Guild Wars 2

Do it! Just do it! Don’t let thieves be scrubs!
Bet people are gonna say active defence, blah blah blah. Just shhh, we need this!

Or you just equip vitality gear. I recommend marauder, a bit of valk if you want even more. Marauder has the advantage of overall more stats.

Or they can just fill a large cardboard box up with tons of buffs and just pour it all over us. This would be included.

After 3 years, I think the time to adjust such stats has come and gone, along time ago.

Padd.1479:

Or you just equip vitality gear. I recommend marauder, a bit of valk if you want even more. Marauder has the advantage of overall more stats.

Problem is that other classes have a built in bunch of stuff, that archetypally you would expect that class to have to feel like that class, that provides a fair amount of leeway in building that char; as you do the survivabilty vs damage output trade-off back and forth.

You’ve simply got more stuff to build on as your starting point. Thief (especially gunslinger for whom our class feature, Steal, is often the last thing that you want to do) doesn’t have any built in class stuff at all; so it all has to come from our build.

Without that pool of stuff, our build margins are extremely tight; with every single thing that we do to make our char feel like an archetypal rogue class (most of which should be built in and baseline IMO), with every single little bit of survivability that we add being an instantly noticeable drop to our damage output.

And the margins are so tight, and the game so unforgiving, and Thief just so dire, that it’s really easy to fall into the trap of adding ‘just a little bit more…’ Vitality, done so incrementally that you don’t notice that your damage output has completely tanked to uselessness… and you still have rubbish survivability into the bargain….

So you end up with both less survivability and less damage output than everyone else… result!

Sure, you can absorb some switching of Zerk → Mara without losing too much damage output [and in my case, my damage output actually went up] but it really isn’t many pieces before your damage starts to tank.

I’m big into the RP side of games [and not so much the MMO part…], so I’d prefer that the archetypal stuff was baked in; movement speed, movement-impairing condi-cleanse, something that reflects the fact that we’re always dodging whatever we do, with our lightning reflexes, faster Endurance regen, and keep the low HP pool.

This would mean that we didn’t need to supply these things with our builds (at huge opportunity cost), which would give us that build (diversity) margin that other classes have.

But realistically, that would be work; so if we got at least the easy option of a medium health pool then I’d dance a jig in the street.

I do think the gap is too high between the tiers, especially the 2nd and 3rd. An extra 1500 or so at level 80 would be appropriate.

So, if everyone else is getting a bunch of random passive stuff, what’s thematic for thieves?

33% move speed passive. A minor in acro as well as an upgrade to our m0ove signet. We’re supposed to be mobile. It’s dumb that we don’t have the game’s easiest access to capped move speed.

Superspeed on steal. Thrill of the crime? more like lame boons everyone has anyway of the crime. Upgrade the swift to superspeed.

Resistance on dodge/stealh. We should have condition defense that doesn’t require us to either take daredevil or shadowstep. Adding resist/dodge to acro and resist/stealth to SA would seriously help our surviability.

+% damage against disabled targets. Not sure where to put this. Basically, scaling damage the more stuns/dazes/cripples/etc. are piled on the target. Since we can’t stack a lot of these ourselves, it gives us increased lethality in team fights, going hand in hand with our semi-meta role of quick stomps, and makes us not just good at +1, but substantially better than other classes. I’m thinking something that feels more like a good jungle ganker in MOBAs. Where other people’s +1 is a nuisance but thief +1 is terrifying.

+combo effectiveness – Initiative gives us a lot of ways to rapidly exploit combo fields. We should have some trait options that really let us push fields over the top. This is another place where we’d be scaling really well by piggybacking on allies while getting only a marginal increase in our own abilities. Stuff like “your whirl finishers are also blast finishers” or “when you execute a leap finisher, it is twice as effective” or “your blast finishers blast twice” etc. Initiative and combo fields go together like peanut butter and jelly, so we should really be able to build support around ridiculously amazing combo interactions.

Better stealing. Stolen items are good. Sometimes. maybe. However, most other classes can build their profession skill with options to specifically compliment specific builds. Stolen items should have two uses, one offensive, and one defensive, an generally follow a pattern of those uses being well geared for condi or power builds respectively. Current stolen items vary greatly in usefulness based on build. Stealing and using stolen items should always feel useful. It is literally our thing.

It’s not so much that they’re getting extra stuff, but that they had it already, built into their core class. ‘You lose a class, or more, of armour and/or health but in exchange you get a bunch of thematic and useful stuff!’

We Rogues sure lose the armour and health and in exchange we get… Steal? Ugh! Not the thematically usual higher base speed and ability to keep moving when the enemy is trying to stop you, not the usual dodge/reflex based defensive buffer….

And not another thematic thing that wasn’t in your list (just to be thorough): Not any useful, built in damage buff when you hit the target from behind, or otherwise sneak attack it (the latter being in your list).

Speaking as always from the PoV of being a gunslinger, I always try to hit the enemy from the back, having played Rogues in other games for most of my life [though I also have a soft spot for Paladins].

But my only real reward for that here is the RP satisfaction that I bring to the table. I get what, a brief Haste on a really long CD… when I already have ~perma-Fury, and I’m not convinced that Quickness works properly. Seems like you get twice as many shots but each hits about two-thirds as hard?

I could also get an increased crit chance, but that trait clashes with a Just Better one, so I don’t.

Dunno, I’m pretty sure that we’ll never get any of these goodies, but as long as we’re dreaming… even if we’re to be perpetually +1s, the above would at least make us better and more characterful ones (depending on what you included in ‘sneak attack’).

So, moving flanking damage bonuses out of traits and in to base thief? Seems appropriate, and would open a bit of trait space for some other adjustments. Like, say swapping those traits to disables on flanking in stead. So you get the damage incentive as base, but if you want to trait for it you have some really flexible disabling options.

I can’t say this enough: Superspeed, superspeed, superspeed.

Those short bursts of massive in/out of combat mobility should be a bread and butter thief boon. We rely more heavily on outpositioning foes than any other class due to lack of defenses, but the chainable/uncounterable nature of our shadowsteps and stealths makes them unsuitable for in combat buffs from a balance perspective in a lot of situations.

We need a lot more in combat superspeed in our base lines.

Additionally, if we’re not ever really getting survivability buffs then we deserve more disables or damage openers. This opens a concerning balance paradigm that paves the way toward permastun>dead builds, which I don’t want to advocate as they’re generally not fun to play against. Soft disables like more/longer cripple, more blinds, and more daze access, we need that.

In addition, it may be thematic to hand us some access to unblockable flanking attacks. This would greatly increase thief lethality, but I don’t believe it would put us over the top in 1v1s. We’d be extremely potent with the addition of stealth and mobility, but wouldn’t have to rely on stupid stuff like release era insane and uncounterable burst, and in stead be expected to use our superior positioning.

Yeah, it’s like the Devs did the equivalent of looking over the classes in Neverwinter Nights; nodding as they saw the thematic trade-offs that each class has. Then got to Rogue, agreed with the armour and health reduction then saw what they get in exchange.

‘Agility/reflex based buffs to defence, and bonus sneak attack damage?! Well, they can buy all that out of their Feats allowance… so what can we give ’em? I know, let’s give these squishy folks, including the archers, the ability to instantly get into the target’s melee range! Result!’

I certainly agree that I would put more speed at the top of the list of thematic, baseline stuff. It’s not just that we don’t get it as part of the trade-off for reduced survivability, but that we don’t even have lower opportunity cost (than a Utility or Runes) to buy it than other classes can.

From there, it is thematic and elegant to couple this increased mobility to increased flanking damage. I honestly wish that PvE and PvP were balanced separately, but (as you say) that might be a way that we could have increased damage (and other effects) that we have to play well for, and therefore give the human victims of this in PvP fewer grounds to complain and cry for nerfs… in theory, though that wouldn’t really happen.

[Note that this isn’t a dig at PvP/ers in general.]

I do enjoy playing a gunslinger, far more than any other class, but there’re just too many times when I’m doing my part in playing as a Rogue, but the game doesn’t give any reward for doing so.

As an example, it really struck me the other week in a fort defence in the Silverwastes. OK, to be inside the fort is to insta-die, which is quite characterful really for a Rogue. But I want to contribute so what can I do?

Sneak or run very fast into the enemy’s back line. My ‘slinger has nothing at all that lets her move more sneakily or speedily than any other class, and less so for both than some (who haven’t had to lose anything at all to be able to do so…).

Get behind the enemy artillery, and burst it down fast! But, with P/P I get no meaningful buff to being behind the target (might as well have just shot them in the front). And because pretty much all of our survivabilty is in a zero-sum relationship with damage output, and I’d fallen into the ’I’m sick of getting insta-rekt… just a bit more Vitality…’ trap, it took me ages to take down each one.

Nothing functioned according to the archetype, and I ended up being completely useless. This made me realise that I needed to switch my gear back to high damage, so at least I would have some use… but it’s at the expense of having very, very little survivability.