Guild Wars 2

roamzero.9486:

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.

I’d agree there if they werent nerfing the over all initiative regen on thiefs. Even if i invested in all of the initiative traits now, i still reckon i’d be worse off using S/P then i was using just opportunist.

EDIT:
Since a vast majority of most builds dps depends on initiative, regardless of how high the base is and how low the traits are, as long as the bonuses to initiative out weigh the loss in taking up other traits ppl will still be forced into taking these traits until they get to such a point where they have high enough regen for it not to matter.

Long story short;
Trying to decrease the maximum initiative regen just forces us to invest more points into these traits your trying to make us avoid. I’m going to need to invest additional points in trait lines i previously had no interest in just to maintain the initiative regen i have now.

Honestly I’m not particularly inclined either way about the upcoming changes in terms of how I’ll have to play my thief, but I also refuse to PvP or WvW. I’ve also been getting the impression that we’re considered the ‘whiny class’ by many people, and perhaps rightly so. That being said, I also get the impression that from -our- side of the battle lines, we feel like the neglected class.

Not all of us will be happy with the upcoming changes regardless of class… it is what it is, and I’ll figure out how to move forward. But I feel like more than anything else thieves that frequent the forums etc. would really appreciate more communication or feedback related to both the more well-orated concerns in the fora and maybe just how much dedicated playtime goes into our class (if I had a dollar for every time someone said “nobody on the dev team actually plays thief”). I realize that it might not make people enjoy the changes, but I think it could do a lot for the player consideration given to said thief changes. Or if the thief class was just the unfortunate result of a bet between two programmers, you can tell us that you’re still just upset you forgot to lock the computers that night (we can handle it). At the risk of perpetuating our whiny facade, it would be more straightforward attention than it sounds like we normally tend to receive. And because I hate to complain without making a suggestion:

It seems evident that many of these changes are directed at non-PvE combat. I’m not a programmer, so I won’t pretend to understand the feasibility of this idea, but perhaps there’s a way to do traits and skills for PvE separately of those for non-PvE. Balance seems primarily important for non-PvE, and I get that. I don’t feel that this should impact PvE players as much… particularly with ‘weaker’ or ‘squishier’ classes, how much do these things impact the balance of boss battles or champ fights or dungeon runs, other than the player’s ability to stay alive? Even before a new round of potential nerfs and tuning, the number of people I’ve seen laughed/discouraged out of dungeon/fractal runs because they weren’t a warrior, guardian, or the one lucky tanky ele/mes is frankly nauseating. The whole “if you want to do dungeon runs, get a level 80 warrior/guardian first” shtick.

What I really really don’t understand is why all this has to happen at once. Sure, make the change to Infusion of Shadow. Then STOP THERE and see where the dust settles.

Balance is done with minute adjustments not with sledgehammers.

I don’t now how this managed to get into the hard to catch thread as it should have made its way here. Oh well another crosspost then…

I actually agree with almost every change you want to implement as I can clearly understand your reasons for doing so and believe that the thief community as a whole will be able to adapt. That being said there are some points to consider.

Flanking Strikes, Vigorous Recovery and Bountiful Theft
I agree with you latest post that these changes might be too harsh. Flanking Strikes would need to be buffed if it is moved to Master Tier in order to compete with Bountiful Theft. And on the matter of vigor duration, I also believe that 6s and 10-12s would be better.

Hard to catch
The elephant in the room… I understand that you want to boost thief survivability by moving this down and making it more accessible. I think you won’t accomplish that because Hard to Catch triggers on CC but does nothing to actually get rid of said CC. The added swiftness doesn’t really help if we get stunned for 3s for example. It also involves an unwanted RNG element because of the random teleport. This makes it very awkward to use. Think back to the changes of engineer elixiers, same story.

It was stated that condition removal should be available through the acrobatics line. I wholeheartedly agree and would change Hard to Catch to remove 1-2 condition(s) and set the ICD to 20s. This would then actually be useful as it would remove the impending conditions.

Now the teleport should actually remain. Here’s why: It is an awkward mechanic and disorienting for the thief himself but this lets it also act as a counterweight to the rest of the effect. A kind of penalty if you will that could be turned into an advantage by a skilled player.

As it is now the trait is only mildly interesting and involves too much risk with too little reward for the thief. Another thing worth considering when thinking of the phrase “hard to catch” is to add an evade ability to the skill for 2s after the teleport. This would give the thief some breathing room and improve survivability significantly.

Thank You
Last but not least: Thank you for taking time out of you no doubt very buisy schedules to inform us about all these changes and for letting us actively participate in guiding this update.

I think this changes will have a great impact on thieves’ gameplay. Particularly speaking about the ini regen rate. It will be a big overall buff to our dps.
Sword #2 will have to be used with a grain of salt instead of mindless spammed, not a big issue.
Pistol Whip will probably have a place again.

What i think is missing here is a real group support:
Mesmer’s veil affects a limitless amount of targets and Mass Invisibility affects 10 players while thief’s stealth affects only 5 players.

What does a thief do for a group ?

Venoms are bad designed as there is few to no control on them.
We cannot follow a melee train since we are too squishy.
We do not have anything to remove allies’ conditions or foes’ boons.
Traps … lol

Why anyone should pick up a thief instead of a necro/guardian/warrior/mesmer/ele?

Daendur.2357:

I think this changes will have a great impact on thieves’ gameplay. Particularly speaking about the ini regen rate. It will be a big overall buff to our dps.
Sword #2 will have to be used with a grain of salt instead of mindless spammed, not a big issue.
Pistol Whip will probably have a place again.

What i think is missing here is a real group support:
Mesmer’s veil affects a limitless amount of targets and Mass Invisibility affects 10 players while thief’s stealth affects only 5 players.

What does a thief do for a group ?

Venoms are bad designed as there is few to no control on them.
We cannot follow a melee train since we are too squishy.
We do not have anything to remove allies’ conditions or foes’ boons.
Traps … lol

Why anyone should pick up a thief instead of a necro/guardian/warrior/mesmer/ele?

exactly what i have been preaching as well; thieves might be good roamers (won’t be so great soon) but they contribute little to groups hence why most guilds don’t want thieves or force thieves to reroll other class

Initiative regen is a good approach imo

I don’t understand why should Infiltrator’s Return should has a cast time.
Thieves are only limited to 1 stability skill (elite) and only a few stun break from utility (which have relatively long CD). Thieves are so defensive limited (I know, thieve are not suppose to be at the defensive end), but it is now so challenging to keep ourselves survive. the cast time will just make thieves so vulnerable to other class’ CC (e.g. war’s hammer, mace, Ele’s dagger #4 earth#4, Guard’s GS #5, engin’s shield pull, elite drop and so). You don’t even give us a chance to withdraw from those situation ? (And as I remember, mesmer staff #2 can blink away very quick also)
With just so much armor and health to start with, stealth, dodge, and stunbreak are our only way to survive.

Suggestion: Even if you want thieves to be (attackable) while stunned. I don’t mind the stun is still effective after we used Infiltrator’s Return (at least we can re-position ourselves), but it would be a problem if other class can just CC us and spam damage on the same location and drop us fast.

On the other hand, i am happy to see some fix on teleport stomp( it lets down #2 for any class to be effective and interrupt the stomp)
Suggestion: How about making stomp stop when ppl use teleport.

Hey Jon, I’m sure this has been said somewhere in this thread, but I’ve just been skimming over, first off, id just like to say I’m happy with you guys trying to get rid of the perma-stealth thieves, as I feel they give us a bad stigma, and I’m also not minding the sound of the initiative regen base boost.
But my question is are there gonna be any changes to our weapons anytime soon? I feel like a lot of them I generally don’t know what there use is for… take p/p for example, is it meant to be for conditions? Like the rangers shortbow is generally? Because Vital shot, does next to no dmg apart from conditions, and then we also have unload, which is completely power/crit dmg based. Id just like our weps to be slightly more clear cut, much like how generally rangers shortbow is conditions, and longbow is there power/crit wep.

If most of the P/P thieves say more or less the same perhaps we are absolutely right:
With these changes you kill the p/p weapon-set
Due to lag and computer issues this is the only thief¨s build viable for many people.
Up to you reading all the comments said on this issue, e.g.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/3151773

p/p skills need an enormous buff in their specific skills if you bring to reality the initiative and vigour changes, due to the fact that this weaponset is highly dependant on them. Much more taking in account that you will forbid shadow rejuvenation-ricochet and assasin´s reward use at the same time by moving reward to grand mastery.
As I suppose that you do not want to buff other weapon sets at the same time your only choice is to improve p/p skills a lot (#1,#3, #4 and #5) adding somekind of survival. The only one worth is #2 with the inmobility change.
Do this at the same time you release the big changes or we are doomed.

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

JonPeters.5630:

Initiative changes
we have been and will playtest this a lot more before we push this change.
…
to ever so slightly reduce the maximum amount of initiative you can have per second if you min/max those traits.

Please Playtest Also in WvW

And I don’t mean roaming and pvp style small group fights, but running together with your commander and guild into large scale battles. The actual Guild Wars. These engagements can last for a long time and drain your initiative. And I can’t switch weapon sets to refresh timers like other classes. By trying out builds and play styles, I’ve found out I must use the traited initiative regeneration from Critical Strikes and Acrobatics lines to remain effective and barely staying alive.

Moving the initiative regeneration to be heavy on default feels counter intuitive to the stated goal of rewarding thieves in keeping up the pressure. Disengaging to rest up is hardly possible in wvw when following your commander while surrounded with enemies. Especially with Opportunist cooldown increase it looks like we are going to end up being low on initiative in the heat of battle and less helpful to our team than we were. Thieves have no passive group support; we need the initiative to do that.

I’m requesting you to be lenient with the initiative traits. Consider coming up with more creative ways to prevent any perceived abuses of traited initiative, like pinpointing specific skills instead of a blanket nerf.

After patch Quick Pockets would be the last remaining initiative skill in Acrobatics worthy of consideration. But by moving Assassin’s Reward into the same Grandmaster tier I couldn’t get both initiative regeneration and survival. For survival I don’t care about Hard to Catch, whose name in wvw might as well be Death Sentence. Is it necessary to move Assassin’s Reward to Grandmaster? Its attrition is helpful for tankier wvw builds, and looking forward to test the improved version.

As everyone I appreciate the improved transparency and discussion about future changes. It evidently leads to lots of crying, but overall better for the community spirit. Makes us players feel involved instead of just being handed the changes. Keep it up, thank you.

For future reference what would be really useful to have is time stamped and detailed combat logs exported to a file in the game directory.

A new topic has been created focusing on p/p:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/P-P-death-10-Dec

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

I want to point out I really like the fact that for the most part, the main issues people are having with this update are
Sword #2
Opportunist ( and it’s effect on unload and pw)
Hard to catch
And to a lesser extent, other classes having vigor on crit while there is supposed to be a vigor cut across the board.

…. But very little discussion about stealth and the changes to IoS
I just find it funny

Infusion of shadow – love the proposed changes.

Assassins reward – I like the idea of sustained small heals but currently there are much better traits to take. I’d consider using this trait if it would have condition removal as well.

I just find the Infiltrator’s Return huge nerf is terrible, it will make any s/x setup horrible, plus it will remove one of the best spell the thief ever had wich is a mobility ability, the way the thief is supposed to survive in battles.

evilapprentice.6379:

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.

Hm…I don’t know. Jon already said “thanks for the feedback everyone, we will close this thread by the end of the week” on the generald forum so I have a feeling he’s not coming back.

My feedback on thief.

disclaimer: WvW PoV

we need some key skills to become needed in groups.
A single target burst is not enough, not when you have warriors that can eviscerate/100b/HS for the same or more damage, while having double hp far more toughness and some other utilities.
A 5 ppl stealth for 4s (or a static one in the SR) is not enough when you can have a mesmer with veil and mass invisibility + null field + portal + good dmg and confusing clones.
Few 45 seconds cooldown condition to allies are not enough when you can have every other class with better aoe conditions.
Fury, might, swiftness, vigor are so easily accessible to other professions that they are not relevant.

There are professions that are easy to use / more effective in doing what a thief can do (damage) since they can take damage (thieves have to avoid it), and there are professions that are crucial.

We are neither fish nor fowl.

We are good solo roamer and good skirmisher, we can run away pretty well and kill some opponents, why can’t we play in a group (with a specific build) ?

ADD:
you gave to eles a wall (like guardians) why not giving something similar to thieves ?
maybe shortbow #5 could become a ranged “Ring of Warding” instead of a teleport.

From wvw player:
1. need more shortbow range, standing on top of the tower cant even hit anyone below.
2. hard to catch is not useful when most of the time it just teleport ppl into the zerg.
3. thief have no useful utility for zerg fight other than use shortbow from range.
4. pet timers are too long and most of them are useless.

Jor.2741:

From wvw player:
1. need more shortbow range, standing on top of the tower cant even hit anyone below.
2. hard to catch is not useful when most of the time it just teleport ppl into the zerg.
3. thief have no useful utility for zerg fight other than use shortbow from range.
4. pet timers are too long and most of them are useless.

Jon Please address these issues.

JonPeters.5630:

TLDR; Thieves with 15+ in critical strikes and no other initiative traits will be slightly less efficient. All other thieves will be equally or more efficient.

Jon

So you are basically saying that you want us to go for conditions.
There is already a lot of condition spam out there and you want us to join the train of ridiculous (and still untouched) perplexity runes + dire equip.

btw: there is really someone that puts 15points in that line just for that trait without a power/critical build ?

JonPeters.5630:

No, I am saying that I don’t want the balance of the thief held hostage by a 15 point minor in critical strikes so we need to take that initiative away from there and put it into the base class mechanics, which is exactly what we are doing.

Jon

Only one question, Hard to catch it will work like now, or you have some change in mind? Honestly any thief know that this trait is more a danger rather than a salvation and it not helps to improve our survability like you want.

JonPeters.5630:

No, I am saying that I don’t want the balance of the thief held hostage by a 15 point minor in critical strikes so we need to take that initiative away from there and put it into the base class mechanics, which is exactly what we are doing.

Jon

Ok, but we can go power/crit or condition (i think a little minority has an hybrid build)
If you give a boost to ini regen to any build but the critical one (lowering the cooldown by 25% on every skill except for thieves using a critical oriented build) why we should choose the “slightly less efective” build instead of the boosted one ?

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

I don’t think that this is going to ruin thieves. Plenty of people after this patch will continue to play their thief. In fact, you are right. This is a nice buff to our skills. Maybe it will lead to more build diversity, maybe it won’t. I’m not a game developer. I barely know any game theory. And I do appreciate the fact that you are trying something new and are trying to evolve the class into something better.

That being said.

It doesn’t matter how much gas you give us if you are going to slash our tires. It’s great that you give us more initiative, but if the nerf to S/D goes through all the initiative in the world won’t save it. It will simply be another sub par skill. I understand that you are trying to create build diversity, but I feel like you aren’t making other builds look better; it simply seems the current builds are just becoming worse.

The thing is, I think a lot of us aren’t made about the this nerf. Ok, yeah, no one wants to be nerfed and there is always going to be negative feedback on that. But it isn’t just this nerf we are mad about. We are mad about the series of nerfs that we have had to deal with since the game launched with so little in return. It’s not this nerf in particular that has made us angry. It’s the pattern that we have seen.

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

It is an incredible buff to this profession and should not be treated lightly. To counter this imagine we took a few weapons and took away the cooldown portion of their trait. They would still be 5% better but other weapons would be 25% better.

Among the changes that is basically what it amounts to, with the exception of one change which I’ll talk about next.

Opportunist
This trait was wildly overpowered. I there was a 15 point minor for any other profession that basically read: "Reduce cooldown of all weapon skills by 33%, it would basically be impossible to run that profession without putting 15 points into that line. Because of this every thief build that is effective uses this line, which improves crit and crit damage. This pigeonholes this profession in a way that makes it frustrating for players and developers. This trait has to be closer to an 8% increase if we expect people to consider not taking 15 point in critical strikes.

By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to. There are a lot of good traits that simply will never see play until we make this change.

Hopefully this explains, in more detail, what we hope to accomplish here.

TLDR; Thieves with 15+ in critical strikes and no other initiative traits will be slightly less efficient. All other thieves will be equally or more efficient.

Jon

Thieves with 15 in crit strikes will be slightly less effective… which means “you bad thief you take trait to get init so you can actually do something with your inferior skills that we have nerfed into ground… so here take this nerf so bad thief don’t do that no more”… or to put it in not so sarcastic terms… thief, stop trying to overcome our destruction of the thief class.

All other thieves will be equally efficient.. in other words… if you don’t take 15 in crit strikes you will be just as you are now so ha ha.

So whats next for the min/max of init? Take away the init regen on roll for initiative? Take away the 3 extra init in the trickster line? Oh, I know, take away or reduce the init gain from stealth? I mean seriously… you have nerfed our boon ability, nerfed our condi removal, nerfed our damage, nerfed nerfed nerfed… and now the mobility and init regen… give us a break already or just delete the profession because if you don’t, the players will delete it for you.

Jon, let me rephrase my question:
In what way, do you think, pve P/P and S/P (the most inferior both damage and defense-wise) will benefit “massive buff” with initiative gain cut by 30% (opportunist, the +0.25 per second counted in already) and vigor cut by half?

So huge nerf for p/p build. T_T.

Jon, can you confirm whether Vital Shot is working as intended? Because currently it seems feeble enough that it forces you to rely on Unload for sustained DPS (creating a problem with Initiative starvation), which I believe to be the primary culprit behind why P/P feels so weak and clumsy.

JonPeters.5630:

No, I am saying that I don’t want the balance of the thief held hostage by a 15 point minor in critical strikes so we need to take that initiative away from there and put it into the base class mechanics, which is exactly what we are doing.

Jon

This is a reasonable enough change IMO. Dependence of Thief builds on the CS line needs to be reduced to allow for better build variety and the only way to do that while avoiding power creep is by increasing Thief’s base effectiveness and reducing the effectiveness of certain traits in the CS line. There is no other way around it. Whether these changes go too far or not enough, however, is certainly up for debate.

Regarding Shadow Return, how about taking a similar approach and removing it from Sword altogether (change Inf to a leap finisher maybe?), and add Shadow Return as an F2 for our class mechanic Steal, adding a Stun Breaking/condi removal component?

This would accomplish the following:
1. Allow all Thief builds access to a more readily available Stun Breaker (that we really need due to being shoehorned into Zerker builds to be useful to our teams and the lack of Stability access), making other weaponsets approach pre-nerf S/x in viability
2. Give Thieves at least 1 Stun Breaker regardless of what utilities they need to bring on their bar (Venom share anyone?)
3. Make it easier for you to balance SR since Steal is a cooldown based mechanic
4. Make Steal inherently useful as more than just a gap closer and situational utility tool without traiting for it
5. Add a survivability aspect to the Trickery line so that it could be a viable alternative to Acrobatics

While we’re on the topic of Steal, please also consider removing the ability to use Stolen Items from F1, and add a F3 that will be populated with an Offensive item, and F4 that will be populated as a Defensive item when F1 is used. A Thief can then choose to between one of these two items to activate based on the situation at hand, or to Steal again with an unobstructed F1 without using F3 or F4 if he needs to use Steal itself to reroll F3 and F4 or to activate traited effects.

These changes would make untraited Steal a much more robust mechanic on par with the usefulness of other class mechanics that don’t require traits to be class-defining.

Still waiting for host of other things thieves need, such as bug fixes, and main-hand pistol users brought up into line with other weapon sets, strength-wise.

E.g.: Changes to Assassin’s Reward. It’s still not worth a grandmaster trait slot, especially since it’s STILL bugged to only reward 5 initiative in healing for a 6 initiative cloak and dagger. That’s just one of many things that hurts what we do have. No need to go into detail about how awful Last Refuge is, or Hard to catch. No one that is familiar with the thief class traits either of those, regardless of where it will be in the trait line.

I really don’t expect a lot regarding the things being changed Dec. 10. Anet is going to nerf/change what they want changed, regardless of suggestions/comments/concerns of those playing thieves.

This is about the first time I’ve ever seen an Anet employee actually explain their reasoning, but it’s like asking which is better, Herpes or Syphilis. Does is really matter?

I’m as much concerned as the next thief with the current state of the upcoming update, but overall i mostly dislike where the successive updates since release are leading us.

It really feels like we’re moving deeper within the power creep issue, and a part of me can’t help but asking if the +0.25 ini per seconds means the overall power of the game has been multiplied by 1.25.

Figuratively speaking.

To me the initiative boost is a poor choice promoting passive gameplay, while actually nerfing the initiative regen for active gameplay.
People feel pushed to ask for buffs to compensate the loss, this is just another case of power creeping, or let’s call it power leaking, because you try to contain the exponential strength of the game’s 8 classes by tying up legitimate parts of the gameplay to force diversity, which can only lead to more fotm, and people asking for buffs in other areas once they realise they won’t enjoy one area in particular.

Yea i feel like i’m not making sense at all, sorry for that.

In short words, this is a nasty nerf, but in the end it’s a small part of a bigger issue, a power creep issue, where that kind of game design choice will ineluctably lead, despite you trying to avoid it.

Fade.7658:

Still waiting for host of other things thieves need, such as bug fixes, and main-hand pistol users brought up into line with other weapon sets, strength-wise.

I really don’t expect a lot regarding the things being changed Dec. 10. Anet is going to nerf/change what they want changed, regardless of suggestions/comments/concerns of those playing thieves.

This is about the first time I’ve ever seen an Anet employee actually explain their reasoning, but it’s like asking which is better, Herpes or Syphilis. Does is really matter?

I really don’t understand why don’t Anet listen to the community who knows better about the class.

JonPeters.5630:

No, I am saying that I don’t want the balance of the thief held hostage by a 15 point minor in critical strikes so we need to take that initiative away from there and put it into the base class mechanics, which is exactly what we are doing.

Jon

What about shadow refuge then, this class has been held hostage to that skill since release and it’s still not being nerfed.

And what about the balance of venoms being hostage to a 30 point trait, that’s fine i guess, they suck on their own but they can potentially become useful (let’s be honest, you WILL nerf devourer venom to 1s immo per charge sooner or later, that’s just how it works because of this broken trait).

I understand your choice with ini regen, it had to be done, but the compensation are poor. Honestly this class is a mess, most weapon set doesn’t make any sense (scrap everything that isn’t s/p, d/p and shortbow, trust me that’s just how bad it is, you can even include the sword stealth skill), some utilities sucks (venoms and traps mostly), traits are aweful (there must be 3-5 worth trait by line and i’m generous). Really, you’re better removing this class for a while and rework it, i wish i was joking but that’s just how bad it is.

Also, as others have mentioned, please work on some kind of change for traits that can be detrimental such as Last Refuge and Hard to Catch.

Hard to Catch is less of a priority as it’s not mandatory, but Last Refuge is akin to a poison pill that Thieves need to swallow to get the rest of the benefits of the SA line.

All Anet needs to do with Last Refuge, is remove the revealed restriction in regards to stealth with it. Meaning, that even if you have revealed from something else, triggering Last Refuge will still put you into stealth, as if you never had revealed.

Trait fixed, and it truly becomes a last refuge.

Hard to Catch: Either change it into a mechanic mimicking Roll for initiative, or put a little flair into it and make it so it recharges a variety of defensive utilities, such as shadow step or roll for initiative.

Hard to Catch: When you are disabled (stun, daze, float, knockdown, launch, knockback, sink, or fear), Roll for initiative, Shadow Step and Blinding powder are all refreshed. On use, the two that are not used resume whatever cooldown they are affected by.

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

It is an incredible buff to this profession and should not be treated lightly. To counter this imagine we took a few weapons and took away the cooldown portion of their trait. They would still be 5% better but other weapons would be 25% better.

Among the changes that is basically what it amounts to, with the exception of one change which I’ll talk about next.

Opportunist
This trait was wildly overpowered. I there was a 15 point minor for any other profession that basically read: "Reduce cooldown of all weapon skills by 33%, it would basically be impossible to run that profession without putting 15 points into that line. Because of this every thief build that is effective uses this line, which improves crit and crit damage. This pigeonholes this profession in a way that makes it frustrating for players and developers. This trait has to be closer to an 8% increase if we expect people to consider not taking 15 point in critical strikes.

By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to. There are a lot of good traits that simply will never see play until we make this change.

Hopefully this explains, in more detail, what we hope to accomplish here.

TLDR; Thieves with 15+ in critical strikes and no other initiative traits will be slightly less efficient. All other thieves will be equally or more efficient.

Jon

If it really is overpowered for a minor trait, switch it with something like practiced tolerance and then move that that new VI trait to the major line. Swap it with something like ankle shots so that a condi-pistol user doesn’t have to spec 20 into a line that’s not going to help them in the slightest. The result would help condi-pistol users and crit based thieves who still need the initiative regen to help the sustain of something like D/D.

Fade.7658:

All Anet needs to do with Last Refuge, is remove the revealed restriction in regards to stealth with it. Meaning, that even if you have revealed from something else, triggering Last Refuge will still put you into stealth, as if you never had revealed.

Trait fixed, and it truly becomes a last refuge.

Would do nothing to prevent LR triggering mid C&D and revealing you when C&D lands. We’re going to need a more thorough solution.

Best one I’ve seen is so far is making it drop a Smoke Field that blocks projectiles and can be combo’d with on your own terms.

Kaon.7192:

Fade.7658:

All Anet needs to do with Last Refuge, is remove the revealed restriction in regards to stealth with it. Meaning, that even if you have revealed from something else, triggering Last Refuge will still put you into stealth, as if you never had revealed.

Trait fixed, and it truly becomes a last refuge.

Would do nothing to prevent LR triggering mid C&D and revealing you when C&D lands. We’re going to need a more thorough solution.

Best one I’ve seen is so far is making it drop a Smoke Field that blocks projectiles and can be combo’d with on your own terms.

I don’t think there will be a perfect fix for this trait. They could put a self-inflicted 1/4-3/4 second blind, to prevent any damage being done, but that would likely crop up other issues.

edit: They could change it into simply removing revealed, and nothing else. I wouldn’t mind that over what we currently have, and it wouldn’t impact the CnD scenario you mentioned, aside from allowing it to work if you do have revealed, from a ranger or the wvw trap.

JonPeters.5630:

It is an incredible buff to this profession and should not be treated lightly. To counter this imagine we took a few weapons and took away the cooldown portion of their trait. They would still be 5% better but other weapons would be 25% better.

Jon

Talking frankly, keep away from me that incredible buff and maintain vigour and assasin reward at mastery line for me.
Please take in account that with these changes you are killing the only two viable builds for p/p: the critics one and the tanky one with shadow rejuvenation+malice signet+ assasin reward.
Taking out vigour and initiative bursts at the same time is a madness for p/p builds.
Buff p/p skills in order to get survibility and damage outcome or we are doomed.

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

Something I’ve posted from another thread. These are probably out of scope for the Dec 10 patch, but should be kept in mind and discussed for future Thief changes:

Condition transfer is definitely something that should be explored more for Thieves as a condi removal option (Dancing dagger is 1 obvious skill candidate). It would alleviate much of our problem with lack of condi removal options, poor access to critical condi’s like burning and even fits well with the Thief theme IMO. Mesmers could benefit from some more condi transfer options too.

Boon steal definitely needs to be explored further also. The following themes should be looked into:

1. Let it scale to the number of boons a target currently has so that it can effectively punish boon spamming while not disproportionally penalize classes that make strategic use of fewer numbers of important boons.

2. Each boon steal skill/trait needs to define exactly what category of boons it can steal (Offensive or Defensive), and within each of these categories there must be a pre-defined priority list rather than the almost random manner that it’s determined at the moment. This will make it possible for skilled Thieves to make strategic use of even very limited boon stealing capabilities, rather than being forced to spray and pray against most boon bunkers.

I tentatively suggest the following priority lists (from high to low):

Offensive: Might → Fury → Retal → Swiftness
Defensive: Aegis → Stability → Protection → Vigor → Regen

In a similar vein I think conditions could benefit from categorization and prioritizing in terms of removal as well.

Tentative priorities:
Damaging: Confusion → Burning → Bleed → Poison → Torment
Utility: Fear → Immob → Weakness → Chill → Cripple → Vuln → Blind

Removal skills can then be used to target specific conditions of a certain category.

Puru.4217:

JonPeters.5630:

No, I am saying that I don’t want the balance of the thief held hostage by a 15 point minor in critical strikes so we need to take that initiative away from there and put it into the base class mechanics, which is exactly what we are doing.

Jon

What about shadow refuge then, this class has been held hostage to that skill since release and it’s still not being nerfed.

And what about the balance of venoms being hostage to a 30 point trait, that’s fine i guess, they suck on their own but they can potentially become useful (let’s be honest, you WILL nerf devourer venom to 1s immo per charge sooner or later, that’s just how it works because of this broken trait).

I understand your choice with ini regen, it had to be done, but the compensation are poor. Honestly this class is a mess, most weapon set doesn’t make any sense (scrap everything that isn’t s/p, d/p and shortbow, trust me that’s just how bad it is, you can even include the sword stealth skill), some utilities sucks (venoms and traps mostly), traits are aweful (there must be 3-5 worth trait by line and i’m generous). Really, you’re better removing this class for a while and rework it, i wish i was joking but that’s just how bad it is.

I have to agree with you here… in every traitline there are 3-5 traits that are so much better than anything else you’re bound to pick them.

I kind of agree with most of the changes even tho im quit concerned what builds we will have left in competitive Play after. The only one that Comes to mind is 10 30 0 0 30 d/p burst and a VERY VERY good played S/D thief but other than that… maybe venom share but that build is flawed because the supporting traits are in the wrong traitlines… they should be in acro / trickery imo

I fail to understand where the ini boost (a welcome Change i like, boosts the build im playing but even with more ini it will never be competitive because it lacks 30 into CS… something to think abt here devs… and no, not because lack of ini, but lack of damage…) opens up more builds because even if you Play D/D spike or S/P or P/P or anything else beside D/P and S/D, more ini will not Change the fact that most weapon sets we have are downright broken and thus will never be played at a competitive Level. Like why would you Play D/D spike over D/P spike? Or P/P over SB as off Hand set? Or why would you ever bring a condition build (whether P/D or D/D) when engineers and necros do it so much better.

This whole Balance patch feels like you are taking options away from us rather than opening up new builds… i remember Powerr screaming MASSIVE buffs in some other thread i would rly like to know which builds you are testing internally with These changes…

P.S. Hard to catch?! I mean really?! That trait can downright kill you. Why should i ever pick something that can possibly kill me? Arent traits supposed to help me… this trait should be removed and changed with something else…

Can we get some condition loving as well? Condition builds don’t have any viable signets like some other condition-using professions. Either a damage increasing signet, or something that boosts duration.

Less stealth cheesing will just be healty for everyone – including, and especially, for thieves.

Ofc, this must be followed by some buffs to other areas of the profession, and while ini regen is already a strong one, there is still more to do imo.

RE: Pistol Whip
Reducing aftercast is nice, but the current state of Retal really limits its use to fights off center point where each team has at least 1 Guardian spamming it.

Compressing its damage into fewer hits and shorter animation time would definitely help make it more viable in these kinds of fights.

Funny thing is, ~ a month or two back (non-Thief forum thread, though), I had suggested the idea of imparting some condition-drop options to the Acrobatics line. This way, Acro-heavy Thieves wouldn’t be near so penalized versus enemy conditions, compared to SA Thieves. Kaon’s idea of condition transfer abilities is an interesting one, and with some tweaking to Acro (and/or Trickery) skills could work out.

IS and Opportunist changes are arguably the most painful of the lot, tbh. Especially IS, considering that as others have mentioned, Thief is a squishy class, with long-cooldown stunbreakers. Presuming you still wish to keep Stability and Protection off the table, then something has to accommodate Thief in the defensive sector. This also ties into my next point.

• Mobility and Speed in general: Honestly, I’ve said this for a while now. You gents rather coded yourselves into a corner by changing +speed signets to be a uniform speed increase. You honestly should have kept Thief at 25%, then ranged other classes at between 15-20%. Thief would still be the speed “King,” as it were … but catchable with some CC at the right moment, or smart counter-play. As for the mobility end, zapping down IS hardly seems to be a move that keeps a Thief “mobile”

Last Refuge … is the Thief’s version of Reanimator. Unlike Reanimator, it could easily be made somewhat workable. Simply recode its Stealth to work like Mesmer Decoy/Deceptive Decoy. Either of those ignore the Revealed business, and as such, you already have a code precedent for that function to exist.

Hard to Catch, I agree, needs some form of buffing to be considered usable in Master position. There are more “controllable” Traits available at that same point-cost. Now, if it were to stunbreak/drop a condition or two … it might be workable at the c/d you’re discussing. Especially if you keep the random nature of its teleport intact.

Venoms and Traps, in general, are a fun idea that somewhat suffers in practice. Which kinda sucks, since both -tuned to be a bit less unwieldy/selfish- could open up great options for Thieves in team play.

I too love the idea behind venom and traps but find them very hard to work in a limited toolbar. In order to survive one needs some sort of stunbreak and some sort of condition removal and this leaves little room for a venom or trap. Those builds are not really effective if you have only one on the tool bar.

I see a “venom thief build” as sort of a “shout warrior build” but the warrior has shouts that can do multiple things LIKE remove conditions. The venom is very limited and with long cooldowns that one venom on a toolbar is limiting options rather then expanding on them. When I find my survival abilities lacking or need signet of shadows for that extra speed it tends to be the venom skill I remove from my toolbar.

JonPeters.5630:

Opportunist
This trait was wildly overpowered. I there was a 15 point minor for any other profession that basically read: "Reduce cooldown of all weapon skills by 33%, it would basically be impossible to run that profession without putting 15 points into that line. Because of this every thief build that is effective uses this line, which improves crit and crit damage. This pigeonholes this profession in a way that makes it frustrating for players and developers. This trait has to be closer to an 8% increase if we expect people to consider not taking 15 point in critical strikes.

By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to. There are a lot of good traits that simply will never see play until we make this change.

I appreciate ArenaNet’s initiative here (lolpuns), but there’s a huge problem with that logic: with or without Opportunist being viable, Thieves are still pigeonholed into Critical Strikes.

Deadly Arts, the power traitline, is obviously designed around venom/condition builds and has very little to offer power/crit Thieves. Even the minor traits are all condition-based.

The proposed improvement to Sundering Strikes is a good start towards changing the blandness of the power traits, but Improvisation is still completely obsolete, and there are very few other choices. If a power/crit Thief—or, better yet, a power/crit Thief with a sword mainhand—wanted to put 30 in Deadly Arts, what traits could they take to make an effective build?

So, by reducing the effectiveness of Opportunist and reducing the variety of helpful traits in Critical Strikes, it does seem like you are pushing Thieves towards venom/condition builds.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

No, this ENTIRELY false. It’s the same as reducing the cooldown on ONE arbitrary skill.

Dear lord, if you thinks those are equivalent….. we’ve got very little hope.

babazhook.6805:

I too love the idea behind venom and traps but find them very hard to work in a limited toolbar. In order to survive one needs some sort of stunbreak and some sort of condition removal and this leaves little room for a venom or trap. Those builds are not really effective if you have only one on the tool bar.

I see a “venom thief build” as sort of a “shout warrior build” but the warrior has shouts that can do multiple things LIKE remove conditions. The venom is very limited and with long cooldowns that one venom on a toolbar is limiting options rather then expanding on them. When I find my survival abilities lacking or need signet of shadows for that extra speed it tends to be the venom skill I remove from my toolbar.

In terms of Venoms, one idea I remember reading about that I really liked was adding a passive component for equipped Venom utilities that grant a single stack of the venom passively on a cooldown of length depending on the Venom type.

Activating the Venom grants you an additional number of stacks for burst condi/leech/control exactly as it would now.

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

It is an incredible buff to this profession and should not be treated lightly. To counter this imagine we took a few weapons and took away the cooldown portion of their trait. They would still be 5% better but other weapons would be 25% better.

Among the changes that is basically what it amounts to, with the exception of one change which I’ll talk about next.

Opportunist
This trait was wildly overpowered. I there was a 15 point minor for any other profession that basically read: "Reduce cooldown of all weapon skills by 33%, it would basically be impossible to run that profession without putting 15 points into that line. Because of this every thief build that is effective uses this line, which improves crit and crit damage. This pigeonholes this profession in a way that makes it frustrating for players and developers. This trait has to be closer to an 8% increase if we expect people to consider not taking 15 point in critical strikes.

By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to. There are a lot of good traits that simply will never see play until we make this change.

Hopefully this explains, in more detail, what we hope to accomplish here.

TLDR; Thieves with 15+ in critical strikes and no other initiative traits will be slightly less efficient. All other thieves will be equally or more efficient.

Jon

Here is the issue Jon. Initiative is unique… Besides engineer and ele any other class can use 10 weapon skills and has to wait for a CD. Where thief gets to burst skills from one of two weapons and with the current initiative cost of skills it does not amount to 10 skills. So while I am sure you have a good grasp on how it works when you compare this system to another class it is not the same at all. The reason people are pigeonholed into critical strikes is to improve their damage not for initiative regen…

BTW using warrior as an example isn’t helping your case with the proposed mobility issues the will be facing with the originally listed changes. Thief is not a warrior. Thief has the least amount of defensive options in the game. So while you are trying to accommodate versatility there is not much available you should really add more options to the thief class (traits) or you will ruin it.

JonPeters.5630:

No, I am saying that I don’t want the balance of the thief held hostage by a 15 point minor in critical strikes so we need to take that initiative away from there and put it into the base class mechanics, which is exactly what we are doing.

Jon

Others have asked what the vision is for the role of thief with these changes. Are you expecting them to try wearing soldiers gear? What do you see as the base mechanics of the thief class? What is the vision for role of thief?