The below reflects the balance changes made in the July 26th patch, with my comments on the changes and suggestions for improvements. Although other threads commented on specific changes, such as the stealth attack internal cooldown, I felt a holistic approach would be easier for a dev to read through looking for feedback on the patch.
Balance Changes1. Stealth Attacks: All stealth attack skills will now have a 1-second recharge between uses.
2. Venomous Aura: The area-of-effect aspect of this trait has been merged into venoms as baseline. The radius has been reduced from 360 to 240. The recharge reduction has moved to Leeching Venoms.
3. This trait has been renamed Rending Shade and now causes all sneak-attack abilities to steal up to 2 boons when striking an enemy, while receiving less damage from foes without boons.
4. Leeching Venoms: This trait no longer grants might to allies it is applied to. This trait now reduces the recharge of venom abilities.
5. Devourer Venom: The number of stacks that this skill applies has been reduced from 3 to 2.
6. Basilisk Venom: The number of stacks that this skill applies has been reduced from 2 to 1. Stun duration has been increased from 1 second to 1.5 seconds.
7. Haste: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 60 seconds to 50 seconds.
8. Dagger Storm: This skill can no longer be affected by quickness or slow.
1. I think the idea of an internal cooldown is interesting. It rewards players who are accurate in using their attacks and it also prevents the constant “rapidfire” spam on Sneak Attack if the attack was initiated after the target moved out of range. It also opens up the possibility of buffing stealth attacks for the first time in a while. However, the full one seconds feels “clunky” on thief. The cooldown of the animations means that 1 second, especially for thieves with only 3 seconds of stealth, will in some cases mean no stealth attack is able to land at all.
My feedback is that a 0.5 second cooldown is more appropriate to the pacing. Otherwise, with the cooldown as significant as it is, stealth attacks themselves need to be buffed to reflect the cost of failure. I think a reduction in the cooldown is a better solution than buffing any attack, generally.
2. Venomous Aura is a powerful ability that in the right circumstances represents a significant boost in damage or utility for the thief sharing the venoms. Making this baseline was a huge boost to those running venoms and to many thieves using the elite venom already. Splitting up the venom recharge reduction was smart by bringing new and additional value to a lesser used trait that provided its own enhancement to venoms.
My feedback is that the radius is too small. The venoms are already limited in how many people may receive the venoms. I would even take few people being able to receive the venoms in exchange for a viable radius. Say a 400 radius and a maximum of three people receiving the venoms. 240 is far too small for sharing venoms, one with a significant cast time, in the middle of a battle.
3. Rending Shade is a useful grandmaster trait in the new meta where boons are shared and generated at an almost absurd rate. The three options in Shadow Arts are now all valuable and useful for a mix of offensive and defensive reasons—something which the line is characterized by.
4. See 2.
5. With more people being able to receive this under a baseline venomous aura I can see a reason “why” this was reduced. However, I don’t think many people took this ability before the change and I don’t see a reason for them to take it or not based on one more or less stacks. This is an ambivalent change that neither breaks the class nor addresses a serious balance issue. Time will tell if the change was warranted.
6. Likewise as with 5. People took this before the charges were increased to 2. People also took this without the ability to share it to a group. Given its unique ability to freeze people in place, time will tell if this change was warranted. I suspect, given the group PvP implications that it will prove to be more warranted than the change discussed in #5.
7. This is one of the better changes in the patch notes. Haste has always been an under utilized ability because of the long recast. Now, a thief could trait for the cooldown reduction in tricks and have access to this on a 40 second cooldown, which reflects the faster pace of combat in the current gw2 meta.
8. Hopefully, this is not the last balance to DS that will be done. Now that there are no worries about quickness increasing its damage unreasonably, maybe the core ability can be buffed or the cooldown can be reduced. It is rare to see anyone run this trait as it currently stands, so all I can say at this juncture is that more continuing effort is needed to bring this elite into actual use.
Overall thoughts: This was, with the exception of the length of the stealth attack cooldown, a decent patch for the thief. It opened up some new play styles and gave thief more tools to deal with a meta that became very boon focused—while leaving thieves mostly without a way to gain those boons. Incorporating more boon steal, stealing being the essence of thief, was the right choice to balance thieves into that aspect of the meta. Previous patches boosted thief damage. In this patch, at last, thief is being given more tools that promote smart gameplay and don’t simply rely on “hit harder” to balance the game.