Guild Wars 2

NOTE: This isn’t meant to fix the current situation of thief in the current meta or in anything else. Instead it is meant to give thieves(Daredevils) an unique group support to maybe make them a more viable choice in groups, whether in PvP or PvE.

So I’ve come up with an idea to give the Daredevil spec line an unique group support buff that takes advantage of the Daredevil’s GM Major traits.

Let’s take for example the current Bounding Dodger Trait:

Bounding Dodger: Your dodge ability is replaced by Bound, dealing damage to the area after you evade. Physical damage is increased for a period of time after you dodge.

The change I want to add to it is pretty simple:

Bounding Dodger: Your dodge ability is replaced by Bound, dealing damage to the area after you evade. Physical damage is increased for a period of time for allies in range after you dodge.(up to 5 allies, range is 600 radius)

The same change should be applied to all the Daredevil’s GM Major traits with their respective bonuses.

This simple change gives the Daredevils a much needed group support without botching their DPS (or their survivability), which can compete with a PS Warrior(Berserker) Might generation(and +150 power trait), or a Herald with their Might and Fury upkeep(and +150 ferocity trait).

REMINDER: This isn’t meant to fix the current situation of thief in the current meta or in anything else. Instead it is meant to give thieves(Daredevils) an unique group support to maybe make them a more viable choice in groups, whether in PvP or PvE.

Please write your opinion about this change!

Sounds like more dmg creep to me. Thief was never meant to support a grp like the other class’s can, or do. A thief is a thief, they don’t share. Only venoms but they are kinda weak

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Sounds like more dmg creep to me. Thief was never meant to support a grp like the other class’s can, or do. A thief is a thief, they don’t share. Only venoms but they are kinda weak

That was the point though as one of the problems with thieves is that they don’t contribute to group support, and as you said Venoms are weak. Damage creep is being currently abused with the release of HoT and the change I request is minor at best, since it requires the Daredevil to dodge to apply it and as far as I know the amount of dodges are limited in a period of time(also the 4 sec duration also serves as somewhat of a cooldown to make the player not waste dodges just to get this buff, since the duration isn’t stackable)

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Sounds like more dmg creep to me. Thief was never meant to support a grp like the other class’s can, or do. A thief is a thief, they don’t share. Only venoms but they are kinda weak

That’s precisely the reason thieves are in a bad spot in pve.

GW2, with its lack of focus on hard roles, is built around stacking combinations of support and damage. In most games, the rogue archetype makes up for a lack of support by being hands down the best at damage. This paradigm doesn’t work in GW2 because the role-less profession system ensures everyone can deal comparable DPS to everyone else, given similar builds.

Thus, professions are selected or not selected for their utility rather than their damage. Thief, unfortunately, doesn’t have utility.

This is an extremely easy fix, as thieves already have a built in pve specific mechanic that wouldn’t affect pvp balance in any way in the form of stolen skills. All you really need to do to make thieves have valuable utility in any given raid encounter is ensure that their stolen ability is as useful as the built in utility of other classes.

For example, in VG, what if thieves stole a guardian essence, which placed a shield around him that destroyed red wisps? What if he stole a “spirit bomb” from gorseval that he could set up to time-bomb the walls? Bam. Thief is valuable without being required, and you don’t even touch pvp balance. You could still complete the encounters with methods already designed (DPS, knockbacks, etc. etc.) but the thief’s unique mechanic (stealing stuff) would translate to unique encounter mechanics, making him useful for a range of encounter-specific utility purposes.

PopeUrban.2578:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Sounds like more dmg creep to me. Thief was never meant to support a grp like the other class’s can, or do. A thief is a thief, they don’t share. Only venoms but they are kinda weak

That’s precisely the reason thieves are in a bad spot in pve.

GW2, with its lack of focus on hard roles, is built around stacking combinations of support and damage. In most games, the rogue archetype makes up for a lack of support by being hands down the best at damage. This paradigm doesn’t work in GW2 because the role-less profession system ensures everyone can deal comparable DPS to everyone else, given similar builds.

Thus, professions are selected or not selected for their utility rather than their damage. Thief, unfortunately, doesn’t have utility.

This is an extremely easy fix, as thieves already have a built in pve specific mechanic that wouldn’t affect pvp balance in any way in the form of stolen skills. All you really need to do to make thieves have valuable utility in any given raid encounter is ensure that their stolen ability is as useful as the built in utility of other classes.

For example, in VG, what if thieves stole a guardian essence, which placed a shield around him that destroyed red wisps? What if he stole a “spirit bomb” from gorseval that he could set up to time-bomb the walls? Bam. Thief is valuable without being required, and you don’t even touch pvp balance. You could still complete the encounters with methods already designed (DPS, knockbacks, etc. etc.) but the thief’s unique mechanic (stealing stuff) would translate to unique encounter mechanics, making him useful for a range of encounter-specific utility purposes.

Thank you for highlighting the main issue. however the mechanic that you suggested may fix the problem in PvE, but it won’t help anything in PvP. What I suggested here is good for both PvE and PvP. However the thing I suggested requires testing and balancing(I doubt it but maybe it’s too strong for PvP?).

Honestly, for pvp it’s less a thief issue and more a “all these bunkers are overtuned” issue.

Thief (daredevil specifically) isn’t actually that bad in a pvp sense in a bubble, its primary problem is that the current bunker meta that’s so bunker/aoe heavy is out of whack, and that’s an issue that’s more about certain builds being too good than it is about thieves being not good enough, and is an overall problem in pvp that makes more than thieves extremely underpowered. The meta in the past was about apex predators that were only marginally better than other options. The current meta is about apex predators that are so much better than the alternatives that the alternatives may as well not exist. That’s not just a thief problem. It’s a problem for everyone not playing exactly 4 specific builds.

True. But this kind of thing can only be fixed in a massive balance patch. My suggestion that I wrote in my first post isn’t meant to fix the current meta, but more of a “hotfix” to the current group imbalance that thieves suffer from.