Guild Wars 2

Sanduskel.1850:

Zacchary.6183:

Most of the players aren’t complaining about the profession anymore. Thieves melt so easily in this meta that the only ones who use them are diehards.

I disagree. I hear and see them spew hatred for this class all the time.

people hate stealth. its a hard mechanic to fight against. but thieves suck at team play. anything larger than 4v4 is just suicide for thieves. too much incidental dmg and aoe dmg. so thieves are good at 1 v 1 :P. playing against stealth isnt hard…but alot of players arent good so….. Let me put it this way; I cannot remember the last time i was backstabbed. cant remember.

Perma stealth isnt bad. its actually good for the opponents. mad because it gives us a chance to get away? well it gives you the same chance because chaining 52 52 52 makes it impossible to keep up with a fleeing person. if you play against a 52 52 52 player just walk away there is no point…u can still win but not worth it bc they can reset. either way we deal 0 dmg in stealth and take plenty of dmg. perma stealth does nothing but help opponents. yup you heard it. it HELPS opponents.

what exactly does perma stealth do?

1) turns a 4 v 4 into a 4 v 3 (opponents advantage)
2) allows a free cap for your opponents (cant cap while invis)
3) allows opponent to leave and you to stay in a small spot to keep stealthed
4) allows opponent to deal dmg to you without being able to attack them in perma

Thats a pretty nice list for any opponent. You are welcome. From anet.

Doesn’t change the fact that people hate it.

tru tru….. but i hate the fact that eles can just wisp into towers everytime their down. i havent complained once online. ive mentioned it that other skills should dothe same….. but never once will i ask for a nerf. i just leave eles alone or draw them away. u wanna make a perma stealth theif uncomfortable just get him into tighter areas.

perma stealth is no advantage other than saving a few runs back in wvw. seriously not an issue. if u hate it ….thats bc ur not as intelligent or jealous. period. :P no logical/tactical reason to hate “perma”

Well I guess I’ll give up on thief and roll a mesmer. Thanks Anet for making my time into my thief useless.

IDK why anet doesnt see that thieves have no place in this game anymore. the only thing we can do decently…atleast til dec 10th… is ROAM! and roaming doesnt change much.

we have had 2 real buffs

FS/LS
STEAL

the other 200 changes were nerfs. 20 of which were super heavy nerfs. why do you continue to make the game worse aaaaaaaaand worse aaaaaaaaand worse? why not just buff other classes so the game is better…more options…better and stronger classes. i mean i know u have to tone down some things…but a big kitten nerf is just making classes weak. would be nice to have every class strong and leave it to the better PLAYER to win…not the better setup/mechanics/skills. anyway what do i know :P just a player since launch. i main a thief and finishing all my legendaries….1 left. bolt.

Travlane.5948:

IDK why anet doesnt see that thieves have no place in this game anymore. the only thing we can do decently…atleast til dec 10th… is ROAM! and roaming doesnt change much.

we have had 2 real buffs

FS/LS
STEAL

the other 200 changes were nerfs. 20 of which were super heavy nerfs. why do you continue to make the game worse aaaaaaaaand worse aaaaaaaaand worse? why not just buff other classes so the game is better…more options…better and stronger classes. i mean i know u have to tone down some things…but a big kitten nerf is just making classes weak. would be nice to have every class strong and leave it to the better PLAYER to win…not the better setup/mechanics/skills. anyway what do i know :P just a player since launch. i main a thief and finishing all my legendaries….1 left. bolt.

they have a place in this game. you are overdramatizing. people hate dying to enemies they never see and cannot target. I understand that. that’s why some of us don’t rely on perma stealth. it wrecks the class and draws all these nerfs.

i dont use perma stealth bc its kinda silly. i dont like having to use BPS for invis…kinda risky against a GOOD player lol.

i dont overdramatize anything. there is no instance in anywhere in this game other than scouting…..where i would say ok…id like to take a thief on this team. 5v5 10v10 20v20 50v50 100v100 ….none. not in spvp….tpvp…PVE or WVW. just scouting and making some camp capping. anything a thief does other classes do better AND have more survivability without having to take a time out from fighting. just is what it is.

i dont mind getting rid of perma stealth….i welcome it. i think the init changes are a lil overexaggerated in the sense they are “even” trades for the init regen boost. the math is lopsided in a large overall loss. there is no denying that. but seriously if u would like to make an in game GOLD bet ill show you 200 nerfs. thats prolly around 500 to be real. theres like 15 this coming patch alone. plus all the hotfixes inbetween. 1 year of nerfs. easily 200.

and 200 is only relative to the amount of buffs

now here i am totally guessing but i THINK the buff/nerf ratio:

Thief : for ever 1 buff they get 25 nerfs
Others : for ever 1 buff they get 2-3 nerfs (and thats being generous)

Now i know in the beginning that some of the other classes were ….weaker so its relative to that understanding but still….not THAT much diff.

Sanduskel.1850:

Doesn’t change the fact that people hate it.

And that doesn’t change the fact that some of that hatred is due to a failure to learn on their part.

There are multiple threads and vids showing you how to handle thieves who use stealth and the ever popular “play the class to learn how it works” suggestion which ultimately works with EVERY profession.

Thieves handed everyone the tools just so people would stop crying so you can’t really justify breaking a profession just because people hate something they can handle.

Zacchary.6183:

Sanduskel.1850:

Doesn’t change the fact that people hate it.

And that doesn’t change the fact that some of that hatred is due to a failure to learn on their part.

There are multiple threads and vids showing you how to handle thieves who use stealth and the ever popular “play the class to learn how it works” suggestion which ultimately works with EVERY profession.

Thieves handed everyone the tools just so people would stop crying so you can’t really justify breaking a profession just because people hate something they can handle.

i can handle it just fine. many of the rest of the players simply hate it, and ANET has been nerfing thieves ever since. it doesn’t matter what you think or other perma stealthers think. It’s a hated mechanic, anet called it abuse of the mechanics, and they are changing it. Warriors will eventually get the same treatment. People don’t like to swing at empty air hoping they hit an invisible enemy. it doesn’t matter whether you or I think they are bad players. They make up a large portion of the game, and they likely buy lots of gems for their pve. so anet will listen to them. Welcome to business.

I am happy because eliminated hated mechanics viewed as abusive will allow anet to help this class in ways that are acceptable to the casual player base….who pays the bills.

Don’t you mean “loud minority”? There are hundreds of them in this game. If you havn’t noticed, more people think of thieves as a joke rather than a threat.

I would like to add as an example:

Jagex revamped Runescape’s combat which cause over 50k players to end their subscription. Those 50k players did their best to ruin Jagex’s reputation by spamming youtube and several other sites in protest of the update. Even after 6 months of abuse by these players, Jagex is still standing with an extra game (07scape), a charity going on as well as bonds which players are eating up right now.

The community is now overall a better place because the loud and obnoxious minority (runescape’s PvP community) left.

In this case its quite the opposite since it seems anet is catering to the loud minority. Now you might think it’s just about permastealth which isn’t the problem in and of itself, but really its just general hatred for the profession and any buff will be met with backlash. In the end, thief players will just leave the profession and every new thief player will eventually find out how bad the profession is as a whole because the people who have complained this profession to death finally got what they wanted.

And as a price, this game now has 7.5 professions total.

That’s business for ya.

With the recent and upcoming changes to thieves, I believe you guys should fix Shortbow #1 – trick shot.

The velocity needs to come up to match a ranger’s shortbow because you can literally strafe quickly back and forth in front of a thief within 500r and dodge all his trick shots…It’s also incredibly unreliable to land surprise shots because of this as well.

Please consider bumping up the velocity of the thief’s SB since trick shot no longer tracks.

One word: nightblade

/20char

It was about time Sword 2 got some fixing.

You know, the worst feeling in GW2 is when the enemy does something and naturally you press the counter-to-that button… but in this case, I’m left looking at my skillbar and realizing nothing counters it.
Stun? They zap out.
Root? It gets removed by sword 2 plus teleport.
Gap closers? Mine have a cooldown, Sword 2 doesn’t and is pretty cheap.
They get in, quickly burst, then get away. Rinse and repeat.
Basically the only option is to run away when you get a Thief specced into that.

Mind you, this is not a complaint, I like to fight with Thieves the most and I want them to keep being strong opponents.
I’m just turned off by uncounterables.

Actually you can counter that by getting close to their shadow return spots.

v If they made the return spot visible that would definitely help.

Red Falcon.8257:

It was about time Sword 2 got some fixing.

You know, the worst feeling in GW2 is when the enemy does something and naturally you press the counter-to-that button… but in this case, I’m left looking at my skillbar and realizing nothing counters it.
Stun? They zap out.
Root? It gets removed by sword 2 plus teleport.
Gap closers? Mine have a cooldown, Sword 2 doesn’t and is pretty cheap.
They get in, quickly burst, then get away. Rinse and repeat.
Basically the only option is to run away when you get a Thief specced into that.

Mind you, this is not a complaint, I like to fight with Thieves the most and I want them to keep being strong opponents.
I’m just turned off by uncounterables.

If they shortened the return and made the return spot visible like on shadowstep (utility), would that be a change for the better or worse than the proposed one?

Just trying to give ANet alternate suggestions so input helps.

Thanks.

Zacchary.6183:

Don’t you mean “loud minority”? There are hundreds of them in this game. If you havn’t noticed, more people think of thieves as a joke rather than a threat.

---

I would like to add as an example:

Jagex revamped Runescape’s combat which cause over 50k players to end their subscription. Those 50k players did their best to ruin Jagex’s reputation by spamming youtube and several other sites in protest of the update. Even after 6 months of abuse by these players, Jagex is still standing with an extra game (07scape), a charity going on as well as bonds which players are eating up right now.

The community is now overall a better place because the loud and obnoxious minority (runescape’s PvP community) left.

---

In this case its quite the opposite since it seems anet is catering to the loud minority. Now you might think it’s just about permastealth which isn’t the problem in and of itself, but really its just general hatred for the profession and any buff will be met with backlash. In the end, thief players will just leave the profession and every new thief player will eventually find out how bad the profession is as a whole because the people who have complained this profession to death finally got what they wanted.

And as a price, this game now has 7.5 professions total.

That’s business for ya.

Stealthers aren’t this hated in other games because once they commit to a fight they can’t disappear mid fight. It’s clearly not a minority who hates this. Anet has the facts, and they wouldn’t respond to a minority. I for one, trust anet to do what’s right for the health of the game. They have data, we don’t.

Sanduskel.1850:

Zacchary.6183:

Don’t you mean “loud minority”? There are hundreds of them in this game. If you havn’t noticed, more people think of thieves as a joke rather than a threat.

---

I would like to add as an example:

Jagex revamped Runescape’s combat which cause over 50k players to end their subscription. Those 50k players did their best to ruin Jagex’s reputation by spamming youtube and several other sites in protest of the update. Even after 6 months of abuse by these players, Jagex is still standing with an extra game (07scape), a charity going on as well as bonds which players are eating up right now.

The community is now overall a better place because the loud and obnoxious minority (runescape’s PvP community) left.

---

In this case its quite the opposite since it seems anet is catering to the loud minority. Now you might think it’s just about permastealth which isn’t the problem in and of itself, but really its just general hatred for the profession and any buff will be met with backlash. In the end, thief players will just leave the profession and every new thief player will eventually find out how bad the profession is as a whole because the people who have complained this profession to death finally got what they wanted.

And as a price, this game now has 7.5 professions total.

That’s business for ya.

Stealthers aren’t this hated in other games because once they commit to a fight they can’t disappear mid fight. It’s clearly not a minority who hates this. Anet has the facts, and they wouldn’t respond to a minority. I for one, trust anet to do what’s right for the health of the game. They have data, we don’t.

Players also have facts and data; there’s a multitude of threads where people contribute their calculations, comparisons of like skills, and general number-crunching. Which data, I wonder, is ArenaNet using?

Also, it’s a long-known American idiom that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Minorities can get results, if they’re vocal enough. If they couldn’t, then women probably still wouldn’t have the right to vote, and there would still be segregated drinking fountains.

It is minority now, seeing as how the last batch of thief nerfs combined with the news of the next batch of thief nerfs sparked a movement within the thief community. With the lack of thieves playing thieves, the only people who complain about thieves nowadays are the ones with personal vendettas against the profession (which they are partially to blame for their hatred). The facts are: This profession is in a bad place and is heading in a bad direction. If anet continues down that path, they might as well delete the profession altogether.

They already responded to stealthing multiple times. However, their data is based on paper and not firsthand experience which they have clearly shown they lack. So regardless if they think they knows whats best for the game fact is that w/e it is its misguided.

Now the thief is not so desirable in PvE, very limited in capabilities in WvW and practically useless in PvP. The only people who would touch this class are the inexperienced and diehards.

And stealthers are hated in other games because the physical disappearance of a character requires a different form of skill from reading telegraphs. What kitten es people off the most is when there are no direct counters even though the counters to the stealth mechanic are present albeit requiring some effort.

I seriously don’t know what makes you think everything you believe is right.

Your all right about the silent minority. Like I said alot of the thief community have rerolled or will reroll nightblade come the time.

Atleast the pve monkeys that venture into wvw for achievements (u know the guys who pay anets employee salary by buying mini cute animals and fluffy costumes) will be happy.

E S O – 2014

Is there anyone who thinks the professions in this game are now balanced?

I’m wondering, what is Anet balancing the professions for? sPvP and Tournaments I hope!

Yesterday I was playing 1 v 1 against an Engineer. (Yes I understand that gw2 isn’t balanced around 1 v 1 !!!!!). While I’ve been playing a thief from the start of gw2 actively and got really good at playing Sword/Pistol, I had the feeling that I got facerolled by the Engineer in any situation.

We fought for 5 maps in a row, just 1 v 1. And we both won about 50% of the battles, but the fact that he was playing Engineer for the first time and he didn’t play sPvP at all made me feel sick. I had to use everything in order to survive his lame turrets and condition bombs.
He could heal up all the damage if I didn’t interrupt his heals, which basically made me walk trough condition fields while being crippled. Then I had to regain health after taking his turrets down, re-open my attack and burst everything I had to kill him.

The main reason players hate the Thief would probably be the fact that they can burst damage and disappear. But the only reason why that is, is because its the only way to play a Thief effectively.

1. Go into a fight
2. If the fight can be won use least amount of resources to take target down
3. Otherwise retreat and regain health

First off, wow so much reading.
There is so much justification for everything Anet is doing, I main a thief and am aware of the powerful cookie cutter builds at the moment.
1 thing before my 2 cents is that the strong builds, such as high evade s/d power thief reward Skilled players that understand how to properly manage aftercasts etc, rather than a more faceroll war or guard tank build.

I noticed that you are leaning toward less evasive melee thieves, using the vigor and ini changes, but to do Both to the lowest HP class (Buff HP?), while other classes can upkeep vigor is too much. Your 6s VR vigor and 12s BT vigor was somewhat acceptable, meaning that on a 21s steal and withdraw, a thief can only upkeep vigor by taking both.
Remember that thieves have limited block/stability/protection access, so having evades is not OP, especially when melee evade weapon skills have high aftercast. Also keep in mind, vigor upkeep is maintained by spamming your heal and steal, which is a BAAAAAD idea.
Cond removal lacks in the sense that taking a lot of it means you must have at least 10 SA, 20 AC, Shadowstep and Hide heal meaning you may sacrifice your desired traits and skills, mainly bc of high cds.

My change ideas would be:
-No vigor change yet, vigor upkeep by taking 2 traits is not OP, when other classes have access to it on minor traits.
-Nerf Roll for Initiative’s Ini gain, lower cd to balance (4 Ini, 50sec?)
-There was a good idea about condi transfer (maybe a venom Trickery Adept Major trait? 10s cd), this fits the flow toward party support if it worked with sharing, and makes taking 1 venom more viable without sharing. Venom share not OP at all with no break stun or defensive utility.
-Another good idea posted was a Shadow return chained skill on Steal, I would add an Ini cost or slightly longer steal cd if used. If not used, it is wasted when steal cools down. This may also lead to removal of Shadow return on Shadowstep, for a huge cd cut.
Thank you JonPeters and team for communicating, you could have saved yourself a lot of time and effort by just introducing the changes with no feedback response.

I would also like to add a reply on the thief getting nerfed a lot.
I agree that when the thief gets a buff, it gets a nerf to go with it. Then the buffed area gets nerfed again later.
I understand power creep but the counter to that has been overused in the thief’s case.
Thief could use a little power creep in weaker areas, such as overlooked traits. Remember you are locked to 3 Major traits per line, having 100 powerful traits is not any better than having 10.
In short, maybe look toward seriously buffing less used traits, (little by little to better control it and avoid unwanted OP builds) instead of over-nerfing the other side of the problem, strong traits used in strong builds. At least for now, you can always re-balance later.
I hope that this happens now that perma is basically dead, and good point Travlane, you made me see that if a thief perma stealths, I win.

Sanduskel.1850:

Stealthers aren’t this hated in other games because once they commit to a fight they can’t disappear mid fight. It’s clearly not a minority who hates this. Anet has the facts, and they wouldn’t respond to a minority. I for one, trust anet to do what’s right for the health of the game. They have data, we don’t.

This is absolutely and horrendously incorrect. I’ve developed hundreds of equations to describe a host of various aspects of the game, and in doing so I’ve been both criticized and completely rejected by a number of players who perhaps don’t think that their “amazing skillz” can be changed into numbers. And yet, here we have a case where it is in fact ANet with the numbers, and it’s credible? Certainly, throughout my studies of this game, no one has refuted my calculations, but I’ve received little credit for those whereas ANet is being hailed by people like you as some kind of truth-telling prophet. The truth of the matter is, when you truly understand what the kitten you’re doing when you play this game, it’s really not all that difficult to delve deeper into the mechanics and derive the usefulness of certain skills, utilities, and stats. So please, understand what you’re talking about before making broad, sweeping claims like that.

Travlane.5948:

chaining 52 52 52

You are doing it wrong.

Stealth classes are always hated in every game I’ve ever played. I came from Daoc and in that game you could not stealth in combat. You could perma stealth while out of combat. Stealth classes were by far the weakest class in the game for years before they received any kind of love. They got completely ignore while the rest of Daoc got huge buffs and new skills. All because the vocal community hated stealth.

I feel that’s how it’s going in this game as well. When I play other classes I don’t feel like thieves are OP. In fact I know thier patterns and react to them. I avoid most backstabs. I don’t have problems with other thieves on non-thief class.

In fact the number one class I complain about is mesmers and the class everyone else complains about is mesmers. At least the people that I know who don’t post on the forums. So if anet listens to the forum posters that’s only one small portion of the community. Which is a bad idea. Just because the forums get spammed with nerf thief doesn’t mean the majority feels that way.

I bet Mesmer is the class that everyone hates the most.

@swinsk
Take it from me, Mesmer probably is the most hated in general. Worst part is, Mesmer was never able to perma-stealth, and a goodly number of its stealth tricks can’t be layered for crap, unless you are that up on your timing. Decoy being the exception, since it ignores Revealed. (Hell, Last Refuge should do the same, tbh.)
The funniest part, is that Mesmer’s not a terribly “faceroll” class, you need to know your biz to rock out as one. Of course, the same can be said for Thief … and is the main reason I tend to favor both classes.

@Folk in general.
As for the ongoing IS/Phase Retreat debate: you’re forgetting two small difference here.
PR was never a stun break. Also, can you honestly compare a move that requires an actual (if potentially short) c/d with one that is Initiative-based? You’re dealing with two different resource requirements, here.

Arganthium.5638:

Sanduskel.1850:

Stealthers aren’t this hated in other games because once they commit to a fight they can’t disappear mid fight. It’s clearly not a minority who hates this. Anet has the facts, and they wouldn’t respond to a minority. I for one, trust anet to do what’s right for the health of the game. They have data, we don’t.

This is absolutely and horrendously incorrect. I’ve developed hundreds of equations to describe a host of various aspects of the game, and in doing so I’ve been both criticized and completely rejected by a number of players who perhaps don’t think that their “amazing skillz” can be changed into numbers. And yet, here we have a case where it is in fact ANet with the numbers, and it’s credible? Certainly, throughout my studies of this game, no one has refuted my calculations, but I’ve received little credit for those whereas ANet is being hailed by people like you as some kind of truth-telling prophet. The truth of the matter is, when you truly understand what the kitten you’re doing when you play this game, it’s really not all that difficult to delve deeper into the mechanics and derive the usefulness of certain skills, utilities, and stats. So please, understand what you’re talking about before making broad, sweeping claims like that.

They wrote the code and they receive player feedback. I am sorry, but i trust them far more than I do inherently biased players.

Sanduskel.1850:

They wrote the code and they receive player feedback. I am sorry, but i trust them far more than I do inherently biased players.

Excuse us if we trust the statements of a player who shares the results of his math exercises more then one who makes arguments based on broad, self-sourced but otherwise unverified statements.

Sanduskel.1850:

Arganthium.5638:

Sanduskel.1850:

Stealthers aren’t this hated in other games because once they commit to a fight they can’t disappear mid fight. It’s clearly not a minority who hates this. Anet has the facts, and they wouldn’t respond to a minority. I for one, trust anet to do what’s right for the health of the game. They have data, we don’t.

This is absolutely and horrendously incorrect. I’ve developed hundreds of equations to describe a host of various aspects of the game, and in doing so I’ve been both criticized and completely rejected by a number of players who perhaps don’t think that their “amazing skillz” can be changed into numbers. And yet, here we have a case where it is in fact ANet with the numbers, and it’s credible? Certainly, throughout my studies of this game, no one has refuted my calculations, but I’ve received little credit for those whereas ANet is being hailed by people like you as some kind of truth-telling prophet. The truth of the matter is, when you truly understand what the kitten you’re doing when you play this game, it’s really not all that difficult to delve deeper into the mechanics and derive the usefulness of certain skills, utilities, and stats. So please, understand what you’re talking about before making broad, sweeping claims like that.

They wrote the code and they receive player feedback. I am sorry, but i trust them far more than I do inherently biased players.

Really? I’m willing to bet the people who wrote the code are off writhing more code for the next project. Even with the manpower requirements of mmorpgs a skeleton crew is still left behind. You can tell from arenanet responses, messages hell even the games content that this more than evident here.

To change skills almost completely over a year after launch shows one of two things (maybe both). That the team working now is almost completely different or inexperienced with developing this type of title.

Next you’ll be telling me Floyd mayweather prints his own t shirts down at the factory. It appears it’s you who has no idea what he is talking about. The original back end development team working for gems?! Lol.

Answer this, what was better Halloween 2012 or 2013? Then ask yourself why.

Neoheart.2750:

Sanduskel.1850:

Arganthium.5638:

Sanduskel.1850:

Stealthers aren’t this hated in other games because once they commit to a fight they can’t disappear mid fight. It’s clearly not a minority who hates this. Anet has the facts, and they wouldn’t respond to a minority. I for one, trust anet to do what’s right for the health of the game. They have data, we don’t.

This is absolutely and horrendously incorrect. I’ve developed hundreds of equations to describe a host of various aspects of the game, and in doing so I’ve been both criticized and completely rejected by a number of players who perhaps don’t think that their “amazing skillz” can be changed into numbers. And yet, here we have a case where it is in fact ANet with the numbers, and it’s credible? Certainly, throughout my studies of this game, no one has refuted my calculations, but I’ve received little credit for those whereas ANet is being hailed by people like you as some kind of truth-telling prophet. The truth of the matter is, when you truly understand what the kitten you’re doing when you play this game, it’s really not all that difficult to delve deeper into the mechanics and derive the usefulness of certain skills, utilities, and stats. So please, understand what you’re talking about before making broad, sweeping claims like that.

They wrote the code and they receive player feedback. I am sorry, but i trust them far more than I do inherently biased players.

Really? I’m willing to bet the people who wrote the code are off writhing more code for the next project. Even with the manpower requirements of mmorpgs a skeleton crew is still left behind. You can tell from arenanet responses, messages hell even the games content that this more than evident here.

To change skills almost completely over a year after launch shows one of two things (maybe both). That the team working now is almost completely different or inexperienced with developing this type of title.

Next you’ll be telling me Floyd mayweather prints his own t shirts down at the factory. It appears it’s you who has no idea what he is talking about. The original back end development team working for gems?! Lol.

Answer this, what was better Halloween 2012 or 2013? Then ask yourself why.

Neither. I don’t do pve.

The bottom line is, Anet is going to make changes based on their data and their vision of where they want things to go, profession-wise or anything else in-game.

The only concrete way of trying to make them sit up and notice, is stop buying gems with cash, if that’s something you do. They can ignore pleas and rational posts with hard data all day long, and it costs them nothing. You can bet they will start taking notice when their cash flow slows a bit.

Some of the nerfs are justified, such as the perma-stealth related ones. The others need a second look, and adjusted. Jon Peters throwing thieves a bone (in the form of a few extra seconds) cost him nothing, and still results in an overall nerf, so those stating that Anet does listen, need to look at the bigger picture.

Thief:
Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
fine

Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
Would you consider increasing the initiative cost to 3 instead? I would consider that more of a shave.

Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
Good start, and I like the idea of splitting this into 2 skills, but the changes to Sword 2 makes this change lackluster, imo

Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.
fine

Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
fine

Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
I still don’t get this and don’t think it’s justified, changes like this sort of undo your “buff” of base initiative increase. If you need to tone it down, don’t basically destroy it, keep the ICD to 1s and try it with 15%-20%.

Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
fine

Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
fine, but I don’t think anyone will take this unless the trigger increases

Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
fine, over due really. I’d also like to see Thieves get revealed if they are blocked in an attack from stealth, that’s a nerf that makes sense…

Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 5s from 8s.
6s would be better, we’d at least be able to get back to the base 8s by going 30pts into acrobatics

Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.
fine, but i don’t think it will be used

Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
This no longer looks like a master level trait. This should either be dropped to adept or add a condition removal to it.

Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
fine.

Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.
This is still a pointless trait, not having control on your location with a class that requires precise control of your location is never going to be a trait thieves will use long term.

Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
This change and the changes to Quick Recovery (assuming you either drop it to adept or add condi-removal) and Signet Use would be fine if you left Opportunist alone.

Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.
fine

Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 10s.
Better at 11s or 12s.

Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.
fine
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————
If it will save IS/SR, why don’t you consider tweaking Larcenous strike? Why not give it some of the functionality of Heart Seeker where the damage is reduced at higher Health?

How about this:
Larcenous Strike
Target is above 50% health – 365 dmg, 1 Coef and 1 boon stolen
Target is below 50% health – 365 dmg, 1.5 Coef and 2 boons stolen

Chaszyrr.6479:

-There was a good idea about condi transfer (maybe a venom Trickery Adept Major trait? 10s cd), this fits the flow toward party support if it worked with sharing, and makes taking 1 venom more viable without sharing. Venom share not OP at all with no break stun or defensive utility.
-Another good idea posted was a Shadow return chained skill on Steal, I would add an Ini cost or slightly longer steal cd if used. If not used, it is wasted when steal cools down. This may also lead to removal of Shadow return on Shadowstep, for a huge cd cut.

Wow. I think it’s safe to assume you’ve pretty much read through the entire thread since I think you saw my post back on page 4. XD

I’ve actually made a new topic for it here.

A rework of Steal is what I feel would be the most important and impactful change they can make for the Thief class at this point.

If Steal itself is potent and genuinely useful at its base level, it would decrease the dependance of Thieves on certain weaponsets for survivability (Sword) and mobility (Shortbow), and open up so many build choices for Thieves due to the fact that it is available for every Thief build to make use of, regardless of weaponsets, stats, or traits.

Iterating on my earlier suggestions, my ideal Steal mechanic would do the following:
1) Have a 30 second base cooldown shared between F1 and F2 (can only use one or the other)
2) F1 – Targeted Shadowstep. Instant, but does not break stuns. Upon success, steal 2 items, one offensive in F3, one defensive in F4. For 10 seconds after using F1, this will be available as a Shadow Return that is also instant but does not break stuns.
3) F2 – Ground targeted Shadowstep. Instant, but does not break stuns. Shares a cooldown with F1. Also available as a Shadow Return for 10 seconds after use. Randomly selects an enemy in the AoE and populates F3 and F4 accordingly. Does not populate F3 and F4 if no enemies are in the AoE.
4) F3 & F4 – Use offensive or defensive item, respectively. Only one of the two can be used per Steal. Overridden by another set of items if F1 or F2 is used successfully on a target

This new Steal would accomplish the following:
1. Give all Thief builds at least 1 way to counter CC through reaction and preparation, instead of through the passive mitigation that all other classes have access to, bringing all builds a step closer to pre-nerf S/x in terms of viability
2. Give all Thief builds a mobility boost in F2, so that Shortbow becomes less of a requirement for roaming (Even with shortbow, many warrior builds have clearly superior sustained mobility)
3. Make it easier for Anet to balance the Shadow Return mechanics since Steal is cooldown based
4. Make Steal inherently useful as more than just a gap closer and situational utility tool without traiting for it, and give it better situational utility through the choice between an offensive and defensive ability
5. Add a survivability aspect to the Trickery line so that it could be a more viable alternative to Acrobatics and Shadow Arts, and possibly making it possible to build more interesting traits around the new Steal to address some of Thief’s weaker areas (see some of my suggestions below)

…

sierras.6297:

I am very curious as to if thieves will get a 1200 range option.

In the long run the thief will probably gain the ability to use a longbow.

this is mostly personal opinion take it or leave it, it matters little in the long run.

Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
When haste was at 100% this trait worked well with unload/repeater/pistolwhip.
a 2 second haste at 50 IAS is still to slow. and since it procs more you will lose even more evade frames on FS/sb#3/dodge roll.

Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
You should split this skill, sure you can shadowstep through walls in PVP But in wvw this thing misfires over rocks,steps, slight inclines. you are making it out like 1/4 a second is no big deal, in this condition meta that is a very long time. that is also 1/4 seconds i can’t dodge making melee have a higher chance of tagging/killing me and retreating from a zerg near impossible. a bad infiltrators strike will get you killed with an instant return this is just overkill.

Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
2% increase there pulling out all the stops now. I’ll take it though, any extra life will help a little.

Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.
this might be good for pvp. for wvw most people are going to stick with mug as it does dmg and gives you life.

Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
The whole animation is simply to slow. this was the main reason haste + PW was so popular. (plus it looked sweet)
Since you drastically reduced the damage because of that combo, i find myself asking will you ever bump it back up again? personally i would rather 100% haste and pw take another direct dmg nerf.but unfortunately haste is tied to other classes.

Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.
Does anyone use this is pvp? with the maps being as small as they are, and in wvw we have this thing called seaweed. yes you can get a huge uptime by stacking both, (and using cluster shot) but its kind of pointless with all the access to swiftness we already have (Steal, dodge roll, ect)

i might comment about the init/vigor changes after i see them first hand….

Sanduskel.1850:

Neoheart.2750:

Sanduskel.1850:

Arganthium.5638:

Sanduskel.1850:

Stealthers aren’t this hated in other games because once they commit to a fight they can’t disappear mid fight. It’s clearly not a minority who hates this. Anet has the facts, and they wouldn’t respond to a minority. I for one, trust anet to do what’s right for the health of the game. They have data, we don’t.

This is absolutely and horrendously incorrect. I’ve developed hundreds of equations to describe a host of various aspects of the game, and in doing so I’ve been both criticized and completely rejected by a number of players who perhaps don’t think that their “amazing skillz” can be changed into numbers. And yet, here we have a case where it is in fact ANet with the numbers, and it’s credible? Certainly, throughout my studies of this game, no one has refuted my calculations, but I’ve received little credit for those whereas ANet is being hailed by people like you as some kind of truth-telling prophet. The truth of the matter is, when you truly understand what the kitten you’re doing when you play this game, it’s really not all that difficult to delve deeper into the mechanics and derive the usefulness of certain skills, utilities, and stats. So please, understand what you’re talking about before making broad, sweeping claims like that.

They wrote the code and they receive player feedback. I am sorry, but i trust them far more than I do inherently biased players.

Really? I’m willing to bet the people who wrote the code are off writhing more code for the next project. Even with the manpower requirements of mmorpgs a skeleton crew is still left behind. You can tell from arenanet responses, messages hell even the games content that this more than evident here.

To change skills almost completely over a year after launch shows one of two things (maybe both). That the team working now is almost completely different or inexperienced with developing this type of title.

Next you’ll be telling me Floyd mayweather prints his own t shirts down at the factory. It appears it’s you who has no idea what he is talking about. The original back end development team working for gems?! Lol.

Answer this, what was better Halloween 2012 or 2013? Then ask yourself why.

Neither. I don’t do pve.

Well although you may be able to li… your post history tells the truth. lol your smart “im too cool for pve” backfired. Do fractals much?

Why do you bother posting here anyway? seriously?

Neoheart.2750:

Sanduskel.1850:

Neoheart.2750:

Sanduskel.1850:

Arganthium.5638:

Sanduskel.1850:

Stealthers aren’t this hated in other games because once they commit to a fight they can’t disappear mid fight. It’s clearly not a minority who hates this. Anet has the facts, and they wouldn’t respond to a minority. I for one, trust anet to do what’s right for the health of the game. They have data, we don’t.

This is absolutely and horrendously incorrect. I’ve developed hundreds of equations to describe a host of various aspects of the game, and in doing so I’ve been both criticized and completely rejected by a number of players who perhaps don’t think that their “amazing skillz” can be changed into numbers. And yet, here we have a case where it is in fact ANet with the numbers, and it’s credible? Certainly, throughout my studies of this game, no one has refuted my calculations, but I’ve received little credit for those whereas ANet is being hailed by people like you as some kind of truth-telling prophet. The truth of the matter is, when you truly understand what the kitten you’re doing when you play this game, it’s really not all that difficult to delve deeper into the mechanics and derive the usefulness of certain skills, utilities, and stats. So please, understand what you’re talking about before making broad, sweeping claims like that.

They wrote the code and they receive player feedback. I am sorry, but i trust them far more than I do inherently biased players.

Really? I’m willing to bet the people who wrote the code are off writhing more code for the next project. Even with the manpower requirements of mmorpgs a skeleton crew is still left behind. You can tell from arenanet responses, messages hell even the games content that this more than evident here.

To change skills almost completely over a year after launch shows one of two things (maybe both). That the team working now is almost completely different or inexperienced with developing this type of title.

Next you’ll be telling me Floyd mayweather prints his own t shirts down at the factory. It appears it’s you who has no idea what he is talking about. The original back end development team working for gems?! Lol.

Answer this, what was better Halloween 2012 or 2013? Then ask yourself why.

Neither. I don’t do pve.

Well although you may be able to li… your post history tells the truth. lol your smart “im too cool for pve” backfired. Do fractals much?

Why do you bother posting here anyway? seriously?

I post because I care..about this class. I’ve never done a fractal, honestly. Hate them.

Pixels.6532:

Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
fine.

I actually thought that was fine, too, although I didn’t think the 35% increase was enough to justify moving it up a tier, since the healing is massively underwhelming as it is.

Then I realized that, after this patch, if I put 30 into Acrobatics for this trait there’s absolutely nothing I’d want in the Master slot. I’d probably still take the vigor-on-heal trait, but nothing remaining in the Master tier looked even remotely appealing enough for me to want to pigeonhole myself into Acrobatics.

Imagi.4561:

Pixels.6532:

Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
fine.

I actually thought that was fine, too, although I didn’t think the 35% increase was enough to justify moving it up a tier, since the healing is massively underwhelming as it is.

Then I realized that, after this patch, if I put 30 into Acrobatics for this trait there’s absolutely nothing I’d want in the Master slot. I’d probably still take the vigor-on-heal trait, but nothing remaining in the Master tier looked even remotely appealing enough for me to want to pigeonhole myself into Acrobatics.

Yes at roughly 100 hp/s if you spend all of your ini all the time, it’s extremely lackluster as a Grandmaster trait, especially when comparing with the sustain options of other classes or even our own Shadow Rejuvenation.

Imagi.4561:

Pixels.6532:

Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
fine.

I actually thought that was fine, too, although I didn’t think the 35% increase was enough to justify moving it up a tier, since the healing is massively underwhelming as it is.

Then I realized that, after this patch, if I put 30 into Acrobatics for this trait there’s absolutely nothing I’d want in the Master slot. I’d probably still take the vigor-on-heal trait, but nothing remaining in the Master tier looked even remotely appealing enough for me to want to pigeonhole myself into Acrobatics.

I doubt I’ll take it, but I’m still fine with it because it is a trait I never use replacing a trait I’d never use. If that makes sense… :o)

Or to put it another way, if I had to pick the “buffed” AR or the current Hard to Catch for the other Grand Master slot, I’d go with the AR.

But I get where people who don’t go 30pts into Acro find this change annoying, it may be better off staying as a master trait.

Can we just make HtC a 5 seconds of vigor on crit every 5 seconds? The increased ability to actively dodge a stun versus the passive proc that it is seems much more appealing. Also I wouldn’t feel pigeonholed into taking withdraw for an evasive build to try to keep up vigor by blowing my heal every 15 seconds. Furthermore I might ve able to take HiS in an evasive build as an additional cleanse.

Additionally, as a major point, that would match the traits that 2 other classes have kitten point minor traits and 1 has in a 10 point major. Those other 3 classes have ample access to protection and regen as well as acess to aegis and an alright number of blinds. We have limited access to regen and no protection, stability, or aegis except in those situations where we can steal it. Furthermore this would be a 20 point major trait locking us out of a purely burst build. As a dodge based class we should retain access to a large number of dodges.

Finally, since this would be a natural dodge and not a weapon based evade it wouldn’t be doing anything other than avoidance. When FS/LS was change the reasoning given during the SotG was that it did too much: evasion, damage, utility. This would purely add to the evasiveness of all thief builds.

Thanks for your time.

Erzian.5218:

Travlane.5948:

chaining 52 52 52

You are doing it wrong.

srry. was tired 5 2 2 2

I disagree with your rant. Just because certain game breaking mechanics such as permastealth have been fixed doesn’t give you the right to attack a group of hard working developers, toiling to make the game better for everyone. You may not have gotten all you wanted, but it’s all for the health of the entire game.

Sanduskel.1850:

I disagree with your rant. Just because certain game breaking mechanics such as permastealth have been fixed doesn’t give you the right to attack a group of hard working developers, toiling to make the game better for everyone. You may not have gotten all you wanted, but it’s all for the health of the entire game.

Perma stealth is not game breaking bud.

Well apparently Anet disagrees. they basically said as much, using the term abuse when referencing this topic.

i already explained to sanduskel that perma stealth gives 4 very MAJOR ADVANTAGES to opponents. inarguable.

abusing doesnt mean game changing. seriously :P its annoying that sombody can hide for a long time. but does NOTHING…literally. nothign.

Sanduskel.1850:

Well apparently Anet disagrees. they basically said as much, using the term abuse when referencing this topic.

You are just reading what you want.

“We are ok with thieves blowing their cooldowns to have longer stealth, and we are ok with theives bouncing in and out of stealth, but we were not ok with thieves maintaining long duration stealth through abusing a single trait.”

You know thieves will still be able to perma stealth after patch right? They just won’t be able to achieve it with Infusion of Shadow all by itself.

The word abusing != game breaking.

No where in this statement did ANet say that remaining in stealth is breaking the game. In fact they said the opposite, they are absolutely fine with it as long as we use utilities or other combinations of traits to obtain it.

You’re obviously an angry poster.

Noty angry. Just presenting facts. they wouldn’t be so insistent to fix this if they didn’t think it was a serious problem. abuse is abuse. it’s a strong word to use for something that you think isn’t a big deal.