Guild Wars 2

Many players seem to dislike the Thief as a profession right now. The class experienced many adjustments and nerfs since release.

After reading the “we need a break” thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/We-need-a-break/) I am curious about your opinions on making a new Thief profession, that gets less hate and less “adjustments”.

For me it looks like A LOT of people asking for nerfs regarding the current Thief class and asked since the game started. And I too got the feeling, that A-Net blindly listens to these people.

So I guess the majority of the player base of GW2 would like to see the Thief being kinda changed and I wonder, what those people have in mind, if they are NOT just asking for nerfing Thieves even if they are already at the bottom of the food chain. So let’s think positive and assume, that there are some good ideas around.

My question is – what do people think about a solid, well-balanced, useful Thief class? Think in terms of a class description and tell us, what should make a Thief special, separates it from the other professions and makes it rewarding and fun to play.

To help you with that, I can tell you, what people DON’T want:
1) The Thief class shall not have burst damage.
Burst is a bad thing as it can kill other players too fast. All major burst skills have been nerfed for the Thief since the game was released.

OK – so a Thief shall not burst. Fine.

2) The Thief class shall not have strong condition damage
Thief has no access to burning anyway, so that leaves poison and bleed. Just Poison is laughable in terms of killing enemies and can be counted as an “annoyance”. So for condition damage the Thief got: bleeds. From last patchnotes: “Reduced duration from 15 seconds to 10 seconds”. Do I have to say more?

OK – no condition damage/burst from Thieves.

3) The Thief shall not go into stealth too often / too long
No need to elaborate on that… we all know it has been nerfed and is still one of the major things people ask for.

OK – stealth only as a special skill, that won’t last longer than a few moments.

4) The Thief shall not be able to run faster/escape easier than other classes
Let’s face it – if the Thief can’t win a fight he/she’s probably going to leg it out. People don’t want that. If a Thief dares to attack he/she shall PAY for it. Period. Look at other professions and how they got plenty of speed options. I am quite sure there will be some nerfs ahead to make sure, that (almost) every profession can catch a Thief so the “fair” fight can start.

OK – no special mobility/speed for the Thief.

…

Now it’s your turn – can someone please answer my question? I mean – either the Thief profession really brings something unique, rewarding and worth playing to the table or A-Net shall dump it right away.

Please describe a Thief class, that is worth having the name “Thief” and won’t get nerfed because of it’s abilities. Also think in terms like: “I like having a Thief in my team, because: …”. Obviously it is not easy to design that class, so let’s help A-Net with a few good ideas!

Maybe we can create a new and better Thief profession that way!

Regards

I’ll start with just a few ideas:

PICK LOCK
Works on everything that has a lock. Picklocks can be crafted and can have different qualities. Wouldn’t it be nice to picklock Black Lion chests (with a certain chance)? Maybe you could picklock a keep door that way?

PICKPOCKET
Why not steal some nice gold from monsters, NPC’s, whatever? I mean… you are a Thief afterall? Maybe steal some special things, too? Things, that can’t be looted otherwise?

CLIMB
Be able to climb (keep) walls at certain areas, steep mountains, even (some) trees (and hide in there for example).

DISGUISE
Blend with your surroundings. No stealth – you are still there. At a certain distance your armor color and pattern looks more and more like the surrounding (to a certain degree), your name tag is less visible etc.

DISARM ENEMY
Your stealing skills are so high – you can even disarm an enemy. Target can’t use weapon skills for a certain amount of time.

DISARM TRAP
You can detect and disarm all kind of traps – and maybe avoid some automatically.

MASTER ACROBAT
Some skills or skill improvements, that are related to acrobatics.
“Long Jump”: you jump further than others and can get to places others can’t reach (that easily). Can also work as a movement skill/gap closer.
“Master evade”: your evades cost less and last longer.

Thief just needs a more viable bunker build. Thieves should be rewarded for not going into stealth, as it stands there is no logical reason to NOT pop into stealth every 3 seconds, the benefit of doing so is just too great. We are essentially forced into this or a similar playstyle due to the lack of condition removal and self healing. Stealth is supposed to make up for these, but it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t be one or the other. For instance the basis of the Elementalist is receiving boons from attunement swapping, an entire trait line dedicated to improving the swap, now it’s the most common build because other playstyles just aren’t as effective. The same answer solves both these problems, make playing OTHER builds more viable.
Make it so you having something to gain by staying visible. I’m thinking something like increased passive healing or toughness, or just something to give staying visible an advantage. Obviously whatever it is goes on a long CD when using stealth to avoid abusing the best of both mechanics. As stealth is mostly useless in dungeons, such a buff could really help out thieves in PvE.

Stealth should only reach its final stage at the result of a grandmaster trait. Perhaps have stealth give a +50% damage taken passive effect until the final trait negates/lessens this effect and adds a little something nice, like adding the extra second of stealth. Okay kind of extreme but you get my point, make it nowhere near as effective until the last trait.

Regarding condition damage, I’d argue that poison was never meant to be a damage dealer, rather meant to absolutely cripple your foe’s healing ability. Trying to heal when slapped with a lengthy poison and no condition removers left is just the worst situation you could be in.

Now this next comment is more than likely going to cop a lot of flak, but… Get rid of the initiative system. Give it the same CD on each skill as every other profession has to deal with, the skills themselves are only half of how thieves burst too well, it’s the ability to chain all of their hard hitting attacks one after the other. If a warrior could set off multiple Hundred Blades or Whirlwind Attack in a matter of seconds then the world would be crying for nerf, I fail to see how the situations are different.
I can see what Anet tried to do, but I’m just not a fan, replace it with some other unique ability that can add more depth to the thief.
For instance add F2-F4 skills that all share a CD with steal, providing more variety to the class. I’m just throwing ideas around but throw in a 3x condition remover and stunbreaker, a haste skill, and perhaps a knockdown? All with shared CD to avoid abusing it, and allow improvements through trait lines, e.g shorter CD, the option to use 2 skills before the CD is activated for a grandmaster trait.

The tl;dr is the reason thieves are strong in PvP and bad in PvE is the lack of build variety. In most situations a build good for PvE won’t be as effective in PvP. Give thieves the option to be GOOD in PvE, and tone down their finesse at PvP (through the changes mentioned above) and the class will stop receiving all the hate.

In regards to your second post, improvements made to climbing and jumping will only serve to open the doors for exploiting and bugging, something which Anet is really trying to keep a lid on. Such changes would be taken advantage of far too easily.
DISARM ENEMY sounds good in theory, but coupled with the thieves current state of burst damage it would leave people too helpless.
DISARM TRAP doesn’t sound too bad, though very enemy/dungeon specific and probably wouldn’t be widely utilised.
The other ideas would be a huge overhaul of the game to add, far beyond just messing around with a few thief traits. Though I wouldn’t mind seeing them in the the future, there are a lot more big fixes to happen before adding more content.