Guild Wars 2

(Long read ahead, don’t say I didn’t warn you)

By improve I mean it would work for both parties. “Thief isn’t fun to fight against”, “thief is too squishy”, “Thief is annoying”, “thief hits to hard”, he said she said, list goes on. It takes too kitten long for these balance patches to come out, and lately I can’t tell if thief needs a stronger rework or ranger does because both are actively complained about (1 being too weak 1 having mixed feelings. Take a guess at which is which).

Complaints are bound to be endless and I have no intention of stopping them in their tracks but when almost a quarter of the threads on the balance discussion sub-forum are thief related (mostly nerfs), I’m shocked anet hasn’t taken the time to gather thoughts. Hopefully a thief discussion erupts soon by the dev’s but until then, I’ll reside within this.

Traits

Unfortunatly, many thief traits have 1 sided bonuses which leads to underwhelming results. Pistol mastery, Dagger training, venomous strength, etc. This makes certain traits that are nearly essential for the build to function very spread out resulting in more sacrifices than it should. Thief support is also limited to offence, while leaving a vast majority of defensive support skills/traits to be rather selfish or ill behaved (shadow protector not granting regen if you already have it for example). Ill post my suggestion of a trait rework towards the end but to be as blunt as possible, almost every trait needs to be looked at and revised.

Weapon skills [Initiative]

Another big thief topic. The absence of DR on pressing 1 skill over and over is the cause of many weapon skill nerfs. The problem the few skills that do any damage often end up being the primary source of damage so spamming then over and over is a sad but necessary tactic in some cases (p/p, s/p). It’s a fact that thief weapon skills have lower condition durations, cc durations (daze/stun) and lower scaling for power however it isn’t that much lower, and with no DR it got abused and abused ever since which lead to nerfs and cries to this day. Two options imo to fix this issue once and for all.

1- Add a counter for all weapon skills. Repeated use of the same skill puts a debuff that increases the initiative cost of that skill by 1, capping at +3 initiative. This debuff is reset after 1.5 seconds of not using that skill or after using another weapon skill other than auto attack. This would apply to skills with separate parts such as IR, LS, Detonate cluster.

2. Implement reduced effects for repeated uses of the same skill. If the skill is meant for direct damage, have it deal reduced direct damage each consecutive use. If the skill is meant to apply a condition, have its duration reduced. This effect would also stack up to 3 times, each stack reducing the effect by 25% so using the same skill 4 times would leave the 4th cast with 25% of its full effects. Skills like choking gas would not proc this effect on themselves, because they naturally pulse but field 1 from choking gas would have a 33% longer duration than field 2 of choking gas. Pistol whip would do 75% less damage on the 4th cast but the 1/2 second stun would remain untouched since pw is primarily there for damage. There could be a 2 second debuff period for each skill, also resetting if another skill is cast in that time.

Stealth

Really simple, we need better sustain out of stealth. Not saying we don’t have any, but its noticeable less than Shadow arts in both style and effects. Stealth has a lot of solid options while acrobatics generally struggles to keep up. This ties into the trait rework I’ll do towards the end but there are 2 things acrobatics needs to improve on and that is active combat healing, and condition clearing. It’s there, just not strong enough.

(reserved for typing)

Steal

Incredibly strong when spec’ed for it, lousy when not. The other 7 professions don’t have to spec for their F mechanics to make some use of them, some of them even have the luxury of chosing what those F mechanics are to some degree. The big problem with steal is on its own, it is not universally beneficial to the thief. You can’t choose what to steal (that would be op), you get no benefit from holding onto steal or the stolen item, it basically becomes a gap closer in the end. I love how steal works because it gives thieves the benefit of adapting to fights if they use it correctly, but even so untraited it provides very little. In a mix with the trait suggestions at the end, I’d propose to grant steal a passive effect when off cool down.

[Steal]- Regenerate 1 initiative every 10 seconds when in combat. Same active(removes the passive initiative regen, naturally).

To not make initiative management absent,

[Infiltrator’s Signet] Gain 1 initiative when targeted by a disable (3 sec ICD). Same active.

Initiative is universal to a thief. If a thief wants to hold onto it, they get a bonus. If they spend it, its usually for a purpose and they already get a bonus. A nerf to infiltrator’s signet passive would be necessary because without it the need to trait for initiative regen would be almost gone.

Now onto what I believe the traits should be changed to (the easiest place to find OP suggestions). Numbers are obviously subject to change.

Deadly Arts

[Back fighting] Why would you spec for being downed? Scrap trait. Could change to “[Deep Wound]” When revealed, your condition duration is increased (20%). Ideas for anything but this terrible trait.

[Corrosive traps], merge [Trap master] into this.

[Venomous Strength] Bump might stacks to 3. If need be, reduce duration of might.

[Potent poison] bump to 50%. With the nerf to choking gas, there is no reason why an adept trait shouldn’t have some kick for thief but warrior gets 50% bleed duration in a condition trait line for the same investment (and bleeds hurt a lot more since they stack intensity).

[Improvisation] Change effect to “Recharge 1 utility skill on cooldown (random for multiple skills) on steal. 10% damage while holding a stolen skill.” If used properly, you can use only 1 utility skill and recharge it on a successful steal effectively doubling the cast. Move to GM traits.

[Dagger training] Add additional effect," lower initiative cost of off-hand dagger skills by 1".

[Combined Training] Replace [Combo critical chance] from CS. New trait [Ice drake venom], venom strikes apply chill (1 second).

[Residual venoms] Move to master traits. Maintains venom share potential while buffing non-venom share users for using venoms. Being a master trait, you can’t reduce the recharge (quick venoms) and get extra strikes without a full 30 investment, but a buff to improvisation opens up potential choices for venom share and non-venom share (condi using improvisation to stack a venom).

[Ice drake venom] Not a trait but in realation to the trait rework, changed to [Karka venom]- Transfer 1 condition to your foe on your next 2 attacks. Behaves like any other venom, 45 second base cool down, no cast time. Grant venom share defensive support, and with redone traits an alternative to condition clearing.

[Revealed Training] Bump power amount to 300. This effect does not work on stealth attacks, so that leads to pw or hs. Since spamming hs often leads to self inflicted death, you’re left with pw which s/p has very limited access to stealth making it difficult to abuse. You’re also going into a trait line more dedicated to venoms and condition application, losing precious ferocity and precision.

Critical Strikes

[Keen observer] 90% health especially on a power thief, is rather hard to maintain. Either bump % crit chance or slightly lower the parameters to 80%, something suitable for a minor adept trait to not be too strong.

[Furious Retaliation] Change functionality to "Grant allies fury when you hit a foe below 50% health. Same duration, same ICD, radius of effect 300 units.

[Concealed defeat] I’m iffy on suggesting this but change from smoke screen to shadow refuge, adding an ICD of 60 seconds. I like this trait in some dungeons but it does little in concealing your demise against melee. Could change to only apply 2 pulses instead of 4.

[Pistol Mastery] Merge [Ankle Shots] into this. Move to master traits.

[Combo critical chance] Scraped for combined training. Increase combo skill damage to 7%. Reason being 5% crit chance for a precision trait line seems a little pointless, and low to begin with if its going to affect only 1 skill type.

[Heavy rounds] Replacement for ankle shots as an adept trait. Pistol shots have a chance to be unblockable. 15% chance.

[Hidden killer] change functionality to apply to stealth attacks (meaning sneak attack will crit each shot).

[Invigorating Precision] Heal for a percentage of your critical damage. (2 options) 15% for single target skills, 7% for AoE skills OR increase by 1% for every 100 healing power. 1 or the other, obviously not both.

Shadow Arts

[Last refuge] Scrap it, burn it, toss it into a wood chipper. Place [Cloaked in shadows] In its place.

[Master of Deception] Add additional effect,“Using a deception skill removes 2 conditions.”

[Slowed pulse] Odd trait but since this trait line only has 4 non-stealth related traits and 2 of them being venom related, I suppose it had a place. In any case, lower the ICD to 10 seconds, the regen duration to 5 seconds, and proc off poison as well. Long ICD traits that grant boons are terrible against classes that can remove them.

[Shadow Protector] Remove the functionality, “Does not apply if ally already has stealth”, and add an ICD of 10 seconds per unique target(similar to lotus poison).

[Cloaked in Shadows] since this is the new minor adept trait, something new to replace it, preferable for non-stealth users (aka venom share). [Vigorous Venoms] Gain healing power based on the number of active venom strikes (based on the highest number of unique venom, does not tally up all venom attacks so spider + skale will not equal 8 stacks) Healing power per venom (40, level / 2).

[Power shots] Add additional effect, “Increase range by 100”. Not sure what justification there is to not granting thief a 1200 range weapon but atleast something would be nice for a master trait. Believe it or not, 300 units is a pretty big difference.

[Patience] Easily out done by infusion of shadow in the short term, promotes perma stealth for long term which is not healthy. Change functionality to “Recharge endurance quicker while in stealth”. 5 additional endurance every second in stealth(essentially in-stealth vigor).

[Hidden assassin] Change functionality to apply to allies you stealth as well.

Acrobatics

[Assassin’s Retreat] swiftness on kill, we already see how many people are abusing the superior sigil of speed, this must be broken!… Change functionality to grant 5 seconds of vigor on kill instead. Either you get vigor from active combat(vigorous recovery)or you get it from focus firing.

[Master Trapper] Change functionality to, “Trap skills cause AoE reveal to enemies when triggered”. Reveal duration 4 seconds. Number of targets 20. Radius of effect 360 units. Nice for Mesmer but mainly a trait for zerg play in wvw to counter enemy veil or mass invis if used well. Traps aren’t generally attractive anyways but atleast this would have a role.

[Fleet Shadow] Add additional effect, " Move 50% faster and ignore cripple and chill while in stealth". This does not remove the cd effect of chill or remove the conditions, just when in stealth you ignore it’s movement impairing effects. Does not work against immobilize.

[Fleet of foot] Remove a condition on dodging. 50 endurance removes 1 condition. Move to GM traits. No ICD.

[Hard to catch] Change functionality to grant stability for 4 seconds with the shadow step to actually break stun on disable OR to shadow step away and grant stealth for 3 seconds on disable. Bump ICD to 45 or 60 seconds if need be, at least have this trait function.

[Assassin’s Equilibrium] Move to Master traits. Simply put, not worthy of a GM trait even with high BD. In the evasive trait line, it’d be better to dodge the disabling effect and any other conditions/damage attached to it than to reveal yourself and eat that attack.

[Assasssin’s Reward] Increase healing power scale from .05 to .1 to give a purpose to healing power gear for thief. SA grants healing power on its own so the heals from it are naturally more powerful with a lesser effort. To make use of AR, you have to spend initiative and get it back just as fast. It’s gata compete with its neighbor as a defensive trait line on top of being a GM trait, it should reap some suitable rewards since you are targetable.

Trickery

[Instinctual response] Change functionality to “Blind nearby foes when disabled”. Blind duration 3 seconds, ICD 10 seconds, Radius of effect 120 units.

[Long reach] Add additional effect, “unblockable”.

[Trickster] Additional effects depending on the trick casted. (Haste: affects cooldown recharges)(RFI: Removes revealed)(Scorpion Wire: If pulled, the enemy loses 1 boon)(Caltrops: Invisible, applies to uncatchable as well).

[Initial strike] change to every 3rd basic attack gain 1 initiative. ICD 1 second. (3rd hit, wait 1 second, counter starts again).

Goal of the above trait suggestions is to open up choices that weren’t otherwise useful in any build. Traits should compete with one another to some degree, and a few should remain situational (hence why I left decent of shadows alone). If for whatever reasons the above traits are too strong to pass up, then numbers should be toned down but if they offer as strong a utility as its neighbor traits, then there is some good to it. Thief is not the only victim of poorly made and/or located traits. I can’t even begin on guardian or ranger but, the low weapon selection and defensive options has an impact on build diversity which is not healthy for new players and leaves a stale taste for old players. If you made it this far, I salute you for reading and await any critique you may have.

(Update)

Weapon skills were a bit tricky to suggest a change. Earlier I thought reversing some previous nerfs was suitable but not all the nerfs were due to the fact that they could be spammed. For instance, removing the stun break from IR was because it had no risk associated with it, and increasing the cost of LS was because the incredibly high evasion up time with full boon stripping in seconds.

Weapon Skills

[Pistol]

-#1 (Vital Shot)- Increase the base damage slightly as well as the power coefficient. Sb, is multi target longer range(due to flight path) higher base damage and a slightly stronger power coefficient when compared to pistol. I see a problem…

-#1 (Sneak Attack) Increase the bleed duration of sneak attack to a base of 7 seconds for pvp, 6 seconds for pve/wvw. Reason for the split is p/d is most certainly strong in wvw with higher condition durations from either foods or gear, and conditions hit a lot harder in wvw as well. Goal of change is to help define what role pistol plays in a power or condition spec.

-#2 (body shot) IMO, p/p needs some form of sustain that won’t drastically buff p/d. Change functionality to,
-While moving away from your target, back step while firing an immobilizing shot, while moving towards your target roll forward and fire a close range shot causing vulnerability." Immobilize duration 1 second. Vulnerability 6 stacks for 4 seconds. Back step 180 units. Evade 1/2 second. 4 Initiative. back step would not evade, it is merely a quick step. The forward cast would have a slight aftercast to not allow evade spam, which is why there is an increase in condition duration base.

-#3 (shadow strike)- A small bump in the torment duration (6 seconds). Reason being p/d doesn’t use the torment for damage as much as a cover up condition (although it still does some damage). Since you teleport away, it isn’t reliably spammed unless against a wall.

-#3 (unload) Add functionality, “Each attack applies vulnerability. 1 stack of vulnerability for 1.5 seconds.” This skill has a 1.75 second channel time, goal being that multiple shots will start to hurt real bad. Also a small bump in the power coefficient since this weapon set takes a lot of investment just to make an impression for being single target which means less survivability which means… rally bot.

[Sword]

-#1 (Tactical strike) Change functionality of the front attack to a condition transfer (1). Sword thief to me always seemed like a dirty play style with some degree of control, something a blind just did fit to well in especially for how much of that we already have.

-#2 (Infiltrator’s strike/return) Small change, change functionality of IR to, “Return 1 initiative if a condition is removed”. Time to reward some active thinking and not nerf this skill, its still in pain.

-#3 (Pistol whip) Tied to the skill spam change, I think it’d be safe to reduce the initiative cost to 5 for pvp and return a small % of damage back (5%?).

-#3 (Larcenous strike) Add functionality to cleave. Why? Because Mesmer sword auto attack out does this skill, which is quite sad. The increased cost and 50% boon stripping nerf (2->1) this skill needs some love. Could just as easy reduce the cost back to 1 initiative since it only steals 1 boon now. 1 or the other.

[Dagger]

-#2 (Heartseeker). Further the damage spread from high to low health to deal less damage at higher health and more damage at lower health. This will hopefully get us closer to removing hs spamers from embarrassing themselves and reward those who use it for dps at the right times. The damage increase at lower health would be much lower than the damage loss at higher health, we’re trying to reward good use of the skill not make it easier to abuse.

-#3 (Death blossom) Increase the distance it travels by say 80 units (just a little) and make it a full evade. Keep the after cast to not allow easy evade spam but atleast those who know the duration of the animation can use it wisely in avoiding certain attacks.

-#4 (dancing dagger) For dps, its meh, for gap closer any other weapon would do better, and its highly unreliable to hit. Change functionality to, “Throw your dagger to poison your foe. Poison duration 4 seconds”. Increase the projectile speed to make it hit more reliably. This is just a start, I’m sure there is some better utility to this skill than a single target poison but a 3 second cripple that barely even makes contact is rather pathetic.

[Shortbow]

-#2 (Cluster bomb) Return the range to 1200, there was no reason to this nerf, -300 range is a big nerf especially to the class with no ranged weapon that has even 1000 range (although power shots would make SB 1000 but that’s a master trait).

-#5 Debatable, but I’d suggest removing the blind in favor of 1 less initiative. Although the blind has some use, it is far to uncommon to come across. This skill is to get around and avoid a burst if you are immobilized or caged in (RoW, Static field, etc). Otherwise no problem with this skill.

Didn’t you hear the news? A noob was killed in WvW by a stealthThief, so Improving the Thief is NOT allowed in any way – and forever more.

;-)

PS: You have some interesting thoughts, but you would be FAR better served introducing them one at a time (so it doesn’t look like a total class remake) and posting them in the Professions forums instead of here.

Ision.3207:

Didn’t you hear the news? A noob was killed in WvW by a stealthThief, so Improving the Thief is NOT allowed in any way – and forever more.

;-)

PS: You have some interesting thoughts, but you would be FAR better served introducing them one at a time (so it doesn’t look like a total class remake) and posting them in the Professions forums instead of here.

I considered that, except that this is only for thief (if it was stealth related I certainly would, since thief is not the only stealth class). Also there is a lot of whiners in there who have very very twisted stances on thief with little information to back it up. I agree thief isn’t the most balanced, but its painted to be far to strong than it actually is, which leads to shouting contests from both sides and the topic is easily derailed from people not willing to L2P and/or rude comments directed at specific people.

I’ll see if I can revise the thread though, it does look a little like the ancient wall of text. Still have a few topics I’ll touch in the coming days as well as some tweaks to previous thoughts.

I don’t think Fleet of foot should be a GM trait. Keep it master and remove the CD. 10 seconds for 2 conditions is not good at all.

The formatting and length ruin this for me. I can’t even understand you at all. Couldn’t get past the first paragraph.

Pawstruck.9708:

The formatting and length ruin this for me. I can’t even understand you at all. Couldn’t get past the first paragraph.

I cut out a lot of chatter, hope it helps.