Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I wrote a detailed feedback about Thief’s Trickery specialization a while ago :
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/thief/Stealing-cooldown-CD-too-long-when-specialized

About the general class mechanics, I wrote a detailed thread about all classes mechanics, but this feeling clearly started with the Thief, so the point is relevant in Thief’s feedback :
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Will-Combat-Mechanics-be-deeper

That said, all in all, the Thief’s combat pace is the fastest, therefore the one I prefer. But it clearly lacks depth in my taste. I’ll detail what I wish the Thief mechanics were, but keep in mind this could apply to other classes as well.

I wish there were 2 axis in my gameplay, for each fight (may it be pve or pvp) :

• first, the thinking process. Having the choice, in the same class, to either choose the mechanics simple route (= 3-4 skills rotation like now), or the complex but superior route (= if I do skill#1, then it will empower skill#3, and then if I do a critical on skill#3, it will reset my cooldown on utility#2.. or if I do skill#2 two times in a row, then … etc). This more complex route is more powerful, but more risky as it takes more time. Risk/Reward.
  I don’t feel like there is this complex strategy choice right now. I miss such a depth, because it is exactly what creates what is called “mindgames”. It’s also what creates those moments where you tell yourself : “holy cow, I succeeded in outputting this ?? now I’m proud !”
  Put it simply : Facing a situation where a fight seems impossible to overcome, unless I make the proper decisions with my strategy, in the shortest possible time.
  (yep, please don’t think all your playerbase is brain-lazy, thanks)

• second, the execution process. Actually, you just have to mash autoattack (yup I’m so bored that I turned auto-execution off, even if it’s just mashing), then time 2 or 3 skills properly. For a person who just discovers videogames, it’s sufficient. But for someone who has been playing games for more than 20 years (and we’re a lot, considering the average gamer’s age is 30), you do understand how it can feel déjàvu or console-esque. Executing 4-5 skills is good for an arcade game like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry (although they do have more combos than GW2). But for a RPG, it’s clearly too limited. I’m not necessarly asking for 50 concurrent skills, but as an example, for every skill to be like the Thief’s autoattack (skill#1a = effect 1, skill#1b = effect 2, etc, and if I wait too long the skill resets to skill#1a).
  This would put more pressure on my execution for complex strategies, sending me back to simple attacks as a penalty (= auto-attack, and 2-3 additional skills push here and there).

TL;DR : I want deeper mechanics, more choices in how I want to fight with a weaponset. Far more choices, really.

RPGs are by essence revolving around character management. Stats and gear are well known. But actions management is part of the RPG genre, too.
The purpose of RPGs, may they be Pen&Paper or Videogames, have always been to manage an archetype’s abilities to create your character. Your gameplay.
To leverage your skills at will.

You can perfectly have, in the same class (and here in the same weaponset), a base layer of simple skills mechanics, but still allow to add more and more layers when you meet certain conditions. Those layers would also be different depending on the talent (trait) specialization you choose.

This pressure leverage relying purely on class mechanics, is what made the golden days of MMORPG fights. Please think about it.

edit : additional about Thief : utility skills CD are way too long … example, Spider venom, 45sec for 5 attacks … for the fastest attacking class ? and it doesn’t stack, but just refreshes the timer ……. ? Are you serious ?

These are things that need some fixing:
Venoms – They are almost useless without all traits affecting them and with them they are just fine, nothing special. The best solution is imho rework to something like signets – you get one venom strike every X seconds or on every X attack and you can activate the venom for the same effect it has now.

Traps – Ambush trap is ok but the rest of them is trash. They only affect one target and when enemy cross the trap from narrow side it sometimes doesn’t activate but just disappear. Reducing cooldown on some of these traps (Ambush is ok) or making them affect more then one target would make them much more usable.

Scorpion Wire – Range 1200 doesn’t fix anything when it works like 3 times from 10. Random obstructed on flat terrain or knockdown instead of pull makes it highly unreliable. The slow projectile speed is also bad but i guess it is there to make it avoidable.

Sword + Dagger – It was high control medium damage set now it is medium control low damage set. Tactical strike does lower damage than crippling strike. Flanking strike is highly unreliable skill, better tracking would make it much more useful. There is no good way how to do damage except for autoattack after nerfing dancing dagger (that was good move, but the cost should be lowered too) and cloak & dagger. Buffing Tactile strike a little bit more and fixing Flanking strike could make this set useful again.

Pistol Whip – Please increase the damage for PvE only.

Pistol + Pistol – This set should be improved to do more damage or more control, right now it is weak in both departments.

WvW stealth capping – This should go away.

Blacksarevok.8104:

Blacksarevok.8104:

- Vital Shot sucks
- Body Shot (still) sucks
- Flanking Strike doesn’t quite suck, needs to follow the target or have a much quicker animation
- Pistol Whip sucks

As a general statement, Thieves lack survivability in PVE. Stealth is a very powerful mechanic in PVP, but it falls short in PVE. It seems like we have to give up a lot of our offensive capability just to be able to stay alive, whereas proffesions like Warrior barely have to give up anything offensively to avoid being flattened.

I can’t tell you how lame it is that I can only fight one veteran or karka at a time on my Thief, but my Warrior (who is slightly less geared) can run in and take 2-3 at a time. I know Warriors are obviously intended to take hits better than a Thief, but my issue is that if a Warrior and a Thief have similar damage outputs, but a Warrior can survive substantially better, why play a Thief?

Actually, in response to my last paragraph, I would like to see Thieves get an elite skill defensive signet. Something that gives a passive damage reduction and/or HP increase, and has a Use that restores endurance and grants a block or something.

An elite signet with a passive that makes all attacks have a chance to restore a small amount of endurance like the dagger auto attack would be all kinds of awesome. Perhaps with an active that gives you and your group vigor and protection.

bladie.5084:

Deadly traits is alright.
Critical traits are okay
Acrobatics are pretty nice
Trickery is pretty nice as well

Shadow arts traits is just crazy imba glyphs imho. You get rewarded while in stealth? regen while stealth, gain more initiative while stealth gain, 15 seconds of might when stealth? That’s just crazy and nonsense imo. That’s why decent players can’t kill some of us, once we stealth, we can remove conditions, re heal everything, regain all our initiatives and are ready to go for round 2+3+4 and so on.

Yes it gives decent health regeneration some might, and condition removal. Just that Elementalist has all that in AoE scale while also having damage in AoE scale, not like thief.

Stin.9781:

bladie.5084:

Deadly traits is alright.
Critical traits are okay
Acrobatics are pretty nice
Trickery is pretty nice as well

Shadow arts traits is just crazy imba glyphs imho. You get rewarded while in stealth? regen while stealth, gain more initiative while stealth gain, 15 seconds of might when stealth? That’s just crazy and nonsense imo. That’s why decent players can’t kill some of us, once we stealth, we can remove conditions, re heal everything, regain all our initiatives and are ready to go for round 2+3+4 and so on.

Yes it gives decent health regeneration some might, and condition removal. Just that Elementalist has all that in AoE scale while also having damage in AoE scale, not like thief.

The thing a lot of folks fail to realize about stealth is that if you want to utilize all those fancy stealth benefits you’re making a tradeoff in attack uptime. Every second you stay in stealth is a second you can’t attack your enemy (because you want to stay in stealth for safety/positioning/trait reasons), but your enemy has free reign to do whatever they want. If you’re fighting someone incompetent that just stands there while you’re stealthed, this is a huge advantage to you. If you’re fighting someone who is active and has a decent idea of where you are or are going to be stealth is a liability. All the repositioning and trait effects in the world can’t make up for an entire three seconds where your opponent is beating on you and you’re just walking around.

Tulisin.6945:

The thing a lot of folks fail to realize about stealth is that if you want to utilize all those fancy stealth benefits you’re making a tradeoff in attack uptime. Every second you stay in stealth is a second you can’t attack your enemy (because you want to stay in stealth for safety/positioning/trait reasons), but your enemy has free reign to do whatever they want. If you’re fighting someone incompetent that just stands there while you’re stealthed, this is a huge advantage to you. If you’re fighting someone who is active and has a decent idea of where you are or are going to be stealth is a liability. All the repositioning and trait effects in the world can’t make up for an entire three seconds where your opponent is beating on you and you’re just walking around.

^^ THIS

I can´t say anything against, totally agreed.

Tulisin.6945:

Stin.9781:

bladie.5084:

Deadly traits is alright.
Critical traits are okay
Acrobatics are pretty nice
Trickery is pretty nice as well

Shadow arts traits is just crazy imba glyphs imho. You get rewarded while in stealth? regen while stealth, gain more initiative while stealth gain, 15 seconds of might when stealth? That’s just crazy and nonsense imo. That’s why decent players can’t kill some of us, once we stealth, we can remove conditions, re heal everything, regain all our initiatives and are ready to go for round 2+3+4 and so on.

Yes it gives decent health regeneration some might, and condition removal. Just that Elementalist has all that in AoE scale while also having damage in AoE scale, not like thief.

The thing a lot of folks fail to realize about stealth is that if you want to utilize all those fancy stealth benefits you’re making a tradeoff in attack uptime. Every second you stay in stealth is a second you can’t attack your enemy (because you want to stay in stealth for safety/positioning/trait reasons), but your enemy has free reign to do whatever they want. If you’re fighting someone incompetent that just stands there while you’re stealthed, this is a huge advantage to you. If you’re fighting someone who is active and has a decent idea of where you are or are going to be stealth is a liability. All the repositioning and trait effects in the world can’t make up for an entire three seconds where your opponent is beating on you and you’re just walking around.

Exactly, that 2k health gained while invisible while speced like that is nuthing if oponent manages to land some attacks on you. 4 seconds passed you merge out of invisibility, oponent has same ammount of hp as you did not attack him, he hit some on you, you went into minus.
Elementalist heals while actualy damaging you, he applys more pressure, then does thief + all that is in AoE scale
Also buffs shared from ele will be in AoE scale too not thief self might stacks.
I do not see reasonable reason to whine about this, not taking in mind other class perspectives.

My biggest issue with thief, the entire time, has been survivability. I’ve learned to dodge thanks to the inherent squishiness of the class, but I feel there is a large hole in thief design that needs to be addressed.

Stealth is supposed to be our saving grace. We share the lowest base HP with the Guardian and Elemental professions, both of which have immunity abilities and lots of other survival utilities. And our defense is supposed to be stealth. Good. Great. I get it.

Here’s the problem. Stealth is, in it’s current form, and OFFENSIVE tool, not defensive, in most scenarios. Sure, it allows you to avoid some direct target skills. Notice I said “some”; we’ll get back to that later. However, it is entirely useless against AoE’s and skills that do not require targeting, which is most melee attacks. Some of those AoE attacks have such a large area of effect that one dodge does NOT get you out of them. Our only form of long lasting stealth puts an area on the ground that anyone can see, and has a fairly small radius in comparison to most aoe attacks, meaning if we stand in it we will likely die against any competent player. Ok, fine, stealth shouldn’t be an “I win” button and make you immune to everything; I can live with trying to juke people into thinking I’m somewhere else.

Here’s what’s GENUINELY broken with stealth: any channeled or cast attack that is put on us before we enter stealth continues to hit us. If we are forced to use stealth as a survival mechanic, this is 100% unacceptable. On top of that, as if the damage received wasn’t bad enough, projectile attacks CONTINUE TO TRACK US, showing the enemy EXACTLY where we are. Good teams in tPvP abuse this, spamming weak, casted or channeled abilities with little to no cooldown and an easy to see effect to prevent thieves from being able to make proper use of stealth. This MUST be fixed, or thieves need to be bumped up to the next HP tier. There is no debate. Our damage has been nerfed to more or less fair levels (mug is still broken, and should be removed from the game completely), but our survivability has received ZERO attention.

I will still play my thief in PvE because I love it, but in PvP and WvW stealth is not an acceptable form of survival in its current form.

Xyrm.5602:

My biggest issue with thief, the entire time, has been survivability. I’ve learned to dodge thanks to the inherent squishiness of the class, but I feel there is a large hole in thief design that needs to be addressed.

Stealth is supposed to be our saving grace. We share the lowest base HP with the Guardian and Elemental professions, both of which have immunity abilities and lots of other survival utilities. And our defense is supposed to be stealth. Good. Great. I get it.

Here’s the problem. Stealth is, in it’s current form, and OFFENSIVE tool, not defensive, in most scenarios. Sure, it allows you to avoid some direct target skills. Notice I said “some”; we’ll get back to that later. However, it is entirely useless against AoE’s and skills that do not require targeting, which is most melee attacks. Some of those AoE attacks have such a large area of effect that one dodge does NOT get you out of them. Our only form of long lasting stealth puts an area on the ground that anyone can see, and has a fairly small radius in comparison to most aoe attacks, meaning if we stand in it we will likely die against any competent player. Ok, fine, stealth shouldn’t be an “I win” button and make you immune to everything; I can live with trying to juke people into thinking I’m somewhere else.

Here’s what’s GENUINELY broken with stealth: any channeled or cast attack that is put on us before we enter stealth continues to hit us. If we are forced to use stealth as a survival mechanic, this is 100% unacceptable. On top of that, as if the damage received wasn’t bad enough, projectile attacks CONTINUE TO TRACK US, showing the enemy EXACTLY where we are. Good teams in tPvP abuse this, spamming weak, casted or channeled abilities with little to no cooldown and an easy to see effect to prevent thieves from being able to make proper use of stealth. This MUST be fixed, or thieves need to be bumped up to the next HP tier. There is no debate. Our damage has been nerfed to more or less fair levels (mug is still broken, and should be removed from the game completely), but our survivability has received ZERO attention.

I will still play my thief in PvE because I love it, but in PvP and WvW stealth is not an acceptable form of survival in its current form.

Thats why thief has to play burst or offencive builds

Our greatest defence is offence, i can dodge a lot sure, i can go invisible sure, but these are skill based defences, about our timing to dodge/go invis/shadowstep.

Elementalists and guardians got blocks/protection/regeration and healing unkeeps what lets them be defencive passivly. apply protection for 10 seconds and fight as you would normaly, thief defence is active.

Is it bad ? In some way it is, in some it is not.
Your defences are inferior, if you are low/mediocre skill player.
Your defences are superior after some skill level, as passive defences can only do as much as reduce damage not avoid it.

Why is this the only “feedback” thread?
Why isn’t there a similar thread on the other class forums?

Thiefs aren’t the only class ingame, and are one of the most “fixed” classes out there. Why don’t you guys invest time and resources in all the classes, instead of focusing on one?

Humposaurus.5764:

Why is this the only “feedback” thread?
Why isn’t there a similar thread on the other class forums?

Thiefs aren’t the only class ingame, and are one of the most “fixed” classes out there. Why don’t you guys invest time and resources in all the classes, instead of focusing on one?

Because the Community guys and forum mods are tired of seeing a bunch of new threads on what is perceived as broken/OP by the players, and want to have all of our posts in one thread for a cleaner sub forum.

Jack of Tears.9458:

And I wanna know who’s auto healing to full when they stealth so I can copy that build.

It doesn´t heal you to full health very quickly but the Shadow Arts trait Shadow’s Rejuvenation heals for approx. 300 HP every second while in stealth. CnD, prolong stealth with Hide in Shadows and a Thief comes out of stealth with (almost) full health. I can imagine this is annoying when you´re fighting them, but the thief has to invest quite heavily (30) trait points in Shadow Arts and will not be able to burst-kill like a crit specced mugger can.

More PvE feedback ….

About Steal

• It is interesting. However, it is much less effectiveness and has much less ultization rate than other classes’ special mechanic.
• Firstly, its cooldown is too long.
• Secondly, it’s not convenient — in my opinion, thieves should be able to keep what they stole. Using stole should not conflict with Steal itself. For example, give thieves F2~F4, when thieves steal, what be stolen will put into F2~F4. Thieves can decide when and where to use those stoles.

About Venom

• Most of them are useless due to the number of attacks. ‘Cause the effect durations are too short and each attack just refresh but not stack with previous effect. If there are many foes, the effect of venom are jokes; and in 1v1 battle, the effects will just be wasted due to thieves’ fast attack speed — unless you stop doing damages.
• Venoms need some changes. For example, strongly decrease the duration of Venom, but with unlimited number of attacks during the duration. Or, for example, all venom have only 1 attack chance, but the duration of effect should be increased significantly.

About Dual Pistols.

• Vital Shot probabely is the worst ranged skill 1 in all classes — slow attack speed, low damages and short condition duration.
• Body Shot costs too much, especially the vulnerability (in both the duration and effectiveness) is not significantlly useful. Providing it cripple can make it look better.
• Headshot …. what can I say about this skill. It probabely is designed to interrupt foes charging. However, it costs too much and thief doesn’t really have the chance to use it (incorrect timing). As a result, it is rarely used. Using it in pve means you have too many initiatives so you can just waste it.
• Black Powder. The description says “Fire a black powder shot ….” So, why can’t thieves decide the location? Its currently function (PBAoE) is seriouly less useful and less convenient than Smoke Screen; Smoke Screen can even block projectiles. Worse is ….. this ineffective skill costs 6 initiatives !!

Abouth Stealth

• Please fix channeled powers. Those powers should not be able to trace a stealthing target (also, channeled powers should be stopped automatically if the targeted target is moving to attacker’s back).

Xyrm.5602:

My biggest issue with thief, the entire time, has been survivability. I’ve learned to dodge thanks to the inherent squishiness of the class, but I feel there is a large hole in thief design that needs to be addressed.

Stealth is supposed to be our saving grace. We share the lowest base HP with the Guardian and Elemental professions, both of which have immunity abilities and lots of other survival utilities. And our defense is supposed to be stealth. Good. Great. I get it.

Here’s the problem. Stealth is, in it’s current form, and OFFENSIVE tool, not defensive, in most scenarios. Sure, it allows you to avoid some direct target skills. Notice I said “some”; we’ll get back to that later. However, it is entirely useless against AoE’s and skills that do not require targeting, which is most melee attacks. Some of those AoE attacks have such a large area of effect that one dodge does NOT get you out of them. Our only form of long lasting stealth puts an area on the ground that anyone can see, and has a fairly small radius in comparison to most aoe attacks, meaning if we stand in it we will likely die against any competent player. Ok, fine, stealth shouldn’t be an “I win” button and make you immune to everything; I can live with trying to juke people into thinking I’m somewhere else.

Here’s what’s GENUINELY broken with stealth: any channeled or cast attack that is put on us before we enter stealth continues to hit us. If we are forced to use stealth as a survival mechanic, this is 100% unacceptable. On top of that, as if the damage received wasn’t bad enough, projectile attacks CONTINUE TO TRACK US, showing the enemy EXACTLY where we are. Good teams in tPvP abuse this, spamming weak, casted or channeled abilities with little to no cooldown and an easy to see effect to prevent thieves from being able to make proper use of stealth. This MUST be fixed, or thieves need to be bumped up to the next HP tier. There is no debate. Our damage has been nerfed to more or less fair levels (mug is still broken, and should be removed from the game completely), but our survivability has received ZERO attention.

I will still play my thief in PvE because I love it, but in PvP and WvW stealth is not an acceptable form of survival in its current form.

Seconded. Stealth is not a reliable enough tool for damage avoidance and mitigation to compensate for their lowest-in-game health and mediocre armor. It’s very obvious there’s an asymmetry here as Thieves are not notably offensively stronger than warriors, they’re just defensively much weaker. The only reason you’d play a thief over a warrior would be for flavor reasons, and it’s very frustrating especially at lower levels.

Caffynated.5713:

….
3. Thieves should only be able to re-enter stealth if their initiative is full or nearly full. Right now, they can come out of stealth with both guns blazing for 3 seconds, and then just restealth while they regain their initiative and get ready to do it all over again. Their opponent has little time to actually fight back as the burst damage potential of the thief leaves most players on the defensive to begin with. It’s difficult to do a lot of damage when you spend the 3 second revealed debuff dodge rolling and using stun breakers to escape instant death. This change would force thieves to make tactical decisions about how they’re going to handle a fight. They can break stealth and burn their initiative in an attempt to kill their target outright, or they can be more tentative with mostly and maybe a low init attack or two before restealthing to assess the fight.

Both guns blazing? P/P doesn’t have much stealth and the initiative cost of Unload is pretty high, with mediocre damage. I can’t believe you’re complaining about Unload? And P/P has stealth only from utility skills, which already have a cooldown, and you want to effectively disable them? For a P/P gunslinger?

If you’re talking about P/D Sneak Attack, there’s plenty of time to roll away from Sneak Attack, (the first couple of hits don’t hit that hard anyway) and it definitely does not extend over the duration of the Revealed debuff (two more auto-attacks fit in) and the thief will have to be in melee range of someone to use CnD. The cooldown for the stun utility is close to eternity and the one from pistol whip is on a S/P which has stealth only from utility skills

Stealth utility skills already have their cool-downs, perhaps their cooldowns should be removed then and replaced by the initiative system as well?

Initiative is the thief system to moderate weapon-skill use, Cloak and Dagger costs 6 initiative, which is exactly the amount that is regenerated in 10 seconds, effectively putting CnD on a 10 second cool-down (in prolonged fights like you see with P/D thieves). While you can use utilities or trait to regain initiative faster, that means you can’t trait something else (like crits and mug) and will do less damage.

The thief is the only class I am interested in playing in this game. I like assassin type classes in all games. I love the design of the thief in this game and it’s really fun.

My problems with the class: Stuck into D/D + SB. Everything else kind of sucks.

I get two shotted by 2h warriors and sometimes guardians.

Not sure why we received all those nerfs. Other classes seem to deal with our class very easily with the except of the necro. Necro doesn’t have much to use against thief but I hear they do well vs. most other classes.

Honestly, I think the thief class is fine the way it is. No more nerfs. Maybe some improvements to other weapon types, like S/D flanking strike (useless atm). I’d like to see dancing dagger improved and not in damage, but more crippling or duration or something to compensate for the loss of dps.

I’m 30CS, 20SA, 20Trickery…

Shadowstep, dagger storm, SoM, hide in shadows, refuge.

D/D + SB

I don’t do burst damage. I rely on my game play ability to land CnD and stealth and backstab. If I am screwing up or get added on I can escape with refuge or shadowstep or something.

It’s really fun except when getting 2 shot by warriors or guardians with 2h swords.

I would like to see more traits like, “Venomous Aura” added for our support role.

No one said all support roles need to be the same. There are plunty of classes that can spam Might, or Regeneration on all group members, why not give thieves something a little different and let them spam damage related “buffs” to nearby group members, similar to how the trait Venomous Aura works.

Some suggestions might be:

Grant your group the passive effect of Signet of Shadows/Assassins Signet/Signet of Agility.

When a group member strikes an enemy that you have inflicted with the bleed condition they go into a blood frenzy. (Grants the Fury boon for 10 seconds, 45 second internal cooldown)

Give groups a reason to look for Thieves, or at least accept them. Guardians offer amazing defensive benefits in the form of Boons and heals, let Thieves be known as the class that offers more offensive benefits!

I agree with most that has been said in this thread:

Venoms are nearly useless unless used in niche builds.

Stealth is easily broken with channelled attacks and projectiles. I’ve even seen PvE mobs following me around, targeting me at close range or even putting an AoE on my feet while I was in stealth. Shadow Refuge should be just that: a refuge. Having no effect on the enemy, I think that revealing them where it is put is just unfair, just like “traps” being plain visible, and not just for the thief traps, while environmental traps are nearly invisible (anyone played the “swampland” fractal…?)

Some signets actives and passives have nothing to do with each other.

Most weapon combinations can’t compare with backstab builds even after the nerfs. Sure you get more survivability but the damage can’t even begin to compare. Most abilities are almost useless or rarely used compared to the range of options a weapon can give other classes, both offensively or defensively. Other classes get a CD system on their most useful skills, thus allowing them to use them without any effect on their other skills.

We get a half initiative bar cost for skills that on their own won’t do much damage or advantage us greatly like Black Powder, Dancing Dagger, Flanking Strike, Body Shot, Infiltrator’s Arrow, Choking Gas etc… These skills, while useful in PvE because of the dumb AI, in WvW or sPvP, well, they aren’t that great. Also the auto attack of the pistol is subpar unless traited for bleeding damage.

Traits are also really messed up. Our venom traits are on the power line. Some bonus have no place where they are (+7% damage behind a foe on the trickery line?). The obvious “condition damage” trait line is missing. We effectively have no traits to the conditions we deal, like immobilization, bleed, poison, etc. The ones we have now are bonus we get from other lines (“on venom activation”, “condition duration”). A big problem knowing that thieves can be deadly playing conditions. I play them myself. And If I had a condition trait line I would put my 30 points in it.

Everything to say the Thief right now IS a gimmicky class, because most builds we can come with have many, many problems, being from squishy weapon sets, squishy armour to get the correct stats, weapon skills being for the most part useless or costly on a specific build (to play conditions you will use maximum 3 of your 5 skills, to play backstab you will use only 2, to play pistol whip only 2, etc) because of the initiative system (I wouldn’t say no to a cripple or a blind, but if using it limits the use of my damaging skills then I have to make a choice other classes don’t have to make), stealth right now not being stealthy, trait lines forcing to play power because of very limited offensive options (elems can choose from 4 elements, rangers can choose their pet, their bow, their swords, warriors have endless weapons sets, etc…) Now I’m not saying playing backstab is the only way to go, but other kind of builds don’t get much love from traits or skills. I mean, critical strikes gives +20% damage to foes under 50%, Deadly Arts give + dagger damage, +dual skills damage (forgot to say that Pistol Whip is the only offensive, as in damage dealing dual skill) etc, while pistols have what, +5% chance to bounce, on the critical strikes trait line, when pistols are obviously designed for condition damage.

Time to work! Thief definitively needs an overhaul, in order for les QQing. If players were to be killed by poison thieves, backstab thieves, pistol thieves, trap thieves, sword thieves, stealth thieves in general, or even control thieves, people wouldn’t think that “this build” is OP. After all, all other classes have access to many, many builds that aren’t OP, like you promised it would be.

Xyrm.5602:

And our defense is supposed to be stealth.

I don’t think that’s true, though.

Thieves get blindness spam, dodging and evasion up the wazoo, and shadowsteps.

Stealth is much more of a mixed offensive/defensive tool. A thief who chooses it as his only form of defense is intentionally playing a very fragile build.

bladie.5084:

Deadly traits is alright.
Critical traits are okay
Acrobatics are pretty nice
Trickery is pretty nice as well
Shadow arts traits is just crazy imba glyphs imho. You get rewarded while in stealth? regen while stealth, gain more initiative while stealth gain, 15 seconds of might when stealth? That’s just crazy and nonsense imo. That’s why decent players can’t kill some of us, once we stealth, we can remove conditions, re heal everything, regain all our initiatives and are ready to go for round 2+3+4 and so on.

So is ok that you can deal 7500 damage with MUG,is normal to imobilize oponent for 4 seconds when he is low hp , is ok that you can have 100% critical chance for 4 hits in row, but is crazy OP to regen 350 hp/sec on stealth.
Is ok that you can remove criple at every dodge roll, but is crazy OP that you can remove conditions when you are not able to attack
Is normal that you can have might at dodge roll, but is too overpowered to have might when you enter stealth.
Idk what kind of thief you play, but i can feel the hate for other thives, or you try trow the ball in other yard, to protect allmighty MUG. Won’t work.

First, Mug never hits for 7500 damage even on the squishiest classes in the best possible gear. Post a screenshot or quit spewing bullshiet. You can take a talent to immobilize somebody for 4 seconds when they’re low on health, but that isn’t a burst build since it’s at the end of a trait line that focuses on Poisons (Deadly Arts). Sure I guess you could weaken yourself and put 30 points into Deadly Arts and another 30 into Critical Strikes and lose the extra initiative gain from Trickery along with the reduced steal cooldown, though that’s not the common build I usually see. Not to mention the cooldown for that immobilize is on a 1 minute cooldown and we already have a poison that will immobilize you (Devourer Poison) and it’s only on a 45 second cooldown (36s traited), thus making that immobilize somewhat useless compared to other traits.

100% critical strike for four hits in a row? Since when is any attack outside of Hidden Killer giving you a 100% critical strike chance? OH yeah, none! 350 hp/sec while in stealth would only happen if you’re chewing on some major +healing food or stacking some +healing gear (thus lowering your DPS). As a DPS burst spec, they won’t have either of those things, which means the maximum heal per sec is closer to 290~300 hp/sec. Yes you can remove cripple and weakness when you dodge. However, that is a weak azz trait on a 10 second cooldown in the Acrobatics tree that no burst Thief will have either.

Yes you can gain Might on Dodge and Might when you go into stealth, but again, to get Might on Dodge you have to spec into Acrobatics and to gain Might when you enter stealth, you have to spec 25 points into Shadow Arts. Again, Burst Thieves won’t have points in either of these trees. Now if they ever decided to give me a 30/30/30/30/30 spec, then I could understand some of your complaints. As it stands, you list off skills and abilities that somebody able to kick your nuts in in 5 seconds or less would NOT have. Once again it’s somebody crying that they lost to a Thief with no desire to learn how to counter them, spewing bullshiet because they have no idea what a Thief can and cannot do. Next!

Rayya.2591:

bladie.5084:

Deadly traits is alright.
Critical traits are okay
Acrobatics are pretty nice
Trickery is pretty nice as well
Shadow arts traits is just crazy imba glyphs imho. You get rewarded while in stealth? regen while stealth, gain more initiative while stealth gain, 15 seconds of might when stealth? That’s just crazy and nonsense imo. That’s why decent players can’t kill some of us, once we stealth, we can remove conditions, re heal everything, regain all our initiatives and are ready to go for round 2+3+4 and so on.

So is ok that you can deal 7500 damage with MUG,is normal to imobilize oponent for 4 seconds when he is low hp , is ok that you can have 100% critical chance for 4 hits in row, but is crazy OP to regen 350 hp/sec on stealth.
Is ok that you can remove criple at every dodge roll, but is crazy OP that you can remove conditions when you are not able to attack
Is normal that you can have might at dodge roll, but is too overpowered to have might when you enter stealth.
Idk what kind of thief you play, but i can feel the hate for other thives, or you try trow the ball in other yard, to protect allmighty MUG. Won’t work.

7500 mug? Proof.
4 100% sritical hit chance hits? Proof.
Remove conditions? Sure, by burning all our CDs.
Heal in stealth? Sure, by investing 30 points in the stealth traits, thus doing less damage.
Remove cripple and add might on dodge? Sure, once again by investing in non-offensive trait lines.

Play a thief before suggesting any modifications on them. Your post is pure hate.

SSVAV.5862:

Rayya.2591:

bladie.5084:

Deadly traits is alright.
Critical traits are okay
Acrobatics are pretty nice
Trickery is pretty nice as well
Shadow arts traits is just crazy imba glyphs imho. You get rewarded while in stealth? regen while stealth, gain more initiative while stealth gain, 15 seconds of might when stealth? That’s just crazy and nonsense imo. That’s why decent players can’t kill some of us, once we stealth, we can remove conditions, re heal everything, regain all our initiatives and are ready to go for round 2+3+4 and so on.

So is ok that you can deal 7500 damage with MUG,is normal to imobilize oponent for 4 seconds when he is low hp , is ok that you can have 100% critical chance for 4 hits in row, but is crazy OP to regen 350 hp/sec on stealth.
Is ok that you can remove criple at every dodge roll, but is crazy OP that you can remove conditions when you are not able to attack
Is normal that you can have might at dodge roll, but is too overpowered to have might when you enter stealth.
Idk what kind of thief you play, but i can feel the hate for other thives, or you try trow the ball in other yard, to protect allmighty MUG. Won’t work.

7500 mug? Proof.
4 100% sritical hit chance hits? Proof.
Remove conditions? Sure, by burning all our CDs.
Heal in stealth? Sure, by investing 30 points in the stealth traits, thus doing less damage.
Remove cripple and add might on dodge? Sure, once again by investing in non-offensive trait lines.

Play a thief before suggesting any modifications on them. Your post is pure hate.

Shows you just how much half of these people here, complaining about thieves, know about thieves…doesn’t it?

4 100% critical hits…that made me chuckle!

PVE
Many a missing mechanic

We’ve all read about them, seen them in other games, enjoyed them in other games. The ability to skulk around PVE Zones without being detected, sneaking around to get the things we need in those brief few moments of quiet movement in the night.

Thieves/Rogues have always had this as an artform.

What’s missing are important mechanics that would vastly improve gameplay.

1. making enemies turn around to look behind them, a Distract: This is such a useful missing component that would improve this class in strides. You have 3 other F keys would love to see a distraction ability sometime as while stealthed it’s quite a pain to begin with an adequate backstab.
2. improved surprise initial attacks from longer stealth: making backstab out of this longer lasting lesser stealth as an initial attack do quite a bit more damage then the standard one. It would be very useful to make this function in the game. In PVE there is always opportunity but never a mechanic to make this happen.
3. lesser stealth for longer periods of time: Surely there can be a stealth mechanic (purely for PVE) on one of the F keys that allows a player in dungeons or in open world to use a stealth mechanic that greatly reduces their aggro range while in this mechanic for about 1 minute with a long cooldown like 1 minute cooldown. It would be very fun for the class to sneak up behind a dungeon mob, distract or sap it and then backstab bringing us out of stealth for the initial attack.
4. Sap: Similar to the troll stolen ability, it would have a slightly longer confusion stun then the stolen version and would halt all attacking so one could backstab effectively. Right now the only weapon combo that does this does not allow for daggers so backstab with a “face the other way” option doesn’t exist.
5. Behindus: surprise teleportation has been a big thing about this profession in every story in every game because it’s been such a useful tool that’s part of the lore. I’m just asking for what it should function like. Teleportation on mobs does this already, when they appear (many of them) they appear behind you. Why can’t abilities like Shadowstep, and Shadowshot place us squarely behind the enemy?

These abilities can be part of the PVE world and easily turned off in the pvp zones when entered to keep the balance, they could be F key mechanics or improved existing ones (tho I would think that making them separate abilities from the norm would make it much easier to code to turn them off in WVW and sPVP matches)

They are part of the charm of the class, the ability to assassinate and to sneak around stealing unbeknownst to the enemies.

The enemies that one could make immune to the longer stealth could be champions so there’s no abusing of the ability there but Vets and other such mobs should be affected by it.

These mechanics would add such a huge sense of fun to this profession making it more viable for PVE environments like open world and dungeons and would bring thief back to the game in a more positive way instead of it being a profession people only play for pvp.

so reading this thread it sounds like thieves are a little underpowered in WvW and could use some buffs

Like many others in this thread, I’m only going to address PVE, since I feel it needs the most work. Hopefully after some of these changes we can avoid this vicious nerf cycle going on with our precious Thieves.

First, the Steal mechanic. I have a simple solution for this that would solve a lot of people’s complaints. Make our stolen skills selectable much like how a Ranger chooses pets, or how a Mesmer can choose which Shatter skills they use.

We should be able to choose whether we want a Stun/Bleed/Cripple/AOE to suit our playstyle. For a profession that needs such precision, random abilities is a dangerous factor. We need consistency…

Secondly Stealth… This is a tough one to balance, but I think the mechanics of it need to be reworked. Thieves don’t have many healing/blocking/protection skills to fall back on like Guardians and Elementalists. Stealth shouldn’t be only tied to a few weapon skills, it should be woven into each and every weapon setup. Pistol off hand for example should have an option for stealth; maybe instead of just dazing, it should also Stealth the Thief for a short duration. I also think Stealth in general should have a longer duration, because time in Stealth is time not adding damage, so it balances itself out in PVE situations.

Stealth is easily broken by AOE in PVE encounters, and generally doesn’t drop threat quickly enough to be very effective; so it really needs to be looked at from a dungeon standpoint.

The Third is utility skills… I understand Thieves having low health, but I don’t understand why Thieves don’t get much compensation for it. Again this goes back to the Stealth factor. It should be woven into utility skills as a secondary effect. I understand not having a bunch of healing skills, as it doesn’t fit the lore of a Thief, but Thieves should have naturally higher regeneration of stamina. That’s something that shouldn’t be exclusive to certain builds, it should be exclusive to Thieves.

When I think of a Thief, I think of someone darting through the shadows making quick precise attacks; striking vital body parts to injure or incapacitate. So far Thieves feel weak/cheap instead of agile/precise.

When I heard GW2 will have separate skill mechanics for PVE and PVP I was really relieved, because I know how PVE can get the short end of the stick when it comes to balancing for PVP. We end up with this cycle of never-ending nerfs and buffs that just become tedious. You guys have a great opportunity to make good on your word with Thieves. They are easily the most loved/hated archetype in any MMORPG.

This is somewhat of a sidenote, but PVE encounters/bosses also need to consider the various profession mechanics so that they’re fun and diverse. Some fights just seem to neglect Mesmer and Thief mechanics entirely. You shouldn’t require us to adapt and use range methods for some encounters, then give Thieves a main skill that puts us in melee range (Steal). Either give us a protection buff or stealth after Stealing, or rework the boss/fight mechanics. I personally prefer both…

PVE is the backbone of big MMORPGs, so please don’t neglect it.

quercus.9261:

so reading this thread it sounds like thieves are a little underpowered in WvW and could use some buffs

Not at all.

80% of my time in WvW is just using Clusterbomb and knowing how to dodge, with occasional bursts of trickier play. But thieves are very effective even just doing that.

Thief is WvW is a very satisfying and powerful class that rewards battlefield awareness and gives you plenty of ways to punish enemies for their mistakes. It can be pretty skill-intensive, too — the folks who complain about spamming certain abilities are making a category error about what actually constitutes player skill. And fixing WvW perma-stealth cheese (culling and stealth-capping) will only improve the gameplay.

I feel like a lot of these suggestions are rather overreaching…

tigirius.9014:

1. making enemies turn around to look behind them, a Distract: This is such a useful missing component that would improve this class in strides. You have 3 other F keys would love to see a distraction ability sometime as while stealthed it’s quite a pain to begin with an adequate backstab.

Monsters already turn around and start walking away the second you go into stealth. Like, so much that it’s downright silly.

Soulja.7024:

Pistol off hand for example should have an option for stealth; maybe instead of just dazing, it should also Stealth the Thief for a short duration.

It’s a trade-off. You can have spammable stealth (with */Dagger) or Black Powder (with */Pistol). If you don’t like Black Powder, there are other weapons for you. If you want both Black Powder and stealth (and don’t want to use HS combo to get it)… well, that’s asking a bit much, in my opinion.

Soulja.7024:

I understand not having a bunch of healing skills, as it doesn’t fit the lore of a Thief, but Thieves should have naturally higher regeneration of stamina. That’s something that shouldn’t be exclusive to certain builds, it should be exclusive to Thieves.

There are soooo many options for extra evasion. 15 points in Acrobatics. 10 points in Acrobatics and Vigorous Recovery. Shortbow. Daggers. Withdraw. Roll for Initiative. You’re not pigeonholed at all in this respect.

ASP.8093:

There are soooo many options for extra evasion. 15 points in Acrobatics. 10 points in Acrobatics and Vigorous Recovery. Shortbow. Daggers. Withdraw. Roll for Initiative. You’re not pigeonholed at all in this respect.

Here’s the problem with this, though. Armor category affects a profession’s attrition, and is a mechanic that is separate from the profession’s abilities. As such, Warriors don’t have to take traits to improve their survivability (even though those traits exist) because having superior defense is simply a component of them being heavy armor wearers.

Having superior mobility though, is neither a class component nor an armor component (like it should be), and is instead baked into individual skills and traits, which makes those classes gimmicky and hard to balance. This makes lighter-armor classes harder to play effectively and very punishing if you don’t have the right builds.

It actually makes no sense at all that medium and light armor don’t have their own baked-in benefits such as faster movement speed and higher endurance regeneration to combat the fact that all professions are equal offensively but not defensively. This is why warriors and guardians are so good in PvE compared to other professions.

Einlanzer.1627:

Having superior mobility though, is neither a class component nor an armor component (like it should be), and is instead baked into individual skills and traits, which makes those classes gimmicky and hard to balance. This makes lighter-armor classes harder to play effectively and very punishing if you don’t have the right builds.

That’s already embedded into the design of the whole game, though.

For good or for ill, playing a class with low hp or low armor — any class — requires paying more attention to skills and traits. But the existing traits and skills are very much all built around that assumption. It’s not something that can be easily changed without tweaking hundreds of abilities. I really don’t see that working out well.

Tulisin.6945:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Blacksarevok.8104:

- Vital Shot sucks
- Body Shot (still) sucks
- Flanking Strike doesn’t quite suck, needs to follow the target or have a much quicker animation
- Pistol Whip sucks

As a general statement, Thieves lack survivability in PVE. Stealth is a very powerful mechanic in PVP, but it falls short in PVE. It seems like we have to give up a lot of our offensive capability just to be able to stay alive, whereas proffesions like Warrior barely have to give up anything offensively to avoid being flattened.

I can’t tell you how lame it is that I can only fight one veteran or karka at a time on my Thief, but my Warrior (who is slightly less geared) can run in and take 2-3 at a time. I know Warriors are obviously intended to take hits better than a Thief, but my issue is that if a Warrior and a Thief have similar damage outputs, but a Warrior can survive substantially better, why play a Thief?

Actually, in response to my last paragraph, I would like to see Thieves get an elite skill defensive signet. Something that gives a passive damage reduction and/or HP increase, and has a Use that restores endurance and grants a block or something.

An elite signet with a passive that makes all attacks have a chance to restore a small amount of endurance like the dagger auto attack would be all kinds of awesome. Perhaps with an active that gives you and your group vigor and protection.

Yeah that would be cool too. Just something that can give us access to either more endurance or damage reduction, without having to completely change our traits.

I dont know any other profession who can ignore toughness + vitality on items like thieves can.

Mesmer and Warrior can both run berserker.

RinKyu.4317:

LiuliRenai.3928:

And yet Thief burst is not as damaging as a shatter mesmer build.

If you hit with everything with the usual shatter+blurred frenzy combo it deals about 7k damage, just saying.

Shatter can crit to 3k in RvR. In SPvP I crit about 2k5 … even if i crit at 2k it still can deal around 8k without blurred frenzy … If all crits obviously, but with 61% crit on mind wrack its not a problem. When I manage to hit my full combo on a thief, most of the time its a one shot (though if can be pretty hard to do on an awake thief with shadowstep up).

SSVAV.5862:

Rayya.2591:

bladie.5084:

Deadly traits is alright.
Critical traits are okay
Acrobatics are pretty nice
Trickery is pretty nice as well
Shadow arts traits is just crazy imba glyphs imho. You get rewarded while in stealth? regen while stealth, gain more initiative while stealth gain, 15 seconds of might when stealth? That’s just crazy and nonsense imo. That’s why decent players can’t kill some of us, once we stealth, we can remove conditions, re heal everything, regain all our initiatives and are ready to go for round 2+3+4 and so on.

So is ok that you can deal 7500 damage with MUG,is normal to imobilize oponent for 4 seconds when he is low hp , is ok that you can have 100% critical chance for 4 hits in row, but is crazy OP to regen 350 hp/sec on stealth.
Is ok that you can remove criple at every dodge roll, but is crazy OP that you can remove conditions when you are not able to attack
Is normal that you can have might at dodge roll, but is too overpowered to have might when you enter stealth.
Idk what kind of thief you play, but i can feel the hate for other thives, or you try trow the ball in other yard, to protect allmighty MUG. Won’t work.

7500 mug? Proof.
4 100% sritical hit chance hits? Proof.
Remove conditions? Sure, by burning all our CDs.
Heal in stealth? Sure, by investing 30 points in the stealth traits, thus doing less damage.
Remove cripple and add might on dodge? Sure, once again by investing in non-offensive trait lines.

Play a thief before suggesting any modifications on them. Your post is pure hate.

i made an comparation to him , explaining him that sa trait is not Overpowered compared to other traits
If you want proof and got own thief try it by yourself : thief full bersek gear 114 critical power, over 3500 attack with 25 stacks of Bloodlust trained on glass cannon , your MUG will hit from 5500 – heawy armor to 8500 + on glass cannons
for 100% critical power for 4 hits in row i will explain you , if you don’t know or you are just sarcastic .
first option :Steal + backstab – first crit (100% ) , dodge roll- c&D wich is in 75% casses crit , C&D will stealth you, backstab, second crit (100%) dodge roll bliding powder backstab (3 rd ? ) hide in shadows -4 rd crit 100% .
second option : steal + backstab (1’st) C&d , wait 3 seconds (C&d) …. etc 100 crits 100% in row.

Setima.8741:

First, Mug never hits for 7500 damage even on the squishiest classes in the best possible gear. Post a screenshot or quit spewing bullshiet. You can take a talent to immobilize somebody for 4 seconds when they’re low on health, but that isn’t a burst build since it’s at the end of a trait line that focuses on Poisons (Deadly Arts). Sure I guess you could weaken yourself and put 30 points into Deadly Arts and another 30 into Critical Strikes and lose the extra initiative gain from Trickery along with the reduced steal cooldown, though that’s not the common build I usually see. Not to mention the cooldown for that immobilize is on a 1 minute cooldown and we already have a poison that will immobilize you (Devourer Poison) and it’s only on a 45 second cooldown (36s traited), thus making that immobilize somewhat useless compared to other traits.

100% critical strike for four hits in a row? Since when is any attack outside of Hidden Killer giving you a 100% critical strike chance? OH yeah, none! 350 hp/sec while in stealth would only happen if you’re chewing on some major +healing food or stacking some +healing gear (thus lowering your DPS). As a DPS burst spec, they won’t have either of those things, which means the maximum heal per sec is closer to 290~300 hp/sec. Yes you can remove cripple and weakness when you dodge. However, that is a weak azz trait on a 10 second cooldown in the Acrobatics tree that no burst Thief will have either.

Yes you can gain Might on Dodge and Might when you go into stealth, but again, to get Might on Dodge you have to spec into Acrobatics and to gain Might when you enter stealth, you have to spec 25 points into Shadow Arts. Again, Burst Thieves won’t have points in either of these trees. Now if they ever decided to give me a 30/30/30/30/30 spec, then I could understand some of your complaints. As it stands, you list off skills and abilities that somebody able to kick your nuts in in 5 seconds or less would NOT have. Once again it’s somebody crying that they lost to a Thief with no desire to learn how to counter them, spewing bullshiet because they have no idea what a Thief can and cannot do. Next!

did you even read that i made comparation betwen traits ?

100% critical can be for 100 hits in row , just turn off autoatack and do c&d every 3 seconds.
you can have 10 points in acrobatics and 25 on SA
P.s. i heal 390 from runes of divinity and triforge pendant only
I am not gonna post you any screenshot , you can make tests by yourself , i invested over 250 gold in my thief, and i do not want an uncalled nerf on SA traits just because glass cannon thief trow garbage in that trait.

Four hits in a row means four hits back to back to back not 4 Backstabs. If you have hidden killer of course it’s 100% critical hit and it will always critically hit with that trait. That isn’t what you said and that’s sure as heck not the only attacks you use to do a 3 hit combo. The only 100% critical chance you have is on Backstab, the rest is up to the RNG so no, it is not 4 100% critical hits in a row. The only thing you could do is to start a fight with one weapon set, swap to D/D with a Sigil of Intelligence so that your Mug/CnD would 100% critically hit for at least 2 guarantees of critical hits during your opening, but that means giving up some surprise elements and Sigil of Air of course.

Of course you’re going to heal for more because you just pointed out that you’re not running the normal setup that most glass Thieves run. Runes of Divinity are good (it has also been shown that 5x Runes of the Scholar+1x Rune of Divinity gives the highest DPS increase once you’re under 90% health) but that also raises your stats so you’d gain healing from that and the Triforge Pendant also has +healing on it, thus you’re using +healing gear. Chew on some +healing food and you’d probably heal for more than that as well.

I still won’t say Mug will ever hit for that much damage even decked out. I’ve tested the hits in The Mists and even doubling the damage it never came close to an 8k hit.

I think what happened here is that the way you worded your post up there made it sound as though you thought all the traits you listed were overpowered and it seemed how it was written that these traits were overpowered because you could get them all at once. So I may have jumped the gun there a little seeing as how it’s obvious English is not your first language.

Centhis.5071:

Fix the thief. One just took out our raid. She wasnt even using her perma invis..she raced around the battlefield..if someone got close she stealthed, then someone was dead..she would let us chase her a bit..stealth, then do it again. She killed 15 of us without taking damage. This isnt the first time this has happened.

With all due respect, I don’t see how we’re supposed to take this feedback seriously. Can we please stop the ridiculous hyperbole? I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of not only how Thief works/plays, but also a serious misunderstanding of what to do when you get hit by a single stealth Thief in a group of supposedly 15 allies, assuming that part of your tale is even true.

.

aside from my previous opinions and suggestions on
specific thief-related gameplay in my previous post,

was just reminded on something that seemed ‘off’ for me
when in comes to reactive skills in gw2 compared to other mmos.

basically it comes to the long windup sequences some of the thief skills have.
for example, underwater speargun number 3, the one where you
retreat backwards while doing a shot. its of limited use as a quick evasion
move since it takes ages for the animation to actually start going backwards.
same with infiltrator’s SB shot. while i can use it to avoid aoes, and long telegraphed
attacks, it could’ve been much better. same with the pistol’s daze shot to interrupt,
it takes so long on the windup animation to fullfill its purpose.

well actually compared to some other mmo’s i feel a lot of gw2 skills
(not just on thieves) have too long of startup animation sequence before they do
what they should be doing. made the combat feel a bit clunkier than some more
action focused / split-second timing mmos i have tried, where you can literally do a
life-saving move in an instant an turn things around. not so much here, like how
our very, very few party-support skills like shadow refuge still has a long
startup animation. even if they made it just to par with the dodge move,
the game will feel more action-responsive.

of course if this will be imbalanced for pvp, just continue on with the pve/pvp
skill split. have experienced stigma against the class in forming dungeon groups
for their perceived lack of party-wide survival support.

.

no setima , eng is not my first lang , actualy is my 3’rd , and i do not check the grammar most of the time , while responding on forums.
Please consider that in Heart of mysts you cannot get maximum damage items, you can get 30 points of crit power from traits and 20 from amulet + 12 from runes. that’s 62
In wvw is an diferent story : with exotics you get:
30 from traits
10 from weapons
12 from runes
4 backpack , 8 amulet , 6x 2 accesory 6 x2 rings
5 coat 2x helm ,gloves , boots, shoulders,, 3 leggins
that’s 104 + 10 from food 114 .
I had tested it myself today, to see if i overreacted with numbers i got only 2980 power if i invest in DA and 82 critical power, and i did MUG up to 7300 on some light armor users. I assume that if i had 114 critical would be diferent ( and more power )

My main concern with the thief is with WvW, since that’s what I play 90% of the time. The thief is quite effective in WvW, we do good AOE damage, but it’s also a little on the boring side. As someone else said, 80% of the time we’re just spamming cluster bomb and dodging. And a good chunk of the remaining 20% is using daggerstorm when it’s off cooldown. It’s effective, but it’s incredibly dull. Sure, you can try and play other weapon sets in WvW, but nothing is even close to as effective as shortbow.

I’m not sure what the solution to this is. It’s the innate flaw of having an initiative based system that there’s going to be one skill that trumps all others for every situation. If there was some more synergy in there somewhere, or something that encouraged you to use your utilities/weapon skills in some kind of order, it would probably be more entertaining, but for now it’s basically hit 2, wait for the bomb to land, dodge backwards when low on health and repeat.

Andykay.5198:

My main concern with the thief is with WvW, since that’s what I play 90% of the time. The thief is quite effective in WvW, we do good AOE damage, but it’s also a little on the boring side. As someone else said, 80% of the time we’re just spamming cluster bomb and dodging. And a good chunk of the remaining 20% is using daggerstorm when it’s off cooldown. It’s effective, but it’s incredibly dull. Sure, you can try and play other weapon sets in WvW, but nothing is even close to as effective as shortbow.

I’m not sure what the solution to this is. It’s the innate flaw of having an initiative based system that there’s going to be one skill that trumps all others for every situation. If there was some more synergy in there somewhere, or something that encouraged you to use your utilities/weapon skills in some kind of order, it would probably be more entertaining, but for now it’s basically hit 2, wait for the bomb to land, dodge backwards when low on health and repeat.

While your description of activity is without question boring, it is only that way because that is what you choose to spend your time doing. There are many other activities in WvW that thieves excel at and if people didnt try and make the thief into a plinking class they wouldnt be so bored. Roll a ranger if you just want to stand back shooting stuff.

frans.8092:

Both guns blazing? P/P doesn’t have much stealth and the initiative cost of Unload is pretty high, with mediocre damage. I can’t believe you’re complaining about Unload? And P/P has stealth only from utility skills, which already have a cooldown, and you want to effectively disable them? For a P/P gunslinger?

I’m not sure if you’re being serious here, but incase you are:

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/with+guns+blazing

if you do something, especially argue, with guns blazing, you do it with a lot of force and energy

The boy’s mother arrived at the school, all guns blazing, furious that her son had been suspended.

The following is a mainly WvW perspective.

IMO Thieves don’t need a redesign but they need to be refocused. Currently they have damage to the extreme, but no survivability, but stealth to make up for it. What this means is poor survivability in PVE and incredible survivability if well played in WVW and sPVP.

To tell you what I mean by extreme damage. My level 35 Engineer is toughness/vitality spec’d all the way. I run around with close to 3k armor. I have 29k health. A thief took me down not 20 minutes ago in under a second. Nothing else has ever done that to me. No burst of any other class has even come remotely close to that. In fact that engineer is used to tanking damage from full 80’s for my group in WvW. This level of burst completely destroys the design of skillful combat where you feel in control that yall have done so well with.

Solution IMO: Give them a little more survivability and tone down the stealth significantly. Take their damage down on select skills and builds a bit to compensate.

Ideas of where to start:

-Increase base Thief HP.
-Nerf Mug. Mug is broken. It needs lower numbers or a redesign.
-Make Shadow refuge grants far less stealth, but make it heal more.
-Make all stealth give you the revealed debuff when it ends.
-Make the revealed debuff last 1-2 seconds longer in WvW due to the culling issue.
-Killing chickens and critters applies a “coward” debuff to the thief for 10 seconds.. At 3-5 stacks the thief is turned into a moa for 10 seconds.
-Increase the damage on Dancing Dagger somewhere between pre and post nerf.
-Give a balance pass to everything pistols. Pistols could use some love.
-Lower the cooldowns on the evasive rolls. Lets make thiefs more dodge oriented and less perma stealth oriented.
-Make a balance pass on the shadow arts tree. Basing the class around stealth requires severe limitations that the thief does not have. Make this tree less focused on stealth and more focused on sneaky tricks that keep you alive and cripple your enemies. Also add another healing option,
-Ricochet is TERRIBLE, increase the % significantly.

Ralathar.7236:

To tell you what I mean by extreme damage. My level 35 Engineer is toughness/vitality spec’d all the way. I run around with close to 3k armor. I have 29k health. A thief took me down not 20 minutes ago in under a second.

Sorry to argue, but this is not possible anymore, not by single-roaming Thief.
Maybe if he has a 25 stacks of might, fully stacked power sigil and crit food, you were vulnerability-stacked and he had a ton of luck critting avery ability used, then he could burst you down. But I kinda doubt that this ever happened so far….

Give other Classes a Stealth dedection, maybe on pets and turrets or somthing like that or lower Steath to max 6 sec and every action heartseaker/rezz or finishing people should break the stealth.

Fix the rendering issues on Stealhtclasses not only Thief.

Reduce the massive Burst on thief but not touch the overall damage done over time.

Buff Condition Build a bit and this not only on Thiefs

Haralin.1473:

Give other Classes a Stealth dedection, maybe on pets and turrets or somthing like that or lower Steath to max 6 sec and every action heartseaker/rezz or finishing people should break the stealth.

Fix the rendering issues on Stealhtclasses not only Thief.

Reduce the massive Burst on thief but not touch the overall damage done over time.

Buff Condition Build a bit and this not only on Thiefs

Sometimes I wonder if people read what they wrote… Don’t do a feedback if your only concern is to delete the class from the game. You want to nerf the stomp capabilities on one of the worst stomper in the game? You want to remove the only supportive ability of the thief (SR rez) Really ? Please Anet, dont touch to stealth before fixing the (overrated) culling effect. Ideas like this would just make the class totally useless.

Elthan.5246:

Haralin.1473:

Give other Classes a Stealth dedection, maybe on pets and turrets or somthing like that or lower Steath to max 6 sec and every action heartseaker/rezz or finishing people should break the stealth.

Fix the rendering issues on Stealhtclasses not only Thief.

Reduce the massive Burst on thief but not touch the overall damage done over time.

Buff Condition Build a bit and this not only on Thiefs

Sometimes I wonder if people read what they wrote… Don’t do a feedback if your only concern is to delete the class from the game. You want to nerf the stomp capabilities on one of the worst stomper in the game? You want to remove the only supportive ability of the thief (SR rez) Really ? Please Anet, dont touch to stealth before fixing the (overrated) culling effect. Ideas like this would just make the class totally useless.

I play both Thief and Engi and you talk about the worst stomper, i cannot take it serious compared to engi which can not get 100% stability to stomb. The thief is the best stomper cause you cannot interupt their stomp in downstate, cause you cannot aim at him the only thing which works ae knockback and blind but not every class have it. And with Quickness+Stealth it gets even more powerfull.

A thief as way more utily for group, not only Stealthrezz.

Haralin.1473:

I play both Thief and Engi and you talk about the worst stomper, i cannot take it serious compared to engi which can not get 100% stability to stomb. The thief is the best stomper cause you cannot interupt their stomp in downstate, cause you cannot aim at him the only thing which works ae knockback and blind but not every class have it. And with Quickness+Stealth it gets even more powerfull.

A thief as way more utily for group, not only Stealthrezz.

Quickness shouldn´t be in this game at all (or at least not so powerful, +33% action speed for longer time period would be much more balanced) because it only cause trouble with abilities/actions which aren´t OP itself (f.e. Pistol whip, 100b or the mentioned finishing).

here are the main issues,
PVE!
1. Too paperish… When i got ganked by just 2 monsters, I will just get instantly DESTROYED, which make melee hard. I’m suppose to be an Assassin not a guy who uses a shortbow/ dual pistol sitting at the corner shooting people. I can dodge but what if my endurance level is low, i cant do anything.

2. The pistol skills are too underpowered. The 3rd skill is epic. But the 1st,2nd, and 4th skill just does not do exptected damage.

3.Not much AOE skills, if i do not have a shortbow in my hands, i just get destroyed by 2 mobs. And I suggest that Dagger Main Hand’s 1st skill should be able to damage multiple mobs, except for the last animation.

4.Sword/Dagger. Its so ridiculous how much damage this combination do. The only good skill in my opinion is the 1st and 4th skill thats it. I suggest that u change the 3rd skill, making it balance with the other weapons, so it won’t be underrated.

5. Overall the thief is EXTREMELY underpowered in PVE. Useless in dungeons. Not able to deal enough damage. Classes like elementalist, guardian,warrior,ranger can easily dominate thief. Yes warrior and guardian are op, but look at this.
Guardian/Warrior – Heavy Armor/Big Damage/Able to survive
Elementalist- LA/Insane Damage/Glass Cannon
Ranger- MA/Reasonable damage/Have a pet to tank.
Thief – MA/Awful damage/Die alot
So i would rather play the classes listed above than thief.

Thanks Anet for reading this. I hope that u would really make this class balanced and not underpowered. This class really have potential. Really wanted to play this class, as i wanna be an assassin but unfortunately this class is so underpowered in PVE.

You should try Sword/pistol really if that’s your concern.

Pistol 4 is an awesome skill altough less useful in PvE than PvP. But for PvE Pistol 5 is one of the best skills you can get.

Got 2 mobs on you? Pistol 5 and Sword 1. The Sword skills are nearly all AoE 3 targets. I already survived to save a guardian that was ganked by the skelks in the north part of the jungle fractals like that. Poor guardian, he must have felt bad getting downed that easily by mere mobs and seeing a thief facetank his way out of them to save him

XENus.6931:

here are the main issues,
PVE!
1. Too paperish… When i got ganked by just 2 monsters, I will just get instantly DESTROYED, which make melee hard. I’m suppose to be an Assassin not a guy who uses a shortbow/ dual pistol sitting at the corner shooting people. I can dodge but what if my endurance level is low, i cant do anything.

2. The pistol skills are too underpowered. The 3rd skill is epic. But the 1st,2nd, and 4th skill just does not do exptected damage.

3.Not much AOE skills, if i do not have a shortbow in my hands, i just get destroyed by 2 mobs. And I suggest that Dagger Main Hand’s 1st skill should be able to damage multiple mobs, except for the last animation.

4.Sword/Dagger. Its so ridiculous how much damage this combination do. The only good skill in my opinion is the 1st and 4th skill thats it. I suggest that u change the 3rd skill, making it balance with the other weapons, so it won’t be underrated.

5. Overall the thief is EXTREMELY underpowered in PVE. Useless in dungeons. Not able to deal enough damage. Classes like elementalist, guardian,warrior,ranger can easily dominate thief. Yes warrior and guardian are op, but look at this.
Guardian/Warrior – Heavy Armor/Big Damage/Able to survive
Elementalist- LA/Insane Damage/Glass Cannon
Ranger- MA/Reasonable damage/Have a pet to tank.
Thief – MA/Awful damage/Die alot
So i would rather play the classes listed above than thief.

Thanks Anet for reading this. I hope that u would really make this class balanced and not underpowered. This class really have potential. Really wanted to play this class, as i wanna be an assassin but unfortunately this class is so underpowered in PVE.

Hi, I don´t feel underpowered in PvE as you´ve described, not nearly as that.
Can you please post your build/equipment so we can look at it and maybe help with your performance?