Guild Wars 2

Impact strike has some crazy gameplay potential, but right now it feels somewhat underwhelming with all the cleave around you.

These following suggestions allows higher skill-level-thieves to make more interesting plays, that allows us to raise our learning curve in the long run.

1) Let us use skills in-between Impact Strike, Uppercut, and Finishing Blow.

Right now, if you use your skills in-between it, Impact Strike goes on CD. I don’t really see the reason why it should go on CD, so allowing us to use other skills makes it much more interesting.

2) Increase the time in-between the elite skills.

At the moment it goes on cooldown if you don’t continue the chain after 3 seconds. By increasing it to 7-10 seconds, it allows us to either

a) move away from the cleave/AOE that usually follows after a foe goes down, or
b) have time to use other skills to either interrupt the rezzers, or do damage to players around you.

3) Make an “Uppercut” skill launch a foe away from you (450 distance).

Right now, if we use uppercut, it just launches him up in the air, and that’s it. While it’s useful for interrupting downed state skills, it doesn’t add much to the party, especially with all the cleave around you.

By making it function like Engineer’s rifle nr.4 “Overcharged Shot” or Revenant’s Elite you can launch the player away from the point, allowing you to cap it while he bleeds, or play “football” when others try to rezz him.

4) Make a “Finishing Blow” leap to your target with 900 distance.

My first thought was to make it teleport to your target, but it seems like it would destroy the principle behind the “physical” skills.

It would synergise really well with the other buffs. While enemies cleave around you, you just walk away, use some other skills, and if they start rezzing, you leap to your downed body and stomp him.

These buffs would really help thieves, since they suffer from this AOE syndrome. We basically should never stomp the target, since we don’t survive those 3 seconds of animations.

With these buffs it gives us survivability, plus an option to make some sick plays that only higher level thieves would benefit from.

These are okay.

Or.

Make the first hit of impact stun for half a second.

The new elite is fine… Why would you want it overbuffed when other professions already complain about it being OP? I mean it has chase, two interrupts, and is the only skill in game with an stomp. You can use it to instantly kill players who are low HP, completely skipping downed state. You can queue it up on a target then teleport the finishing blow mid channel onto someone else… All of this while being our shortest CD elite. Anymore would be silly.

Xeyon.6419:

The new elite is fine… Why would you want it overbuffed when other professions already complain about it being OP? I mean it has chase, two interrupts, and is the only skill in game with an stomp. You can use it to instantly kill players who are low HP, completely skipping downed state. You can queue it up on a target then teleport the finishing blow mid channel onto someone else… All of this while being our shortest CD elite. Anymore would be silly.

NOT ENOUGH.

But in all seriousness it’s fine as is.
Still wouldnt mind that stun though

The skill is actually already pretty good.

However, Bandit’s Defense needs to channel for 2 seconds and have a rollover knockdown available for 5 seconds if it successfully blocks something.

Fist Flurry/Palmstrike need to have their order reversed. Have the Palmstrike stun and deal its current damage, and put the Pulmonary Impact on the final strike of Fist Flurry. In that way it would be like a Pistol whip without the evade and root but with a longer stun on a CD.

Impact strike is fine, and you can actually use blinding powder before the uppercut/ finishing blow.

I think it’s fine, but I would like an “isolate and destroy” elite in the future with a knockback>shadowstep to target>big hit style chain.

No problems with it, been killed and killed many with it. I like the voice over thing the thief sais. I dunno if they are all the same but my thief is human, and she says a number of things “and stay down!” “It’s over!” “You’re history!” On the final stomp bit that is.

The only thing I want about this skill is having finishing blow being useful in PvE.

Uppercut needs to have a small gap closer like 1st attack from the chain. It’s pretty much impossible to land it on a running enemy while being crippled. Or at least make 1st attack apply cripple for 3 seconds.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

I dunno if they are all the same but my thief is human, and she says a number of things “and stay down!” “It’s over!” “You’re history!” On the final stomp bit that is.

kitten , now I’m tempted to activate the voice on my toon. I’ve been told he sounds like a potato..

Edit: He mumbles something like “You’re done” and “You’re history” – and he does sound like a potato.

Human male always sounded bad, female sounds a lot more “aggressive”. Try a male norn, or charr.

Nah, he just needs to look good =)
I really wondered how people are able to play with dialog the 5 mins I had it – so much drivel “strooong! eat my dust.”

It helps me in pvp, especially vs eles in a multi person punch up, them changing atuments with out me seeing them and hearing “fire!” Is always good. It’s also good vs downed stealth thievs because you can here them (sometimes) use downed skilled #4.

I heard so, also that people are able to hear a backstab – but I can’t with the dialogues.

Hmm not noticed that 1.

This skill needs no buffs.
What needs buffs is the crap ton of other massively underwhelming underpowered stuff under the thief that got nerfed to death over the last years that are the thief’s traitlines, utility skills, healing skills and vanilla game elite skills

The whole thief class is under the current game meta balance setting since the June 23rd patch a total JOKE far more, than this class was a joke already before of that patch and since then it became only worser and worser and the Daredavil sadly did absolutely nothign at all to brign back some balance to the class, thanks to all the massive power creep that all the other classes received at the same time.

Making some changes just only on impact strike will change absolutely NOTHING!! at all.

What the thief class needs is a complete rebalancement/redesign around its traitlines as theres currently absolutely no other class in the whole game, with crappier traitlines, utilities and elite skills, than the thief with the exception of impact strike and that pretty much since game release!!

What this class needs first and foremost are changes on the following points:

• Rebalancement of Base Health, here the game is still in a 2012 state and direly needs changes so that Base Health finalls gets approppiate numbers for all the Power Creep GW2 receive over the last 3 years.

Minimum Base Health needs to get increased from 11645 to a much better fitting 15000
Medium Base Health needs to get increased from 15922 to a better fitting 17500
High Base Health should get increased from 19212 to 20000 with High gettign the smallest increase, because High Base Classes have in the game the base Damage Mitigations with either lots of Damage Blocks, auto Health Regens or in the case of the Necro practically a second quickly refilling on demand Health Bar that protects them from lethal damage.

With these Base Healthes increased, Build Diversity will increase and Classes won’t drop like flies instantly anymore fro mthe currently way overpowered Damage Conditions that can be spammed way to quickly into seriously deadly high stacks

• Vitality needs to get merged with Healing Power to give defensive attributes more synergy and straightly increase stronger Max Health per Point (from plus 10 per point increase to plus 20 perpoint, so that a high vitality player has also significantly more health than a non vitality build player) and Toughness needs to reduce stronger Damage as in ints current Reduction Formular Toughness feels like beign non existant reducing way too less the damage that you receive. Toughness needs to become more effective, therefore that Conditions completely ignore this Attribute!! If you go really high on Toughness, then a battle against your high toughness build should feel for an Enemy Player like fighting agaisnt one of these high defense Mordrems, which receive only significant damage from conditions…but at the current state, you could have like 1500+ toughnes,s it feels like have 0 toughness..it feels liek receiving exactly the same damage and the defense from that attribute is nothing but a nonexistant stupid illusion!!

• 13 Initiative Points BASELINE, thief is way too muhc dependent from this from Trickery

• Fall Damage Reduction BASELINE

• Daredevil Dodge Changers redesigned into an out of combat Dodge Style Toggle (F3) and their effects replaced with real Grandmaster Traits

• Blindness on Cloak and Dagger BASELINE

• Increase of the Dodge Animation from Deadly Blossom to its FULL ANIMATION LENGTH

• Venom Share BASELINE to make Thief more useful for Groups, thief massively lacks Group Play Support. This class is way too much selfish and should be in fact one of the most Best Group Supporters that whenver they steal somethign to weaken a foe, party members should benefit from that..whenever they use venoms, party members should benefit from that, whenever they successfuly dodge attacks, party members should benefit from that, whenever they use Stealth, party members should benefit from that, Thiefes need to become finalyl again the absolute most best and unrivaled Stealth Class, thats whats their main design point on what the whole class is based on..its whole combat design stays and falls around stealth the most from all classes, so they should have also the best best and most effective stealth abilities from all classes that have stealth skills. Simply said, whenever somewhere stealth is needed, a group should always weant to have for that job first a thief and no other class, unless no thief is currently avaiable.

• Thieves need to have the most effective Poison from all classes, not ranger, rev or necro.
  Thieves are the masters of deadly venoms and poisons..so when a thief poisons you, it should be alot more deadlier for you, then getting poisoned by any other class!!

• Thieves need to become finally the absolute most mobile and fastest moving class from ALL. Absolutely no other clas, especially not a Warrior in HEAVY ARMORS should be able to outrun and catch a thief. The only single class that should come any close to the movement agility and mobility should be logically only an Elementalist on Air Attunement!! or an Engineer/Scrapper with its technological Gadgets and Gyros ect. Everythign else needs to be slower and less mobile than thieves

• Steal Skills need to get buffed/redesigned, as alot of them are absolutely underwhelming to the point of beign totally useless. They need to become stronger Class Counter Skills that when used at the right time can turn the tide to your favor.

• Thieves need to receive more/better Combo Skilsl Effects so that Thieves become the number one choice when you will want to have tons of Combo Effects.
  SB is already a good example for this, but the other weapons lack at this and should get looked at, how they can be improved to be more effective for making lots of combo effects in synergy with the other classes

• Alot of Traits/Utility Skilsl of the Thief Class should get merged to make space for some new and better thought out and universally more useful Traits/Utility Skills.

Example: Merge the Signet Utility Skills like Signet of Agility with Signet of Shadows and merge Assassinan’s Signet with Infiltrator’s Signet.
Doiung this would create space for 2 new Signet Skills with that Anet could improve the build diversity of the thief and could rebalance the thief with these 2 new skills.
Same thign with traits

Other example of what should get merged is Shadowstep +Blinding Powder or Needle Trap with Trip Wire, because there effects are either good for a snyerge, or too similar in the case of Trip Wire and Needle Trap, as the one knocks dowbn, the other immobilizes..for the surprise effect of the CC, its just too similar

• Redesign of the Acrobatics Traitline, as Daredevil is basically since its release Acrobatics 2.0, but just in many things alot better. Acrobatics need to receive again some good reasons why you want to take this trait line over Shadow Art, Deadly Arts or Critical Strikes

These examples are just only some of very many problem points of the thief class as a whole.
Changing Impact Strike would be nothing but a band aid to a non existant wound, than giving this class finally the fixes that it needs to make it again a viable and fun to play class, that is in many things equal with the rest of the classes.

When the thief becomes again a viable class, that is not anymore nothing but a +1 pet, then the Devs have made a good job on class balance for once!!

Maugetarr.6823:

The skill is actually already pretty good.

However, Bandit’s Defense needs to channel for 2 seconds and have a rollover knockdown available for 5 seconds if it successfully blocks something.

Fist Flurry/Palmstrike need to have their order reversed. Have the Palmstrike stun and deal its current damage, and put the Pulmonary Impact on the final strike of Fist Flurry. In that way it would be like a Pistol whip without the evade and root but with a longer stun on a CD.

I don’t think you understand how daredevil works… it’s not a brawler class that recklessly throws attacks, the attacks are based on martial arts. No martial artist is going to throw a palm hand before a fist flurry.

xXBurningEmberXx.6085:

Maugetarr.6823:

The skill is actually already pretty good.

However, Bandit’s Defense needs to channel for 2 seconds and have a rollover knockdown available for 5 seconds if it successfully blocks something.

Fist Flurry/Palmstrike need to have their order reversed. Have the Palmstrike stun and deal its current damage, and put the Pulmonary Impact on the final strike of Fist Flurry. In that way it would be like a Pistol whip without the evade and root but with a longer stun on a CD.

I don’t think you understand how daredevil works… it’s not a brawler class that recklessly throws attacks, the attacks are based on martial arts. No martial artist is going to throw a palm hand before a fist flurry.

Exactly, you wouldn’t recklessly throw out attacks, which is why stunning them before a series of blows makes sense.

Edit: The original palmstrike counted as an offhand attack setting you up for a dual attack. It started the combo, not finished it.

Orpheal.8263:

-snip-

Several good points, however I don’t think the devs care enough about thief to implement some of these. I’d love to be proven wrong though.

Your #3 point makes no sense. You want the uppercut to knockback so the final skill in the chain misses and the downed player lives? Personally I don’t think it’s bad but it feels pretty mediocre like basilisk venom. It is cool to stomp with but serves little purpose beyond that, landing a good interrupt with it is tough because of its limited range and slow speed + travel time. I find in 1v1’s it tends to be a waste of a skill and provides little to no benefit. If I had to change anything on it, I think a stun on the initial hit rather than daze would be beneficial as it would be more difficult to evade the continuing chains. Beyond that it really lacks a purpose in dueling scenarios which is rather disappointing. I still run it often however due to its great usefulness in group fights being able to secure a kill more quickly. But it’s not without drawbacks, for example you are a total sitting duck while running through its animations and often find myself hard cced while doing and then poof the chain is gone. I don’t know, personally I find it disappointing overall and feel like it has potential to be so much better but it was pushed out as a half baked idea.

Lyger.5429:

Orpheal.8263:

-snip-

Several good points, however I don’t think the devs care enough about thief to implement some of these. I’d love to be proven wrong though.

I can’t take this serious, to be honest. All I see is “Thief should be BEST at THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS and THIS!” Usually I enjoy Orpheals comments, there are many interesting ideas from him, but this is just too much.

Why should thief be the best at party support? Totally doesn’t fit the theme of it.
Why should thief have the strongest poison? You can arguement for many classes to have the strongest poison. Many venoms (even the ones from thiefs) are from animals, ranger does know MUCH more about these so maybe ranger should have stronger poison. Or necromancers are masters of dark magic and use it to create poison, magical poison probably should be more powerful.
Why should thief be the best at combos? Seems like anet wants that theme to be for engineers and you can say it makes sense. Many technical devices for several fields and finishers.

I agree that thief should be number 1 for stealth, but the other points I have to disagree. Theme of thief should be about stealth and assassinating (and that’s why I don’t get why anet gave necromancers a SPAMMABLE attack which has a higher damage scaling than backstab…..)

You do know that you can stow impact strike chain?

Kodama.6453:

Theme of thief should be about stealth and assassinating (and that’s why I don’t get why anet gave necromancers a SPAMMABLE attack which has a higher damage scaling than backstab…..)

The theme of thief is not “assassin” it is “rogue” and not the “rogue” class from <insert other game> but the literary definition of rogue.

GW2’s core classes are based on generall broad fantasy character archetypes, with a few unique GW lore-centric ones thrown in.

Thief describes an archetype of the slippery, dirty fighting, underhanded sort of character. That encompasses assassins, pirates, muggers, burglars, and generally is typified by GW2’s mechanics as a combination of dirty tricks, stealth, and evasion. The overall intent of the system is that a thief can play around any of these core concepts, not that all thieves should be limited to glassy stealth builds.

Assassin is a build option, not a class.

All thieves are not assassins, just as all Guardians are not GW1 prot Monks, and all eles are not long range nukers. Thief is (theoretically) the master of stealth if he specs in to it, but stealth does not typify the character, nor should it, as being pigeonholed in to stealth has been one of the major balance issues for the class since launch.

@ Kodama

The problem with the thief class is, that it got over the last years so many nerfs, that this class is mostly absolutely currently best at nothing at all anymore, because of anet making everything that this class provided basically uniform with other classesm ore and more to the point, that other classes are in certain things significantly better.

The Thief Class is no Allrounder, that can do tons of things and sucks at everything.
Its a Class wioth absolute clear roles and its a Class, that needs to exceell at these roles to perform these roles for what this class is made for to do best.

They Key Roles of the Thief Class are:

• Superior Mobility (Superior Mobility means, there should be nearly no other Class, that easily can outperform their Mobility. there should be only at best other Classes like said Air Elementalists or Engineers/Scrappers that should come close to the Mobility of the Thief, while other totally senseless Classes should absolutely never get that kind of Mobility of a Thief that they can outrun them easily, when they wear HEAVY ARMOR. Absolutely no Heavy armor Class should have more Mobility than a Thief.. this should be just LOGICAL, but we speak about logic, somethign that anets seems to lack at when it comes down to senseful Class Balancing in regard of equipment weight affecting mobility. You can’t expect someone wearing like your own body weight in equipment to run same as fast and move as agile like someone in leather equipment that weights just only a tiny part of what heavy plate armors weight.

• Combo Synergy
  Thief is one of the Classes with the most Combo Synergy. They have alot of skilsl that can proc all kinds of Combos with other Classes. The Shortbow alone is already an on demand constant Combo Field Generator/Field Finisher and its projectiles can combo like every 5th shot with fields.
  With daggers they get leaps and whirls. Daggerstorm is one of the most effective long time whirl finishers of the game.
  With Pistols they get more projectile combos and blind field on demand.
  Staff added more whirls and leaps.
  The only weapon of them that lacks all of this gameplay is the Sword, it provides absolutely nothing for combos sadly whyever.

So 90% of the whole thief gameplay is made to synergize with other classes in combat. It should be 100%

• Superior Agility, with this I mean not the mobility in regard of how they move, but the efficiency of moving.
  Thieves should be simply said the fastest moving class with the most access to permanent Swiftness and thignsl ike Super Speed… When I see that there are other classes like Engineer/Druid ect. out performing the Thief, I could cringe only innerly.
  Thieves are Runners, they are used to flee quickly if situations get too dangerous for them

• Single Target Predators (Vulture Gameplay)
  Thiefs are like the vultures in this game, they shouldn’t be overall superior in dealing alot of AoE damage, therefore exist Classes like Elementalist or Necromancer, but they should excell in Single Target Damage the most. Thats into what thieves specialize, to take out single enemies quickly and efficiently and remove from the battlefield the weak and unskilled players, or weaken their enemies so, that their allies have an easier time dealing with them, where we come to the next Key Role of the Thief.

• DPS Control
  Thieves are very good at weakening foes and interrupting them using alot of conditions like Poison, Weakness, Vulnerability, Blindness, Cripple/Chill and Bleeding/Torment.
  That are the core conditions a thief mainly uses and the most effective condition of those should be logically poison, as thieves are masters of deadly venoms by significantly weakning stronger the enemies abilities to recover, than any other class should do. With all this healer gameplay now in the game due to spammy Heal Druids, this becomes now even much more important, because the whole PvP battle design of GW2 was from begin on never designed around this kind of gameplaxof having such effective Healers in the game that they can easily outheal even the strongest damage bursts!!
  Every kind of assasinating thief uses all kinds of deadly venoms all of the time to improve their deadly attacks and their efficiency to weaken foes so that they are an easier target to assassinate quick, silent and effective. No other class uses posions in the form the Thief class does, where their poisons work like some kind of preparation to enhance the attacks. rangers dont do so, necromancers dont do so, no other class does so, its only the Thief which uses deadly Venoms what is the simple logical reason, why their Poisons should be the most effective ones as Poisons and Venoms are like some kind of trademark mechanic for the whole thief class like steal and stealth kind of.

• Surprise Attacks
  Stealth and their Shadow Steps are one of the main key roles that give the Thief the advantage of the element of surprise and thats something at what Thiefs are superior in and what is a core elemental part of the whole class design of the thief

That are the 6 Key Roles, the foundational pillars of that the Thief Class are made off in most of all MMORPGs I know and have played as like also in tons of Offline RPGs with thief classes that I have played which share this vision of a thief/assassin/rogue alot
—-

Party Support:

I didn’t said, that Thieves hsould be the best at Party Support, you misunderstood me there Kodama.
I said, that Thieves need to become better at it, because currently the whole Thief Class provides nearly nothing at all that is of any kind of high value for any group in the whole game for why the group should want to have a Thief with them.

Stealth? Lol , dont make me laugh hard.. any kind of game meta group that sets focus on group support synergy will always use for Fractals/raids ect. always Mesmers/Chronomancers or Engineers/Scrappers with their superior useful Stealth Skills

Conditions? any serious group will always use Condi Mesmers/Condi Enginners over any venomshare thief that I have seen so far, because the venomshare is just as a group effect too weak compared to the group support that other condi builds of other classes can offer in a more constant up time than the spammy venoms with their very few amounts of usages that hardly do nothing compared to the condition spam other classes can do and that on AOE basis

Thats why I said, Anet needs to improve the group support aspects of the Thief and add more positive side effects to things that Thiefs can do and do mostly all of the time by significantly improving things that are already part of their Key Roles:

Superior Mobility > Better Group Support through Mobility by lettign the group better benefit from it when the Thief uses Skills like Shadow Steps or dodges successfuly around

Combo Synergy: Improve the CS of the Thhief to 100% by adding Combo Effects to the sword skills. add traits, that give better group benefiting effects for whenever the thief finishes in any kind of way a combo, because they do it mostly constantly all of the time when fighting in a group.

Superior Agility: Whenever the thief gains boons like swiftness, super speed or quickness, the group should somehow benefit better from that also, so that the group actually wants to deliver the thief constant agility enhancing effects so that they profitate self also from it … thats somethign also where the Steal Gameplay comes in mind and where the group should benefit more, when thieves steal.

Single Target Predator/Surprise Attacks: Here could anet maybe improve the thieves group play by lettign the group benefit more from it, when the thief kills targets out of stealth or weaken foes

DPS Control: here coudl anet improve the group play with thieves by letting group members benefit more from thieves so more they interrupt targets and break their break bars to weaken foes significantly, so that the weakness state when the bar gets broken by a thief becomes more effective

The possibilities are endless, fact is only, thief is currently at a very weak balance state and it needs to get finally addressed instead of getting constantly ignored by Anet or overshadowed with other power creep added to all other classes that makes everything what the thief might have gotten improved directly again obsolete, like now with HoT, where mostly everythign what they added with HoT outclasses in addition with the terrible condition patch of june 23rd the thief, what is the reason, why you see now in the game out of a sudden all this thief discrimination that peopel yell at you to change your character if you dare to play things like raids or ranked PvP with a thief, because you absolutely contribute nothign there to the group, that any other class can do alot better than the thief!!

My suggest would be to have the skill behave differently based on the targets status. If they are downed, it spikes them quickly. If they are stunned/dazed, it launches uppercut. If they are status free, it acts as a stun. Then I would shorten its cooldown to 30s.

Problem with the current elite is that it is very difficult to land the combo making Basilisk more reliable on the same cool down.

My main complaint is how underwhelming the 3rd hit is. Lower dmg than uppercut-slightly more than a frontal backstab, no CC, slow, only real use is finishing people and that isn’t a thing in PvE so not much reason to use it.

I also wish the timer on it was a bit longer and didn’t get removed when using a different skill so makes it a bit tricky when dealing with downed invuln frames and such.