Guild Wars 2

…without breaking them in PvP.

I posted these suggestions in another thread within the raid section, but I figure that it would be worthwhile to share them here as well to get feedback from the thief community.

The goal of the proposed changes – Allow thieves to do competitive DPS in raids without affecting PvP balance and without incentivizing a pure auto-attack rotation, even when under the effects of quickness.

- Change the quickness speed scaling of backstab, Weakening Strike, Cloak and Dagger and/or other weapon skills with quickness. Thieves don’t really benefit from alacrity (especially with power DPS builds), so increasing the scaling with quickness can help them stay competitive when a chrono is in the group while also preventing thieves from being incentivized to just AA when quickness is up.
– Increase the DPS modifiers in the Critical Strikes trait line. This trait line already has a ton of DPS modifiers, but since it doesn’t really fit into any PvP builds, this could help PvE without affecting PvP.
– Add bleeding to Ice Drake Venom. PvP condi thieves can’t fit 3 venoms on to their bar due to lack of a stun break and condi thief overall is still arguably not great for PvP compared to D/P power. A bleed on Ice Drake would allow a venom share thief to run with 3 venoms and do competitive condi DPS.
– Change Leeching Venoms to grant a condi damage or duration boost instead of might. This is my #1 suggestion. Doing this would give thieves a unique boost that would make them useful beyond just having high DPS. This would also be a boost that’s not so good that it’s necessary for all groups (since it doesn’t help power builds), which would reinforce a rigid group meta in raids, but it would still be beneficial enough to make them worth considering.

And if any of the changes above were implemented, AA DPS could potentially be decreased again since it’s not needed for PvP and could keep thief DPS in PvE from being out of control.

Since the buff to AA damage thief is one of the best direct damage classes in game at the moment.
If you would make a case to increase thieves group support in some way i think that would be valid but the damage doen’t need a buff atm. For condi thief to be competitive there needs to be some rework of venoms and a strong condie set.

Draugl.8079:

Since the buff to AA damage thief is one of the best direct damage classes in game at the moment.
If you would make a case to increase thieves group support in some way i think that would be valid but the damage doen’t need a buff atm. For condi thief to be competitive there needs to be some rework of venoms and a strong condie set.

Yes, but having thieves as best dps via a build where you pretty much just AA the entire time (unless you don’t have perma-quickness) is really just terrible.

I agree that having some support would be ideal and that’s part of the Leeching Venom suggestion. Venoms have come a long way and they’re viable, but they’re still something that a group tolerates and not something a group wants.

Or you could not take Leeching Venoms away from me. I play Power, that provides incredible burst. I’d say take the once an attack stigma off and its k.

Improving the DPS of any profession in PvE doesn’t require any skills or trait changes. They’ve done this in GW1 where they’ve applied environmental effects to balance the skills in PvE. The effect can come from the instance effect, map wide effect, or NPC presence effect. Doing it this way will improve not only the profession but also the flavor of the environment the players are in — and the most important thing is it doesn’t affect PvP what so ever.