Guild Wars 2

Mika.9815:

So that’s one page out of 17 in this thread wasted by just one person. Excessive trolling cannot be grounds for banning on this forum?

Obviously anet is allowing it.

Stooperdale.3560:

“Well thieves aren’t for everyone, you know. Either work harder or play another class.”

Sanduskel is up to 48 posts in this thread now with expert advice like that. Just ignore him.

Yeah Im not an expert in these forums but I’ve already picked that out, this Sanduskel guy has no evidence to back up his posts. Can’t even call them opinions because he doesn’t back them up aside from rewording his earlier post.

Any who, I wish thief had more rewards for steal, and staying out of stealth. It seems like the term thief is entirely out of context here, since a majority of our strong traits include entering or staying within stealth. It should of just been named assassin if this was the aim, steal as a profession skill just seems far too much of a burden for some thieves. Every profession has multiple benefits from a profession skill, even without traits into them, yet thief either spec’s into it or doesn’t. No benefit to holding steal, no added benefits to stolen skills through traits, very limited sustain from steal (mug). On some builds I almost feel like steal is like a pet for rangers. Sure its there but I really don’t care for it, it doesn’t contribute to my build in any significant way and that’s a problem. If something as concrete as a profession skill can’t be useful by all builds for that profession, there is something wrong. The stolen skills themselves can be neat but in some cases its more of a trash skill than anything significant.

guys, in all your talk about less initiative this, less initiative that, you forgot that you actually have to hit something for opportunist to work and even then need to have a high(as in berserker gear high) crit chance for the new trait to be worse than the old one.
Now, what will happen in a fight, where people will block, invuln, dodge, blind, stun or daze you or simply walk out of range, moving on the edge of your attack range?
Exactly, you won’t get any initiative from opportunist.
Sure, under optimized conditions(multi hit ability, 100% crit chance, stacked up opponents standing at one spot and taking the hits), the current opportunist is far more potent, but in reality, you might have some valkyrie or soldiers parts mixed in, you might miss some attacks, you might get blinded, blocked, etc.
Let’s keep one thing in mind: opportunist is a minor trait, and as such, should be universally applicable, showing similar reward for any build, you slap it on.
What this change actually does: It makes opportunist more reliable. In fights against bunkers, you only need to land a couple solid hits for it to trigger. It will make the initiative gain more baseline and cut off both the upper and the lower ends of the curve. This may be bad for big group fights and dungeon speedruns, where you stack up at one place and spam till your target is down, but it will actually benefit small scale pvp fights(mainly) and tough PvE encounters, which you can’t defeat by stacking, cause you have to keep dodging.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

pawned.2359:

personally idc what u do to thief i will figure a way to kill people with it i have played other classes they seem to slow/easy thief is only one that tickles my gizzard when i out play someone ……….

^ this

Zacchary.6183:

If the thief profession is to truly be a thief, it should have plenty of access to everything via theft.

Stealing life, boons, endurance, certain attacks, switching out conditions with boons should all be part of the thief’s attacks while they have nothing to produce for themselves. They should be able to improvise with what they steal to at least create some sort of synergy for themselves. And for a thief to be able to hold all of the kitten it’ll be stealing, the thief will need deep pockets (meaning open up F2, F3 and F4 for stolen items).

The thief SHOULD NOT just be another rouge class whose only redeeming quality is ambush and going transparent all the time.

The ability to store multiple stolen skills would definitely add to thief gameplay. It’s something I wish we already had, everytime I have to waste stolen skill to free up my steal.

They simply shouldn’t be on the same button and should be queued for F2.
Steal remains on F1, and F2 allows the use of the last three stolen abilities from newest to oldest. Steal more than three times and the oldest gets kicked out of the queue.

Put an ICD on stolen skill use equal to that of steal’s such that you don’t have people stealing warriors and stacking whirl and then just spamming triple whirl.

So steal becomes a much more usable mechanic rather than just a gap-closer.

DeceiverX.8361:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

pawned.2359:

personally idc what u do to thief i will figure a way to kill people with it i have played other classes they seem to slow/easy thief is only one that tickles my gizzard when i out play someone ……….

^ this

Zacchary.6183:

If the thief profession is to truly be a thief, it should have plenty of access to everything via theft.

Stealing life, boons, endurance, certain attacks, switching out conditions with boons should all be part of the thief’s attacks while they have nothing to produce for themselves. They should be able to improvise with what they steal to at least create some sort of synergy for themselves. And for a thief to be able to hold all of the kitten it’ll be stealing, the thief will need deep pockets (meaning open up F2, F3 and F4 for stolen items).

The thief SHOULD NOT just be another rouge class whose only redeeming quality is ambush and going transparent all the time.

The ability to store multiple stolen skills would definitely add to thief gameplay. It’s something I wish we already had, everytime I have to waste stolen skill to free up my steal.

They simply shouldn’t be on the same button and should be queued for F2.
Steal remains on F1, and F2 allows the use of the last three stolen abilities from newest to oldest. Steal more than three times and the oldest gets kicked out of the queue.

Put an ICD on stolen skill use equal to that of steal’s such that you don’t have people stealing warriors and stacking whirl and then just spamming triple whirl.

So steal becomes a much more usable mechanic rather than just a gap-closer.

What? You mean holding onto useful skills as you pick them up and holding them for the appropriate time to use them strategically? And not having to blow them just so you can use it for a gap closer? And being able to see your cooldown timer on steal all the time? Nah. /sarcasm

I’d be all for no global icd on those, but if you end up with 2 of the same skill it just drops one of them (so you can only hold one of any one skill at any time).

NinjaEd.3946:

Stooperdale.3560:

“Well thieves aren’t for everyone, you know. Either work harder or play another class.”

Sanduskel is up to 48 posts in this thread now with expert advice like that. Just ignore him.

Yeah Im not an expert in these forums but I’ve already picked that out, this Sanduskel guy has no evidence to back up his posts. Can’t even call them opinions because he doesn’t back them up aside from rewording his earlier post.

Just remember guys, if he makes a point:

Sanduskel.1850:

Again, sample size of 1 an anecdotal.

naphack.9346:

guys, in all your talk about less initiative this, less initiative that, you forgot that you actually have to hit something for opportunist to work and even then need to have a high(as in berserker gear high) crit chance for the new trait to be worse than the old one.
Now, what will happen in a fight, where people will block, invuln, dodge, blind, stun or daze you or simply walk out of range, moving on the edge of your attack range?
Exactly, you won’t get any initiative from opportunist.
Sure, under optimized conditions(multi hit ability, 100% crit chance, stacked up opponents standing at one spot and taking the hits), the current opportunist is far more potent, but in reality, you might have some valkyrie or soldiers parts mixed in, you might miss some attacks, you might get blinded, blocked, etc.
Let’s keep one thing in mind: opportunist is a minor trait, and as such, should be universally applicable, showing similar reward for any build, you slap it on.
What this change actually does: It makes opportunist more reliable. In fights against bunkers, you only need to land a couple solid hits for it to trigger. It will make the initiative gain more baseline and cut off both the upper and the lower ends of the curve. This may be bad for big group fights and dungeon speedruns, where you stack up at one place and spam till your target is down, but it will actually benefit small scale pvp fights(mainly) and tough PvE encounters, which you can’t defeat by stacking, cause you have to keep dodging.

u r 100% wrong. if u were right it would not have been changed in the first place. the whole premise of your perception is wrong.

naphack.9346:

guys, in all your talk about less initiative this, less initiative that, you forgot that you actually have to hit something for opportunist to work and even then need to have a high(as in berserker gear high) crit chance for the new trait to be worse than the old one.

You either run high crit (as in mostly berserker with a few pieces other gear) or none at all, so your ‘even then’ extends to everyone using crit. The difference in initiative between high crit (with the ini trait) to none is very, very noticeable with skills like Unload and Clusterbomb. These skills are somewhat balanced in initiative cost and damage for the current, high crit opportunist situation and reducing the initiative gain on opportunist will make them less effective and possibly, in the case of unload, Less Able to Make Effective (LAME)

I have played thief since headstart (it’s my main character, all best gear on her, almost 3 legendary weapons: the dreamer, incinerator and almost quip) and now i’m thinking about stop playing in this game. I love all thiefs/assassins/rouges in mmo but in gw2 this character is going to “die”. I don’t know why ANet <3 warriors and theirs gswords but IMO thief is THE MOST hated, nerfed and becomes the mots boring and hard survivable class.

Other think is pve. I’m really experienced thief in pve (dont like pvp), i have over 10k achi BUT… i undersand why ppl kicking me a lot of times from party on dungeons/fractals… it’s because thief is USELESS in dungeons (unexpected stealth for skip and blast might from shortbow). WHY??? Why they’re going 4xwarrior and 1 guard/mesmer? WHY???…
I KNOW WHY… It’s because in this “perfect” guild wars most important in pve is DPS and warrior have the best dps, a lot of toughness and vitality but other classes NO!
Maybe i’m kitten and noob but this class, thief, is going 2 die.

p.s. Sorry 4 my english.

rVn.2076:

….I KNOW WHY… It’s because in this “perfect” guild wars most important in pve is DPS and warrior have the best dps, a lot of toughness and vitality but other classes NO!…

It creeped in after the release of Factions for Guildwars I – the first campaign really had people playing together, ad hoc and everyone could join. Even in PvP – I had fun there, and we all did that, when I entered GvG with a level 19, non-ascended ranger, not knowing anything about PvP.
But Dungeons came, with high rewards and factions which changed bonus missions from exploration and extra challenges to an ordinary time limit. And the masses changed their course from playing together for fun and discovering what the developers had in store for us, to playing to achieve ‘goals’ effectively.

That was the end of Guildwars.

(dramatic silence and fade to black)

Zacchary.6183:

Mika.9815:

So that’s one page out of 17 in this thread wasted by just one person. Excessive trolling cannot be grounds for banning on this forum?

Obviously anet is allowing it.

he is probably anet employe or mod or something

I’d like to know the thief trade off.

Mesmers get burst, stealth mobility, conditions. How ridiculously strong is PU!!!.

Guardians get blocks, blinds, aoe damage and yet are still tanky.

Warriors…well we all know that story.

Necros, tanky and damaging.

Thieves?…our burst is about 1/4 of geared 80s hps. But to get that burst you have to spec as paper.

I don’t understand why other classes don’t have to make that trade off. Which is why I see 60 percent warrior/20 percent mesmer/10 guardian/8 necro/2 everything else.

If I hit one more clone/phantasm and get 4 conditions on me i’ll go crazy.

Well, phaeris:
Ironically, the class numbers released ~2 months back show Mesmer as one of the game’s least played classes. As for the strength of PU, I’d call it less of a Mesmer = OP thing, and more of every bleeding class in game needs to have good Grandmaster Traits. I mean, let’s be realistic here. For any GM Trait, you’re plopping almost half of your char’s available Traits … ergo, the reward should be darned good.

And, no, it’s not just Thieves getting shafted there. Most classes have GM Traits that are either:

• poorly placed.
  or
• not nearly powerful enough for the point cost.

As such, I would honestly like for the Devs to apply some form of logic to point burn vs. reward, as a concept entire. I’m personally convinced that the reason some Mesmer GM Traits are so relatively “great” is because – as the last class officially leaked -
the code-jockeys actually happened upon some darned good ideas. And that is what the game needs more, not trying to dumb everything down toward uselessness.

You don’t have any sacrifice in your lines. with constant protection/regen/aegis, it’s like hitting a bunker when fighting some mesmers. Yet you can pop blurred frenzy and boom!, there’s your damage.

Someone at Anet really likes mesmers, because browse the mesmer boards and 1v1 no mesmer worries about other classes.

On the topic of mesmers… Why is it that they’re able to stealth with no risk? For a thif to go stealth you have to be within 130 range, less so if you’re running d/p, but there is still room for counter play. Where as with a mesmer, they have high stealth uptime with no risk, or counter play available. Secondly they’re able to keep up very high pressure in a player without even leaving stealth via phantasms, condi on clone death, and scepter block (which doesn’t reveal them).

Anyways, that was a bit off topic. Back to thief.

While I’m happy (for my condi build at least) that out base init regen if being buffed, and infusion of shadow is being changed, I don’t really agree with the change to sword and the vigor changes.

Whether this patch will be an overall buff or nerf to thief seems to change depending on who you talk too, though regardless of if its a buff or not, It wont be enough to make thieves really viable. The sword nerf seriously hinders s/d in every aspect of the game, but the init change buffs d/p trickery.

Not really sure where I was going with this post anymore so..

tl;dr: post patch warriors and necros are still OP in pvp, and PU mesmers are still stupid 1v1 while thief remains mediocre in every aspect of the game.

Advent.6193:

Well, phaeris:
Ironically, the class numbers released ~2 months back show Mesmer as one of the game’s least played classes. As for the strength of PU, I’d call it less of a Mesmer = OP thing, and more of every bleeding class in game needs to have good Grandmaster Traits. I mean, let’s be realistic here. For any GM Trait, you’re plopping almost half of your char’s available Traits … ergo, the reward should be darned good.

And, no, it’s not just Thieves getting shafted there. Most classes have GM Traits that are either:

• poorly placed.
  or
• not nearly powerful enough for the point cost.

As such, I would honestly like for the Devs to apply some form of logic to point burn vs. reward, as a concept entire. I’m personally convinced that the reason some Mesmer GM Traits are so relatively “great” is because – as the last class officially leaked -
the code-jockeys actually happened upon some darned good ideas. And that is what the game needs more, not trying to dumb everything down toward uselessness.

link to those stats plz?

I play all 8 classes.

I found Mesmers, Necros and Warriors to be very strong.

The Thief feels so weak to me, that outside of gimick builds – i.e. permastealth – the Thief is almost unplayable.

Travlane.5948:

link to those stats plz?

I’m pretty sure he’s talking about the graph at the bottom of this page, which shows Mesmers tied with Engineers as the least-played class in GW2.

If you’re curious for more information, or ever want to find the original source of an official GW2 post that someone mentioned, you can find it by using the remarkable magical engine that is known as Google.

Cynz.9437:

Zacchary.6183:

Mika.9815:

So that’s one page out of 17 in this thread wasted by just one person. Excessive trolling cannot be grounds for banning on this forum?

Obviously anet is allowing it.

he is probably anet employe or mod or something

That would be very sad. It would also prove most of my conspiratorial theories correct which is also something I would not like to happen.

Jon thank you I understand better now what Anet is doing with the thief class.

JonPeters.5630:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks,

Jon

Dear Jon,

any chances we get Last Refuge fixed for Dec, 10 patch or later? Please read this bug report:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Thief-trait-Last-Refuge/

Thanks teg

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

If you want to argue that the stealth capability from D/P was “broken” then fine, let’s go ahead and say it is.. putting that aside completely, my problem is the fact that changing this ONE trait is nerfing multiple aspects of the build and other traits that are based on stealth. No adjustments are made to these traits to at least leave them unaffected by this change. There are far more reasons for D/P 0/30/30/10/0 thief to stealth in and out while IN combat (like the example of might stacking from Hidden Assasin), then there are for one to “perma-stealth” and watch from afar.

Example.. If I have full initiative (12)and no traited regen (except infusion) I can drop BP + HS 3 times through it to gain 6 stacks of might and still have some initiative to fight.. With the change it will be pretty difficult to do it more than twice, so now our might is reduced from 6 to 4.. This is a side nerf and in my opinion should not happen.

BP + HS is also D/P’s quickest access to stealth, but now it’s going to eat up so much initiative.. Unless the base regen really makes things amazing, and I guess we won’t know until it’s final, I just see this build ending up much more in the negative than anything.

“Perma-stealth” might be considered by some an abuse of the mechanics, but I STILL fail to see how it actually hurts anything or anyone other than kitten ing them off because they can’t get a bag from someone that ISN’T FIGHTING THEM.

If they want to make this change, they NEED to look at the big picture. I feel they’re tunnel-visioning on the desire to slap perma-stealth trolls on the wrist and call them bad children and not considering how this affects other parts of D/P builds.

perma-stealth
the problem is they are indeed fighting them and the thief usually perma stealths to fully health/buff/whatever

and the main issue isnt even the stealth itself its the kitten ed blinds blind on stealth blind on #5 cooldownless skill blind when dieing blind on pistol #3 all with No Cooldown except for the 25% hp trait wich is bugged and unnecesary anyways

Perma blinds…

You’re aware that a thief has no real ranged dps, no block/parry/shield moves. Lowest hitpoint tables. No CC. No aegis, no protection boons, no reliable regen, no weapon abilities which give swiftness.

Pretty much the only way thieves can avoid damage is with blind and stealth.

You know how i used to avoid damage on my warrior? I didn’t, i soaked it up with my 3500 armour, regened it with my signet and could still dish out 4k earthshakers all awhile having swiftness/fury and might thanks to my elite signet every 30 seconds out of 60 seconds

Or maybe on my engineer i’ll just throw aoes around me all day, I don’t even have to see a player or target one, just spam it at my feet and watch them kill themselves with 15 stacks of confusion.

No Christmass presents for thief. Only more crappy traits than before. Guess we have been naughty against the whiny casual player base.

What a great idea to nerf all initiative traits and get nothing in return. Oh wait yeah we get a tiny bit increased ini regen.
You know why i play thief? Because i am a nostalgic gw1 veteran and i love the concept of spending a resource (energy, initative, mana w/e) on my skill and being great by managing it in certain ways. Now you take all these traits for managing init and making builds that run well because of them and dump em in the trash for a boring increased passive regen?
Where are the great minds of GW1??? The skill balancing was amazing. OP builds were always nerfed while less played builds were boosted making an ever changing meta for each profession. The only thing i have seen for the thief class is a constant gradual nerfing of every build and every much used weapon set (S/D and D/P). Ok if you do that, but give us other viable options. And by viable i dont mean lame Venomsharing with a shortbow or P/P 3 spam like I’ve seen your devs do.

I am very dissapointed in GW2 as it is today. I looked forward to this game a lot. Been there all the way with you since beta launch. Loved it like GW1 at the start (which i just couldn’t put down) but now i am thinking of quiting because of a whole spiral of bad balancing decisions. I have always been a more pvp orientated player and gw1 was the best PVP mmo ever. Class balancing in GW2 however is worse than WoW. I am afraid you will lose me to ESO as soon as it comes out if this bad pvp policy continues.

Kind Regards and Merry Xmass

+33% are not “tiny”.

Fact remains there is no fun in a passive regen increase as opposed to making a build where skills, utilities and traits work together to keep initiative up as a whole dynamic entity + as a counter balance of this (in your eyes) big passive regen increase the amount of viable traits overall is again reduced (and thief didn’t have a lot of those to start of with).

Black Teagan.9215:

+33% are not “tiny”.

when default gain is tiny, 33% of tiny is still tiny lol

Travlane.5948:

Brett.4305:

A few days ago, I removed any weaps and traits that are set to be
“balanced.” A few hours ago, I double checked my traits and can
guarantee that I won’t be dancing to their fife.
Players gravitate to certain builds on certain classes when everything else sucks.
ANET, in their wisdom, breaks the things that work to stop popular usage.
Then everyone will find something else that doesn’t suck AS BAD.
Then those builds get nerfed …

this is basically what happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiXhgsfoL6c

when i see things like this it makes me mad. no i dont want a warrior nerf. even as they are now….OP and all. i just want no nerfs. undo all nerfs and make all classes better with buffs. should never nerf. rarely ever anyway.

a warrior can do that in the video an a thief would have died in EVERY instance. so a thief is slippery! BIG DEAL! 1 v 1 assassination is what a thief is. IR nerf? why bc they are hard to hit? BS

I’ll wait for the changes to completely form an opinion. Though I don’t love them.

But you are flat out wrong regarding that video. I am something like 170ish rank in WvW. I consistently blob surf right next to the commander/leader. I run in full Soldiers with Sb and S/D as a default, but have run in zerker armor/weapons (Wurm Runes), and full condi/P/V with D/D and Sb before. I often survive team wipes. I also occasionally get evaporated if I screw up and get in front of the train. The last time I went zerker, the two times I died the commander and the group died too.

I run a 10/30/0/20/10 build most of the time. HiS for a heal, (Withdraw works well too, but I prefer HiS for it’s condi removals), SS, RfI, and run speed/caltrops most often. DS elite for the stabilty. Lyssa runes on the PVT set.

Going into the fight I pop DS then hit escape/dodge or stay spinning as I see fit. Lyssa runes pop after DS finishes so I can ride it out and still have stability. Shotgun Sb when it’s really thick (or fields need blasting), dodge and Sb3 if it gets hairy. Run with dodgetrops on, and caltrops on utility and I’m a cripple/blastbot. SS for repositioning, and stun break as needed. I usually swap to S/D for clean-up, spikes and super pursuit mode.

That Warr looks slow and lumbering to me.

tpvp: tanky necros spamming condis/fear, tanky engis spamming condis, hambow wars with HS, unkillable troll PU mesmers porting repair kits, shatter mesmers one shotting ppl with daze/immob combo, bunker guards never dying, zerker guards one shotting thieves, spirit rangers with pet blocking cluster spam on screen^, mad aoe is flying around…. meanwhile they keep nerfing anything that keeps thieves alive or viable for that matter…
nice kitten logic

/tableflip

“we want thieves to stay longer in combat” ? WITH WHAT!? please teach me! oh jk, devs play p/p thief in pve and stay dead for entire stream time

devs are so biased about thieves even 5 year old can tell

Greets,

I’m Coryphaeus, and I’m a Sword/Dagger Thief. The majority of my time in-game is spent running detached from, but in the orbit of, our server’s zergs and GvG groups, harassing the edges of other groups or picking off stragglers. Sword provides a great deal of mobility, as well as the ability to get in and out of trouble.

I believe that the upcoming change adding a cast time to Infiltrator’s Return (“IR”) is the wrong way to address the primary issue that, I’ve gathered from the Dev posts, it is designed to fix. It will certainly stop people from using it to cheap-stomp, but a cast time has practical implications that, perhaps, do not seem as daunting as they do on paper.

Usage of Infiltrator’s Return

IR rewards good planning on the part of a Thief. I use it primarily to set up an escape route when I know I will (a) be entering a densely packed group of enemies, or (b) know that I am being targeted for being a detached Thief by a large group. This latter situation arises mostly in GvG’s, where you’re pulled, knocked down, and very efficiently focused down.

It is this situation that I am most concerned about. According to an earlier Dev post, the addition of a minuscule cast time to prevent cheap-stomping seemed to be regarded as a minor issue. While a fraction of a second is not a large amount on paper, the difference, practically, between instant and cast-time-d is immense.

The utility Shadowstep is an option to escape this same situation and others like it, but I believe that having to rely entirely upon Shadowstep will diminish Sword Thieves more than is reasonable to address a problem that may be solved in another way. I am not a developer and have no grasp of what would be an acceptable alternative, balanced approach.

As a Sword Thief, I rely on mobility to be effective. Mobility, in this case, is not simply movement across the battlefield, but also the ability to escape from situations. IR fulfills this function admirably, but, again, only if the Sword Thief plans ahead of time by placing the return point.

I know that, when dealing with organized groups, I will be stunned, knocked down, and otherwise shut down. In the most common situations that I find myself in, the duration of this shut down is more than enough time to down me. With a cast time added to IR, if I have slotted Shadowstep, I have still lost half of my options for escape,

It seems like a minor change, but I still remember the global addition of one second to the Revealed debuff some time ago. One second is certainly greater than the proposed third-of-a-second change, but I want to emphasize that it is a third of a second compared to instant, which, I believe, makes it a much more substantial change than the numbers might suggest.

Initiative

This was another issue brought up in another previous Dev post; that IR could be used every 20 seconds, on average, to clear a condition. In the large combat situation as I described in the previous section, conditions tend to be applied much more often and consistently than IR could conceivably clear.

Furthermore, if you’re using all of your initiative for Infiltrator’s Strike (“IS”)/IR, you’re unlikely to be doing anything else effective. I cannot say whether the increased Initiative over time regeneration will substantially affect this point, but having experimented with the Quick Recovery trait, it’s the long lapse in between extra ticks that counts, and in that period, you’re still out either your Initiative or your effectiveness.

Conclusion

The cast time on Infiltrator’s Return is more substantial and detrimental a change to Sword Thieves than it appears to be on paper. The problem that it addresses should be fixed, but the practical negative effects on general Sword Thief play of this change are not commensurate with the benefit.

Regards,

- Coryphaeus

As a PvE thief i couldn’t disagree more with stealth nerfs. Maybe you meant cloak and dagger cause i’m one thief that rarely looks at daggers at all. But in dungeons or in orr i want veeery long stealths, so i can zip around doing my harvesting without being constantly bullied by the risen.

In Ascalonian catacombs path 1 i did hodgins defense by playing smart and cloaking us both – shadow infusion + blast finisher on smoke field gave all the stealth we needed for initial stage, keeping shadow refuge for use when i couldn’t afford any blast finishers due to gravelings all around us. It’s not a perfect strategy, but it sure buys a lot of time before i’m forced to kite.

Still use of utility stealths was necessary in that rotation, not to mention smoke screen for that smoke combo field.

I think there are two sorts of stealth thieves. Those that use it as avenue of attack, and those that use it as means of defense, simply to get past trouble without unnecessary hustle. Perk of being a thief. I’m definetely the 2nd type, so…if it’s because of the attacker thieves, take it into consideration and don’t stomp us “shadow walkers”.

phaeris.7604:

Perma blinds…

You’re aware that a thief has no real ranged dps, no block/parry/shield moves. Lowest hitpoint tables. No CC. No aegis, no protection boons, no reliable regen, no weapon abilities which give swiftness.

Pretty much the only way thieves can avoid damage is with blind and stealth.

You know how i used to avoid damage on my warrior? I didn’t, i soaked it up with my 3500 armour, regened it with my signet and could still dish out 4k earthshakers all awhile having swiftness/fury and might thanks to my elite signet every 30 seconds out of 60 seconds

Or maybe on my engineer i’ll just throw aoes around me all day, I don’t even have to see a player or target one, just spam it at my feet and watch them kill themselves with 15 stacks of confusion.

i call bullkitten on that, thief has high ranged dps not my fault all thiefs go full dagger build for instant kills as for cc another lie thief has access to immobilize cripple and stun

dont have block but got stealth spammable as well making the blind overkill

as it stands theres hardly any risk when you stealth and not only are gone from target’s sight but also negate all attacks due to blind Full Time

no weapons give swiftness because thieves have 100% uptime 25% movement speed

as for your example

going full bunker class should not be considered a thief only counter

if anything im not saying it is wrong to have blinds im saying its wrong having such a powerful condition to be spammable with so easy access

blind on stealth-trait-no cooldown
blind when injured-trait= acceptable blind
AoEblind+field-no cooldown
blind+stealth-utility = the only actual fair blind
blind+shadowstep-no cooldown

lets point out all the no protection boons nor regens are due to as all the other thief issues= everyone builds the same glass cannon build – or at least 90% of the thief population(dont care whoevers gonna ask me to confirm my numbers and what not )

also this : What justifies being able to spam attacks during stealth on a Blocking players and remain stealthed?

High ranged dps?

Am I missing something here?

Movement speed comes from equipping a signet, which has a crappy active. So you sacrifice a slot for what others get from traits alone.

What justifies ranged attacks to keep hitting for several more seconds once you’ve entered stealth, completely giving away your position/doing damage or necro abilities locking onto you whilst you’re still in stealth. Poor mechanics is what. Works both ways my friend.

Stealth isn’t spammable by the way. You should honestly roll a thief to see how you do. I used to believe thieves were easy mode until i played one post nerfs. It’s a very fragile class and takes 100 times more concentration than my warrior did.

High range damage is nonsense. Shortbow and Pistol is far from high damage and far from high range (restricted to 900 range whereas all other range professions got 1200-1500 range).

Also stealth is not spamable from range. CnD is melee range and costs 50% ini. DP stealth will be nerfed next patch.

So at the end stealth is spamable via CnD if you target doesn’t know what he’s doing. As soon as CnD misses (via dodge, block, blink, evade) the thief is forced to stealth via utilities which all are on fairly high cooldowns.

Also perma 25% run speed… its a complete joke because EVERY profession has access to it nowadays. Most professions have (nearly) perma swiftness uptime, so as a thief you are actually 8% SLOWER than most professions.

You wanna sell this as an advantage… really?

Rezzet.3614:

if anything im not saying it is wrong to have blinds im saying its wrong having such a powerful condition to be spammable with so easy access

Actually blind is easy to remove. But you do have to pay attention and notice you are blinded …

blind on stealth-trait-no cooldown

Wrong, stealth essentially is on a cooldown, and thus the blind associated with it.

blind when injured-trait= acceptable blind

Throw feathers is on a 60 sec cooldown

AoEblind+field-no cooldown

Initiative use provides the cooldown.

blind+stealth-utility = the only actual fair blind

…

blind+shadowstep-no cooldown

initiative use provides the cooldown

i will keep it short and simple. playing pvp as a thief comes down to this:

http://youtu.be/WdoF0iayjvs?t=34s

- too much aoe in the game
- stealing and stealth come with very few utility
- going stealth penalizes u rather than giving u an advantage
-> initiative cost / risk by using CnD / utility slot on long CD

- thief’s gamplay is very fast and fluid. very nice
-> BUT it is very generic
-> therefore combat is easy to predict

- thief has got only a few weapon choices:
so pls consider giving this class traits that
dramatically influence the handling of a weapon. thus the style/way of tactical maneuvers.

except for the perma stealth fix i hardly can understand the course of action you r taking anet.

thieves need utility that allows them to operate/survive outside of stealth.
in many cases thieves cannot participate in grp battles. and u know that.

greetings

frans.8092:

Rezzet.3614:

if anything im not saying it is wrong to have blinds im saying its wrong having such a powerful condition to be spammable with so easy access

Actually blind is easy to remove. But you do have to pay attention and notice you are blinded …

blind on stealth-trait-no cooldown

Wrong, stealth essentially is on a cooldown, and thus the blind associated with it.

blind when injured-trait= acceptable blind

Throw feathers is on a 60 sec cooldown

AoEblind+field-no cooldown

Initiative use provides the cooldown.

blind+stealth-utility = the only actual fair blind

…

blind+shadowstep-no cooldown

initiative use provides the cooldown

i did say throw feathers was actually aceptable as other classes have blinds when injured as well or invulnerability so this one shouldnt count i suppose

and still my point is proven too much access to blind coupled with thief’s dps and stealth theres really hardly any counter other than being a bunker and endure the thief’s attacks all it takes for me to fight non thieves without taking any damage is 2 blinds and my damage isnt even close to a thief’s

as for stealth having cooldown for excuse to blind on stealth cooldown Name me 3 classes with at least two 8s cd blinds.

as for ranged i dunno why you guys complain spammable aoe poison fields is Huge in zergs you’re crippling the whole enemy zerg’s ability to heal and clusterbomb is no joke either

as for pvp yes ranged is pretty lackluster i ll agree

Honestly, some of these changes were actually called for such as Infusion of Shadow. While a lot of people whine about thieves being OP, like every single MMO where the stealth class that bursts gets the most hate; however these arguments are somewhat valid seeing as stealth stacking was never to be intended and with 25 points in Shadow Arts you could essentially stack might along with stealth. These types of things just prove to those who whine about stealth based classes that they are right.

Although the nerf on sword seems uncalled for. Remember Anet this is pretty much our only viable weapon for higher tier tournaments and such, but this one seems like your call Anet.

The nerfs to standard supplements to initiative gain does seem somewhat unruly like Quick Recovery. It only procs every 10 secs going from 2 to 1 does seem like some builds will be taking a large hit ehem D/P. But with the new base initiative regen rate we can’t say much of now.

Despite the changes I don’t think its a call to abandon thieves. This pretty much just forces us to be more careful (as if thief isn’t brittle enough, well compared to other classes). I considered joining Engineers, or just changing to D/D but these changes weed out the bad from the good. Rise up my brethren of the shadow we will combat this threat that looms over us.

permastealth brought the hate train on us. that’s why we got nerfed.

Sanduskel.1850:

permastealth brought the hate train on us. that’s why we got nerfed.

any half decent thief wouldn’t use perma stealth in pvp…. it is pointless
not perma stealth is any of issue in pve
wvw might be an issue… but again, stealthed thief doesn’t do anything

Rezzet.3614:

i did say throw feathers was actually aceptable as other classes have blinds when injured as well or invulnerability so this one shouldnt count i suppose

and still my point is proven too much access to blind coupled with thief’s dps and stealth theres really hardly any counter other than being a bunker and endure the thief’s attacks all it takes for me to fight non thieves without taking any damage is 2 blinds and my damage isnt even close to a thief’s

as for stealth having cooldown for excuse to blind on stealth cooldown Name me 3 classes with at least two 8s cd blinds.

as for ranged i dunno why you guys complain spammable aoe poison fields is Huge in zergs you’re crippling the whole enemy zerg’s ability to heal and clusterbomb is no joke either

as for pvp yes ranged is pretty lackluster i ll agree

Since you compare other classes:

Where’s our burn, 13 stacks of confusion, endless CC, blocks, invulnerability, stability, protection, retaliation, 15k base hp?

You know thief is the only class with 10.8k hp without blocks, protection and invulnerability and on top of that we have poor access to stability and really silly condition cleanse . The only cond cleanse that can be considered really strong is one that only works if we are staying out of the fight, in stealth. Mesmers and Engineers have everything thieves are lacking + all things that thieves have, with 5k more hp on top of that. Engineers even have a lot more healing. Thieves just specialize more into these few things ppl are QQing about because we don’t have the other ones. Engineers and Warriors can be immune to blind, and also engineers have really strong AoE options that can annihilate the thief both while he’s in stealth and outside stealth. I could go on, but I don’t have time for now.

The moral of the story, thieves have high access and are strong with the few things they are strong with, hard-counter what they are strong at and they don’t have anything cause of lack of versatility.

Ghostwolf, don’t feed him. It’s another rabbit like sudunksel.

Rezzet.3614:

and still my point is proven too much access to blind coupled with thief’s dps and stealth theres really hardly any counter other than being a bunker

You are proven wrong by actual Wvw participation in higher tiers. It’s just that you’re lacking the skills. Cloaked in Shadows triggers on entering stealth, which is either by skills with long cooldowns or with CnD, which can be countered by preventing it from landing.

all it takes for me to fight non thieves without taking any damage is 2 blinds

You want an “I win” button?

Alright, I do not have enough time to read this entire forum post so forgive me if I state something that has already been said. My only real concerns are the changes to IS/IR, initiative burst regeneration, and vigor shaving. I main thief and have noticed how quickly I can burst through all of my initiative (my favorite build is S/P) and I have to burst some initiative regeneration. It is the only way I can continue doing damage. As for IS/IR, specifically IR, that is a thieves “Oh kitten!” skill. First we close to distance to deal damage and if we find ourselves outmatched, we run away with IR… taking that away is like taking away a warriors endure pain skill or a guardians boons. Thieves have to run away when they find themselves outmatched, it is our only way to survive. Anet did not give us much in the way of base HP or Toughness so we have to dodge and stealth to survive. This also brings up our Vigor boon. You say you are removing our permanent vigor because it is overpowered and you want us to face enemies head on instead of evading their attacks (completely the opposite of what a thief coughASSASSINcough class is supposed to be) yet you leave the perma-vigor on classes like the engineer, warrior, guardian, and mesmer. If you are going to “balance” us, make sure it is actually balanced across all classes so no class has perma-vigor option

My point:
Please, please, please do not take away our survival mechanisms unless you are going to give us a SIGNIFICANT buff elsewhere (not something that is utter garbage such as the Hard to Catch trait) OR you take away the survival mechanisms from all other classes as well. Leave us all equally wimpy or leave the thieves alone for once.

Edit: Maesk pointed out for me that warriors do not have perma-vigor (thanks! I didn’t know that). I do not play warriors and never have because I find their, playstyle boring and lacking any real skill or knowledge. (This is my own personal opinion so please do not bash me on this)

@Butch

Warriors dont have perma vigor, and they’re nerfing engie vigor by 50% too (unless you run swiftness on crit —> vigor on swiftness, which leaves there in combat vigor at pretty much 100& uptime).
Other than that I agree with your post 100%

Maesk.8753:

@Butch

Warriors dont have perma vigor, and they’re nerfing engie vigor by 50% too (unless you run swiftness on crit —> vigor on swiftness, which leaves there in combat vigor at pretty much 100& uptime).
Other than that I agree with your post 100%

Thanks! I did not know this. I have edited my post to be a bit more accurate.

I’m tired of having my class nerfed considerably every single balance patch. We haven’t gotten a major buff in a long time, have we? Have you guys ever stopped to think that maybe the reason a lot of people struggle with fighting thieves is because they can’t be bothered to adjust and play differently?

Nerfing Opportunist is rather contradictory to your desire to reward active engagement in fights. Regardless of your aim, 5 seconds of CD is unfair.

The nerf on Infusion of Shadow is understandable, but it’s a major nerf that will decrease the efficiency of some builds if there’s nothing else to compensate and balance the change. In that sense, I don’t see much at the moment…

Quick Recovery will now not be able to compete with the other master traits on any build. It’s just been added to the pile of useless traits.

Assassin’s Reward was bad for a master trait before the intended buff. Now it’s been buffed a bit but put in grandmaster tier? And it’s switching places with Hard to Catch, a bad trait that can easily put you in worse situations than if it had not triggered, not to mention the lack of control you have over it. Speaking of which:

PLEASE do something about Last Refuge. How long do we have to keep begging you?

I have Bolt-inci on my thief….will you give me somthing to move them on other character cause you obviously killed S/D thieves while it was the most not OP build.
perma stealth build should have been nerfed only…
And warriors should be nerfed constantly …not us how is it my thief backstabbing zerker warrior and he still have half of his life and,in seconds,full life?
And why is preplexity runes are still left alone? prep warriors are combi of two OP things come on Anet please nerf it

Last refuge killed me last night..

Standing in my shadow refuge completely visible because last refuge decided to kick in during a fight and then i cancelled it with my next hit.

Such a frustrating skill. Wish they’d change it to having 2 seconds of evade at 25 percent health instead.

phaeris.7604:

Last refuge killed me last night..

Standing in my shadow refuge completely visible because last refuge decided to kick in during a fight and then i cancelled it with my next hit.

Such a frustrating skill. Wish they’d change it to having 2 seconds of evade at 25 percent health instead.

So, a thief trait/skill/weap did everything but play that certain 1987 Rick Astley song.
ANET’s POV : one thief died so that many warriors could live. Or mesmers. Or guardians, Or …

I feel your pain, phaeris. I leveled and geared my thief while waiting for THEM
to fix my ranger’s traits and skills. In that time, thief got dunked in weak sauce.