Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,

I wanted to make this thread cause I worry about thief balance. I think the class is very close to where it should be, but a few builds with other professions are over-tuned. This is not to discuss the professions that need some nerfs, as there are many threads discussing this, but rather to point out areas the Thief can be safely buffed without upsetting balance, especially once the aforementioned classes get nerfed.

Weapons:
Pistol 1
Off-hand Dagger 4
Staff 4

Utilities:
Skelk Venom
Signet of Malice
Smoke Screen
Signet of Shadows (stun brake)
Tripwire
Ambush
Scorpion Wire
Ice Drake Venom

Traits: (Please leave suggestions)

I think any buffs should focus on the stuff mentioned above. The thief is a strong profession, and while is may struggle right now, I don’t agree with buffing it to a stronger level. Simply help out with diversity by buffing the least used skills and utilities. (And traits, but I’m lazy) Thank you, and I hope others agree with me. I don’t want to see the Thief nerfed in a future update, because d/p got buffed, etc.

My real issue right now with thief is weapons. Mostly the flow of weapons and their interaction with some effects. While that other stuff does need some work I think the best thing we can do for the thief atm is balance the weapons so we can move away from the “d/p or die” type mindset.

Wall of text inc:
If we look at the flow of the sets it’s obvious that d/p is the best set. The set doesn’t need any traits to actually make the set function (i.e D/D needing cloaked in shadows). But rather than nerfing D/P I think the other sets should be modeled off of it in terms of just flowing together well and synergizing with every skill so the set feels complete and not like it’s fighting itself.
S/D- Mostly feels good but there’s a couple things that if changed will make the set meta worthy again. Dagger #4 needs a damage increase so it becomes a reliable way to damage a foe who is not within melee range (probably not a huge one but definitely something along the lines of 5-10%). Sword 2 return needs to be instant cast but not a stunbreaker (I.E. can’t be cast when cced but it still is helpful in the times that you need it) and removes 2 condis instead of just 1. Sword 3 needs to cycle on block (after all the skill description is cycles to larcenous if you hit a foe, even if they block it you still hit them you just didn’t deal damage) will remain as it is with evades and blinds as that is considered a miss. Dagger 5 should have a single target blind on it so the skill flows better within both s/d and d/d.
S/P- Keeps all the sword changes but now has #3 split into 2 different skills, The first one is a charge/leap that stuns your foe (just like pw does now) and if it hits (same interaction I mentioned with sword 3) it cycles to the damage part of pw. Reason for that change is then S/P has some stealth access without having to trait for bound allowing the set to be more self reliant rather than trait reliant.
D/D- Keep all the dagger offhand changes I mentioned above and then remove the bleeds from death blossom and change it to act like staff 3 where it hits and then rolls backwards so the set then has a gap opener/disengage and we remove the annoying death blossom lotus training condi builds at the same time.
Staff- #4 blind leaves a smoke field to allow the set to stealth via #4 and vault.
P/P- Have the AA change depending on whether you are p/p or p/d. If p/p, then the bleed from the stealth skill and aa will be removed and the damage will be buffed so it is stronger, rate of attack maybe buffed a bit just so it applies a little more pressure with it’s autos. If p/d it will stay the same as it is now. #2 would have a small roll backwards after the immob shot was fired that would also be a leap to allow the set to stealth itself with pistol 2 and 5 combo’d.
P/D- just incorporate the stuff I mentioned above and it should be fine.

So yeah those are my proposed weapon changes to make all thief sets self reliant and give them a better feel to play. This will reduce dependency on D/P and will allow other builds to emerge as there will be no 1 best set. (damage on each can be adjusted depending on how the proposed changes affect their performance).

In terms of traits I think it mostly comes down to making baseline what can be in order to reduce the mandatory nature of some lines and then buffing/nerfing what is under/over performing in other lines. The extra ini from trickery would be great to see as a baseline and some buffs to steal that you trait would be great to see baseline so the steal can function without needing several traits to make it that way. I’d also personally like to see the leap finisher from bound removed as all other sets would have leaps/ stealth access built into then and then stealth focused builds would again have to invest into SA in order to get high stealth uptime rather than getting all of dd and high stealth from the leap. (not that it’s overperforming it just goes against what I see as a balance ideal which is that you should have to invest in order to get something and taking 1 trait for near perma stealth is not imo an investment)

Outside of what I talked about there’s not much else I can think of that could be changed or that I have the experience with to suggest changes to without either causing more power creep or really messing up game balance.

Edit: I forgot to say make reveal 3 sec in pvp so it is uniform across the game and d/d has potential to see some play in pvp.

My biggest focus is that buffing thief should be done with the intention of helping the less used weaponsets and abilities. The last thing I want is thief to become overpowered, but some skills are simply under preforming.

My last pvp match, I went in to 1v1 a thief taking their home node, I had my shortbow out and was a little worried, as thief vs thief fights can turn fast. Then I saw the thief place 3 traps at his feet on the point and I knew the fight was won. There was no hope for him.

I’m not against helping underutilized weapon sets, but the devs have to be careful. I don’t agree with changing the reveal time to 3 seconds, just because it would help d/p. I don’t think d/p needs any buffs right now. Helping make s/p less clunky with skill 3, and perhaps some slight improvements to s/d and d/d through buffing skill 4 would be nice.

I started this thread, cause I believe thief is doing well right now, but as with most classes could use some buffs to things that simply under preform. The devs a while back had said they would focus on this for all classes, but have yet to really accomplish anything. Playing thief without shadowstep is not usually viable, and I don’t think we should nerf it, because thief is well balanced right now, and nerfing their good skills would simply make the whole profession underwhelming. They need to bring up the utilities, healing skills, elites, and traits that see almost no action today. They have the data, they need to simply do it. For all professions. But I play thief as my main today, and I feel most passionate about it.

Perhaps it would be best to demand this on the pvp forums (or reddit, for some reason), and make the request for all professions. I’m sure some guardians want to run spirit weapons, or warriors physical skills, but there is no justification for them. They simply suck. Please A-Net, help these skills not suck and the meta would be much more flexible, with each match being far more varied and interesting.

I agree on your s/d commemts airo, I also think cloak and dagger needs to have stealth duration slightly increased to compete with black powder stealth combos. I also think swords first auto attack needs to be instant since with the way sword auto works now it ends up doing less dmg potential than it used to unless the 3rd hit strikes, and its usually quite hard to land that 3rd strike on a good opponent.

I really like the idea of a longer stealth duration for cloak and dagger. Would balance the sets more due to the higher risk in getting into stealth with cloak and dagger. I think 5 seconds would be balanced, but 4 seconds would work well too.

I don’t have much recent experience on s/d, so I won’t comment.

I like the idea of staff #4 blinding in the shape of a cone instead of a straight line.

It may be a little OP, but maybe it could make a cone-shaped blind field so that when combined with vault (a blast finisher) it causes stealth.

I don’t foresee this being OP though myself simply because staff stealth #1 isn’t anything like backstab, so stealth wouldn’t generally be as scary to opponents.

As for dagger #4, maybe it could apply a stack of torment, and pistol #1, perhaps a stack of poison similar to main hand dagger’s auto attack.

As for all the venoms, they all need some kind of buff because as of now, they’re not worth the utility spots that shadow refuge, shadow step, and various stunbreakers should naturally take.

I will say that perhaps tripwire should be unevadable. Currently, when you evade through a DH’s trap, they still trigger. As for a thief’s traps, they just get disarmed. I’m still in disbelief at how underpowered this is relatively speaking.

Thoughts?

Reason thief traps get disarmed is that they are linear. While it is annoying that people keep evading through the traps I don’t like making things unavoidable because then it opens up the door for gimmicks and more things to be made that way. That said for our knockdown trap I could get behind it being unevadeable like the guardian’s line of warding.

My 2 cents:

15 ini baseline will open huge build diversity. It won’t buff dp so much, but will give space for other interesting builds.
Revealed training – add stab/prot/both for revealed.
Bountiful theft – make it actual steal of boons with stacks/duration. <3