Guild Wars 2

draxynnic.3719:

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 agree; actually from a PvP perspective I’d prefer any of the master minors in Shadow, Acrobatics, or Trickery to Opportunist. Critical Strikes is all about the passive stats and grandmaster traits, Opportunist is still ok but the major masters are all blah and the adept tier stuff is ok but not exactly a selling point. If I wasn’t going to 30 in Critical Strikes I wouldn’t bother with the line at all.

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.

exactly! i feel the same way cuz i just tried Mace+GS and my easiest victims are thieves! after my 1st skullcrack, theyre forced to breakstun (shadowstep) then when my nxt mace skullcrack hits again! switch to GS 100Blades! and the poor zerker thief’s 70%-80% HP just melted LOL

So…what this is telling is…you’re going to nerf thief again in every conceivable way you can get away with to make the class useless, EXCEPT you’re going to increase base initiative recovery rate.

1. Init recovery increase…Okay, thanks.

2. Removing infiltrator’s return’s stunbreak = forcing a low HP, glassy profession to stay within range of a stunspammer or any number of other melee enemies that can and will crush the thief EXTREMELY easily if the thief lacks some way to escape from melee range quickly each time (or evade)…and it’s not like we can swap weapons faster than every 10 seconds, assuming black powder or head shot would even be enough to save us (which won’t matter if we’re STUNNED anyway). Nobody in their right minds would ever use sword main again on thief because it would have NO useful escape.

3. Infusion of shadow…another thief nerf coming down the road.

4. Flanking strikes…and another thief nerf.

5. Vigor and bountiful theft…so you’re going to nerf thief vigor access so they can’t really dodge quite as often. Why would anyone want to reduce the evasive abilities of a profession that is an damage/evade/escape/glass by design, unless they want to make the profession more useless? Same as infiltrator’s return: We have limited access to useful stunbreaks while several classes have access to many stuns on much shorter cooldowns than all of our stunbreaks except infiltrator’s return.

The summary: You’re going to rob thief of every functional dodging and stunbreaking boon they have access to and turn them into worthless squishy warriors without the meaningful escape abilities that allow them to survive.

Nobody will play sword main if they can’t escape with it. Pigeonholed.

Everyone will find good builds to counter dagger main. Pigeonholed.

Fewer people will use vigor builds or bother with the vigor trait because halving the duration makes it far less useful. Pigeonholed.

GJ.

Mrbig.8019:

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.

Disagree. I always considered S/? a utility weaponset much like the SB at least in WvW. The feel of S/? blends well with D/D. The utility of Infiltrator’s Strike and Flanking Strike should not be underestimated in a roamer build. I switch to S/D when roaming now and will continue to do so especially since Infiltrators Strike is a much better gap closer than HS or Infiltrators Arrow.

JonPeters.5630:

Please respond to some of the more serious, well reasoned arguments concerning this change. There have been a dozen solid arguments as to why this is a bad idea, which take into consideration how S/D is forced to Spec and gear if it wants to remain effective, and also how thief was designed as part of the lowest Base HP pool in the game, with no way to block, go immune or psuedo-immune, no access to protection or stability.

When you make a statement like this, it is important to re-read the original post in general about how to give feedback. I appreciate the passion here, but literally this breaks every rule that I laid down.

How to give good feedback and what to expect.

• Be constructive. If you think a change may cause issues, say why and give examples. Try not to argue with others – make your point and then accept that other people may have different points of view.
• Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!
• Be specific. “I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B”. The more specific you are, the better we are able to understand where you’re coming from, what type of content you play, and it helps us to understand the context for your feedback.
• Be objective. Keep in mind that just because you may not like something, that doesn’t make it bad. Others may have differing opinions. They may play a different type of content, or they may play a different profession, so be objective and keep in mind – we have to balance the game for EVERYONE, not just you.
• Be respectful. This goes for your fellow community members as well as for devs. Respect the ideas and opinions of others.
• Be mindful of scope. These are the changes we are trying to get in for the Dec. 10th balance patch. That doesn’t leave us with time to rework entire classes, or redesign entire weapon sets with this update. Keep scope/work/time/resources in mind when you make your suggestions.
• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.

Since my above post breaks the wall of text rule I’ll post the TL; DR here:

Thief stunbreaks are insuficient to cover the proposed changes to sword and vigor. I already feel pigeonholed into 2 specific ones for survivability. More need to be added and the current ones improved. Specifics included in other post.

Straegen.2938:

Mrbig.8019:

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.

Disagree. I always considered S/? a utility weaponset much like the SB at least in WvW. The feel of S/? blends well with D/D. The utility of Infiltrator’s Strike and Flanking Strike should not be underestimated in a roamer build. I switch to S/D when roaming now and will continue to do so especially since Infiltrators Strike is a much better gap closer than HS or Infiltrators Arrow.

This capability and more defensive capabilities could now be better accomplished by D/D + D/P which won’t have the stigma of permastealth anymore.

JonPeters.5630:

this is currently the only instant weapon ability

I really, really, really hope you are only talking about thief weapon abilities. Cough Mesmer Staff #2 has the exact same functionality Cough. Wanna know why it doesn’t have a cast time though? Cause if it did it would severely hinder the survivability of mesmer. Imagine that.

JonPeters.5630:

Please respond to some of the more serious, well reasoned arguments concerning this change. There have been a dozen solid arguments as to why this is a bad idea, which take into consideration how S/D is forced to Spec and gear if it wants to remain effective, and also how thief was designed as part of the lowest Base HP pool in the game, with no way to block, go immune or psuedo-immune, no access to protection or stability.

When you make a statement like this, it is important to re-read the original post in general about how to give feedback. I appreciate the passion here, but literally this breaks every rule that I laid down.

How to give good feedback and what to expect.

• Be constructive. If you think a change may cause issues, say why and give examples. Try not to argue with others – make your point and then accept that other people may have different points of view.
• Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!
• Be specific. “I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B”. The more specific you are, the better we are able to understand where you’re coming from, what type of content you play, and it helps us to understand the context for your feedback.
• Be objective. Keep in mind that just because you may not like something, that doesn’t make it bad. Others may have differing opinions. They may play a different type of content, or they may play a different profession, so be objective and keep in mind – we have to balance the game for EVERYONE, not just you.
• Be respectful. This goes for your fellow community members as well as for devs. Respect the ideas and opinions of others.
• Be mindful of scope. These are the changes we are trying to get in for the Dec. 10th balance patch. That doesn’t leave us with time to rework entire classes, or redesign entire weapon sets with this update. Keep scope/work/time/resources in mind when you make your suggestions.
• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.

Here it is the constructive feedback you want.
__________________________________________________________________

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

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

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

Without smurf accounts.

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

1. Initiative changes

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

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

Now overall max ini regen will be nerfed.

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

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

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

2. Inf strike-shadow return

You’re killing sword thieves with this change.

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

Those professions won’t be nerfed enough.

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

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

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

3. Flanking strikes.

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

We’re not wars, nor engies, nor necros, nor spirit rangers.
keep this in mind, because it seems you’ve forgotten it.

4. Vigor

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

Sorry for the long post.

Infiltrator’s Return (1/4 casting time) – It stops you from using this skill while stunned.

after Dec.10 patch. just wondering what will happened to your zerker thief when a hammer Warrior jumps on you and while your long cooldown breakstun is on CD?

OR just wondering when a Mace skullcrack caught you cuz it only have 8secs short cooldown while your breakstun is 50secs. then 100Blades! i only think one way how to survive! ALT – F4!

only viable build to play after this dec.10 patch is D/D burst, 30 trickery D/P Burst and P/D or D/D condition

Jon, we are pointing out the flaws in solutions that are proposed to the sword’s skill number 2 and opportunity/initiative in general. We are not in any ways denying the existence of the problems and existence of reasons behind every change.
It is just that none of the given reasons justifies exactly the changes that are proposed. Instead of providing a 1) measurable goal; 2) instruments by which we can judge the success of solution; 3) a prognosis of impact of the solution; we are being given the plain reasons over and over again. The ones we were all aware of before this topic started.
Reasons that are being pointed out only speak of the NEED OF SOLUTION. None of them requires the exact very solutions that are proposed.

Following your rules:

Opportunist change:

• You expect this change to accomplish A —> release the profession from the mandatory 15points in CS trait line;
  but I think it will actually accomplish B —> make deep critical builds less effective with a not needed nerf.
• Make ICD reverse scaling with points spent will kill two birds with one stone.

General
I think thieves have little build diversity because of how some skills are designed.

Venoms:

• Venomous Aura should not be put with Shadow’s Rejuvenation and it should have a much larger radius (like shouts) to be actually usable in combat
• Venoms should last a given number of seconds – no charges.

Traps:

• Triwire should work as “Line of Warding” (guardian’s staff wall) – once triggered, for a given time (5 seconds ?) it should knockdown every enemy that crosses it.
• Needle Trap should affects up to 5 enemies in it’s radius.
• There should be this trait: “Trapped Ground – traps use ground targeting”

Thank you.

In my opinion Jon, thieves in this post have put into print some very concise, specific, respectful opinions about infiltrator’s strike. It is a wall of text, but only because there are hundreds of posts saying that it is a grave mistake to give it casting time.

The best suggestion I’ve seen in this thread suggested that the teleport stomping is a game mechanics problem rather than a class skill problem. The failing mechanic is that the game only checks the proximity of the players at the start and end of the stomp. If the game mechanics checked the player locations during the stomp then that would fix the issue of players not being at the down location during a stomp. Please considering deferring this change and fixing the mechanics in a future patch.

Look at it this way, Skull Crack is 8 sec cd which means a 100b for roughly 80% of your hp unless the warrior is zerker (in which case its a 1hko).
IS is a 5-initiative displacement. At .75 ini/sec, that means ~7 seconds you aren’t able to do ANYTHING but autoattack.
Ask yourselves— Is that really so “OP”?

Oh, and if you say yes, then I expect to be compensated with heavy armor high hp and/or perma prot/regen and more condi cleanses.

Topic: Combine Hard To Catch with Uncatchable to encourage use.

Expected Result: Promote build diversity by increasing the appeal of HTC that is under used in it’s current form.

Thoughts: There are complaints that HTC does not provide enough of a defensive benefit to validate taking over other options. Adding a cripple to your target / porting away could be what this trait needs to see more use than currently.

Counterplay: Do I hobble over to my target and then continue the onslaught giving them some breathing room in the moments it takes to catch up to them, or do I use a condition removal to keep the pressure up and stick to my target?
(I really like how this would still preserve the flavor and original intent of the skill.)

Scope: I know it would be very difficult to generate a new trait to fill the gap of one of the previous ones in time for the patch. (Although I am sure you guys have several traits in the think tank that have not made it to us yet & I await new options with baited breath)

Context: I don’t believe the thief is performing “very well” in the current state of the game. Especially when compared to the current form of the Necro and the Warrior. (The S/D thief is the exception with sprinkled use of D/P which both are being addressed)

Ease of Balance: Balance by adjusting:
1. The ICD
2. The Range of the shadowstep
3. The duration of condition(s) applied.

Skewed Perspective: I would also like to give some perspective on my own experience in GW2. I have some limited experience on Guardian & Warrior. I spend the most of my time logged in on my Thief. I have not reviewed the changes to the other classes extensively. (Just a glance over since this is not the final patch notes and I would rather keep my focus where my expertise is at)

Thank you for your time.

Closing Shout Out of Appreciation: Thank you for giving out seasonal cards & in game gifts to players. I never feel more appreciated than when you open communications/ show your players that you do appreciate them in a verbal/tangible way that can be looked back on and further appreciated.

What about giving 1/2s cast time on shadow return but make it usable on stun??

Ok let me make it short

1) Hard To Catch is useless no matter where you put it. Tested it with stability and If you get hit by a disable skill with stab you get teleported.
+ its to a random location

2) Mesmer Staff 2 does the same thing as thief sword 2 except it has a low 10s cd

3)There is no reason to touch vigour when other class have perma vigour

4)No condi removal trait except in SA line and pain response. forcing us to go into SA for the condi removal in stealth

Re-posting my thoughts on the changes to Opportunist from the main thread regarding the proposed December 10th changes. Hoping for increased visibility in a Thief centric discussion.

I still feel that Opportunist changes won’t impact most thieves, and that the initiative changes are fine in general, but this will be a serious blow to the pistol/pistol playstyle, which is already under performing.
______________________________

Please reconsider the ICD change on Opportunist. Pistol/Pistol thieves are generally very initiative starved, because the only skill which plays heavily into their direct damage playstyle is Unload. Opportunist is the only trait which keeps Unload builds viable.

The baseline change to Initiative is not sufficient to offset this loss, and the changes to other initiative generating abilities downright cripple Unload thieves. Here’s some supporting math:

Unload takes roughly 2 seconds and uses 5 initiative, or 2.5 initiative per second. 2.5 initiative gain per second would be what a thief needs to run this ability permanently.
Let’s assume a thief has 75% crit chance. This makes opportunist much more useful on an Unload thief, because the rapid hit succession of the ability gives it more chances to trigger.

Currently, if the thief can land the 4 Unload shots that occur in 1 second, they have a 64% chance to gain 1 initiative in 1 second of Unload Shots. This is .64 initiative per second.

The proposed trait that changes Opportunist to have an ICD of 5 seconds means that if the thief triggered this perfectly, once every 5 seconds, they could gain .2 initiative per second. That’s a loss of .44 initiative per second, which is a bigger loss than the .25 initiative gain from the baseline initiative changes. Current net loss is .19 iniative per second for Unload thieves. This may seem trivial, but that’s the net loss BEFORE you consider the compensating nerf to other initiative generating abilities that most unload thieves rely on. When those are factored in, it becomes evident that Unload thieves are severely hamstrung by this proposed change.

In the interest of not taking a currently difficult, but still viable and entertaining play style option away from Thieves, I’d like to request that your reconsider the proposed changes to Opportunist. Unload Thieves have it tough enough. Let’s not bury the hatchet on these poor guys.

Thanks for your attention.

JonPeters.5630:

*Snip

A) Summary of patch preview

- Vigor nerf
- Sword ‘2’ Nerf
- Infusion of shadows nerf
- Initiative overhaul (there is NO BUFF to critical line, in fact it’s a nerf)
- Some minor buffs and useless buffs to traits.

I won’t be writing about the nerfs on IR since majority of the people already told you that it’s a mistake.

There has been nothing but absolute skepticism like how IR is being abused for stomping or initiative overhaul is a masssssive buff.

B) What sort of buffs do you have intended for thieves that will improve the meta? None (that I can see).

Buffs that does “something”.

- Is there EVEN one this patch???

Questionable buffs (meaning it’s probably useless).

- Initiative Overhaul. Maybe, maybe not. Some forum users already pointed out critical trait users will get a nerf, not a buff. Nothing else to note other than some obscure trait line users may stand to benefit.

- Pistol whip separation. Who know is it will work. Only testable under live patch.

- Critical Haste. As long as there’s an ICD, this thing is considered as RNG. I will be surprised if someone wants to use it. Other than spamming auto attacks, I’m not sure how anyone can take advantage of this.

- Practiced Tolerance. Nothing that impacts the thieves survivability. Our main survival skill set is through stealth and dodging.

Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s. I have no idea if this trait is even useful compared to picking vigorous recovery.

Useless changes -

Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Nerfing it to be as worse than opportunist as a master skill without any buffs. If you spent the same amount of time buffing thieves traits instead of wasting time to defend IR’s and how “buffed” our thieves are going to be next patch, we might be inclined to believe you and your patch.

Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Heals for 100 HP per initiative spent (after buff). Only 3 times lousier than Shadow’s rejuvenation.

Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Whatever. Someone already even wrote an acronym for it (garbage).

Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Nerf
Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Nerf

C) Nerfs discussion

- Majority hates IR change.
- Quite a few players thinks initiative overhaul doesn’t change anything to meta gameplay, no it’s not the most controversial change, it’s the IR and 50% vigor nerf.
- Our survivability is into the toilet.
- Many thieves expressing time to reroll statement.
- Quite a number of us thinks you devs don’t know what you’re talking about with IR “stomping issues” and initiative overhaul = massive buff.

D) Personal opinion

- Why are you wasting our time? This patch is anti-thief. It comes with a nerf bat with utterly no buffs that will really lead us to diverse builds (because TRAITS/weapon sets are the ones doing that, not initiative overhaul) or even meta changing things.

Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait.

- Grandmaster trait assassin’s reward VS Warrior’s master trait Adrenal health (100 HP/Second 1 second init recovery vs 133HP/second at T3 adrenaline).

Warrior skull crack vs Basilisk venom. What excuses do you have for for a 3 seconds stun for a 10 seconds cooldown vs 1.5 seconds stun for 45 seconds cooldown and has a 1 second casting time?

- Moving around of traits, but it’s a time waster. Why are you trying to move traits that don’t change meta gameplay? Waste of effort and time. If you bothered making real changes with buffs to it we can discuss things.

PS: I just want to ask, are you devs really trying to help us thieves? Or nerf us because of forum pressure? It doesn’t help when you tell us you got limited resources to “balance” things especially when you understand so little about thieves. It’s so kitten biased when it comes to warriors I just want to flip tables.

I already stated my suggestions here (2 other different posts), so I won’t be stating it again.

Daendur.2357:

Following your rules:

Opportunist change:

• You expect this change to accomplish A —> release the profession from the mandatory 15points in CS trait line;
  but I think it will actually accomplish B --> make deep critical builds less effective with a not needed nerf.
• Make ICD reverse scaling with points spent will kill two birds with one stone.

General
I think thieves have little build diversity because of how some skills are designed.

Venoms:

• Venomous Aura should not be put with Shadow’s Rejuvenation and it should have a much larger radius (like shouts) to be actually usable in combat
• Venoms should last a given number of seconds – no charges.

Traps:

• Triwire should work as “Line of Warding” (guardian’s staff wall) – once triggered, for a given time (5 seconds ?) it should knockdown every enemy that crosses it.
• Needle Trap should affects up to 5 enemies in it’s radius.
• There should be this trait: “Trapped Ground – traps use ground targeting”

Thank you.

Venom having duration might sound good but in practice with venom share, it would be too strong. Think about having 5 ppl all with basilisk venom or devourer venom and tab targeting or aoeing the other team

Maugetarr.6823:

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.

100% agree with this. In fact, I’ve pretty much repeated the same thing in a thread I just made (doh!)

LoneWolfie.1852:

JonPeters.5630:

*Snip

A) Summary of patch preview

- Vigor nerf
- Sword ‘2’ Nerf
- Infusion of shadows nerf
- Initiative overhaul (there is NO BUFF to critical line, in fact it’s a nerf)
- Some minor buffs and useless buffs to traits.

I won’t be writing about the nerfs since majority of the people already told you that it’s a mistake.

There has been nothing but absolute skepticism like how IR is being abused for stomping or initiative overhaul is a masssssive buff.

B) What sort of buffs do you have intended for thieves that will improve the meta? None (that I can see).

Buffs that does “something”.

- Is there EVEN one this patch???

Questionable buffs (meaning it’s probably useless).

- Initiative Overhaul. Maybe, maybe not. Some forum users already pointed out critical trait users will get a nerf, not a buff. Nothing else to note other than some obscure trait line users may stand to benefit.

- Pistol whip separation. Who know is it will work. Only testable under live patch.

- Critical Haste. As long as there’s an ICD, this thing is considered as RNG. I will be surprised if someone wants to use it. Other than spamming auto attacks, I’m not sure how anyone can take advantage of this.

- Practiced Tolerance. Nothing that impacts the thieves survivability. Our main survival skill set is through stealth and dodging.

Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s. I have no idea if this trait is even useful compared to picking vigorous recovery.

Useless changes -

Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Nerfing it to be as worse than opportunist as a master skill without any buffs. If you spent the same amount of time buffing thieves traits instead of wasting time to defend IR’s and how “buffed” our thieves are going to be next patch, we might be inclined to believe you and your patch.

Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Heals for 100 HP per initiative spent (after buff). Only 3 times lousier than Shadow’s rejuvenation.

Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Whatever. Someone already even wrote an acronym for it (garbage).

Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Nerf
Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Nerf

C) Nerfs discussion

- Majority hates IR change.
- Quite a few players thinks initiative overhaul doesn’t change anything to meta gameplay, no it’s not the most controversial change, it’s the IR and 50% vigor nerf.
- Our survivability is into the toilet.
- Many thieves expressing time to reroll statement.
- Quite a number of us thinks you devs don’t know what you’re talking about with IR “stomping issues” and initiative overhaul = massive buff.

D) Personal opinion

- Why are you wasting our time? This patch is anti-thief. It comes with a nerf bat with utterly no buffs that will really lead us to diverse builds (because TRAITS/weapon sets are the ones doing that, not initiative overhaul) or even meta changing things.

Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait.

- Grandmaster trait assassin’s reward VS Warrior’s master trait Adrenal health (100 HP/Second 1 second init recovery vs 133HP/second at T3 adrenaline).

Warrior skull crack vs Basilisk venom. What excuses do you have for for a 3 seconds stun for a 10 seconds cooldown vs 1.5 seconds stun for 45 seconds cooldown and has a 1 second casting time?

- Moving around of traits, but it’s a time waster. Why are you trying to move traits that don’t change meta gameplay? Waste of effort and time. If you bothered making real changes with buffs to it we can discuss things.

PS: I just want to ask, are you devs really trying to help us thieves? Or nerf us because of forum pressure? It doesn’t help when you tell us you got limited resources to “balance” things especially when you understand so little about thieves.

I already stated my suggestions here, so I won’t be stating it again.

We are doomed

I dont think so they are going to consider any buff to thieves.

My 50 cent…

They way initiative regaining by Black Powder and Heartseeker works now needed to be changed basically thieves are able now to gain long periods of stealth with just 2 buttons and effectively no initiative or cooldown cost, anyone with half a brain saw that nerf coming and it is needed, if you do something you pay in initiative or cooldowns that is the unerlying design principle, you do not get stuff for free. NOW PLEASE TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT WARRIORS APPLYING THAT PRINCIPLE.

33% more initiative regeneration: HAHA to good to be true, no complaints there.

S/D is overrated and a gimmick at best, we all know it, warriors do it 10 times better. The gimmick now gets removed no big deal. And the return part in conjunction with the on crit initiative refund was basically another “free” move, the only alternative to the upcoming changes would be a drastic increase in initiative cost for the 2 skill.

Damage and initiative are not the problem thieves have, nor will the reduced uptime on vigor have any overwhelming effect, basically you can spam evades and dodge without vigor traits anyway.

The problems thieves have are simple, no reliable way to get stability and/or protection without Lysaa runes or useing daggerstorm canceling (both severely limits choices in your build).
In a lot of aspects of the game there are situations where it is absolutely crucial for you to stay on a spot, ride out a damage spike or when even 1 knockback will instantly kill you. This is why the total imunities some proffesions have are so incredably strong, having no damage migitation (protection) no way to directly avoid knockbacks etc. withoutmoving (stability) or a absolut imumity (this should not be in the game anyway, especially if you can still use skills etc. during that imunity) is a huge disadvantage, one can go without 1 or 2 of the above options but not without all of them. Just look at rangers they have it even worse because of the very same reasons plus bad mobility.
So give us one or two of those options. (I suggest traits like: Gain protection if disabled for 3 sec, instead of a random teleport that will just kill you, or gain stability for 3 sec when you fall below 33% health on a 60 sec internal cooldown…).

Honestly, if Doom/SkullCrack/Updraft weren’t instant-casts, I would actually promote the IS change minus the cast time. It would encourage you to actually port back to dodge the stun/fear, as I often do to dodge Eviscerates or bait out Mind-Wracks. But in this current state of the game the mere thought is just outrageous.

Avoiding mostly reaction on the constructive feedback given and picking out those that aren’t seems to derail from your own view to discuss the balance with the small amount of time available.

With that said a lot of strong points have been made throughout this thread that have plenty substance for discussion.

The problems with thief variety and substain lie in the amount of options we have,

Currently thief only gains substain (or survivability ) either through speccing for mass avoidance or speccing deep into Shadow arts through stealth benefits, both of these forms of substain rely heavily on initiatve regen, and already set builds in stone for limited options.

The same can be said for Utilities to compensate in that direction, as a thief is often forced to take at least two slots for defense, leaving one truely for the said utility.

This again leaves a lot of Ultities and related traits unused again pidgeonholing the thief class in a certain direction, to top it off a thief that specs into power is pretty much forced to go deep in Critical strikes to even be a threath, and those that go condition are forced to increase their durations and lack options of condition overload if they want to have any form of substain ( survival ) left.

This means that if you truely want more variety and substain ( survival ) for a thief, you need to link these unused traits like traps and venoms more to traits and benefits to go all out with these while maintaining forms of pressure and substance overall for a form of survival to see more play of the unused utilities, however what truely would open build varierty is creating options by spreading condi-removal, healthgain, damage boosts, condition option traits all across the board while leaving the strongest forms deeper and into their subjected lines.

Regarding the changes listed for 10 december i already posted my view on it before but i don’t mind listing them again.

Regarding the changes on Initiative regeneration, it seems a step forward to increase our base regeneration and take it away from speccing heaviliy into traits to compensate, however a lot of these traits that will be changed will become extreemly lackluster and will give you a good oppertunity to either fully rework them or add side effects to compensate, Quick recovery mainly comes into mind for such a rework/add on.

Regarding limiting avoidance by cutting vigor, this in the overall picture is a good change but for a thief who already lacks the tools for substain it will hit us kitten longterm fights, but generally speaking no class should be able to maintain perma-vigor, i feel that rangers and thiefs might be hit to kitten this while mesmers stay unscatted, however it is good to see you stear from the extreem duration cut already.

As for Infusion of shadow this is a change done right and i don’t have much more to add on this.

Then we come onto Trickster that wants to be moved down, if this does happen i suggest to swap it with a dead trait like Instinctual responses and rework that later.
However the true problem of Trickster is the ability to fully utilise this trait and for that you need to link traps themselves and traits regarding traps onto survival, so utilites taken for survival can make room for creative trap utiliy builds, the same should be regarded when it comes to venoms.

Then we come to sword, by limiting the avoidance and lowering the initiative gain that these builds specced heavy into you already cut out a lot of it’s effect, and adding a delay on the return only seems to create ackward play and take away from the smooth play that this setup requires to be succesfull.

When going deeper into specific trait changes, one cannot seem to ignore the willingness to push Hard to catch into play with the mindset it adds survival, however as already mentioned a lot of times the current version of this trait will not add survival but rather add inconvience and take away from forward play, as i stated earlier if you want to push this for survival add 2-3 seconds of evade/invul on this and it will see play, however the 30 seconds cd might have to be upped to 40-45 then.

Then we still have traits like Critical haste being buffed, while it’s nice that the proc change is upped the duration has not been changed since the quickness change, and this trait will likely still not see much play if any play over other more important options.

There’s probably still many more things to list and comment on but for now i will leave it at this.

Jumper.9482:

Honestly, if Doom/SkullCrack/Updraft weren’t instant-casts, I would actually promote the IS change minus the cast time. It would encourage you to actually port back to dodge the stun/fear, as I often do to dodge Eviscerates or bait out Mind-Wracks. But in this current state of the game the mere thought is just outrageous.

from what I read, they increased cast time on skullcrack by 0.25 to 0.5s. that’s still pretty much instant cast but better than before I guess. not sure about doom or updraft though.

Sandrox.9524:

Kaon.7192:

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.

Basically you saying “anet you killed S/D thieves so why dont you just remove thief sword as a playable weapon?”

Hell no you P/D,D/D thief will not get this buff on S/D thieves behalf

Your blind loyalty to a single weaponset is… unhealthy.

All other Thief builds sorely need access to something like the current SR that can mitigate stuns reactively, because we overwhelmingly lack passive CC immunity, damage tanking, and sustain options. If SR is nerfed to no longer being able to activate while stunned, we will loose even this sole option.

The change I suggested would grant every Thief build an extra stun breaker (maybe just instant displacement + traitable stun break?) that can be used after Steal.

It’d be easier to balance than the Initiative based Shadow Return in Infil since Steal is cooldown based, and vastly improve build variety through:

1) Making Trickery a better survivability line
2) Freeing up an utility slot in all Thief builds usually reserved for a stun breaker
3) Giving every Thief build access to a disengage mechanic that’s necessary for survival without access to CC immunity or damage mitigation or high sustain

My problem with thief class and every change they have ever made to the class is that build diversity has been shrinking with every patch.

Just because you nerf opportunist doesn’t mean we are aren’t going to go 30 points into CS. You pretty much have to or you won’t do damage as a thief. So any build running 30CS is going to get a huge nerf and nothing in return for it. Better base init regen by 33% but all init regen traits have been nerfed by 33%-50%. So overall, the actual changes to init generation is a nerf not a buff. You took away a big bone and gave us a smaller one to play with.

Nerfing sword #2, who will play sword main hand anymore other than crazy people who like making the game harder for themselves?

These changes are making all thief builds shift towards d/p trickery in spvp.

Thief in wvw is going to be dead with the “perma stealth” changes. They literally have no other defense other than stealth. Take that away and you are left with free points.

Mr. Peters, you make it incredibly frustrating to play this game as a thief with your “balance” patches.

“Your blind loyalty to a single weaponset is… unhealthy.”

Yes it is. Sticking to a specific weaponset is unhealthy but I have legendary sword and dagger.
It took 9 months to get them and I am not going to reroll.
Everything were a waste of lifetime. Farming legendaries, ascended weaponsets, gear AND discussions with devs…..
I am sorry but it is the truth.

JonPeters.5630:

• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.

Looks like some people need to be more objective. You’re giving warriors a 5% conversion increase to power based on toughness. Talking about power creep.

Time to find another game

JonPeters.5630:

Please respond to some of the more serious, well reasoned arguments concerning this change. There have been a dozen solid arguments as to why this is a bad idea, which take into consideration how S/D is forced to Spec and gear if it wants to remain effective, and also how thief was designed as part of the lowest Base HP pool in the game, with no way to block, go immune or psuedo-immune, no access to protection or stability.

When you make a statement like this, it is important to re-read the original post in general about how to give feedback. I appreciate the passion here, but literally this breaks every rule that I laid down.

How to give good feedback and what to expect.

• Be constructive. If you think a change may cause issues, say why and give examples. Try not to argue with others – make your point and then accept that other people may have different points of view.

This was done a dozen times – I was simply asking you to read some of those responses that were constructive and respond to them.

• Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!

Same as above – why flood the thread with arguments repeated a dozen times? I thought it would be easier to simply reference that these concise, constructive arguments had been made, and yet to be replied to

• Be specific. “I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B”. The more specific you are, the better we are able to understand where you’re coming from, what type of content you play, and it helps us to understand the context for your feedback.

Same as above

• Be objective. Keep in mind that just because you may not like something, that doesn’t make it bad. Others may have differing opinions. They may play a different type of content, or they may play a different profession, so be objective and keep in mind – we have to balance the game for EVERYONE, not just you.

The questions were concerning how S/D thief was intended to survive, with all the changes proposed and how it plays now – the posts were as objective as possible.

• Be respectful. This goes for your fellow community members as well as for devs. Respect the ideas and opinions of others.

How was I disrespectful? I was polite, used polite tone, was not dismissive or rude – all I did was ask you to respond to the IR changes and the communities arguments against it. In fact, Looking through your post history, I’ve seen you quote users who were more rude/dismissive to you than I have been, and continue to be, with no admonishment of their tone – that feels kind of like I’m being singled out.

• Be mindful of scope. These are the changes we are trying to get in for the Dec. 10th balance patch. That doesn’t leave us with time to rework entire classes, or redesign entire weapon sets with this update. Keep scope/work/time/resources in mind when you make your suggestions.

How is “Please don’t go through with your proposed IR change” not mindful of scope? If anything, my goal of not having IR get a cast time would reduce your workload.

• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.

Not nerfing something can hardly be called power creep – the skill has been nerfed in the past, but you’re not reversing a buff.

I just don’t see how “Please respond to some of the posts that have offered concise, constructive, objective, polite feedback mindful of scope” could be considered to have violated literally all of the rules you set out at the beginning of this thread. If that’s how I came off, I do apologize, it was not my intention. All I care about is thoroughly examining the IR changes before they go live.

Most importantly, I’d still really like a more open and frank discussion about what the proposed IR changes are going to do to thief – Here is a constructive, concise, polite opinion from a top player mindful of scope – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/8#post3168211

I am not getting any motivation in playing thief class anymore.

Everyday i see a post from Anet leads talking about nerfing thief class.

God sake stop nerfing thief class

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.

Very well said. Listen to this A-Net.

Shogun.7401:

I am not getting any motivation in playing thief class anymore.

Everyday i see a post from Anet leads talking about nerfing thief class.

God sake stop nerfing thief class

Some of us appreciate these changes since they open up new options for thieves. It’s not all about lobbying to get or keep the most overpowered skills.

I’ve already said my piece about these changes and plenty others are saying what I’d already argue about them. I will say, however, that I like the altered shaves to uptime on vigor … seems much more reasonable / build synergistic and can be further nerfed if it is still a problem in the future.

I was wondering though, what about venoms? Not Basilisk venom, because as it is, it’s fine IMO. But the other venoms …

What if they worked similarly to spirits for rangers? Passive chance on hit to apply x listed effect pertaining to the venom with an internal CD. … Then an on use that you can use for yourself and to share venom effect with team mates, should you trait for it. This could make traiting for leeching venoms more powerful if the passive effect could trigger leeching venoms, but depending on ICD and trying to balance out the passive being useful through ICD timers … leeching venoms on passive proc could easily be too strong.

• Skale venom without the passive being able to proc leeching venoms. Giving it maybe a 2 second ICD to apply 1 stack of torment & vulnerability for 5-10 seconds?

• Skale venom with the passive being able to proc leeching venoms. Giving it maybe a 5-10 second ICD that applies 1 stack of torment & vulnerability for 5-10 seconds?

Of course … these numbers can be altered to whatever hell numbers you prefer / find to be more balanced. It’s just an example / suggestion, but it could definitely make venoms feel a bit more worth taking without making them hideously overpowered via venom share.

Sorry if this isn’t the place for off-topic suggestions.

Vi Au.8341:

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

I agree with this, i’d rather have only the infusion fix than any of the proposed changes, especially if it means the balance team will take their time to actually familiarize themselves with the class and thus produce a quality update at a later date.

Maugetarr.6823:

This capability and more defensive capabilities could now be better accomplished by D/D + D/P which won’t have the stigma of permastealth anymore.

S/P will be a great compliment to D/D than D/P after the patch for roamers.

That fast and cheap shadow step with the sword is ridiculously powerful in 1v1 fights particularly around uneven terrain. I wouldn’t use the S/? as my up close attack but it is great as an opener and gap closer. Also nice when going in against certain builds like guardians.

The one thing that scare me its not those nerfs but the time after the patch. How much time it will take to buff thief to be viable tpvp spec again?

AlexEBT.7240:

Vi Au.8341:

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

I agree with this, i’d rather have only the infusion fix than any of the proposed changes, especially if it means the balance team will take their time to actually familiarize themselves with the class and thus produce a quality update at a later date.

I will vote for this.

Here are my thoughts:

Reasoning behind nerfing perma vigor: too many buffs based on dodging. Its like getting free boons with 1 key stroke with no cast time on a low cd.

Perma-stealth should be stopped by giving revealed everytime initiative is spent. No self-stacking. Thieves may utilize multiple utilities/heal that give stealth to stack but not use their own blast finisher to do so. This would definately stop the abuse of using stealth to reset fights (I strongly feel this is unfair to other classes). They may use it to run and escape but not continually harass.

On the last patch when Anet fixed para sigil which supposed to be “direct” nerf to warriors hurt thieves more!

Pistol whip: 0.5 sec stun nerf (with or without sigil)
Daze shot: 0,75 sec daze nerf (with or without sigil)
Seight of hand: 1 sec daze nerf (with sigil)
Basilisk venom: 0,5 sec stun nerf (with or without sigil)
Tactical strike: 0,5 sec daze nerf (with or without sigil)

and nerf on ls strike to steal only 1 crap buff. Where is the boonhate mechanic which was promised for thieves? What are we doing here?

Sometimes i think we have to start from zero again, because all this number scaling or traitswitching is meaningless if the generell classdesign is questionable at some point.

When i have the thief in mind or let’s say rather the assassin from GW1 i got without thinking much about it 3 possible playstyles in mind that are fitting into that profession (without taking the different weapons into account).

*1. the hit and run glasscannon assassin – find your target (mostly healer or other low hp low armour guys) -> get to them (by invis or shadowstep or however) -> use your spells/attacks which should deal massive burst to nuke them down in secounds b4 they can escape or call for help -> try to get out there alife, since you are deep into the enemys territory (to get out alife is the difference between a good thief and a mediocre one, not to deal enough dmg that should be done by the build/traits).

*2. the sneaky annoying guy – (for example like the s/d was b4 the nerf) deal with your enemys by weakening them let it be by stealing their buffs or by apply debuffs, way more surviveabillity than the glasscannon but therfore less direct burst damage, letting their victims suffer and finish them off slowly or drawing attention of the enemys allies. (here it should be the priority of skill to be able to time your debuffs perfectly to be most efficient and maybe even be able to handle 2 guys! the skills/traits should be there to make sure your debuffs and/or buffstealing is a nuisance)

*3. the guy that never dies (for the costs of damage and also taking risks like the shadowform assas from GW1) just being there to interupt the enemys and being a pain in the kitten almost getting 0 damage and survives almost every initiation so your goal is to draw all attention on you. (the trait/skills should make sure you have enough defense in the first place and you make this playstyle better working by your positioning and juking abillitys)

these are the playstyles i have in mind then i think about this profession there can be variations and more complex factors but i think similar have all guys in mind that play this class. what all 3 types got in common is to take care of the keyplayers 1v1 (let it be the glasscannon, healer, tank etc every build handles another kind of keyenemy).

tbh i don’t feel any of this at the moment in GW2 all thiefs have the access to so many abillitys but the things you need for your playstyle you did choose are not effective enough.
lets take for example the D/D backstab thief that was called OP all the time in the forums or ingame. afaik only the player which didn’t altercate with the thief were whinning while the good players know how to counter them but it was hard if the thief was good himself. now every mediocre player can counter the backstab max dmg thief so no reason to play.

Now despite the nerfs you deal to the most popular buidls atm you say you buff the thief in generell by increasing the initiative reg. but for the hitandrun build this isnt even a buff because you want to deal high damage in short periode of time i dont care about being able to “spam” my abillitys….they can be on cooldown 30sec after i finished my job but they should be enough to do this after i used them.

if i want to stay at the front dealing good dps all the time i woudn’t play a thief in the first place…

sorry for the long text not being able to give constructive feedback to the change of numbers or traits since i didn’t play active for half a year or so but im still feeling conected to the game and this profession, and hope there will be changelogs that will bring me back to the game. Thanks for listening

tl;dr – scroll on and ignore if you dont have the time to read all of this^^

I have said it before…

I don’t want thief to have more HP or defense.

I want thief to have more dodges, escapes, etc., because that is what a thief SHOULD be about.

The design should be made to deliver high damage bursts and then escape.

Thief is MEANT to be this way. Glassy, high risk if you get caught, satisfying with the high numbers and quick kills IF you earn it by being good enough to use it properly.

The original design is built around that concept. However, every time a stunbreak gets removed or nerfed or an evade buff gets reduced (vigor etc.), it’s another step away from that philosophy. And every time our damage gets nerfed, it’s also a step away.

I have looked at traitlines several times and realized that…in most trait lines, there are several GOOD skills…but you can’t have them all. This having trouble choosing between GOOD traits is where the balancing act becomes a personal preference and sacrifice thing. This is also, IMO, important to choosing your profession’s functionality…

I compare trait lines to professions. Each profession is different, but some are better than others right now or have more versatility. Several professions are only good because of one or two skills that ALL of the best players of those professions must have. The imbalance of professions and skills is part of the problem – a few skills (warrior healing signet) are REALLY good…and the alternatives are not as good by a long shot. Warrior is considered OP in current meta by many people for good reason, although a lot of it is based on just a few skills that EVERYBODY runs (pigeonhole effect).

I propose this: Follow the concept of traits, how there are MANY good options that have tradeoffs and sacrifices that come down to personal taste…and make each profession have GREAT options that trade off somewhere. In fact, make EVERY profession OP so they all CAN be OP…vs each other, the effect would be to balance them out. They just have to be played properly to be OP.

Make it like, “gosh this skill is great and that one is great too, I don’t know which one to choose…well this one might benefit this playstyle more, while the other etc. etc..”

Instead of making so many subpar skills, make most/all of them GREAT skills and make them tough to decide between instead of being common sense to avoid (e.g. most thief venoms and traps, etc.).

This is regarding adding a cast time to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Dear Developers:

Most S/D builds rely on vigor and evades to induce damage and mitigate the amount of damage received due to our inherent non-tanky nature. I understand that it does not make sense for a skill to be used while under a stunned state. This is what the current change will do:

• Penalize those players who are not stunned before using IR.
• Reduce our effectiveness of clearing conditions.
• Reduce our survivability
• Increase the cost for using the skill without an equal offset or balance.

If the cast time is a must to keep us from porting while stunned and from being able to chain IS/IR with utility skills and steal to teleport stomp, perhaps the following will help balance the added cast time:

• Increasing the immobilize duration on Infiltrator’s Strike (IS). All but two main-hand weapon skills across all classes have 2s or more immobilize duration. One of those two is Infiltrator’s Strike.
• Increase the amount of conditions cleared upon using IR. As it stands now, condition clearing is very costly for a S/X thief who is not traited for Shadow Arts. Condition bursts seem to be trending and we have no way counter.
• Cutting back on the reduction to vigor. I see that you have decided that your initial quote was too much, but I still think that 6s and 10s from our trait lines is a bit much. I think 7.5s and 12s would be decent in-between.

As a general comment, having high evasion is what separates thieves from other classes that have higher health pools. Using IS/IR to launch an attack is a way for us to lay down some damage before we are stunlocked, dazed, and knocked down by warriors to death.

Thank you for allowing us to comment on and give our objective view points to the upcoming changes.

Vi Au.8341:

Venom having duration might sound good but in practice with venom share, it would be too strong. Think about having 5 ppl all with basilisk venom or devourer venom and tab targeting or aoeing the other team

we are talking about a 30 points traits + 1 elite skill + some other utility burned…. it has to be strong. Not being strong is as it is now, indeed it is hardly used.

For venoms they could even do something like, add stealth upon venom activation cd 30 sec onto Quick venom cd reduction and suddenly a free util slot for a venom and suddenly build varierty into power trait lined condi specs, it’s not that hard to be creative to add build varierty, although the venoms in itself are still lackluster and imo at least need 1 offensive condition on each of em ( burn/confusion/bleed).

Dekk.3459:

JonPeters.5630:

• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.

Looks like some people need to be more objective. You’re giving warriors a 5% conversion increase to power based on toughness. Talking about power creep.

Time to find another game

Do you think they care about this, GW2 doesnt have subscription, they already had your money. So, feel free, to leave, but dont forget to buy toxic armor skin.
At this moment, there is nogamez on market.

It seems Thieves are getting a new utility, in the same vein as a Ranger’s Troll Unguent, but on a super short CD: