Guild Wars 2

Okay first off, I’m going to preface this by saying that I think thief is – contrary to many people’s opinion – for the most part, in a good state of balance. Personally, the area where I’d like to see the class improved the most would be to have all weapon skills have some REAL purpose in a fight. Currently D/P and Shortbow are the only weapon sets, in my mind, that are the most balanced weapon sets around this idea. S/P is mind-numbingly boring and an easy spec to play. S/D is a bit tougher to play now, but still viable (though in my opinion still boring to play) – Dagger offhand is in a terrible state right now. D/D Thieves are a one-trick-pony, and that’s boring. It doesn’t help that Deathblossom and Dancing Dagger are terrible skills.

This being said, I’m here to talk about some of the precieved “cheese” revolving around backstab builds. Usually they revolve around perma stealth – which, for the record, sees no relevant play in tpvp. In order for perma stealth to work, the team you’re up against needs to be really bad as it can be beaten, at the very least, with proper teamwork. Much of the spam that many people complain about can be beaten with a few well timed hits – this is the nature of going all-in with spam. As someone has stated before on these forums, “It’s about as cheesy as saying spamming low kick in fighting games is cheesy.” However, where the thief shines (at least where good thieves shine) is their ability to be unpredictable.

Let’s side-step a bit and examine a skill in the thief’s kitten nal: Shadow Trap. Shadow Trap is, aforementioned, a trap that is laid down in wait for someone to trigger it. If no one triggers it, the thief can cast a 1.5 second spell (about the time it takes to cast basilisk venom) to port him back to its location. Doing so is a stunbreaker and grants the thief some temporary health regen. If someone triggers the trap, the trap skill then turns into a shadow return skill in which the thief has the option to teleport back to the behind of the target that triggered it while in stealth – basically prepping for a shadow attack. What people might not know, when the thief teleports back to its target, there is a black circular shroud that appears at the feet of the thief. It only occurs for about a half a second.

Okay now lets step forward and discuss our current situation – perma stealth backstab thieves. Many people assume if you’re playing D/P, then you must be spamming 2 through smoke fields all day. In reality, they might be fighting a D/P trickery build which doesn’t do this. Regardless these people who have complained about D/P haven’t played enough of the thief class to recognize what a thief can and cannot do. As anyone who has played enough of the class can tell you, if you’re spamming heartseeker through smoke fields, you’re not going to have enough initiative to reliably use virtually anything else on the set – this is why I don’t play perma stealth as, just like D/D, it’s a one-trick-pony. The Tessa personally introduced me to her legendary perma stealth build, I was immediately turned off to it for this very reason. If you choose to use anything else, you run the risk of being exposed for too long, and a perma stealth thief (being the nature of Shadow Arts traits) wants to be in stealth for as long as possible and out of stealth for as least as possible. Thus, perma stealth thieves are very predictable. So because of this, good players know how to deal with them.

HOWEVER:

A lot of the complaints are about how the backstab is unpredictable. To a certain extent, it is. To another, it isn’t. Fighting a thief, and fighting as a thief, is all about the mind games – getting into the head of your opponent and spotting how they operate. Being able to fool the opponent by mixing things up and to easily read them at the same time is what separates the good thieves from the bad. However I am constantly asking myself, “Is the class/spec I play (D/P trickery) really that bad?” For the most part, or rather regarding most concerns, I think not. In other areas, though, I think it might have the potential to be improved. (to be continued)

It takes about 3/4ths of a second to activate backstab. Forget what the tooltip tells you, tooltips in this game are terribly designed and outright wrong in some cases. The cast time of backstab is about 3/4ths of a second. Here is my proposal: Just like shadow trap generates a black shroud at the feet of the thief when he ports back to his target, what if Backstab generated that same effect for about a 1/2 a second each time it was activated? What will this do?

Well as the biggest benefit for d/p perma stealth, every time they blow a backstab (flailing wildly in the air) the shroud appears. This would discourage this activity, allow the thief to keep stealth, and allow the opponent a better opportunity to protect their backside and retaliate. Thieves have no access to protection or aegis, or high levels of armor, or elemental auras, and limited amount of heals/health pool. So going into melee range as a thief is very dangerous if you don’t have full awareness of what you are doing.

I imagine it would have about the same level of a telegraph as a point-blank clusterbomb shot – which is reasonable. However obviously I wouldn’t know exactly as its not part of the game beyond shadow trap.

The animation is already in the game, which is a huge plus, as it just means they could easily apply it to the skill.

• It would have minimal changes to the d/p trickery set which, in my opinion, is one of the more balanced specs in the game – you don’t spam backstab with it as backstab is often paired with a port. From a personal perspective, it is the closest thing to a cripshot ranger for me – which I adored in GW1. I say minimal changes because the biggest thing you need to land is the steal on d/p trickery which always lands first. If anything, it would harm the infiltrator signet + backstab the most, as you don’t have the daze to cover your backstab. That being said, it might also harm the bassi => infiltrator signet => backstab, as you rarely want to use your bassi with steal because that will waste a cooldown, but I don’t think it would change it by much. If anything, the bassi hit allows you to easily land your steal item skills – which the stolen item skills are really strong anyway, so it would (in some ways) merit the change.

• With regard to things like aegis or blind: Bad thieves will backstab into them. Good thieves will use 4 initiative to clear it with a headshot – not revealing them or providing the shroud.

• With regards to D/D: that set alone just needs some major help. It’s a one-trick-pony, but has easy (cheaper) access to stealth that is more immediate than D/P. The better D/D thieves occasionally wait and continue to CnD people until they see an opening for a backstab (watch yishis). I don’t have much reliable play on D/D (again, it’s boring to me) so I can’t say too much about it.

• Sword stealth attack needs major help as the stealth skill is terrible. So in order to merit the shroud on sword stealth attack, it needs to be better. It used to be good with a 2 second daze, but now it’s not worth it – you can’t reliably interrupt anything with it as the aftercast on things like cloak and dagger takes ages.

• Shortbow stealth attack is in a perfect spot right now – so I don’t think it needs the shroud. It has a telegraph, but does minimal damage and gives the thief some range to work with.

• As with shortbow, pistol also has a well-telegraphed stealth attack.

So yeah, maybe placing a shroud underneath the feet of the thief before they backstab might provide the telegraph people are asking for. That being said, a lot of other things would have to change as well – I’m looking at you, fresh air ele.

But maybe not. Maybe I’m just succumbing to the players who say 6-pool zerg rush is OP. I don’t know.