Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

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.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

I don’t want to be rude so I will just put it like this Jon:

1) If this change happens, Sword will not be used in PvP, period.

2) The fact that you feel teleport stomping(which uses a weapon skill and a utility skill or burns our steal) is somehow unfair when other classes can: Stability stomp, mist form stomp, elixir S stomp, or Invulnerable stomp, is just insulting. Really, it is. Are you planning on nerfing those other methods of stomping as well? Because teleport stomping has more counters to it than those other methods.

3) D/P thieves can still blinding powder stomp people, and we can still stealth stomp anyway, so you are nerfing sword for an illogical reason, and it WILL kill the weapon in PvP.

Thieves need that CC escape to survive, period. Unless of course you plan to compensate sword survivability in other ways…

I don’t understand why people aren’t talking about

Quick Recovery (1 init per 10 seconds – Completely worthless master trait)

and

Assassin’s reward (approximately 100 hp gain per init spent – Grandmaster useless trait) and compare it to healing signet (400 hp healed per second) or (shadow rejuvenation – 300 HP regain under stealth)

If you trait shadow arts line with cloak and dagger (DD weapon set), it gives you 4 seconds worth of stealth + 300*4= 1200 hp regain, + 2 initiative on stealth. 1 initiative = 300 hp worth of healing.

If you trait into acrobatics line, your HP regain is 600 HP worth (CnD). 1 initiative = 100 hp worth of healing, along with vigor nerf. While discussing all the issues with S/X weapon skill sets, I want to bring up these 2 useless traits to attention. Remember, shadow arts have shadow’s embrace, while acrobatics have no condition removal.

This being said, thieves have ONLY ONE REMOVAL TRAIT.

Warriors – Shrug it off, Cleansing Ire, quick breathing
Guardian – Absolute resolution, Inscribed removal, Purity, Pure of voice
Ranger – Evasive Purity, Empathic Bond
Elementalist – Cleansing Water, Cleansing Wave, Evasive Arcana
Engineer – Cleansing Formula, Transmute, Automated Response
Necromancer – Shrouded Removal, Fetid Consumption
Mesmer – Cleansing Conflagration, Mender’s Purity, Shatter Conditions, Cleansing Inscription

Now take a look at thief. Right now we can ignore the initiative rehaul, it’s more or less the same initiative gain as before (affects critical lines the most, I know). The biggest problem in assassin’s reward isn’t the healing itself, it’s because we simply don’t have a very effective condition removal system. (weapon sets such as PP/shortbow = NO condition removal)

Consider the nerf on IR, vigor nerf. Each one alone already negates the assassin’s reward “buff”. Anet’s never going to change their mind on these issues, so I’m going to bring you guys back to BUFF TRAITS to overcome the nerfs.

- Vigorous Recovery. Removes 1 condition when you heal.
- Quick recovery. Don’t nerf this. What’s the point of giving 0.1 init per 10 seconds.
- Assassins’s Reward. 15% chance to remove per initiative spent. (especially this. It fits the idea of “rewarding” thieves to fight)

Give us more condition removal traits if you want to take away our dodge and escape mechanics.

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

Had this post pointed out to me from another thread, and felt it needed to be commented on:

All of the thief 15-pt minors are pretty good. Weakness on every application of poison on a profession that can hand out poison like candy if it chose? Great! 33% increase in the duration of most stealth skills that is often the difference between getting off a sneak attack and dropping out of stealth just short of the target? Excellent! Receive back 35% of the cost of dodging on a profession that relies on mobility to survive? Indispensable! An extra 25% initiative? Sign me u… what do you mean I don’t have enough trait points?

And there’s the point where you have to make difficult decisions. :P

A lot of people get CS15 not because by itself it’s a huge bonus to their build (I’ve run non-CS thief builds, and unless I was spamming the likes of Unload or Death Blossom – the kind of high-attack-rate, high-initiative cost that best synergises with Opportunist – I didn’t really notice a huge difference in the initiative I had available). As the person who pointed me to this post said – a lot of the reason why people go deep into CS is for the grandmaster traits, and CS15 is just a step along the way. A nice thing to have, but nerfing it is probably not going to stop CS30 from being a common build element.

My concern, however, is that while I concede most builds will get a buff, those like P/P that did strongly rely on CS15 are going to lose out big-time – and P/P is already regarded as one of the weaker weapon choices for thieves.

My suggestions, then, are the following:

1) Nerf CS15, but in the opposite way that is proposed. Keep the ICD at 1s, but drop the proc chance (say, to 10%). That makes its functionality a little smoother (you’re less dependant on when you proc the effect, rather than missing out if your crit comes a second too early) but maintains the synergy with skills granting a high rate of attacks.

-or-

2) Nerf CS15 as planned, but start thinking of a strategy to buff P/P so it will still be viable afterwards.

Sanduskel.1850:

I disagree. This community shouted anyone down when the unfairness of permastealth was raised. It cannot think to the good of the game, rather only advocate for its narrow self interests. If I were Anet , I would use this forum’s input only as fact checking. If were up to many in this community the glaring op issues would never be touched.

Anyone who has played a thief long enough knows d/p permastealth was an issue, not many are arguing to keep it. This is supposed to be a balancing patch… And there continues to be a push towards survivability (besides guardian but anyone that cant survive as a guardian…). Let me be clear unlike you with 5 thief alts, I’ve got an 80 of each class and play guardian, mesmer, thief, elementalist and sometimes warrior (just don’t ranger or necro and engineer i suck). There are alot of changes proposed for the other classes and its pretty balanced from what I can see. Oh wait, guardians and mesmers increase/decrease for their benefit across the boards.

Except Thief, look at the patch notes. Initiative traits slashed, vigor slashed, some shell game of traits (look were doing something, oh wait we changed our minds), and yet no significant survivability options. Are you telling me youre gonna dump 30 trait points into acrobatics for assassins reward, wear a clerics set and run around wvw? With the amount of burst and conditions from other builds you might as well paint a target on yourself. I mean you’re “certainly” not gonna be stomping anyone that knows their class in that gear.

I mean seriously if youre not playing devil’s advocate GFd. The majority of people are distressed about the amount of time theyve invested in Guild Warriors 2.

Ensign.2189:

Oghier.7419:

You’re making a lot of changes to initiative regen. I assume you guys have done the math, and you’re being accurate when you say builds that don’t currently make use of the +initiative traits will get a boost. For a typical crit-power build, however, I wonder how the nerf to Opportunist will balance this out. I wish I could parse the combat logs, so I could tell how much regen I am getting from it now.

A P/P thief min/maxed to chain Unloads full throttle will gain around 4.75 initiative per 10 seconds from Opportunist in its current iteration; if the proposed nerf goes through, this will be reduced to about 1.75 initiative per 10 seconds.

A more conservative, D/D thief using a standard PvE rotation will be dropping from around 2.75 initiative per 10 now to 1.5 per 10 after.

If you made good use of Opportunist before these changes take effect, you can expect to have less initiative after this patch regardless of where you spent the rest of your trait points. That trait is a font of initiative for high performance PvE thieves and they’re taking a sledgehammer to it.

Ok so this is with your calculations.

P/P Unload Build

10 secs of current init regen + 4.75 from current Opportunist, 10 * .75 + 4.75= 12.25
10 secs of buffed init regen + 1.75 from nerfed Opportunist, 10 * 1 + 1.75=11.75
So you are losing .5 init every 10 secs in the new patch, throw a dodge or 2 in there and they are even (which you can now because you are not relying on activating unload for initiative).

D/D Build

10 secs of current init regen + 2.75 from current Opportunist, 10 * .75 + 2.75= 10.25
10 secs of buffed init regen + 1.5 from nerfed Opportunist, 10 * 1 + 1.5= 11.5
Its being buffed…

Also for both builds you will no longer be AS effected from weakness, your damage will go down, but your initiative regen wont take as big a hit now. IMO the initiative change is needed and welcomed by this theif.

@LoneWolfie
How about
Quick Recovery gain 5 initiative on condition removal…

You are not getting 5 initiative on anything.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Quick Recovery (1 init per 10 seconds – Completely worthless master trait)

It’s weak for a master trait, but wouldn’t make a particularly bad adept trait. I think the perhaps slightly weak adept Quick Recovery at 1 per 10 is healthier for the game than the very strong master Quick Recovery at 2 per 10. I’ll support this in as much as it’ll enable that swap a year from now.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Assassin’s reward (approximately 100 hp gain per init spent – Grandmaster useless trait)

Probably not getting any attention because it’s garbage now, and rearranging garbage in the trait lines isn’t all that newsworthy.

draxynnic.3719:

All of the thief 15-pt minors are pretty good. Weakness on every application of poison on a profession that can hand out poison like candy if it chose? Great!

Lotus Poison got sledgehammered a few months ago in the weakness patch – it now applies a 4 second weakness every 15 seconds. It’s substantially weaker than the 5 pointer in Deadly Arts now (10s poison on steal).

draxynnic.3719:

As the person who pointed me to this post said – a lot of the reason why people go deep into CS is for the grandmaster traits, and CS15 is just a step along the way.

You put 30 points into Critical Strikes if you want things to die – Deadly Arts is garbage past 10 (Exposed Weakness isn’t enough to carry it), and putting all your points into the other lines pretty much confines you to be a condition troll. It isn’t exactly a shock that the 3 most common competitive builds are 10/30/30/0/0, 10/30/0/30/0, and 10/30/0/0/30 (except in PvE, where you 30/30/10/0/0 because lol PvE).

draxynnic.3719:

1) Nerf CS15, but in the opposite way that is proposed. Keep the ICD at 1s, but drop the proc chance (say, to 10%).
-or-
2) Nerf CS15 as planned, but start thinking of a strategy to buff P/P so it will still be viable afterwards.

How about…both? I’ll start with saying Unload should cost 4.

What I don’t understand is that Assassin’s reward is still a very lackluster trait even more so now that it is a grandmaster trait regardless of the buff it got.

The heal is still too little and now that it’s a grandmaster trait it should be compared to another healing grandmaster trait which is Shadow’s Rejuvenation

I’m sorry, but nobody would want to go 30 points into Acrobatics for that trait. Well maybe a d/d Deathblossom build, but they only really work in pve solo play….

Dekk.3459:

@LonieWolf
How about
Quick Recovery gain 5 initiative on condition removal…

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now. We talked through this flanking strike vs trickster change again yesterday and are still up in the air on it. I’m only posting updates to the main thread of stuff that is 100% changing.

Jon

All thief players scream “uncatchable is an awful trait that people hate running and goes against several changes that Anet themselves have said they’re making to other classes for the better.” and give you in depth reasons why, and you come back with “uncatchable is a good trait.”

yeah… this is the state of the thief patch notes.

On a side note, I’ve read through everything else and do genuinely appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.

Something I’d like to give you as food for thought is the possibility of fixing the consistency of various weapon sets, currently the 3 skill on D/D and P/P when compared to the rest of the weapon sets lend themselves more to hybrid builds than anything else.

A thought that popped into my head last night was something to the effect of removing the bleeding (and perhaps the combo finisher) from Death Blossom, and instead adding the ability to transfer 1 condition (or 2?)… This would give thieves some (in my mind) much needed relief on conditions/survivability while also not detracting from the power aspects of this weapon set.

Perhaps unload could become similar to Sneak attack on stealthed mainhand pistol, and apply bleeds in exchange for a reduction in damage increasing the viability of that set as a condition set, I feel this would open up some more ranged options for a P/D | P/P build, making more use of body shot, and more melee survivability for a d/d thief.

Aesthetic Quietus.5346:

The death of d/p build. That build will absolutely get trounced by anything 1v1. its defense was stealth. it was a bit troll like to be able to hide from a zerg..but did that impact balance? seems not a whole hell of a lot different than walking around CnDing to stay in stealth. A shred more skill to land it.

Correction: D/P permastealth is dead. 0/30/30/10/0 D/P Backstab is still alive and well. I run 0/30/30/10/0 D/P Backstab and I never stack heartseekers in black powder.

Have you considered reducing the inits cost of Cloak and Dagger while the reveal buff is on a thief? The Mug >> CD >> Backstab change was needed but it was only a problem because you could steal right as the Cloak and Dagger went off. It all reality, Cloak and Dagger has a cast time and a small hit box.

Our special thing was initiative and the ability to ‘spam’ abilities till it ran out. The reveal debuff changed that. Cloak and Daggers is expensive because of its damage and effects, but there is no reason we should be paying full price when the ability is only operating at 50%.

Four seconds of auto attack isn’t ‘terrible’ by any stretch of the imagination, but with our health pools and armor we’re prone while that debuff is ticking down. It isn’t like we stop taking damage while we’re stealthed and we’re significantly easier to damage while we aren’t. We also deal significantly less damage.

All these changes to our dodging and our stealth without addressing the issue of why we dodge and stealth so much and rely on these silly gimmicks keeps me from sPvPing on my thief.

Some of the changes were needed, while others were overkill. This sword/dagger sPvP spec is just another example of Thieves trying to make due with the mixed messages you are sending us.

Health/Toughness trees are tied to stealth and dodging. You get buffs while in stealth and from dodging. Your dual skills all center around dodging! But now you feel like we do that too much.

Promoting a skill that shadowsteps us on disable and disorients us just as much as it does our opponent is not a solution.

And now as one of the above posters mentioned, saying uncatchable is a good trait. Do you want us in fights or running away? We want to be in fights. We want to feel like we don’t have to rely on silly gimmicks to survive, but if that goes against your design philosophy, that’s fine.

Just enough with the mixed messages already.

liefbread.9513:

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now. We talked through this flanking strike vs trickster change again yesterday and are still up in the air on it. I’m only posting updates to the main thread of stuff that is 100% changing.

Jon

All thief players scream “uncatchable is an awful trait that people hate running and goes against several changes that Anet themselves have said they’re making to other classes for the better.” and give you in depth reasons why, and you come back with “uncatchable is a good trait.”

yeah… this is the state of the thief patch notes.

It gives away your location if you’re in stealth… Until the 10th though its pretty useful for s/d p/d or d/d condition, IMO. Great reasons for it being awful btw, i can only think of one. Is the fury, might, swiftness better, ehh, in groups.

Uncatchable is great if you’re running a condition spec and you’ve got bleeds and torment up on your opponent.

Condition builds are great because you only have to focus on condition + precision in some cases for extra bleed effects, so you can pour the rest of your armor stats/traits into surviability.

What is good for Condition Thief != What is good for Thief profession.

Dekk.3459:

liefbread.9513:

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now. We talked through this flanking strike vs trickster change again yesterday and are still up in the air on it. I’m only posting updates to the main thread of stuff that is 100% changing.

Jon

All thief players scream “uncatchable is an awful trait that people hate running and goes against several changes that Anet themselves have said they’re making to other classes for the better.” and give you in depth reasons why, and you come back with “uncatchable is a good trait.”

yeah… this is the state of the thief patch notes.

It gives away your location if you’re in stealth… Until the 10th though its pretty useful for s/d p/d or d/d condition, IMO. Great reasons for it being awful btw, i can only think of one. Is the fury, might, swiftness better, ehh, in groups.

The reasons were posted ad nauseum in the first few pages, and in many other posts :P

that said, as a S/D thief I HAAAAAAATE hard to catch.

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

I disagree. This community shouted anyone down when the unfairness of permastealth was raised. It cannot think to the good of the game, rather only advocate for its narrow self interests. If I were Anet , I would use this forum’s input only as fact checking. If were up to many in this community the glaring op issues would never be touched.

Can you provide links to these discussions you speak of, where the majority of people contributing were supporting permastealth? At most, I see people tell those complaining about permastealth to “l2p,” but it’s pretty unanimous that it’s a cheap tactic whether you can counter it or not.

Also, which “glaring op issues” are being ignored by the community?

It’s quite humorous to see so many frequent posters suddenly emerge from the woodwork to admit that permastealth is an exploit of mechanics, when only a few months ago they all chanted that its impossible. Indeed, humorous.

Which op issues? The ones nerfed over the last year.

Sanduskel.1850:

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

I disagree. This community shouted anyone down when the unfairness of permastealth was raised. It cannot think to the good of the game, rather only advocate for its narrow self interests. If I were Anet , I would use this forum’s input only as fact checking. If were up to many in this community the glaring op issues would never be touched.

Can you provide links to these discussions you speak of, where the majority of people contributing were supporting permastealth? At most, I see people tell those complaining about permastealth to “l2p,” but it’s pretty unanimous that it’s a cheap tactic whether you can counter it or not.

Also, which “glaring op issues” are being ignored by the community?

It’s quite humorous to see so many frequent posters suddenly emerge from the woodwork to admit that permastealth is an exploit of mechanics, when only a few months ago they all chanted that its impossible. Indeed, humorous.

Which op issues? The ones nerfed over the last year.

I think you misunderstood. I don’t think anyone ever said ‘Permastealth’ wasn’t an exploit of mechanics. I think they said the concept of Permastealth wasn’t game breaking.

As it turns out, remaining in stealth permanently after the reveal change (Reveal upon dealing damage to an enemy) is a great way to deal absolutely no damage.

The person you quoted represents the player base that has used this issue, ‘permastealth’ to distract for legitimate issues that the Thief profession actually has. We don’t care about a couple of Dagger/Pistol thieves that sit in WvW taunting zergs. They die, usually pretty quick once someone locks them down.

The fact that so many people have commented that the behavior itself isn’t damaging, that the thief doesn’t actually manage to kill you, just that it takes a while to get a fix, lock them down, and kill them (Usually very quickly) shows just how little impact this ‘exploit’ had on the game.

Permastealth is not an issue that warrants attention. It doesn’t kill the game. In fact, considering it took them this long to address it and how few people actually use that spec in sPvP pretty much shows how little impact it actually had on the game as a whole.

The amount of attention it was getting because people really wanted an easy kill but couldn’t get it because that darn thief just kept hopping around is what was astounding.

EDIT: I should say! Removing ‘permastealth’ for the Dagger/Pistol equation will give them a chance to take a look at the weapon layout (Right along side Dagger/Dagger) and look for ways to improve it.

The fact that it took them so long to make this change and the fact that they’ve been pulling numbers and statistics from it has been more damaging to the thief class than it has been to players.

I play an evasive S/D thief, with this new cast time to Infiltrator’s Return it does change everything especially in wvw where every second counts, I use IR to get away from AOE/CC and to clear conditions whenever possible because I don’t put any points into Shadow Arts at all, stealth isn’t a tool I want to use if possible.

As we all know by now Hard to Catch won’t compensate for this nerf, as it doesn’t get rid of CC nor do you have control over it, you are also shaving off our Vigor uptime which also makes this build less viable, what I can only think of is going back to using Signet of Agility, but that would be like pigeon holing us into using certain signets now.

In fact I might have to be more selfish with what Traits/Utilities I use just to survive myself, even Shadow Refuge may need to be dropped.
How about making Bountiful Theft less random and more useful now the Vigor uptime will be lower, we only have the ability to strip one boon using LS + two extra random boons for not the whole duration nor the stacks, gives us options to offer more support other than venoms which need to be reworked.

You aren’t giving us much options with all these changes, Perma stealth needed to be addressed but Sword Mainhand because of stomping seriously?

I’ve never really see many S/D roamers myself it’s mostly D/P thieves, and I never use SS/IR to stomp it costs 5 initiative just like FS/LS, what you should be doing is maintaining the viability of everything at our disposable, not nerfing things for the sake of what you think is balancing.

This includes our Active Initiative regen, now your plan is to shave off alot of our Traits that allow that in return for better Passive regen, but that would mean as mentioned that we would need to disengage, as much as you want us to engage into a fight.

Sanduskel.1850:

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

I disagree. This community shouted anyone down when the unfairness of permastealth was raised. It cannot think to the good of the game, rather only advocate for its narrow self interests. If I were Anet , I would use this forum’s input only as fact checking. If were up to many in this community the glaring op issues would never be touched.

Can you provide links to these discussions you speak of, where the majority of people contributing were supporting permastealth? At most, I see people tell those complaining about permastealth to “l2p,” but it’s pretty unanimous that it’s a cheap tactic whether you can counter it or not.

Also, which “glaring op issues” are being ignored by the community?

It’s quite humorous to see so many frequent posters suddenly emerge from the woodwork to admit that permastealth is an exploit of mechanics, when only a few months ago they all chanted that its impossible. Indeed, humorous.

Which op issues? The ones nerfed over the last year.

It’s impossible to do damage in permastealth, so while the build is an exploit it’s both impractical and ineffective. I’ve seen that statement in various forms a lot, and I agree with it. Perhaps that is the common argument you’re referring to?

Which “glaring op” issues are you referring to, specifically? There have been a lot of nerfs over the past year, considering that’s the majority of this game’s life so far.

Sanduskel.1850:

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

I disagree. This community shouted anyone down when the unfairness of permastealth was raised. It cannot think to the good of the game, rather only advocate for its narrow self interests. If I were Anet , I would use this forum’s input only as fact checking. If were up to many in this community the glaring op issues would never be touched.

Can you provide links to these discussions you speak of, where the majority of people contributing were supporting permastealth? At most, I see people tell those complaining about permastealth to “l2p,” but it’s pretty unanimous that it’s a cheap tactic whether you can counter it or not.

Also, which “glaring op issues” are being ignored by the community?

It’s quite humorous to see so many frequent posters suddenly emerge from the woodwork to admit that permastealth is an exploit of mechanics, when only a few months ago they all chanted that its impossible. Indeed, humorous.

Which op issues? The ones nerfed over the last year.

Get back on your main account, trolling is for dorks

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

I disagree. This community shouted anyone down when the unfairness of permastealth was raised. It cannot think to the good of the game, rather only advocate for its narrow self interests. If I were Anet , I would use this forum’s input only as fact checking. If were up to many in this community the glaring op issues would never be touched.

Can you provide links to these discussions you speak of, where the majority of people contributing were supporting permastealth? At most, I see people tell those complaining about permastealth to “l2p,” but it’s pretty unanimous that it’s a cheap tactic whether you can counter it or not.

Also, which “glaring op issues” are being ignored by the community?

It’s quite humorous to see so many frequent posters suddenly emerge from the woodwork to admit that permastealth is an exploit of mechanics, when only a few months ago they all chanted that its impossible. Indeed, humorous.

Which op issues? The ones nerfed over the last year.

It’s impossible to do damage in permastealth, so while the build is an exploit it’s both impractical and ineffective. I’ve seen that statement in various forms a lot, and I agree with it. Perhaps that is the common argument you’re referring to?

Which “glaring op” issues are you referring to, specifically? There have been a lot of nerfs over the past year, considering that’s the majority of this game’s life so far.

Don’t bother replying to/arguing with Sanduskel, he is a very well known troll over the whole forums and his opinion vary only from several liners in a “thief op nerf him” through “yeah this is ok, thieves didn’t need that anyway” to “yeah thieves deserved that” style. My guess is he got ganked some times in WvW, ragequit the game and spends most of the time on the forums whining how life is unfair. I wish there was a “don’t view this user’s post” option – he was funny at the start, now he is just pathetic.

liefbread.9513:

Dekk.3459:

liefbread.9513:

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now. We talked through this flanking strike vs trickster change again yesterday and are still up in the air on it. I’m only posting updates to the main thread of stuff that is 100% changing.

Jon

All thief players scream “uncatchable is an awful trait that people hate running and goes against several changes that Anet themselves have said they’re making to other classes for the better.” and give you in depth reasons why, and you come back with “uncatchable is a good trait.”

yeah… this is the state of the thief patch notes.

It gives away your location if you’re in stealth… Until the 10th though its pretty useful for s/d p/d or d/d condition, IMO. Great reasons for it being awful btw, i can only think of one. Is the fury, might, swiftness better, ehh, in groups.

The reasons were posted ad nauseum in the first few pages, and in many other posts :P

that said, as a S/D thief I HAAAAAAATE hard to catch.

The Dev was asking for feedback on Uncatchable… minicaltrops in trickery. But I agree HtC is worthless in its current state. And the two other leather classes get 2 traits focusing on disables, not some kitten with a bow.

Pavel.8531:

Don’t bother replying to/arguing with Sanduskel, he is a very well known troll over the whole forums and his opinion vary only from several liners in a “thief op nerf him” through “yeah this is ok, thieves didn’t need that anyway” to “yeah thieves deserved that” style. My guess is he got ganked some times in WvW, ragequit the game and spends most of the time on the forums whining how life is unfair. I wish there was a “don’t view this user’s post” option – he was funny at the start, now he is just pathetic.

I’m aware. I don’t engage with him much anymore, but sometimes I think it’s worthwhile to ask him for specifics or proof to support his claims.

I second the desire to ignore users on the forums, although I can imagine how it would be difficult to program.

Ensign.2189:

draxynnic.3719:

All of the thief 15-pt minors are pretty good. Weakness on every application of poison on a profession that can hand out poison like candy if it chose? Great!

Lotus Poison got sledgehammered a few months ago in the weakness patch – it now applies a 4 second weakness every 15 seconds. It’s substantially weaker than the 5 pointer in Deadly Arts now (10s poison on steal).

Valid point – I cut back on DA as a result of that change myself now that you mention it, and had completely forgotten it. :o

My overall point there still stands, though – the other master minors are all worth having, so the popularity of CS can’t be pinned on Opportunist. It’s also Executioner, First Strikes, Keen Observer, and a good set of majors to choose from, not to mention that precision and critical damage are always good to have for DPSing.

I’ve been lurking here for a couple of days now, and I’m glad I’m not the only thief who’s a little uncomfortable with these changes. I’ll try not to repeat things that have been said already, but there are a lot of posts so please forgive me if I do :P

I play D/P in WvW, with a standard 0/30/30/10/0 build (most of the time), and I’m guilty of being one of these perma-stealth thieves as I’m normally the scout for my guild group and using a (very) OP trait to help with my innate squishiness is not below me. That being said, I like the change to IoS.
When I fight someone instead of just goofing around doing zero damage (which is pretty easy to counter anyway if the opponent knows what they’re doing), I only heartseeker through BP once max to set up a backstab. Combat will largely feel the same post patch I think. Sure, I’ll miss being such a troll, but frankly I’ll become a better thief by being forced to come up with more inventive ways of escaping a group. It’s a good change, and it’s been done in a way that doesn’t adversely affect other builds, nicely done

Regarding sword and opportunist; I rarely use sword so can’t comment, I use 30 in CS for Hidden Killer and the stats, and at least a month passed after switching to D/P before I even realised opportunist gave me ini, so it’s always been an incidental perk to me.

What makes me uncomfortable is the passive nature of the changes to ini regen. The devs say they want to encourage thieves to stick around in a fight, to do that we need ACTIVE ini regen, so that way when that ele is leeroying away trying to heal we can use a couple signets (for example) to ensure we can definitely finish it off. Or, if things are not going so well, we can actually use short bow to escape when we swap to it instead of just sitting there looking pretty whilst some warrior lamps you with the better part of a tree.
The active management of ini is a major concern for all thieves looking to up their game, and for me is what makes the class so rewarding to play sometimes. Having this reduced in favour of a greater passive regen just encourages hit and run gameplay since we have to just strike and retreat, as if we press an attack we run a much greater risk of not being able to react to new threats due to low ini. Not to mention the ini traits becoming next to useless, which when so many traits are already underused because of bad/ineffective mechanics (you could replace the hard to catch trait with a picture of a cat doing the safety dance, and people would probably be happier) this doesn’t exactly help build diversity either. This seems contrary to what the devs are trying to achieve here.

I agree with Jon in that the ini regen increase IS a huge buff, but many thief builds need to know that ini is quickly available in a pinch. If they don’t have that, they’ll have to hang back from a fight more than ever.

Sorry, I rambled more than I thought :/

JonPeters.5630:

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

The moment a local computer received the attack state of the target, his state will be further in time on the server. Then we have to recognize the potential threatening animation, which is not obvious until at least a quarter into the animation, and hope to have enough time left to do the shadow return.

- A human reaction time is somewhere between ~150-300ms.
- An internet connection has somewhere between 50~100ms latency (from and to)
- An average LCD screen has a 5ms refresh rate delay.
- An average computer runs at 30 FPS; the next frame can delay by 33ms.
- An average keyboard has 11ms input delay.
- The Shadow Return skill has a 360ms activation delay.

That’s 150 + (2 * 50) + 5 + 33 + 11 + 360 = 659ms delay right there, not event counting the time it takes for an attacking animation to become recognizable and making a (quick) decision based on that animation. Are you saying that enemy attacks take longer than (659ms + timeToRecognizeAttack) and allow a window of effective use of the new Shadow Return? Personally I think it is already quite difficult to avoid the dangerous ones combining all the latencies. Granted I’m not an amazing player, but I suspect the use of the skill will become limited to the best of computer hardware, internet connections, and player skill, rather than being accessible to other players.

The p/p discussion continues:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/P-P-death-10-Dec

More specific recommendations:
Changing positions to HtC and Assasin reward is not accepted by anybody. HtC is awful and the assasin reward would be to high in the line, compared to other heals does not worth. Please rethink this and find something as useful in grandmastery as shadow rejuvenation or hidden killer. My opinion would be to maintain Assasin reward were it is and improve HtC somehow.
All the skills in the p/p weaponset are disgusting compared to other weaponsets…
Vital shot – It has been said once and again…more dps heavily needed
All the other shots are too expensive in initiative to what they do. Jon will say, now you will have more initiative. We already were able to get initiative with the traits you are nerfing, mate.
None of the shots give survival (not even black powder taking in account the meta), they are more supportive than efficient, if you spend your initiative in control (headshot or black powder) you can not make enough damage with upload, the only way.
Upload execution takes too much time.
Add some kind of teleport to any of the shots to add somekind of survival to p/p. Without vigour we are doomed.
Or directly reduce one initiative point from all the shots, they deserve it…
The problem is that p/p was heavily dependant on vigour, without vigour the survival decreases heavily.
It is needed somekind of run away system in the mainhand or offhand skills, it is needed one stealth more or one teleport, as easy as that….

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

Dekk.3459:

liefbread.9513:

Dekk.3459:

liefbread.9513:

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now. We talked through this flanking strike vs trickster change again yesterday and are still up in the air on it. I’m only posting updates to the main thread of stuff that is 100% changing.

Jon

All thief players scream “uncatchable is an awful trait that people hate running and goes against several changes that Anet themselves have said they’re making to other classes for the better.” and give you in depth reasons why, and you come back with “uncatchable is a good trait.”

yeah… this is the state of the thief patch notes.

It gives away your location if you’re in stealth… Until the 10th though its pretty useful for s/d p/d or d/d condition, IMO. Great reasons for it being awful btw, i can only think of one. Is the fury, might, swiftness better, ehh, in groups.

The reasons were posted ad nauseum in the first few pages, and in many other posts :P

that said, as a S/D thief I HAAAAAAATE hard to catch.

The Dev was asking for feedback on Uncatchable… minicaltrops in trickery. But I agree HtC is worthless in its current state. And the two other leather classes get 2 traits focusing on disables, not some kitten with a bow.

My bad, I made the post while my eyes were glazed over at work.

fair and valid point, apologies all around.

JonPeters.5630:

Show Spoiler

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Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

A lot of high damaging attacks and hard CC have a cast time beneath 1/2 to 3/4 seconds.

The average human reaction time is ~215 milliseconds + I’ll use ping as 60 milliseconds (didn’t count extra server lag during evenings.) + 360 milliseconds cast time.

The result is 0.635 seconds, add some poor delayed telegraphing on the high dmg or cc skills and in addition some server lag and it will take even longer before IR fires off.

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be superhuman with 0 ping to play S/D like I’ve always played it. Sure, we are compensated with being able to spam Flanking Strike more frequently without investing in initiative traits and utility, but dodges have a hardcounter; the time gap after the animation finishes.

S/D can’t by any means affort to be locked down and I believe this change will eliminate it from competive PvP, to bring it back up we would need a better selection of stunbreakers, a lot better condition removal and never press #2 again for other than gap closing or removing a condition or two when attempting to leave combat.

All this just because…

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. 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 don’t see among these 2 reasons where the cast time is necessary. Make it simply not work anymore like any other skill while stunned and queue up after or cancel current action (like when stomping, triggering basilisk venom, casting Cloak and Dagger, casting Shadow Refuge)

Infiltrator’s Strike wont be rewarding for the thief class anymore after this change, sure it would be highly rewarding for any other class with Protection, Stability, high hp pool and high health regen and high crowd control to be able to teleport back and forth at will, but for thieves it isn’t, it’s just another skill which is mandatory for survival.

About stunbreakers, I use one stunbreaker almost all the time to flush conditions since I can only do it by using Lyssa Runes + BV otherwise and a sustained condition removal from IS>IR, but to counter condition burst I need a burst cleanse like SS. I use Infiltrators Signet for additional ini regen and as gap closer since many classes are able to outrun me, sure sometimes also for IS>IR>Inf sig to stomp someone, I rarely use it as a stunbreaker since it teleports me to the target I’m trying to escape from if I don’t find some other target far away or I untarget which puts me in the same spot taking the dmg I’m trying to escape anyways. I use Shadow Refuge to support my team with all its benefits and escape getting zerged, this utility I would have to change from Roll For Initiative. Tell me, what other class needs stunbreakers and condition cleanse in every slot to be at least a pinch of viable?

You have to realize thieves walk on a really thin line between being extremely overpowered and being the weakest class in the game. The line gets thinner with every patch, every nerf to thief, every buff to other classes.

There is a reason this nerf in particular is so hated.

Well at least I tried..

Hard to Catch: Shadowstep away and give swiftness (12s) when you are disabled (stun, daze, float, knock down, launch, knock back, sink, or fear). This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds.

Why is this trait lacking:

• Doesn’t break disables. This point is very important. I would much rather have this trait off and use a stunbreaker when the situation arises, than to be shadowstepped away for a mere headshot daze and have to use my gapclosers to get back on the target.

• If you are stability stomping someone and that guy uses any form of CC, you WILL be shadowstepped away and get your stomp interrupted. How clunkier and counterintuitive can this trait get?

• When a teamfight arises on keep, in Forest of Nifhel, stay the hell away from the border or you WILL be shadowstepped outside of the keep, losing time and important positioning.
  EDIT: Tested a little bit further and if you stay on the Clocktower’s cap point and depending on the stun, you will sometimes get shadowstepped to the tunnel below and lose the cap point because of that.

TL;DR: Traits are suposed to bring in versability, especially a Grandmaster. But all this trait offers is limitations. Reducing the trait’s cooldown won’t make it better, it will just make it worse as it is.

I’ve added a sugestion box to the trait, hopefully Jon Peters can cue us in why is the trait worthy of a Grandmaster tier if it’s so unreliable/unpredictable in its’ current state.

Sugested Changes so far:

• Next skill’s crowd control that would otherwise disable you is negated. (75 second cooldown) – Quickfoot Katana
• Change it to a very short range shadowstep + stealth – Grimwolf
• Attempting to dodge while immobilized/stunned/etc will teleport you back X range (ICD same as Hard to Catch) – bobross

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

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.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

Sorry Jon, you are trying to make it look like a buff when it isn’t.
Also, the only thing you keep talking about is the init buff, it is your only argument for countering the complaints about all the nerfs flying our way…

I do believe it is a buff (the init buff) but since we haven’t tested it yet ourselves, I’m not so sure it is as incredibly awesome as you make it look like. Also i don’t think that the init buff does not justify nor makes it up for the nerfs thieves are getting.

More initiative it is the answer for all the thieves problems nor more versatility, it means more spam.
For versatility you guys would have to change/replace some (useless) traits and buff some underused utilities and some weapon skills like Pistol MH, also some terrible stolen abilities would need to be replaced (ranger / engi).

Not to mention that Last Refuge and Hard to Catch still exist in this game. These traits are terrible! they harm thieves and benefit our enemies, no competent thief will ever take Hard to Catch… as for Last Refuge we don’t even have a choice do we?… (if we want to get into Shadow Arts). Does the Init buff fix this problem?!

The Init buff is not the answer for the thieves problems (like you make it seam like) and imo not even needed…

I would like to make a few sugestions for the thief’s Venom Share build.

1st proposal: Leeching Venoms with a new stack system.

Current scenario: This trait limits the amount of life steal, applied simultaneously, to only one per attack. However, in a Venom Share build is common to use two or more venoms skills, in the utility slots, punishing the Thief with the loss of life steal because it counts only 1 venom, not both.

Change: Create a new stack system, equal to the venom charges, that shows how many strikes you still have with that utility. For example, by using two venom skills that grants you 2 charges each, instead of activating 2 times the life steal, i would accumulate and you would have 04 stacks of life steal.

2ndt proposal: Residual Venom and Venomous Aura – traits- when used together activate an unique effect.

Current Scenario: The classic Venom Share build has very little space for customization, usually follows with 30 in deadly arts and 30 in shadow arts. Costing the Thief lot of their traits designed to survival and direct damage.

Change: Starting from the assumption that developers do not want to relocate the traits I propose an extra skill activated when residual venom and venomous aura are simultaneously active in the same build. Considering that most venoms intended for crowd controll, I suggest a 10% bonus on condition duration. This would release the thief of using one of his weapons with the attribute giver, runes or food that give bonus cond. duration to reach 50%. This would be especially good when using the short bow. What would allow the thief using these resources to increase their survival or damage.

The 4.75 from current opportunist is the bottom line when attacking SINGLE target.
The 2 from new opportunist is the attainable maximum in any conditions.

RodrigoZV.9852:

I would like to make a few sugestions for the thief’s Venom Share build.

1st proposal: Leeching Venoms with a new stack system.

Current scenario: This trait limits the amount of life steal, applied simultaneously, to only one per attack. However, in a Venom Share build is common to use two or more venoms skills, in the utility slots, punishing the Thief with the loss of life steal because it counts only 1 venom, not both.

Change: Create a new stack system, equal to the venom charges, that shows how many strikes you still have with that utility. For example, by using two venom skills that grants you 2 charges each, instead of activating 2 times the life steal, i would accumulate and you would have 04 stacks of life steal.

2ndt proposal: Residual Venom and Venomous Aura – traits- when used together activate an unique effect.

Current Scenario: The classic Venom Share build has very little space for customization, usually follows with 30 in deadly arts and 30 in shadow arts. Costing the Thief lot of their traits designed to survival and direct damage.

Change: Starting from the assumption that developers do not want to relocate the traits I propose an extra skill activated when residual venom and venomous aura are simultaneously active in the same build. Considering that most venoms intended for crowd controll, I suggest a 10% bonus on condition duration. This would release the thief of using one of his weapons with the attribute giver, runes or food that give bonus cond. duration to reach 50%. This would be especially good when using the short bow. What would allow the thief using these resources to increase their survival or damage.

Why not just melt venomous aura with residual venoms and move leeching venoms from master to adept? Assuming this scenario a venom/support thief would have 30 points in deadly arts and 10 points in shadow arts, and the 30 points left out could be spent into different trees depending if you want a condition damage offensive build or a true support build.

Jon , you sir underestimate just how crucial infiltrator return is to an S/D thief’s survivability, if you didn’t you guys would not even consider nerfing it by adding a cast time to it.

The only thing you’ll accomplish with this change is make people quit sword ( i for sure will ) , i already know a lot of thieves that are practicing pistol dagger or that plan on rolling a different class.

How your team think this nerf is a good idea is mind boggling, if you took your thief out in WvW or SPvP regularly you’d see why we are outraged.

Deathspike.1870:

JonPeters.5630:

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

The moment a local computer received the attack state of the target, his state will be further in time on the server. Then we have to recognize the potential threatening animation, which is not obvious until at least a quarter into the animation, and hope to have enough time left to do the shadow return.

- A human reaction time is somewhere between ~150-300ms.
- An internet connection has somewhere between 50~100ms latency (from and to)
- An average LCD screen has a 5ms refresh rate delay.
- An average computer runs at 30 FPS; the next frame can delay by 33ms.
- An average keyboard has 11ms input delay.
- The Shadow Return skill has a 360ms activation delay.

That’s 150 + (2 * 50) + 5 + 33 + 11 + 360 = 659ms delay right there, not event counting the time it takes for an attacking animation to become recognizable and making a (quick) decision based on that animation. Are you saying that enemy attacks take longer than (659ms + timeToRecognizeAttack) and allow a window of effective use of the new Shadow Return? Personally I think it is already quite difficult to avoid the dangerous ones combining all the latencies. Granted I’m not an amazing player, but I suspect the use of the skill will become limited to the best of computer hardware, internet connections, and player skill, rather than being accessible to other players.

i did this myself but without screen/connection figured in. i did it as str8 up like everything was instant. still an obvious call. this is beyond Anets comprehension. they dont care they just wanted bad players to be competitive and that wont happen if they buff other classes…bc the players will still be bad right? so what they do is nerf nerf nerf…making it a dumbed down game. Nothing to do with us. thief is a hard class to play so we have a very different understanding of the game than most do.

JonPeters.5630:

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%.”

Ini regen won’t create a new meta, new/buffed traits will – the two meta builds of choice have been smashed and nothing new offered as a replacement. What use is having more cooldowns if you are dying because you can’t evade or stealth to mitigate damage.

I think the assumption that not having to take ini-regen traits now will somehow create a new range of meta builds is wrong.

If you disagree, please feel free to post a few examples of what you see the new meta in thief builds might be – now that d/p and s/d are dead.

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.

30 in Critical Strikes is still required. Executioner and Hidden Killer are just too good not to take. This change won’t solve anything about the Critical Strikes line.

JonPeters.5630:

All other thieves will be equally or more efficient.

You mean apart from stealth and evasion meta builds right? So the 3% of thieves who don’t run those two builds will be equally or more efficient. The remainder will be significantly less efficient.

800 of my 2000 hours are on thief but I think I’ll be using my mesmer going forward.

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

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.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

I started looking at the data, i wasnt really aware of the stomp issue, because i rarely spvp these days, but i agree its a problem. mostly because by combining this and utilities/steal, the theif could get 3 shadow step finishers back to back, and they of course still have some protection with stealth stomp (many skills need a target to work)

However, i think that you are cutting into its main intended use, as you put it, its an escape. Its supposed to reward reactive play. by putting it with a cast time, you make it a lot less effective as a reactive skill.
The way i see the skill, is you use it to control your position in the fight, you can get in and out, and back in again instantly. If you see a big aoe, you can shadow return. By putting a .3 cast time, you are eliminating it as a reactive skill for people without really high reflex time. its one thing not to be able to use it to remove stun, its another thing to not be able to avoid stun with it.

And Escape/evasion with cast time isnt a very good escape/evasion
I recommend 3 options,
a)put an extremely short cast time (.1),
b) use some other method that makes it not work while stunned, or
c)give it evasion frames equal to its cast time, if you need a certain number for the cast time not to be buggy.

This is the only way the skill can actually still do its job of being a viable escape, it must work from the moment you press the button, or its not an escape, you will often get caught.

TheThiefMaster.3812:

Jon , you sir underestimate just how crucial infiltrator return is to an S/D thief’s survivability, if you didn’t you guys would not even consider nerfing it by adding a cast time to it.

The only thing you’ll accomplish with this change is make people quit sword ( i for sure will ) , i already know a lot of thieves that are practicing pistol dagger or that plan on rolling a different class.

How your team think this nerf is a good idea is mind boggling, if you took your thief out in WvW or SPvP regularly you’d see why we are outraged.

You do realize they did this so our thieves can’t escape their beloved warrior’s stuns right? I mean: doom on anything that even looks funny against a warrior.

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

I had no idea the thief class was being held hostage by 15 pt minor in critical strikes.

Condi thieves (even tho they are terrible) don’t put a point into CS and do just fine.

Any non-condi thief is held hostage by the ENTIRE cs line. If you don’t use CS, you don’t do damage, plain and simple as a power thief.

Instead of nerfing CS, why not improve the rest of our trait lines to get us alternative options for damage?

Just so sick of LOSING abilities/traits on this class instead of GAINING cool stuff to play with.

Look at warrior and necro, they got so many new traits and reworked traits and in some cases new weapon skills in death shroud. Things like that keep the class fresh and interesting.

Thief is the opposite and just loses stuff and the “new” stuff that’s given to us isn’t even worth mentioning over half the time and it’s very minor.

Jon, are you planning on nerfing shadow refuge and/or backstab? Those are like the only things left to nerf until everyone rerolls a different class.

The only thing I see this accomplishing is narrowing build diversity, forcing everyone to play d/p trickery or play Warrior.

I don’t know what you plan to gain by destroying S/D and completely burying the already dead S/P, but these sets need buffs, not nerfs. I thought the complaint was that S/D only has 2 usable skills and only 1/3 of the sword autos. Now you want it to ONLY be 3 spam?

The previous patch was aimed in this direction as well—instead of nerfing the damage or initiative forcing more tactful use of FS, you instead remove one of the boonsteals so now you are FORCED to spam it to get past that regen and vigor that gets applied every 3 seconds to get to the protection so your team can actually damage the target. Oh that Might at the very end there? Don’t even think about stealing that anymore. There’s no way you’re ever stealing anything other than regen and the occasional protection.

PS: One of the funniest moments in this game is when I’m playing mace/gs warrior and bait a thief back to his shadow return point and skull crack him>100b for a 1hko. I can’t imagine how incredibly faceroll it would be if I didn’t even have to try to bait him when he doesnt have the shadowsteps or interrupts+blinds that either of the current viable builds offer. Well, that’s if anyone would be stupid enough to run sword mainhand after these proposed changes.

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?

You do realize the only stun breakers thief has are either long cd, not all that controllable, or actually hurt you more than help? Also we have no stability, but sure, we’re op….

Infiltrator’s return does NOT break stun as it used to, which is fine. I actually thought that it was rather op back then, but now all it does is displace. It doesn’t recover from launch, or knockback, it just moves you away. Ranged players have no problem getting a few more hits in before you’re back up.

We also have 0 protection and blocks/counters on land. So I ask you, do you even play thief? I can’t help but notice that someone who “main” thief asking for further nerfs to the already overrated profession is coming from the fields of solo queue where pug stomping is a pleasure.

Well, that’s if anyone would be stupid enough to run sword mainhand after these proposed changes

We’ve all said it, sword is dead after this patch. The only people who don’t think so are the devs…and people who don’t play thieves.

Excalibur.9748:

Well, that’s if anyone would be stupid enough to run sword mainhand after these proposed changes

We’ve all said it, sword is dead after this patch. The only people who don’t think so are the devs…and people who don’t play thieves.

The devs don’t seem to play thief

kitten I hate to complain but it just keeps getting worse

I would suggest to hold back the thief balancing till they have something more viable and only implement the infusion of shadow change

Jumper.9482:

The only thing I see this accomplishing is narrowing build diversity, forcing everyone to play d/p trickery or play Warrior.

I don’t know what you plan to gain by destroying S/D and completely burying the already dead S/P, but these sets need buffs, not nerfs. I thought the complaint was that S/D only has 2 usable skills and only 1/3 of the sword autos. Now you want it to ONLY be 3 spam?

The previous patch was aimed in this direction as well—instead of nerfing the damage or initiative forcing more tactful use of FS, you instead remove one of the boonsteals so now you are FORCED to spam it to get past that regen and vigor that gets applied every 3 seconds to get to the protection so your team can actually damage the target. Oh that Might at the very end there? Don’t even think about stealing that anymore. There’s no way you’re ever stealing anything other than regen and the occasional protection.

PS: One of the funniest moments in this game is when I’m playing mace/gs warrior and bait a thief back to his shadow return point and skull crack him>100b for a 1hko. I can’t imagine how incredibly faceroll it would be if I didn’t even have to try to bait him when he doesnt have the shadowsteps or interrupts+blinds that either of the current viable builds offer. Well, that’s if anyone would be stupid enough to run sword mainhand after these proposed changes.

QFT.

Again, i can’t understand the reasoning behind these changes without effectively nerfing wars-necros-engies-spirit rangers.

S/D thief was barely on par, now anyone picking sword would be literally crazy

1. same stunbreak capability than dagger
2. less DPS than dagger
3. more condi removal ( but who cares, since you’ll be dead at the 2nd stun) than dagger
4. less burst than dagger
5. more predictable than dagger

Basically there’s no reason to play sword. Abolutely no one. And dagger was already sub par.

Since the weapon skill IR is going to be changed to not allow it to avoid the following hit after a stun, I’d just like to go through our alternatives (stun breaks) and look at their opportunity costs.

Blinding powder: not a true stunbreak, but an alternative to the current IS/SR since it negates one hit + stealth. 40 second cooldown. Worth it, but I already slotted it in an effort to increase my survivability.

Shadow step: Arguably our best true stunbreak. Already had it equipped when running sword because sitting through any stuns as a thief usually means death. 50sec CD. I have a feeling the cooldown is partly balanced around the condition removal, but I will never use it for that purpose. Its utility as a stunbreak far outweighs its removal. It would be nice to have a shorter cooldown on it since it is 2 breaks at best compared with other classes stunbreaks of relatively close cooldown times which grant stability negating all stuns during that period.

Infiltrators Signet: Very limited utility as a stunbreak. When someone stuns me its usually followed by a close range big attack. The last thing I want to do is shadow step into them. When I slot this, it’s for the offensive capabilities it adds to D/D.

Shadow Trap: This was decent for a 2 month period. It required you to plan ahead in a fight and plant it before you went in if you were going to use it as a stunbreak. Using it in combat is only useful offensively due to its short rollover time. If the rollover time lasted 25-30 seconds I could plant it during a fight and possibly turn the fight around when stunned. I realize that it shadow steps you to your opponent like ISignet but combined with traits it can blind them and stealth you followed by a short offensive boost. Please look into lengthening the rollover time.

Haste: I will never use this a a defensive stunbreak since it completely negates sustain after use. Endurance is taken away and evade frames seem to be reduced as well. If you use it, you’d better be able to kill your opponent in the next 2 or so hits because the follow through to the stun and a few auto attacks which you can no longer dodge will most likely kill you.

RFI: Pretty decent functionally. 1 dodge which removes movement impairing conditions and returns enough initiative to use C&D or maybe a Shortbow IA. Cooldown is way too long for me to consider slotting it. Half of the current CD would make me consider it.

Daggerstorm: Not a stunbreak, but as our only source of stability I’ll sometimes pop it and dodge cancel it for just the stability when fighting a CC heavy class.

That’s it and this list includes 2 non-stunbreaks. If you want to reduce the effectiveness of IS/IR, please look into improving our stunbreaks or attaching a stunbreak to other skills. Signet of agility would be a prime candidate as it would break stun and refill endurance instantly adding sustain to a plethora of thief builds. Take away the condi cure or something if you think it would be too effective, but that part only affects the functionality of a single ele dodge roll.

Thanks for reading. Sorry if I forgot any.