Guild Wars 2

In light of the other thread where adjustments to high stealth uptime thieves were being discussed, having a top three priorities thread seemed appropriate.

What are your top three priorities for thief? It can be a buff to thief itself or a nerf to some other class/trait that makes thief more frustrating to play effectively.

Mine:

1. Sword seems like a fun set but the animation time for some of the attacks make it hard to properly use in a fight. The variable nature of the stealth based attack, and again its’ relatively low speed, make it hard to land with consistent results it in the post ICD world. In addition the slow animations make using IS and then following it up with another attack feel clunky. I think there is a lot of potential to be unlocked by trying to make the set more fluid.

2. The duration of the poison field on shortbow is absurdly low. It doesn’t do much condition damage on a full condi build even when a person sits in the field and just takes the damage. The low duration also has a side effect of making it difficult to set up combinations with finishers—which I think is the whole point of having a field in the first place (aoe weakness and poison projectile finishers). Five or six seconds would not be uncalled for given how weak the poison applied actually is.

3. Shadowstep has the most awkward condition clear mechanic. The only time it works “correctly” is when you using Shadowstep on engage and get loaded up on conditions in the first 10 seconds and can hit the return ability to cleanse those conditions. As a positional tool in combat, a more common usage, it pulls you back towards the thing loading you up with conditions in order to clear the first set. Yes you can overcome that by spamming dodge and shortbow 5, but returning to where I was just taking damage is a silly idea on a thief. I’d move two of the conditions cleared to the first shadowstep and leave 1 clear on the return ability. This lets you spread out the clears and lets you decide if the last cleanse is worth taking over returning into the line of fire for.

Shadowstep
Shadowstep to target area and clear two conditions. Becomes Shadow Return, which returns you to your starting area and clear a condition.

i bet every thief would love this change. doesnt hurt to quote me and up vote

1. Swap the positions of Venemous Aura and Revealed Training.

2. Fix the “No Valid Path to Target” problem.

3. Speed up some of the cast animations (CnD for example) and the projectile speed on all shortbow skills (excepting #4 possibly)

JonnyForgotten.4276:

1. Swap the positions of Venemous Aura and Revealed Training.

2. Fix the “No Valid Path to Target” problem.

3. Speed up some of the cast animations (CnD for example) and the projectile speed on all shortbow skills (excepting #4 possibly)

3. Is quite a problem to me.
EDIT:
Before Thief became all about Decaps and +1’s according to the devs! Cough!,
Theif was all about rapid burst engagements, you go in, do some damage and get out.

Sadly, many of the skills don’t make this easy at all, as either the skills themselves have a ridiculously long build-up, or their recovery animation is equally long, making chaining abilities clunky and unresponsive.

Some weapon sets are more prone to this than others, but Shortbows and Swords are definitely part of the culprits.

You can work around it though, wait my bad… You have to.

Choking bomb was nerfed couple years ago – Anet thinks it is OP somehow. Meanwhile in real world, where the current state of the game is and not somewhere in devs mind, we have things like DH traps…

Thing is i don’t think they will change or revert anything for thief that makes sense. Anet doesn’t want thief to be capable to fight anything in 1v1 situation due to mobility (and absolutely ignore the fact that lot of HoT builds have some kind of mobility so at the end thief has like 1 sec before enemy arrives while being so much weaker). It is actually a miracle that we can 1v1 some classes on first place but it only happened because everyone was crying about those classes and they got nerfed which was kind of indirect buff to thief.

I honestly think the creation of revs how they were (oh thief should only +1 and decap empty points because of mobility but heyyyyyy revs have much mobility + best fighting class in game) and the massives nerfs to thieves (acro was turned to garbage to introduce acro v2 as DD) in HoT was biggest middle finger i have seen in any game from balancing team in all my years of gaming. The patches just proved over and over thief class players are not wanted here, the class is not desired here and devs really don’t know wth to do with it.

Darkaheart’s suggestion for Shadowstep is definitely something I’d support. It would give thief a reliable on demand condi clear outside of signet of agility or being forced to invest into trickster. At the same time, it doesn’t really seem out of place nor op.

I personally would like to see Sword’s auto attacks/ stealth attack functions slightly buffed. As much of the damage comes from landing the 3rd hit, maybe a slight increase in it’s damage variable based on health, such as 10% increase in damage against >50% or a single boon strip every successful crippling strike. Yes I am aware Larcenous Strike does it too, but I believe this could essentially allow thief to have an additional function in pve too as a boon removalist role and actually give the sword a purpose outside of S/P spamming.

saerni.2584:

In light of the other thread where adjustments to high stealth uptime thieves were being discussed, having a top three priorities thread seemed appropriate.

What are your top three priorities for thief? It can be a buff to thief itself or a nerf to some other class/trait that makes thief more frustrating to play effectively.

Mine:

1. Sword seems like a fun set but the animation time for some of the attacks make it hard to properly use in a fight. The variable nature of the stealth based attack, and again its’ relatively low speed, make it hard to land with consistent results it in the post ICD world. In addition the slow animations make using IS and then following it up with another attack feel clunky. I think there is a lot of potential to be unlocked by trying to make the set more fluid.

2. The duration of the poison field on shortbow is absurdly low. It doesn’t do much condition damage on a full condi build even when a person sits in the field and just takes the damage. The low duration also has a side effect of making it difficult to set up combinations with finishers—which I think is the whole point of having a field in the first place (aoe weakness and poison projectile finishers). Five or six seconds would not be uncalled for given how weak the poison applied actually is.

3. Shadowstep has the most awkward condition clear mechanic. The only time it works “correctly” is when you using Shadowstep on engage and get loaded up on conditions in the first 10 seconds and can hit the return ability to cleanse those conditions. As a positional tool in combat, a more common usage, it pulls you back towards the thing loading you up with conditions in order to clear the first set. Yes you can overcome that by spamming dodge and shortbow 5, but returning to where I was just taking damage is a silly idea on a thief. I’d move two of the conditions cleared to the first shadowstep and leave 1 clear on the return ability. This lets you spread out the clears and lets you decide if the last cleanse is worth taking over returning into the line of fire for.

In Addition on #2:

Did some playing around today and realized that having expertise or other condition duration increases does not apply to the poison stacks given by Choking Cloud. . . including any combos. Which is pretty kittening weak if you ask me. I understand the low field time, but the ticks themselves? Sheesh. . . .

First, for the sake of build diversity, get rid of our total dependancy on Trickery to function effectively. I think this means giving us Preparedness baseline at the very minimum, because Anet clearly balances our Initiative costs around having that trait and so not having that extra initiative pool is very limiting. Less dependance on Trickery means we could fill that slot with SA or Acro for a solid defensive boost if we need to, and that means more diversity. Seems like a simple thing to do, so why not do it Anet?

Secondly, rework Acro and SA. As of right now, SA is completely redundant and Acro is mostly only used in some Staff builds, and even then only to supplement Daredevil. Make SA a solid line that doesn’t promote camping stealth and give Acro its own unique niche that gives us a reason to really want to take that line. As of right now, Daredevil does what both of these lines do but better whilst also adding more offensive potential.

And lastly, rework our useless weapon skills and utilities. D/D (offhand dagger in general) needs a total overhaul. Traps need a direct damage component so as to get rid of this ridiculous Ghost Thief build. Cut down on long duration stealth uptime in general and stop promoting mindlessly spamming evades and overtuned skills, Shadow Shot being a primary culprit…. Oh and revert this insanely dumb CD on our stealth attacks. Totally uncalled for. Etc etc etc.

I’m sorry, 3 things isn’t enough!

JonnyForgotten.4276:

Did some playing around today and realized that having expertise or other condition duration increases does not apply to the poison stacks given by Choking Cloud. . . including any combos. Which is pretty kittening weak if you ask me. I understand the low field time, but the ticks themselves? Sheesh. . . .

That honestly seems like a bug. I wonder if the same is true for the duration of blind from Black Powder…also throw gunk has the confusion combo we should test.

Also, I would disagree that SA is “redundant.” Redundant with what? It provides thief a solid bonus to stealth and shadowstep abilities. It also has our strongest “core” condition removal and damage reduction. People say that SA is too defensive, but that is what makes it a strong traitline that allows a thief to stay in the fight longer and apply more damage. Whether you take Cloaked in Shadows or Rending Shade the line is a solid choice for stealth oriented thieves—making the core class better.

TheDarkSoul.1938:

First, for the sake of build diversity, get rid of our total dependancy on Trickery to function effectively. I think this means giving us Preparedness baseline at the very minimum, because Anet clearly balances our Initiative costs around having that trait and so not having that extra initiative pool is very limiting. Less dependance on Trickery means we could fill that slot with SA or Acro for a solid defensive boost if we need to, and that means more diversity. Seems like a simple thing to do, so why not do it Anet?

To be fair, this is(generally speaking about trailines) not just a thief problem. Almost all classes have “mandatory” traitlines. Ele has absolutely no traitline-choices at all if they wanna PvP.

I’ve talked about this before in another thread. This will basically be copy pasta.

My three biggest issues/priories are:

Eval.2371:

• We lack survivability to deal with aoe cleave. When we are in a big fight we resort to haphazardly dodging to avoid aoe cleave because if we don’t we melt to sheer amount of it.

• We lack the ability to indefinitely pressure targets that have an abundance of passive defenses or immunities. Stealth attack? block. Unload spam? invuln, Stack bleed & confusion? resistance.

• Trickery & DrD feel mandatory. Because of the two above, we are reduced to spaming both our defensive and offensive mechanics. Be it aimless dodges in hope to avoid cleave, or unloads chained together because its our only good option, or stacking stealth endlessly until we have an opportunity to land a stealth attack. Not having trickery or DrD limits your ability to succeed in either category as you will run out of resources.

saerni.2584:

JonnyForgotten.4276:

Did some playing around today and realized that having expertise or other condition duration increases does not apply to the poison stacks given by Choking Cloud. . . including any combos. Which is pretty kittening weak if you ask me. I understand the low field time, but the ticks themselves? Sheesh. . . .

That honestly seems like a bug. I wonder if the same is true for the duration of blind from Black Powder…also throw gunk has the confusion combo we should test.

I was mistaken. The initial tick is only 2 seconds, so max 4s with 100% condition duration increase. So just very weak basically. Although, the weakness ticks lasts twice as long as the poison, so there is that.

A lot of things can be done to improve thieves. However, the change you propose for Shadowstep I cannot agree with. It would mean that on a very often used shadowstep + steal engage you already use your condi clear! And then when you need to remove condis, it will be on cooldown.. If you want more remove on the first step make it 2 on step and 2 on return.

Things that should be looked at by the devs:
1. Make thieves less reliant on Trickery. The line is good and often required for pretty much any playstyle. This hinders diversity. Some of this should be baseline, especially the minors.

2. Take a good look at the balance between damage output and how much a thief can take / avoid in damage. Our damage has been nerfed in the past to prevent from blowing up people too harshly, which is fair enough. But we haven’t been compensated in our defense enough. And now with the powercreep on all classes, our damage is only medium to high, while our survivability is down at the bottom.

3. Look at the roles that a thief can play in the game. In pvp we are down to only +1 and decap. In wvw we can pick off lone targets, but anything bigger means we melt with one tiny mistake. If that is the way the thief should be, then our damage should actually be a bit burstier!

To sum up. My take on the thief is that we are pretty okay right now. However, our roles are limited and we lack something that we truly excel at. Give us another role, or give back some damage to actually be the one to pick for our burst and out role.

Why not just

Shadowstep
Shadowstep to target area. Becomes Shadow Return, which returns you to your starting area. On activation, clear 1 Condition per second for five seconds.

Just remove the condi clear from the shadowstep part entirely if it bothers people. Make them two independent effects. It could take longer or shorter to clear out the conditions depending on balance concerns, but I think the basic idea is sound. If you want to use it and not return to where you were, then just don’t hit the return bit.

That will still not allow me to keep my clears in check until I really need them. Or it means I cannot engage with Shadowstep to begin with.

We as thieves don’t have a whole lot of condition clears. And most that we do have are restricted to certain types of conditions. This means that I have to use my other clears, like Dash or Withdraw first, in order to clear cover conditions. Then I use shadowstep return to clear the actual damaging ones.

Your solution would take away my choice of when and what to clear!

You could also make it clear 2 and 2 conditions. Maybe not as effective in some regards as in the past but certainly more effective in others.

Keep in mind that your engage use of Shadowstep is still more than possible. And all a person has to do is wait 10 seconds after you shadowstep to negate that condition clear you are talking about. I can see why you would have “less control” in some scenarios over condition clear, but only slightly because atm as soon as you use the ability you only have 10 seconds in which to be effected by conditions and then use the cleanse return.

In a team fight, say I have medium conditions on me, but I also want to engage with another person who is running in from the side. I use Shadowstep to engage, but I can’t do too much damage before I need to use the Shadowstep return in order to clear the condi on me. Further, maybe returning isn’t the best option in that scenario because there are a ton of marks down right where I was. So putting all the condition clear on the return limits my flexibility and makes me more vulnerable, not less, to conditions.

My position is basically “having conditions on me shouldn’t force me to return into the line of fire to cleanse some of them.”