Guild Wars 2

Aveneo.2068:

So kinda more Assassin than Thief (ridiculous why they invented a new ‘class’ when they could have taken Assassin directly from GW1 imo).

You do realize that if Thieves are Assassins that it will be more OP since Assassins would not be Assassins without the condition Deep Wounds.

Yes, that crazy condition that I am glad that’s not part of GW2.

If you think that Thief can insta-gib you now, it would have been a lot worst if Thieves are Assassins. There will be a lot of shadow stepping, knockdowns, deep wounds, hexes…oh I’m thankful not to have to deal with those.

As for your main concern about the Steal range, you have a reasonable concern but I simply don’t see it the way you do, thus I disagree.

Aveneo.2068:

evilapprentice.6379:

Snip

You are correct that I am fed up with the Thief class and how they (or I) can just instagib any other (ranged) class whenever they (or I) want.

Profession Balance forums can be tricky – I only talk PvP. What thief does in WvW doesn’t factor into anything I talk about, because I’m talking strictly PvP here. Just something to be aware of.
Having said that, what ranged class doesn’t have tools to open up gaps? Melee has gap closers, range has gap openers – that’s how things work. Just off the top of my head I can’t think of a single ranged weapon that doesn’t have at least 1 skill that knocks back/immobilzes/cripples/evades away/grants swiftness etc etc etc. I admit this is off the top of my head, but at minimum the vast majority of ranged weapons have gap-opening tools on the weapon itself – many classes ALSO have utilities that can be used to open a gap (and yes, thief also has a utility that can close a gap)

As I saw another thread regarding gapclosers, I felt that they all need to be brought in line. After all, they are gapclosers and should not allow you to jump halfway across a football field. Hence my suggestion for the reduced range on Steal. A melee oriented character needs to work a little harder at getting into melee range when faced with a ranged character and not simply push a button and done.

900 is less than the max range of every classes ranged weapon (minus thieves). Not many players run long reach – it’s not nearly as generally useful as thrill of the crime (Remember, I’m talking PvP, not WvW, I have 0 wvw knowledge). Even if you assume the thief is running long range, realize theif’s Niche is mobility – other classes can do burst, other classes can do stealth (admittedly not as well, but theres access), sticking to their target is what thieves do. Realize that it comes at a cost (notice how thieves don’t get stability?)

At any rate, while I appreciate your reasoning for providing an objective view when posting, you have to admit that ‘clearly you don’t play a thief’ is not objective. And pointless blanket statements like that is what I had an issue with as I have gotten such remarks too much already when trying to have any discussion concerning the Thief class. So often I see ‘You don’t play Thief’ or ‘L2P’ as if that immediately invalidates any post; almost giving the impression that this is all the Thief players know how to post.

I appreciate you’re willingness to discuss. Please realize, 95% of players who come here to kitten about thief are not willing to discuss anything – their opinion is rock solid, and they’re just interested in convincing others to agree with them, not in a discussion. I’m not going to spend 10 minutes elaborating my opinion when 19 out of 20 times the response is “Doesn’t matter, don’t care, thief is broken” without any discussion. I apologize for treating you as such, but it’s just the safe bet at this point. Everyone thinks they know exactly how to fix thief (Most of them having never actually played the class), and it’s usually by nerfing them into a free kill – no offense intended, but your suggested steal range is insultingly bad, and it’s hard to believe you play a thief and think that it’s a completely fair and viable change.

Thief is broken and requires (a lot of) attention. And with attention I do not mean nerfs. They are certainly in need of a lot of improvement too, next to toning a few things down. That is my (objective/subjective) view on the matter. They should be more the sneaky/evading ‘Scout’. So kinda more Assassin than Thief (ridiculous why they invented a new ‘class’ when they could have taken Assassin directly from GW1 imo).

I continue to disagree that thief is “broken”, for the reasons listed above. Recall, thieves used to be great assassin’s, until the community complained about how much spike they did (I’m not judging that choice, just stating a fact). Thief’s current state is a direct consequence of players not liking being insta-gibbed by spike damage – which is fine, but realize if you take a class that was designed to do great spike damage with low survivability, then limit it’s damage, you’re going to need to give it tools to stick to its target and survive until the target is dead, or else they’re just free kills.

You’re advocating a complete overhaul of the class (a thief that can’t close gaps is a free kill) – Anet doesn’t have a great track record with minor/moderate changes, and their time frames for those minor/moderate changes are insanely long – it’s fair to assume thief isn’t going to be completely overhauled any time soon.

Very relevant to this is the introduction of Edge of the Mists, which has brought a lot of new (bad) players into WvW. D/D thieves feast on bad players; they punish people with bad builds, people out of position with poor situational awareness. Now, to some extent this is undesirable. Getting exploded in a couple hits when you have no idea what is going on is really frustrating, and D/D thieves are gorging themselves on EotM at the moment.

At the same time, against players that have some experience the whole ‘wombo combo FTW #YOLO’ falls off in effectiveness rapidly. With experience players dodge reflexively when the thief teleports, breaking up the combo. With experience people also tend to build tankier in general, and make better use of defensive skills. It’s a much different game than when you’re feasting on people who just wandered into WvW from CoF farming.

Also, remember that critical damage is getting a pretty hefty nerf pretty soon with the Ferocity change, which is going to hit this sort of gameplay the hardest. So there’s already something that will help in the pipeline at the same time that a bunch of new players are getting punched by it. There’s every reason to wait and see right now.

As for the skills under discussion, Cloak and Dagger does hit really hard, but it really does need to hit that hard. It is expensive and tricky to land against players who know how to move and dodge, and the payoff of landing one needs to be high to compensate for the cost and risk. Look at what happened when the damage was gutted in sPvP – the character disappeared entirely. Just ripping a bunch of damage off of C&D on its own is a really bad idea that’d gut the set.

That said, I think there’s an avenue to explore in lowering the initiative cost of C&D. If it did not cost as much, it would not need to hit nearly as hard to compensate for the risk of missing. This is admittedly playing with fire, but a 5 initiative C&D at, say, 25% less damage would certainly be worth discussing.

Mug is in a good place. A lot of its power is in the heal, which is completely wasted if you open a fight with steal. It’s no longer a universal trait with Fleet Shadow offering more reliable backstabs. I don’t see a really compelling reason to look at Mug over dozens of other issues at this time.

I do think a discussion about a lower range on steal is reasonable (say, down to 600 or so). The longer the range on steal, the harder it is to see a combo coming, and there’s definitely something to be gained in telegraphing it better. That said, there are so many movement skills with enormous range in the game, and once you’re past the OHKO level steal is used to stick to targets backing out with those skills. It’s worth discussing, but as part of a larger discussion of just how strong movement skills in this game are in PvP.

Ensign.2189:

Very relevant to this is the introduction of Edge of the Mists, which has brought a lot of new (bad) players into WvW. D/D thieves feast on bad players; they punish people with bad builds, people out of position with poor situational awareness. Now, to some extent this is undesirable. Getting exploded in a couple hits when you have no idea what is going on is really frustrating, and D/D thieves are gorging themselves on EotM at the moment.

At the same time, against players that have some experience the whole ‘wombo combo FTW #YOLO’ falls off in effectiveness rapidly. With experience players dodge reflexively when the thief teleports, breaking up the combo. With experience people also tend to build tankier in general, and make better use of defensive skills. It’s a much different game than when you’re feasting on people who just wandered into WvW from CoF farming.

It’s good for games to have an easy to use effective options. It gives new players a way to feel like they can compete. That option should by no means be the strongest thing around though (and DD/DP thieves are not). This vid has a good explanation.

If you’re a new eng or something… you’ll need to practice, but in the end you’ll be able to kill these thieves on a regular basis. Not willing to put in the time? Go roll a war or thief or something that has a better easy to use option. Just know that when you come up against a skilled player of some of the other classes… you’re gonna have a bad time.

Bazzoong.7145:

FLiP.7680:

Protection on CnD? Yeah, that would be awesome for P/D condi thieves

But no, seriously, this will break D/D builds.

One point is to make CnD useful for non-power/crit builds not just P/D also S/D would profit.

D/D would not be broken the damage will just be moved a bit, even the one-shot signet build will still work as it does now since that one is overkill anyway, if you eat the full Mug CnD BS combo with my suggestion in wvw you`d still be KITTENED (yeah I typed that out).

It already is, though. High-uptime stealth is a win for any build on a #5. It might not be a feature for other builds, but it’s stil a very good skill. Nerfing it doesn’t help the builds that don’t rely on it; it just hurts the builds that do.

Mug doesn’t need a reduction. It already doesn’t hit for a ton of damage and has a long cooldown comparatively as it’s tied to steal.

These would totally kill d/d thieves which are already considered fair/“meh” builds while it would buff the builds more commonly complained about such as s/d or force people into playing d/p heartseeker which nobody likes fighting against to remain competitive even in the WvW scene.

If you wanted to pull some of the burst potential off steal you could convert it from a raw damage + healing effect into a really powerful lifesteal effect. That would trade some of the damage against squishy targets for damage against heavy armor targets since lifesteal ignores armor.