Guild Wars 2

Thief sword has a very interesting get in / get out skill that they absolutely need in their weapon set.

The name of the skill is infiltrator strike (sword 2 skill). Its a instant gap closer.

Thief with d/p also have a skill that they need to reach other players.

The name of the skill is Shadow Shot (d/p 3 skill). Almost instant gap closer.

The problem is those skills give too much reward to the thief and no reward to the player when he sucessfully dodge the first and even the second burst. There is no way to keep distance from a thief who keeps using this skills along.

Every thief already have steal in their build (900 non traited range) and they can also take infiltrator’s signet (900 range).

Thief needs to chasse their target, get them by surprise, but where is the reward to the players that can actualy dodge / avoid their combat mobility? If they miss one they will try again right after. This is a bigger problem to those classes that need to kite to be more efective.

There should be a way to avoid thiefs to keep spam mobility skills they just missed / being avoided.

Maybe a solution could be the increase of iniciative cost to skills that have been used before (for instance 6/7 sec before) by one. After the first being added to the cost, the second time it adds two iniciative cost.

What people think?

i think thief combat mobility is fine as it is.
they are supposed to be mobile in that way.

oh man now a complain about mobility…whats next?

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i think thief combat mobility is fine as it is.
they are supposed to be mobile in that way.

Yes they are supose to be that mobile. What they lack its the reward for the other player who is able to dodge instacast gap closers.

I not said to take that away from them. I said to make them pay for mistakes.

a t s e.9614:

You want to be able to kite a thief with 1,8k armor and 10k HP? The gap closers on thief is for that reason, being too vulnerable to any attacks they must stick close to their target.

And dodging the shadow shot drains their initiatives for nothing , that is the reward. A thief without initiatives is a dead thief.

The same could be said about mesmer phantasm, what’s the point of dodging zerker phantasm if its gonna strike you again in few seconds. That’s how the game is , just because you dodged one time doesn’t mean you deserve to win.

True. But if you dodge the phantasm you know that phantasm doesn’t going to strike again right after you dodge it. It gives you some time / distance to counterplay (except when they are cast while the mesmer is in stealth, but that its another issue).

Mobility is kinda the point of a thief, since they have kitten for defense otherwise. The second you catch a thief it’s going to be killed or get very close. So good thieves won’t get caught.

Runewolf.8456:

Mobility is kinda the point of a thief, since they have kitten for defense otherwise. The second you catch a thief it’s going to be killed or get very close. So good thieves won’t get caught.

True and my changes wont hurt them. Just the bad ones will be punnished by their own fault.

Another solution could be to give the ports one obvious animation, but that will hurt thiefs against skilled players.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i think thief combat mobility is fine as it is.
they are supposed to be mobile in that way.

Yes they are supose to be that mobile. What they lack its the reward for the other player who is able to dodge instacast gap closers.

I not said to take that away from them. I said to make them pay for mistakes.

They spend more initiative, which means they need more time to recover it before they can continue using their other skills.

gotta love gw2 community, their anti thief crusades and the mods that let this crap going on.

If people would actually read they would understand that he wants a way to punish those skills, so they are not brainafk to use. Guardians, warriors and thieves have to much access to skills that are to easy to use because you cant counterplay it. Like punishing warriors in the next patch for F1 skill spamming, their should be a option to counter play gap closers on thieves.

honest to goodness, roll a thief and try playing it without using the mobility skills.

tell me how long you last.

Black Box.9312:

silentnight warrior.2714:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i think thief combat mobility is fine as it is.
they are supposed to be mobile in that way.

Yes they are supose to be that mobile. What they lack its the reward for the other player who is able to dodge instacast gap closers.

I not said to take that away from them. I said to make them pay for mistakes.

They spend more initiative, which means they need more time to recover it before they can continue using their other skills.

Yes, but the way that iniciative gain is now, thats is not even a average penalty. I can use Shadow shot 5/6 times in a row so i can miss about 4 and still have defenses left.

The sword one is even more easy to spam, i can spam it 8 times until i stay out of iniciative and in the end i’m away in safety.

Spaming skills should be less rewarding than it is now

BrunoBRS.5178:

honest to goodness, roll a thief and try playing it without using the mobility skills.

tell me how long you last.

I have a thief and i use and abuse those skills. Thats why i know that are too much.
And i dont want to take that away from them. I want more reward to who is able to dodge instacast gap closers.

Black Box.9312:

silentnight warrior.2714:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i think thief combat mobility is fine as it is.
they are supposed to be mobile in that way.

Yes they are supose to be that mobile. What they lack its the reward for the other player who is able to dodge instacast gap closers.

I not said to take that away from them. I said to make them pay for mistakes.

They spend more initiative, which means they need more time to recover it before they can continue using their other skills.

They can use other gap closers instead. I give a window of 6/7 seconds for them. Thiefs have steal on a 22 sec cd traited (and traited this one is very good). They have Infiltrator’s signet and dagger 2.
They would still have excelent gap closers, they would need to use them wisely.

Punishment is loss of initiative.

Changing the existing behavior is optional, as thief is not OP (with the most obvious justification being that multi-thief comps have not been proven to be viable in equally skilled matchups).

There are obvious and better areas to focus development attention on, such as overly effective passive abilities.

The only issue I have about Thief mobility is the cast times on Steal, and chain on Infiltrator Return.

Since I main Mesmer, steal gives Thieves “consume plasma” probably one of the strongest skill in the game hands down. I can only anticipate it when I catch the Thief coming at me from the corner of my screen. It is extremely difficult to avoid. A nice cast animation, like the Hide In Shadow heal would be nice to give me a chance.

Infiltrator’s Return is the 2nd part of chain on Infiltrator Strike. Already powerful to escape stun/daze/immobile, what really kills me is the 15s duration. Heck, even portal, when opened to port, only has 10s activation window. I feel the 15s gives Thieves too much escape when they got outplayed on their burst. Reducing it to 10s would do wonders in terms of risk and reward, engage or disengage in smart Thief play.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Yes, but the way that iniciative gain is now, thats is not even a average penalty. I can use Shadow shot 5/6 times in a row so i can miss about 4 and still have defenses left.

The sword one is even more easy to spam, i can spam it 8 times until i stay out of iniciative and in the end i’m away in safety.

Please actually know the class you claim to play before posting comments about it.

Shadow shot costs 4 initiative. There isn’t a spec in the game that can fire it 5/6 times in a row, neither is there aspec that can fire it 4 times and still have initiative left over for “Defenses”.

IS/IR combo requires 5 initiative – much like the 20 init spec, there is no 40 init spec.

You either
A) Have no idea how the class works
B) Do not have a strong enough argument to support your case without resorting to extreme hyperbole.

In either case, please stop spreading misinformation, it only hurts the game.

Not that I’m agreeing with the OP, but just curious. How many times in succession can a skill be used in order to label it spam(y)?

mrmadhaze.8706:

gotta love gw2 community, their anti thief crusades and the mods that let this crap going on.

i could say the same for the warrior haters you know

Thief cooldowns should be doubled and initiative removed.

silentnight warrior.2714:

BrunoBRS.5178:

honest to goodness, roll a thief and try playing it without using the mobility skills.

tell me how long you last.

I have a thief and i use and abuse those skills. Thats why i know that are too much.
And i dont want to take that away from them. I want more reward to who is able to dodge instacast gap closers.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/silentnight-warrior-2714/showposts

I don’t see much evidence of teef’n

what if i say that the rewar is:

-the thief lose time wich is important for him
-the thief lose initiative which is even more important for him

increasing the cost on spammed skill would just lead even more to the death of the profession in pve…

If i’m ok to say that thief need a rework it doesn’t deserve a nerf again

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

mrmadhaze.8706:

gotta love gw2 community, their anti thief crusades and the mods that let this crap going on.

i could say the same for the warrior haters you know

You are in a bad position to say that you allready have one of the best group/solo pve class, one huge capacity of roam/impact in bus in wvw, a good sPvP class, even one of the best class to farm blacklion keys….And all that with a low to medium skillcap depending on what gamemode you play…

Just going to say thief is basically a"spam" class other than SA condi P/D and zerk D/D which focus on CnD,stealth attack and AA which is spammable on all classes every other spec could be consider spam like. Trying not spam with a initiative system(double edged sword) is impossible. If they put CD on thief which will never happen you can expect MAJOR damage buff(power and condi) and stronger traits mainly SA since stealth will be less accessible and then you will want change back.

Rasalhague.8270:

Thief cooldowns should be doubled and initiative removed.

Aka, All weapon skills = auto attacks

Shockwave.1230:

Rasalhague.8270:

Thief cooldowns should be doubled and initiative removed.

Aka, All weapon skills = auto attacks

I concur. Let’s remove init entirely and make all thief weapon skills 0s CD, as this brave soul has suggested.

Huzzah for standing up for the class you believe in Rasalhague.

Let’s see how spammy these classes are.
For a P/D, you can only spam in quick succession 2, 3, 4 and NOT 5 (Heart seeker , shadow shot, head shot).
Every other profession? They can spam 2,3,4,5 in quick succession.

Long term? Let’s see.

Average initiative cost for an attack is 4 initiative (it’s actually 4.4 initiative, but let’s round it down cause we don’t want thieves to seem underpowered). We regenerate 1 initiative per second. So starting with everything on cool down, that is .25 attacks (not auto attack) per second. 0.227 attacks per second if we use 4.4 initiative. Let’s take greatsword warrior for example cause we all hate warriors too.
Burst, 10 seconds. HB, 8 second. Whirlwind attack, 10 second. Bladetrail, 15 second. Rush, 20 second. That is .44 attacks per second (.342 attacks per second if you didn’t know you had an F1 skill that does something). If you guys weapon swap, oh my goodness, it’s as if someone just entered a cheat code.

Just as warriors can trait for lower CDs, so can thieves regain initiative. How do thieves regain more initiative? Steal. That’s 2 extra initiative every 25-35 seconds. Barely anything.

Every single profession can spam skills faster than thieves can (unless it’s heart seeker or dancing dagger, but that is it), just not the same skill over and over.

Some of you guys are like, shadow shot OP! I dodge the first one, and then he shoots me again, and I’m out of endurance. Ok, the thief just used 8 initiative out of 12. If they are going trickery, that just means they are doing less damage. Are you guys really going to be auto attacked to death?

The only thing thieves are better at than every single other profession is their ability to use an attack more than once. What other professions do better is their ability to spam their attacks faster than a thief can.

I just showed you how a profession can basically use their attacks about 1.75 times more often without even swapping weapons. Even a warrior with a hammer can spam skills faster than a thief can. Look up weapon skills for each profession, tell me which one can’t attack more than once every 4 seconds.

I’m not saying that other professions are OP, I just want to show you guys that in my opinion, it is a good tradeoff, using half as many skills as any other professions can, but being able to spam a skill multiple time.

If you guys think there’s something wrong with what I wrote, or there are anything else you think make thieves too OP, reply, and I’ll either agree with you, or try to prove how it isn’t OP.

On topic: If a thief can’t catch someone, and if a thief can no longer burst anyone in 3 seconds, and a thief is squishy, and a thief can’t support anyone unless they go that kittenty venom share, what is a thief supposed to be good at? Are they supposed to be good at trolling? Giving out legendaries from their dead bodies? I’m pretty sure that a thief carrying a Banner of Strength everywhere so people will always get the aura is better than venom share.

Thieves pros: good dps, good mobility, stealth. Consistent Might, vigor, fury, bleed, poison, vulnerability, immobilize (1 second, lol). If you want to talk about S/D, replace good dps with being able to steal other people’s boons.

Thieves cons: No team support, low hp, low armor. No other conditions or boons. Subpar condition removal. Don’t underestimate how squishy thieves are – no blocks, no invulns, no access to protection, Lowest base HP, no practical access to stability. Poor sustain, Zero bunker ability.

Platanos.8107:

Let’s see how spammy these classes are.
For a P/D, you can only spam in quick succession 2, 3, 4 and NOT 5 (Heart seeker , shadow shot, head shot).
Every other profession? They can spam 2,3,4,5 in quick succession.

Long term? Let’s see.

Average initiative cost for an attack is 4 initiative (it’s actually 4.4 initiative, but let’s round it down cause we don’t want thieves to seem underpowered). We regenerate 1 initiative per second. So starting with everything on cool down, that is .25 attacks (not auto attack) per second. 0.227 attacks per second if we use 4.4 initiative. Let’s take greatsword warrior for example cause we all hate warriors too.
Burst, 10 seconds. HB, 8 second. Whirlwind attack, 10 second. Bladetrail, 15 second. Rush, 20 second. That is .44 attacks per second (.342 attacks per second if you didn’t know you had an F1 skill that does something). If you guys weapon swap, oh my goodness, it’s as if someone just entered a cheat code.

Just as warriors can trait for lower CDs, so can thieves regain initiative. How do thieves regain more initiative? Steal. That’s 2 extra initiative every 25-35 seconds. Barely anything.

Every single profession can spam skills faster than thieves can (unless it’s heart seeker or dancing dagger, but that is it), just not the same skill over and over.

Some of you guys are like, shadow shot OP! I dodge the first one, and then he shoots me again, and I’m out of endurance. Ok, the thief just used 8 initiative out of 12. If they are going trickery, that just means they are doing less damage. Are you guys really going to be auto attacked to death?

The only thing thieves are better at than every single other profession is their ability to use an attack more than once. What other professions do better is their ability to spam their attacks faster than a thief can.

I just showed you how a profession can basically use their attacks about 1.75 times more often without even swapping weapons. Even a warrior with a hammer can spam skills faster than a thief can. Look up weapon skills for each profession, tell me which one can’t attack more than once every 4 seconds.

I’m not saying that other professions are OP, I just want to show you guys that in my opinion, it is a good tradeoff, using half as many skills as any other professions can, but being able to spam a skill multiple time.

If you guys think there’s something wrong with what I wrote, or there are anything else you think make thieves too OP, reply, and I’ll either agree with you, or try to prove how it isn’t OP.

On topic: If a thief can’t catch someone, and if a thief can no longer burst anyone in 3 seconds, and a thief is squishy, and a thief can’t support anyone unless they go that kittenty venom share, what is a thief supposed to be good at? Are they supposed to be good at trolling? Giving out legendaries from their dead bodies? I’m pretty sure that a thief carrying a Banner of Strength everywhere so people will always get the aura is better than venom share.

Thieves pros: good dps, good mobility, stealth. Consistent Might, vigor, fury, regeneration, bleed, poison, torment, vulnerability, immobilize (1 second, lol). If you want to talk about S/D, replace good dps with being able to steal other people’s boons.

Thieves cons: No team support, low hp, low armor. No other conditions or boons. No boon removal. Subpar condition removal. Don’t underestimate how squishy thieves are.

It’s so sad that this write up will be completely ignored, because it’s mostly spot on.

My only complaints are “no boon removal” in thief cons – almost everyone is running bountiful theft because…why wouldn’t you? Steal is crap (relative to other class mechanics) until you dump 4-5 traits into it, at which point it becomes fairly powerful. Bountiful theft also supplies some team support, though not on the level of other classes.

Also, Regeneration and torment don’t feel like something thieves have “good” access to – some access yes, but nothing special. “Dont underestimae how squishy thieves are” is vague, spell it out – no blocks, no invulns, no access to protection, Lowest base HP, no practical access to stability. Poor sustain, Zero bunker ability (which basically pidgeonholes thieves into burst specs)

evilapprentice.6379:

snippy snip

Thanks for the input. I agree with you and I changed it to mostly what you said. Removed boon removal from cons, but didn’t put it in pros cause it seems on par with the other professions.

Sometimes I do not believe what I read here. Too mobile now?

If people really just want practice dummies to fight against there are some on the PvP map.

People call thieves spammy because they can spam ONE gimmick over and over, aka blind blind blind or evade evade evade or stealth stealth stealth depending on the build. Every thief spec that is actually used relies on one single gimmick to function. That makes them completly OP against any build that cant deal with that specific gimmick and completly useless against any build that can completly ignore that gimmick.

People here always claim that thieves dont need to play in skill rotations because they can use whatever skill they want but in reality thats not true its the most predictable class beside warriors because the situation forces them to use specific skills. If you know the thief spec you know exactly what the thief does at any time in a 1v1 situation because every thief spec is so tunnel visioned to function around one gimmick that you actually have zero freedom how to play and thats why they are so spammy.

Eliesume.1687:

The only issue I have about Thief mobility is the cast times on Steal, and chain on Infiltrator Return.

Since I main Mesmer, steal gives Thieves “consume plasma” probably one of the strongest skill in the game hands down. I can only anticipate it when I catch the Thief coming at me from the corner of my screen. It is extremely difficult to avoid. A nice cast animation, like the Hide In Shadow heal would be nice to give me a chance.

Infiltrator’s Return is the 2nd part of chain on Infiltrator Strike. Already powerful to escape stun/daze/immobile, what really kills me is the 15s duration. Heck, even portal, when opened to port, only has 10s activation window. I feel the 15s gives Thieves too much escape when they got outplayed on their burst. Reducing it to 10s would do wonders in terms of risk and reward, engage or disengage in smart Thief play.

This could also work. Give them obvious animation to be able to be countered. But this will hurt thiefs in high end PvP.

evilapprentice.6379:

silentnight warrior.2714:

Yes, but the way that iniciative gain is now, thats is not even a average penalty. I can use Shadow shot 5/6 times in a row so i can miss about 4 and still have defenses left.

The sword one is even more easy to spam, i can spam it 8 times until i stay out of iniciative and in the end i’m away in safety.

Please actually know the class you claim to play before posting comments about it.

Shadow shot costs 4 initiative. There isn’t a spec in the game that can fire it 5/6 times in a row, neither is there aspec that can fire it 4 times and still have initiative left over for “Defenses”.

IS/IR combo requires 5 initiative – much like the 20 init spec, there is no 40 init spec.

You either
A) Have no idea how the class works
B) Do not have a strong enough argument to support your case without resorting to extreme hyperbole.

In either case, please stop spreading misinformation, it only hurts the game.

When you use those skils and the target dodged back you will not use it right away. You wait at least one second to let them end the dodge / evade and then use the skill right away.

I know the class thats why i posted it and i can do what i said.

Even after i read your post i log in again just to be sure i was not making some mistake with those numbers and i must say they are pretty acurate.

Jayce.5632:

Not that I’m agreeing with the OP, but just curious. How many times in succession can a skill be used in order to label it spam(y)?

That depends.

For some people spaming skills is when you just press buttons one after other just to use the skills right when they are out of CD. I can understand this but for me its spaming the same skill until it works.

“Also, Regeneration and torment don’t feel like something thieves have “good” access to – some access yes, but nothing special. “Dont underestimae how squishy thieves are” is vague, spell it out – no blocks, no invulns, no access to protection, Lowest base HP, no practical access to stability. Poor sustain, Zero bunker ability (which basically pidgeonholes thieves into burst specs)"

In some of this cases Thief can have them by boon removal and thief is very good at it.

And poor sustain is not really acurate.

But those are other things out of the topic.

And who actually cares? The problem is that you defend the warrior just as vigorously as you attacked the thief in this thread. And that is the pefect example of being delusional. How can it be that someone defending warriors is upset about the combat mobility a thief has? Its not like the general seen warrior cannot sit in someone´s face because of outstanding mobility skills and near-soft-CC-immunity, right…

Poor sustain is accurate, because being a thief means gtfo asap when you get focused.

The mobility a thief has in combat has been nerfed over the time. S/x #2 lost its stunbreaking ability and got a cast time. The Shadow Trap got a cast time as well. SB #5 is hella expensive, and Steal / Infiltrators Signet / Shadowstep / Withdraw / Roll For Initiative have more uses than just gap closing or creating and are on reasonable cooldowns. Heartseeker and to some extend Flanking Strike may close gaps, but spamming them is neither advisable nor does it look good.

A thief´s mobility is offset by his squishyness. A warrior doesnt share this offset and still is mobile. If a thief wants to be tanky, he has to give up on damage. A warrior does not.

A truckload of +1 to Platanos. His (or her´s) wall of text hits all the nails on their heads. You should stick that onto the “thief initiative neads a rework”-thread where someone moans about chill not affecting thief weapon skill CDs while a thief actually has the longer cooldown system.

You are not squish if you can evade all damage including channeling ^^ with 5 possibilities to reset combat per minute.

food for thought.

It all relates to their initiative regen being too high imo. The raw mobility the class has isn’t a problem. They need those tools because the class really is quite fragile. Either the initiative regen needs to be reduced so they can’t just spam their mobility, evasion, and stealth skills without a care in the world or things that support their survivability in other ways needs to be toned down.

Things like Blind on Pistol 5’s shot (not the field), Feline Grace, Blind on Stealth trait, Steal on 20 second cooldown that provides every positive boon in the game and dazes the opponent, etc.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

You are not squish if you can evade all damage including channeling ^^ with 5 possibilities to reset combat per minute.

food for thought.

no, you remain squishy.

thief is the ultimate “all or nothing” profession. either we kill really fast, or we’re dead meat. either we completely null the damage coming to us, or we’re dead.

so yes, it’s a profession with a bunch of evades and blinds, because the moment a hit slips through, we’re one foot in the grave already. god help us if a condi necro manages to land some attacks.

other classes can take those hits to the face and walk away, unless they’re eles/guards (the other two low base HP professions) on a glassy build. but thief only has the option of a glassy build. and those eles/guards also have active defenses of their own, on top of damage better mitigation.

so i’ll tell you the same thing i told OP: if thief mobility is so unfair, try playing one without using the mobility and tell me how long you last.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

You are not squish if you can evade all damage including channeling ^^ with 5 possibilities to reset combat per minute.

food for thought.

no, you remain squishy.

thief is the ultimate “all or nothing” profession. either we kill really fast, or we’re dead meat. either we completely null the damage coming to us, or we’re dead.

so yes, it’s a profession with a bunch of evades and blinds, because the moment a hit slips through, we’re one foot in the grave already. god help us if a condi necro manages to land some attacks.

other classes can take those hits to the face and walk away, unless they’re eles/guards (the other two low base HP professions) on a glassy build. but thief only has the option of a glassy build. and those eles/guards also have active defenses of their own, on top of damage better mitigation.

so i’ll tell you the same thing i told OP: if thief mobility is so unfair, try playing one without using the mobility and tell me how long you last.

Not quite the case as it stands. My full healing power P/P blindspam grind thief actually has performed the best of all of my thief builds in sPvP. I’ve had dedicated duels go on for more than 45 mins against extremely good players (outside of a game, ofc), and I always win the long ones. The build pretty much doesn’t die and attritions so long for so well that everyone runs out of gas and simply can’t keep up with the slight decreases their health bars are facing. The thing is, it’s not at all mobile (and with the upcoming patch/nerf to BP, will no longer be as effective), but the point being that thieves can have great access to sustain by building for it and abusing some of their gimmicks as someone else mentioned above.

I’d like for HS to be changed, honestly, coming from a D/D main. I find myself frequently needing to spam it just because I lack enough to stick to my target for the longer fights, and I hate the fact that it’s just so cheesy in the damage department. Turning it into a more effective gap close with a higher initiative cost would I suspect help reduce the whole spamming problem it faces and severely cut down on permastealth builds while ultimately not changing much in terms of the overall effect it has when used in-combat as a gap-closer.

So you successfully eliminated a thief´s squishyness by sacrificing damage AND mobility, which is part of attition. outside of a duel anyone would walk away.

DeceiverX.8361:

BrunoBRS.5178:

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

You are not squish if you can evade all damage including channeling ^^ with 5 possibilities to reset combat per minute.

food for thought.

no, you remain squishy.

thief is the ultimate “all or nothing” profession. either we kill really fast, or we’re dead meat. either we completely null the damage coming to us, or we’re dead.

so yes, it’s a profession with a bunch of evades and blinds, because the moment a hit slips through, we’re one foot in the grave already. god help us if a condi necro manages to land some attacks.

other classes can take those hits to the face and walk away, unless they’re eles/guards (the other two low base HP professions) on a glassy build. but thief only has the option of a glassy build. and those eles/guards also have active defenses of their own, on top of damage better mitigation.

so i’ll tell you the same thing i told OP: if thief mobility is so unfair, try playing one without using the mobility and tell me how long you last.

Not quite the case as it stands. My full healing power P/P blindspam grind thief actually has performed the best of all of my thief builds in sPvP. I’ve had dedicated duels go on for more than 45 mins against extremely good players (outside of a game, ofc), and I always win the long ones. The build pretty much doesn’t die and attritions so long for so well that everyone runs out of gas and simply can’t keep up with the slight decreases their health bars are facing. The thing is, it’s not at all mobile (and with the upcoming patch/nerf to BP, will no longer be as effective), but the point being that thieves can have great access to sustain by building for it and abusing some of their gimmicks as someone else mentioned above.

I’d like for HS to be changed, honestly, coming from a D/D main. I find myself frequently needing to spam it just because I lack enough to stick to my target for the longer fights, and I hate the fact that it’s just so cheesy in the damage department. Turning it into a more effective gap close with a higher initiative cost would I suspect help reduce the whole spamming problem it faces and severely cut down on permastealth builds while ultimately not changing much in terms of the overall effect it has when used in-combat as a gap-closer.

honest to goodness, how useful is that build? if a fight goes on for 45 minutes, you’re being useless. sure you don’t die, but you don’t kill either, and i doubt a second person coming wouldn’t mean your end. that’s like saying a full nomad gear healing warrior is a viable build, because it’ll never die. on WvW, if you can’t kill anything, you’re useless. on sPvP, if all you can do with your build is survive 1v1s, you’re also useless.

as for heartseeker, it’s an executioner move. the guy has to be low on health for it to do really strong damage, otherwise it’s just a gap closer.

Not really. in sPvP, not dying as a bunker build is the name of the game. If you hold your point, you’ve succeeded.

In WvW, it depends on the class. If I said I had a build for a water-based Ele that made them immune to all damage and could still drop effective water fields, I’d probably have one of the most loaded inboxes in the game. Thief, as a counter-back-line or back-line class, will take a lot of focus from enemies. What’s better, having someone blow their cooldowns on a tank or a squisy DPS? The former. Having the enemy in a zerg environment see a thief expecting hard DPS and subsequently blow their cooldowns on a tank is hugely detrimental to their fight at the cost of almost nothing to your own.

I’m not the first to try and work around with the healing power thief idea. I’d argue this player was successful:

Granted, my build is a non-stealth variant.

With HS, the damage in the middle tier is still too high. I admit I run my D/D thief glass, but my mid-tier HS hits for 8-10k. If it’s a finisher, then the damage should only apply on < 25% health, and the initiative cost should go down. As of now, it’s just way too much.

DeceiverX.8361:

Not really. in sPvP, not dying as a bunker build is the name of the game. If you hold your point, you’ve succeeded.

In WvW, it depends on the class. If I said I had a build for a water-based Ele that made them immune to all damage and could still drop effective water fields, I’d probably have one of the most loaded inboxes in the game. Thief, as a counter-back-line or back-line class, will take a lot of focus from enemies. What’s better, having someone blow their cooldowns on a tank or a squisy DPS? The former. Having the enemy in a zerg environment see a thief expecting hard DPS and subsequently blow their cooldowns on a tank is hugely detrimental to their fight at the cost of almost nothing to your own.

I’m not the first to try and work around with the healing power thief idea. I’d argue this player was successful.

With HS, the damage in the middle tier is still too high. I admit I run my D/D thief glass, but my mid-tier HS hits for 8-10k. If it’s a finisher, then the damage should only apply on < 25% health, and the initiative cost should go down. As of now, it’s just way too much.

you can hold your own in a duel, where the only objective is to kill the other player. but what when there are two, three players on you? a good bunker has to be able to survive 2v1’s and 3v1’s long enough for their teammates to help. and what about CC? if you’re bunkering, your job is to keep the enemies off point while not being pushed off point yourself. i don’t think P/P healing thief can do that.

on WvW, the only “immortal builds” are the support builds in a zerg, and even then it’s preferrable that they don’t go full support, and that they don’t have too much support for too little damage. you specifically listed that the one thing your build does well is survive duels. not even win duels, just survive them until the other player is so tired they die of boredom. in any WvW scenario, you’d be ignored for not dealing enough damage, assuming you don’t get ganked in the zerg fight (not like you have any mobility to avoid that).

Thief has too much mobility? Did you know a Thief that doesn’t stealth as much is all about positioning on a situational basis, otherwise we are dead meat?

Infiltrator’s Strike (which has limited range) already has a cast time which us Thieves complained about, but we adapted to the change accordingly, it is no longer spammable and took some getting used to when the situation needs it.

If you want to complain about Sword Thieves specifically you can’t complain about Evades aswell, you have to realize we are doing no damage to you, unlike under stealth we do not have the ability to disengage for Health regen, init regen and a condi cleanse – which allows us to re-engage into combat starting with a Backstab.

The idea behind the thief is to slip in and out of combat for a burst, like an assassin, we have to wait for init Regens unique to our class and cooldowns like everyone else.
We aren’t built like tanks either, warriors can do so much that other classes can’t while doing alot of damage along with plenty of CC.

BrunoBRS.5178:

thief is the ultimate “all or nothing” profession. either we kill really fast, or we’re dead meat. either we completely null the damage coming to us, or we’re dead.

Looks at P/D condi… laughs

TheBandicoot.5294:

So you successfully eliminated a thief´s squishyness by sacrificing damage AND mobility, which is part of attition. outside of a duel anyone would walk away.

Thats how roaming with necro works… everyone walks away with 30% hp

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

Thief has too much mobility? Did you know a Thief that doesn’t stealth as much is all about positioning on a situational basis, otherwise we are dead meat?

Again wecome to the world of the necromancer…

Mayama.1854:

BrunoBRS.5178:

thief is the ultimate “all or nothing” profession. either we kill really fast, or we’re dead meat. either we completely null the damage coming to us, or we’re dead.

Looks at P/D condi… laughs

P/D is extra vulnerable on team fights because it sacrifices mobility/evasion and relies on stealthing often. different tool, same principle: avoid damage altogether.

Taking condition builds into the equation is nuts because conditions currently throw any balancing out of the window the smaller the amount of participating players is in sPvP and WvW.

While the necro isnt inherently fast, it has the tools to slow down its prey instead. Condition necroes only need few attack combos and target is dead or will be few seconds later, and power necroes hit like a truck. Staying near both equates suicide most of the time. I agree open WvW roaming on a necro can become dull when your opponent flees, but then again personally i count those fights as victory. Even as a thief its pointless to chase most warriors and, to some extend, elementalists.

BrunoBRS.5178:

P/D is extra vulnerable on team fights because it sacrifices mobility/evasion and relies on stealthing often. different tool, same principle: avoid damage altogether.

P/D is near invunerable againt alot of specs in 1v1 it sacrifices mobility/evasion and relies on stealthing often. different tool, same principle: avoid damage altogether.

Just waiting for the, “the game isnt build around 1v1” argument but if you draw that card I dont want to hear condi tank or turret engi complains from thiefs too.

TheBandicoot.5294:

WvW roaming on a necro can become dull when your opponent flees, but then again personally i count those fights as victory. Even as a thief its pointless to chase most warriors and, to some extend, elementalists.

Well yeah I stoped roaming on my condi necro it might be super efficient but you are threated like you have a infectious plague everthing beside diamond skin eles avoids you at any cost 1v1.

TheBandicoot.5294:

Taking condition builds into the equation is nuts because conditions currently throw any balancing out of the window the smaller the amount of participating players is in sPvP and WvW.

Its not nuts they are just part of the meta, they arent even the most used specs. You see way more celestial eles/engis/warriors and zerker thieves, which are all meta builds, than condi bunkers.

Do you know why I personaly roam with condi specs in WvW? Because I dont want to get 2 hit by warriors after I used all my dodges. With a zerker build I would be a sitting duck when I cant dodge anymore and they pop all their stance to keyboard smash me to death. I personaly enjoy power necro way more than condi for example but its just suicidal to use it as roamer in the current meta.

Mayama.1854:

BrunoBRS.5178:

P/D is extra vulnerable on team fights because it sacrifices mobility/evasion and relies on stealthing often. different tool, same principle: avoid damage altogether.

P/D is near invunerable againt alot of specs in 1v1 it sacrifices mobility/evasion and relies on stealthing often. different tool, same principle: avoid damage altogether.

Just waiting for the, “the game isnt build around 1v1” argument but if you draw that card I dont want to hear condi tank or turret engi complains from thiefs too.

just because you saw the flaw in your own argument and called it out doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

people keep treating duels and 1v1s as the standard of balancing when it’s painfully obvious that the game is not meant for that.

Grebcol.5984:

oh man now a complain about mobility…whats next?

There will always be bad players who complain about anything.