Guild Wars 2

This is a ticket I sent to Anet but I would love to see different opinions. Keep it clean and respect eachothers opinions, I am just curious if people think along the same line here.

“Dear Anet,

I am contacting you here because I have a better chance of developers reading this, I am not here to whine about how “broken” thief is, I play one and I’m by far one of the best thiefs on my server.. I only want to give advice on a couple of stealth mechanics that are “too much”, I’m not sure how anti-stealth traps are going to work.. but I am not really looking forward to those.

This is me playing, a small clip, forward to 2:30 for action.. I have several clips there, how I solo’d towers (which you fixed last patch) or roam around and kill groups of enemies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG6XCZv2JTo

The fun part of the thief class is.. it is a VERY powerful tool for a skilled player and a very hard one to counter for the casual player, which is “fine”. But it is also a very good “troll” class and I find myself fighting thiefs everyday that just reset fight after fight after I get a few backstabs into them, going stealth and fleeing.. mostly with Shadow Refuge.

My advice would be; make Shadow Refuge only stealth within its radius, it shouldn’t stealth you for an extra 10s afterwards. This still makes it a brilliant skill to recover or to resurrect people.

“Out of combat” health regeneration is also pretty stupid, every class has a healing skill, in PvE this is completely understandable, but IMO it has little place in PvP. It just makes it easier to reset a fight and come back fully restored.

I play D/P as seen in my videos, I can perma stealth by heartseeking 4 times into black powder, which is “fine” I suppose, because it takes a lot of skill to heartseeker 4 times in one powder, I need to manipulate my heartseekers to be shorter by positioning my camera at a certain angle and holding down strafe keys and turning with the camera all in the same time, something a casual player cannot do.. so if you would nerf that to “my standards”, thief class would become unplayable, because lets face it.. thiefs need their stealth, it’s their main damage output and they are too squishy to survive without.

Still d/p is pretty overpowered and has become the new “meta” for thief, one of the major issues is blind with this.. the blind is way too powerful.

One other thing imo; downed stance.. ressing a player is a lot faster than stomping one, which doesn’t make any sense, it encourages larger groups to still win even though they might have played worse, larger groups can get mass rally’s done etc too. In general, Gw2 at this state makes it very hard for you to win if you have a slightly smaller group, because even when you outplay your enemy, they can still mass rally. Downed stance just needs some sort of nerf to my feeling and many others.

In short: stealth is fine, as long as you remain in combat.. thief is such a beautiful class, but it could be so much more by making it a little bit harder, aoe stealth needs a nerf, not the ones that require you to fight close combat, such as cloack and dagger, those need to be encouraged, but they were hit too hard with anti-culling, it is very hard to be successful with d/d right now.

Hope this is somewhat useful information and be sure to check out videos on our guilds channel, mainly my thief videos, it might help tweaking thief better (but then again, it shouldn’t be nerfed “to my standards” because I am not a casual player and thief would become unplayable)

Thats it for now… thanks for reading and I hope this can help out balance the class a little.

Greetings,
Sceinna"

Are these changes focused on PvP or PvE/dungeons? If they are meant only for PvP, then I have no opinion since I don’t do any of that.

However if they are meant to include PvE/dungeon play, then I am not in favor of your proposed change to Shadow Refuge. In dungeons, I am often ressing dead players and need to chain my resses together in order to do it safely. The extra 10 sec is invaluable for this. The length of SR allows easier skipping of trash dungeon mobs as well as makes some fights much more manageable. Also, SR as it is now is our only stealth skill that still breaks enemy monster agro (because of it’s length). Taken together, these changes will make Thieves even less wanted in dungeon groups since SR in it’s current form is one of the most powerful unique skill that we bring in that environment.

Again, this is from a PvE/dungeon only Thief’s perspective.

I really don’t understand why a thief is coming in here and asking for nerfs after the kitten slew that it was already hit with.

Further more, this class does not need any more nerfs, it needs buffs. Tired of PvP QQ, because there happens to be this other part of the game called PvE, where thief does not excel at , whatsoever.

I really wish people would stop mindlessly asking for nerfs because of tunnel vision in whatever they “think” is best.
lay out as many pvp scenarios as you want, but with anti stealth mechanics being introduced soon (which cripples backstab builds almost entirely around it) , we dont need any stealth nerfs.

For the sake of PvE, get BUFFED and not nerfed..

so shadow refuge shouldnt let us stay invis after it ends….u mean you want us to be trapped inside there and take aoe/melee dmg …not being able to roll out then when its done be “visible” to all? sounds like setting ones self up to die. wow horrible idea. the only mechanic on a thief that is arguably OP is black powder shot/the field it leaves. although it is easy to get a thief out of invis in d/p just by standing next to the field u should be hitby a HS. if not roll back…. i do it and do it very well so idk about others but still its a pretty strong skill. blind on range and blind melee and pulses and can invis. everything else is fine. thief is horrible at PVE ….not very good in zerg play…..one of the less desirable classes for spvp/tpvp…..making them weaker would just kill their roaming ability…..basically the one pride and joy they have left. burst is now dead. still good combos but no real bang like before mug nerf.

I clearly said these are changes that imo should apply to WvW, not PvE.. because PvE is hard as it is for a thief. And yes I’m a thief QQing about the mechanics, why?

Because I’m tired of kitten thiefs slipping out of my hands day in day out, yesterday I had 3 thiefs too frightened to fight me so instead they were trolling me with s/d and d/p and using refuge whenever one downed. It has become such a troll class. I’ve been saying for months area stealth needs a nerf, because it requires 0 skill and it is way too OP.

I also did mention I’m not a fan of those anti stealth traps, because they are not the way to “fix” this problem Anet is trying to compensate for.

Stealth is a problem in any game, but as it is right now in GW2, it is far too easy, especially if you play d/p like I do, you can’t look past that, just check out my videos… I perma stealth in towers and solo them.

Jeez not this kitten again…

d/p still is cheeseplay to the max, I can’t take players serious that claim HS 3-4x through BP requires any skill, no it really doesn’t. You’re whining about stealth being unbalanced, yet you’re abusing it to the max with this weaponset, how about you change to another weaponset like s/d instead of BP HS comboing the moment revealed is gone? The vid clearly shows that you’re using d/p 5 only to access stealth, theres other ways to utilize this skill, you know? D/D still works like a charm , so theres once more alot of bullkitten spread in here.

I got to agree on the rezzing part though, players getting revived faster than we can stomp them is just bad game designing.

Sceinna.3561:

My advice would be; make Shadow Refuge only stealth within its radius, it shouldn’t stealth you for an extra 10s afterwards. This still makes it a brilliant skill to recover or to resurrect people.

4 seconds of stealth is not something you’d use a utility slot for. Without the additional stealth once the skill ends it is not brilliant, not even mediocre, even blinding powder would be better then that.

Being able to get away from a fight is a central theme for the thief. It’s this ability that compensates the lack of defensive boons.

“Out of combat” health regeneration is also pretty stupid, every class has a healing skill, in PvE this is completely understandable, but IMO it has little place in PvP. It just makes it easier to reset a fight and come back fully restored.

That is a mechanic shared by everyone, if your opponent gets out of range, you both restore health. It’s quite obviously intentionally done that way.

Still d/p is pretty overpowered and has become the new “meta” for thief, one of the major issues is blind with this.. the blind is way too powerful.

This surprises me, I’ve used it in PvE a while and it could take out almost anything, but it was so boring. It works in PvE because AI tends to linger in the blind field, something a player wouldn’t do. I think.

You’re a Thief who plays D/P to be able to slip away easily when roaming in WvW asking for even more over the top nerfs to Thieves because you’re sick and tired of them easily slipping away in WvW when roaming…

WHAT?! \o.O/

that’s why i have a half-orc rogue(thief) right now
i can actually enjoy pve and totally own the mobs

So, if I understood well… let’s sacrifice Shadow Refuge to the whinners, turning it into a useless ability. That way, you placate the QQers, aaand… It doesn’t affect your gameplay in the slightest, since you already have all the perma-stealth you want on demand with the D/P set…

Yeah, nice try.

No, actually… it wasn’t…

as we can see in your video you put there a lot of effort to HS 4 times in one single black powder, just to attack 2 secs later and not kill that engi…

nice , thanks.

.. best thief on your server ? Man there must really only be bad thiefs playing on your server ..

You do realise thath you only need to hit BP field ? you can heartseek in and out and still get the “proc”.

Also, what did this vid show us ?
Nothing you weren’t even able to kill an engi in 1v1 … clearly thief needs some more nerfs.

Your max attacks hit for like 5k , thats it ?

Blind op? Only vs other melees that are stupid enough to stay in the field, and even then you will lose a straight up 1v1 vs several other classes if you would just spam BP and hit him while he hits you.

Incurafy.6329:

You’re a Thief who plays D/P to be able to slip away easily when roaming in WvW asking for even more over the top nerfs to Thieves because you’re sick and tired of them easily slipping away in WvW when roaming…

WHAT?! \o.O/

I have to agree with what Incurafy said. This post is not one offering advice on how to fix the stealth mechanic for all thieves in general but a selfish plea to help you kill other thieves because they won’t stop using stealth to survive. It’ s okay for you to use stealth to suit your needs but not others. I get it now, Princess.