Guild Wars 2

I play wvw 100% and I own thief for 3+ years. After HoT they added daredevils and I want everybody would understand – there are thieves and there are daredevils. they added mobility and some defenses for daredevils. nerfs came in too. Nerfs were applied for whole Thief/Daredevil class. Thats not fair. As DD usually are mobile spike/burst damage dealers. Meanwhile thieves are more sniper type – spike due to backstab dealers. With stealth attack CD you disabled thiefs (not daredevils) ability to deal damage.

I’m from Underworld and been linked almost with all servers in EU and I havent seen many thieves. Everyone moved to burst dmg daredevil. I’d say it was 99% of daredevils I met. I’m ok to loose against other classes/builds or daredevils but I feel disappointed and cheated as stealth attack cooldown is applied for whole Thief/daredevil class.

Some people say it’s good because it determines thief skill. I say hell no. it makes you useless cripple and disables fluent play for thief. In wvw group fights or even duels stealth attacks are useless most of the time.

My suggestion – remove cooldown for thief, leave it for daredevils. they got increased mobility/survivability we should get increased chance to do damage. In general I think this nerf is worst ever.

Developers, if you read that. Please reply to a dedicated player. Let us thieves know what you think, what is the future of this particular ability.

Sorry for mistakes in text as English is not my native.

Your suggestion does not make any sense.

Yes, Daredevil has more mobility. No, that does not mean the less-mobile vanilla Thieves should get more damage, because they already do. If you’re opting to not go with Daredevil, then that means you’re running DA/SA/Trickery. If you were running Daredevil, you’d be using DD/SA/Trickery, most likely. And look, you just lost all the damage-oriented traits from DA! Or maybe you’d be running DD/DA/Trickery and lose a ton of defenses? Or lastly, DD/DA/SA and lose the utility gained from Trickery?

Even without that, your suggestion does not make sense. DD gets punished for the 1s cooldown just as much as vanilla thief.

I think he makes a valid point.
The problem is, Anet presented elite specializations as extensions/options to our professions. In reality however, elite specs are pure and simple improvements, and it will be clearer as more specializations are put in the game. This will make the base profession more and more obsolete, but that was the intention of the design team.
But OP you need to understand how much work this will require from the developpers. You are asking for the Thief and Daredevil to be inspected independently of each others, whereas in fact, they are same profession, if they listen to you, than they will have apply this rule to every other professions.

I do agree with you though, I do not think it will be feasible.

I understand there is no gold middle in this. And my primary suggestion was to remove CD at all (few month ago). after no response was given I came up with this idea. It does not matter which class you take, you balance between 2 things damage/survivability. In my opinion daredevil got much more survivability and stealth attacks are not their main source of damage. what I saw in WvW almost none of daredevils biggest damage come out of stealth. it come from burst. I’m not asking to increase any damage for thief. they can even decrease backstab output by 5-10%. I’m asking for fluent play. If I would like “dodging monkey” game style I would roll to daredevil.

Olba.5376:

Your suggestion does not make any sense.

Yes, Daredevil has more mobility. No, that does not mean the less-mobile vanilla Thieves should get more damage, because they already do. If you’re opting to not go with Daredevil, then that means you’re running DA/SA/Trickery. If you were running Daredevil, you’d be using DD/SA/Trickery, most likely. And look, you just lost all the damage-oriented traits from DA! Or maybe you’d be running DD/DA/Trickery and lose a ton of defenses? Or lastly, DD/DA/SA and lose the utility gained from Trickery?

Even without that, your suggestion does not make sense. DD gets punished for the 1s cooldown just as much as vanilla thief.

As Anet came up with idea of elite classes they must’ve thought about additional balance requirements. Anyway I also understand that elites might push out base classes. I’m ok with that too. But I cant find any logical explanation for this cooldown on stealth attacks. There is no response from devs even forums were flashing. This uncertainty made me disappointed. I’d like to know the future of this particular skill. At least that devs read feedbacks from veteran players in forums.

Kocoff.7582:

I think he makes a valid point.
The problem is, Anet presented elite specializations as extensions/options to our professions. In reality however, elite specs are pure and simple improvements, and it will be clearer as more specializations are put in the game. This will make the base profession more and more obsolete, but that was the intention of the design team.
But OP you need to understand how much work this will require from the developpers. You are asking for the Thief and Daredevil to be inspected independently of each others, whereas in fact, they are same profession, if they listen to you, than they will have apply this rule to every other professions.

I do agree with you though, I do not think it will be feasible.

I think they should just make it so stealth attacks will only have a cooldown if the enemy uses a skill to avoid the damage, such as blocks/evades/goes invuln, etc. Having a cooldown just because you missed really sucks, especially if you only have one stack of stealth (only one chance per 3 seconds pretty much). So atleast it will reward the player for blocking that attack rather than a base cooldown for smacking the air thanks to lag time.

CreedOfGod.9764:

I think they should just make it so stealth attacks will only have a cooldown if the enemy uses a skill to avoid the damage, such as blocks/evades/goes invuln, etc. Having a cooldown just because you missed really sucks, especially if you only have one stack of stealth (only one chance per 3 seconds pretty much). So atleast it will reward the player for blocking that attack rather than a base cooldown for smacking the air thanks to lag time.

Or they could remove it, especially since they have given absolutely any reason for this implementation.

Sounds reasonable but additional condition would add more confusion. You will have to watch are you on cooldown or not as it will become variable.

I vote for complete removal and removal for thieves only as second option.

CreedOfGod.9764:

I think they should just make it so stealth attacks will only have a cooldown if the enemy uses a skill to avoid the damage, such as blocks/evades/goes invuln, etc. Having a cooldown just because you missed really sucks, especially if you only have one stack of stealth (only one chance per 3 seconds pretty much). So atleast it will reward the player for blocking that attack rather than a base cooldown for smacking the air thanks to lag time.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Or they could remove it, especially since they have given absolutely any reason for this implementation.

Dangus.6572:

I vote for complete removal and removal for thieves only as second option.

Well I couldn’t agree with both of you more, but I feel like there is little chance the devs are likely to admit they f***ed up and completely reverse the nerf. Putting a CD only on blocked stealth skills still kind of keeps the nerf but is punished a lot less on small mistakes.

I still hope they just remove it. It’s the only weapon skill with a cd in the whole profession, it’s the only one that you have a time limit to land, and it’s the only weapon skill you can only land once. We should get a 25% damage buff to all stealth skills as compensation.

Skill already has lots of requirements for it to even be useful, not to mention that couple swings with autoattack hits harder. Most other classes have much higher hitting attacks that have zero requirements to use and/or land which makes people arguing pro nerf look silly. This nerf was uncalled for and I’m guessing it’s coming from some developer that got ganked really badly so he wanted his payback.

The change never made sense from begin with, regardless elite spec or not. You know what happened before the nerf? This (see below) and it speaks tomes about devs and their balancing policy:

I’m fairly sure the 1s cd on stealth attacks was to prevent breaking through 1 hit defenses like Aegis or Blind, since hitting them does not break stealth.

Lahmia.2193:

I’m fairly sure the 1s cd on stealth attacks was to prevent breaking through 1 hit defenses like Aegis or Blind, since hitting them does not break stealth.

Yeah, but it’s not like it didn’t have counterplay before. You see your aegis block an attack, dodge. You see a “miss”, dodge. It’s not like the backstabs were flying as fast as double strike. They still took time to perform, and if your opponent was able to get a tell and outplay you, great. If not, then you get to land a hard hitting skill.

Lahmia.2193:

I’m fairly sure the 1s cd on stealth attacks was to prevent breaking through 1 hit defenses like Aegis or Blind, since hitting them does not break stealth.

And the fact thieves had 3-4 second timer to land a BS in the majority of cases, so adding another punish for no reason since what you are saying is still an assumption since Anet has yet to provide any justification so currently it is “solution” to no problem..