Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return

1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers.

Jon

Well you are right, why i have to use a breakstun skill while i am stunned ? nosense arenanet.

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)
Jon

Infiltrator’s Return
First, point 2 is simply not true. I’m becoming more and more convinced that no one actually plays Thief on the balance team. It’s just that class where everyone on the team is like, “Well I’ve been playing my mesmer, been a few months since I’ve logged on my old thief…” plays their Thief for 10 minutes “Well that was nice, back to mesmer.”

Sir, the skill you are thinking of is the utility “Shadowstep”. It has a 50 second base cooldown with a stunbreak on the step and return, with the return removing 3 conditions (because they can’t just lay that right back on and twiddle their thumbs for a few more seconds, right?)
Here are the steps for the stomp you mentioned:
1. Start stomp
2. Shadowstep away (again, the utility skill)
3. Wait for stomp channel to almost finish
4. Shadow Return back just before channel finishes (did I say utility)

Now, its not impossible to do this using infiltrator’s strike, but you would need to:
1. Infiltrate into the downed player
2. Hope player is also a thief, and teleports where you came from
3. Do steps 3 and 4 from the Shadowstep method
OR (WHOA TWO METHODS)
1. Infiltrate on top of the downed player, so your return is at their location
2. Avoiding redundancy, use Infiltrator’s Signet on a faraway target
3. Do steps 3 and 4 from the Shadowstep method

Beyond this, being unable to return after incoming CC (which actually requires to have been set up beforehand, contrary to popular belief) will assure the thief’s death, especially if you have more than one stun. Why, we may die faster than Warrior before “You can make all the mistakes you want against power builds, honey” Signet.

Here’s the thing:
Thieves and Guardians both have very low health pools. Guardian has a plethora of defensive and healing abilities to both mitigate and recover from hits to counter this. Thief is supposed to be the opposite, using a plethora of mobility skills to counter this. Without being able to use mobility to avoid the damage, the thief will die much faster than any other class relying on a hard cooldown stun break because of this health pool

Push for Hard to Catch
Instead of saying this trait is garbage, like many have accurately stated already, I’m going to break it down for you using the G.A.R.B.A.G.E. system.

G.reat for getting yourself killed: it triggers with stability on, is not controlled by the player, AND does not actually remove that which it sets out to protect you from.

A.lready put all the reasonably useful points into that tree. Feline Grace is at 15, this would require 20

R.eally long cooldown compared to what it actually does, which previously could be managed by the player through smart use of initiative management and upkeep of setup requirement

B.oon isn’t that great because it’s only useful for travel out of combat in the context of having teleports and some leaps to close gaps, and stealth to escape

A.ssassin’s reward, which isn’t that great already, would easily beat out this skill in this tier even before the negligible buff. (yeah, lemme just grab some healing gear for my thief)

G.ood boon alternatives to support the thief mobility design, such as vigor, would be given a lower amount anyways in light of the recent vigor nerfs across the boar-OH WAIT, forgot about mesmer vigor.

E.veryone who actually plays the thief has always said how useless this trait has always been, yet here you are, acting like this is some amazing reworked trait when in fact nothing has changed about it functionally.

I end this section with two questions:
1. Did the guy who designed “Tow Line” (Thief spear #4) design this trait?
2. How many more weeks until “Tow Line” is finally renamed to “CC Yourself”?

Conclusion/Seriousness
Jon, after all I have said, I do need to add that most of what you said was very true and well thought out. Specifically, the change to Infusion of Shadow is easily one of the most fair and balanced changes to the thief. However, I can’t just stay silent when some of the points have revealed nothing but blatant neglect regarding balancing the thief to compete in a meta they already have virtually nothing they really do better than other classes. (Distortion stomp?)

TL;DR
Nothing new for people who actually play Thief.

JonPeters.5630:

I couldn’t find a thread to place this in. Here is a summary of what I have seen discussed on the thief changes and some more clarity into what our initial thoughts were and where we stand currently.

Initiative changes
We believe this is one of the most controversial but important changes this patch. The important thing to understand is that we have been and will playtest this a lot more before we push this change. The default rate of initiative regeneration was simply to low and was causing players to either take traits to suppliment it, or to have their effectiveness suffer. This is something that has to change. What these changes intend to do is to increase the power of every single thief build that is not running these traits, and to ever so slightly reduce the maximum amount of initiative you can have per second if you min/max those traits. I know its easy to theorycraft what is going to happen here and there is a lot of danger in that. It is hard to get a sense of this change without playing it, and believe me if I could I would let everyone test a change of this magnitude and gather some more empirical and data driven feedback, but currently our resources are limited, but we still believe that this is a change whose time has come. We will monitor it very carefully when we do release it to make sure it is working as intended.

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Jon

Dear Jon I don’t think you understand just how crucial this skill is to sword/dagger thieves such as myself who are always involved in group fights in WvW.

Its the only ability along with shadow step utility that allows us to go balls deep and have somewhat of an escape should we get CCed , feared etc…. you’re probably thinking "well thats the point , we don’t want you to be able to escape those " well then you sir tell me whats the point of playing this weapon set if not for the survablity it provides?

We don’t play sword because its dmg output ( we have daggers for that ), we play it because of the ability to get out of tricky situations it provides us, you want to take that away ? and give us what back exactly ? This will kill the set.

Removing the stun break from sword was justified but also making it that we can’t port away when stunned is simply a bad idea , a very bad one. It probably wouldn’t affect us much in terms of 1 v 1 fights but for players like me ,who play this game to roam with his guildies to get into group fights , this simply kills it for me.

Don’t get me wrong , i know that whatever changes you guys make you do it thinking about the best for your game , you don’t make these changes to annoy us but you seriously need to reconsider this one.

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

I’m sorry, but I don’t find your reasoning for the nerf to IS/SR valid.

Regarding #1: you do not nerf the only other generic Sword MH skill, apart from autoattack, in order to address a problem related to a specific set, namely S/D. This is a bad approach to the problem, you gave to the thief specific dual skills based on the combination of MH/OH, so if the problem lies in a specific build with a particular dual skill, you should address the problem modifying that particual dual skill. Hitting (more again) S/P with this nerf is completely uncalled for and a bad decision. It just “pidgeonholes” us more than before.

Regarding #2: Why don’t you just add an interrupt when using a teleport skill (or just IS/SR) while stomping? I think you’re fine with using Shadowstep to port-stomp (due to the high CD), then just make Shadow Return to interrupt the stomp if used, so a thief can’t just start stomp -> port back with SR -> use Infi Signet to port back to the stomped player -> stomp him. Even if I don’t see this as a huge problem, not as much as you see it – the player needs to waste Infi Signet (30 secs CD) + 2 ini, I’d say that’s a fair cost in trying to get a more secure stomp.

I may sound harsh, but since my main set has been S/P since beta (and I just loved from first sight this set ), I know how much you nerfed it during this year and a half (to the point of forcing me out of it after the last “stun fix” patch), but never addressed the real problems directly. We had:

- PW + Haste -> the problem was Haste -> you nerfed the damage of PW by a whopping -15%; then you proceeded to nerf quickness for all classes, without reverting the nerf to PW.
- IS/SR -> You removed the stun break capability of Shadow Return (but that was ok, since at least we could port away while CCed), then you proceeded to nerf the range (from 900 to 600). Now you want to “fix” again a problem related to a specific set (S/D) with a change in a skill that impacts a lot more to another set (S/P).

You really need someone on your staff to play constantly a thief to understand all these problems (all the others related to ini regen/traits are quite well explained by other fellow thieves in this same thread ) and with all these past and future modifications it seems you’re just trying to save a flooded ship using a bucket.

JonPeters.5630:

I couldn’t find a thread to place this in. Here is a summary of what I have seen discussed on the thief changes and some more clarity into what our initial thoughts were and where we stand currently.

Initiative changes
We believe this is one of the most controversial but important changes this patch. The important thing to understand is that we have been and will playtest this a lot more before we push this change. The default rate of initiative regeneration was simply to low and was causing players to either take traits to suppliment it, or to have their effectiveness suffer. This is something that has to change. What these changes intend to do is to increase the power of every single thief build that is not running these traits, and to ever so slightly reduce the maximum amount of initiative you can have per second if you min/max those traits. I know its easy to theorycraft what is going to happen here and there is a lot of danger in that. It is hard to get a sense of this change without playing it, and believe me if I could I would let everyone test a change of this magnitude and gather some more empirical and data driven feedback, but currently our resources are limited, but we still believe that this is a change whose time has come. We will monitor it very carefully when we do release it to make sure it is working as intended.

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Infusion of Shadow
For basic use this trait’s functionality is not going to change. By many players it was being used to grant some initiative when going into stealth. However there were some abusive builds that were using this to maintain very long stealth uptime without having to use their utility skills. The problem with this is that it lets them recharge those skills while in stealth, which takes away the risk associated with using them. We are ok with thieves blowing their cooldowns to have longer stealth, and we are ok with theives bouncing in and out of stealth, but we were not ok with thieves maintaining long duration stealth through abusing a single trait.

Flanking Strikes
I agree that this move may be overkill on the thief. We are currently discussing undoing it. The main motivation was that we really wanted to move Trickster to adept tier to encourge use of those utilities, and the most obvious candidate to move up was Flanking Strikes. This isn’t how we should be making that decision, so we will discuss this and get back to you.

Vigorous Recovery & Bountiful Theft
I’ve seen a lot of talk about this as well, and discussing this already this morning the current vigor is a bit too high, but we may have overdone the reduction. I was thinking about going back to 5s or 6s on Vigorous Recovery, and going back to 10s or 12s on Bountiful Theft.

Thanks,

Jon

It’s simple, make a tournament of 1v1 see which professions are in the first places.

The nerf the infusion of shadow is the only nerf tolerable.

JonPeters.5630:

I

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Jon,

Can you elaborate on this? Are you talking about Thief Sword 2 or our utility skill, Shadow Step? If you’re talking about Sword 2, can you go into details about why you think using 5 initiatives and a utility skill to secure a stomp is over the top?

Thanks,

I’d be fine with all these changes Mr. Peters as long as we got some significant changes.

For instance, Last Refuge is a terrible trait and everyone hates its. Why not replace last refuge with infusion of shadow? Infusion of shadow is a must have trait for anyone going into the shadow arts line and last refuge is not.

This would open up some build diversity.

Why not give venoms to all thieves as F2-F4 skills with the exception of basilisk venom? This would be a flat out buff to the class. Thief community might actually say, hey thanks for giving our class something new and useful instead of whine nerfs 24/7.

I’d like to see some of these changes be added into these huge nerfs. This is a huge nerf patch. No more perma stealth, no more s/d builds, opportunist nerf is going to effect every thief build as well.

As a Thief main,

Can you give me some depth behind the Infiltrator’s Strike change? Especially why have you decided to add more cast time to Infiltrator’s Return instead of disabling the skill when the thief is stunned/dazed/immobilized?

In my opinion adding more cast time just makes the whole mechanic more clunky and still allows Thieves to get out of sticky situations they shouldn’t be able to.

If a Thief is stunned, unless he uses a stunbreaker, he should remain as such. Infiltrator’s Return bypassing CC is clearly broken and counter intuitive in my opinion.
If a Thief is stunned or dazed he shouldn’t be able to use Infiltrator’s Return. You need to add some punishment if a Sword Thief is caught without a stunbreaker up. You need to create some separators between average thieves and GREAT thieves. *

A GREAT Thief would use Infiltrator’s Return before the stun arrives, that’s good reward. An average Thief wouldn’t have the timing to avoid the stun and therefor would be punished.

Skill vs Reward/Punishment is something we need

Infiltrator’s Return can’t be the “OH SHIET” button. That’s not very balanced for competitive play.
Introducing this fix, would you go as far as not going foward with this cast time increase and maybe reducing initiative cost? What are your thoughts on this?

I am one of those thieves who already mains s/d and uses d/p as a second weapon set, mainly for finishing off opponents and securing a stomp. If you follow through with the changes to sword 2, I can assure you that you pretty much kill sword specs. It’s already hard enough trying to keep up with some other professions in the game’s current state because of their abilities to mindlessly toss out cond’s, ai, and/or stun spamming aoe while having plenty of defensive abilities.

It does require a utility by the way in addition to infiltrator’s return using a great deal of initiative and a little skill to secure a stomp in this way. How is this ANY worse than many other classes just popping STABILITY which takes hardly any (if any) active skill on a player’s part to secure a stomp? Also, using blackpowder, I pull off stomps far easier, using almost the same initiative and don’t even have to use a utility. So why exactly are you changing Infiltrator’s Return based on this supposed “more impactful” use? Your guys’ reasoning sometimes really escapes me.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

As a Thief main,

Can you give me some depth behind the Infiltrator’s Strike change? Especially why have you decided to add more cast time to Infiltrator’s Return instead of disabling the skill when the thief is stunned/dazed/immobilized?

In my opinion adding more cast time just makes the whole mechanic more clunky and still allows Thieves to get out of sticky situations they shouldn’t be able to.

If a Thief is stunned, unless he uses a stunbreaker, he should remain as such. Infiltrator’s Return bypassing CC is clearly broken and counter intuitive in my opinion.
If a Thief is stunned or dazed he shouldn’t be able to use Infiltrator’s Return. You need to add some punishment if a Sword Thief is caught without a stunbreaker up. You need to create some separators between average thieves and GREAT thieves. *

A GREAT Thief would use Infiltrator’s Return before the stun arrives, that’s good reward. An average Thief wouldn’t have the timing to avoid the stun and therefor would be punished.

Skill vs Reward/Punishment is something we need

Infiltrator’s Return can’t be the “OH SHIET” button. That’s not very balanced for competitive play.
Introducing this fix, would you go as far as not going foward with this cast time increase and maybe reducing initiative cost? What are your thoughts on this?

So you want the thief to stand there and die while CCed? Okay.

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:
_One of the issues
… We have also somewhat reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves by reducing vigor up time and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword. This prevents these thieves from evading too much and too easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.). Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait. This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again. …

Here is the issue, these changes are supposed to be balancing. I am going to compare Thief and Mesmer as I believe the playstyles are similar for most people. (Sidenote: ive been running a mantra mesmer since March and have never seen condition removal as an issue, so w/e to the complaining.)

Generally the changes seem to be addressed for pvp and two of the most annoying builds are thief stealthing/evading and mesmer stealth/blink. So they are similar, avoid damage by your enemy not being able to see or hit you. However this ‘balance’ seems more about spinning plates than actually synergy. And here is the kicker Mesmers get close to permanent vigor for 5 trait points, have access to protection (remember that issue months ago), and regeneration on positioning. Thief gets vigor and regen w/ condition and … Not so balancing IMO

Hard to Catch and Assassins Reward are close to the least used traits in acrobatics. Hard to Catch, as stated by many others, is buggy and more times than not the results are negative. I feel like an engineer from months back, time to toss the dice and see how this game is gonna screw me. Assassins Reward is healing, in a current game setup where healing does not scale well, its not worth 20 points (and i have a set of magis gear).

Without evasion and positioning they are sitting ducks.

Need revamped traits not some shell game. Can you keep the thief fun to play?

So are there any plans to actually allow theif a chance in a toe-to-toe, since that is apparently the point?

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

As a Thief main,

Can you give me some depth behind the Infiltrator’s Strike change? Especially why have you decided to add more cast time to Infiltrator’s Return instead of disabling the skill when the thief is stunned/dazed/immobilized?

In my opinion adding more cast time just makes the whole mechanic more clunky and still allows Thieves to get out of sticky situations they shouldn’t be able to.

If a Thief is stunned, unless he uses a stunbreaker, he should remain as such. Infiltrator’s Return bypassing CC is clearly broken and counter intuitive in my opinion.
If a Thief is stunned or dazed he shouldn’t be able to use Infiltrator’s Return. You need to add some punishment if a Sword Thief is caught without a stunbreaker up. You need to create some separators between average thieves and GREAT thieves. *

A GREAT Thief would use Infiltrator’s Return before the stun arrives, that’s good reward. An average Thief wouldn’t have the timing to avoid the stun and therefor would be punished.

Skill vs Reward/Punishment is something we need

Infiltrator’s Return can’t be the “OH SHIET” button. That’s not very balanced for competitive play.
Introducing this fix, would you go as far as not going foward with this cast time increase and maybe reducing initiative cost? What are your thoughts on this?

The problem you don’t acknowledge is S/D’s reliance on Zerkers gear to do acceptable damage in organized play (TPvP, SPvP). Running stats any Dagger MH spec would consider “burst” allows Sword MH to do enough damage to actually drop a target eventually.

Sword relies on evades (which are being reduced via vigor uptime reductions), IS/IR (which is being nerfed) and FS to avoid damage, and LS to generate boons for extra survivability (which lost 50% of its effectiveness Oct 15th). With the high amount of easy to land, short CD CC’s there are currently in the game, Sword thieves need more than just stunbreakers to survive in any realistic situation, because they have to dodge CC AND most damage, or they melt. There’s no protection or stability to rely on, no huge HP pool, no high armor – they have to actively evade most attacks. And don’t forget, you gave thieves absolutely no way to generate Stability with in class abilities, unlike every other class in the game

If Anet wants to increase the damage on sword AA, IS, FS, and PW, that would be a different story – as it stands, sword needs to be in the fight and targetable longer than say D/P when running Glass Cannon stats. I wish I could compare S/D to other effective thief weaponsets other than D/P, but we don’t have any.

As others have pointed out, Point 2 under Jon’s post is kind of disheartening. It either points to a very base level misunderstanding of how IS/IR works (which calls into question their ability to balance it), or they’re claiming that spending 5 init AND a utility such as Inf Sig, Steal or Shadow Step is “too effective” for stomping.

The suggestion that is puts more value on running a secondary weaponset that enables stomping (like say OH pistol) also feels shallow – if you’re not aware that Shortbow is basically a requirement for thieves, you don’t play one. The mobility it allows a roamer (Thief’s only position in TPvP atm) AND the team fight options it brings to a class too squishy to mix it up among the AoE fest team fights can become are part of the reason thief even remains viable in TPvP.

Zerbo.5381:

I am one of those thieves who already mains s/d and uses d/p as a second weapon set, mainly for finishing off opponents and securing a stomp. If you follow through with the changes to sword 2, I can assure you that you pretty much kill sword specs. It’s already hard enough trying to keep up with some other professions in the game’s current state because of their abilities to mindlessly toss out cond’s, ai, and/or stun spamming aoe while having plenty of defensive abilities.

It does require a utility by the way in addition to infiltrator’s return using a great deal of initiative and a little skill to secure a stomp in this way. How is this ANY worse than many other classes just popping STABILITY which takes hardly any (if any) active skill on a player’s part to secure a stomp? Also, using blackpowder, I pull off stomps far easier, using almost the same initiative and don’t even have to use a utility. So why exactly are you changing Infiltrator’s Return based on this supposed “more impactful” use? Your guys’ reasoning sometimes really escapes me.

Yeah I got a laugh out of that reasoning too

I am sure there a plenty of ingenious improvements that could be made. Here are a few I came up with to add a bit of diversity to thief.

Some change possibilities.
Add another buff to traits that give vigor, for example, vigorous recovery vigor X sec, stability X sec; Bountiful Theft vigor X sec, aegis or protection and steal two boons. Add a steal boon or transfer condition to kleptomaniac.
Add transfer condition to some other ability, really any condition removal (low hp pool might be fun for a guardian).
Other thoughts:
Deadly Arts
Throw out DA X, move DA XII Residual Venom to X and move SA XII Venomous Aura to DA XII. That or make DA X damage increase for skill 3 of dual wields.
DA VII Improvisation – Transfer condition on steal

Critical Strikes
Opportunist (dec10) with ICD of 4s

Shadow Arts
SA XII Shadow Sieve – attack after stealth transfer two conditions to target icd 10s

Acrobatics
A III Vigorous Recovery – gain vigor 4s and stability 2s
*A IV Change to Swashbuckler – Sword #2 is instant cast, or 25% speed w/ melee
A V Master Trapper – traps are instant and recharge quicker
Swap A VII Fleet of Foot with improved A V Master Trapper
A XI Hard to Catch – Turn to mist/smoke 2s & gain swiftness on disable (sorry but shadowstep skills are buggy with current terrain models and a class that uses positioning to survive… random movement is not conducive)

Trickery
T Adept Kleptomaniac – reduce ini 3 to 2, steal one boon
T VII Bountiful Theft – Grants Protection and Vigor, steal 2 boons

Basilisk Venom: gives target herpes, next 3 attacks (anyones) cannot be dodged, blocked, or evaded (at this point its only used for Rune set actives… Elite not so much)

Increase dps of sword overall by 5%, atleast give thief sword autoattack…
Increase speed of shortbow #5

For a class-balance discussion in an MMO forum, this is pretty darned civilized

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

About point 1* most classes have Stability or Invulnerability, which make them inmune to stuns and trows, and beside of this, they have their own stun breakers too. Thieves has non of this features and that is why many of us use Infiltrator´s return, is like our stability, so my question is if you are gonna to remove stability from the other classes to make it a fair enough change to us? Also, Shadow Trap is a bad joke of Stun breaker, are you planing in make the traps more reliable or fix this one at least, this trap is one less stun brake to us.

About point 2* Soooo, PvE thieve must belive this is a fair rason? Really? are you fuking kidding me? dam Anet you are really and blatand showing us were your mind in this game is.

Are you serious, JonPeters? Have you guys not heard a single logical issue here? sPVP teleport stomp? Are you serious? What about PVE?

WHAT ABOUT S/P THIEVES THAT YOU HAVE IGNORED FOR OVER A YEAR NOW? Then you say this?

• Infiltrator’s Return
  The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
  1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
  2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Yeah, OH pistols for instance: meaning you never realized how many players actually DO NOT play this setup. Those of us who HAVE been playing this for the past year because S/P actually takes a bit of understanding and skill to pull off a good S/P Thief. But, no, you guys based your nerfing off of S/D, proving me again and again and again that you have simply ignored the cry from S/P thieves ALL this time.

Proof again: S/P is the 1% build in this game. Then you base your nerf off on S/D thieves killing the 1% build even more. Thanks a lot ArenaNet, you proved me right again that you have ignored S/P for over a year now.

Kill us in PVP, then go on and kill us in PVE. You based all of your decision on PVP and S/D thieves. Way to go, you did a wonderful job!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Devs-Thinking-In-the-Box/
Read it

But wait! Mesmers and Elementals can get out of stun! Oh wait, Elementals can get up from downed state and run into a Keep/Tower and self heal up! <— Hey this is PVP isn’kitten Real fair isn’kitten. . .

Did you not hear: S/P thieves do NOT rely on stealth. Maybe you didn’t design the class to work that way (obviously because the devs do not understand S/P well enough), but that’s how S/P works. Let me show you how a S/P Thief works NOT A S/D THIEF! Care to join me PVP designers?

S/P: Now you’re supposed to hang around for a massive hit ‘that you can clearly see with your own eyes’ and stand there and take it. Good good job ArenaNet.

Here comes that infraction! Can’t handle the truth!

magom.3275:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

About point 1* most classes have Stability or Invulnerability, which make them inmune to stuns and trows, and beside of this, they have their own stun breakers too. Thieves has non of this features and that is why many of us use Infiltrator´s return, is like our stability, so my question is if you are gonna to remove stability from the other classes to make it a fair enough change to us?

This is a good point I don’t think has been hammered on enough.

Every other class in the game has access to stability besides thief (please don’t mention Daggerstorm as a counterpoint – that is not a way for thief to gain stability, its there so a 90s CD elite isn’t instant CC bait). Some classes have stunbreakers which also grant stability when used. You decided to gives thieves no access to stability – I feel an ability that allows you to teleport but remain stunned seems a fair tradeoff for the inability to gain stability via class skills.

evilapprentice.6379:

magom.3275:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

About point 1* most classes have Stability or Invulnerability, which make them inmune to stuns and trows, and beside of this, they have their own stun breakers too. Thieves has non of this features and that is why many of us use Infiltrator´s return, is like our stability, so my question is if you are gonna to remove stability from the other classes to make it a fair enough change to us?

This is a good point I don’t think has been hammered on enough.

Every other class in the game has access to stability besides thief (please don’t mention Daggerstorm as a counterpoint – that is not a way for thief to gain stability, its there so a 90s CD elite isn’t instant CC bait). Some classes have stunbreakers which also grant stability when used. You decided to gives thieves no access to stability – I feel an ability that allows you to teleport but remain stunned seems a fair tradeoff for the inability to gain stability via class skills.

Could not agree more. Clearly this is NOT being handled well within the class balancing group within the company. Everything he made (the OP) does not greatly clarify a GOOD cause of reason when you sit back and see that he is nerfing an ability purely based on sPVP. I guess they don’t think S/P thieves do PVE in their game, that much is clear.

Then the stability behind it all: we’re not allowed to go around with a good stability ability. Then we have a cast time to return? So much logic coming out of that room right now . . .

I don’t know how many people already told you this, but the change to Infiltrator return will definitely kill any S/x build and thus push thieves out of sPVP/tPVP. Instead of seeing what happens with all the changes to vigor access and iniative gain, you obviously already settled your mind into overnerfing the weaponset.

Why are you not listening to your huge playerbase on this behalf? Where has the philosophy of step by step balancing gone? Also why does S/P not get its 1sec stun back, if your balancing of the skill was obviously based on the old system (where it seemed “in place”).

Don’t you think Signet Use and Quick Recovery will be rather subpar for a master trait. (Only 1 sec advantage over waiting) – No one’s gonna use them this way.

What about buffs to our survivability? With this patch you’ll just take away even more of our already poor survivability / staying power infight. What about access to buffs like stability, protection or aegis if you really need to take away our mobility & vigor.

These things really leave me wondering whether anyone has really tested S/D in it’s current state.

I welcome the change to Infusion of Shadows though, its been long overdue, also nice to see D/D being put onpar with d/p after the patch, but really reconsider the change to Opportunist as this will especially harm any set with channeled high cost abilities (P/P + S/P)

Jon, thanks for taking the time to post here and update us and give an insight in to what the team are thinking.

Having said that these changes are just quickening the progression of thief to be the joke class in GW2. Others have put more elequently their thoughts so I won’t bother repeating but seriously consider this:

- Last refuge – almost always ends up getting me killed, I can’t think of another trait for any class that does this and is unavoidable. At least move it somewhere we can (all, every one of us) choose not to take it.

- Hard to Catch – 50% chance to get me killed, honestly I might as well be knocked back by guardian hammer or something, skills with no control or over your characters movement just ANNOY players and they annoy good players even more.

Dec 10th is a special day for me, try not to kill my favorite class on it please.

By the way – isn’t it about time you un-nerfed cluster bomb range back to 1200? Pretty tired of being useless while defending in WvWvW and being the only class that doesn’t have adequate access to 1200 range. Thanks.

All these nerfs make me think they want thiefs just to be punching bags.
Thiefs innately have low hp, low defence, limited heals so we rely on skill to survive. Since we cant take a hit we are forced to not get hit but all these changes seem to counter that design plan. They’re saying thiefs are too nimble so lets force the squishiest melee class to sit there and facetank dmg.

MyCondolences.8172:

All these nerfs make me think they want thiefs just to be punching bags.
Thiefs innately have low hp, low defence, limited heals so we rely on skill to survive. Since we cant take a hit we are forced to not get hit but all these changes seem to counter that design plan. They’re saying thiefs are too nimble so lets force the squishiest melee class to sit there and facetank dmg.

Slowly, but surely, sadly, yes.
But they buffed the HECK out of Necro’s, and no one see’s that.

Summation of counterpoints thus far:

Initiative changes
Most like the faster base init regen. Many feel opportunist was over nerfed, and feel a 3s ICD is more fitting. My personal feeling is that Opportunist, Quick Recovery and Kleptomaniac should gain secondary effects (I’ve made suggestions concerning those secondary effects in this thread) to keep them from being bland and underpowered, and to help differentiate thieves specced in these trait lines more so than “Slightly faster init regen under certain conditions”

Infiltrator’s Return
Most feel this will kill Sword mainhand completely in TPvP. Sword MH needs to run Glass cannon to remain effective, relies on evading nearly every attack to even survive, and its worth noting that thieves have no access to stability. Your second point doesn’t make much sense, as the only way to use IS/IR for stomps is to use steal/a utility in conjunction with it, and 5 init + a utility/steal is a hefty price to pay to secure a stomp. Concerning your comment about bringing value to other stomp methods (Pistol OH was mentioned), Shortbow is a requirement for thieves in TPvP – roamer is the only role we are capable of filling, and without shortbow thief makes a very poor roamer. It’s also our only option for AoE heavy team fights. Lets also note that Black Powder tends to secure stomps just as well, for 1 more init and no need to use a utility skill. so I don’t see any need to nerf IS/IR for ease of stomping (which again, doesn’t exist in the first place)

Infusion of Shadow
Almost universally regarded as a good change, and a long time coming. No need to discuss this further.

Flanking Strikes
A fairly minor point – it isn’t worth taking over Uncatchable, Thrill of the crime, or Long reach, and none of those are so good as to warrant Master tier. Ultimately not very important, considering how drastically the other changes will affect the class.

Vigorous Recovery & Bountiful Theft
Some still disagree that these need to be nerfed at all, since Evasion is the thiefs primary survival mechanic. We don’t get protection or Aegis, and the dev’s themselves have stated that thieves trying to spec for survivability gain too little in defensive gains when compared to how much offensive capability they sacrifice (though this statement is old, and its possible Dev opinions have changed on this). I’m personally happy to see the proposed reductions at 25% and 33% respectively, rather than 50% even if I don’t think a nerf is really warranted in the first place – that seems more like the “Shave and see” balance philosophy that Anet uses than a 50% reduction would be.

Hard to Catch
It doesn’t matter what tier this trait is in, no one is taking it. It doesn’t break stuns (a minor point), and the RNG of the teleport makes it so that a skill can potentially be harmful (the major point)- no one wants to waste a trait slot on something potentially harmful, especially one we have no control over.

Last Refuge
Same issue as Hard to Catch in that it’s potentially (and almost always) detrimental, only more annoying because you can’t avoid taking it if you put any points into SA. At least it’s not being touted as a “survivability buff”.

Other long standing issues ignored
D/D still has a sub-par evade, condition based attack in the middle of a direct damage weaponset. P/P is still awful. PW seems like a bandaid more than a fix. When we see S/X being nerfed into uselessness (In our opinion, based on proposed changes), this is hard to ignore, since we have so few effective weaponsets as it is.

If anyone feels I’ve forgotten something, or misrepresented the communities reaction (I do have some unavoidable personal bias here, of course) please send me a PM and I will amend this list – try not to quote and correct it however, as the point is to give the Dev’s a single post they can reference when taking our opinions into account.

I think an interesting idea that should be considered is making steal a stunbreaker.
I think this might off set some of these changes and make more thought into thief builds/playstyle.
eg. whether or not its worth investing 30points in trickery or
whether or not to use mug offensively or save it for a last resort.

Would also make the cast time for SR not as relevent since you can break stun and then cast it to retreat.

Wow, none of you guys run an ele as well as thief do you?
Go roll one now and play it for a while. You will run back to thief with a smile.

Wouldnt it just be easier to recreate the thief in its entirety. this is a colossal fk up. i mean thief HAS NOTHING to compare it to its original on release…i mean nothing. maybe p/d. but thief is unrecognizable now and this is obv not a good change… you are forgetting what makes people want to play this game. they dont want simple skills so people can ALL play comptetively. if u cant respond fast enough no amount of dev changes is going to help. thief is garbage now and not even fun to play. im not even talking about pawning or owning etc im just talking abuot how teleports are toned down…no combos left…. i mean nothing fun…. seriously just ignore damage and buffs and conditions for a sec. just think fun. its not half as fun as it was when it came out (not that it didnt need alot of work) but you are pushing players away. i have 3 legendaries and 9500 account points. would be 12k but i kinda quit. i check in now and again but seriously. im glad i dont spend any cash or play anymore. its hard to invest in a character and get this kind of chagne response. nothing to take pride in when its changed every other month.

also i think this is funny:

“ever so slightly reduce the maximum amount of initiative you can have per second if you min/max those traits”

i think this is a slap in the face to our intelligence. well some of ours. anyway enjoy prolly dont carewhat i have to say but thats the exact problem from another POV. peace

I have two main things I’d like to add here:

First is to second the suggestion I saw farther up of swapping the nerfed Opportunist with Practiced Tolerance.

Second, I’d really like to see something done about the pistol autoattack. This is an OK move for P/D condition-spike builds in WvW roaming, but that’s a pretty narrow gametype. I enjoy playing a build with P/P as my main weaponset, and I’m constantly iterating on my build in a (so far) vain attempt to get some kind of reasonable mileage out of this autoattack. While it is possible to use Unload very often with the current initiative-regeneration traits, and it will probably still be possible under the new initiative paradigm, the reliance on doing so is the one thing don’t like about the weaponset.

It seems like the autoattack either needs to attack faster by having reduced aftercast, deal more direct damage, be redesigned as a chain attack, or be redesigned in some other way to boost its usefulness, both for P/D in non-WvW roaming play, and for P/P in all parts of the game. Of these, reducing the aftercast is probably the simplest thing, though it would improve P/D’s ability to stack bleeds, single-target bleed-stacking is not exactly the most OP thing you can do. My favorite idea is to make it an attack chain, since that creates the possibility of leaving the current attack as the first in the chain, while putting a move that really felt strong, or had some special effect, at the end. Doing this would make pistol #1 feel like it really had a point besides filler while init regens, and would potentially introduce some more decision-making into P/P dps, related to whether you wanted to spend more init to do more damage with Unload, or whether it was worth sacrificing some damage to let the full chain land and have init for, say, Black Powder. In either case, it really feels like something needs to be done with pistol #1 in order for it to pull its weight and feel like it makes sense with the weaponsets to is part of.

Wow, thanks for posting this. While although the changes may not be popular, I respect that you posted this thread as an open forum discussing why such changes were made.

swinsk.6410:

I’d be fine with all these changes Mr. Peters as long as we got some significant changes.

For instance, Last Refuge is a terrible trait and everyone hates its. Why not replace last refuge with infusion of shadow? Infusion of shadow is a must have trait for anyone going into the shadow arts line and last refuge is not.

This would open up some build diversity.

Why not give venoms to all thieves as F2-F4 skills with the exception of basilisk venom? This would be a flat out buff to the class. Thief community might actually say, hey thanks for giving our class something new and useful instead of whine nerfs 24/7.

I’d like to see some of these changes be added into these huge nerfs. This is a huge nerf patch. No more perma stealth, no more s/d builds, opportunist nerf is going to effect every thief build as well.

swinks hit it right on the head. our steal alone is a joke compare to other classes. really it is. if traited its better but still not as good as f1 f2 f3 f4 other classes have especially when its an all or nothing…miss or hit.

agreed with the rest too!

Jon,

While I understand that Infiltrator’s strike might be considered an ‘overpowered’ skill, sword thieves already require a LOT of skill to play. It isn’t a build like spirit ranger that has access to protection and a big HP pool while also having tons of dodges. Dodges and engaging/disengage are what make s/d thief work. If you want to go through with this change, please seriously consider buffing infiltrator’s return to remove conditions or make larcenous strike remove boons again. Either that or add a cool trait that effects sword in some way. Otherwise sword mainhand is becoming very, very bland.

Travlane.5948:

swinsk.6410:

I’d be fine with all these changes Mr. Peters as long as we got some significant changes.

For instance, Last Refuge is a terrible trait and everyone hates its. Why not replace last refuge with infusion of shadow? Infusion of shadow is a must have trait for anyone going into the shadow arts line and last refuge is not.

This would open up some build diversity.

Why not give venoms to all thieves as F2-F4 skills with the exception of basilisk venom? This would be a flat out buff to the class. Thief community might actually say, hey thanks for giving our class something new and useful instead of whine nerfs 24/7.

I’d like to see some of these changes be added into these huge nerfs. This is a huge nerf patch. No more perma stealth, no more s/d builds, opportunist nerf is going to effect every thief build as well.

swinks hit it right on the head. our steal alone is a joke compare to other classes. really it is. if traited its better but still not as good as f1 f2 f3 f4 other classes have especially when its an all or nothing…miss or hit.

agreed with the rest too!

You seem to forget that the initiative system is counted in our unique profession mechanics. It might be a more passive compared to other professions, but combined with Steal it’s definitely as good as other professions mechanics (virtues, attunement swaps etc). What other class can use weapon skills consecutively without CD?

I do think putting venoms as a prof mechanic is a really cool idea, but at the same time it’s just not needed.

Has anyone had experiences in other classes’s patch threads where the Dev responds? Is he even reading this stuff? Not being disrespectful or anything mods, don’t ban I’m just wondering.

Anyone think opportunist should be 2 sec max. even 1 sec is kinda fine….. i mean you need 3 hits every sec just to gain +1 per sec. so only way you get one per 1 sec is DB hitting everytime spamming it. its really not that OP. and the -1 init on signet use? who would ever take that trait? i mean why not just get rid of it.

Animus.6453:

Travlane.5948:

swinsk.6410:

I’d be fine with all these changes Mr. Peters as long as we got some significant changes.

For instance, Last Refuge is a terrible trait and everyone hates its. Why not replace last refuge with infusion of shadow? Infusion of shadow is a must have trait for anyone going into the shadow arts line and last refuge is not.

This would open up some build diversity.

Why not give venoms to all thieves as F2-F4 skills with the exception of basilisk venom? This would be a flat out buff to the class. Thief community might actually say, hey thanks for giving our class something new and useful instead of whine nerfs 24/7.

I’d like to see some of these changes be added into these huge nerfs. This is a huge nerf patch. No more perma stealth, no more s/d builds, opportunist nerf is going to effect every thief build as well.

swinks hit it right on the head. our steal alone is a joke compare to other classes. really it is. if traited its better but still not as good as f1 f2 f3 f4 other classes have especially when its an all or nothing…miss or hit.

agreed with the rest too!

You seem to forget that the initiative system is counted in our unique profession mechanics. It might be a more passive compared to other professions, but combined with Steal it’s definitely as good as other professions mechanics (virtues, attunement swaps etc). What other class can use weapon skills consecutively without CD?

I do think putting venoms as a prof mechanic is a really cool idea, but at the same time it’s just not needed.

actually thief averages about 4 init per skill. they start with 12 init. thats 3 attacks maybe 4 in a row…. ok?

now take any other class. they have 4 skills they use in a row (2-5) and then switch then 4 more skills in a row (2-5) and then 2 secs later switch back.

so thieves can spam 3-4 skill attacks in a row and any other class 8…..

you were saying?

and id honestly take any other F mechanics over steal anyday. i could do the math if u really like.

EDIT: you say its just not needed…i disagree….

right now you make a 10 v 10 battle you bring a thief….umm never. so a thief isnt needed :P

Ink.9058:

I have two main things I’d like to add here:

First is to second the suggestion I saw farther up of swapping the nerfed Opportunist with Practiced Tolerance.

Second, I’d really like to see something done about the pistol autoattack. This is an OK move for P/D condition-spike builds in WvW roaming, but that’s a pretty narrow gametype. I enjoy playing a build with P/P as my main weaponset, and I’m constantly iterating on my build in a (so far) vain attempt to get some kind of reasonable mileage out of this autoattack. While it is possible to use Unload very often with the current initiative-regeneration traits, and it will probably still be possible under the new initiative paradigm, the reliance on doing so is the one thing don’t like about the weaponset.

It seems like the autoattack either needs to attack faster by having reduced aftercast, deal more direct damage, be redesigned as a chain attack, or be redesigned in some other way to boost its usefulness, both for P/D in non-WvW roaming play, and for P/P in all parts of the game. Of these, reducing the aftercast is probably the simplest thing, though it would improve P/D’s ability to stack bleeds, single-target bleed-stacking is not exactly the most OP thing you can do. My favorite idea is to make it an attack chain, since that creates the possibility of leaving the current attack as the first in the chain, while putting a move that really felt strong, or had some special effect, at the end. Doing this would make pistol #1 feel like it really had a point besides filler while init regens, and would potentially introduce some more decision-making into P/P dps, related to whether you wanted to spend more init to do more damage with Unload, or whether it was worth sacrificing some damage to let the full chain land and have init for, say, Black Powder. In either case, it really feels like something needs to be done with pistol #1 in order for it to pull its weight and feel like it makes sense with the weaponsets to is part of.

I’ve been on a crusade since launch to make people aware of how Vital Shot’s weakness is almost entirely responsible for how bad P/P is. It’s important for the autoattack on any weapon to be a functional source of sustained DPS on its own (while the other skills provide tactical supplements), but it’s especially important for any Thief weapon because of the Initiative mechanic. Vital Shot is very comparable to Bleeding Shot on the Warrior rifle, but appears to be intended to be weaker and faster when in reality an excessively long aftercast means it’s only weaker, even though it has less range.

It seriously boggles my mind how this hasn’t been addressed in over a year and yet Body Shot was ‘buffed’ which did little for the set because the whole problem with Body Shot was never Body Shot itself but rather the fact that it was locked in direct resource competition with your bread and butter damage skill, a competition the latter will virtually always win.

The set basically forces you to sacrifice way too much mobility and utility for damage and way too much damage for utility or mobility and in the process also becomes extremely dull and tedious to use. It’s a serious design problem and even if a lot of people don’t understand it it’s largely why P/P is railed against and complained about so much.

JonPeters.5630:

Initiative changes
We believe this is one of the most controversial but important changes this patch. The important thing to understand is that we have been and will playtest this a lot more before we push this change. The default rate of initiative regeneration was simply to low and was causing players to either take traits to suppliment it, or to have their effectiveness suffer. This is something that has to change. What these changes intend to do is to increase the power of every single thief build that is not running these traits, and to ever so slightly reduce the maximum amount of initiative you can have per second if you min/max those traits. I know its easy to theorycraft what is going to happen here and there is a lot of danger in that. It is hard to get a sense of this change without playing it, and believe me if I could I would let everyone test a change of this magnitude and gather some more empirical and data driven feedback, but currently our resources are limited, but we still believe that this is a change whose time has come. We will monitor it very carefully when we do release it to make sure it is working as intended.

As easy as it is to theorycraft, the change to opportunist is a bad one. It’s a clear nerf to initiative heavy builds, aka anything that’s not d/x. It should be fine as it is even after the change.

On the topic of weaponsets not being d/x. Pistol whip needs a damage increase, it’s sort of odd that after many threads agreeing to this fact and after sigil of paralyzation got nerfed, that the damage was not increased back to its original 1249 base damage. The stunlocking that was an issue is no longer one, so please buff PW.
P/P needs a buff as well, Vital shot needs to actual shoot at 0.5 secs instead of 0.82 secs. Unload also needs a damage buff, which can be achieved by just increasing the number of bullets fired to 10. The P/P set seems like it was designed to just deal damage from range, and it doesn’t do enough. Also increase it’s range to 1200 please.
Shortbow, trick shot should be firing at 0.5 instead of 0.95.

I just have 1 question for you Jon, why is thief the ONLY class without a weapon(on land) that has 1200 range? SB is a good candidate, I still don’t think anyone understands as to why clusterbomb was nerfed.

JonPeters.5630:

I couldn’t find a thread to place this in. Here is a summary of what I have seen discussed on the thief changes and some more clarity into what our initial thoughts were and where we stand currently.

Initiative changes
We believe this is one of the most controversial but important changes this patch. The important thing to understand is that we have been and will playtest this a lot more before we push this change. The default rate of initiative regeneration was simply to low and was causing players to either take traits to suppliment it, or to have their effectiveness suffer. This is something that has to change. What these changes intend to do is to increase the power of every single thief build that is not running these traits, and to ever so slightly reduce the maximum amount of initiative you can have per second if you min/max those traits. I know its easy to theorycraft what is going to happen here and there is a lot of danger in that. It is hard to get a sense of this change without playing it, and believe me if I could I would let everyone test a change of this magnitude and gather some more empirical and data driven feedback, but currently our resources are limited, but we still believe that this is a change whose time has come. We will monitor it very carefully when we do release it to make sure it is working as intended.

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Infusion of Shadow
For basic use this trait’s functionality is not going to change. By many players it was being used to grant some initiative when going into stealth. However there were some abusive builds that were using this to maintain very long stealth uptime without having to use their utility skills. The problem with this is that it lets them recharge those skills while in stealth, which takes away the risk associated with using them. We are ok with thieves blowing their cooldowns to have longer stealth, and we are ok with theives bouncing in and out of stealth, but we were not ok with thieves maintaining long duration stealth through abusing a single trait.

Flanking Strikes
I agree that this move may be overkill on the thief. We are currently discussing undoing it. The main motivation was that we really wanted to move Trickster to adept tier to encourge use of those utilities, and the most obvious candidate to move up was Flanking Strikes. This isn’t how we should be making that decision, so we will discuss this and get back to you.

Vigorous Recovery & Bountiful Theft
I’ve seen a lot of talk about this as well, and discussing this already this morning the current vigor is a bit too high, but we may have overdone the reduction. I was thinking about going back to 5s or 6s on Vigorous Recovery, and going back to 10s or 12s on Bountiful Theft.

Thanks,

Jon

I know my comment will get lost and you’ll never read it, but i’ll give it a try.

I consider myself a failry skilled thief.

I’m consistently top 200 in solo q and used to be top 200 too in team ladder before team queue became a ghost town.

I used to play against the best players in EU and still do it in solo queue, altough it’s a whole different world.

Without smurf accounts.

What you’re doing to the thief is a slap in the face.

1. Initiative changes

During thief profession life, you changed Ini regen tons of times ( yes i’m a beta player) till you decided to balance THE WHOLE PROFESSION on a certain regen ( 0.75 ps).

By increasing it, you’re basically saying you were wrong in everything. Now you nerfed the thief several times in order to balance it regarding the “max possible ini regen rate” and all your calculations were done basing on it.

Now overall max ini regen will be nerfed.

Our skills have been nerfed ( PW, HS, Mug, OH dagger, Tactical strike).

There’s no point in having more ini to spend if those skills you spend your ini with have no purpose.

And since you’re destroying the sword, we’re left with D/P, which is subpar and unmeaningful in PvP, due to current meta.

2. Inf strike-shadow return

You’re killing sword thieves with this change.

Again, S/D thieves were not OP when compared to Necro-Engi-War-Spirit ranger which are still dominating the meta, unless you’re running heavy spike comps ( that still are not that viable).

Those professions won’t be nerfed enough.

You’re taking from us our only viable option while increasing our “potential” offensive options by increasing ini regen.

The point is that thief offense HAS NEVER BEEN THE ISSUE, the issue was THIEF CAPABILITY TO SUSTAIN HIMSELF.

With this nerf you’re taking it away from us, because not even the most skilled thief can resist to such condi spam-AoE spam-Stun spam meta: we’re dead in 2 shots, with or without inf strike.

3. Flanking strikes.

If you’re moving it, it needs to be buffed. The point however is that nobody will care about tricks because they’re simply underwhelming and, again thieves need to slot defensive utilities in order to stay alive

We’re not wars, nor engies, nor necros, nor spirit rangers.

keep this in mind, because it seems you’ve forgotten it.

4. Vigor

Removing heavy vigor uptimes is always a good thing. But you need to remove them from other professions too, otherwise the change makes no sense, and it’s just a no brainer nerf hammer against the thief.

Sorry for the long post.

Travlane.5948:

Animus.6453:

Travlane.5948:

swinsk.6410:

I’d be fine with all these changes Mr. Peters as long as we got some significant changes.

For instance, Last Refuge is a terrible trait and everyone hates its. Why not replace last refuge with infusion of shadow? Infusion of shadow is a must have trait for anyone going into the shadow arts line and last refuge is not.

This would open up some build diversity.

Why not give venoms to all thieves as F2-F4 skills with the exception of basilisk venom? This would be a flat out buff to the class. Thief community might actually say, hey thanks for giving our class something new and useful instead of whine nerfs 24/7.

I’d like to see some of these changes be added into these huge nerfs. This is a huge nerf patch. No more perma stealth, no more s/d builds, opportunist nerf is going to effect every thief build as well.

swinks hit it right on the head. our steal alone is a joke compare to other classes. really it is. if traited its better but still not as good as f1 f2 f3 f4 other classes have especially when its an all or nothing…miss or hit.

agreed with the rest too!

You seem to forget that the initiative system is counted in our unique profession mechanics. It might be a more passive compared to other professions, but combined with Steal it’s definitely as good as other professions mechanics (virtues, attunement swaps etc). What other class can use weapon skills consecutively without CD?

I do think putting venoms as a prof mechanic is a really cool idea, but at the same time it’s just not needed.

actually thief averages about 4 init per skill. they start with 12 init. thats 3 attacks maybe 4 in a row…. ok?

now take any other class. they have 4 skills they use in a row (2-5) and then switch then 4 more skills in a row (2-5) and then 2 secs later switch back.

so thieves can spam 3-4 skill attacks in a row and any other class 8…..

you were saying?

and id honestly take any other F mechanics over steal anyday. i could do the math if u really like.

EDIT: you say its just not needed…i disagree….

right now you make a 10 v 10 battle you bring a thief….umm never. so a thief isnt needed :P

You’re right in saying a thief is generally not needed for a 10v10, but that’s more an issue with a lack of build diversity than anything else. Other than bursting people down, everything else we can do another class can do much better in a large group, yeah? Support? Guardian, ele. CC? Damage? Control? Warrior, Warrior and Warrior (and don’t forget warrior!). See where I’m going with this?

While I agree with you here, I don’t really think it’s relevant to the profession mechanic though. It’s a completely different issue.

You go too far with the skill use notion. You shouldn’t be spamming all of your skills as hard as you can on any profession (unless you like zerging in WvW then by all means do it). That just makes you an awful player. You should be using your skills wisely for each situation. My point is that no other class can use the same skill several times in a row or within very small amounts of time (like seemingly infinite CnD -> backstab rotations).

Combined with proper initiative management (rather than spamming the kitten out of your skills) from the player and I’d say initiative is pretty kitten good as a class mechanic. It gives the player much more choice and control over what they want to do in a fight.

I’m talking from a more WvW solo/small man roaming perspective than anything else. While your raw numbers might say ‘yeah other classes can spam harder than us’, it’s not really applicable in real instances. There’s a massive difference between skill spam and controlled, intelligent skill use.

I think if you were to change anything about the profession mechanic for thief, it’d be a small change. Something like making Steal a stun break or unblockable. Nothing major, but something still useful for every thief.

The very short version of what is wrong with the changes is that you’re trying to make players try out other builds by nerfing the overplayed ones, but you fail to understand that these overplayed builds are not played because they are too good, but because everything else is too bad. So after the nerfs thief players can choose between bad and bad builds, and then the build of choice often becomes guardian or warrior instead. You should buff some of the less viable builds WITHOUT nerfing something else at the same time.

Gravox the Terrible.2157:

Wow, none of you guys run an ele as well as thief do you?
Go roll one now and play it for a while. You will run back to thief with a smile.

I admit I do not play an Ele (I only have 80 Mesmer, Guardian and soon Warrior to compare), but generally “my class sucks so it’s not a problem when your class sucks, too” is not really a good argument.

I honestly believe this is what is going on.

Behind every change/patch, there is a greater motive. In last 6 months, patches have been focus on bringing the warrior/necro up so that they see high tpvp play. It is their time to shine. Since you can only bring 5 players in a Tpvp, someone has to sit out. Basically, they nerf one or two classes to the ground so those classes sit out of the meta for a while. They are trying to bring Ele into the meta again and I guess in the coming months the thief will have to sit out.

It is a vicious cycle but in the end they are trying to give each class a chance to shine in Tpvp. Is this right? It depends on who you ask…

Hi Jon,
I would like to comment about the IS/IR issue.

S/D thieves,whenevr they good or bad relay on IR to get out of sticky situations-it is somewhat understandable why you changed it,you got pressure from some ppl who can’t deal with it.But let me remind you that thief is no warrior and dont have endure pain or can whirl away and thief is not a mesmer and dont have distortion and thief is not a necro with 3 health pools and he is not elem or guardian with 41243 boons.Infact thief health pool is very low.So IS/IR was a nice addition to match up those other proffesions hit managing skills.
What I suggest is to compensate S/D thieves with a increased toughness or vitality at least or even shorter init for other skills such as the dual one.
Please consider that Jon and again thanks for keep us in the loop for these changes.

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.

Coming from a class that has 1 source of stability (Elite Dagger Storm) outside of a luck steal on a mesmer, this takes away an escape maneuver for thieves.

Put this in perspective in a wvw and spvp aspect, if a thief gets stunned/immobilized preventing the ability to dodge, then 90% of the time, that means death. additionally, only 1 WORKING stun breaker has a cool down less than 50 seconds and that is infiltrators signet. Shadow Trap next up at 45 sec, has a 1 and 1/2 sec cast time as a stun breaker. Making it, NOT a stun breaker.

With this change, can you reduce the cool down another stun breaker, such as Roll for Initiative by 10 seconds or Shadow Step by 5 seconds?

Or how about adding a Stun Break and stability option to “Hard to Catch” since that trait is getting pushed on thieves.

Just to clarify: Are you here just to drop the giant bomb on us and then leave, or are you guys actually looking for feedback here?

I don’t want to waste a lot of time trying to talk to people who aren’t listening.

Pawstruck.9708:

Just to clarify: Are you here just to drop the giant bomb on us and then leave, or are you guys actually looking for feedback here?

I don’t want to waste a lot of time trying to talk to people who aren’t listening.

Lets be fair – they have 8 classes worth of discussion to monitor. This post was just made today, it isn’t unreasonable to give them at minimum a few days to get back to us – the patch is still over a month away, we have time.

Initiative changes
It’s counter productive, you nerf all ini traits but at the same time you buff base regen, but the thing is, no thief can avoid putting points into Crits if they want to have ANY damage at all in current meta. And guess what, both ini traits in crits got nerfed. There’s still no point in using any other spec tree, cos damage just blows then. So yeah, ini change is meaningless for all spvp thieves.

Infusion of Shadow
Guess it’s ok, but you have to fix kitten ed random revealed stuff.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/How-to-fix-stealth-in-your-game/first#post3151348

Flanking Strikes
Nobody was using it anyway. Fury on steal will always be superior.

So Deadly Arts I Back Fighting is getting a 200% damage buff scaling of both power and condition damage? Still not going to play a thief if these changes are made

The changes are unjustified. There are what 4 common builds now for thief? And they all revolve around damage, the only thing a thief can do well. Not top dps but well.

With these changes venoms are out of the question, no cc protection. Traps take to long and no type of trait support. There go half the utilities… Sword will be severely hampered, p/p still doesnt work and sb will be nerfed in January. Guess that leaves one weapon set, the big gulp!

So again Ill ask the devs where is the versatility for thief?

I support the initiative changes, even if they don’t get it right the first time round, the idea of being less dependent on ini traits is a good one. TBH Im really more worried about Anet making monsters out of Mesmers (who are already brokenly OP in 1v1s) and their lack of concern over Warrior mobility and healing signet (I don’t really care too much about that hammer build they are over-addressing)