Guild Wars 2

A bit late for x-mas, sorry.
Onto the fake patchnote bandwagon we go!

(New!) Vote for your favorites.
http://strawpoll.me/978841

This will only include my opinions over thousands of hours and multiple tournaments over the course of playing Thief competitively. I won’t be attempting to analyze underlying problems of other classes but instead more deeply analyze Thief as only I and few others can.
I’ve given this a ton of thought over the past few days, about 6 hours writing up the first draft (the original document was ~5x as long including in-depth analysis but I thought ‘meh, tl;dr.’). But if this even sparks one idea for change for some red out there, it’ll be worth it.

I present; Jump.doc.
http://pastebin.com/dvMYb77F

Goals: Massively raise the skill floor to be efficient with S/D builds along with nerfs aimed at endurance regen, tone down Trickery builds, and greatly promote build diversity across multiple weapon skills, utilities, and traits as well as tackling “1-button” playstyles present in sets like S/x and P/P increasing depth. And to also rework the Shadow Arts traitline discouraging camping stealth for extreme periods of time making it more of an attractive choice in PvP.

Thief

Skills

Disabling Shot – Added a ~0.15 second aftercast to add counterplay and discourage endless chaining of this skill for evasion purposes.

Headshot – Daze duration increased to the original amount (pre-nerf) when interrupting the target.

Dancing Dagger – Increased cost from 3 to 5 initiative. Damage increased by 33% (up to 66% from 50% of the original). Now stuns first foe hit when hit from behind for 0.25 seconds. Increased aftercast by 50%. (optional:) If stun is triggered, no additional bounces are applied.

Heartseeker – Increased aftercast by 30%.

Cloak and Dagger – Increased cast time by 10%. Decreased aftercast by 33%. Increased damage to the original amount up from 66% to match WvW and PvE.

[Leaping] Death Blossom – This skill now ignores aftercasts and cancels other skills in queue (except for Death Blossom). Increased initiative cost by 1 to 5 from 4. Increased damage by 25%. Reduced bleed duration by a similar amount.

Tactical Strike – Increased daze duration by 0.5 seconds.

Larcenous Strike – If target has 4 or more boons, this skill steals 2 boons.. Decreased damage by 10%. Increased cost from 2 to 4 initiative. This ability now restores 2 initiative upon hitting a target.

Pistol Whip – Increased damage by 15%. Increased initiative cost by 1 to 6 from 5. This ability now dazes for half duration when hitting from the front and stuns when hitting from the side or behind the foe.

Vital Shot – Increased rate of fire by 20%, with focus on decreasing the aftercast.

Unload – Reduced base damage by 25%. Damage is now increased by 15% of the new base damage per condition on target (eg. 109% original damage at 3 conditions). Increased initiative cost from 5 to 6. Now chains into “Laced Shot” for 5 seconds.

(New) Laced Shot – Stays toggled for 5 seconds. Cost 3 initiative. 0.50 second cast. 214 base damage. 100% projectile finisher. 900 range. Transfers 1 condition to your target.

Infiltrator’s Return – Increased initiative cost from 2 to 3. Cast time reduced to 0.10 seconds from 0.25 seconds. This ability now ignores aftercasts and cancels skills in queue.



Utilities

Blinding Powder – This skill is now a stunbreak. Increased cooldown to 50 seconds from 40.

Ice Drake Venom – combined with Spider Venom. The next three attacks chill and poison foes.

Scorpion Wire (Thanks to ensoriki)- Improved heatseeking to 100%. Now steals 1 boon (Applied before pull, same priority list as Bountiful Theft). Increased cooldown from 20 to 45 seconds.

Roll for Initiative – Reduced cooldown to 45 seconds from 60.

Infiltrator’s Signet – Increased cooldown to 35 seconds from 30.

Tripwire – Increased damage by 250% to 256 from 73. Cooldown lowered to 25 from 30.

Needle Trap – Increased damage by 250% to 283 from 81. Cooldown lowered to 25 from 30.

Ambush Trap – Thief’s health increased by 33%. Cooldown lowered to 25 from 30.

Shadow Refuge – Increased cooldown to 70 from 60.

Shadowstep – Increased cooldown to 55 from 50.


Heals

Hide in Shadows – Now removes torment.

Signet of Malice – Reduced active base heal by 50%. Your next attack will steal 50% damage dealt as health. Application is removed upon miss. Increased cooldown to 25 seconds from 15.


Elites

Dagger Storm – reduced cooldown to 75 seconds from 90. Increased rate of fire (and therefore dps) by 25%. Decreased duration from 8 to 6 seconds.

Thieves Guild – reduced cooldown to 165 seconds from 180. Increased Thieves’ health by 33%.

Traits

Improvosation – Instead of bundles, this trait now gives bonus damage if you are in posession of a stolen skill. Stealing now instead reduces the recharge on all utility and elites by 5 seconds.

Quick Venoms – Added additional effect: When applied, Venoms reduce the recharge of each of all recharging venoms by 1 second per strike. This can only occur once per strike (non-stackable).

(New) Deadly Arts, Master: Malicious Daggers – 50% chance to inflict torment with critical strikes from dagger attacks. 2 stacks for 3 seconds. 5 second ICD.

Dagger Training – Increased dagger damage by 6% for each Dagger you are weilding.

Added New (Critical Strikes, Master) Trait, Critical Berserking – Immunity to retaliation on critical strikes.

Hidden Killer – Now instead adds 30% Critical Chance while in stealth. Adds a static 10% Critical Damage.

Executioner – Reduced extra damage when target is below 50% from 20% to 15%.

Last Refuge – Now gives a buff that gives stealth on your next attack at 25% health.

Shadow Protector – When stealthing an ally, both players are also given protection for 2 seconds.

Hidden Assassin – Now gives 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds when entering stealth. No longer re-applies itself during stealth (from previously stacking 10 or more times).

Shadow’s Rejuvenation – This trait now instead instantly restores health upon entering stealth rather than over time. Base: ~750hp.
Alternatively: Renamed to “Leeching Shadows” – Stealth attacks now heal the user for a (similar) base amount.

Feline Grace – Reduced effectiveness of this trait by 20%.

Hard to Catch – Immunity from 1 crowd-control effect. Buff: your next dodge roll within 5 seconds costs no endurance. 60 second cooldown.

Assassin’s Reward – Increased base healing recieved significantly.

Ricochet – Moved to adept tier.

Trickster – Additionally, this trait applies 1 stack of confusion for 5 seconds on interrupting foes (5 second cooldown).

Sleight of Hand – Decreased steal cooldown reduction to 10% from 20%.

Trickery Traitline – Decreased steal recharge reduction gained from traitpoints spent by 33%.



Sigils

Sigil of Superior Energy – decreased endurance restore from 50% to 33% (maybe 25-30%).



Runes

Runes of Perplexity – Introduced Runes of Perplexity to pvp. Reduced internal cooldown on (6) effect from 8 to 5 seconds. Decreased amount of confusion stacks from 5 to 2.
Lowered (4) set effect to 1 stack from 3. Decreased cooldown from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.

Runes of Lyssa – Increased internal cooldown to 60 from 45 seconds.

Runes of Vampyrism – (6) Changed to drop all conditions when hit below 20% health and become mist.

Runes of the Ogre – Increased Rock Dog’s health by 33% and moved from (4) to (6) effect. Reduced damage of (6) effect to 2% from 4% and moved to (4) effect.



General

Added a new UI option to toggle internal cooldown tracking.

Max stealth duration cap in PvP has been reduced to 8 seconds from 14.

All “Inflict X on hit or critical strike” traits/sigils/effects from all professions now instead give a visible buff that applies the effect on the player’s next attack. This is lost upon being blocked/evaded/etc.

Any questions about any particular change I’d love to answer/discuss it. Otherwise feel free to point out any flaws or your favorite changes you’d like to see!

My personal favorite: the changes to P/P and confusion. It has the possibility of becoming the most intricate and fun set since D/P using every skill in the kit. And could even be built 3 ways (condi/hybrid/power) to boot!

Im pretty sure that every change you said is legit but i dont think that thief needs so many changes..Its already a very fun classes to play, it has high skill ceiling that means that you can enjoy playing with a thief for a long time..

I dont know, why dont you try to suggest some changes in other classes too?So we can see the whole forest and not just a tree (even tho its beautifull)

Dardamaniac.1295:

Im pretty sure that every change you said is legit but i dont think that thief needs so many changes..Its already a very fun classes to play, it has high skill ceiling that means that you can enjoy playing with a thief for a long time..

I dont know, why dont you try to suggest some changes in other classes too?So we can see the whole forest and not just a tree (even tho its beautifull)

I’d love to, but I don’t feel qualified enough. I wouldn’t be able to offer anything more than very vague/general opinions such as making the hand-glows on Necromancer mark casts be made more visible/differentiated or giving a particle trail effect on the Warrior’s longbow immobilize and slowing the speed a bit.

I like the ideas around making more incentive to play D/D. Also interesting way to make P/P fit ‘both’ damage and condition roles.

No changes to the blind fields?

Good stuff Jumper.

Aquin.3192:

I like the ideas around making more incentive to play D/D. Also interesting way to make P/P fit ‘both’ damage and condition roles.

No changes to the blind fields?

I’m not sure what you mean by that. Black Powder is in a really good spot when it comes to D/P and the proposed P/P.
It’s just S/P that has little room for it to be used. I was attempting to combat this (also applies to headshot) in my list via increasing the cost and damage (and positioning to incentivize the use of headshot) of Pistol Whip, making headshot and bpowder more attractive choices for moments when utility outweighed damage.

Dancing dagger: YES!

Looks like you have been having trouble winning with the thief lately and now you really want it buffed. And everyone knows that d/d thief used to be stronger than meta thief is now. No need to buff it.

Dancing dagger (currently) has to be one of the worst skills in the game. A single shortbow AUTO ATTACK is both more reliable and does more damage.

Rezz.8019:

—snip—

Look closely. There are quite heavy nerfs to both meta builds (s/d acrobat and d/p trickery).

There are also no tournaments /to/ win unless you’re referring to the one Acandis is planning.

Rezz.8019:

everyone knows that d/d thief used to be stronger than meta thief is now. No need to buff it.

The only advantage D/D used to hold over D/P used to be Dancing Dagger for multi-target damage.
Mind you, this was also a time before high tier players started developing and learned how important well-placed blinds and interrupts are.

Jumper,

You are proposing some pretty good changes. But what I would like to ask you, and I think it’s important that you make it clear with a yes or no, does this game actually need more buffs? Is thief really a priority when it comes to balance?

Would love to see these changes! P/P would finally be viable, and there would be more counter play to certain skills and builds. Great work indeed!

nyqwist.2360:

Jumper,

You are proposing some pretty good changes. But what I would like to ask you, and I think it’s important that you make it clear with a yes or no, does this game actually need more buffs? Is thief really a priority when it comes to balance?

If I remember correctly, ANET has stated that they think the power creep of the game is currently at a good spot, using bunker Guardian as the reference point.

To answer your first question: Yes. Many of these skills and weapon sets are laughable—take Dancing Dagger for example. I can sit there and use full +initiative and +damage traits and utilities and spam a 4x bounce Dancing Dagger as hard as I can. It won’t be able to out-dps a Warrior’s, or even Guardian’s passive heal. Or I could play condition Pistol mainhand and spend an hour attacking them and do no damage. If ANET says this is balanced, then it only makes sense Thief (excluding D/P Trickery and S/D Acrobatic) needs to come up to their level.

Is Thief a priority? Well that depends on what game balance means to you.
Does it mean multiple viable builds and weapon sets, equal in strengths for each class?
Or to go even further and say each build must be balanced within each weapon set and no weapon set like the current S/P or P/P should exist only using 1-2 skills using very little skill or tactic?
Or is it simply the best possible build, leaving only 1 with slight or no variation for each class, if infact, said builds are balanced against the other 7 builds (classes)?

Because when it comes to Thief, we are much closer to the latter.

Jumper.9482:

nyqwist.2360:

Jumper,

You are proposing some pretty good changes. But what I would like to ask you, and I think it’s important that you make it clear with a yes or no, does this game actually need more buffs? Is thief really a priority when it comes to balance?

If I remember correctly, ANET has stated that they think the power creep of the game is currently at a good spot, using bunker Guardian as the reference point.

To answer your first question: Yes. Many of these skills and weapon sets are laughable—take Dancing Dagger for example. I can sit there and use full +initiative and +damage traits and utilities and spam a 4x bounce Dancing Dagger as hard as I can. It won’t be able to out-dps a Warrior’s, or even Guardian’s passive heal. Or I could play condition Pistol mainhand and spend an hour attacking them and do no damage. If ANET says this is balanced, then it only makes sense Thief (excluding D/P Trickery and S/D Acrobatic) needs to come up to their level.

Is Thief a priority? Well that depends on what game balance means to you.
Does it mean multiple viable builds and weapon sets, equal in strengths for each class?
Or to go even further and say each build must be balanced within each weapon set and no weapon set like the current S/P or P/P should exist only using 1-2 skills using very little skill or tactic?
Or is it simply the best possible build, leaving only 1 with slight or no variation for each class, if infact, said builds are balanced against the other 7 builds (classes)?

Because when it comes to Thief, we are much closer to the latter.

Great answer Jumper.

Though in my opinion, things like spamming #1 on pistol from a safe distance kind of should be “bad” (not that it needs a buff right now, since it’s completely unviable even in kittening hotjoins).

I think something you need to consider is the reward for the skill it takes to pull something off. There’s been many of theese things in the past, like 100-blades, S/P thief, bunker elementalist and HGH engineer that has been way too efficient compared to the playstyle. I think that simply changing the numbers of a skill is illogical, you should add some feature to it, that demands mechanical skill or some kind of tactical deployment in order to make the game more interesting and intriguing.

Hey Jumper,
First of all : thanks for your job, and sry for my poor english its rly not my mother langage.

I think many change are legit but some of them are a little over buff no ?

A Backstab is 403 based dommage (when it’s front-hit).
Scorpion Wire, and traps will do near equals damage. Its rly strong no ?

With classic trickery build this skills can hit over 2500 each.

With that change D/D BS build will come back and will do so much dommage !
Something like 25/30/0/0/15 in D/D with your change will give like this dmg on 3k Armor target :
(i assume we crit on CnD, on back stab is obvious with 100 % CC)
- CnD : 5066
- Steal : 1097
- BS : 6092
Total : Litlle more than 11 k dmg without buff ! on a bounker like guardian its more than half of his life.

With some buff i think we can go one shoot Build with defensive utilities.

You said D/P Trickery was nerf with 10 th dec patch, can you explain this ?

really?
you need that much help from dev’s to play thief now?

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

snip

Where do these people keep coming from?
I think you replied to the wrong thread, bro.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

really?
you need that much help from dev’s to play thief now?

If you actually read the changes, most of them are to traits that are NOT used, and weapon sets (or specific weapon skills) that are not used.

D/P is an awesome weapon set and shouldn’t be changed. The bread and butter 10/30/0/0/30 is also in a good place in terms of balance. S/D is also a viable alternative, but the weaponset is limited to pressing two (see three) of the five weapon skills.

Who has ever used d/d and been successful in the past 10 months? Nobody. It’s still being used in WvW because the damage of C&D wasn’t nerfed.

I think what Jumper is trying to get to is that a thief should have more than one build to choose from in order to be viable in spvp.

Belgarion.1975:

Hey Jumper,
First of all : thanks for your job, and sry for my poor english its rly not my mother langage.

I think many change are legit but some of them are a little over buff no ?

A Backstab is 403 based dommage (when it’s front-hit).
Scorpion Wire, and traps will do near equals damage. Its rly strong no ?

With classic trickery build this skills can hit over 2500 each.

With that change D/D BS build will come back and will do so much dommage !
Something like 25/30/0/0/15 in D/D with your change will give like this dmg on 3k Armor target :
(i assume we crit on CnD, on back stab is obvious with 100 % CC)
- CnD : 5066
- Steal : 1097
- BS : 6092
Total : Litlle more than 11 k dmg without buff ! on a bounker like guardian its more than half of his life.

With some buff i think we can go one shoot Build with defensive utilities.

You said D/P Trickery was nerf with 10 th dec patch, can you explain this ?

I agree with this. And after all that damage he will still have full initiative to finish off anyone easily. Just like in old times when this guy was winning because d/d thief was overpowered and he simply learned the right combo before others.

Belgarion.1975:

snip

When consulting with Caed, I was told those damage numbers probably wouldn’t even be enough to make traps/wire worth consider losing a precious stunbreak. But, point taken; changed the numbers to resemble an auto attack.

I feel D/D should be the ‘pure dps’ go-to while sacrificing utility. Yes, reverting the nerf to CnD and introducing a decent 20 DA trait would result in tons of damage,
- CnD : 5066
- Steal : 1097
- BS : 6092
11k with no aegis or protection. That’s a fair amount considering an elementalist can do the same thing, if not more, with less telegraphs and still offer more support to their team, right?
And what can D/P Trickery do? 25% less damage but with a game-changing steal every 21 seconds that interrupts stability/aegis stomps and resses and a plethora of blinds and other interrupts? I for one would still choose trickery. But those who prefer pure damage wouldn’t be at such a huge disadvantage anymore now would they?

Well if they dont nerf feline grace at least a little next patch I would be shocked.

Decent changes but buffing thieves guild and rock dog is stupid. Not more ai please.

Good changes but pointless because it would have to be balanced along with other classes to create balance. Your changes are way better than the other two “Documents” we have seen which seem to be utterly clueless.

TNoD.8143:

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

really?
you need that much help from dev’s to play thief now?

If you actually read the changes, most of them are to traits that are NOT used, and weapon sets (or specific weapon skills) that are not used.

D/P is an awesome weapon set and shouldn’t be changed. The bread and butter 10/30/0/0/30 is also in a good place in terms of balance. S/D is also a viable alternative, but the weaponset is limited to pressing two (see three) of the five weapon skills.

Who has ever used d/d and been successful in the past 10 months? Nobody. It’s still being used in WvW because the damage of C&D wasn’t nerfed.

I think what Jumper is trying to get to is that a thief should have more than one build to choose from in order to be viable in spvp.

Ok fine,
Have em, i guess you guys need a second/third/fourth combat reset and basic invuls trough evedes etc.. add confusion in the mix and it’s bye bye spvp..

Jumper.9482:

nyqwist.2360:

Jumper,

You are proposing some pretty good changes. But what I would like to ask you, and I think it’s important that you make it clear with a yes or no, does this game actually need more buffs? Is thief really a priority when it comes to balance?

If I remember correctly, ANET has stated that they think the power creep of the game is currently at a good spot, using bunker Guardian as the reference point.

To answer your first question: Yes. Many of these skills and weapon sets are laughable—take Dancing Dagger for example. I can sit there and use full +initiative and +damage traits and utilities and spam a 4x bounce Dancing Dagger as hard as I can. It won’t be able to out-dps a Warrior’s, or even Guardian’s passive heal. Or I could play condition Pistol mainhand and spend an hour attacking them and do no damage. If ANET says this is balanced, then it only makes sense Thief (excluding D/P Trickery and S/D Acrobatic) needs to come up to their level.

Is Thief a priority? Well that depends on what game balance means to you.
Does it mean multiple viable builds and weapon sets, equal in strengths for each class?
Or to go even further and say each build must be balanced within each weapon set and no weapon set like the current S/P or P/P should exist only using 1-2 skills using very little skill or tactic?
Or is it simply the best possible build, leaving only 1 with slight or no variation for each class, if infact, said builds are balanced against the other 7 builds (classes)?

Because when it comes to Thief, we are much closer to the latter.

Wow, did they really say power creep was currently at a good spot? lol, I guess that makes at least 12 more months of spirit rangers.

Made my day.Inspired by this buff thief thread im gonna start one for warrior too.
I saw whay you did there op.Lets see if i can copy.

Warrior
Decreased healing signet active heal by 50%.Increased casting time to 1.25 seconds from 1.Animation is more obvious.Passive effect changed from 397hps to 938 every 2seconds. (Think i got this )

Bull’s charge (copy lacernous strike changes logic)
Increased cooldown to 50 seconds.Kb increased to 3 seconds from2.If hits target cooldown changed to 15 seconds.? (Y i definately got how this works thx op)

Combustive shot ( ideea got from pistol whip change in this thread).
Combustive shot radius increased by33%.All andrenaline levels changed to maximum radius of 480.Burning and damage tick every second.Damage normalized to 1k per tick and 6 secobds of burning (8 stacks).If hits a player when landed it also stuns the target for 2 seconds and convert, s all target’s boons into conditions.If target has no boons it will only apply 25 stacks of torment for 18 seconds.

Rifle auto attack.Damage decreased by 60%.

Elite.Signet of rage also gives 33% condition decrese time for 48 seconds.It only gives 4 stacks of might down from 5. Fury replaced with stability and swiftness with protection.Cooldown increased from 60 seconds to 68.
Signet mastery decreases signet cooldown by 28% instead of 20.

nyqwist.2360:

Jumper.9482:

nyqwist.2360:

Jumper,

You are proposing some pretty good changes. But what I would like to ask you, and I think it’s important that you make it clear with a yes or no, does this game actually need more buffs? Is thief really a priority when it comes to balance?

If I remember correctly, ANET has stated that they think the power creep of the game is currently at a good spot, using bunker Guardian as the reference point.

To answer your first question: Yes. Many of these skills and weapon sets are laughable—take Dancing Dagger for example. I can sit there and use full +initiative and +damage traits and utilities and spam a 4x bounce Dancing Dagger as hard as I can. It won’t be able to out-dps a Warrior’s, or even Guardian’s passive heal. Or I could play condition Pistol mainhand and spend an hour attacking them and do no damage. If ANET says this is balanced, then it only makes sense Thief (excluding D/P Trickery and S/D Acrobatic) needs to come up to their level.

Is Thief a priority? Well that depends on what game balance means to you.
Does it mean multiple viable builds and weapon sets, equal in strengths for each class?
Or to go even further and say each build must be balanced within each weapon set and no weapon set like the current S/P or P/P should exist only using 1-2 skills using very little skill or tactic?
Or is it simply the best possible build, leaving only 1 with slight or no variation for each class, if infact, said builds are balanced against the other 7 builds (classes)?

Because when it comes to Thief, we are much closer to the latter.

Great answer Jumper.

Though in my opinion, things like spamming #1 on pistol from a safe distance kind of should be “bad” (not that it needs a buff right now, since it’s completely unviable even in kittening hotjoins).

I think something you need to consider is the reward for the skill it takes to pull something off. There’s been many of theese things in the past, like 100-blades, S/P thief, bunker elementalist and HGH engineer that has been way too efficient compared to the playstyle. I think that simply changing the numbers of a skill is illogical, you should add some feature to it, that demands mechanical skill or some kind of tactical deployment in order to make the game more interesting and intriguing.

His changes to Larcenous Strike do help differentiate bad thieves from good ones, for example, which is absolutely essencial in creating a skillful game.

What I would like to see done, and please bear with me until the end here, is having a specific aftercast for every skill, but it would only apply if you repeated the same skill. Using a different skill would result in 0 aftercast . This way you are effectively nerfing spammers (heartseeker spam, flanking strike, pistol whip, disabling shot, etc.

I’m not sure I was able to get my point across, I’ll throw some numbers to this to see if I made myself clear (note: the numbers are totally random)

Autoattack
Heartseeker (0.5sec specific-aftercast)
Shadow Shot (0.5 sec specific-aftercast)

What this means is if a Thief uses Heartseeker, then tries to use Heartseeker imediately, before he can use Heartseeker a second time he will have to wait the 0.5 sec specific-aftercast.

If a Thief uses Heartseeker, Shadow Shot and rotates back to Heartseeker he won’t have no aftercast on the first heartseeker and on the Shadow Shot, because he rotated between different skills!

I think this a healthy change to balance the no-cooldown initiative system, and where more damage comes from the expense of consuming huge amounts of initiative, leaving a thief depleted and vulnerable if he fails “the big combo”.

A bad thief using the same 3 skills, but on a spammy-nature, would end up with this:

• Heartseeker
• Wait 0.5 seconds
• Heartseeker
• Shadow Shot

It’s significantly worse and it feels clunky! Now Thieves feel the incentive to rotate between other skills in their skill set and not just spam their best one. This could lead to different rotations depending on the situation: a D/D thief and a target is low and running off? Heartseeker+Dancing Dagger+Heartseeker turns out way more eficient than Dancing Dagger + Heartseeker + Heartseeker, because of the in-built specific aftercast!

I like many of them, like those:

Improvosation – Instead of bundles, this trait now gives bonus damage if you are in posession of a stolen skill. Stealing now instead reduces the recharge on all utility and elites by 5 seconds.
Hard to Catch – Immunity from 1 crowd-control effect. Buff: your next dodge roll within 5 seconds costs no endurance. 60 second cooldown.
Assassin’s Reward – Increased base healing recieved significantly.
Last Refuge – Now gives a buff that gives stealth on your next attack at 25% health.

But i don’t really know about those:

Dagger Training – Increased dagger damage by 7.5% for each Dagger you are weilding.
Hidden Killer – Now instead adds 30% Critical Chance while in stealth. Adds a static 10% Critical Damage.

wouldn’t all that damage be too much overkill? do we want another oneshot era?

ramorambo.6701:

wouldn’t all that damage be too much overkill? do we want another oneshot era?

I don’t think a ~10% damage boost, ~15 considering CnD being reverted, would result in d/d thieves suddenly doing severely more burst than a fresh air ele or sd engi.

Personally, even if Sleight of Bountiful Theft went on a 45 second cooldown and DA specs did 50% more dps, I’d still probably stick with Trickery if it were a high-stakes tourny. I don’t think people realize how much the Thief profession is being carried by S/D Acro and D/P Tricks.

Jesus dude. I’m only half way through the first post. Why don’t you just give thieves the nuke button and shorten the post?

Jumper.9482:

Belgarion.1975:

snip

When consulting with Caed, I was told those damage numbers probably wouldn’t even be enough to make traps/wire worth consider losing a precious stunbreak. But, point taken; changed the numbers to resemble an auto attack.

I feel D/D should be the ‘pure dps’ go-to while sacrificing utility. Yes, reverting the nerf to CnD and introducing a decent 20 DA trait would result in tons of damage,
- CnD : 5066
- Steal : 1097
- BS : 6092
11k with no aegis or protection. That’s a fair amount considering an elementalist can do the same thing, if not more, with less telegraphs and still offer more support to their team, right?
And what can D/P Trickery do? 25% less damage but with a game-changing steal every 21 seconds that interrupts stability/aegis stomps and resses and a plethora of blinds and other interrupts? I for one would still choose trickery. But those who prefer pure damage wouldn’t be at such a huge disadvantage anymore now would they?

Sure D/P Trickery is rly strong actualy. But overdamage will be more strong i think, if you can out the ennemy bunker without spend much init, you will stay in fight to do mass dmg on stunned target (basilik venom).

If you instant kill the support who give stab / aegis / protect, is it rly usefull do take 30 in trickery ? Just stealing boon can be enought for other ennemy, i hope in team fight your team mate can do some controle if you rip their stab.

I love P/P Unload change

But in fact, this change :

Trickery Traitline – Decreased steal recharge gain from traitpoints spent by 33%.

will make all thief take Sleight of Hand with 30 trickery, if not CD of steal not be reduce enought to be intresting. In this way other grand master will never be taken. (actualy its not too but …)

I didn’t see on you change any up or solution to clean condition in thief. I think its a good way to add some clean skill/trait. No ?

IMO, actualy for some damage build in thief its the access to fury buff. Only 2 traits give us this buff, so if you want play physical damage you must take one of this.
Make better acces to fury can level up damage significatly, without changing actual meta build. (S/D acro and D/P trick)

And why increased so much initiative cost ?
You have add some effect each time, but i don’t understand some other :

Death Blossom – This skill now ignores aftercasts and cancels other skills in queue. Increased initiative cost by 2 to 6 from 4. Increased damage by 25%. Reduced bleed duration by a similar amount.

50 % cost up to gain 25 % damage and lost condition duration ? not rly woth it. Adding finisher leap on skill is good idea but not enought to justify +50 % init cost

Infiltrator’s Return – Increased initiative cost from 2 to 3. Cast time reduced to 0.10 seconds from 0.25 seconds. This ability now ignores aftercasts and cancels skills in queue.

i don’t understand why increased cost… Adding cast time is enought balancing no ? cancels skill queue, you can make it with hotkey.

But if change can make you stream back , why not

mini.6018:

Made my day.Inspired by this buff thief thread im gonna start one for warrior too.
I saw whay you did there op.Lets see if i can copy.

Warrior
Decreased healing signet active heal by 50%.Increased casting time to 1.25 seconds from 1.Animation is more obvious.Passive effect changed from 397hps to 938 every 2seconds. (Think i got this )

Bull’s charge (copy lacernous strike changes logic)
Increased cooldown to 50 seconds.Kb increased to 3 seconds from2.If hits target cooldown changed to 15 seconds.? (Y i definately got how this works thx op)

Combustive shot ( ideea got from pistol whip change in this thread).
Combustive shot radius increased by33%.All andrenaline levels changed to maximum radius of 480.Burning and damage tick every second.Damage normalized to 1k per tick and 6 secobds of burning (8 stacks).If hits a player when landed it also stuns the target for 2 seconds and convert, s all target’s boons into conditions.If target has no boons it will only apply 25 stacks of torment for 18 seconds.

Rifle auto attack.Damage decreased by 60%.

Elite.Signet of rage also gives 33% condition decrese time for 48 seconds.It only gives 4 stacks of might down from 5. Fury replaced with stability and swiftness with protection.Cooldown increased from 60 seconds to 68.
Signet mastery decreases signet cooldown by 28% instead of 20.

I´ve got the same impression as you.

LS changes are awful, Jumper you won’t spam it anymore just deal with it.

Despite it, the other changes are fine.

If the development would just work with players like you to adjust the balance, the game could be enjoyable again. Sadly they don’t.

Another balance document… come on!!
How many hints u need to understand that you will be ignored ?
You want to be acknowledged, well, make a document about rewards in spvp, that will work well .

I can say with confidence that +7.5% dmg per dagger equipped is way over the top (ESP since passive signet buff). The fact that it would also buff power p/d which would also become too strong (#3 already hits like a truck) doesn’t help. Also think of pve man :p

Agreed on trap damage, have to remember they are spammable if they come off cooldown before being triggered, and need balanced for that.

Not sure if sleight nerf is warranted or not considering I often swap it out for long reach anyway(stupid engis).

Overall increasing initiative costs seems good with new über regen

+1’d for fido health boost

Jumper.9482:

Belgarion.1975:

snip

When consulting with Caed, I was told those damage numbers probably wouldn’t even be enough to make traps/wire worth consider losing a precious stunbreak. But, point taken; changed the numbers to resemble an auto attack.

I feel D/D should be the ‘pure dps’ go-to while sacrificing utility. Yes, reverting the nerf to CnD and introducing a decent 20 DA trait would result in tons of damage,
- CnD : 5066
- Steal : 1097
- BS : 6092
11k with no aegis or protection. That’s a fair amount considering an elementalist can do the same thing, if not more, with less telegraphs and still offer more support to their team, right?
And what can D/P Trickery do? 25% less damage but with a game-changing steal every 21 seconds that interrupts stability/aegis stomps and resses and a plethora of blinds and other interrupts? I for one would still choose trickery. But those who prefer pure damage wouldn’t be at such a huge disadvantage anymore now would they?

We shouldn’t further promote the limitation of other burst builds in the game. Thief is already the head of that class and that amount of damage only exacerbates the situation.

You use elementalist as justification for those numbers. Elementalists do not have nearly the mobility or amount of disengage a thief has currently. What is this talk of support? What type of support does a fresh air elementalist provide?

Interesting list. Hmm, that’s quite a lot of nerfs to trickery thief build. I admit it’s strong, but that could be a bit overboard, no? It already has some tough 1v1 matchups. Also, I don’t think what pistol whip needs is more upfront damage, the burst is pretty high already. My approach would be to lessen the number of hits of it, and maybe lower the damage slightly but also lower the initiative cost. Punish a bit less for retal, but lower the spike generated by the haste proc.

Other changes are interesting, I’d like to see how d/d turns out with your trait. Making it stronger in wvw is kinda sketchy, though. Maybe 5% per dagger? 15% more overall damage is high for Master tier.

Most of these changes are very good, of course, and do in fact identify with many of the thief’s problems currently. I definitely like the changes to Unload- condi removal is, IMO, easily the number one problem with that weapon set. Any other changes are pointless until that is fixed, so the chain looks pretty good to me. Overall the changes to the weaponset that you proposed are my favorites as well; it’s always been a weaponset I’ve wanted to use.

A few things I might change:

Sleight of Hand- perhaps increase the daze slightly. Honestly, I don’t have enough experience with this trait to say whether or not the 1s daze is very useful, but from when I have used the trait, it never seemed very useful. Of course, if a balance patch which included this nerf also included nerfs to CC of other classes, then the 1s daze would be fine as is.

Roll for Initiative- this skill could use a reduced CD, but I’d put it to 50s, at least for starters. It still is a good stun break/mobility-impairing condi remover, and its burst initiative regen isn’t too bad either.

Larcenous Strike- hmm. I suppose that, for starters, it might be better to change the cost to 3 initiative and the initiative return that you proposed to 1 initiative. I see where this change is going, but since FS/LS is such an integral part of S/D, it might be better to make this a smaller change for starters.

Infiltrator’s Return- this is the one I’m going to have to disagree with most. At least, the part about the cast time, anyways. The cast really needs to go back to 0s and interrupt the skill queue. It’s really sword’s main source of condition removal, and is a large part of the fluidity behind the build. Heck, I might even suggest upping the cost to 4 initiative if we got a 0s cast in return. I’m worried that a .1 cast from a .25 cast (which is more like a 1s cast at the moment…) won’t be a very effective change.

Trickery traitline stat changes- sure, but it would probably work better if “X on steal” traits got a very slight buff in return. Not enough to offset the nerf if steal is used whenever it comes off CD, but enough to offset it if steal is used at very particular times in the course of a fight.

EDIT: one last thing- for all the thief NPC’s, I might suggest starting by buffing them by only 50% health. Just a little side note, though.

I really love a lot of these suggestions, although honestly I feel like thieves guild is in a good place right now, but daggerstorm is just ridiculous in a pvp setting in its current state.

What I appreciate most about your changes to the typical S/D build is that you have changed it in a way that punishes bad players and rewards good ones. Those changes to the S/D set would be amazing because as it is right now bad players can still be good on it.

Pyriall.5027:

Jumper.9482:

Belgarion.1975:

snip

When consulting with Caed, I was told those damage numbers probably wouldn’t even be enough to make traps/wire worth consider losing a precious stunbreak. But, point taken; changed the numbers to resemble an auto attack.

I feel D/D should be the ‘pure dps’ go-to while sacrificing utility. Yes, reverting the nerf to CnD and introducing a decent 20 DA trait would result in tons of damage,
- CnD : 5066
- Steal : 1097
- BS : 6092
11k with no aegis or protection. That’s a fair amount considering an elementalist can do the same thing, if not more, with less telegraphs and still offer more support to their team, right?
And what can D/P Trickery do? 25% less damage but with a game-changing steal every 21 seconds that interrupts stability/aegis stomps and resses and a plethora of blinds and other interrupts? I for one would still choose trickery. But those who prefer pure damage wouldn’t be at such a huge disadvantage anymore now would they?

We shouldn’t further promote the limitation of other burst builds in the game. Thief is already the head of that class and that amount of damage only exacerbates the situation.

You use elementalist as justification for those numbers. Elementalists do not have nearly the mobility or amount of disengage a thief has currently. What is this talk of support? What type of support does a fresh air elementalist provide?

He probably won’t respond to your answer, due to the fact it’s true.

I think some ppl are overacting a bit and just seeing some of the juicier buffs. I think he was actually pretty harsh on the nerf side to. As said before I really like the changes rewarding skilled play with the “on landing” skills. Like the lars strike and headshot change.
The dancing dagger stun is a must have. Ppl have to realize overall gameplay has increased since the early days of d/d. It is easily countered and needs something to make the insane risk worth it.

I would add in reverting revealed time to be the same across all formats tho

Good stuff

I think people are misunderstanding this thread. He’s not buffing the current available builds in this game. He’s trying to make it so that another build for thief would be usable again which is D/D. He didn’t even make it seem more usable than D/P Trickery build atm. Just made D/D more viable. I think this is a great post and I feel more classes need things like this as well.

There’s only one thing you forgot, which is to give thieves another weapon lol. Seriously, so limited on weapons it’s dumb. Thieves need another weapon or two for more diversity although I agree this post definitely gave it some.

Great Post!

Trickery Traitline – Decreased steal recharge gain from traitpoints spent by 33%.
will make all thief take Sleight of Hand with 30 trickery, if not CD of steal not be reduce enought to be intresting. In this way other grand master will never be taken. (actualy its not too but …)

The Trickery traitline is massively overpowered imho. A 21 second stab/aegis ignoring interrupt makes thieves mandatory in organized play right now. You’d be lucky to even get your target down again more often than 20 seconds.

Belgarion.1975:

Infiltrator’s Return – Increased initiative cost from 2 to 3. Cast time reduced to 0.10 seconds from 0.25 seconds. This ability now ignores aftercasts and cancels skills in queue.

i don’t understand why increased cost… Adding cast time is enought balancing no ? cancels skill queue, you can make it with hotkey.

Right now, Infiltrator’s has a cast time of 1-1.25 seconds when factoring in the massive sword aftercasts. The only thing I could use that for is to dodge a Killshot… And maybe die to the other guy who is autoattacking me while casting in the meantime. On the flipside, I always found dodging with Infiltrator’s Return with 2 initiative to vastly outweigh dodging with endurance or flanking strike since I also cured a condition. This would even it out a bit more.

Death Blossom – This skill now ignores aftercasts and cancels other skills in queue. Increased initiative cost by 2 to 6 from 4. Increased damage by 25%. Reduced bleed duration by a similar amount.
50 % cost up to gain 25 % damage and lost condition duration ? not rly woth it. Adding finisher leap on skill is good idea but not enought to justify +50 % init cost

Okay, so Dagger doesn’t have as much of a problem with horrendous aftercasts its true. But, this is about making Dblossom a consistant dodge. The evade frames are so tiny, that it has to be timed perfectly in reaction to your opponent’kitten. It also has counterplay to it due to the fact the evade frames don’t happen until halfway through the skill and you become locked down afterwards. Then again, if played well enough you wouldn’t need endurance at all if it costed that little initiative, would you?

Added a ‘goals’ summary at the top for people barging in assuming this is calling for buffs to S/D Acro and D/P Trick without reading.

Also;
Disabling Shot – Added a ~0.10 second aftercast to add counterplay and discourage endless chaining of this skill for evasion purposes.

Jumper.9482:

nyqwist.2360:

Jumper,

You are proposing some pretty good changes. But what I would like to ask you, and I think it’s important that you make it clear with a yes or no, does this game actually need more buffs? Is thief really a priority when it comes to balance?

If I remember correctly, ANET has stated that they think the power creep of the game is currently at a good spot, using bunker Guardian as the reference point.

To answer your first question: Yes. Many of these skills and weapon sets are laughable—take Dancing Dagger for example. I can sit there and use full +initiative and +damage traits and utilities and spam a 4x bounce Dancing Dagger as hard as I can. It won’t be able to out-dps a Warrior’s, or even Guardian’s passive heal. Or I could play condition Pistol mainhand and spend an hour attacking them and do no damage. If ANET says this is balanced, then it only makes sense Thief (excluding D/P Trickery and S/D Acrobatic) needs to come up to their level.

Is Thief a priority? Well that depends on what game balance means to you.
Does it mean multiple viable builds and weapon sets, equal in strengths for each class?
Or to go even further and say each build must be balanced within each weapon set and no weapon set like the current S/P or P/P should exist only using 1-2 skills using very little skill or tactic?
Or is it simply the best possible build, leaving only 1 with slight or no variation for each class, if infact, said builds are balanced against the other 7 builds (classes)?

Because when it comes to Thief, we are much closer to the latter.

well it seems you lost the spot on how to evaluate the function of a skill. so u honestly think dancing dagger ( whats imho a cripple ) should out dps a guardians or warrios heal? well, why not buff all util.skills in heaven regarding dmg? blade trail, throw axe, aimed shot, crippling throw, crippling shot and the list goes on should all receive a dmg. buff to 1000% regarding your mind.

the next thing u seem to forget is that your proposal for nr3 on s/d and s/p are out of context. maybe its a good decision to actual hit first with infiltrators strike to apply immob. before u spam 3. s/d 3 is still to strong and u want it buffed further. 10% less dmg is nothing.

i suggest less biased suggestions. im sure u know other good thief players. so i suggest to pick a different class (not fotm) and see where your class shines to stop making stupid suggestions for that part.

honestly i hate suggestions from ppl like u, that only know 1 class and only see the problems they have against different builds and the lack of different builds but negate the rest of the class. esp. where the class/ builds shine and are stupidly strong.

i hope some suggestions are a joke like blackpowder and that whole stuns crap. so a kitten of teleport isnt already enough u want to spam more stuns it seems.

want that desp. play condition thief and apply confusion? u know that with your suggestion dancing dagger is a aoe interrupt. it will always hit in a groupfight some from behind.

seems like belgarion has more insight in your class than u.. and like pyriall mentioned u should not compare the dmg to other builds. if u think fresh air ele is that op i suggest stop playing your class and play fresh air ele.

and honestly can we already stop complaining about retailation? is it that hard to actual watch the enemy boons and use a brain?

tl;dr
stop playing thief and play other class/builds to see how stupid and biased your suggestions are. the suggestion to retailation shows me that u playing the wrong class. pick a warrior and suggest to add stealth to them if u really want to bomb out aoe without fear of retailation.

hooma.9642:

—snip—

First of all, the proposed list of changes attempt to balance the Thief class within itself from only someone with thousands of hours playing the class competitively would. Show me one other person who has 2,000 hours playing competitively on at least 2 different classes each. Other classes are not relevant for this discussion other than knowing that S/D Acro and D/P Trickery are far too strong currently.

2. By that logic, since Skull crack stuns for 3 seconds, it should do 30 damage. Or Earthshaker should have its damage reduced 3000%.

3. 10% less damage and an extra 2 initiative upon miss is a huge nerf and quite necessary to reward classes like Mesmers who manage to properly counterplay and evade Larcenous.

4. S/P is a “spam pistolwhip” build. As stated before, these changes focus on reducing the spamability of PW while also putting more value on Headshot as an interrupt since using PW from the front would no longer do so.

5. Caed was more biased than myself when I ran it by him. Acandis helped with the nerfing too.

6. I have played fresh air ele. And most other burst classes for that matter. Even stumbling around my keyboard I was still able to be far more effective than a D/D thief would be.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO3KkEy9MQI

7. I suggest you carefully re-read the change to Dancing Dagger more closely and realize adding a ministun (READ: On the first target hit) from behind would not only put it on-par with offhand pistol, but also help chase down fleeing foes—something that dagger/pistol is good at without even trying while blinding and dealing far more damage at less initiative (Shadow Shot). I also addressed the potential issue of spamming DD by drastically increasing its initiative cost and aftercast (may potentially require more than +50% aftercast). On top of that, it would still be an inferior tool than D/P has in ShadowShot because of the projectile speed which would allow one to either dodge or turn briefly to counter the ministun.

Jumper.9482:

hooma.9642:

—snip—

First of all, the proposed list of changes attempt to balance the Thief class within itself from only someone with thousands of hours playing the class competitively would. Show me one other person who has 2,000 hours playing competitively on at least 2 different classes. Other classes are not relevant for this discussion other than knowing that S/D Acro and D/P Trickery are far too strong currently.

2. By that logic, since Skull crack stuns for 3 seconds, it should do 30 damage. Or Earthshaker should have its damage reduced 3000%.

3. 10% less damage and an extra 2 initiative upon miss is a huge nerf and quite necessary to reward classes like Mesmers who manage to properly counterplay and evade Larcenous.

4. S/P is a “spam pistolwhip” build. As stated before, these changes focus on reducing the spamability of PW while also putting more value on Headshot as an interrupt since using PW from the front would no longer do so.

5. Caed was more biased than myself when I ran it by him. Acandis helped with the nerfing too.

6. I have played fresh air ele. And most other burst classes for that matter. Even stumbling around my keyboard I was still able to be far more effective than a D/D thief would be.

7. I suggest you carefully re-read the change to Dancing Dagger more closely and realize adding a ministun (READ: On the first target hit) from behind would not only put it on-par with offhand pistol, but also help chase down fleeing foes—something that dagger/pistol is good at without even trying while blinding and dealing far more damage at less initiative (Shadow Shot).

u played to much of a thief. u only see thiefs problems. on a side note u also dont seem to understand why some thiefs builds are too strong atm. if u believe the game needs a top-bottom balance attempt then i think u should stop making suggestions, if u cant understand how they affect different levels of competition and why they are complete out of border.

2. whats wrong with that even u ignored the recharge? the problem u have is thinking all skills should apply dmg. if u think thats the only reason why ppl use or not use any skills, well then u arent that pro like u think.

3. 10% less dmg is not enough to call it a nerf. the skillchain is still to strong and u ignore the pathfinding on the skills. evade-/ dodgespam as counter should not even be considered if u want to actual BALANCE the game.

4. your suggestion lead to spam pistolwhip too. immob from front? as i said, u seems not to understand how the class is build or supposed to use. infiltrators strike is not only a teleport it also applies immob. your statement is the perfect example why this game came out of border. the util. are already there, but even “pros” like u ignore them, cause they do kitten dmg. headshot is a ranged interrupted. the skill has its uses. cant understand why u dont see them. maybe not so much on s/p but def. on d/p. its more a problem of game design.

5. seems was not enough

6. u wanna kidding me? first u claim to so competive but need a vid full of hot join action to justify anything? sorry, but hasnt really played other classes outside of thief compet. how many champion titles u have?

7. well dancing dagger is ranged cripple. isnt that already enough to chase down fleeing foes? lets ignore all the teleports outside of weaponsets or steal. thats already all that other classes have access to. d/d has a ranged cripple and a leap/gap closer. what do u think a warrior has outside of greatsword?
so ignoring that u already has the util. u justify the dmg buff with shadow shot. really?

Jumper.9482:

…Other classes are not relevant for this discussion ..

the best joke ever. alone that statement shows that you have no idea what balancing means. i hope its just a joke. or do we really need 8 suggestions from biased “pros” like u to balance the game? must be a really enjoyable game u try to create.. so why not call in your friends for other “pro” suggestions?

i start to wonder if other classes are not relevant, why u need them to justify some suggestions?

hooma.9642:

the best joke ever. alone that statement shows that you have no idea what balancing means. i hope its just a joke. or do we really need 8 suggestions from biased “pros” like u to balance the game? must be a really enjoyable game u try to create.. so why not call in your friends for other “pro” suggestions?

i start to wonder if other classes are not relevant, why u need them to justify some suggestions?

Now I know you’re trolling. Riot devs use this reasoning all the time. “It doesn’t matter if Tryndamere can hit 500 damage a hit at level 6. That doesn’t mean everyone else has to. Tryndamere’s damage is balanced for Tryndamere.” I see you as the type of person who would compain “Corki’s R is weaker than Ezreal’s Q! Fix it!”. Even though Ezreal is balanced for Ezreal and Corki is balanced for corki.

I don’t think the mechanics of Gw2 would allow that version of dancing dagger.
If this skill Crits on the first strike, it will continue to crit for the 2nd,3rd and 4th hit.
chances are the stun would continue on too.