Guild Wars 2

FUNCTIONALITY CHANGE TO STEALTH FOR ALL PROFESSIONS

• If a player attacks while in stealth, but “misses” an attack due to being out of range, blinded, blocked, evaded, obstructed, or if they struck an invulnerable target, that player gains the revealed debuff for 4 seconds.

THIEF BASE HP

• Thief base hp at level 80 increased from 10,805 to 15,082.
• The Thief’s hp now scales identically to Engineer, Ranger and Mesmer hp levels.

NEW CONDITION UNIQUE TO THE THIEF – STAGGERED

• Staggered foes cannot gain protection or stability. Staggering a foe removes up to 2 stacks of Defiant.
• Staggered does not stack in duration nor in intensity. If a staggered foe were to be staggered again, the second instance of staggered would simply overwrite the first instance.

[Steal]

• Range reduced from 900 to 600.

Stolen Skills by Profession (PvP)
[Mace Head Crack] (Guardian)

• Damage adjusted from current to 159 (0.5)
• Daze duration reduced from 4 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
• Now also inflicts staggered for 3 seconds.

[Throw Gunk] (Engineer)

• This skill now uses ground-targeting.
• This skill now has a “Radius: 180” skill fact in its description.

[Ice Shard Stab] (Elementalist)

• Damage adjusted from current to 159 (0.5)
• Chilled duration reduced from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Now also inflicts staggered for 3 seconds.

[Whirling Axe] (Warrior)

• Duration reduced from 3¼ seconds to 2¼ seconds.
• Number of attacks reduced from 15 to 10.

[Consume Plasma] (Mesmer)

• Cast-time reduced from 1 second to ½ second.
• All boon durations respectively decreased from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Now no longer grants stability.

Stealth Attack skills
[Surprise Shot] (1)

• Damage reduced from 202 (0.6) to 159 (0.5).

[Backstab] (1)

• Front damage reduced from 403 (1.2) to 302 (0.9).
• Back damage reduced from 806 (2.4) to 554 (2.0).
• Now also inflicts 12 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds when striking a foe from behind.
• This skill’s damage is applied before the vulnerability stacks.

[Sneak Attack] (1)

• Each strike now also inflicts 1 stack of vulnerability for 5 seconds.

Sword main-hand skills
[Slice] (1-1)

• Damage reduced from 269 (0.8) to 229 (0.65)

[Slash] (1-2)

• Damage reduced from 269 (0.8) to 229 (0.65)

[Crippling Strike] (1-3)

• Damage reduced from 437 (1.3) to 336 (1.0)

[Infiltrator’s Strike] (2-1)

• Initiative Cost: 4
• Cast-time: 1¼ second
• Dash at your foe to deliver an immobilizing strike. You gain 1 initiative if you strike a foe.
• Damage: 252 (0.75)
• Immobilize: 1 second
• Range: 600
  • Uses the Warrior banner [Sprint] attack animation.
  • If you strike a foe with this skill, it chains into another skill: [Infiltrator’s Return]

[Infiltrator’s Return] (2-2)

• Initiative Cost: 2
• Cast-time: 0
• Evade backwards and lose up to 1 condition.
• Evasion: ¾ second
• Evasion distance: 400
  • Condition removal occurs before the backwards evasion roll.
  • This chain skill remains active for up to 20 seconds.

Sword/Dagger combo skill
[Larcenous Strike] (3-2)

• Now has a 10-second cool-down.
• Now steals up to 2 boons.
• Damage reduced from 365 (1.5) to 336 (1.0)
• This chain skill always remains active for 3 seconds, even if it is not off cool-down.

Sword/Pistol combo skill
[Pistol Whip] (3-1)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Initiative cost: 3
• Stagger your foe with a pistol whip.
• Damage: 202 (0.5)
• Staggered: 2 seconds
• Range: 130
  • If you strike a foe with this skill, it chains into another skill: [Malicious Assault]

[Malicious Strike] (3-2)

• Cast-time: 1¼ second
• Initiative cost: 3
• Dash at your foe before leaping and delivering a devastating strike with your sword.
• Damage: 840 (2.5)
• Super Speed: 1 second
• Range: 900
  • This skill uses the Elementalist [Fiery Rush] attack animation.

Dagger main-hand skills
[Wild Strike] (1-2)

• Damage reduced from 286 (0.85) to 202 (0.5).

[Lotus Strike] (1-3)

• Damage reduced from 286 (0.85) to 252 (0.75).

[Heartseeker] (2)

• Damage at 100% – 50% hp level reduced from 336 (1.0) to 317 (0.85).
• Damage at 50% – 25% hp level reduced from 504 (1.5) to 462 (1.25).
• Damage at 25% – 0% hp level reduced from 672 (2.0) to 618 (1.6)
• Striking a foe at 25% – 0% hp level now also inflicts 10 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds.

Dagger/Dagger combo skill
[Death Blossom]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Initiative cost: 5
• Do an evasive attack in a target direction, striking and bleeding foes up to three times along the way. If you strike a foe with 3 or more stacks of bleeding, you also inflict vulnerability.
• Damage: (3x): 201 (0.6)
• Bleeding per strike (2): 5 seconds
• Vulnerability per strike vs bleeding foes (2): 10 seconds
• Number of strikes: 3
• Evasion: ¼ second
• Combo Finisher: Whirl
• Range: 130
• Attack range (radius) for each strike increased from 130 to 150. The total distance traveled when using this skill remains at 130 range.
• This skill is now a ground-targeted movement skill akin to [Whirlwind Attack]. What this means is that [Death Blossom] will now track across a targeted strip of land, attempting to strike all foes in its path instead of attempting to path over a selected target.

Dagger/Pistol combo skill
[Shadow Shot] (3-1)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Initiative cost: 4
• Fire a shot that marks your target if it hits.
• Damage: 202 (0.5)
• Mark duration: 3 seconds
• Range: 900
  • This skill is no longer unblockable.
  • Now chains into another skill: [Shadow Stab]
  • A small [Shadow Shot] skill icon appears over top of a target marked by [Shadow Shot].
  • If you strike a foe with this skill, it chains into another skill: [Shadow Stab].

[Shadow Stab] (3-2)

• Cast-time: 0
• Initiative cost: 0
• Shadowstep to your marked target and blind your foe with a dagger stab.
• Damage: 202 (0.5)
• Blind: 5 seconds
• Range: 900
  • Stab attack animation increased from current? to ½ second.
  • This chain skill remains active for up to 2.5 seconds.

Off-hand dagger skills
[Dancing Dagger] (4-1)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Initiative cost: 3
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Throw an oversized dagger that bounces between foes before returning to you. Foes that are struck by Dancing Dagger are crippled and bound to you for 5 seconds.
• Damage: 244 (0.75)
• Crippled: 3 seconds
• Bound duration: 5 seconds
• Maximum bound leash range: 900
• Number of bounces: 4
• Range: 900
  • This skill now uses the Mesmer [Mirror Blade] casting animation.
  • This skill now chains into another skill upon completion: [Dagger Draw]

[Dagger Draw] (4-2)

• Cast-time: 1½ seconds
• Recharge: 40 seconds
• Pull all foes bound by Dancing Dagger to you.
• Unblockable
• Range: 900
  • This skill uses the Lieutenant Kholer wire pull animation with a different audio cue.
  • This chain skill always remains active for 5 seconds, even if it is not off cool-down.

[Cloak and Dagger] (5-1)

• Damage reduced from 504 (1.0) to 336 (1.0)
• Vulnerability stacks increased from 3 stacks for 5 seconds to 10 stacks for 5 seconds.
  • This skill now chains into another skill upon completion: [Push].

[Push] (5-2)

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 35 seconds
• Knock your foe back with a quick push. If you push a staggered foe, you knock down that foe instead.
• Knock-back: 180
• Knock-down: 1 second
  • This skill only hits 1 target.
  • This chain skill always remains active for 5 seconds, even if it is not off cool-down.

Shortbow skills
[Trick Shot] (1) – NAME CHANGED TO: [Volatile Arrow] (1).

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Shoot an arrow at target foe. If you strike a poisoned foe, your arrow explodes, damaging nearby foes as well.
• Damage: 134 (0.4)
• Explosion damage: 179 (0.5)
• Explosion radius: 180
• Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% chance)
• Range: 900
  • After-cast adjusted from current to 0.15 seconds.

[Cluster Bomb] (2-1)

• Damage reduced from 487 (1.45) to 386 (1.0).
• Bleeding stacks changed from 1 stack for 4 seconds to 3 stacks for 5 seconds.
• Added a minimum range: 50
• This skill is no longer a Blast Finisher.

[Detonate Cluster] (2-2)

• Initiative cost increased from 0 to 1.
• Bleeding inflicted per explosion is now 1 stack for 5 seconds.
• This skill now has an automatic ¼-second cool-down imposed on it upon chaining to prevent immediate double-tap activation.
• This skill is now a Blast Finisher.

[Disabling Shot] (3-1)

• Retreating leap distance increased from 180(?) range to 400 range.
• Now chains into another skill upon activation: [Tangle Bomb].

[Tangle Bomb] (3-2)

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Fire a net-loaded bomb at target area. Detonate this bomb in mid-air to release a net that knock-downs and cripples targets.
• Minimum range: 50
• Range: 900
  • This chain skill always remains active for 5 seconds, even if it is not off cool-down.
  • This skill shares its projectile behaviour with that of Thief [Cluster Bomb].
  • This skill’s projectile is a bright-green colored Thief [Cluster Bomb].
  • This skill deals no damage or effects upon landing at the target location. The purpose of this skill’s ground-targeting is to allow the Thief to time the release of the chain skill.
  • This skill chains into another skill upon cast completion: [Release Net].

[Release Net] (3-3)

• Cast-time: 0
• Release the net from your Tangle Bomb to knock-down and cripple foes beneath it.
• Knock-down: 2 seconds
• Crippled: 5 seconds
• Radius: 240
  • This chain skill always remains active for the same amount of time as Thief [Detonate Cluster] in relation to its prerequisite skill: [Cluster Bomb].

[Choking Gas] (4-1)

• Radius reduced from 240 to 180.
• Poison duration per pulse reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
• Now chains into another skill upon activation: [Beguiling Haze].

[Beguiling Haze] (4-2)

• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Shoot an arrow that releases a gas that dazes your foe. If you struck a foe that was already poisoned, you also daze all foes adjacent to that foe and you gain stealth.
• Damage: 101 (0.3)
• Daze: 1 second
• Daze radius if striking a poisoned foe: 180
• Stealth: 3 seconds
• Range: 900
  • This chain skill always remains active for 3 seconds, even if it is not off cool-down.

Pistol main-hand skills
[Vital Shot] (1)

• Bleeding duration reduced from 4 seconds to 3 seconds.

[Body Shot] (2)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Initiative cost: 4
• Fire a shot that immobilizes and inflicts vulnerability. This attack has different effects based on the condition of your foe.
• Damage: 61 (0.2)
• Vulnerability (5): 5 seconds
• Immobilized: 1 second
• Effect vs burning foes: Explosion damage: 302 (0.9); Explosion radius: 180
• Effect vs disabled foes: Vulnerability (10): 5 seconds

Pistol/Dagger combo skill
[Shadow Strike]

• Shot damage reduced from 336 (1.25) to 314 (0.85).
  • If you strike a foe with this skill, it chains into another skill: [Incendiary Slug].

[Incendiary Slug]

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 6 seconds
• Fire an incendiary round that explodes at the target location, burning foes and leaving behind a field that damages foes.
• Explosion damage 65 (0.2)
• Explosion burning: 2 seconds
• Explosion radius: 150
• Field damage (4x): 1128 (3.6)
• Field duration: 4 seconds
• Radius: 150
• Combo Field: Fire
• Range: 900
  • This skill’s projectile shares its behaviour with that of Thief [Choking Gas].
  • This skill’s projectile uses the Elementalist [Fireball] projectile model.
  • The field created by this skill shares its pulse schedule with Elementalist [Lava Font].
  • This chain skill remains active for up to 3 seconds.

Pistol/Pistol combo skill
[Unload] (3-1)

• Damage per shot increased from 101 (0.3) to 101 (0.32).
• This skill now chains into another skill upon completion: [Desperado].

[Desperado] (3-2)

• Cast-time: 1 second
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Dash into your foe and unleash a blast from your pistols that sends your target flying.
• Dash damage: 118 (0.4)
• Dash range: 600
• Pistol blast damage: 386 (1.0)
• Pistol blast launch: 400
• Pistol blast range: 150
  • The dash part of this skill uses the Warrior [Bull’s Charge] animation.
  • The pistol blast part of this skill uses the Thief [Unload] animation for a single shot; the attack itself uses an Engineer [Blunderbuss] visual and audio effect.
  • This chain skill always remains active for 5 seconds, even if it is not off cool-down.

Off-hand pistol skills
[Headshot]

• Daze duration increased from ¼ second to ½ second.
• This skill now chains into another skill upon cast completion: [Crack Shot Frenzy]

[Crack Shot Frenzy]

• Cast-time: 1¾ seconds
• Recharge: 20 seconds
• Unleash a cloud of gunfire that damages foes and reflects projectiles.
• Damage (8x): 392 (1.6)
• Reflection duration: 2 seconds
• Range: 400
  • This skill uses a conical hit detection identical to Elementalist [Cone of Cold] for inflicting its damage.
  • While this skill is being channeled, a projectile-reflecting barrier surrounds the Thief.
  • The player can move while channeling this skill.
  • This chain skill always remains active for 10 seconds, even if it is not off cool-down.

Healing skills
[Withdraw]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Roll backward and evade attacks. Cures immobilized, chilled and crippled.
• Evade: ¾ second
  • This skill now chains into another skill upon cast-completion: [Recover].

[Recover]

• Cast-time: 1½ seconds
• Heal yourself with each pulse.
• Pulse healing: 1448 (0.5)
• Pulses: 3
  • This skill pulses healing once every ½ second.
  • This chain skill remains active for up to 10 seconds.

[Hide in Shadows]

• Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1¼ seconds.
• Healing increased from 5240 (0.5) to 5560 (0.75).
• Regeneration duration increased from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.

[Skelk Venom]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Recharge: 35 seconds
• Splash your foe with skelk venom and heal yourself. Allies that attack a foe that is coated in skelk venom gain health and remove conditions.
• Initial self heal: 4920 (0.75)
• Skelk venom (15 stacks; 5 second duration): Foes heal and remove a condition when they strike you.
• Skelk venom heal: 204 (0.2)
• Skelk venom conditions removed: 1
• Range: 1200
  • To apply the skelk venom, this skill uses a bright-green tinted Elementalist [Water Blast] projectile with a 600 range. The player struck by this attack gains the Skelk Venom stacks detailed in the skill’s description.
  • This skill’s projectile can be blocked and/or reflected.
  • A target splashed with skelk venom gains 25 stacks of a unique debuff called Skelk Venom. Players that strike a target coated with skelk venom heal and remove up to 1 condition. Each attacker has a 1-second internal cool-down on this effect.
  • When splashed with skelk venom, a player’s model turns a bright green similar to poison’s visual effect.

Deception skills
[Shadow Refuge]

• Cast-time increased from ¼ second to ¾ second.
• Recharge increased from 60 seconds to 75 seconds.
• Pulses reduced from 5 to 4.
• Stealth granted per pulse reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds.
• Duration reduced from 4 seconds to 3 seconds.

Trick skills
[Scorption Wire]

• Now also staggers the target for 2 seconds.

[Haste]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 40 seconds
• Gain endurance and super speed.
• Endurance gained: 25
• Super speed: 3 seconds
• Breaks stun.
  • This skill chains into another skill upon cast-completion: [Jungle Strike]

[Jungle Strike]

• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Deliver a leaping kick to your foe. If you strike a foe suffering from crippled, chilled or immobilize, you also inflict knock-down.
• Damage: 101 (0.3)
• Knock-down vs snared foes: 2 seconds
• Combo Finisher: Leap
• Range: 300
  • This chain skill remains active for up to 10 seconds.
  • This skill uses the Ranger [Kick] attack animation.

Trap skills
[Ambush]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 40 seconds
• Teleport to target location and summon an attacking thief at your former location.
• Teleport range: 600
• Thief duration: 20 seconds
• Breaks stun
  • This skill’s summon effect now only summons the melee-specialized female thief.
  • The Corrosive Traps (Deadly Arts – II) trait now inflicts its vulnerability stacks in a 180 radius at the Thief’s location when he/she activates this skill.

[Needle Trap]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGE
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Spring a trap that immobilizes and poisons foes that cross it.
• Trap duration: 3 seconds
• Damage: 101 (0.3)
• Immobilized: 2 seconds
• Poison: 6 seconds
• Unblockable
• Range: 300
  • This skill’s effect has a 5-second internal cool-down per target.
  • This skill now uses a unique model: Tall, bright-green needles jut out of the ground along this line’s AoE.
  • This skill uses the same hit-detection as Elementalist [Unsteady Ground]; this skill will not function if cast directly on top of a target, instead the target must run into the AoE.

[Tripwire]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Spring a trap that knocks down and cripples foes that cross it.
• Trap duration: 3 seconds
• Knock-down: 2 seconds
• Crippled: 5 seconds
• Unblockable
• Range: 300
  • This skill’s effect has a 5-second internal cool-down per target.
  • This skill now uses a unique model: Two wide logs on either ends of this skill’s AoE suspend a wide, grey wire across the AoE’s line.
  • This skill uses the same hit-detection as Elementalist [Unsteady Ground]; this skill will not function if cast directly on top of a target, instead the target must run into the AoE.

[Shadow Trap]

• Recharge reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.

Signet skills
[Assassin’s Signet] (passive)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• You gain might whenever you successfully evade an attack.
• Might (5): 5 seconds
• Cool-down: 5 seconds

[Assassin’s Signet] (active)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• The next time target foe blocks an attack, you bleed and deal damage to that foe.
• Assassin’s Signet (1): 10 seconds
• Damage: 302 (0.9)
• Bleeding (3): 5 seconds
• Unblockable
• Range: 900
  • This skill now applies 10 seconds of 1 stack of a unique debuff called Assassin’s Signet to the target enemy. Whenever that target would successfully block an attack while under the effects of Assassin’s Signet, this unique debuff decreases in stack by 1 and that foe takes the damage detailed in this skill’s description. The application of this debuff is unblockable.

[Infiltrator’s Signet] (passive)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Using a shadowstep or movement skill grants you initiative.
• Initiative gain: 1
• Cool-down: 10 seconds

[Infiltrator’s Signet] (active)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Teleport to target location.
• Breaks stun.
• Range: 900

[Signet of Agility] (passive)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• You gain fury and cure 1 condition whenever you successfully evade an attack.
• Fury: 5 seconds
• Cool-down: 10 seconds

[Signet of Agility] (active)

• Endurance gain reduced from 50 to 25.

Venom skills
[Devourer Venom]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 45 seconds
• Immobilize adjacent foes with a mist of devourer venom and evade backwards.
• Immobilized: 2 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Evasion: ¾ second
• Breaks stun
  • Evasion distance is 400 range.

[Ice Drake Venom]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Leap to target location and chill foes with a blast of ice drake venom.
• Damage: 336 (1.0)
• Damage radius: 180
• Chilled: 3 seconds
• Combo Finisher: Blast
• Range: 600
  • This skill uses the Warrior [Earthshaker] animation.
  • This skill plays a [Frozen Burst] visual animation when the strike lands.

[Skale Venom]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Throw a skale venom coated dagger that bounces between foes and allies. This dagger inflicts vulnerability and torment when it strikes a foe; and both grants regeneration and cures up to 1 condition when it strikes an ally.
• Damage: 211 (0.55)
• Vulnerability (3): 10 seconds
• Torment (2): 5 seconds
• Regeneration: 3 seconds
• Conditions cured: 1
• Number of bounces: 5
• Range: 900

[Spider Venom]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 20 seconds
• Throw a bomb packed with spider venom that explodes at target location, leaving behind a poisonous field.
• Damage: 263 (0.65)
• Field duration: 3 seconds
• Field pulse: 1 second
• Field poison per pulse: 3 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Combo Field: Poison
• Minimum range: 50
• Range: 900
  • This skill shares its projectile behaviour with that of Thief [Choking Gas].

[Basilisk Venom]

• Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1¼ seconds.
• Recharge increased from 45 seconds to 75 seconds.

Deadly Arts traits
Dagger Training (Deadly Arts – IX)

• Now also reduces recharges on dagger skills by 20%.

Potent Poison (Deadly Arts – V)

• REMOVED FROM THE GAME

Combined Training (Deadly Arts – X)

• Moved to Adept tier to replace Potent Poison.

NEW TRAIT – Ambush Vanguard (Deadly Arts – X)

• When you use a shadowstep skill or a movement skill, a thief ally ambushes your current target.
• Ambush thief duration: 20 seconds
• Cool-down: 60 seconds
  • This trait only triggers if the player has a valid target selected when he/she uses a movement or shadowstep skill.
  • This trait summons the male [Unload] Thief when it activates.
  • The ally thief appears directly next to the player’s selected target.

Improvisation (Deadly Arts – VII)

• Moved to Adept tier.

Mug (Deadly Arts – III)

• Moved to Master tier.
• Damage reduced from 366 to 286.
• Now also staggers the target for 3 seconds.

Panic Strike (Deadly Arts – XI) — NAME CHANGED TO — Evasive Pitfall (Deadly Arts — XI)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• When you successfully evade an attack, you lay a [Needle Trap] at your location.
• Cool-down: 30 seconds
  • This Needle Trap exists separately in the game from the utility skill version—although the two are identical. This allows the Thief to maintain up to two Needle Traps on the field if equipped with this trait and the utility skill.

Residual Venom (Deadly Arts – XII)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• When you use a venom skill, your next attack is boosted based on that venom’s attribute.
• Devourer Venom (1): Your next attack cripples (5 seconds) your foe.
• Ice Drake Venom (1): Your next attack chills (2 seconds) your foe.
• Skale Venom (1): Your next attack inflicts vulnerability (5 stacks; 10 seconds) on your foe and grants you regeneration (5 seconds).
• Spider Venom (1): Your next attack poisons (5 seconds) your foe.
• Basilisk Venom (1): Your next attack grants you protection (4 seconds).
• Skelk Venom (1): Your next attack heals you (Healing: 808 (0.2)).
  • The number of uses on these skills’ effects will decrease if an attack lands of if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed or Invulnerable.

Critical Strikes traits
Signets of Power (Critical Strikes – II)

• Might stacks granted by signet use reduced from 5 for 10 seconds to 3 for 10 seconds.

Ankle Shots (Critical Strikes — VII)

• Moved to adept tier.

Pistol Mastery (Critical Strikes – V)

• Moved to Master tier.
• Additional damage with pistols reduced from 10% to 5%.
• Now also reduces recharges on pistol skills by 20%.

Critical Haste (Critical Strikes – X) — NAME CHANGED TO — Trickster’s Initiative

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Using a Trick skill grants initiative.
• Initiative gain: 1

Shadow Arts traits
Cloaked in Shadow (Shadow Arts – VI)

• This trait now only procs once upon entering stealth (no longer pulses every 3 seconds while in stealth).
• This trait now has a 10-second internal cool-down.

Power Shots (Shadow Arts – VII)

• Now also reduces recharges on shortbow skills by 20%.

Leeching Venoms (Shadow Arts – IX)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Gain a stack of venom leech for 20 seconds each time you use a venom skill (maximum of 3 stacks at any time). When you strike a foe while under the effects of venom leech, you steal some health from that foe.
• Venom leech duration: 20 seconds
• Venom leech heal: 370 (0.2)
• Venom leech damage: 200 (0.07)
  • The number of venom leech stacks will decrease by 1 if an attack lands of if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed or Invulnerable.

Venomous Aura (Shadow Arts – XII)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• When you use a Venom skill, you and nearby allies gain 1 stack of Venomous Aura for 15 seconds (maximum of 1 stack at any time). For each stack of Venomous Aura that you have, conditions on you expire 15% faster and you take 5% less damage from attacks. Whenever you use a Venom skill, you also weaken and stagger nearby foes.
• Venomous Aura (1 stack; 20-second duration): Conditions on you expire 15% faster; you take 5% less damage.
• Venomous Aura ally effect radius when activated: 240
• Staggered: 2 seconds
• Weakened: 3 seconds
• Radius: 240

Acrobatics traits
Assassin’s Retreat (Acrobatics – IV)

• REMOVED FROM THE GAME.

NEW TRAIT – Trapper’s Dexterity (Acrobatics – IV)

• Shadow Trap now uses ground-targeting. Ambush, Tripwire and Needle Trap have increased ranges.
• [Tripwire] and [Needle Trap] range increase: 600
• [Ambush] range increase: 300
• [Shadow Trap] ground-targeted range: 900

Trickery traits
Preparedness (Trickery — 15 minor)

• This trait now replaces Initial Strike as a major Master trait (Trickery — XI).

Initial Strike (Trickery — XI)

• This trait replaces Preparedness as the master minor trait (15 points into Trickery)
• This trait now has a 20-second internal cool-down.

Sleight of Hand (Trickery – XII)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• When you steal, your next attack also dazes your target. Reduces steal recharge.
• Sleight of Hand daze: ½ second
• Sleight of Hand duration: 10 seconds
• Steal recharge reduction: 10%
  • When stealing under the effects of this trait, the Thief now gains 1 stack of Sleight of Hand which lasts for 10 seconds. Sleight of Hand is a buff similar to a venom buff. The number of Sleight of Hand stacks will still decrease by 1 if an attack lands of if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed or Invulnerable.

If ANet ever wants to get rid of the current thief playstyle they know where to look for a complete overhaul.

All I see in this is more heartseeker spam and signet build nerfs across the board.

So no thank you.

I’m just going to repost my post from the other thread talking about Thieves driving other glass cannons out of the meta

MonMalthias.4763:

The problem with Thief is that it’s a little too good against other Glass cannons, hence pushing them out of the meta (Elementalist, Mesmer), whilst being only middling or outright inferior against tougher builds like Condi-bunkers or just Bunkers in general.

• Part, but not _all of the problem can be traced back to Critical Damage. Most GC builds run little to no toughness, so getting hit by a Thief hurts. A lot. You can easily start a fight at 50% HP as a GC against a Thief, and then you’ve got small windows of opportunity to turn the fight around. Against D/P, you have to interrupt/CC the re-Stealth. Against S/D, you have to hit a clutch CC, or wait for when they try to burst, then counter.

• Outside of these windows of vulnerability; there is little opportunity for other Glass Cannons to counter-engage. Stealth remains difficult to counterplay for some classes, laughably easy for others. The solution is to build tanky DPS so you live longer to see more windows. But that leads to the original problem – other glass cannons are out-competed.

The solution is not going to be easy, but it’s going to involve the following:

• Moving some of the utility Thieves get from Stealth into other areas. Condition cleanse, Crit chance, that sort of thing.
• Making Stealth a Boon; thus giving skills with Boon Hate additional utility against Stealth. Mesmers in particular would have their matchups improved markedly by this one change.
  • Most importantly removing Stealth as a Boon should not inflict Revealed. With counterplay must come counter-counterplay – the Thief should be able to re-stealth after hitting Boon Hate. Obviously things like hitting people while Stealthed should still inflict Revealed.

• As for things like Backstab, the whole Stealth Opener thing should be revised to be just that: an Opener. Damage should not be frontloaded into Backstab. Instead, large (I’m talking 5, 10, 15 stacks) of Vulnerability should be inflicted. Snares like Cripple or Immobilise optional. (maybe through Traits)
  • Thief weapon sets should then be rebalanced to put more damage into the other skills. Overall damage output over time should be increased. Thief shouldn’t be a one-shot wonder, but something that hits harder and harder the more you can’t get them off your back.
  • This has the effect of making Thief less effective against other Glass Cannons as the window of counter-engagement has now increased. This also makes Thief more effective against Tanky DPS builds (assuming damage output over time is also increased)

Too many weapon sets rely on only 2-3 out of the 5 possible attacks because too much has been loaded into 1 skill whilst others are left weak because buffing them would make the weapon set OP.

• Underutilised skills should be reworked to provide Thief with more sustain i.e. Life Steal is an underlooked mechanic on Thief, but as a Protection/Toughness ignoring source of damage, Life Steal on Thief can be looked at as a way for Thief to counter bunkers.
• The aim is to enable Thief to stay engaged with an enemy for longer while being less dependant on, but no less assisted by, clutch Blinds/Dodges

TL:DR: The aim should be to:

• Make Thieves less time-starved, or “one shot wonders”. Thieves should be dealing damage, but it should not be all frontloaded from Stealth.
• Make Thieves less dependant on Stealth overall to deal their damage. Thieves should deal their damage just like everyone else – Revealed. They just require the tools to be able to do so like everyone else instead of using Stealth as a crutch.
• Clutch Blinds and Evades should still be an outstanding feature of the class, but must promote a skill floor like being conditional on dodging actual attacks, or actually hitting, or dealing bonus damage to target after target misses attack due to Blind.
• Squishy GCs should have their window of counter-engagement against Thieves extended, whilst Tanky DPS or Bunkers have theirs decreased i.e. through Vulnerability stacking or Toughness ignoring damage i.e. Life Steal.

There’s also a mini-debate within a debate (debate-ception) going on revolving around such a thief overhaul. Hopefully some of that can filter through to here.

evilapprentice.6379:

MonMalthias.4763:

snip

This is one of the best suggestions for thief I’ve heard in a long time – well thought out and articulated. What’s even more shocking, you’re talking about thief on the forums but not exaggerating or crying for nerfs,and it’s clear your familiar with how the class works! I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

What’s ultimately depressing is that these suggestions aren’t easy to implement – If we ever see them (and I doubt it), it’ll be 6+ months at minimum into the future.

phaeris.7604:

I come from a thief, recently switched to ele as thief didn’t have much synergy with my friends toons and was getting boring.

I played burst d/d spec and certain classes (elementalist, ranger, most thieves), were a guaranteed kill in sub 5 seconds. I would kill eles in my first combo. so sub 2 seconds.

Mesmers took a little more work, but not bad if you caught them unaware.

From an ele standpoint, when you’re wearing light armour, and lowest hitpoint tier, in WvW it stops you traiting for damage entirely as any no skill chump can C+D + steal you then heartseeker for 2-3k you a few times afterwards. So you end up with very little capability to deal damage and speccing alot of defence….or more commonly in pvp just not playing an ele and rolling a warrior, who laughs at every class he meets. Which explains the current issue with pvp matches being full of warriors and the dissapearance of elementalists and mesmers.

If you spec damage you’ll die within seconds to thieves/zerk warriors..if you spec defence you’ll die a bit slower, but won’t kill anyone. So why bother putting yourself through that annoyance.

Also…everyone targets the elementalist first for this reason. It’s like being teemo in LoL, you’re first target because everyone is aware you’ll either fall over or the fight you’ll put up won’t really put them in any significant danger. My friend loves it though, now people target me instead of him, whereas they used to target him and not my thief.

Xaylin.1860:

MonMalthias.4763:

…

TL:DR: The aim should be to:

• Make Thieves less time-starved, or “one shot wonders”. Thieves should be dealing damage, but it should not be all frontloaded from Stealth.
• Make Thieves less dependant on Stealth overall to deal their damage. Thieves should deal their damage just like everyone else – Revealed. They just require the tools to be able to do so like everyone else instead of using Stealth as a crutch.
• Clutch Blinds and Evades should still be an outstanding feature of the class, but must promote a skill floor like being conditional on dodging actual attacks, or actually hitting, or dealing bonus damage to target after target misses attack due to Blind.
• Squishy GCs should have their window of counter-engagement against Thieves extended, whilst Tanky DPS or Bunkers have theirs decreased i.e. through Vulnerability stacking or Toughness ignoring damage i.e. Life Steal.

Great post!

Stealth
Stealth certainly has its issues in GW2. In DAoC, for example, going back into stealth after attacking was a lot harder or even impossible. However, implementing your changes would make Shadow Arts totally useless. I personally would make going into stealth less attractive in general. Or just more difficult.

One idea which has been posted several times is changing the combo field of Blinding Powder into a dark field. I really like this suggestion. Blinding Powder could still blind on hit but the pulsing Blind could be removed. Leap stealthing would be prohibited. The original poster also suggested making dark fields stealth on projectile finishers. I disagree with that part of the suggestion. It would just move the perma-stealth issue from D/P to P/P. It would also be hard to control due to 20% projectile finishers and probably just cause unintentend reveals.

One shot wonders
I partly disagree here. There should be a way of playing the Thief in an Assassin style way. However, there got to be a bigger risk like in DAoC where you can’t get back into stealth after you used your backstab. As said earlier, I don’t think limiting stealth is the right solution here. However, Backstab and the other weapon#1 stealth skills could get a cooldown and only become available after this cooldown is done. As a result, Thieves won’t be able to burst that frequently. It also makes hiding in stealth less appealing because you can’t reapply your Backstab that frequently. Conclusively, Thieves might actually stay out of stealth longer to deal damage and use stealth more defensively.

caveman.5840:

every class but the thief has team support skills!

Got to disagree. Thieves do have support skills but most Thief players just don’t like them because they favour a different play style. Venoms are pretty nice for your group while they indeed might need some more tweaking. Smoke Screen and Shadow Refuge on the other hand are just plain great. They also provide great combo fields which you state Thieves do not have.

Xaylin.1860:

evilapprentice.6379:

Please stop saying “Perma-stealth” – it no longer exists in sPvP. The Dec 10th change rendered long-duration stealth impossible without the use of utilities, which Anet is fine with (and is fine from a balance standpoint) – thieves in sPvP can no longer stealth indefinitely.

Point taken. The word perma-stealth probably is inaccurate. The maximum duration of chained stealth might have decreased but stealth is still overused. Thieves might drop out of stealth more often. However, they instantly get back into it. Considering the mobility of Thieves the window of Revealed is a lousy joke for bursting them down. While I don’t think that the duration of Revealed should be increased I still think that Thieves should rely on stealth a lot less.

evilapprentice.6379:

This is an awful, awful suggestion that keeps cropping up on the forums in various forms. Backstab is already balanced around the current stealth timers – if you want a CD imposed on backstab, be prepared for a big damage increase (which is completely counter-productive). On top of all that, I don’t see how Mon advocated less stealth – his suggestion leaves stealth where it is for the most past.

From my point of view, Backstab is not sufficiently balanced by stealth timers. While I don’t think denying Thieves to go back into stealth is the right thing to do, I feel that the frequency of applying Backstabs is too high. Thus, damage is too stealth dependend. Lowering the frequency by introducing a cooldown doesn’t necessarily mean that the damage of Backstab has to increase. If needed, out of stealth weapon skills could be adjusted or it could apply Vulnerability as mentioned above. It advocates the same idea like Mon mentioned, making Backstab an opener.

Mon did also advocate less stealth through taking damage away from skills like Backstab. His rework of making stealth a boon results in a totally different stealth. Not sure how you assume this would leave stealth where it is.

evilapprentice.6379:

Venoms are awful – to be of any use, they the entirety of your spec dedicated to them (60 points and 5 traits), and even then they’re Meh – they’re a utility line with a long CD with no stunbreaker in the line, and their use is all PBAOE and instant, making coordination significantly harder for the benefits you receive than other classes support options.

I said they needed tweaking. But they far from useless. I personally enjoy using them in PvE. It’s also not true that you have to get all traits at once, only Venom Aura is mandatory. If their range was increased and a stunbreak was introduced to them they might make for a nice supportive low stealth build in WvW or hotjoin PvP. tPvP not so much but that doesn’t mean they suck in general.

However, that’s not the point of my post. I just said that there are support focussed skills on Thieves. I didn’t argue about their usefulness. But feel free to bash me.

evilapprentice.6379:

Shadow refuge has 1 real use – stomp prevention. Mind you, that’s a really good use.

Well… everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess? I personally value it.

Xaylin.1860:

Well… everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess? I personally value it.

evilapprentice.6379:

I wasn’t disagreeing – Shadow refuge is basically a must in tPvP, because it’s ability to counter stability/invuln stomp is tremendous.

I still to this day don’t understand the backstab hate. Yes the damage is big, but it’s less than burst rangers, axe or longbow warriors, zerker guards, and shatter mesmers.

Meanwhile also remaining less survivable than all of those builds, requires positioning skills and resource management.

Backstab builds in their entirety are used to blow up squishies and finish enemies at say 50% hp. Nobody should be killing another class at full health when beginning the fight at 50% hp.

The real problem is permastealth or stealth continuity. I’d much rather see the following done to stealth to balance out its play much better:

Upon entering stealth, applies a debuff timer for what should be the duration of the stealth skill used. After this timer expires, the revealed debuff is applied to the thief both removing him from stealth and preventing him from entering stealth again until revealed expires.

This simply prevents thieves from running 20 seconds of consecutive stealth and appearing from nowhere and instead requires they initiate from a visible distance while also preventing chain-stealth escapes/mid-fight resets/engages while still giving them an edge in positioning every few moments on the battlefield with both engage and disengage possibilities.

It can’t be exploited while still keeping stealth a relevant and useful tool in the hands of skilled players.

A few questions.
-Do the skills with damage nerfs get a base damage increase?
-How do you envision the pistol nerfs would effect Pistol/Dagger’s ability to function?
-What are you thoughts on how the x/D sets are supposed to operate now, having lost their natural stealth? How is Push worth it’s cooldown?

hooma.9642:

dont focus to much on stealth.. s/d and s/p are very strong too.

MonMalthias.4763 got it right. the problem for other gc is the low window of vulnerability on the thief for a short fight. but i think that is less a problem of stealth or blinding. its more a problem of initiative and no cooldowns.

d/p has the problem u cant interrupt the restealth on most classes, cause blinding powder shots a blinding projectile. unless a warrior who has zerkerstance up or a engi with shield or googles its nearly not interruptable or u need to be lucky that the projectile got blocked trought someone else. d/p shadow shot is on some gc enough to prevent big hits and on the same deliever high dmg.
s/d has the high evade problem + teleport, and the s/p got the invul. during pw, teleport and blindingfield for defense.

i think feline grace is 1 part of the problem and another bountiful theft. problem is the both are needed for longer fights. maybe other gc needs a more reliable way to ignore blinding like utility googles or zerkerstance and at least some viable source of vigor for a certain frame of time.

the overall goal should be to higher the amount of time of vulnerability to other gc and on the same part give thief more sustain for longer fights. i think the first part can only be achieved on other classes or we get rid of initiative.. all in all its a balancing problem! if the cost for skills without dimishing return is to low it favours spamming and if they are to high it hurts longer fights.

i think it would be overall healthier for the game if a dimishing return would exist for initiave.

On Hooma’s points there didn’t seem to be much debate. Diminishing Returns is a proposal that could work, but it should not be implemented as it would make playing Thief excessively intransparent. Not sure about this one.

Dual.8953:

A few questions.
-Do the skills with damage nerfs get a base damage increase?

No. The point of a damage nerf is reduce the overall damage. The damage nerfs are meant to balance out the overall increased survivability of the Thief with its increase to base hp along with other defensive measures incorporated into various weapon and utility skill designs.

Dual.8953:

-How do you envision the pistol nerfs would effect Pistol/Dagger’s ability to function?

It would become more of a defensive/attrition set-up that would specialize in defense and enemy movement control. I was thinking of maybe adjusting some of the torment and initiative cost to [Shadow Strike] in order to provide a little more pressure for the weapon set, though.

Dual.8953:

-What are you thoughts on how the x/D sets are supposed to operate now, having lost their natural stealth?

[Cloak and Dagger] will be incorporated into a part of any number of planned combination attacks that would involve multiple skills. It would remove the potential to perma-stealth one’s self, instead making x/D into possibly either a clutch positioning tool (using stealth to cover quick movement) or as a stealth skill battery (with a better cue now since the opponent would know that the Thief would only have 3 seconds to pull something off while in stealth via [Cloak and Dagger]).

Dual.8953:

How is Push worth it’s cooldown?

Use it on a staggered foe for a free full-power [Backstab] or [Tactical Strike]. Or just use it to set up any stealth-triggered 1 skill. Moreover, the 180-range knock-back can be good for point contention or just ruining someone’s stomp. Given that the skill can either knock-back or knock-down while also being tied to a stealth-granting prerequisite skill, it has enormous versatility that really should only be available once per encounter for it not to be overpowered.

Where’s the increased defense?

What you are suggesting kills the class

DeceiverX.8361:

I still to this day don’t understand the backstab hate. Yes the damage is big, but it’s less than burst rangers, axe or longbow warriors, zerker guards, and shatter mesmers.

Meanwhile also remaining less survivable than all of those builds, requires positioning skills and resource management.

Thirty points into Trickery and [Infiltrator’s Signet] typically take most any “resource management” out of a Thief’s worries.

Furthermore, I’m already increasing Thief survivability and sustainability across the board. That’s why damage can afford to come down.

DeceiverX.8361:

Backstab builds in their entirety are used to blow up squishies and finish enemies at say 50% hp. Nobody should be killing another class at full health when beginning the fight at 50% hp.

Finishing a foe at 50% hp from stealth personifies poor combat legibility.

This game is founded on the principles that combat should be legible because there are no healers/damage-mitigation classes constantly monitoring hp bars to make sure nobody gets vaporized in an instant. Legible combat provides an individual player a means of countering an opponent through the use of positioning, dodges or a damage mitigation skill (all of which typically have long cool-downs and limited durations).

DeceiverX.8361:

The real problem is permastealth or stealth continuity.

While stealth is indeed a problem in and of itself, front-loading huge amounts of damage onto every Thief skill is probably its biggest sin. Even without stealth, it’s tough to deal with a thief because of its constant instant-cast abilities, teleports, blind spam, evasion spam all combined with high damage on every attack. The whole class is a mess of issues that must be dealt with carefully.

Swagg.9236:

Stealth Attack skills
[Surprise Shot] (1)

• Recharge increased from 0 to 10 seconds.
• Damage reduced from 202 (0.6) to 159 (0.5).

[Tactical Strike] (1)

• Recharge increased from 0 to 10 seconds.
• Damage reduced from 302 (0.75) to 244 (0.75).
• Now also staggers the target for 2 seconds when striking a foe from behind.

[Backstab] (1)

• Recharge increased from 0 to 10 seconds.
• Front damage reduced from 403 (1.2) to 302 (0.9).
• Back damage reduced from 806 (2.4) to 554 (2.4).
• Now also staggers the target for 3 seconds when striking a foe from behind.
• Now also inflicts 10 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds when striking a foe from behind.

[Sneak Attack] (1)

• Recharge increased from 0 to 5 seconds.

I don’t even play Thief myself and I would have to say that putting a cooldown on Backstab or other stealth openers is not the way to go. Yes, on the one hand you limit Backstab availability, but this simply pushes Thieves to want to frontload even more of their damage due to the nerfs to damage. Thieves playing, say, D/P should be able to execute multiple backstabs over the course of the fight – but the damage should never be frontloaded.

• Instead the concept of escalating threat should be applied here. As I said, I don’t play Thief, so I won’t comment on numbers. What I will say is that reducing the coefficients very little for Front damage and not at all for Back/Side damage will simply push Thieves more towards things like the 1 minute Venom Thief that stacks Venoms for Might in order to get inordinately high, frontloaded Backstab damage.
• With that in mind, the Recharge should be removed. Front stabs should grant 5 stacks of Vulnerability. Side and Backstabs 10 stacks of Vulnerability. Damage overall should be decreased and coefficients moved to skills 2-5.

Azukas.1426:

Where’s the increased defense?

Base HP increase.
Addition of CC across the board within weapon skills.
Venom trait updates.
Devourer Venom.
Ambush.
Shadow Trap CD reduction.

I broadened the options for active defense and gave the thief substantial more passive defense with the base hp buff.

Azukas.1426:

What you are suggesting kills the class

It increases the Thief’s combat legibility while providing it with more well-defined roles and clutch functions outside of “Find target and press buttons to kill target.” The Thief is now more of a control/attrition/support class with various, substantial damage options scattered throughout each weapon set. The changes on the whole make the Thief into a better overall contributor to a fight as opposed to a guy that runs in to a fight and presses a bunch of buttons to kill something before he dies.

Looks like you haven’t gotten any smarter.

Swagg.9236:

Guild Wars 2 was a game with combat designed around the player anticipating an opponent’s moves and appearance by reading the opponent’s actions and gear,

No it wasn’t, otherwise there would be visible casting bars.

then either preparing a plan of attack or actively counter-playing properly after the opponent had engaged.

Then there’s the Thief.

Is that supposed to imply that thieves can’t be actively played against? That certainly seems to be what you’re saying, though in the context of your next statement

The Thief is a profession so innately crippled; with such a one-dimensional and predictable play-style that it requires evasion tanking, blind spamming, direct-to-target teleports and super-high damage on every attack in order to compete with any other class in the game in its only function: kill the selected target. In order to be remotely functional in GW2 combat, the Thief has to break every single rule in the “How to balance combat in GW2” book. This isn’t to say that other classes don’t break these rules in their own ways, but the Thief is founded on breaking those rules, making the entire class a mess that goes against the fundamental conventions that govern balanced GW2 combat.

You seem to be contradicting yourself (not to mention you have no evidence to back up your claims about how the game was designed).

Furthermore, Thief attacks, thanks to their universally high base damage

Empirically incorrect. First of all, thieves have no additional base damage stats; as a matter of fact, all classes have the same base offensive stats. As a result, what we really have to look at are damage coefficients. Let’s use one of the highest weapon coefficients that thief has- 1.5 on LS (we could compare with BS, but there are a ton of attacks that do lots of damage just barely wouldn’t make the list). So let’s see what skills have Standardized Weapon Coefficients greater than 1.35 (90% of LS’ damage)(including multi-hit attacks):

Elementalist

• Fire Grab
• Churning Earth
• Dragon Tooth
• Phoenix (Explosion)
• Drake’s Breath
• Burning Speed
• Meteor Shower
• Ice Spike
• Lightning Surge
• Eruption

Engineer

• Jump Shot
• Blunderbuss
• BoB
• Grenade Barrage
• Flame Jet
• Detonate Flame Blast

Guardian

• Whirling Wrath
• Faithful Strike
• Mighty Blow
• Smite (at least 5 strikes)
• Zealot’s Defense
• Sword Wave
• SoWrath (explosion)

Mesmer

• Phantasmal Berkserker
• Illusionary Warlock
• Confusing Images
• Blurred Frenzy
• Phantasmal Duelist
• Illusionary Riposte
• Phantasmal Swordsman
• Phantasmal Warden
• Mind Wrack (three clones)

Necromancer

• Ghastly Claws
• Life Siphon
• Life Transfer

Ranger

• Maul
• Counterattack
• Rapid Fire
• Barrage
• Hunter’s Call

Thief

• Backstab (back side)
• Heartseeker (< 50%)
• Unload
• Pistol Whip
• Cluster Bomb

Warrior

• Hundred Blades
• Rush
• Arcing Slice
• Fierce Blow
• Backbreaker
• Earthshaker
• Arcing Arrow
• Volley
• Kill Shot
• Triple Chop
• Eviscerate (any)
• Pulverize
• Counterblow
• Skull Crack
• Final Thrust (either)
• Whirling Axe

And that’s not including AoE pulses or conditions, neither of which thieves have in abundance. Of course, not all of these skills are very good, or hit often enough to always do more damage than LS, but many, many of them deal more damage than LS does anyways (100b only needs to hit a few times to do more damage, for instance), and to act like all of these skills are worse than thief’s skills is, quite frankly, absurd and ignorant. Thieves quite definitively do not have more damage “universally” than other classes do.

Swagg.9236:

Azukas.1426:

Where’s the increased defense?

Base HP increase.
Addition of CC across the board within weapon skills.
Venom trait updates.
Devourer Venom.
Ambush.
Shadow Trap CD reduction.

I broadened the options for active defense and gave the thief substantial more passive defense with the base hp buff.

Azukas.1426:

What you are suggesting kills the class

It increases the Thief’s combat legibility while providing it with more well-defined roles and clutch functions outside of “Find target and press buttons to kill target.” The Thief is now more of a control/attrition/support class with various, substantial damage options scattered throughout each weapon set. The changes on the whole make the Thief into a better overall contributor to a fight as opposed to a guy that runs in to a fight and presses a bunch of buttons to kill something before he dies.

More HPs is not more survivability. You can build a thief to be as tank as can be and still be the most squishy player on the map. You also stiffly nerfed ALL thief damage while destroying initiative management.

I applaud you for your time and effort but your patch notes reek of ignorance and bias.

in addition to whatever other effects come with them, force an opponent to face the issue that getting hit with any Thief attack typically bears an enormous consequence.

Like getting damage done to you? Because it’s not like you get 3s stunned by BS or something.

This, combined with the lack of Thief skill cool-downs, has the potential to turn fighting a Thief into guess work and twitchy skill spam rather than clutch counter-play governed by quick, conscious decision making.

“Has the potential” being the key phrase here. Most spammy thieves do nothing for their teams and are, as a general rule, godawful. To act like no thief requires uses “quick, conscious decision playing” (as you seem to be implying) is just flat-out abhorrently wrong.

To fix this issue and give the Thief a real place in GW2, I’ve made many changes to rebalance its damage,

By decreasing the damage of extremely powerful skills like Surprise Shot? Right. Also, I’ll remind you that the only class that fewer skills on the list I put above than thief is necro, though Ranger does manage to tie. Thieves, if anything, do very little damage, which is only offset by initiative and the fact that they tend to build to do lots and lots of damage while taking a lot themselves.

increase its base survivability,

It’s not like thief’s survivability is bad, it’s that thieves don’t build to be survivable most of the time.

introduce more combat utility outside of just stealth/blind spam

In order to “blind spam” you typically have to go 10 into SA. If you know anything about thief, you know that there is not a single meta build that runs even a single point into SA. As for stealth, only D/X and some P/D builds have any significant access to it. Either way, it’s one of the thief’s relatively unique mechanics anyways, and apart from S/D’s evasion, our only defensive mechanic. We also get lots of utility from Headshot, stomp insurance, support via Shadow Refuge, mobility, etc.

and also to give the Thief a unique condition that would give it a more defined role in both PvE and PvP.

It already has a well-defined roll.

With such changes as a whole, we can bring the Thief back down to a level which allows opponents counter-play opportunities without stripping the Thief of its ability to contribute to a fight.

So thief has no well-defined roll, but still needs to be brought “back down”? And, as you said earlier, thieves play very predictably, and yet opponents have no counter-play opportunities against it? What a terrible argument, truly.

MonMalthias.4763:

I don’t even play Thief myself and I would have to say that putting a cooldown on Backstab or other stealth openers is not the way to go. Yes, on the one hand you limit Backstab availability, but this simply pushes Thieves to want to frontload even more of their damage due to the nerfs to damage. Thieves playing, say, D/P should be able to execute multiple backstabs over the course of the fight – but the damage should never be frontloaded.

• Instead the concept of escalating threat should be applied here. As I said, I don’t play Thief, so I won’t comment on numbers. What I will say is that reducing the coefficients very little for Front damage and not at all for Back/Side damage will simply push Thieves more towards things like the 1 minute Venom Thief that stacks Venoms for Might in order to get inordinately high, frontloaded Backstab damage.
• With that in mind, the Recharge should be removed. Front stabs should grant 5 stacks of Vulnerability. Side and Backstabs 10 stacks of Vulnerability. Damage overall should be decreased and coefficients moved to skills 2-5.

The point of the cool-down was actually never necessarily to limit stealth skill availability, but rather to punish poor usage of stealth skills in general. As of right now, you can go into stealth and spam stealth skills with impunity until they hit a target because they lack both a cool-down and initiative cost. Perhaps 10 seconds was too much, though. Maybe 5 seconds across the board would be better. At least that way, it would be more in line with the base Revealed duration imposed on somebody that leaves stealth.

I do like the idea of adding a vulnerability stacking aspect to stealth skills, though (at least [Backstab] anyway). I’d better remove staggered from them, though. A 40% or 60% up-time on staggered just from stealth skills would be overpowered.

Swagg.9236:

MonMalthias.4763:

snip

The point of the cool-down was actually never necessarily to limit stealth skill availability, but rather to punish poor usage of stealth skills in general. As of right now, you can go into stealth and spam stealth skills with impunity until they hit a target because they lack both a cool-down and initiative cost. Perhaps 10 seconds was too much, though. Maybe 5 seconds across the board would be better. At least that way, it would be more in line with the base Revealed duration imposed on somebody that leaves stealth.

I do like the idea of adding a vulnerability stacking aspect to stealth skills, though (at least [Backstab] anyway). I’d better remove staggered from them, though. A 40% or 60% up-time on staggered just from stealth skills would be overpowered.

To be honest the problems with Stealth and Stealth openers doesn’t exist solely with Thief but Stealth in general. Yes, Thief gets the most benefit out of Stealth – stealth openers, condition cleanse and regeneration, initiative return – but the fact of the matter is that the Stealth-anti-Stealth metagame is woefully underdeveloped. The sole interaction players have upon encountering Stealth is to dodge predictively or spam AoE or put up Aegis and/or Blocks. It’s counterplay, sure, but it’s indirect counterplay. You’re playing defensively instead of trying to land skills to remove Stealth.

I mentioned in my earlier posts proposing to make Stealth a Boon, with all of the implications for Boon Hate that it entails. This is in order to increase the interaction of Stealth – with and against it – with more skills – without requiring extensive re-tooling and rebalancing like the Sic’em change for Ranger.

This would change the following matchups for Stealth (Thief in particular, also PU Mesmer):

• Mesmer against D/P or other Stealth oriented Thief builds through Null Field. Shatter Mesmers can sacrifice their shatter damage to proc Illusionary Persona/Shattered Concentration in order to counteract incoming Backstabs. Disenchanter may finally find a use.
• Engineer running Static Discharge and/or Throw Mine and/or Acidic Elixirs
• Necromancer – in particular Wellomancer running Well of Corruption.
• Elementalists need some form of Boon Hate, so they lose out for now, as do Rangers.
• Warrior and Guardian already have very good matchups against Thief so their interaction with Stealth should not need to be extended.

Further extensions of Boon hate towards other classes would then also increase their interaction against Stealth.

However overall the Stealth uptime or restealthing capability would be relatively unchanged for Thief.

• What remains now is to reduce Thief reliance on Stealth for survival and general utility as more skills will unstealth Thieves.
• Most importantly Boon Hate should not inflict Revealed on Thieves. Thieves are merely kicked out of Stealth, yet should retain the capability to re-stealth as it does cost Initiative and/or Cooldowns to do so. With counterplay there must come counter-counterplay

MonMalthias.4763:

words

I’m not too good at this game, but this is a pretty fantastic overview.

To review Swagg’s changes:

HP increase: why
Staggered: what does it flip to when switched?

mace head crack: would much rather, if it has to be changed, it had a longer cast time
throw gunk: sure, why not- makes it easier to combo off
ice shard stab: okay
whirling axe: why? seems fine at the moment
consume plasma: make it 7 seconds

stealth attacks in general: placing CDs here is very counterintuitive and i strongly doubt it will feel good at all to actually play because it adds another limitation to how you might want to play a thief.

sword:
auto: eh. feels weird that autos deal more damage than unloads
infiltrator’s strike: this seems to have no positive interaction with fields to counteract its negative interaction with fields
infiltrator’s return: more evasion?

flanking strike: why are you shaving EIGHT damage off this skill, are you just changing it because you couldn’t figure out anything to do?
larcenous strike: so s/d doesn’t really have any damage, between the auto nerf, this nerf and the tac strike nerf. also another cooldown to make the class feel incredibly awkward

pistol whip: so you’re supposed to do this twice and then do
malicious strike: okay there’s a nice big number except it isn’t marked as interacting with any combo fields and if it did interact with combo fields you could malicious strike through your pistol 5 and get stealth and tac strike and then start up the same combo again and just murder someone

i predict 100% s/p thieves

dagger changes:
yep looks like we’re going s/p

shadow shot: not sure why we’re changing this. i mean it might be cool but i dunno. kind of trivial if you ask me

dancing dagger: an oversized dagger is a sword. giving it some purpose beyond being a crappy cripple is nice, though
dagger draw: thieves already have this skill: scorpion wire
cloak and dagger: okay
push: the distance is only relevant in very tight avenues. i do not know why this skill exists- let alone why it is attached to CnD

shortbow:
1: why
2: bleeding changes reduce tactical depth, and why are you reducing the damage here?
3: why
4: this change can no longer quickly cover a large area in poison gas because you will be CD locked behind the chain skill after the second gas. awkward play. shortbow will be even easier to get away with, since inf. shot is unchanged. completely unnecessary

pistol:
1: why?
2: awkward
3b: this will look incredibly ridiculous, reads incredibly ridiculously, and overall does not seem like it will fit into the P/P kit.
4a: i have no idea why you are increasing the daze here because that is not the point of the ability
4b: how does a cloud of gunfire reflect projectiles
also this is where staggered completely breaks down because it’s obvious you’ve put that chain lock on CD here because allowing headshots to be constantly fired while the target is staggered would be utterly ridiculous. while it is a necessary balancing mechanic, i imagine it would also be incredibly frustrating to actually play with.

Why not change the profession skill to “die and relase loot bag”, that would at least have been honest. But you can’t even be that.

As the Centaurs say, not worth the effort.

Arganthium.5638:

Swagg.9236:

Guild Wars 2 was a game with combat designed around the player anticipating an opponent’s moves and appearance by reading the opponent’s actions and gear,

No it wasn’t, otherwise there would be visible casting bars.

The only thing that cast bars would do for GW2 would be to turn it into a seizure machine for epileptics. Cast bars for offensive attacks don’t mean anything if all the offensive attack is a teleport or has a cast-time that of 1/2-second or less (even a 3/4-second cast-time is pushing it). Cast bar information in GW2 would mostly blur by like a stock ticker that haphazardly vomited out ticker tape at mach speed. That’s the issue.

To be brief, the lack of a dedicated healer makes this game’s combat balance dependent on any given player being able to read his/her opponent’s attack cues. Without a profession to constantly manage everybody’s red bars, it means that there’s nobody to save a player from instant or near-instant offensive attacks (either through passive damage reduction or snap health recovery). That technically means that such types of offensive skills shouldn’t exist in this game and all of the heavy damage should gravitate to well-cued, recharge-bound attack skills with clear animations so as to promote a legible combat environment in which players can survive with their dodges, positioning and clutch damage-mitigation skills.

I understand the devs want reaction based combat, however, I thieves do have too much front loaded damage with close to 0 counterplay. Staggered is a good idea and would make fighting a thief far more interesting from a tactical point of view. At the moment its simply spam aoe (when on a proff that has such) and hope for the best. Giving the thief some ramp up to damage offset by an increase in survivability not reliant on stealth would be good for the overall game imo.

Swagg.9236:

…
[Consume Plasma] (Mesmer)

• Cast-time reduced from 1 second to ½ second.
• All boon durations respectively decreased from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Now no longer grants stability.

Okay, aside from all the other nerfs (control+f “reduce” or “decrease” or “increase”… and count), I’m sorry i mean to say remakes or redesign (does that sound less offensive? more sugary?), this one is kittening gold. No even platinum…
Yes thieves in their current state have way too much access to stability… This is a brilliant redesign, nvm the 10s to 5s … but removing stability is just, you had to have a PhD to come up with that brilliant idea.

Man I wish I can merge this thread with my nerf wish list… so many great ideas….

I want all these changes to go through!

Swagg.9236:

Swordskills
Sword/Dagger combo skill
[Flanking Strike] (3-1)

• Damage reduced from 252 (0.75) to 244 (0.75).

[Larcenous Strike] (3-2)

• Now has a 10-second cool-down.
• Now steals up to 2 boons.
• Damage reduced from 365 (1.5) to 314 (1.0)
• This chain skill always remains active for 3 seconds, even if it is not off cool-down.

… this as an example …..

If you rly want to tell us you were “balancing” the thief, you failed.
Cool-downs making Initiative useless …. and you also want to decrease dmg Output of nearly every skills, also decreasing escape Options but giving nothing real into surviability.
Where did you take your foundations of These “Balance” changes for the Thief, also for other classes?! I saw your open more threads for other classes, too.
For gods sake this will never come true.
Devs already said, We feel that the Thief is in a decent place right now

please at least learn the basics.. i said it to u before. u cant put a dmgvalue, cause its total depending on armor, power and weapon. only a skill coeff. and even then its hard to figure out the dps without attackspeed, activationtime, recharge and delay after usage.
daze durations of > 1 and less then the next full value makes no sense except u consider all +daze/stun duration things to at least come to the a full value. all < 1 is just for interrupt.

and for the rest of your post.. nice attempt, but the thief has 1 main problem besides stealth and teleports. thats the whole initiativesystem.. either the cost for skills is to high or to less. u will never ever find the perfect value in all situations! without recharge all that complete overhauls u try make is worthless and just a change of the symptom but not of the source.

Swagg.9236:

DeceiverX.8361:

I still to this day don’t understand the backstab hate. Yes the damage is big, but it’s less than burst rangers, axe or longbow warriors, zerker guards, and shatter mesmers.

Meanwhile also remaining less survivable than all of those builds, requires positioning skills and resource management.

Thirty points into Trickery and [Infiltrator’s Signet] typically take most any “resource management” out of a Thief’s worries.

Furthermore, I’m already increasing Thief survivability and sustainability across the board. That’s why damage can afford to come down.

I’m sorry but giving us 50% more hp is going to accommodate for massive nerfs in every skill, burst damage reduction that as I already stated is not even the biggest burst damage, and of course adjust us into being a competitive class? I’m sorry but you’re absolutely incorrect here. I’d also like to point out that backstab builds that actually hurt, notably ones in sPvP, are full class cannon, and are played by people skilled enough to do well with glass cannon. All of the above builds which strictly have better burst damage have more survivability, teamfight utility, and are overall more impactful in a given fight than a thief. Your gripe is with stealth, not with damage.

I’d also like to point out that any build running 30 trickery is going to have pathetic damage throughput and shouldn’t be bursting people down even remotely well.

Swagg.9236:

DeceiverX.8361:

Backstab builds in their entirety are used to blow up squishies and finish enemies at say 50% hp. Nobody should be killing another class at full health when beginning the fight at 50% hp.

Finishing a foe at 50% hp from stealth personifies poor combat legibility.

This game is founded on the principles that combat should be legible because there are no healers/damage-mitigation classes constantly monitoring hp bars to make sure nobody gets vaporized in an instant. Legible combat provides an individual player a means of countering an opponent through the use of positioning, dodges or a damage mitigation skill (all of which typically have long cool-downs and limited durations).

So again, you’re stating that because a thief can burst on par with most other classes, but can do so because he gets to surprise the person, the damage needs to come down. Your problem again lies in permastealth/chain stealth which I just offered a very insightful fix to resolve.

You’re also stating that the thief class should not be capable of bursting a squishy who is at half health while also running a dedicated burst build and is inherently squishy as well. I don’t know if you even play thief, but I’m going to tell you now that thief burst isn’t very good in sPvP and even dedicated builds still under-perform the burst of a lot of other strictly better combat classes.

You also stated that the thief class is so predictable in your original post. If they’re so predictable, why is this burst such a bad thing and why is it not countered with skilled play?

Unless you’d like to also tell me that at 50% hp you expect to fight off the thief for an extended period of time but are content with ultimately losing every time due to the health difference. This makes no sense seeing as all you’re doing at this point is just being useless until you die/respawn, anyways and admitting there’s not inherent flaw with the class itself but that you shouldn’t be able to fight off a full hp target at half hp if both are of equal skill.

Swagg.9236:

DeceiverX.8361:

The real problem is permastealth or stealth continuity.

While stealth is indeed a problem in and of itself, front-loading huge amounts of damage onto every Thief skill is probably its biggest sin. Even without stealth, it’s tough to deal with a thief because of its constant instant-cast abilities, teleports, blind spam, evasion spam all combined with high damage on every attack. The whole class is a mess of issues that must be dealt with carefully.

This whole paragraph is just factually wrong.

I’m sorry, where is this front-loading occurring? Last I checked, the powerful burst skills the thief has are backstab and pistol whip. I’ve already clarified why backstab is justified, seeing as it is also less bursty than the aforementioned skills/builds, and of course, it’s so easy to counter with proper character pivoting, which the others again cannot be countered by. And pistol whip isn’t front-loaded with damage at all. It’s such a pathetically scrubby skill that the only people who die to this are either just strictly bad players or ones who got caught with no utilities, heals, impairment breakers, and low health, a mix which under any circumstances is justified with being killed by any class.

Instant-cast abilities? Like you mean the initiative resource mechanic for no cooldowns or the fact that the utilities have no cast animation/time? Initiative is supposed to not have cooldowns, hence the resource pool, and the lack of casting time exists for all classes depending on the type of utility skill used.

Teleports? Okay, I see steal. Unless that is, you want to sacrifice your utility skills, traits, and stealth to run two or three teleports, all of which are on 25+ second cooldowns.

Blind spam exists solely on pistol offhand. Again, this is a D/P and S/P problem only, which as it appears, you buffed S/P. If the blind spam is a problem, complain about that. This has nothing to do with stab damage throughput and ultimately by reducing it will force people out of D/D into D/P blindspam because that’s just about the only viable build you left them with to use.

Of course, D/P permastealth is also a problem because blind spam grants near permastealth. Oh looky, more problems with a given weapon and not the class itself, nor the damage it deals.

Evasion spam? I see a thief can get four consecutive dodges once every 30 seconds or so. You said combat should be legible through the use of dodges and mitigation, right? Well, as it stands, the thief has no mitigation, and thus must also occupy a utility slot to have more dodges. Even building acrobatics doesn’t yield dodge spamming but simply a faster endurance regeneration speed effect. How about instead of crying about a thief dodging your hits, you play such a strategy by blowing the thief up after he consumes such dodges, or toss AoE’s which are located at the end of his dodge frames, funnel his positioning elsewhere, etc.? Again, if they’re so predictable, why is this a problem?

High damage on every attack? Sorry, more incorrect statements. Thief DPS is strictly lower than most of the other class’s when you run the numbers. Ultimately I think you’re mistaking getting scrubbed by heartseeker noobs or getting gibbed by thieves happily running 11k hp with 30/30/x/x/x builds in berserker gear who blow their utilities to focus you down.

theif is fine, stop asking for buffs where it is not needed.

MonMalthias.4763:

Xaylin.1860:

evilapprentice.6379:

Jeez… I’m not sure if I want to take even more bashing for voicing my opinion.

Swagg.9236:

Trap skills
[Ambush]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 40 seconds
• Teleport to target location and summon an attacking thief at your former location.
• Teleport range: 600
• Thief duration: 20 seconds
• Breaks stun
• This skill’s summon effect now only summons the melee-specialized female thief.

I’m sure the highlighted change is purely based on practical thoughts. But it made me laugh pretty hard. Thank you very much.

Swagg.9236:

THIEF BASE HP

• Thief base hp at level 80 increased from 10,805 to 15,082.
• The Thief’s hp now scales identically to Engineer, Ranger and Mesmer hp levels.

NEW CONDITION UNIQUE TO THE THIEF – STAGGERED

• Staggered foes cannot gain protection or stability. Staggering a foe removes up to 2 stacks of Defiant.
• Staggered does not stack in duration nor in intensity. If a staggered foe were to be staggered again, the second instance of staggered would simply overwrite the first instance.

You want to give a class that has boon stealing a condition that blocks protection or stability or both if you had your way………/facepalm.

The Primary.6371:

Swagg.9236:

THIEF BASE HP

• Thief base hp at level 80 increased from 10,805 to 15,082.
• The Thief’s hp now scales identically to Engineer, Ranger and Mesmer hp levels.

NEW CONDITION UNIQUE TO THE THIEF – STAGGERED

• Staggered foes cannot gain protection or stability. Staggering a foe removes up to 2 stacks of Defiant.
• Staggered does not stack in duration nor in intensity. If a staggered foe were to be staggered again, the second instance of staggered would simply overwrite the first instance.

You want to give a class that has boon stealing a condition that blocks protection or stability or both if you had your way………/facepalm.

Dude this is a joke thread… let’s suppose the changes did go through, the thief would be worse off then it currently is… if you don’t like the thief, you should be supporting his ideas… (because overall…)

5k HP increase and a new condition at the expense of 200 nerfs… he even put cooldowns on some skills… LOL this is a joke…

DeceiverX.8361:

So again, you’re stating that because a thief can burst on par with most other classes..

Spike damage of such magnitude does not belong in Guild Wars 2. Every instance of such levels of burst damage has to be toned down or changed outright. No class deserves it. No class needs it. This game isn’t built to handle it.