Guild Wars 2

Jumper.9482:

A lot of people seem to be against cutting the S/D Thief’s endurance gains by 50%…
Or is it maybe the cutting of Trickery’s steal reacharge gains by 40%?

Or maybe its the MASSIVE UNREASONABLE 10% BUFF that is being proposed for a massively underpowered and underused weapon set (D/D).

Yeah, that must be it.

It was mostly because you defended S/D when it was brain-dead trash (Infinite stun break on top of million dodges, C’mon you can’t have everything) when Caed disagreed and said otherwise and even called it an easy mode build when you said it took skill.

TL;DR You defended cheese, Caed disapproved it. That definitely hurt your reputation.

Mesmer’s doesn’t prioritize both aegis and stability.

Regardless, think about the pros versus cons when speccing into Trickery. I’ll go over the most important.
From the original 25DA build, you lose maybe an average of 10-15% damage?
Acrobatics is only really strong when paired with the Sword/ due to the extreme aftercasts and the ability to dodge during them basically nullifying the aftercasts.
Shadow Arts is kind of a joke, a traitline designed around you afk’ing out of combat (in stealth) while your teammates are dying.

Trading that little for incredibly strong utility and cooldown reduction on your Steal.

Amir.1570:

Jumper.9482:

A lot of people seem to be against cutting the S/D Thief’s endurance gains by 50%…
Or is it maybe the cutting of Trickery’s steal reacharge gains by 40%?

Or maybe its the MASSIVE UNREASONABLE 10% BUFF that is being proposed for a massively underpowered and underused weapon set (D/D).

Yeah, that must be it.

It was mostly because you defended S/D when it was brain-dead trash (Infinite stun break on top of million dodges, C’mon you can’t have everything) when Caed disagreed and said otherwise and even called it an easy mode build when you said it took skill.

TL;DR You defended cheese, Caed disapproved it. That definitely hurt your reputation.

Slander.

I have always been against the use of Infiltrator’s Return as a Stun-Break, rather instead, as a skillful reactive tool to avoid hits with a bonus of 1 condi removal at the cost of high initiative (assuming your opponent doesn’t counterplay this with dragging the fight to your shadow return mark) which was taken away with the dec10th patch.

I also specifically remember always being against the amount of endurance generated. Especially from Energy Sigils.

I was also in 110% support when they upped the cost of Larcenous Strike, and, like my suggestion implies, have been pushing for a far greater risk factor to using it.

tl;dr: Even when playing to near-perfection, the effectiveness of the spec only went up by maybe 10%. I am, and always have been disgusted with this and have pushed for change.

@Jumper

Truth.

Every time S/D and balancing were in discussion you would say “oh d/p counters it” without saying “and it only has one bad match-up” which is ofc d/p. Back when it was cancerous garbage.

Point is jumper, don’t even suggest that you are defending cancer, directly or indirectly. Hopefully just by acknowledging that fact you’ll get your reputation back.

Amir.1570:

—

The matchup between S/D and D/P was only in D/P’s favor when played at levels of mediocrity and the reverse at the highest levels of play.
This was supported both by my personal experiences with Caed and the time I made Acandis and Blinx duel using both specs.
And I don’t know how you’re getting “D/P is the only counter” when even before the constant nerfing I openly had trouble against Teldo (and other non-hgh engi’s) from the passive burn application covered too well to cleanse and scepter elementalists due to their instantcast bursts ignoring the evasion frames. As well as 1 mesmer player in particular who timed his bursts extremely well (instead of giving up at the first sign of difficulty and rerolling like some others). And also a 50/50 matchup vs spirit rangers due to the inability to dodge anything meaningful as it is all passive damage.

I don’t know how you’re coming up with this stuff, but please stop you’re making yourself look bad.

Jumper.9482:

Mesmer’s doesn’t prioritize both aegis and stability.

Regardless, think about the pros versus cons when speccing into Trickery. I’ll go over the most important.
From the original 25DA build, you lose maybe an average of 10-15% damage?
Acrobatics is only really strong when paired with the Sword/ due to the extreme aftercasts and the ability to dodge during them basically nullifying the aftercasts.
Shadow Arts is kind of a joke, a traitline designed around you afk’ing out of combat (in stealth) while your teammates are dying.

Trading that little for incredibly strong utility and cooldown reduction on your Steal.

Steal that, unless traited, sucks balls in any build, and that overall sucks as a class mechanic.

Again, in eu very few teams run thief, and it happens that most of them are the most succesful simply because

1: they are the best players
2: there’ s little to no competition right now, since 80% of the population are PvE heroes looking for easy gold and achievement points

3: very skilled thief players are mostly better than average due to them being used to not play facerolling proffs (since even the “so broken” S/D thief was easily 2 shotted by anything and could lose 1vs1 against basically all meta builds unless played flawlessly)

Don’t look at the benefit obtained by speccing into trickery, ask yourself WHY OTHER TRAITLINES SUCK like if there’s no tomorrow.

you already have the answer

by the way, I saw vanish running S/D trickery, lololol

Slightly increased my suggestion for Hidden Sin. As well as a buff/rework for Shadow Rejuv to discourage camping stealth as well.

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.

Not a trait suggestion, but I’d love for them to up the SB #1 fire speed and/or rate since the tracking nerf.

It’s been months and months, but it is extremely frustrating how hard it is to hit anything with it past 5-600r when they are moving…people who know of this abuse the fact and there is nothing you could do about it. They just laugh at your face while they are landing all their attacks while you miss everything.

The fact that other classes could stafe quickly back and forth and you’d have no means of hitting them with SB #1 is ridiculous, especially when so many classes/builds have 100% tracking/instant autoattacks. SB is our only means of safe ranged AOE and we are punished for using it at a distance. In conjunction with how slow cluster bomb flight times are, SB is extremely ineffective at a distance…which is totally contradicting to what it SHOULD do for a thief. The poison field alone just doesn’t put out enough damage/utility.

Even a necro’s staff auto attack(which is a 1200r skill) tracks better than a thief sb, and the projectile has a larger hitbox radius.

Mrbig.8019:

Hype.8032:

Jumper.9482:

Hype.8032:

However, before dec 10th it was widely viewed as underpowered and not worth using.

Actually it has been on-par with the S/D Acrobat since the Trickery changes were first introduced.
At the moment one on each team is practically required in group play for that incredibly overpowered/gamechanging 21s cooldown aegis+stab intterruption.

Calling d/p trickery required compared to say a bunker guardian in teams isn’t an equal comparison. But god forbid a thief having a role in a team right? I don’t see anything that makes that spec op, it wasn’t required before dec 10th and it wasn’t really buffed (you can argue it was but in my experience it’s roughly on par with before). The only reason why it’s considered required at all right now is because s/d was nerfed.

I’m not trying to be combative or insult you in any way, I’m just really surprised you think that spec is OP.

Point is it’s not really required.

There are plenty of teams running without thief in EU, but we know NA has always been another world.

Thief fills a nice niche, dunno why it should be nerfed even further (buffed maybe) and D/P trickery (which is not even the stronges trickery build) is a strong build, nothing more.

Mesmer can do the same with diversion-boon rip, with an average 30 secs CD ( with illusion invigoration) but with multiple dazes ( that, right now, are free mind wracks) but nobody complains ( i think it’s balanced).

Jumper, you’re talking about ripping stab stomps like a ridicolous overpowered mechanic, while in reality, stability stomps have ALREADY small counterplay.

We need more counterplay, i would argue to make stability ALWAYS first in boon rippings priority, even corrupt boon.

So people will finally start to learn to wait instead of spamming AoEs at first sight ( or corrupt boons as soon as you see MOAR BOONS)

Hmm I’ve been feeling this game would probably benefit long term by stability not being a boon same as quickness.

Jumper.9482:

As well as 1 mesmer player in particular who timed his bursts extremely well (instead of giving up at the first sign of difficulty and rerolling like some others).

Say the name of the lord so the plebs shall tremble in fear.

Teckos.1305:

Jumper.9482:

As well as 1 mesmer player in particular who timed his bursts extremely well (instead of giving up at the first sign of difficulty and rerolling like some others).

Say the name of the lord so the plebs shall tremble in fear.

Nnight. Hasn’t really played competitively with teams and I’m not even sure if he plays anymore. But he’s the only mesmer I looked at as not just another free kill.

Added new general change-

Dodge roll – Added a special ~0.10s aftercast which takes priority over all aftercast-ignoring skills such as dodge rolls. This encourages players to dodge reactively rather than proactively/randomly.
(Otherwise being punished for it by players that take advantage of it.)

This change would REALLY separate the good from the bad especially thieves.

Jumper.9482:

Larcenous Strike – Increased boonsteal from 1 to 2. Decreased damage by 10%. Increased cost from 2 to 4 initiative. This ability now restores 2 initiative upon hitting a target.

I agree with much that you have suggested. Some great ideas! Thanks for the share.

I do however believe it is still gives sword dagger a bit too much power. The Lace strike doesn’t really matter in damage as much as the utility it has, and to give 2 ini back on success? Pretty powerful stuff.

The scorpion wire and other additions are great. I like the idea of some adding passive bonus. I will say ambush trab is already pretty balanced. Etc etc. Ill keep looking at these suggestions thanks for posting.

tronjeremy.5820:

Jumper.9482:

Larcenous Strike – Increased boonsteal from 1 to 2. Decreased damage by 10%. Increased cost from 2 to 4 initiative. This ability now restores 2 initiative upon hitting a target.

I agree with much that you have suggested. Some great ideas! Thanks for the share.

I do however believe it is still gives sword dagger a bit too much power. The Lace strike doesn’t really matter in damage as much as the utility it has, and to give 2 ini back on success? Pretty powerful stuff.

The scorpion wire and other additions are great. I like the idea of some adding passive bonus. I will say ambush trab is already pretty balanced. Etc etc. Ill keep looking at these suggeestions thanks for posting.

It’s not as much “rewarding 2 ini on succes” rather than ‘you lose 2 ini extra on miss’, forcing less spam and more careful use out of it.

A skilled player with the sword will still be able to strip 2 boons consistently which is too much and I agreed with the change to one boon stripped. But I do like the idea of losing ini for missing.

tronjeremy.5820:

A skilled player with the sword will still be able to strip 2 boons consistently which is too much and I agreed with the change to one boon stripped. But I do like the idea of losing ini for missing.

A 1-boon steal encourages spam use of the skill to get past the (very many) filler boons most classes put up.

Dodging Larcenous is like rock:paper:scissors. It’s much more of a mind-game thing baiting out your opponent and changing your patterns.
Implying someone could land 100% of LSs 100% of the time is just plain ridiculous lol.
It’s an extremely rare occurrence to pull this off against a good player.

Updated Larcenous suggestion to something slightly more fair:

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.

Added a poll here.
http://strawpoll.me/978841/

Jumper.9482:

Added new general change-

Dodge roll – Added a special ~0.10s aftercast which takes priority over all aftercast-ignoring skills such as dodge rolls. This encourages players to dodge reactively rather than proactively/randomly.
(Otherwise being punished for it by players that take advantage of it.)

This change would REALLY separate the good from the bad especially thieves.

I think this is incredible idea, Anet could really make the combat interesting, reactive and less forgiving toward bad decision making by toying with aftercast and this with pretty much all skills.

Jumper.9482:

Amir.1570:

—

The matchup between S/D and D/P was only in D/P’s favor when played at levels of mediocrity and the reverse at the highest levels of play.
This was supported both by my personal experiences with Caed and the time I made Acandis and Blinx duel using both specs.
And I don’t know how you’re getting “D/P is the only counter” when even before the constant nerfing I openly had trouble against Teldo (and other non-hgh engi’s) from the passive burn application covered too well to cleanse and scepter elementalists due to their instantcast bursts ignoring the evasion frames. As well as 1 mesmer player in particular who timed his bursts extremely well (instead of giving up at the first sign of difficulty and rerolling like some others). And also a 50/50 matchup vs spirit rangers due to the inability to dodge anything meaningful as it is all passive damage.

I don’t know how you’re coming up with this stuff, but please stop you’re making yourself look bad.

so cheese has trouble against cheese? i hope u noticed that with this statement u somehow admit that s/d is broken and only 1 managed to win and i dont want compare the skill that was needed. against build not around spam, s/d is op like hell. with a free dodge+pressure it can avoid all the big hitters. if balance should go less spam s/d needs far more nerfs to be not op.

Jumper.9482:

Added new general change-

Dodge roll – Added a special ~0.10s aftercast which takes priority over all aftercast-ignoring skills such as dodge rolls. This encourages players to dodge reactively rather than proactively/randomly.
(Otherwise being punished for it by players that take advantage of it.)

This change would REALLY separate the good from the bad especially thieves.

wow wow wow, are you suggesting balancing the whole game mechanics around theif?
have you considered casual player? have you noticed what it will cause to other game mechanics such as mesmer’s DE?
Asking for buff is one thing, every class does this, but overhaul major game mechanics is way too far, and you sense of good player and bad player is funny, I have to say.

“Heartseeker – Increased aftercast by 30%.”

As much as I like the idea of this for combat, where it would discourage HS spam, this would be a huge nerf to mobility, which is one of the keystones of the class.

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

ANet has already said that they’re aiming to make this a 2 part skill, but I really don’t see how a damage increase is needed for this skill. It already hits pretty hard.

“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.”

Players already look out for this animation to evade it. Changing it this way would only put non-asura at a bigger disadvantage and give additional counter play to D/D, which is already easy to counter (blind, block, evade CnD or predict the inevitable backstab by knowing the stealth duration). One of the biggest reasons D/D is behind D/P already is because there is so much counter play to it.

_"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."_

I like the idea of the first part of this skill, but with the numbers you’ve provided, it would outpace the dps of D/D in PvE by miles.

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

This isn’t really necessary. We already have a good number of stun break options and it’s already useable while stunned as an AoE blind

“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.”

Overall a fair change, although I don’t know if another boon steal is really necessary.

“Thieves Guild – reduced cooldown to 150 seconds from 180. Increased Thieves’ health by 33%.”

No. This is already a cheesy IWIN button and is better left to PvE. We need more elite skills to help give options to Basilisk, not a buff to elites that are badly designed for PvP.

“Runes of the Ogre – Increased Rock Dog’s health by 33%.”

Huh? This is one of the most popular rune sets. Why does it need a buff?

Outside of the above changes, the most of rest looks relatively reasonable to me…or at least I didn’t feel like making a specific comment about it. =P

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.
-Gives the runeset less focus on damage and more on the benefits Rock Dog brings such as using it to avoid projectiles. Focusing on enunciating the uniqueness of the set.

One of the biggest reasons D/D is behind D/P already is because there is so much counter play to it.

Which is why I’m suggesting to bring the backstabbing strengths of both D/P and D/D closer together. Blackpowder Heartseeker is a huge tell. But the backstab still hits because thieves precast it from out of range/sight and the time between the heartseek and backstab are far too little, thus the need for increased aftercast. With D/D, you basically have two .25s opportunities to avoid the backstab. If you precast CnD, I’d like it to closer resemble D/P, putting more emphasis on players avoiding the actual CnD.

As much as I like the idea of this for combat, where it would discourage HS spam, this would be a huge nerf to mobility, which is one of the keystones of the class.

It’s only used for mobility on D/D because of the lack of gap-closing abilities (aka. how bad dancing dagger sucks). My suggestion for Dancing Dagger would help with that. Also you would still be able to move during the aftercast and currently it’s around less than 0.1 second I believe.

I like the idea of the first part of this skill, but with the numbers you’ve provided, it would outpace the dps of D/D in PvE by miles.

The dps would be limited by the chain skill greatly, which is why it is there (to discourage spam use). It would probably be a nerf for pve honestly. Testing would have to be done.

Fair point on Thieves’ guild. I don’t like it either, but Engineers have Supply Drop and Elementalists have summon elemental for example. I’m not comparing them, but at the moment Thieves’ guild is useless in a teamfight and not taken by anyone for good reason.

Dodge roll – Added a unique ~0.10s aftercast which takes priority over aftercast-ignoring skills such as dodge rolls. This encourages players to dodge reactively rather than proactively.

That sounds very artificial. It would make dodging and certain defensive skills feel clunky and less intuitive. If you really want to fix dodge spamming and random dodges, then you need to start from the million skills and situations that encourage such random dodging. Adding more chewing gum and tape is only going to make the game worse.

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

Increase damage but add a small, frustrating and annoying RNG factor? Why?

I’m not comparing them, but at the moment Thieves’ guild is useless in a teamfight and not taken by anyone for good reason.

And that’s a bad thing? Might as well “fix” guardian pets because they don’t perform as well as ranger ones in team fights, so that we will then have both spirit guardians and rangers!

So that this post wouldn’t be full of complaining, I want to say that your sword and dagger changes I like.

Ok, so there will be alot of controversy over this so I should probably add an asterisk or something.

Dodge rolls just don’t feel right to me right now. Even back when watching players like Teldo, when a player hits full endurance he just dodges. Doesn’t matter if its to avoid autoattack damage.

This change would add another layer of depth to the game. For example, I’m fighting a scepter burst Ele. In his mind he’s thinking “I’ll wait till he does a bad dodge roll to use my burst”. In my mind I could be thinking “I’ll just not random dodge making him hold off on using his burst”. And of course there would still be the factor of you ‘risking’ a dodge trying to predict the elementalist’s burst.

PS: I’m pretty sure every other game with a dodge mechanic locks you down at the end to punish bad dodges.

Master of Timespace.2548:

And that’s a bad thing? Might as well “fix” guardian pets because they don’t perform as well as ranger ones in team fights, so that we will then have both spirit guardians and rangers!

As I said, I’m not comparing them [Thieves Guild vs other classes’ similar elites].
Thieves Guild (Read: When compared to other Thief elites such as Basi Venom or even using Daggerstorm and cancelling it for 8 seconds of stability—as its only current use is) is completely outmatched.

Jumper.9482:

Ok, so there will be alot of controversy over this so I should probably add an asterisk or something.

Dodge rolls just don’t feel right to me right now. Even back when watching players like Teldo, when a player hits full endurance he just dodges. Doesn’t matter if its to avoid autoattack damage.

This change would add another layer of depth to the game. For example, I’m fighting a scepter burst Ele. In his mind he’s thinking “I’ll wait till he does a bad dodge roll to use my burst”. In my mind I could be thinking “I’ll just not random dodge making him hold off on using his burst”. And of course there would still be the factor of you ‘risking’ a dodge trying to predict the elementalist’s burst.

PS: I’m pretty sure every other game with a dodge mechanic locks you down at the end to punish bad dodges.

While I agree that the game needs to be more rewarding/punishing in general, I don’t think that punishing “bad” dodges is a good idea given the massive of amount of powerful instant casts and poorly telegraphed skills, which forces players to predict/dodge randomly.

Also for the love of pve, don’t nerf max stealth duration/do it for sPvP only

Jumper.9482:

As much as I like the idea of this for combat, where it would discourage HS spam, this would be a huge nerf to mobility, which is one of the keystones of the class.

It’s only used for mobility on D/D because of the lack of gap-closing abilities (aka. how bad dancing dagger sucks). My suggestion for Dancing Dagger would help with that. Also you would still be able to move during the aftercast and currently it’s around less than 0.1 second I believe.

I’m primarily talking about map travel since it’s faster and more efficient than short bow skipping, but if you could still move during the after-cast, it may not be so bad.

I’m quite surprised at the lack of support for Headshot.
Even as its primary use, to interrupt heal skills, with its duration cut in half you’re likely better off just heartseekering for 1 initiative less dealing 6k damage (assuming your target is sub-25%) rather than stopping his 6k heal and giving him another opportunity to do so in a few more seconds.
And that’s also not to mention its other uses as an alternative to Shadowshot.

Dahkeus.8243:

I’m primarily talking about map travel since it’s faster and more efficient than short bow skipping, but if you could still move during the after-cast, it may not be so bad.

Oh, there’s a funny story about that. ANET nerfed two similar methods I had made public involving cancelling heartseeker and infiltrator’s strike out of combat for mobility. I take it these aren’t intended to be used as alternatives to Infiltrator’s Arrow.

I have cut down my headshot usage by 90% since the nerf…honestly why use it when it does so little? The only time I still use it is to rupt stompers with no stab from a distance. Rupt a skill only for it to be used immediately after. You can burn all your ini to rupt them but you won’t be able to follow up with a killing blow because of how short the daze is.

Sucks.

Amaterasu.6280:

Trick Shot

I don’t mind that nerf. It seems to me the design of Shortbow is supposed to reward you the closer you are. eg; Cluster Bomb

Jumper.9482:

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

SOM should be 75%. 90% of our skills do 1-2 dmg :P. well 90% of our attacks.
thieves guild good change.
SR …eh i can go with that.
daggerstorm….. pfft horrible idea i think . not chanign much other than making yourself less susceptableto dmg for 2 secs.

rest is garbage in my opinion. all nerfs ? wow. didnt know thief was sooooo good in pvp. cant cap. cant defend. cant do 5v5 or higher….without hurting time by playing hide/outside of main fray. see so few thieves in spvp/tpvp/pve. highest place i see thieves is wvw. its the only place you can have any real chance at some 1v1s or 2v2s etc. dont think 85% of these ideas are even entertainable.

Traps? no good without them being a circle and trip/poison ones being pulsing.

scorp wire at 45 secs….with no real dmg? that woudl be the 2nd worst stun behind basilisk venom in teh entire game. would have to be 30s with what you posted.

infil return…. umm still not going to b a viable set unless it was as before nerf. no defense on this set. period. cant run it. have to run high dmg for lack of CC and condi. just wont work. thief is too fragile.

overall:

i noticed u focused on tit for tat trash. its all nonsense in the sense you are trying to fix a falling skyscraper by starting with the top floor. the problem is in the base. like how traps work. shouldbe 250 radius or something. base dmg should be a little higher so we dont have to spec. our HP should be in the medium range to make up for the total lack of responsive skills like block/invul etc and having no defensive boons like protection/aegis etc. steal is still the worst F mechanic in game. its a gap closer….nothing else has truly ever been a common “wow glad i had stole that skill….just won me a fight”. thief evade (evades on skills anyway) are a joke too. 1/4 sec evade on 1.25 sec skill = 1 sec of ’PLZ HURT ME NOW BC I CANT STOP YOU"…..

srry just seems like another dream post from a …T R * * *.

i know ur a decent player which is why im wondering what the heck this trash is all about. like u did a 180 or something.

The proposed changes to dancing dagger and deathblossom further pigeonhole D/D in to a “burst or GTFO” weaponset.

This promotes glass cannoning with more utility than any bar with backstab on it should have access to like ever, and making it a boring bar to play due to extreme init costs across the board.

I play malice/evade/condition D/D. I am the poster child for build diversity, and over time anets changes have actually strengthened my build. It’s still weak. So Weak in fact that I have to turn off the malice portion and go with withdraw just to PvP in most cases. I use it because it’s fun to have lots of evades and bleed people. You’re effectively looking for ways to destroy my spec. This is not build diversity. This is enhancing one build at the cost of another.

A lot of the other stuff seems okay on the surface (trap buffs for example) But keep in mind any time you radically alter the functionality of a skill you are impacting someone’s build.

My personal opinion is that pvp damage scaling across the entire game, from all sources needs to be brought down by 50%. It scales far too high compared to toughness/vit. Fights are often over in less than ten seconds for some new players, and that, in my opinion, is far too fast a “speed limit” for the hardest pro ganking the newest newbie. It’s so fast in comparison with the PvE game of mitigating multiple small hits or dodging larger more telegraphed hits that it kills the entire system and makes people gravitate to stupid crap like zoo teams and full glass backstab builds.

The fact that thief burst damage has been hit with the ugly stick repeatedly isn’t due to the damage output, but the time it takes to waste some poor sap in one rotation. You’re not going to get back potential sources of burst until that burst doesn’t aslo equate to “jumped a guy from stealth and killed him in ten seconds” because people will whine, and moan and make a fuss about it.

Yes, good players can duke it out for quite some time. I think my personal record was against a guardian in a fight that lasted probably five entire minutes. This is not the norm, and the problem becomes exacerbated in team fights, where it’s not only harder to actively mitigate all sources of incoming damage, but borderline impossible to apply damage effectively with conditions, barring epidemic, leaving an entire subset of builds out in the cold.

I really do believe the answer to overall balance, and a start on getting thieves back on the right track is to look at how compressed damage is in PvP as a whole, and dial it back a bit so that people might use some longer cooldowns or more esoteric skills because they live long enough for them to be useful.

The D/D deathblossom spec was one of the first specs I played. It was one of my favorites. Caed played it for a bit as well.
If you remember back to early last year, switching amulets weapons and utilities was nerfed because I would switch midgame to solo the lord with Deathblossom on Foefire.

With that being said, you must realize that converting 25% of the bleed to direct damage would only buff condition builds due to the heavy amount of condition cleanse in the game; or rather due to the extreme lack of condition diversity Thief brings. You’re almost never going to get the full duration off. At the very least, it would relatively increase the effectiveness of +bleed duration runes and sigils resulting in even more damage/options.
And I think 1 more initiative with the initiative changes is more than made up for the change of making it ignore aftercasts, enabling you to use it much more reliably as an evade, right? I mean otherwise it would be so overpowered you could dodge nearly everything. Oh, and with the proposed Trickster change, you would even get confusion and a use out of Dancing Dagger with this build to even further cover your bleeds. Overall I see this as much a buff to condition as to power D/D.

And about the utility aspect, the only amount of damage that I can see that would ever outweigh the amount of utility that D/P brings in comparison would be enough damage to 1-shot someone from full health. I don’t think anyone wants that, so I’m proposing bringing the utility of D/D up to less than half that (if even) of D/P with the benefit of slightly higher dps options, rather than having the worst of both worlds as is its current state.

I am okay with just about everything on the OP here.

I only have one question, knowingly you cannot test the changes you are suggesting to the after-casts, but what are the numbers behind the increases you have suggested?

Other than that I particularly like the suggested changes to Shadowstep, Roll for Initiative, and Shadow Refuge. All makes for smarter play in this department, and a more attractive Roll for initiative for those builds that may need it.

I’d be careful about including an immobilise in pistol whip, this is essentially like adding a perma devourer venom into the skill. Personally if I was given the choice I’d prefer to use the front hitting pistol whip if it meant that the person I’m hitting is guaranteed to be rooted and take all of the damage. Add in the 15% damage buff and you might be in danger of encouraging spam usage.

Some other people have mentioned already, stability is a good counter to an S/P thief but there’s not an equivalent counter to immob spam (aside from warrior zerker stance). I’d suggest instead of immob when hitting from the front, have a 0.5 second daze instead of a 0.5 second stun. This means that a skilled opponent will know to try and force the daze instead of the stun so that they can still move/dodge out of range of the sword flurry while the thief is rooted, as daze doesn’t impair movement or dodge rolling. This would give some counter play to it for classes that don’t have easy access to stability.

Well, thinking in terms of using Pistol Whip for damage, I guess I can see how an immobilize could be problematic.

I was thinking of it more in terms of using it as an interrupt with a free ~5k damage and evade attached, completely overshadowing Headshot.

But now that I think on it, a daze would still allow for the enemy to move out of the PW, basically turning the skill into a headshot but with 2 more initiative cost and a self-stun while at the same time putting more emphasis on positional play which can be somewhat hard to do without stealth, basically increasing the risk:reward ratio immensely.

I just wish the S/P kit weren’t so redundant… It really is my least favorite designed of the thief weapon sets. Well close call between that and the current P/P.

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.

Does Caed still play?

To my mind this a PvP thief wishlist and most changes are counterproductive for me as a PvE thief. You seem to ignoring the purpose of skills and trying to make them into something else, as shown with the dancing dagger suggestion. In general the changes are well organized but I do not support them at all.

For the last refuge suggestion of the next attack putting you into stealth – this is worse than the existing last refuge since you will fire a missile, stealth, and be guaranteed to have an unwanted reveal when the missile hits.

Amir.1570:

Jumper.9482:

A lot of people seem to be against cutting the S/D Thief’s endurance gains by 50%…
Or is it maybe the cutting of Trickery’s steal reacharge gains by 40%?

Or maybe its the MASSIVE UNREASONABLE 10% BUFF that is being proposed for a massively underpowered and underused weapon set (D/D).

Yeah, that must be it.

It was mostly because you defended S/D when it was brain-dead trash (Infinite stun break on top of million dodges, C’mon you can’t have everything) when Caed disagreed and said otherwise and even called it an easy mode build when you said it took skill.

TL;DR You defended cheese, Caed disapproved it. That definitely hurt your reputation.

but its needs SOME kind of reliable defensive util. IR as is….is useless. srry. unless im KD/STunned etc im not using it unless im switching enemies in PVE. FS LS evade is too short and i wont use it as a reaction defense.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Does Caed still play?

Watch his stream.

@OP:

Way too many changes to consider all at once. It would completely change the dynamic of the game and ANET would never try to make that massive of a change. The issue is that currently there are only 2 weaponsets that are “good”. D/P and S/D. I personally would not touch those for another balance patch or 2 (with the exception of dagger offhand)

Instead, your list should really focus on the main need areas: dagger offhand (4-5), P/P and P/D (1-3), S/P (1-3). More playstyles would definitely be a good thing.

Oh, and a grandmaster trait in deadly arts that has some value would be nice.

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.

I disagree with this. Now shortening cus somehow i went over the 5001 limit.
To be frank the suggestion is balls.
Let’s look at it.
Signet of Malices passive rewards successful hit frequency. The more hits you get, the faster you get them, the more you heal. Unlike healing signet this heal can and will be denied by block, stun, daze, evade/dodge roll, kiting, and blind. Which means ideally as a thief you’re doing everything right by getting your passive to proc and your opponent isn’t avoiding significant amounts of damage if you’re able to continually proc your passive.
Now the active your proposing is scaling on hit frequency. Let’s look at this on a base level.
3275 is the base heal. Lets cut it in half
1637, maybe 1638 i can’t recall if GW2 rounds up.
So 1638 is our base heal for the active… Your opponent dodge rolls, you’ve healed 1638 health for your active heal. Guess it doesn’t matter if you’re poisoned since reducing nothing by 33% will stil lgive you nothing.
The thing with this active
1) It’s subject to evade,blind, dodge, block, CC (as you wont hit), kiting.

2) Weakness, Protection, Endure pain, and “Protect Me” all reduce your heal even if you do connect. 50% of 0 is well 0. Any of the two power negation skills properly timed will mean a good laugh. Weakness gets a nice RNG proc suddenly what heal. This also creates a reliance on critical hits for stable healing of a 1 hit active.
3) The passive of SoM has application to various levels with every weapon set except D/P which has nothing notable outside of the auto-attack chain. Given that everyone has 2 weapon sets, a thief will technically always have a weapon set with some sort of synergy with SoM’s passive. Not bad at all. This is not true for your proposed active. Lets break it down
1638 is the base heal on your suggestion. Lets say you are bursted and only have 2 k health left. Normally at 0 healing power you get 3275 health back and are now at 5.2k health. Let’s think of some normal numbers. So for your suggestion we’d be at 3.6k + 50% of damage dealt
S/D: 4-5k crit Larcenous strike. 50% of that = 2-2.5k health = 5.6k, 6k. For the grand total of an extra ~800 health if you successfully retaliate on your opponent with Larcenous strike. It must be larcenous strike (or crippling strike) anything else heals less. Any miss = inferior. If you dont crit, inferior. If weakness, inferior, protection up? inferior. The fact that you have to stay in fight and specifically land larcenous strike to get a comparable heal? Inferior. Inf strike will heal less

S/P: Nothing here hits harder than larcenous strike in a single hit bar crippling strike. Not practical at all, Active sucks here

P/P: Nothing here will heal for anything remotely relevant. Garbage

P/D: Nothing here will heal for anything remotely relevant.Garbage

Shortbow: Only an undetonated crit clusterbomb… no way in hell is this relevant. After being bursted no one is going to cast the 1s cast time signet, then fire off an undetonated cluster bomb, likely in a point-blank situation since you’re trying to heal immediately (otherwise you’d just hit the passive). Not that I did math on it. undetonated CB is what ~3k/2.7k? 1.6k + ~1.5k for 3.1k on a squish target? Lol nope

D/D: Heartseeker and Backstab.
D/P: HS, Shadow shot, Backstab. Well the bottom line is that you need to do 3.2k+ in a single hit damage to draw even with this heal regardless of weapon set at 0 healing power. To get healing power you have to lower your damage bar Hidden Killer Valkyrie backstabs. In reality the active demands Power+ Crit builds, and only D/D and D/P have any sort of notable healing from it. Where as the heal is the same atm for everyone, and the passive is design wise functioning for everyone but D/P.

If SoM has any big flaw to me. It’s that it’s passive isn’t toned to well Spvp. Outside of a zoo you often wont have the numbers or the clump to make Dagger storm some ridiculous heal. Generally you wont find 3 people who will just sit inside a Pistol whip to let you get a sizeable heal off of it. Unload does 8 hits, but its a channeled interruptible skill and so again the reality that successful hits only reward this heal make that counterable not that it matters since it’s not all that potent in reality especially given the refire rate of Vital shot. To that end it doesn’t really need to be some great pick in berzerkers, but it’s fairly mediocre even with healing power given all the faults. I would think it needs some kind of Spvp split from pve just to boost its healing power co-efficient to a more suitable level to promote something different.

Perma evade thieves need to be nerfed asap, they don’t even take damage while doing tons of damage. I can’t even understand why anet allows these ultra-broken op builds to stay in game?

Umut.5471:

Perma evade thieves need to be nerfed asap, they don’t even take damage while doing tons of damage. I can’t even understand why anet allows these ultra-broken op builds to stay in game?

I’m unaware of how a thief can “perma” evade – please provide an example?

Umut.5471:

Perma evade thieves need to be nerfed asap, they don’t even take damage while doing tons of damage. I can’t even understand why anet allows these ultra-broken op builds to stay in game?

LOL

Do you have any idea how badly our vigor was nerfed last patch? We were hardly “perm evade” before, we certainly aren’t now. Mesmer, guardian, engineer, and ele all easily have as much vigor as we do and probably more.

And if you couldn’t counter “perma evade thieves” beforehand and still can’t now, you seriously need to L2P. You can take advantage of casts/aftercasts on various skills easily, and you can hit a thief using LS pretty easily as well. Heck, the last time I fought another S/D thief that was running a meta build, all I pretty much had to do was auto attack at the right time and the thief would go down pretty quickly. In fact, the majority of my damage came from auto attacking, and in the end it became an extremely easy fight. FS does relatively little damage, and LS makes thieves extremely vulnerable to damage. Just know when to hit and you can bit a S/D thief easily. It’s really not that difficult…

Since it’s 99% Thief stuff, why do you post it here and not on the subforum? Moderator should move the thread

Also, you do realise that stuff like adding stun factor to Dagger 4 would even further broke the entire idea of already broken kiting in this game? Why should I even bother kiting a thief? S/D would already teleport to me and immobilize every time I manage to create any gap, or just lolstun me+cripple to ensure I won’t get out of Sword #2? Not counting other stuff you w+Why should Hide in Shadows cure another un-coverable condition?

You know, you buff already best Thief healing skill which, with buff, removes 4 damaging conditions out of 5 possible, grants stealth, regeneration and reasonable burst heal? Torment was made to counter mobile classes, ya know. Cleansing it on every step isn’t the best solution ever.

But as I said, keep your suggestions to Thief subforum, where it belongs. And please, please, don’t make another “The XYZ Document”. It’s not Discovery channel. At least name it in other way. Greetings

Rym.1469:

Since it’s 99% Thief stuff, why do you post it here and not on the subforum? Moderator should move the thread

Also, you do realise that stuff like adding stun factor to Dagger 4 would even further broke the entire idea of already broken kiting in this game? Why should I even bother kiting a thief? S/D would already teleport to me and immobilize every time I manage to create any gap, or just lolstun me+cripple to ensure I won’t get out of Sword #2? Not counting other stuff you w+Why should Hide in Shadows cure another un-coverable condition?

You know, you buff already best Thief healing skill which, with buff, removes 4 damaging conditions out of 5 possible, grants stealth, regeneration and reasonable burst heal? Torment was made to counter mobile classes, ya know. Cleansing it on every step isn’t the best solution ever.

But as I said, keep your suggestions to Thief subforum, where it belongs. And please, please, don’t make another “The XYZ Document”. It’s not Discovery channel. At least name it in other way. Greetings

His double sword/dagger sword/dagger with energy sigils is no longer unstoppable so now he wants more buffs to a class that is not struggling at all. I also believe this should be moved to the thief forum; a lot of elementalists have made threads recently that have been moved to their own class subforum, why does this guy get special treatment?

The balance team needs to focus on classes that need it and not the thief which is reasonably balanced right now and does not need ANY buffs whatsoever. Thief has been one of the top classes for the entirety of gw2, and they have even been op top dog multiple times. Thieves should be happy they are not eles; it saddens me how ungrateful you are for how well designed your class is op.

Jumper.9482:

The D/D deathblossom spec was one of the first specs I played. It was one of my favorites. Caed played it for a bit as well.
If you remember back to early last year, switching amulets weapons and utilities was nerfed because I would switch midgame to solo the lord with Deathblossom on Foefire.

With that being said, you must realize that converting 25% of the bleed to direct damage would only buff condition builds due to the heavy amount of condition cleanse in the game; or rather due to the extreme lack of condition diversity Thief brings. You’re almost never going to get the full duration off. At the very least, it would relatively increase the effectiveness of +bleed duration runes and sigils resulting in even more damage/options.
And I think 1 more initiative with the initiative changes is more than made up for the change of making it ignore aftercasts, enabling you to use it much more reliably as an evade, right? I mean otherwise it would be so overpowered you could dodge nearly everything. Oh, and with the proposed Trickster change, you would even get confusion and a use out of Dancing Dagger with this build to even further cover your bleeds. Overall I see this as much a buff to condition as to power D/D.

And about the utility aspect, the only amount of damage that I can see that would ever outweigh the amount of utility that D/P brings in comparison would be enough damage to 1-shot someone from full health. I don’t think anyone wants that, so I’m proposing bringing the utility of D/D up to less than half that (if even) of D/P with the benefit of slightly higher dps options, rather than having the worst of both worlds as is its current state.

You make good points, but I think the concept of adding more damage compression to deathblossom is still a bandaid on the overarcing problems with condition design on the thief as a whole.

Namely, we don’t have enough reliable cover conditions for our build.

Other things to consider:

I use dancing dagger’s lifesteal combo as a heal. Gaining chaser style interrupts wouldn’t strengthen my build, but cutting my initiative expenditure would fundamentally change the way I use both dancing dagger and shadow refuge.

What if, in stead, we left the already tight init expenditures alone for dancing dagger and deathblossom and in stead made some more build neutral changes.

I think the concept of allowing deathblossom to function as a cancel is a great one, but one of the weakest points of the skill is its aftercast lock-in that good players can easily exploit for free hits. I think leaving the skill offensively comparatively weak as it is now would be acceptable if it were returned its full length evade frame, and given the self-interrupt treatment you described.

It was initially removed because it was far too easy to exploit for chained evades, but let’s be real here: People know how to mitigate this, and other shifts in balancing and meta have turned this in to largely a non-issue in the current state of the game. I’d even be okay with increasing its init cost if it got that full evade frame back, or even if its animation was shortened to its current evasion.

As for dancing dagger, I think it’s decent as control, but its primary issue in most builds stems from its niche nature. It’s a great control skill against 2+ targets, and a sad skill against a single target. I think we need to normalize its effectiveness somehow, rather than turning it in to headshot 2.0

D/P is a unique flavor and should retain its hard control effects, it’s good at what it does. I look at the overall dagger offhand and */D skillsets and see something that put offhand dagger as an evasive rather than a control offhand, the problem is that it doesn’t do its job well enough. What if Dancing Dagger scaled its init cost based on the number of targets it actually hits? This would make it a much more reliable skill in all engagement types without fundamentally changing its melee-keepaway design, and make it better at what it’s already designed for: stacking cripples and bleeds to soft-control targets for setting up a CnD or buying time and keeping melee at range.

Giving it a stun isn’t the answer. That kind of aggressive ranged control is already present in D/P, and IMO That’s a perfect place for it. I don’t see a lot of value or diversity in giving D/D analogous tools and playstyle to D/P. In stead, I’d like to see weaponsets with variant playstyles, strengths, and weaknesses.