Guild Wars 2

Brett.4305:

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.

Tsk Tsk Brett…..Brett……Brett this is why you need a backup warr and guard. All your other classes maybe subjected to the mischievous tricks of the balance team, but they’ll never touch those 2 classes so at least you have a safe bet with those. Ofc if you don’t do that, you’ll just have to hope you’ll not end up a free loot bag like the thief or a conjured weapon dispenser like the ele…..or worse

how bout blinding powder 7 init and call it a day for these d/p guise

You picked a bad class to switch to Brett!

People just hate stealth types in every game, and rangers seem to get lumped in for some reason.

Anet seems to just adore heavies and mesmers.

phaeris.7604:

You picked a bad class to switch to Brett!

People just hate stealth types in every game, and rangers seem to get lumped in for some reason.

Anet seems to just adore heavies and mesmers.

Believe me, mesmers had their unfair share of nerfs. Up until the last 3 months mesmers were nerfed every single patch. And even like that, it’s only recently they started really buffing them up again…….though they seems to concentrate on mantras a lot for some reason.

Brett.4305:

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.

I sympathize with you, I avoided Ranger, my main in GW 1, on the hunch that pets would never be on par with anything else and with pets as the designated main theme for rangers … I went with Thief, as Rogues had given me a lot of fun in D&D style games. Look how that is turning out. Maybe I should better spend my time investigating D&D style MMO’s.

Mesmers are currently the better thieves. :/

While I fully understand that PvP (structured) is the place where balance takes place, I would like to point out a few things that I feel lacking about the thief. And in a sense may be lacking for more professions.

1. A good profile for each play format (pvp, wvw, pve; in order of importance…) and diversities of roles for these formats.
2. A reasonable trade off, so that using one negates the other.

This mainly has to do with me ‘trying’ to play a thief in WvW, and in a sense be part of all it has to offer. Currently though I feel that the only ‘use’ for a thief is to slaughter yak, and ‘maybe’ play a role in a havoc team, given the havoc team is big enough for the thief to not be noticed (or have 2 mesmers along). Otherwise one is fairly useless…

And with that I mean the main play in WvW is to zerg fight. And in that part of gameplay the thief is weaker than a caster, without any way to put some hurt back. And the only way to possibly contribute is to ‘stealth’ people with regeneration, which only helps a tad for the regeneration, because being stealthed doesn’t mean not being hit…

Now obviously I suck at thief play still, but that is not what I am trying to point at. It’s the very strict use of a thief, the one dimensionality that disappoints me. Not enough armor or health to stand against melee, not enough hurt (beside some gank builds) to stand against casters. And not enough utility to contribute on any other front, aka. useless unless you like ganking yak all day… or carry supply…

Now I somewhat like the buff on initiative to 1/s, but I have to follow this with some ‘true’ sarcasm, as I can now shoot 5 instead of 4 poisonous clouds in a zerg fight, while I pray nothing hits me…

And I do realize that the zerg fighting was hoped not to occur, I can see that the intention was to have large scale ‘hall’ fights. Where frontline, midline & backline where distinct roles to fulfil. And that the thief, in those roles did come with some needed support (I see the traps, the smoke screen and stealths, to guard that backline, and the ‘gank’ to take out those ‘monks’). The reality is different though, there is no midline in WvW, there are just fairly useless medium-class armour professions.

And in a sense that is sad, but more important I think is to accept it as a given, as I doubt there be anything that can be done about it. Just look at it this way, Astrix & Obelix and their village would not stand a chance against the mighty rome, if the zerg wasn’t more effective than organized play, in large scale battle… Moving with Chaos, in a chaotic situation simply works better than trying forcefully to apply organization to the chaos in order to beat it and win the fight at the same time…

So to cut to the chase, and come to my point, the thief (and the other midrange classes) need a whole bunch of ‘new’ skills, or have their current skills adapted, to deal with the reality of the game, it’s formats, and the roles in it suited for each individual class. And by using the power of forced choice, limit a role to its intended purpose, while at the same time making it possible to be useful in every format of the game.

And I would like to stress that this is meant as constructive criticism, I fully see how the medium armor classes were supposed to play their part, and in that have their diversity of roles, and contribute to the whole. And as someone that has found they love midrange play I applaud the setup (a dual axed, trapper ranger is very useful in PvE). It’s just that in the reality of WvW, they currently have no real contribution to make apart from some minor niche functions…

Bountiful Theft, in my opinion, should be left alone and not nerfed.

•Has a slight risk vs reward and skill cap compared to Vigorous Recovery & Withdraw / Heals. By this I mean it can fail with relevant consistency because of invulnerability, evades, and channeled block skills where as Withdraw is an evade, cannot fail in those same given situations, and always grants the buff.
•Is 20 into a trait line that doesn’t immediately augment thief damage / burst where as Vigorous Recovery is only 10 in a similar type of trait line.
•15 Seconds of vigor is not overpowered even with a x / x / x / x / 30 build for improved steal recharge rate, and this is still mainly because of the risk vs reward factor in PvP, it can fail and then that vigor = 0 anyways.

Edit: On top of evades / block abilities / invulnerability that can cancel out the bountiful theft vigor … there’s also obstructed … I don’t think this trait deserves a nerf.

Black Teagan.9215:

Mesmers are currently the better thieves. :/

They are indeed fun.
I have one of every class. Only playing mesmer entertains me as much as thief.
If thief Sword/Pistol goes into the WC …
mesmer Sword/Pistol – Scepter/Focus.

Vigor. Stealth. Mobility.
It’s the Mac vs. PC. Which is which?

All of these discussions still haven’t even ATTEMPTED to fix the Thief class’ most glaring issue.

Lack of group cohesion and feasibility. Simply stated we need to improve GROUP utilities for thiefs, not worry about their 1:1 skills.

Thief
In addition to a few bug fixes and slightly toning down the poison duration of Choking Gas, thieves will be looking at a few new survival and support options via traits. Sharpen your blades, pack your pistol powder tight, and fletch your arrows: Invigorating Precision is coming your way, which will heal you for a percentage of your outgoing damage on critical hits.

Clear.8512:

Thief
In addition to a few bug fixes and slightly toning down the poison duration of Choking Gas, thieves will be looking at a few new survival and support options via traits. Sharpen your blades, pack your pistol powder tight, and fletch your arrows: Invigorating Precision is coming your way, which will heal you for a percentage of your outgoing damage on critical hits.

“We feel the thief profession isn’t as viable as we thought it was so we are going to keep throwing healing traits and skills at them until they are.”

Zacchary.6183:

Clear.8512:

Thief
In addition to a few bug fixes and slightly toning down the poison duration of Choking Gas, thieves will be looking at a few new survival and support options via traits. Sharpen your blades, pack your pistol powder tight, and fletch your arrows: Invigorating Precision is coming your way, which will heal you for a percentage of your outgoing damage on critical hits.

“We feel the thief profession isn’t as viable as we thought it was so we are going to keep throwing healing traits and skills at them until they are.”

Yeah, that 50HP for every 1k crit damage thieves will be doing is going to go miles in keeping those Glass cannons alive – if there’s anything glass cannons really need, it’s infinitesimally small heals via a 30 point GM trait. I’m sure they’ll barely notice the loss of executioner.