Guild Wars 2

its widely agreed that thieves hard counter mesmers.
how will this affect mesmers now if any?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/F2-button-for-Stolen-Item-skill-usage#content

It will make not much difference for us thief’s usealy use ectoplasm insta after they steal from us so no

It makes an already painful steal more painful. What that means … we’ll have to see.

We are at least capable of boon stripping … or stealing … though our Arcane Thievery was nerfed to not be good enough to take all those boons back off the Thief … and that’s assuming we even hit them with Arcane Thievery and it doesn’t bug out.

Exactly what baylock said, the duration in ecto is so long that you gain more by drinking it early than not.

With steal traits you’ll have pretty much 100% fury/swiftness uptime, and you’ll have the upper hand to down mesmer with all support and damage mitigation boons like aegis, protection (10s, yum), regen and vigor. Why not go offense before mesmer build up enough phantasms to counter you? Stability is a nice addition but 3s isn’t doing much when you need to anticipate mantra of distraction etc.

I may find this change more helpful if I’m fighting against +1 by myself (that’s usually bad for thieves anyway). Then I’ll hold onto that plasma until mesmer is more vulnerable.

Though the devs did say they’ll reevaluate stolen items, so plasma may not be the same in HoT.

I’d love for them to do away with ectoplasm or tone it down.

I think we can all agree that there are huge differences between the items Thieves can get from stealing from the various classes.

I think we can all agree that Mesmer is one of the best classes for a Thief to steal from.

Mesmer, Warrior, Ranger and Necro are great steals. Guard and Thief aren’t bad. I think a lot of thieves overlook the Ranger steal as a reset/healing tool. LoS and blast your HP up to save your withdraw for an entangle or something.

I think this change mostly just lets thieves see the CD of steal.

It also prevents them from having to waste time if they stole something that isn’t useful right at that moment but want to steal again (obviously has to be off cooldown from previous steal) … especially useful if traited to daze/confuse on-steal.

It prevents them from being penalized for holding onto the stolen item.

I think the change is great. Just like anything, they have to keep an eye on balance with it … but I’m not overly concerned by it.

I think it’s a good QoL change and glad thieves do get that. Also remember that stolen items are being changed as certain ones were too strong (ecto) and others pretty weak (gunk) so ecto may not be stolen anymore or changed in functionality.

apharma.3741:

Also remember that stolen items are being changed as certain ones were too strong (ecto) and others pretty weak (gunk) so ecto may not be stolen anymore or changed in functionality.

Sorry, got a source for that? Sounds interesting.

I believe it was in the 3 hour ready up where they went over all the specialisation changes.

http://dulfy.net/2015/04/24/gw2-specializations-ama-livestream-notes/

10s all-boon is just too stupid

@Caelus:
I’ve agreed with that for a long time :-p though not all of them are 10s duration.

It’s worse when you realize how low they can get the cooldown for steal :-p

I personally am torn as my two favorite characters are a thief and a mesmer. I think mesmers can fight thieves if they know how. (They have lots of boon stealing and condition removing)

Caelus.7139:

10s all-boon is just too stupid

guards SYS is nerfed to 5s in pvp with a 1m cooldown why cant they do the same to consume plasma?

thunderfall.8095:

I personally am torn as my two favorite characters are a thief and a mesmer. I think mesmers can fight thieves if they know how. (They have lots of boon stealing and condition removing)

On which builds exactly? Oh right, sorry, I called your bluff :/

Their trait improvisation was altered though. So now they can use stolen items twice. So two ectos in a row.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Their trait improvisation was altered though. So now they can use stolen items twice. So two ectos in a row.

Yeah, prepare for epic consume ecto nerfs.

And if they fail to nerf it hard enough, prepare your eye drops and throat spray because I expect hoarse throats from all the sobbing you’ll be doing in front of the devs so they take proper notice.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/do-not-allow-F2-F1-combo/first#post5123871

i need some support here

Idk…since the last few patches, …thieves seems to have a less of a 1 shot smack on the mesmer. Meaning a well played mesmer can down them even if taken by surprise.

Great they are going to get an extra utility because of this, sigh…

they already said that the stolen abilities will ALL be reworked… consume plasma might not be the same after hot comes out…

Why can’t they give us a qol buff to mantras… just sayin

It is important to note that ANet said they wanted to look over Consume Ectoplasm (I saw it somewhere in the forums, no idea any more where). So that might change things again.

Jeez dude how many forums did you post this on?

Its really not that big of a deal. Just a quality change and barely a buff. It should’ve already been like this IMO.

Man, when thieves actually get some true buffs people are going to be flipping kittens across the world. Poor kittens.

This specific change has zero effect on us. It doesn’t really change the effectiveness of Stealing, it just lets them see the CD of steal while they have an item pocketed and let’s them reuse Steal without having to consume the item first.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Its really not that big of a deal. Just a quality change and barely a buff. It should’ve already been like this IMO.

Man, when thieves actually get some true buffs people are going to be flipping kittens across the world. Poor kittens.

Part of the issue here is in that steal is an instant cast. So now some of the steals are made better as you can pre-cast them use with steal. Anet will need to dial back the potency of the steal skills to account for them being practically being guaranteed to connect. I’m incredibly skeptical of Anet getting this right because they’re in a position where steal skill+steal+steal skill chaining (possibly with double use of the stolen skill w/ no mention of cd timers as of yet…) could be incredibly strong and if they make the stolen skill weaks to account for that, then using it without chaining will likely be very very weak.

Consider the necro steal for a moment it would be in an ideal case 2 casts of up to 600 range AoE fear, steal, 2 casts of AoE fear. In an ideal case you could fear a necro for up to 12s. So will Anet not be using any CC on pvp stolen skills then know that a thief could get up to 4 uses? Doesn’t leave much room to work for the balance team – and its due to them setting up the mechanics to have such an extreme best case usage scenario and in the case of the thief steal even without the double use trait its very very strong.

To those that are defending this as ‘its a quality of life thing; now the thief can see their steal timer’, I ask why you aren’t up in arms that exactly zero other cycled skills aren’t receiving the same quality of life change? You are cool that portal will not be seeing the same love and requires you to keep track of the cd (and estimate the skill range as a bonus)? This change on thief isn’t about quality of life, its about Anet wanting players to use the stolen skills more and not realizing that the reason thieves dump the stolen skill so often is NOT that the stolen skills in pvp are weak/bad, but that steal is already an incredibly strong with a ton trait support in useful trait lines (instant cast gap closer, poison, heals, strips boons with stab priority, buffs thief with might fury swiftness and vigor, and dazes).

In general, thief is already getting some very good buffs if you look at the trait changes for them. Aside from the feline grace change thief is looking like its going to be an ever stronger one man wrecking crew that it already is.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I am annoyed about the lack of QoL for portal, but this isn’t about that.

Right now you can already use Stolen > Steal > Stolen with infiltrators signet and in some cases you don’t even need the signet and can still do it.

Sizzle Hint.1820:

Black Box.9312:

EremiteAngel.9765:

I think all of you are missing the point.

They can now daze you from range!

Steal -> then once steal finish CD -> activate F2 daze -> while its casting, quickly activate steal to teleport to you and daze you

they don’t need to be near you now to activate daze

and if they time it right, they got a 2nd daze in their F2 to use again.

can you imagine a blink daze on you now?

But they can already do that with something like Infiltrator’s Signet? It’s not even that powerful of a combo. I don’t really get what the big deal is.

you dont even need infil signet for it…

steal -> wait 21 sec -> f1 -> f1

with the change it will be

steal -> wait 21 sec -> f2 -> f1

eremite stop with these posts please… like in every single prof forum there is a thread from you complaining how this will make thief riddicolous op when in fact all it changes is that we can now see the cooldown of our steal while we carry a bundle…

The thing I’m most worried about, like others have mentioned, is the improv change. If they don’t alter stolen skills that could be a true problem.

Mogar.9216:

Why can’t they give us a qol buff to mantras… just sayin

we’re not thieves

This changes every— nothing. Look, they can now see their F1 on CD! Look, they can now not use whatever they stole before which still put their F1 on CD and replace it with something new after that CD is over!

It actually makes no difference whatsoever to us. They’ve still got ectoplasm, now they just get the choice not to use it~ No idea how this is bad news to anyone. QoL, not a buff.

Mesmer is a complicated class. We rely on using simple AI and shattering that AI. There is a delicate balance between the two that they are trying to achieve. This makes Mesmer a much larger P.I.T.A. to balance.

Any time Mesmer is balanced, the dev(s) responsible honestly deserve recognition as that is a feat. I can’t think of a class in an MMO I’ve played that looks as difficult to balance with its current mechanics as Mesmer.

Dondagora.9645:

This changes every— nothing. Look, they can now see their F1 on CD! Look, they can now not use whatever they stole before which still put their F1 on CD and replace it with something new after that CD is over!

It actually makes no difference whatsoever to us. They’ve still got ectoplasm, now they just get the choice not to use it~ No idea how this is bad news to anyone. QoL, not a buff.

I concur, don’t see how this is a thing at all. If anything it adds some micro to it that wasn’t there before, they actually have to hit another button now.

You don’t actually need to call OP on the QoL change. Just target the insta cast no LoS teleports + OP mega one skill to rule them all Steal skill if you want something. It was OP without a QoL change :p

I would mind Steal a lot less if it:

• Had a telegraph like Thief’s Dagger+Pistol #3
• Didn’t give them every boon in the game when used on a Mesmer … crazy high uptime when traited for steal.

This doesn’t change any of that … so it doesn’t bother me …

I find it incredible that ecto isn’t nerfed, a 50% uptime of almost all boons. It’s interesting that the rune version of this skill was nerfed into the ground a long time ago- rune of lyssa. It removed all conditions and granted all boons for 5(not 10!) seconds but this was apparently too strong. Now it removes 5 conditions and grants boons based on how many conditions you had. This was a meta rune at the time but after the change, mesmers, warriors, thieves and everyone else stopped running it. The condition removal part stayed essentially the same but that wasn’t why it became meta and Anet knew it- it was the boons. How can Anet claim that 5 seconds of boons every 45 sec is OP but 10 seconds of boons every 20 seconds is balanced?

data.4093:

I find it incredible that ecto isn’t nerfed, a 50% uptime of almost all boons. It’s interesting that the rune version of this skill was nerfed into the ground a long time ago- rune of lyssa. It removed all conditions and granted all boons for 5(not 10!) seconds but this was apparently too strong. Now it removes 5 conditions and grants boons based on how many conditions you had. This was a meta rune at the time but after the change, mesmers, warriors, thieves and everyone else stopped running it. The condition removal part stayed essentially the same but that wasn’t why it became meta and Anet knew it- it was the boons. How can Anet claim that 5 seconds of boons every 45 sec is OP but 10 seconds of boons every 20 seconds is balanced?

how many times does it have to be reapeated sigh

it was already said by the developers that every single ability the thief can steal will be reworked…

Sizzle Hint.1820:

data.4093:

I find it incredible that ecto isn’t nerfed, a 50% uptime of almost all boons. It’s interesting that the rune version of this skill was nerfed into the ground a long time ago- rune of lyssa. It removed all conditions and granted all boons for 5(not 10!) seconds but this was apparently too strong. Now it removes 5 conditions and grants boons based on how many conditions you had. This was a meta rune at the time but after the change, mesmers, warriors, thieves and everyone else stopped running it. The condition removal part stayed essentially the same but that wasn’t why it became meta and Anet knew it- it was the boons. How can Anet claim that 5 seconds of boons every 45 sec is OP but 10 seconds of boons every 20 seconds is balanced?

how many times does it have to be reapeated sigh

it was already said by the developers that every single ability the thief can steal will be reworked…

The stolen abilities, yes. But steal mechanics themselves? Needs addressing.

Sizzle Hint.1820:

how many times does it have to be repeated :sigh:

it was already said by the developers that every single ability the thief can steal will be reworked…

What I’m saying is it’s already very powerful. It already grants thieves 50% uptime on boons, if they can use ecto twice it becomes 100%.

Its not going to change much tbh, just allows them to better plan ahead. Consume Plasma will be nerf’d once they give the 2 uses don’t worry too much.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Sizzle Hint.1820:

data.4093:

I find it incredible that ecto isn’t nerfed, a 50% uptime of almost all boons. It’s interesting that the rune version of this skill was nerfed into the ground a long time ago- rune of lyssa. It removed all conditions and granted all boons for 5(not 10!) seconds but this was apparently too strong. Now it removes 5 conditions and grants boons based on how many conditions you had. This was a meta rune at the time but after the change, mesmers, warriors, thieves and everyone else stopped running it. The condition removal part stayed essentially the same but that wasn’t why it became meta and Anet knew it- it was the boons. How can Anet claim that 5 seconds of boons every 45 sec is OP but 10 seconds of boons every 20 seconds is balanced?

how many times does it have to be reapeated sigh

it was already said by the developers that every single ability the thief can steal will be reworked…

The stolen abilities, yes. But steal mechanics themselves? Needs addressing.

And how should it be reworked then? Give it a cast time? You know this would change gameplay fundamentally right? Thief is supposed to combo his abilities together with his shadowsteps …

HS → Steal
BP → Steal
CnD → Steal
LS → Steal
CA → Steal
Stabsteals

… just to name a few would all not work anymore. It is safe to assume that steal will never get a cast time unless the class mechanic is completely reworked.

What i could see them doing is to give it an icon on the thieves buff bar when steal is off-cd to give it more counterplay like mesmer mantras have.

guys that’s why they changed Mimic to how it is now
because it’s counter play
guys see?
balance
all those boons we can copy
balance
we can copy them
balance
copy
balance

Karl McLain.5604:

apharma.3741:

Any idea on how much of a rework stolen bundles are getting?

In the 3 hour AMA when we got to thief there was mention of changes to the stolen items.

Can we expect the same items just rebalanced a bit to be more fair or are we talking almost completely different things in some cases?

Great question!

There will be a couple of changes to items stolen mainly from players (though these do exist in PvE as well). This is mostly out of necessity due to the changes with Improvisation and in how you’re able to use a stolen item multiple times. Some examples:
The necro fear skull is going from 3 seconds maximum, to 2 seconds maximum. The guardian mace daze will be reduced from 4 to 3 seconds for daze. The ranger’s Healing Seed will have a reduced duration (10s -> 5s), but pulse twice as fast (2s pulse -> 1s pulse).

Needless to say, it’s not the goal to remove viability of using a stolen item once. There’s just a few cases in which using the stolen bundle twice does just a little too much.

Thanks for the feedback and for keeping things civil, everyone.

-Karl

Just thought you guys might be interested in this.

This can make killing medi guards a bit more doable when you can chain 2 mace dazes together to have time to kill them

nothing much will change on mesmer side

Daniel Handler.4816:

Their trait improvisation was altered though. So now they can use stolen items twice. So two ectos in a row.

If this happens and consume plasma doesn’t get nerfed…I’m going to…not be surprised, lol..

Sizzle Hint.1820:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Sizzle Hint.1820:

data.4093:

I find it incredible that ecto isn’t nerfed, a 50% uptime of almost all boons. It’s interesting that the rune version of this skill was nerfed into the ground a long time ago- rune of lyssa. It removed all conditions and granted all boons for 5(not 10!) seconds but this was apparently too strong. Now it removes 5 conditions and grants boons based on how many conditions you had. This was a meta rune at the time but after the change, mesmers, warriors, thieves and everyone else stopped running it. The condition removal part stayed essentially the same but that wasn’t why it became meta and Anet knew it- it was the boons. How can Anet claim that 5 seconds of boons every 45 sec is OP but 10 seconds of boons every 20 seconds is balanced?

how many times does it have to be reapeated sigh

it was already said by the developers that every single ability the thief can steal will be reworked…

The stolen abilities, yes. But steal mechanics themselves? Needs addressing.

And how should it be reworked then? Give it a cast time? You know this would change gameplay fundamentally right? Thief is supposed to combo his abilities together with his shadowsteps …

HS -> Steal
BP -> Steal
CnD -> Steal
LS -> Steal
CA -> Steal
Stabsteals

… just to name a few would all not work anymore. It is safe to assume that steal will never get a cast time unless the class mechanic is completely reworked.

What i could see them doing is to give it an icon on the thieves buff bar when steal is off-cd to give it more counterplay like mesmer mantras have.

The trait stacking for maximum effect could do with an overhaul. Being able to steal stabos AND daze is one example. One or the other, fine. Both? Might aswell remove the word counterplay from the existence.

Instacast teleport stabos strip + daze on top of various other effects -_-u

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Right now you can already use Stolen > Steal > Stolen with infiltrators signet and in some cases you don’t even need the signet and can still do it.

Correct, but no one does this because it isn’t worth the price of using infiltrators sig. With the changes coming, we will likely see thieves opening with the steal skill as well as they dont have to burn a stunbreak and passive ini regen to gain the benefit of doing so. Thieves don’t need more love in when it comes to fight opening burst+CC potential.

>.>

I could think of some much more needed QoL changes mesmer can get…

But yeah wont make much of a difference… But steal in general needs to be looked at.

Saves the Thief a bit of time (1 second to be exact) if he just wants to steal off you again without having to first consume the plasma already stolen. But this is dependent on a Thief saving his/her Consumer Plasma for….a rainy day? Never really happens as it’s such a powerful steal that you will want to use it immediately if just for the protection uptime and boon strip safety. Won’t be very noticeable therefore for the most part.

Simonoly.4352:

Saves the Thief a bit of time (1 second to be exact) if he just wants to steal off you again without having to first consume the plasma already stolen. But this is dependent on a Thief saving his/her Consumer Plasma for….a rainy day? Never really happens as it’s such a powerful steal that you will want to use it immediately if just for the protection uptime and boon strip safety. Won’t be very noticeable therefore for the most part.

this 1 second unfortunately may decide the outcome of the fight
and this just makes it easier to play the thief which we shouldn’t encourage too much since they are OP when played by skilled players.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Simonoly.4352:

Saves the Thief a bit of time (1 second to be exact) if he just wants to steal off you again without having to first consume the plasma already stolen. But this is dependent on a Thief saving his/her Consumer Plasma for….a rainy day? Never really happens as it’s such a powerful steal that you will want to use it immediately if just for the protection uptime and boon strip safety. Won’t be very noticeable therefore for the most part.

this 1 second unfortunately may decide the outcome of the fight
and this just makes it easier to play the thief which we shouldn’t encourage too much since they are OP when played by skilled players.

We can use the bolded argument for any profession in the game, honestly. Thief is a serious problem for Mesmers, sure … but a skilled Mesmer is probably the close second for classes called “OP” by their opponents.
Truth is, the QoL change on Steal is something Thieves should have had from word-freaking-go. Now, if we can just get a bleeding range indicator on Portals …

Advent.6193:

EremiteAngel.9765:

Simonoly.4352:

Saves the Thief a bit of time (1 second to be exact) if he just wants to steal off you again without having to first consume the plasma already stolen. But this is dependent on a Thief saving his/her Consumer Plasma for….a rainy day? Never really happens as it’s such a powerful steal that you will want to use it immediately if just for the protection uptime and boon strip safety. Won’t be very noticeable therefore for the most part.

this 1 second unfortunately may decide the outcome of the fight
and this just makes it easier to play the thief which we shouldn’t encourage too much since they are OP when played by skilled players.

We can use the bolded argument for any profession in the game, honestly. Thief is a serious problem for Mesmers, sure … but a skilled Mesmer is probably the close second for classes called “OP” by their opponents.
Truth is, the QoL change on Steal is something Thieves should have had from word-freaking-go. Now, if we can just get a bleeding range indicator on Portals …

There are a lot of things all professions should have had from the “word-freaking-go”, and a lot of things Thieves in particular shouldn’t have had, but w/e. What should be highlighted is that the statement “OP when played by skilled players.” should be tweaked slightly to OP when played by a moderately competent gamer of any stripe – It doesn’t take an Expert Thief Main to capitalize on thief mechanics for maximum effect. Any halfway decent gamer can click on to them within an hour of playing the Thief class. That’s because the issue is tied to the design first and foremost.