Guild Wars 2

I’ll try to be as unbiased as I possibly can, and I’ll try to see everything from every angle.

In no particular order, I’ll just mention points worth discussing, and I hope you will quote single items if you want to discuss these in a civil manner.

Initiative:
Many see this as an overpowered system, allowing the thief to use the same abilities over and over, as long as he has sufficient initiative. From their point of view, it might seem incredibly overpowered, and I do understand their concerns.
However, the other side of this case, is that initiative doesn’t help the thief, as much as it restricts the thief.
Having a resource system as the only profession in the game, means the thief NEEDS to have mediocre weapon abilities, otherwise it will be overpowered, as you can spam these.
If the thief had a knock-down weapon ability that costs initiative, it would be considered overpowered as the thief could chain this over and over.
This is why initiative is a curse rather than a blessing.

Heartseeker:
I see on the forums that this single ability is the source of many discussions, that may or may not get out of hand. Let’s look at what it does:

A leaping ability that does mediocre/okay/good damage (depending on the HP of the target), costing 3 initiative and rendering the thief unable to control anything.
The damage aspect of this ability is strangely put together.
Dealing more damage depending on the health of the enemy you’re striking makes it an “executioner” ability.
This means that preferably, the thief shouldn’t use this unless the target is low on health. However, due to the low initiative cost, and the decent damage along with “stickyness” on the enemy, most thieves tend to use this ability repeatedly, regardless of enemy health.
So those who dislike Heartseeker will argue that a Heartseeker-spamming thief is overpowered.
However: For heartseeker spam to be worth the initiative cost, the enemy needs low health, and the thief needs to have a strict glass-cannon build for it to deal any damage, if the enemy is at decent health.
Heartseeker also does NOT have an evade included, and as such, if you lock down a thief, with ANY ability, he will be taking a beating.
Heartseeker deals its damage fully in one blow. One blind effect is all it takes to completely negate the damage, and have the thief waste initiative.
If you have a ground targeted blinding AoE, you can safely prance around in it, watching the thief miss over and over.
And let’s not forget that the thief has NO control of where he’s going mid-combat, if he decides to use heartseeker. Use this to your advantage.
Long story short, I don’t think it can be considered overpowered, and I’d argue it need its initiative cost increased, but also have a condition of sorts attached to it. This is just my opinion and I’ll leave this for discussion down below.

Pistol Whip:
I really want to copy paste the segment about Heartseeker, as Pistol Whip is countered by roughly the same things. The thief is immobile while channeling it, and all you have to do is lock down the thief with something.
The major difference here, is that Pistol Whip is several blows instead of a single strike, and as such, a single blind effect will not save you.
In conjunction with the shadowstep ability from having a sword equipped, it might be too strong. And I would highly suggest the initiative cost was increased to a much higher cost, making a thief unable to use this more than once, before waiting for initiative to regenerate.

Shadow Refuge vs Blinding Powder:

Why is Blinding Powder even an ability?
I really can’t think of a reason to pick Blinding Powder over Shadow Refuge, in all honesty.

Stealth:
The way stealth works in Guild Wars 2 is how stealth should always have worked. It is a useful ability that allows you to shift in and out of visibility midcombat, allowing for confusing the enemy and stabbing them where it really hurts.
My one gripe with it: Thieves who appear out of stealth are not always immediately visible, and I have often taken damage a good second before the thief was visible.
My suggestion: Upon using a damaging ability (this would require some specific skills to be adjusted) , you leave stealth immediately, regardless of whether you hit your target or not. This isn’t too much to ask, and I hope an ArenaNet employee can confirm that a thief doesn’t appear until damage has been done. Therefore my suggestion would be that as soon as the attack animation is started, the thief leaves stealth. Feel free to discuss.

Basilisk Venom
Why are we required to spend a second on casting this venom, to stun the target for a a second, when a Mesmer can transform people for 10 seconds with roughly the same cast time?

I’ll be updating this as I think of more.

The cooldown System is actually better than initiative.

It is actually better for more reasons then thief skills being watered down.
Most of the other professions weapons are designed around being able to put out similar damage while also having access to Defensive skills. When a thief uses damage skills they are sacrificing a lot of their defensive options on their weapons, and when using your defensive options it severely limits your damage output.

Another problem is the initiative regen before talents is a constant, versus the cooldown system where each skill recharges independently. This allows professions to be recharging multiple skills at the same time. This allows other professions to use more skills more often and not sacrifice defensive options. Thief has to devote a lot in their trait build to achieve what other professions can do at the start of the game.

There is also the weapon swap because we have one initiative bar and a constant initiative regen it is severely lackluster to swap weapons besides wanting to switch fighting strategy or to create combos. the thief shouldn’t even have a weapon swap cooldown either considering all the skills are limited by the initiative bar. it is actually a double negative of weapon swapping for thieves. Regardless how often the thief swaps weapons, before the trait, the number of skills a thief can use every second is constant.

The cooldown + initiative is actually better then anything you can propose. >.>
Just add a cooldown on their weapon abilities so they actually start swapping weapons rather then spam 2 or 3 on their dagger (Sometime 5 if they get low health)
I’d agree to reduce the 5 and 6 initiatives cost for abilities at the exception of the dagger 5 skill. But makes it less of a button mash class. When you can just chain 7 heartseeker in a row with roll for initiative, there is no way in hell someone can stop you unless they go invulnerable or stealth for at least 5 seconds.

you honestly can’t tell the difference between Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge? play the game more and spend less time on the forums.

Blinding powder is instant (an oh kitten button) and allows you you to stay stealthed and land a backstab, or any stealth attack. Ohhh and it also BLINDS.

Shadow refuge on the otehr hand requires a tiny bit more time as it is a ground target. also one you leave the refuge your not stealthed anymore.

I prefer Blinding powder in most cases and running solo. For me its a free backstab when im out of intitive. and lets me get thru a crowd of enemies without getting hit

I like blinding powder over Shadow refuge because there isn’t a giant house hovering over a very distinct area saying “Please drop your AOEs here, I must be in this specific radius”.

The blind is nice too since people are learning they can just keep swinging and hit stealthed characters. With blinding poweder that first hit misses and then I could have gone any direction after that.

Shadow refuge doesn’t take time to cast if you use smartcast, which is easily viable considering thieves don’t have a whole lot of ground target AOEs.

Blinding Powder is much better in group situations. The blind is a lot more valuable than the heal in most cases, because it -prevents- damage and it usually prevents more damage than Refuge would heal. Stealth duration is meaningless because people are often attacking; not hiding.

I actually use Shadow Refuge AND Blinding Powder. Tanky heal thief needs all the stealth heals!

I think it’s been said on the forums multiple times that the initiative system is a huge issue as, you must sacrifice extensive amounts of defense for damage and vice versa. While this means that you can play a balanced thief, it also means that those who go far into either damage and survivability can have an extensive amount of it. The real solution is to generally decrease the damage of attack skills and increase the damage of defensive skills. As well as applying certain tweaks.

I’ll start with Shortbow
1) Trick Shot- Overall this ability seems great, my only problem is that it requires you to be fighting 2 or more enemies for it to actually provide optimal single target damage, which I find quite dumb. I’m personally of the opinion that it shouldn’t be able to bounce back to the original target at all. But that’s solely my opinion and not really a big deal.
2) Cluster Bomb just feels a tad clunky for me because it’s not very distinguishable from other arrows and it’s very difficult to detonate without casting a second one, quite annoying.
3) Chocking Gas- At 4 initiative cost I feel like this should last at least 2 seconds longer, maybe up the initiative cost to 5 increase the field duration to 8 but reduce the condition duration to 3 seconds.
4) Infiltrators Arrow- I don’t really understand the functionality behind the blind, why do I want to be getting in close as someone with a bow? Not 100% sure what needs to be done here.

Dagger(MainHand)
Heart Seeker- Personally I’d like to see the skill have the damage increase based off target health outright removed. While reasonably functional in PvP, it’s not really useful in PvE throughout the majority of boss fights and when it is useful, It’s far too useful. It also highly favours burst damage builds and really decreases diversity.
What I’d like to see the skill become is a leap that does 33% more damage than it does when the target is at 100% currently but not have an increase when the targets health decreases. Then on a successful hit it gives you 2 stacks of might. I’d also like to see the range of the leap increased slightly in the event that this happened

Rika.7249:

In conjunction with the shadowstep ability from having a sword equipped, it might be too strong. And I would highly suggest the initiative cost was increased to a much higher cost, making a thief unable to use this more than once, before waiting for initiative to regenerate.

Given that this is the only major damage source from S/P, increasing the initiative cost would do huge damage to the viability of the weapons set.

At 5 initiative you can only use it twice, and given that the stun doesn’t last the whole animation it means you really need to invest in gap closers to keep on top of your opponent.

I believe that PW is in a good state right now, and doesn’t need to be tinkered with at all.

Shadow Refuge vs Blinding Powder:

Why is Blinding Powder even an ability?
I really can’t think of a reason to pick Blinding Powder over Shadow Refuge, in all honesty.

As others have said: BP is a PBAoE, stealths you (rather than the area) and the PBAoE blind is really good. I prefer it to Shadow Refuge personally, mostly because SR’s regen effect is so little as to barely be worth it. SR can be nice for denying stomps on your team-mates at range, though.

Stealth:
The way stealth works in Guild Wars 2 is how stealth should always have worked. It is a useful ability that allows you to shift in and out of visibility midcombat, allowing for confusing the enemy and stabbing them where it really hurts.
My one gripe with it: Thieves who appear out of stealth are not always immediately visible, and I have often taken damage a good second before the thief was visible.
My suggestion: Upon using a damaging ability (this would require some specific skills to be adjusted) , you leave stealth immediately, regardless of whether you hit your target or not. This isn’t too much to ask, and I hope an ArenaNet employee can confirm that a thief doesn’t appear until damage has been done. Therefore my suggestion would be that as soon as the attack animation is started, the thief leaves stealth. Feel free to discuss.
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This is what happens already. There’s just a latency issue that generates a high delay between the Thief de-stealthing himself (from damage) and the opposing player’s client getting that message.

Shortbow #4 really should last longer, considering you can only use 3 other skills in between before you have to lay it down again. No idea why they made it so short and still 4 initiative when the combo field isn’t that strong.

elithrar.7143:

Given that this is the only major damage source from S/P, increasing the initiative cost would do huge damage to the viability of the weapons set.

At 5 initiative you can only use it twice, and given that the stun doesn’t last the whole animation it means you really need to invest in gap closers to keep on top of your opponent.

I believe that PW is in a good state right now, and doesn’t need to be tinkered with at all.

This is generally my assessment as well. The skill has enough of a risk v. reward aspect that it doesn’t need much changing. It is S/P’s only real burst skill, with their auto attack being the next best thing for damage if you augment it with certain skills or runes (Executioner, Side Strikes, Thief Rune, Eagle Rune). It might be annoying to other players but if you’ve played a S/P build, it’s clear that major changes to PW would significantly affect the viability of the weapon set.

I tried thief, but the weapon skill combinations didn’t convince me as much as the warrior skills do. So I have stickken to warrior. Also the thief skill button icons are too vague: I cannot clearly see, is a skill on cool down or ready, as the colors are almost the same for both.

Also, I wanted to shoot with two pistols at the same time, but thief didn’t have such an option at start. So I got bored, though maybe it would have come later.

I run sword/pistol and for the most part I really enjoy it. You can Shadowstrike in, immobilize for 1 second, quickly stun for half a second with pistol whip, pop 2 signets for 10 stacks of might and do roughly 8k dmg. That being said a Warrior can Bull Charge, which is a 2 second immobilize, frenzy and 100 blades for roughly 14k dmg. In full Invader gear I have roughly 13k HP. A Warrior in full Invader gear has roughly double that. I have the trait to vanish after taking 20% damage but its worthless since you are rooted and their 100 blades are still hitting you. Its near impossible to kite a warrior as a thief if you do survive their initial onslaught and ranged attacks such as Unload in dual pistol don’t do anywhere near enough damage to kill them from ranged without being bum rushed. I love thief classes in just about all MMo’s but I am quickly going from enjoying my thief to feeling underpowered and squishy.

Thalzion.1378:

I tried thief, but the weapon skill combinations didn’t convince me as much as the warrior skills do. So I have stickken to warrior. Also the thief skill button icons are too vague: I cannot clearly see, is a skill on cool down or ready, as the colors are almost the same for both.

Also, I wanted to shoot with two pistols at the same time, but thief didn’t have such an option at start. So I got bored, though maybe it would have come later.

Just as a clarification, thief weapon skills have no cool-down, but all weapon skills have a initiative cost save for #1, those white diamond pips above your weapon skills. If you have enough Initiative, you can keep using the same ability multiple times in a row, but the down side is that you will be out of initiative unable to use any ability save for #1 and your slot skills.

When any of your weapon skills can’t be used for lack of Initiative there is a small icon on those skills telling you that you lack the initiative to use it.

The thing about Initiative vs Cool-down skills is that on all cool-down professions, there is at least some incentive to have a weapon set to swap to if you are out of cool-downs. For Initiative, there is less of a incentive to swap weapons, because you don’t gain from the extra set of cool-downs.

This is not to say I only run 1 weapon set, just that weapon swapping in combat happens less with the thief. I used to use pistol/dagger, and shortbow, then switched to dagger/dagger, and shortbow.

In general I stick with D/D, and use my bow in group situations, or when I need to be at range, and I tend to swap to bow mid combat only to get away from the enemy and stay in range in a crunch. Might not be the most optimal, but it’s what I do at the moment.