Guild Wars 2

NinjaEd.3946:

Zelulose.8695:

To the OP, If you want steal can daze, poison, blind, stealth, steal boons, grant vigor, deal damage, and heal you on a 21 second CD.

You didn’t read the op i’m afraid. I’m well aware of steal traits, its not the intent of this thread to ask for more or less of those.

Top tier or not, you can’t say everyone is going to that option of using gunk. What if the thief has d/p and basilik venom or thieves guild? Headshot spam is a total waste of intiative, and #3 is only gana get 1 stack of confusion off before it moves you. If your goal was to surpress their condition removal so things like bleed can get through, then yes it works for condi builds which I already stated. But etheral fields are the last thing I care to get near my power build, because there are much more solid options. Whenever i see a potential group fight I avoid the stealing the engineer at all costs, because it simple isn’t helping me as much doing what I’m there for, picking off the weak ones with heavy hits. Wasting my time with a DoT that isn’t going to deal much damage 10 stacks or not just isn’t my priority.

Dancing dagger is great for picking off stragglers and using fields like ice, or static field, conditions that help me either stay on top of the enemy or hurt them more. Ill accept ur advice but not at all considering stepping into it, as it’d be a waste of time imho.

In comparison to what other classes can do to buff their profession skills with traits steal is enough. Your just trying to compare steal without traits to make it seem weak.

The Steal itself is pure junk.

It doesn’t matter if you can trait it to make a worthless skill do something.

Every class mechanic can be traited.

It’s not the traits that are the problem, it’s the underlying mechanic that is completely worthless.

ipan.4356:

The Steal itself is pure junk.

It doesn’t matter if you can trait it to make a worthless skill do something.

Every class mechanic can be traited.

It’s not the traits that are the problem, it’s the underlying mechanic that is completely worthless.

When traited it is extremely useful against any class. For example, A mesmer that is about to cast an izerker get interupted by steal. suddenly the mesmer is blinded and cant seem to find the thief. The mesmer has no time to react. Right after a steal that left him dazed the thief can now come out of stealth to apply conditions or backstab for damage in addition to the damage dealt from steel. It is very useful. Essentially the blind, daze, and stealth shut down the mesmer’s ability to cast phantasms. As for a warrior steal can work in a similar manner. If the warrior has stabability, it will still be blinded. If it cant be blinded or dazed you can stealth and will have received health while poisoning and dealing damage. Again very useful.

It should be noted that, technically, a thief has allot of profession mechanics which it traded for profession skills. It is the only class which changes skill 3 depending on different weapon combinations. It is the only class that gains an ability when stealthing. It is the only class with weapon skills that have no cool-down due to an initiative system. These profession mechanics add to steal. In short, steal is enough, and players should take the time to learn how to use it effectively instead of changing it.

The issue is, that’s a build. Not a profession mechanic, and those traits you listed are heavy investments.

Steal on its own, without any investment is really really weak. It offers little utility for a long cd and its not 100% guaranteed steal due to reasons listed earlier in this thread. Are some stolen skills quite awesome? Absolutely hands down. I love consume ectoplasm, and in small group fights the water field is incredible at making my thief feel like a group player and not some selfish outcast. But it’s not always set up like that.

There are a ton of traits to make steal better, just like there are traits to boost pets’ performance, or shatter skills to have additional effects, or virtues, or burst skills ,etc. That’s not the point, the point is when untraited other people can still have some controlled benefit to their build regardless of how they spec, while thief doesn’t. I gata say pets untraited are rather sad but you can still choose what pet skill to get and for the most part, there is at least 1 skill for any type of play style. I’m not trying to paint some ugly picture, I’m comparing one stripped down class mechanic to the rest, something we don’t have a choice but to equip.

NinjaEd.3946:

The issue is, that’s a build. Not a profession mechanic, and those traits you listed are heavy investments.

Steal on its own, without any investment is really really weak. It offers little utility for a long cd and its not 100% guaranteed steal due to reasons listed earlier in this thread. Are some stolen skills quite awesome? Absolutely hands down. I love consume ectoplasm, and in small group fights the water field is incredible at making my thief feel like a group player and not some selfish outcast. But it’s not always set up like that.

There are a ton of traits to make steal better, just like there are traits to boost pets’ performance, or shatter skills to have additional effects, or virtues, or burst skills ,etc. That’s not the point, the point is when untraited other people can still have some controlled benefit to their build regardless of how they spec, while thief doesn’t. I gata say pets untraited are rather sad but you can still choose what pet skill to get and for the most part, there is at least 1 skill for any type of play style. I’m not trying to paint some ugly picture, I’m comparing one stripped down class mechanic to the rest, something we don’t have a choice but to equip.

Any profession skill without traits is weak.

Zelulose.8695:

ipan.4356:

The Steal itself is pure junk.

It doesn’t matter if you can trait it to make a worthless skill do something.

Every class mechanic can be traited.

It’s not the traits that are the problem, it’s the underlying mechanic that is completely worthless.

When traited it is extremely useful against any class. For example, A mesmer that is about to cast an izerker get interupted by steal. suddenly the mesmer is blinded and cant seem to find the thief. The mesmer has no time to react. Right after a steal that left him dazed the thief can now come out of stealth to apply conditions or backstab for damage in addition to the damage dealt from steel. It is very useful. Essentially the blind, daze, and stealth shut down the mesmer’s ability to cast phantasms. As for a warrior steal can work in a similar manner. If the warrior has stabability, it will still be blinded. If it cant be blinded or dazed you can stealth and will have received health while poisoning and dealing damage. Again very useful.

It should be noted that, technically, a thief has allot of profession mechanics which it traded for profession skills. It is the only class which changes skill 3 depending on different weapon combinations. It is the only class that gains an ability when stealthing. It is the only class with weapon skills that have no cool-down due to an initiative system. These profession mechanics add to steal. In short, steal is enough, and players should take the time to learn how to use it effectively instead of changing it.

As I’ve said previously.
Steal is enough because we have stealth…
(Found that one guy that I was being sarcastic about)

Zelulose.8695:

NinjaEd.3946:

The issue is, that’s a build. Not a profession mechanic, and those traits you listed are heavy investments.

Steal on its own, without any investment is really really weak. It offers little utility for a long cd and its not 100% guaranteed steal due to reasons listed earlier in this thread. Are some stolen skills quite awesome? Absolutely hands down. I love consume ectoplasm, and in small group fights the water field is incredible at making my thief feel like a group player and not some selfish outcast. But it’s not always set up like that.

There are a ton of traits to make steal better, just like there are traits to boost pets’ performance, or shatter skills to have additional effects, or virtues, or burst skills ,etc. That’s not the point, the point is when untraited other people can still have some controlled benefit to their build regardless of how they spec, while thief doesn’t. I gata say pets untraited are rather sad but you can still choose what pet skill to get and for the most part, there is at least 1 skill for any type of play style. I’m not trying to paint some ugly picture, I’m comparing one stripped down class mechanic to the rest, something we don’t have a choice but to equip.

Any profession skill without traits is weak.

I’d disagree.
-Mesmer’s get 4, 2 of which can help any build of theirs.
-Guardian gets 3 passives/actives, the active aegis is significant if you can time it well.
-Ranger can get cc, combo fields, boons, condi clearing, etc.
-Engineer can get skills depending on their skill selection, and overall help the build significantly.
-Warrior can get either conditions, raw dps, or finishers/fields.
-Necro can get insta fear to avoid burst, #5 for aoe cc, and #4 to stay alive. Also having a 2nd health bar is quite helpful at avoiding burst.
-Ele gets massive utility. Whether it be healing/condi removal, control, dps, combo fields/finishers that work well together, its there.

Thief gets a 900 gap closer (if within range, otherwise goes on short cooldown) with a chance at gaining a new skill in it’s place depending on what they steal from.

NinjaEd.3946: Again, your forgetting about initiative and weapon skill 3 combinations that function in addition to steal. Just as steal gains an ability, warriors have an ability. By far, warriors should complain about their profession skill mechanic more than thief given how hard it can be to power up untraited. Elementalists untraited have 4 attunements but lose the ability to have weapon swap combinations. Mesmers have no special mechanic but instead has 4 profession skills. The same could be said about guardian. Rangers have pets but no special weapon system and untraited they have a weak little pet that can barely catch up with simple kiting. necromancers probably have the most useful profession mechanic. However, due to DS skill recharge and DS recharge, it can technically have a double CD making it hard to use consistently. The engineer untraited uses its profession skills along with kits. Still, in Comparison to the thief, none of these classes have a weapon skills without a cooldown except for skill 1. Steal is honestly a bonus that allows a thief to hold its name. Steal does what its supposed to do. It takes a skill depending on the profession each of which I have found to be very useful. For example, the stolen Whirling Axe is essentially a warrior skill which, if saved, can be used after another steal giving it a technical duration of 6.5 sec.

Initiative replaces cooldowns, but doesn’t replace their power. Someone already posted earlier about the damage coeficients of various skills compared to thief.

Also I’d like put out a fun fact for how many weapon skills each profession has as a counter argument to the weapon selection you mentioned.(this will not list aa as more than 1 skill, and it won’t list any skill with 2 or more parts as more than 1, i.e Infiltrator’s strike. Profession skills will count since for some classes, can be chosen.)
-Warrior has 46 land weapon skills
-Thief has 24 land skills
-Ranger has 30 land skills
-Guardian has 33 land skills
-Engineer has 41 land skills (including mobile offence kits)
-elementalist has 60 land skills, this of course is limited to some degree since they cannot weapon swap, but attunement swap changes the behavior of the weapon and has 4 categories. I didn’t include attunement swapping as a skill since it doesn’t, on its own, do anything.
-Mesmer has 28 land skills and is the only class that can deal direct damage in stealth due to clones.
-Necromancer has 22 land skills (shockingly low).

Our #3 and stealth attacks arn’t better than other peoples’ weapon selection, its a solution to low weapon choice. Its how thief is unique at making builds but it isn’t giving us more builds than other professions.

Zelulose.8695:

To the OP, If you want steal can daze, poison, blind, stealth, steal boons, grant vigor, deal damage, and heal you on a 21 second CD.

for 40 trait poitns to do so….and still isnt as good as half of guardian mechanics fully loaded.

Again,

The problem isn’t that you can’t make Steal powerful when traited – if you do, what you actually have is a decent shadowstep.

It’s that steal itself – the skills you get – are bad, and largely because of their randomness.

Even if a couple of the skills are good, occasionally, in certain situations, their randomness always makes them bad.

Yes you can trait the “steal”, so that when you use it it does something else good, but that will never make the steal itself good.

Initiative is not an advantage, it’s just an alternative resource cost to CD’s.

And dual skills mean nothing – everyone has 5 skills on their bar – Thieves, over all, have less weapon options than any other class, bringing the fewest number of skills to the table. Especially compared to Ele’s and Engi’s, for example.

Regardless, every player has exactly 5 skills on his left hand ‘weapon’ skill set, no matter how it got there – so dual skills do absolutely nothing, except affect how you build your character. It’s not as if you’re getting an “extra” skill slot, so please stop talking about dual skills as if it’s some kind of unique trick Thieves get.

ipan.4356:

Again,

The problem isn’t that you can’t make Steal powerful when traited – if you do, what you actually have is a decent shadowstep.

It’s that steal itself – the skills you get – are bad, and largely because of their randomness.

Even if a couple of the skills are good, occasionally, in certain situations, their randomness always makes them bad.

Yes you can trait the “steal”, so that when you use it it does something else good, but that will never make the steal itself good.

Initiative is not an advantage, it’s just an alternative resource cost to CD’s.

And dual skills mean nothing – everyone has 5 skills on their bar – Thieves, over all, have less weapon options than any other class, bringing the fewest number of skills to the table. Especially compared to Ele’s and Engi’s, for example.

Regardless, every player has exactly 5 skills on his left hand ‘weapon’ skill set, no matter how it got there – so dual skills do absolutely nothing, except affect how you build your character. It’s not as if you’re getting an “extra” skill slot, so please stop talking about dual skills as if it’s some kind of unique trick Thieves get.

But they aren’t random. The class you steal from determines the item you’ll get, and it’s designed in a way to help you counter said class.

Although true, VIking Jorun, it still doesn’t disregard the concern of stolen skills impact on thief as a whole. If you run say p/d condi build, and you are up against a power or bunker warrior, whirling axe does you no good. Even if you happen to have sb on to throw down a poison field to combo with the whirl, it isn’t nearly as effective as the field itself because you are a sitting duck until the skill wears off (no #3 to jump out or evade. Yes you can evade in it but you have to have endurance remember). Maybe stolen skills need reworking but I think reworking 8 skills is a lot more work than reworking steal to be more global for thief and less build centric. The traits for steal are mostly good (except improvisation… ), but you should never be forced to spec into (a) profession skill(s) just to make good use of it.

It would be so much better if it were an interrupt or a boon stealer.

ipan.4356:

It would be so much better if it were an interrupt or a boon stealer.

it does, except you must trait either 20 points into trickery for the boon stealer, or 30 for the daze. I wouldn’t count it as reasonable but heck, what do I know?

NinjaEd.3946:

ipan.4356:

It would be so much better if it were an interrupt or a boon stealer.

it does, except you must trait either 20 points into trickery for the boon stealer, or 30 for the daze. I wouldn’t count it as reasonable but heck, what do I know?

You’d be surprised how fantastic Steal becomes when you have both Sleight of Hand and Bountiful Theft. Completely worth the Grandmaster in my opinion. Now we just need Assassin’s Reward to remove conditions and most every grandmaster for the thief will be worth it.

I know those traits are good, my spvp build is 10/0/15/15/30 (as much steal related traits I can get without sacrificing my damage entirely) and it does wonders. My other build however which uses no steal related traits, is hesitant to use that skill for anything but a gap closer. A really long cooldown gap closer.

One day all the useless traits for thief, ranger, guardian, and the other 5 will be fixed. For now, assassin’s reward and hard to catch remain a pile of steaming junk to me. As does assassin’s retreat, and improvisation, and potent poison, and patience, and instinctual response, and long reach. Just to name a few.

steal is good with an ASTERISK (*) and the asterisk being if you poor 40+ trait points into making it so. even with those 40 points…… its still arguably on par with guardians. steal needs to be on par without buffs to other classes. bc every class can buff the heck out of their f mechanics…. so you cant count those trait buffs. u have to look at the base effect. and as a thief…. id take the effects of any other class over ours. our items just are not worth using. most of the time they just get in the way. sure whirl can be decent once in a while but it also say" quick hit me i can stop you". basically they all are quite … circumstantial at best where other classes are useful no matter the situation.

I think it would be fine if the items we stole had passive effects instead of active ones. Receiving a semi-random boon sounds so much more palatable than a semi-random skill that I have to actively fuss over, struggling to find a useful time to trigger.

NinjaEd.3946:

I’d disagree.
[…]
-Warrior can get either conditions, raw dps, or finishers/fields.
[…]

Warriors need a proper build to utilize burst skills well. Even then they are still kind of meh on some weapons (e.g. great sword). Certain builds even press you to not use them but keep your adrenaline bar full instead.

In the worst case steal is still a gap closer which is kind of redundant for thiefs but never disadvantageous. I do think however, it should have its cooldown reduced and some traits worked in by default like putting you in stealth or strip boons from target.

Padrion.7382:

NinjaEd.3946:

I’d disagree.
[…]
-Warrior can get either conditions, raw dps, or finishers/fields.
[…]

Warriors need a proper build to utilize burst skills well. Even then they are still kind of meh on some weapons (e.g. great sword). Certain builds even press you to not use them but keep your adrenaline bar full instead.

In the worst case steal is still a gap closer which is kind of redundant for thiefs but never disadvantageous. I do think however, it should have its cooldown reduced and some traits worked in by default like putting you in stealth or strip boons from target.

They don’t need any investment to make use of combo fields/finishers. SKull crack requires no investment to still stun them for 3 seconds (full adrenaline ofc), the sword burst skill just requires timing, not investment into sword or burst traits because immobilize has uses for anyone, earthshaker is a blast and aoe stun, and so on and so fourth.

They don’t need to invest into Discipline or strength or any mastery just to utilize those things and more importantly, it’s adaptive because the bursts skill is based on weapon choice. They aren’t going to pick up rifle and get some condition damage burst skill, or with axe. Only burst skill that isn’t the greatest I’d say is GS but at full charge that’s a long lasting fury, more than 10 seconds (base cooldown of burst skills). If you don’t care for shouts and still need fury without a 30 point investment (fury on immobilize, immobilize on cripple traits) you have that option so its got its place still.

Viking Jorun.5413:

But they aren’t random. The class you steal from determines the item you’ll get, and it’s designed in a way to help you counter said class.

This ^. Steal is an awesome mechanic and one of the reasons I loved thief once I got in the beta. Coming from WoW where all you get is 1 shadowstep… and in GW2 we thieves have so many… and steal is a great one. I love stealing an opponents abilities and using them against them. If your good you pick which enemy to steal from to get the best ability to fit a situation. i.e. switching from that engi target to the necro to steal the fear, then using it to fear both off the skyhammer map.

Thief builds can be built around a single ability including steal. If you build a thief around this single ability you have an incredible steal every cd.

This is from just a PvE perspective:

No. Steal is in and of itself not much. It has all of the limitations previously mentioned, being subject to missing your target being the chief one. Second of course is not knowing what you will get. While I understand the PvP attitude/response of “since you know what class your stealing from you know what you will get,” that has no relevance in PvE. Go to the Slayer tab in your achievements pane – is it reasonable or realistic to expect anyone to know what “class” and of those targets are and therefore what you get from steal? I can see doing that for PvP but its just silly to think more than 1% of the thief players would be able to use it in a PvE situation with the same effectiveness. You get random c**p that may or may not be helpful. I’ve considered traiting to get mug, but again, given its basic unreliability (by missing your target for instance) decided against it.

I can give you three examples of other profession mechanics that I know from first hand experience are clearly, unambiguously superior: Guardian, Ranger and Necromancer.

Guardian: I do trait somewhat in the professional mechanic and I’ve found those points a very sound investment. The first (Virtue of Justice) I use almost constant damage buff (required 20 points spent in Radiance), and the second and third (Virtue of Resolve and Virtual of Courage) I’ve used countless times to stay up and fighting. With just a 5 point investment in Virtues I get three additional boons on activation. The Renewed Focus elite allows you to use all of those class mechanics at least twice in every fight no matter the target. Given my experience with this class mechanic I believe I would still use if them more, and more effectively even without any trait point contribution than I do Steal now.

Ranger: Only traited about 10 points in the profession mechanic and with for those 10 points I get an effective PvE meat shield/tank/rez helper. Universally useful. The pet is what allows the Ranger class to solo champions even at relatively low levels.

Necromancer: Absolutely no points in this mechanic and its still more universally more useful than Steal. In fact I’d trade Steal for a similar “shadow form” health bar in a second.

I’d say for Steal to be anywhere close to as useful as all other mechanics I’ve used it should: 1) always hit (but never critical), 2) apply a condition to the target based on its class, and 3) give you short boon (5-10 seconds) based on the target’s class. Sort of like an improved version of Prayer to Lyssa.

Guardians pay for their Virtues by being tossed into the bottom rung of health pools, in spite of their role as a heavy armor frontliner. Virtue of Resolve’s sustain combined with the Aegis from Justice, is literally the reason for this particular configuration. That’s the price of being good out of the box.

It’s 2014 now, and it’s time to stop making direct cross-class comparisons. Steal may be problematic, but it not because of what some other class got. Personally, I think that Steal is in a pretty good spot, all things considered.

@Interceptor

And we pay for Steal by being tossed into the bottom rung in spite of our role as a hand-to-hand combatant? Seems to me based on that analysis, Guardian’s got a good deal and Thieves got the fuzzy end of the lollypop.

Have to disagree: Its never time to stop making cross-class comparisons since those comparisons allow you to determine what the characteristics are for a reasonable class mechanic. Based on my experience with all but two of the classes, I would argue that a class mechanic should be reliable and generally beneficial in all (or very nearly all) cases since I’ve yet to see another class with a class mechanic that isn’t (don’t know the Engineer’s and Mesmer’s). Don’t see how those Steal can be described in those terms.

Arrow.4619:

And we pay for Steal by being tossed into the bottom rung in spite of our role as a hand-to-hand combatant?

This is nonsense. Guardians gave up health pool in trade for sustainability and damage mitigation. It’s a direct relationship: their overall tankiness on both ends.

Have to disagree: Its never time to stop making cross-class comparisons since those comparisons allow you to determine what the characteristics are for a reasonable class mechanic.

Then give some iota of a reason why class mechanics should be balanced against each other, other than the fact that you want them to be. Classes are balanced against each other.

Interceptor.2653:

Arrow.4619:

And we pay for Steal by being tossed into the bottom rung in spite of our role as a hand-to-hand combatant?

This is nonsense. Guardians gave up health pool in trade for sustainability and damage mitigation. It’s a direct relationship: their overall tankiness on both end

Have to disagree: Its never time to stop making cross-class comparisons since those comparisons allow you to determine what the characteristics are for a reasonable class mechanic.

Then give some iota of a reason why class mechanics should be balanced against each other, other than the fact that you want them to be. Classes are balanced against each other.

No, I think you’re the one spouting nonsense here. What did the thief in your opinion get for “giving up” health? What “direct relationship” bonus did the thief get? Initiative is just a variation on cool downs – its primary bonus is to allows for more flexibility in attacks and generally more attacks (btw in case you haven’t noticed this is well balanced by generally having the attacks do less base damage than many other classes attacks). Stealth – you mean the same skill as Ranger’s and Mesmers have now (btw – both of which are mid-tier health wise). The skill of dubious benefit in many situations other than PvP. Oh, and Steal. What’s the “direct relationship” between Steal and having crap for health?

Don’t consciously mis-read me its annoying and ridiculous. First, they shouldn’t be balanced against one another they should be generally beneficial to the class in and of themselves on regular, reliable ongoing basis. Tell me exactly how does Steal meet that criteria? Why should one class have a class mechanic with dubious benefits when every other class gets a genuinely consistently, beneficial class mechanic? Simple fairness to the players of all classes would suggest it should.

In terms of making cross-class comparisons, all I’ll say is to go and check out some of the balance patch preview threads. The devs are not against making comparisons constantly with every single class and Jon Peters has done it numerous times.

Interceptor.2653:

Guardians pay for their Virtues by being tossed into the bottom rung of health pools, in spite of their role as a heavy armor frontliner. Virtue of Resolve’s sustain combined with the Aegis from Justice, is literally the reason for this particular configuration. That’s the price of being good out of the box.

It’s 2014 now, and it’s time to stop making direct cross-class comparisons. Steal may be problematic, but it not because of what some other class got. Personally, I think that Steal is in a pretty good spot, all things considered.

True, but thief also shares the same life pool tier and has medium armor, and much less regen/burst heals. Their best heals are withdraw and shadow’s rejuvenation and that hardly makes up for aegis and constant regen/vigor. With a 30 point investment thief can barely maintain perma vigor assuming steal never missed but ppl are human, and they will from time to time. Guardian and Mesmer only require a 5 point investment to get the same thing and unless you get chain cc, you aren’t likely to miss that crit. Add boon duration and its even easier to keep it up.

Arrow.4619:

What did the thief in your opinion get for “giving up” health? What “direct relationship” bonus did the thief get?

Thief was never intended to be a frontline bruiser in the first place. Guardians with their innate class survival AND Warrior/Necro-level health pools would be bonkers; that’s why they didn’t get it.

Thieves have king mobility (mostly from shadow steps) and stealth. As it happens, you can get both of those things from our class mechanic, but that’s probably just a coincidence. Honest.

First, they shouldn’t be balanced against one another they should be generally beneficial to the class in and of themselves on regular, reliable ongoing basis. Tell me exactly how does Steal meet that criteria?

A better question: why does Steal have to meet your made-up criteria for a class skill?

Why should one class have a class mechanic with dubious benefits when every other class gets a genuinely consistently, beneficial class mechanic? Simple fairness to the players of all classes would suggest it should.

Sorry, what’s not beneficial about shadow steps, Steal, long-duration stealth, and no-cooldown weapon utility? PS: just because you can find some things that you don’t like about it, doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial.

NinjaEd.3946:

True, but thief also shares the same life pool tier and has medium armor, and much less regen/burst heals. Their best heals are withdraw and shadow’s rejuvenation and that hardly makes up for aegis and constant regen/vigor. With a 30 point investment thief can barely maintain perma vigor assuming steal never missed but ppl are human, and they will from time to time. Guardian and Mesmer only require a 5 point investment to get the same thing and unless you get chain cc, you aren’t likely to miss that crit. Add boon duration and its even easier to keep it up.

Thief also stomps all over Guardians in terms of:

- Burst damage
- Mobility
- Damaging conditions
- Soft CC

And I didn’t say win, I said stomp. These classes are not even on the same planet in terms of those listed things. So let’s be holistic with our class comparisons, please.

Interceptor, you seem to have it out for thieves on your agenda rather than seeing the picture painted before you. This isn’t about guardian’s being stomped by class X or elementalists having too many skills or they should have weapon swap(not that you mentioned that just displaying the misdirection), its not what this is about.

Also I agree with arrow on the fact that something like steal not being universal is wrong. Profession mechanics no matter how small they may be, should at their base be useful. Even if its somewhat situational, it should be beneficial to the profession not the build whether it be chosen or having multiple profession skills to choose from.

We can hit hard, but have you seen recent guardian builds in spvp/tpvp? They can hit like a truck and if planned right, without any hint of it incoming (group fights, ambush). Guardian may not have the on-command cc thief has (little though) or spammable teleports but you’re comparing 2 completely different classes based on playstyle not effectiveness in combat. From what I’m seeing you put a guardian and a thief in a race and said it was op for the thief to win (btw warrior would win if they were lined up). Point is you’re not looking at effective profession mechanics, something you cannot necessarily swap out. I never said that the classes were balanced or unbalanced atm(its changed a lot recently), that’s hardly my position to judge but as far as profession skills go (F1-F4) thief has it the worst imo.

Does that make thief as a whole worse than guardian? Hard to say, both have ways of dealing with one another. There are good guardians out there that can blow up zerker thieves at any time if careless mistakes are made.

Is guardian GS pull stronger than scorpion wire? Who cares, that’s a skill you selected and can be swapped. If one is better than the other than there lies an issue but that’s not my concern atm. My problems lie in base steal which unless traited isn’t all that great while other professions don’t have that issue.

(And we may beat guardian in DoT conditions, but don’t think for a second that we are actually strong at condi builds. Condi thief is in a bad state, but again not my concern in this here thread. Please keep comments directed at profession skills balance, 1 step at a time now).

NinjaEd.3946:

Interceptor, you seem to have it out for thieves on your agenda rather than seeing the picture painted before you.

Spare me. I’m a career Thief: been playing since beta, I have 700+ hours logged on just Thief alone, probably will have several hundred more in my future. Played every build except S/D (missed the meta when it was good), played every mode except sPvP.

I like this class, I think it’s in a good place. You and others are making silly arguments with made-up criteria.

Also I agree with arrow on the fact that something like steal not being universal is wrong. Profession mechanics no matter how small they may be, should at their base be useful.

Well, sign up for his newsletter. But before that, tell me why it should be that way, a reason other than 1) you want it to be or 2) “fairness”.

We can hit hard, but have you seen recent guardian builds in spvp/tpvp?

Fun fact: I play a Guardian. If you’ve ever wondered why I comment on every Thief vs. Guardian comparison, that’s why. Guards are not bursty in the same way that Thieves are, generally speaking.

[…] you’re comparing 2 completely different classes based on playstyle not effectiveness in combat.

I like to see it as “pointing out the obvious advantages of Thief that people always take for granted”. Some people here have no idea how much Guardians drool over Thief mobility, or how they wish that they had some credible way to deal real condition damage.

My problems lie in base steal which unless traited isn’t all that great while other professions don’t have that issue.

Not only do I think this is a poor metric to be judging things by, but I don’t even agree with you. Steal is better than people care to admit, and Virtues are not as good as people think that they are.

@ Interceptor

Spare me. I’m a career Thief: been playing since beta, I have 700+ hours logged on just Thief alone, probably will have several hundred more in my future. Played every build except S/D (missed the meta when it was good), played every mode except sPvP.

I like this class, I think it’s in a good place. You and others are making silly arguments with made-up criteria.

Wow, a whole 700+ hours and you’re a “career Thief” eh? Let me check my thief. Hmmm it says:

You have played this character 1,829 hours, 39 minutes over the past 500 days.
Across all characters, you have played 2,928 hours 10 minutes over the past 500 days.

Not sure if I should mock you for being a scrub or myself for not having much of a life. Try again, and this time throw down something impressive (even if you have to make it up).

Well, sign up for his newsletter. But before that, tell me why it should be that way, a reason other than 1) you want it to be or 2) “fairness”.

Better question is: Why don’t you tell us why you find it acceptable that you have a class mechanic that can quite often amount as nothing more than a glorified shadow step gap closer useable at most twice a minute?

Not only do I think this is a poor metric to be judging things by, but I don’t even agree with you. Steal is better than people care to admit, and Virtues are not as good as people think that they are.

Fun fact: I play a Guardian. If you’ve ever wondered why I comment on every Thief vs. Guardian comparison, that’s why. Guards are not bursty in the same way that Thieves are, generally speaking.

Fun fact: So do I. Regarding you point on Guardians mobility and DPS I’m again unimpressed. Two of the other characters I play have roughly the same amount of in combat movement in two crucial areas: Actual movement in a combat situation (Asuran Greatsword/Scepter/Focus Guardian with Traveler Runes); and dodging (Human Longbow/Sword/Horn Ranger with all of 10 points in a trait that increases endurance regeneration and provides vigor on heal). Both characters readily shrug off conditions that would inhibit movement through passives. Really the only way my thief is significantly superior in movement to those characters is through shadow step (Steal, Infiltrators Signet, Shadow Step/Return). Would it surprise you to know that somehow I managed to make it through all this time without Stealing very often or using ever using Shadow Step/Return? Neither skill impress me for PvE play, probably never will. As for DPS I would have to say my Greatsword Guardian comes awfully close to my thief. Oh and here’s another “Fun fact” – Three virtues are clearly superior to one Steal.

In response to another post of yours:

You point about mobility as the key focus for the Thief class is underwhelming. If GW2 where a race or a gymnastics competition that would be really really cool for Thieves. Too bad GW2 is neither of those. Too bad too that they just nerfed vigor since you seem to think movement is so important. Must have annoyed you right when Anet did that? Or did you just “adjust” cause you’re in such a “good place”?

You point about “frontline fighters” is just silly. If your best damage is hand-to-hand, guess what: You are a “frontline” fighter if you want to do your best damage. Since you have absolutely no control over who decides to attack you (PvP) or necessarily how much aggro you will draw (PvE) you better be prepared to be a “frontline fighter” whether you think that term applies to you or not.

yeah thief is not in a good place. period. there is not skilled/experience/intelligent player that would place even 1 thief in a 100v100 match. not 1. sad. dungeons? very rare to use a thief and when they are actually wanted/used its for shadow refuge and stealthing to skip trash mobs. tpvp? “plz dont bring thief ty” spvp? same. WVW- eh if ur a thief go cap a camp or something or reroll to join zerg and be effective.

steal is just like the above comments. its just underwhelming compare to other classes. we come up short in every area including dmg. yes we have tied for highest burst dmg. but theres 2 problems with that…. the other classes are REALLY close … i mean not enough to say “we need a thief for dmg” and also that they can (and warrior which is tied for first) can do it while not worrying about their HP depleting in 2-3 seconds in a 1v1 and under 1 sec in a zerg regardless of armor.

steal needs to do 3k dmg. 1200 just isnt really gonna be enough to match up with virtues or necro HP etc etc and so on. heck i’d even rather have a pet. steal isnt even on par with infiltrators signet. lets look.

Steal 35s CD
900 Range (4sec CD if 901+ range)
SS to target
steal 1 item that may hurt or help your situation.

Infiltrators signet 30s CD
900 range (still steps toward target regardless if within range)
SS to target
break stun
Gain 1 init every 10 sec

cmon really? can we just have infiltrators signet as our steal? plz? pffft. steal is nothing but a gap closer unless u poor lots of traitpoints into it

Feline grace- returns 15% endurance on dodge

Vigor- 100% endurance recharge rate

Thief gets feline grace, and 15 second vigor IF steal makes it. Aside from stealth and dodges, they don’t have other ways of damage mitigation. Mug is the only burst heal and it’s tied to a 21.5-35 second cooldown which also will not work if it misses.

Guardian can maintain PERMA vigor, they wear heavy armor and their healing power scales rather nicely, and have several burst heals.

Now, dodging negates all damage and therefore is on par so this isn’t me saying thief can’t last in a fight. But guardian can dodge just as much with a lesser investment and still maintain their natural tank feel. Guardian share the lowest health pool with thief yet they can soak up, recover, and negate damage a lot better. Aegis, shield counters, regeneration, protection, vigor (can trait to heal on those dodges too). Unless its s/tpvp where guardian may mess with some zerker set, they aren’t easy to kill and can ruin a thief’s day if they think to hastily. SImple retaliation and a d/X thief will want nothing to do with that guardian unless they plan to get themselves killed.

Burn virtue is meh, unless you trait for it then it becomes something more enjoyable.

Regen virtue is a quick little heal if needed or a simple regen. Even at 84 health per second, that means something when you have a large amount of armor. It’s passive, so you can’t remove that regen only hinder its effectiveness with poison.

Aegis every 40 seconds (naturally dodge 1 hit at the start of a fight), and an active aegis. Say you see a warrior ready eviscerate, or kill shot and you can’t dodge. Pop that up, and forget about it. Even Mesmer’s illusionary leap-> swap immobilize can be negated, or a necro’s immobilize, it has endless uses for those skills that can be seen from a mile away.

Keep in mind, that’s the base of it. Guardian won’t burst you down and hop into stealth, but they can still kill ya, and they can survive just as good, just in a different manner. Thief isn’t in a horrible state atm but they aren’t sitting at the top of the pedestal in pve, wvw, or s/tpvp, not even close.

@Travlane, I think removing the break stun aspect and just making steal provide a passive init regen to an active SS would be more than enough. Initiative is universal, so if said thief isn’t interesting in a gap closer/stolen skill they can just hold up their weapon skills. I’d be all for making steal break stun since that’s something we generally lack but I think only 2 professions get that luxury (Mesmer invulnerable sorta works since you can negate all damage for those few seconds they’re CC, and engineer can choose slick shoes to get a 45 second stun breaker belt skill).

F2 skill :
Stalk in shadows: enters indefinite stealth mode. Cannot use any skills, utillities. Any action will cause revealed.
1 skill when under effect of stalk in shadows: Reveal yourself. Leaves indefinite stealth mode and causes 3s of revealed.

Karolis.4261:

F2 skill :
Stalk in shadows: enters indefinite stealth mode. Cannot use any skills, utillities. Any action will cause revealed.
1 skill when under effect of stalk in shadows: Reveal yourself. Leaves indefinite stealth mode and causes 3s of revealed.

I wouldn’t want to follow any trend that other MMO’s used. Perma stealth is not fun and certainly out of place in a fast paced game like gw2 spvp/tpvp. Granted ppl can still spam stealth and have ways to maintain it, but they also don’t really do much harm by the time they decide to show themselves.

Arrow.4619:

Try again, and this time throw down something impressive (even if you have to make it up).

Please divert some of the time that you’d otherwise spend on playing GW2, to read a post that you are responding to. As far as I can tell, you have the time to spare. I’ll summarize for you:

1) NinjaEd accuses me of “having it out for Thieves”
2) I point out that I’ve been playing Thief since beta, more than any other class, and I’ll continue to play it. i.e., his accusation makes no sense.
3) You come in here with a non sequitur, and and insult that’s technically worth an infraction.

I think that you’re the one who needs to “try again”. This is not a contest. I am just establishing the fact that I did not just pick up Thief last week: I’ve been here for the whole ride. If you can’t come up with any response other than your /age, then don’t bother replying.

Better question is: Why don’t you tell us why you find it acceptable [..]

No. Steal has worked this way since release, and my argument is that it’s the status quo. If you don’t like it, the onus is on you to come up with a reason as to why it should change. I will ignore any and all attempts to deflect this back on to me.

Two of the other characters I play have roughly the same amount of in combat movement in two crucial areas: Actual movement in a combat situation (Asuran Greatsword/Scepter/Focus Guardian with Traveler Runes) [..]

You torpedoed your own argument the moment you said “Traveler’s”, which are 1) not common enough to be useful as a general solution, and 2) inferior to IMS, and 3) freeze out every other rune set combination. When a Guardian has to blow a king’s ransom and curtail other build options to get a worse result than a Thief when it comes to mobility, that’s a tell that Guardians are extremely mobility-constrained. Which they are.

As for DPS

I said “burst damage”. Circle back and try again.

Too bad too that they just nerfed vigor since you seem to think movement is so important. Must have annoyed you right when Anet did that? Or did you just “adjust” cause you’re in such a “good place”?

I have no problems with Vigor. I get plenty from VR and BT.

You point about “frontline fighters” is just silly.

I’d argue that you only think so because you don’t draw a distinction between a given amount of damage and the time that it takes to apply it, and also that you’re not allowing for something like stealth (which is non-combat time for the most part).

Compare the way a Guard/Warrior fights to the way that a Thief does. If you consider them comparable, we’re either talking waaaay too high level, or with far too specific builds.

NinjaEd.3946:

Feline grace- returns 15% endurance on dodge

Vigor- 100% endurance recharge rate

Thief gets feline grace, and 15 second vigor IF steal makes it. Aside from stealth and dodges, they don’t have other ways of damage mitigation. Mug is the only burst heal and it’s tied to a 21.5-35 second cooldown which also will not work if it misses.

Guardian can maintain PERMA vigor, they wear heavy armor and their healing power scales rather nicely, and have several burst heals.

Now, dodging negates all damage and therefore is on par so this isn’t me saying thief can’t last in a fight. But guardian can dodge just as much with a lesser investment and still maintain their natural tank feel. Guardian share the lowest health pool with thief yet they can soak up, recover, and negate damage a lot better. Aegis, shield counters, regeneration, protection, vigor (can trait to heal on those dodges too). Unless its s/tpvp where guardian may mess with some zerker set, they aren’t easy to kill and can ruin a thief’s day if they think to hastily. SImple retaliation and a d/X thief will want nothing to do with that guardian unless they plan to get themselves killed.

Burn virtue is meh, unless you trait for it then it becomes something more enjoyable.

Regen virtue is a quick little heal if needed or a simple regen. Even at 84 health per second, that means something when you have a large amount of armor. It’s passive, so you can’t remove that regen only hinder its effectiveness with poison.

Aegis every 40 seconds (naturally dodge 1 hit at the start of a fight), and an active aegis. Say you see a warrior ready eviscerate, or kill shot and you can’t dodge. Pop that up, and forget about it. Even Mesmer’s illusionary leap-> swap immobilize can be negated, or a necro’s immobilize, it has endless uses for those skills that can be seen from a mile away.

Keep in mind, that’s the base of it. Guardian won’t burst you down and hop into stealth, but they can still kill ya, and they can survive just as good, just in a different manner. Thief isn’t in a horrible state atm but they aren’t sitting at the top of the pedestal in pve, wvw, or s/tpvp, not even close.

@Travlane, I think removing the break stun aspect and just making steal provide a passive init regen to an active SS would be more than enough. Initiative is universal, so if said thief isn’t interesting in a gap closer/stolen skill they can just hold up their weapon skills. I’d be all for making steal break stun since that’s something we generally lack but I think only 2 professions get that luxury (Mesmer invulnerable sorta works since you can negate all damage for those few seconds they’re CC, and engineer can choose slick shoes to get a 45 second stun breaker belt skill).

thats not a bad idea. something like 1 init every 6 secs? nothing too much. id prefer 2 per 10 secs but i dnot wanna get greedy. 1 per 6 is about as fair as i can get….considering other classes get f1 f2 f3 f4 etc and passives like 85HP per sec as one of them. more than fair.

another place where anet messed up, armor… armor types should affect endurance after all that is why a thief wears leather armor so they can b more mobile?? yet a heavy armor class can have just as much mobility (if not more), dodginess and still benefit from the protection heavy armor provides, they need to make it more costly for heavies to dodge/move around

Spyder.9713:

another place where anet messed up, armor… armor types should affect endurance after all that is why a thief wears leather armor so they can b more mobile?? yet a heavy armor class can have just as much mobility (if not more), dodginess and still benefit from the protection heavy armor provides, they need to make it more costly for heavies to dodge/move around

only thing we have more than guardians is feline grace. lol…. that said…. overall they have more vigor…..so we end up with slightly more after all is said and done with endurance. sickening but anet doesnt play thief

Interceptor.2653:

Better question is: Why don’t you tell us why you find it acceptable [..]

No. Steal has worked this way since release, and my argument is that it’s the status quo. If you don’t like it, the onus is on you to come up with a reason as to why it should change. I will ignore any and all attempts to deflect this back on to me.

Except steal cooldown was reduced by 10 seconds a long time ago. It certainly opened up some new builds, but it didn’t help the builds that had no steal related traits to begin with. It was still the same gap closer/random skill it was before.

I believe it should change because of what thief is forced to deal with isn’t beneficial on a build to build basis. Other professions have either multiple profession skills, can choose their profession skill, or both. They aren’t subject to 1 mechanic on it’s own, they have options and that’s without any traits allocated into them. I also stated earlier the pro’s and con’s of various stolen skills and how it isn’t universal. This isn’t some stone writing tome that all should bow to, this is the point of a thread. To discuss, and you saying everything is greener on my side of the pond isn’t at all comforting nor progressive. “Deal with it” is not a response, and that’s all I’m getting from each post you make.

NinjaEd.3946:

Except steal cooldown was reduced by 10 seconds a long time ago.

Except nothing. We both know that the functionality hasn’t changed since release, so let’s not pretend like a cooldown reduction opens the floodgates for your wish list.

Untraited it’s pretty subpar, though I do love having stolen from a Warrior, letting the steal cooldown get to 0, then hitting f1 twice to get the teleport in before the spin precast finishes.

Was thinking that since steal is so integral to the class it’d be cool to have other ways to trait for it. Maybe a trait that integrates whatever standard utility venoms (non heals, non elites) are on the loadout.

I would like to see F2-F4 added to the their as ‘stolen item slots’ and for steal to immediately go into cooldown while adding the stolen skill to the next slot. This would allow thieves to use their stolen skills in a more opportunistic fashion and get rid of the need to waste a ‘currently useless’ stolen skill just to access their CLASS MECHANIC once again. I think this would be a fair balance with the mechanics of the other classes and also make the thief steal more user friendly as well as making the use of it more strategic. Perhaps adding a 1-2 second global cool down on the f2-f4 stolen skills to avoid some spamming abuse that I could imagine. This really wouldn’t be hard to implement and would make stealing much more viable IMO.

Tman.6349:

I would like to see F2-F4 added to the their as ‘stolen item slots’ and for steal to immediately go into cooldown while adding the stolen skill to the next slot. This would allow thieves to use their stolen skills in a more opportunistic fashion and get rid of the need to waste a ‘currently useless’ stolen skill just to access their CLASS MECHANIC once again. I think this would be a fair balance with the mechanics of the other classes and also make the thief steal more user friendly as well as making the use of it more strategic. Perhaps adding a 1-2 second global cool down on the f2-f4 stolen skills to avoid some spamming abuse that I could imagine. This really wouldn’t be hard to implement and would make stealing much more viable IMO.

Would certainly be a start. Atleast you would be able to set something up like as a condi build, you could save gunk and whirling axe and get some confusion out there or save consume ecto for when you fight someone with a lot off cc and hold onto steal for other purposes. Technically you can atm, but its not at all practical lining it up, would be better off trying to get 15 stacks of torment on your own.

It kind of bothers me that none of the stolen skills count as a bundle (because it doesn’t replace weapon skills) yet we have a master trait granting bonus bundle dmg. Why? Would be nice to see crap like that actually grant some bonus effect to using stolen skills. Just like how mesmers can trait to have their clones apply conditions when they explode on top of their original attacks. Making something like that however would be either really tricky or only be self inflicted because some stolen skills are defensive while others are offensive.

Steal- Thief profession mechanic.

[F1] Pickpocket- Shadowstep to your foe and obtain a skill. (steal as is)
-Range 900
-Cooldown 35 seconds.
[F2] Disarm- Steal a boon from your foe. Steal 2 if from stealth or behind.
-Range 150 (can miss)
-Cast time 1/2 second.
-Cooldown 60 seconds.

Traits-
(Deadly Arts)
-Improvisation: Transfer 2 conditions you are suffering from to your foe on disarm.
-Serpent’s Touch: affects both steal skills. Shorten base duration to 7 seconds.
-Mug: only on pickpocket.
(Shadow Arts)
-Hidden thief: Pickpocket stealths, disarm causes chill for 3 seconds.
(Trickery)
-Kleptomaniac: only works on pickpocket.
-Bountiful theft: Stolen boons are shared with your allies (up to 5). Pickpocket grants vigor. Disarm steals 2 boons regardless of conditions. (affects s/d too, drastically help team fights and promote use in zergs, slight nerf to pickpocket for the shared boon effect and buff to disarm)
-Thrill of the crime: Affects both steal skills. Lowers duration to 8 seconds base instead of 10. If Disarm misses does not apply, Pickpocket works as before.
-Long reach: Increases range of both steal skills by 50%. (Pickpocket 1350, Disarm 225. A flat 600 range on both would make disarm very OP.)
-Sleight of hand: Steal skills daze your target for 1 second. Stolen skills reduce weapon swap by 2 seconds.

Thoughts? More nerfs to steal traits to balance out the presense of a 2nd profession skill?

Tman.6349:

I would like to see F2-F4 added to the their as ‘stolen item slots’ and for steal to immediately go into cooldown while adding the stolen skill to the next slot. This would allow thieves to use their stolen skills in a more opportunistic fashion and get rid of the need to waste a ‘currently useless’ stolen skill just to access their CLASS MECHANIC once again. I think this would be a fair balance with the mechanics of the other classes and also make the thief steal more user friendly as well as making the use of it more strategic. Perhaps adding a 1-2 second global cool down on the f2-f4 stolen skills to avoid some spamming abuse that I could imagine. This really wouldn’t be hard to implement and would make stealing much more viable IMO.

I like this idea. In most world boss fights, I only use F1 for its stun break. At least I wouldn’t have to remind myself to burn the item before I can do it again.

Well, why not completelly change steal? Right now I think steal is useless, because the cooldown is too long for what you can get with it. You may base your entire build on steal, there is at least 11 or 12 seconds each 21-22 seconds of battle you get nothing from your traits, the other 10 you might gets boons, poison your enemy… well, whatever? Nothing the other classes don’t have for the entire time.

Change Steal so it becomes usable whenever you’re in Stealth in any enemy or in any enemy that is Blinded, consuming the blind effect. That will remove Steal’s cooldown, instead now it has a chance of being sucessfull, and so the “Steal Recharge Rate” can be changed to “Steal Success Chance”. Give it a… 15%-30%-45% chance of being successfull based on Front-Side-Back hitting, the Trickery Branch will give other 30% (sum 75%), and that last trait that increases recharge by 20%, gives the other 20% (sum 95%). There, fixed.