Guild Wars 2

Alright so I’m pretty sure we are all getting tired of seeing Thief OP threads posted everywhere on a constant basis. I’ve been wanting to make this thread for awhile now but have refrained because I really didn’t want to be put on the spot but I just don’t see this suggestion that much and only see nerf this, nerf that, adjust these numbers, L2P!, etc. So here it goes. Note: please read the summary.

In my opinion no matter how much the numbers are messed around with and nerfed on thieves we will always see people complaining about them for one reason and that is because of how Thieves can spam attacks over and over again and we will not see a decrease in these threads until Thieves are nerfed to the ground and not viable anymore, if every class was given the initiative system, or unless something is changed. That change would be the initiative system(primarily) and the class’s dependence on stealth. I request a complete class makeover.

Initiative
There are two main issues with initiative, one being on the Thief’s side and the other being on the Thief’s opponent’s side.

• Since Thieves have initiative it makes it so that they only truly have one attack that outputs damage. If they had multiple attacks that had good damage the Thief would only use the one that had the best cost of initiative per damage output ratio. There would be no point in using any other. Because of this all thieves will do the whole time they are attacking is the same thing over and over again which in my opinion is extremely boring as it is so repetitive. (Stealth Backstab Stealth Backstab/Teleport Pistolwhip Teleport Pistolwhip)
• On the opposing side it can be extremely annoying and aggravating and is seen as “spamming” although what they don’t see is that this is the only thing a Thief can do to attack you. Also, since a D/D or D/P thief have to stealth in order to do damage it is extremely annoying to see a Thief stealth and disappear every single couple of seconds or with S/P constantly and repeatedly teleport and immobilize you when you only have a certain amount of condi clears and it seems never ending.

Continued on next post

Stealth
I’m not talking about stealth overall but specifically for Thief. The main problem with stealth for Thief is that it is not just a defensive maneuver, they MUST use it for offense as well for certain weapon sets.

• The main problem with stealth overall is that it is just a guessing game when attacking your opponent and so is fine when it is limited to a degree. With thieves it is not limited and most importantly is the only way that they can deal damage.
• Because of this you will only ever see a Thief for 3-4 seconds when either his stealth has finished or he has succeeded in attacking you. There is no other reason for a thief to not be in stealth so besides those 3-4 seconds you will only always be guessing where to attack and when a thief doesn’t want to be hit because he has “Hide in Shadows” traited and needs to get rid of condis and regen all of his health, he won’t get hit because he’s going to move away from you and not toward you and you’re only guessing so might as well be defensive with your guess and protect yourself from backstab hopefully. Stealth doesn’t have a “true” counter. Note that this is only one example.

Summary
Now since there is the initiative system a thief is extremely predictable because it can only do one thing to do damage and everyone knows what that is. But also because of the initiative system, even if you stop it the first time because it’s predictable the thief can just do it again and again and again and the next time you won’t have those defenses. Stealth also becomes broken when a class cannot do anything without it because it is a tool that is so extremely powerful when it takes away the ability for one to see you or target you. These systems are also annoying for a Thief because it becomes so repetitive that it becomes boring. I mean all you do is the same attack over and over again. There is no diversity. I believe that you can take away the initiative system and the stealth dependence and completely redo all the weapon skills and traits and come up with a Thief that is still the best single target burst class as well as keeping it’s mobility the best and keeping it a powerful class. This is coming from someone who has more hours on his Thief than any other class. I’ve moved on because I got bored.

Let me know what you think. I know I’m going to get the usual Thieves coming in saying that I need to L2P and such but that’s definitely not the case. This would make Thieves more fun to play and play against and I would go straight back to my thief and never stop as that has always been the class/profession I’ve always picked in every game and this game until I got tired of the repetitiveness. Also, this is just the basis of the problem, I could go much deeper into it with examples and much more but this thread would be way too long. Thank you for reading and this is only my opinion.

I like the thoughts in the thread. I do feel you repeat your self a little in the second post.
The short version is this.
Because thieve’s have no a global cooldown instead of personal cooldowns for their skills, in every fight they get into they will use the most dps efficient skills they have and not use the others.

looking at the dagger main pistol off hand. we can see that they will focus on backstabbing, as the only other skill on the entire branch that does damage is their #3.
on the dagger; dagger item set they will again use back stabbing, this time because the only big single target damage skill they have aside from it is cloak and dagger, a skill that sets them up for a 0 initiative coster.

as to your post on stealth, there are realy only 2 ways that stealth could be built into the game. arenanet had the decision of making it incombat stealth or out of combat stealth.
In WOW, their thief type character has a long term stealth and I think only 1 incombat stealth trick, to offset this IT’S STATS LET IT HOLD ITS OWN IN 1V1 COMBAT WITH THE OTHER CLASSES. Because the thief has in combat stealth instead it’s ingame combat abilities are lower to where it can not hold its own vs other classes with most of its builds.

I realy like your viewing on initiative as thieve’s don’t so much spam skills as they try to use the most optimum options they have to win.

Unfortunately, for stealth to work in this game as an IN COMBAT version, combat vs the stealth classes(thief/mesmers) will always remain aggravating for some players. I don’t see any way to fix it without heavy rebuilds of both the thieve’s, mesmers, and probably ranger classes.

Gilhena.3691:

I like the thoughts in the thread. I do feel you repeat your self a little in the second post.
The short version is this.
Because thieve’s have no a global cooldown instead of personal cooldowns for their skills, in every fight they get into they will use the most dps efficient skills they have and not use the others.

looking at the dagger main pistol off hand. we can see that they will focus on backstabbing, as the only other skill on the entire branch that does damage is their #3.
on the dagger; dagger item set they will again use back stabbing, this time because the only big single target damage skill they have aside from it is cloak and dagger, a skill that sets them up for a 0 initiative coster.

as to your post on stealth, there are realy only 2 ways that stealth could be built into the game. arenanet had the decision of making it incombat stealth or out of combat stealth.
In WOW, their thief type character has a long term stealth and I think only 1 incombat stealth trick, to offset this IT’S STATS LET IT HOLD ITS OWN IN 1V1 COMBAT WITH THE OTHER CLASSES. Because the thief has in combat stealth instead it’s ingame combat abilities are lower to where it can not hold its own vs other classes with most of its builds.

I realy like your viewing on initiative as thieve’s don’t so much spam skills as they try to use the most optimum options they have to win.

Unfortunately, for stealth to work in this game as an IN COMBAT version, combat vs the stealth classes(thief/mesmers) will always remain aggravating for some players. I don’t see any way to fix it without heavy rebuilds of both the thieve’s, mesmers, and probably ranger classes.

Thank you and yes, I tend to repeat myself as writing papers and such has always been my worst area in school, although I did my best to explain. And yes, you completely get my post with that summary. What you’re saying with stealth’s issue I think my solution would take A LOT of the hate away. Reason being, they need to take stealth away from being completely dependent on those weapon sets which means taking away backstab. It also means taking stealth away from being a primarily offensive skill and more of a defensive one which like I said by taking backstab away as well as making stealth limited (maybe only via utilities). Of course this will require a complete rework of everything on thief and they would need to give them different attacks so that they can keep the definition of the Thief class being the most mobile as well as having the highest single target burst. Out of everything though, I believe the initiative is a bigger problem than stealth is although stealth is pretty high as well. But a lot of the stealth problems would probably be fixed with the change of initiative meaning the rework of the entire class.

Was hoping anyone else would have something to say on this subject. Its of course endless amounts of work I’m guessing but is needed if thieves are ever going to go anywhere imo although I understand all the new feature patch announcements are getting people attention more.

(Off topic rant about ‘that other game’, then on topic response, not trying to attack you op, or other poster(s) – rant is general about people commenting on stealth from wow. )
Keep in mind in wow, the common burst pvp spec, USED IT’S STEALTH SKILLS OUT OF STEALTH EVERY MINUTE FOR However many seconds, I can’t remember(more than 4, by far)? If you blew your breaks, their burst is back up before your stuff usually. Not to mention other goodies. Geez, did you guys even play a rogue?
Back on topic: we are counter-able, dynamic, and I like the range of playstyles available to us.

As always, things will be tweaked. Unless they announce total trait line revisions(complete overhaul), or just rebuilding the entire class, you’ll either fit in with the (op/up/stealth spamming/perma evading/etc) cool kids, or you won’t. I believe we’re stuck with what we have for the most part. I try and make due because everything other than my ele and thief are brain dead boring to me. You probably have more hours on the thief than I do; I’ve got two at 80, human and asura(still getting used to human cameras after ~900 on an asura!).

I certainly agree we should rebalance the initiative system to interact with certain mechanics(and weapons kills to a degree, but I digress), but I also feel changes like those should come once more glaring issues are resolved and perhaps other classes are seeing similar mechanic interactions(not calling for nerfs on any class directly, just my opinions on the matter) around the same time to indeed “shake things up”.

For the record, normally running d/d, I love fighting anything. I’ll poke anything just to see if I can. Other thieves especially. Any set/build(barring dire/plex of any class with a few interrupts – which is pain in the kitten no mater what, IMO).
(Speaking honest 1v1 roaming no portal bomb mid fight only to have 9 people jumping on your corpse…)
Landing a cnd on a stealthed target? Priceless.
Yanking one out of SR with a nice sw? Priceless.
Juking out hs spammers? Amusing, at best.
Learning the hard way, with no toughness on my gear? Still fun to me.
(Wvwvw mostly, if you can’t tell :p)

And cloak and dagger is 6 initiative if the cast goes through, hit or not. Dp also has hs(brutal at low hp) for damaging as well. And a nice interrupt for a decent cost and very low damage. It’s set is much less predictable in a prolonged fight with a good one. Than say d/d or the sword sets. Mainly because you could really use every skill on the bar for a reason other than mispresses, or ‘funsies’, but because it was a useful skill worth the ini no matter the build : builds support weapons, or should, as weapons give you the skills combat is based on.

Anet would never completely redo a class. In the end, what does posting this accomplish? People will still QQ daily about stealth. Other people will still tell the QQers to l2p. What did writing this accomplish? Other than a few people saying “yeah, thieves are OP, this would be so great if Anet did this”

Of course they’d never completely redo one! Lol. I could maybe see trait changes, but probably not the scope of what I was imagining.

I love my thief. I only play them mostly, and it’s all I will mostly.

We’re just discussing in a discussion forum.

I enjoy writing, how about you?

Too late in the game to really design a new class (what they would really have to do to “fix” things). Even if stealth were only available from utilities it wouldn’t stop people from having mild seizures because the target they were so skillfully 11111111’ing disappeared.

In summary it’s a great thought. I’d love to play a more “marauder” type character, but this far in to the game it just isn’t possible. Maybe in GW3 they will wise up and avoid stealth?

Here’s a thought though. I don’t think it’s stealth that makes thief so popular, I think it’s the ability to survive in a Zerg heavy environment. I see a LOT of warriors roaming these days as they are able to Zerg dodge with all their movement abilities.

I think you’d see more roaming class diversity if it weren’t for the Zerg sledgehammers roaming WvW.

I agree, that the currently kind of stealth, bring many problems with it and should change.

But I disagree about Initiative.
It’s right that they can use the same skill again, again and again, but that dont mean that we have to do it.
Quite the opposite, every thief who spam his attacks is very invulnerable against counters.

The Initiative is fine, how it is.
I see more problems in the cost/dmg relation from the most skills. Some are very cheap, while other are very high.
HS for example is too strong, at >50% Life. It could help alot (against the HS-spammer), if 20-35% from the dmg is move to the <25% part of this skill.
PW is fine how it is, because the evade effect runs not the full duration of PW and the “swing” of the pistol make it easy to dodge/block, while they are fixed in place.
Only a slight increase in the cost to 6 ini could be neccessary.

Just want to point out that even though the damage is small for most attacks does not mean that they are useless. In fact they are a utility skill in themselves. However the reason why you never see them is because this game is a numbers game meaning that burning through your enemy’s HP is more efficient than doing anything else.

On Topic: I wouldn’t mind if arenanet removed initiative, but then they would have to rebalance all of the weapon skills. The lack of damage and universal cooldown in a way balanced their spamability and utility.

The OP has interesting thoughts, but the thing is people like the resource management system that is iniative.

Another class could be designed with these things in mind when another class is introduced.

The thief’s iniative system is one of my biggest reasons for playing the thief. It’s got a higher level of resource management complexity, like the ele. These two professions have an entirely different way to look at skills. The thief’s system requires you to manage your resource and balance it’s use between offense and defense. The ele’s system requires you to keep track of offensive/defensive cool downs you have available and make sure you don’t lock yourself out of too many of them by attunement swapping improperly.

Outside of elementalist and thief I find the other classes to be a little boring, because thier design is such that you use dps combos on cooldown, and only use defensive skills when you see tells. There’s very little mangement of your resources required relatively speaking for the other 6 classes.

For me getting rid of iniative is getting rid of one of my favorite things about this game.

I argued the same point about Initiative encouraging using only the most effective skill. And often that’s only 1-2 skills.

But while that is certainly true it’s not the end of the argument. What is considered “most effective” should change at any given moment.

D/P is a great example of a weapon-set where all skills are useful and rewarding to use. It also has to pay attention to Initiative and can’t use it as liberally as some other builds.

D/D build for example only used C&D, Heartseeker and Backstab not only because they deal the most damage, but because the other skills are so useless. Neither Death Blossom nor Dancing Dagger has anything to offer a D/D build.

P/D is in the same boat and also only uses C&D and Sneak Attack, aside from the odd no. 3 attack.

S/P actually uses all skills as well. It just happens to be that 90% of the time Pistol Whip is the skill of choice because it does 3 important things: Interrupt, Damage and Evade.

I think if done right, Thief Initiative can be a much more engaging mechanic than cooldown management. Unfortunately it requires all skills to be valuable and resource-management to matter.

With the December update ANet actually made Initiative Management easier and more seamless than ever which made skill-spam just that much easier.

Dee Jay.2460:

With the December update ANet actually made Initiative Management easier and more seamless than ever which made skill-spam just that much easier.

They pretty much had to make this change, because the best way to play was with 1 trait setup that gave players even more iniative regen than what currently exists.

Remember that they nerfed all iniative gain traits by at least half and only increased base regen by 25%.

Really all that we lack is diversity. I play a half-bunker d/d condi build, a style that has problems due mostly to nerfs to deathblossom way back when. Originally, when it evaded for the full animation, it was a bit overpowered due to the spammable nature, but the core of the skill was an amazing thing that kep me playing it: It’s the only thief setup in which playing defensively is is most efficient way to kill an opponent.

Currently, it’s difficult because smart player know they can time CCs on the end of a DB animation and hit you while you’re locked in. If you time things right, you can still paly defensive bleed, but it’s lacking in that to play this kind of evasion-based setup you have to sacrifice tools or traits you really need to make it effective as a build.

In PvE it’s a fantastic build. It scales healing against large packs of trash, and it’s got plenty of evades to solo even the toughest champs, or melee the gnarliest bosses. It still, however, suffers from damage problems due to limited condition caps, and almost nonexistant condition removal (though some of the new sigil changes should help this a bit.)

Most of this stems from our poor trait selection. Traits available in critical strikes and shadow arts are by and large solid, meaningful, and impactful additions to the kitten nal of most thief builds. The other three lines, you end up taking a lot of filler that doesn’t help your build much just to get to the one Master or GM trait you actually wanted to use.

Evasion: This line is our alternative to stealth, but it lacks working and usable condition removal that makes it a viable option on the scale that we can use stealth.

Deadly Arts: For one half of our condition damage trees, this doesn’t provide nearly enough access to conditions. It’s also saddled with odd or broken traits that could be awesome if they were just given a slight facelift (hi, improvisation!)

Trickery: Not enough versatility in the early tiers. This is a condition/steal tree, but it is conspiciously absent of desirable condition-enabling traits. It’s great that we have some support options here, but there’s a lot of stuff here that’s so situational it’s gnerally worthless. Trickster? Maybe if it were viable to run a full 3-slots of those skills. Ricochet? Why does it feel like this and improvisation got switched on accident? Initial Strike? How isn’t this an Adept trait? Instinctual response? This is basically a choosable version of all of the problems with last refuge.