]

I still have no clue why spear is a hybrid weapon, only to maybe not to look like the better power stick next to staff , and why on tyria is the leap skill not a leap to combo 🤦🤦
 I know they’ll never do this but if they just dropped the condis and went full into power I’d like it a bit more , in other words delete staff so you can make this better anet come on. 

Edited August 22 by Skullsox.9162

[thaniretouni.4762]

On 8/21/2024 at 9:00 AM, FrancisN.9276 said:

That's it? A bunch of nerfs to condi without any buff to power coefficiency? I guess we have to wait until December patch.

We just got another nerf. so now not only we cannot spam the lead attack to move fast after years of other catching up with us in speed and teleports etc, not only spear hits like a wet noodle in pvp and wvw, but now we cannot even stealth with the weapon to enable the stealth attack and gain superspeed for mobility with SA

[Voodoo.3201]

Ye anet nuked spear in 3 days🤣

[lvis.3824]

I don't understand Arenanet, i really dont.
Why do they hate thiefs ?
It was  the ONLY good thing with spear, to be able to stealth now and then, and 3 days it is gone. No compensation, nothing.
This weapon does have no finishers, no leaps, not projectiles nothing it's so sad 😞

 

One a side note, on every other professions the Spear hits like a truck and sometimes has rediculous abilities and the kittening thief spear has to be nerved.
The argument for the nerf is also so stupid, mirages, rangers, and thiefs can still "abuse" stealth , so will all this be deleted as well ?
 

[ArcanistSeven.8720]

ive already moved back to staff it does better damage and has better cleave its shame because spear feels good to play but numbers just aint there

Edited August 24 by ArcanistSeven.8720

[whooot.5784]

We basicly paid 25euro/dollar for a weapon that was playable 2 days.. GG Anet, now give my money back please you litteraly scammed us, backstabing in the genital part.

[Asur.9178]

Quote

• Shattering Assault: This skill now requires its attack to strike a target in order to apply stealth to the thief.

  

On 8/13/2024 at 4:40 PM, Asur.9178 said:

Their change to the way spear combo system works only makes SA stronger and completely invalidates a reason to even try anything else. The team is so clueless about Thief that they failed to recognize this. This means you will still keep playing SA, TR, and DE/DD...like literally every single build on Thief.

Furthermore, knowing history, they will "fix" this issue by increasing initiative costs instead of overhauling SA (which needs to be done) and buffing Acro appropriately, while also tweaking Trickery and base initiative to fix that large pile of problem - since those 3 things won't happen, they will take the shortcut, increase initiative cost and call it a day. This is what you should expect in the future from the weapon and the balance team.

Remember this?

The current shortcut was making it not stealth unless you hit something...but wait for that inevitable initiative increase as well. I mean they did it to sword randomly cause clearly sword Thieves were highly prevalent and overperforming in the gamemodes - so, expect more of it to keep happening.

So, now, spear not only sucks at mobility and damage, but it also sucks at sustain in PvP. As I said since day one of introduction, there's zero combo fields, zero finishers, zero boons, interaction with traits are completely missing because of core design, and stealth attack is terrible (especially in PvP) since it's a slow (as with nearly all the spear skills, except 4) backloaded multi-hit skill, and all in all, it sucks for PvP. Have fun playing PvE and hitting the golem though to make yourselves feel good about it.

Edited August 24 by Asur.9178

[FrancisN.9276]

7 hours ago, Asur.9178 said:

  

Remember this?

The current shortcut was making it not stealth unless you hit something...but wait for that inevitable initiative increase as well. I mean they did it to sword randomly cause clearly sword Thieves were highly prevalent and overperforming in the gamemodes - so, expect more of it to keep happening.

So, now, spear not only sucks at mobility and damage, but it also sucks at sustain in PvP. As I said since day one of introduction, there's zero combo fields, zero finishers, zero boons, interaction with traits are completely missing because of core design, and stealth attack is terrible (especially in PvP) since it's a slow (as with nearly all the spear skills, except 4) backloaded multi-hit skill, and all in all, it sucks for PvP. Have fun playing PvE and hitting the golem though to make yourselves feel good about it.

I remember Mukluk saying he was most excited about thief's spear than other profession's spear. I wonder what he will say on the next few days.

[nopoet.2960]

Ya'll realize that Shattering Assault doesn't cause revealed right?

[I Insanity I.3278]

Yeah, but why should it? Last skill in a chain that stealths. Working as intended.

[kash.9213]

I could understand regulating Stealth access, if, it didn't require a telegraphed chain of skills that have to happen in order, but maybe it's still fair and I'll get it after a while. What I'm not understanding is why there is a need to nerf an already regulated sequence on top of keeping damage pace and output up and down the weapon manageable for an opponent while also not providing creative or dynamic trait synergy or themes. Maybe there's some Relics that would be a good fit with it and some compounding output with lifesteals or boon rips. 

My early take is that the Spear feels like it was designed from Anets perspective for other class mains on their thief alts to hybrid head to toe with stats and food and be able to not have to think too much about what's going on under the hood too much. But then I do like the skills and their structure on their own and they do feel like they were inspired at some point in development, maybe towards something I'm not catching on to yet. 

 

 

[senftube.6081]

7 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

I could understand regulating Stealth access, if, it didn't require a telegraphed chain of skills that have to happen in order, but maybe it's still fair and I'll get it after a while. What I'm not understanding is why there is a need to nerf an already regulated sequence on top of keeping damage pace and output up and down the weapon manageable for an opponent while also not providing creative or dynamic trait synergy or themes. Maybe there's some Relics that would be a good fit with it and some compounding output with lifesteals or boon rips. 

My early take is that the Spear feels like it was designed from Anets perspective for other class mains on their thief alts to hybrid head to toe with stats and food and be able to not have to think too much about what's going on under the hood too much. But then I do like the skills and their structure on their own and they do feel like they were inspired at some point in development, maybe towards something I'm not catching on to yet. 

 

 

Bro Thief is the class with the most trashed Weaponsets. I mean that is a fact and it shows how bad Anet is to design something good for this class. With that Nerf the spear for thief is a joke in PvP and WvW. Spear = Trashed even more worse than Staff and Axe. I guess we can play S/D, D/P and DE rifle towards the Server Shutdown.

Edited August 26 by senftube.6081