Guild Wars 2

Let’s talk about it and hopefully bring it to developers attention.

First things first. Balance patch preview looks really good. Love speeding up of sword auto attack and damage on dagger one as in clearing up of aftercasts. Bandit’s Defense looks awesome and hoping rest of physical utilities will get same love. Hoping Fleet Shadow went to Shadow Arts. It was a good trait in wrong place. Basilisk Venom, perfect, hoping rest of elites (Thieves Guild, Dagger Storm) get same love because god knows they need it.

So now to Trickery and Steal.

Biggest problem with Trickery is that its mandatory. Other trait lines are not, trickery is and always was mandatory. Remember last time we didn’t have to use Trickery in spvp? Me neither.
Before you couldn’t have viable build without Trickery and now with Daredevil (and in future with other elite specializations) you can’t have it without Trickery. Unless comes elite spec called Trickery+…

For short its hurting build diversity.

Main perpetrator is Preparedness. Without it you are sitting duck plucking for some initiative. General community suggestion as far as I can see is making Preparedness baseline. My personal suggestion would be bringing old Opportunist trait here with slight nerf to it.

Other problem is Sleight of Hand and its 20% faster recharge on steal. I never understood that 20% faster recharge. Solution would be to put steal on 25 second recharge without Trickery and 20 second recharge with Trickery with Lead Attacks. Bewildering Ambush wouldn’t be OP with shorter cd, it still would 5 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds when traited. 5 stacks for 5 seconds on 20 second cd is nothing to write home about next to classes literally spamming confusion stacks but its still useful trait for condi thief.

Next up is Steal. Call me crazy, but Steal should steal boon (1) when untraited with Trickery. I don’t know how it should change Bountiful Theft.

Its not 2012 anymore. Having baseline Steal on 25 second cd that steals 1 boon in 2016 is nothing op.

Also worth mention here is boon stealing effect. If you remove by stealing multiple stacks of same boon you should get every stack you stole on same duration.

Last thing i want to touch up are stolen skills. Some of them are just embarrassing. Revenant…Engi…who stands in gunk???

TL;DR Trickery is hurting thieves build diversity. Let’s change it.

Ideas? Complaints? Let’s hear it.

I think I agree with just about all you said. I would especially like to see Steal actually steal 1 boon as baseline. With all the power creep in the game, particularly the application of boons, I think there needs to be more ways to remove boons from enemies available, or Anet needs to just reduce the number of skills that boons apply or how and when they can be applied.

Also in regard to the gunk you steal from Engi, not only does it require your enemy to stand in it for it be useful, but if they do you can’t use stealth abilities or you get revealed because it’s pulsing damage. If I’m on my engi fighting a thief that’s relying on stealth and he throws gunk, I’ll gladly just stand on it and screw up his rotations lol.

Most important is to grant the 3 extra initiative as baseline.
I’d make the 15% steal recharge on minor trait baseline too probably.
+1 Boon stealing? maybe move 1 from bountiful from to minor. But then that would be a bit weak…
Although when i steal 10 might stacks I shouldn’t just get 1 that’s a very good point.
Duration isn’t too bad if its normalised tho. U dont want to get 1s of might or infinite amount of protection from bosses.

Here’s a bit more of my opinion.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Balance-everything-that-needs-change/first#post5923198

While I play WvW , I would point out that upper hand revised with a lower cooldown MIGHT well supplant trickery when it comes to that INI.

I tend to get about 2 to 3 ini out of this in typical combat per 10 seconds in current iteration. It not enough to compete with the always 3 of preparedness but with the lower cooldown this should push up the return one gets.

To Gunk it has been spoken on before. No one has to STAND in it . Gunk is a field and its strength lies in using that field. Using Gunk with whirls can load on more confusion stacks and with a leap gives Chaos armor. If one has Improv traited and fights an Engineer you can get more Chaos armor access than a mesmer. Chaos armor also allows protection from ranged attacks as it will trigger when attacked by a rangers RF as example.

Changes to Chaos armor will make this a source of weakness , confusion or crippled along with swiftness , protection or Regen. I am not sure why there so many people who do not use its field to their benefit.

I like most of your changes. But even if I didn’t, I agree that Trickery is way to mandatory and has been for too long. For the reasons you mentioned, that is the extra initiative and reduced CD on steal.

I agree with most of what you said OP. However, I’m not sure whether all the changes previewed so far were the best way forward for the thief. I have said why I think so in a couple other threads so won’t repeat them here.

Outside of the above, I would have rather seen your changes implemented rather than the ones we got (specifically to basilisk venom and fleet shadow/instant reflexes). I would love to see the other elite skills get some love. I think the ability to deal with boons should have been distributed more between necros and thieves. The necro changes to boon corruption and AA boon corruption seem a bit much. Those changes could have been less drastic with better distribution of dealing with boons between them and us. It makes thematic sense for thieves too. Above all, I would love to see trickery be a choice rather than mandatory.

Prep baseline fixes this. I remember the oldest viable thief build (at least, when I started) having 25/30/0/0/15. This was DA all the way through to 10% for condi, critical strike from stealth, and Preparedness. Next meta, 30/0/10/0/30 d/p AGAIN. Mug and Prep. Next meta, s/d for a long time was 10/0/0/30/30. This build lasted a LONG time like d/d elementalist on cele long. Reason? Mug on heal, heal on init use, swift/might on evade, one extra dodge, 3 extra initiative AND reduces steal cd.

All of these were meta builds (I probably missed a few, but I’m going from memory of the strongest). All of them have Mug and have Preparedness. Heal on steal (no on cares on damage tbh, its just nice) and 3 initiative is just far too valuable.

I never used MUG – just saying.
My first build for a long time was 0/30/20/20/0, then 06620 and now CS, SA,T – except on my soldier’s thief and in PvE.
06620 worked good for me. Although the initative is nice to have when using SB – don’t think I would miss it that much for D/D but then again I haven’t really been able to fight for now nearly 9 months.

That’s fair. What was your main wep? I used a lot of power orientation, so mug was a major crutch to station myself on.

Dagger Dagger
For the “06440” I was D/P when solo roaming (rare) and D/D or D/P – SB in zergs. I was a clicker when I started thief and that was my build to get the most dodges to reposition. I know it sounds weird. That was pre ferocity.

Oh I was talking on D/p spvp meta build. For WvW I do remember a lot of X/x/6/x/3 builds. In spvp, you need mug. In wvw I believe you require SA? I don’t wvw much on Thief, I did on Mesmer because one shots.

You have 3 trait lines and even if they add 100 new specs you can only spec ur thief in bottom traitline, cuz if next one will be pale reaver you wont be able to go pale reave and daredevil, therefore you always have 1 traitline open.

babazhook.6805:

While I play WvW , I would point out that upper hand revised with a lower cooldown MIGHT well supplant trickery when it comes to that INI.

I have seen it and while It looks promising its only supplementing 1 problem with another. Say I don’t want to play Trickery nor new Acrobatics. Same problem. Baseline Preparedness fixes it.

Bojoo.7819:

babazhook.6805:

While I play WvW , I would point out that upper hand revised with a lower cooldown MIGHT well supplant trickery when it comes to that INI.

I have seen it and while It looks promising its only supplementing 1 problem with another. Say I don’t want to play Trickery nor new Acrobatics. Same problem. Baseline Preparedness fixes it.

No not really. The thief by design is to be inhibited by his or her INI. If they are not then all of the skill they can spam will have to be toned down for damage.

This addresses balance issues in that they will likely sacrifice the higher damage going DA or CS and while those that go that route (Da CS) will do more damage per attack, the former will get more of their INI using attacks off.

I feel people should have to make choices. One of those for the thieves that do not want Acro or trickery should be INI concerns. Your individual attacks will hit harder , but you will not get as many of the INI ones off.

With the added buffs to the main hand weapon AA , Preparedness as baseline would IMHO be too much at once . Were those buffs not declared and were the changes to upper hand not announced I would be on the side of preparedness baseline.

I will alos acknowledge that I might well change my opinion depending on all the announced changes pan out. It my feeling more people will be pulled out of trickery with the announced changes and that those that remain will do so more for the steal cooldown benefits than preparedness.

I honestly think steal on a permanent baseline cd of 15-20 seconds isn’t op either, I don’t main thief though.

Thief buffs are op. Notice how we get a few buffs, and everyone cries bloody mary? I predict a hot nerf, its why I’m super trolling mesmers. Not gonna lie, its pretty funny. Check post history to find it. So as much as lowering a cd on our only 1200 range gap closer would help, its illegal because thief. Buffs=Thieftrue=breakgame. <—-code is in the engine betting it :P

Euhm, a few things, OP. I agree with spicing up base steal by adding a single boon strip baseline. I also agree that trickery is mandatory. What I’m confused about is why this is a problem. Guardians have relied on valor/honor for DPS/support since basically launch. Warriors with discipline. Mesmers with w.e line had deceptive evasion. Eles with water. The list goes on. My point is, simply asking for things to be made baseline so you can beef your build up with little downsides would actually be detrimental to the game overall. Would it be a change that favours thief? Of course, but it wouldn’t help the game one bit. Consider the death of the cele bunkers the single best buff to thief and just call it a day tbh.

Also, the rev stolen item is probably my favourite after the mace we get off guard.

Slayer- all of the other classes aren’t taking it for every build. Mesmer can take Dueling, but if you want assassination you go Dom/Chao/Illusion or the bunker is Illu/Chao/Chrono. Dueling is used for stall builds or condi, focused on testing your reaction and cooldown usage- its not mandatory. I’ve never used Valor on Guardian, meanwhile Honor has been RARE. I’ve used Fast Hands once or twice. Ranger has no mandatory line, literally every line is potent. Necro same thing. Ele, most take water because they want to bunker- but the bunker build is water/earth/tempest, while an assassination build is air/arcane/tempest-fire (one or other). Revenants are new, so they are using crutches (retribution). Engineers are mandatory HGH trait, same position as us.

:D Thought I’d let you know. Oh, and I’ve had no trouble and no builds that relied on one line over all others.

Preparedness should be baseline. Move bountiful theft into its spot, but make it not share the boons with teammates. Make a major trait shares the stack/duration with teammates when you steal a boon (so skills like larcenous strike become team buffs). Remove the -20% from sleight of hand and make steal 24-25 seconds CD to lessen the disparity between traited and untraited steal.

I agree that Steal could use some boosts, and that some stuff should be baseline. Steal should get at least 1 boon steal on default (perhaps even two if bountifull theft is made baseline and removed as trait, except for the sharing part).

Cooldown also should be lower baseline (and seight of hand normalized). It will put less pressure on traitline (still a very powerfull one, with thrill of crime etc traits).

I wholeheartedly agree with these suggestions, hopefully the Devs will finally take into consideration these as being reasonable, especially the preparedness baseline since they are essentially balancing initiative costs against 15 ini pools.

Serious Thought.5394:

In wvw I believe you require SA? I don’t wvw much on Thief, I did on Mesmer because one shots.

Nah. WvW you can honestly get away with almost anything. There’s no real meta aside from GvG-style fights, and if you know what you’re getting into, you can predict how to act.

I still roam, periph, and front-line zergs playing DA/CS/Tr signets on D/D + S/D. I ran an Acro/Tr/DD P/P build and a SA/CS/DD staff concept recently on a separate thief and also got fair results depending on matchup. Obviously my operating skill on these concepts wasn’t peak, either, as I’ve been playing the same D/D signet build concept since release.

If you want trickery to not be mandatory you need to give better initiative options to other trait lines

They used to exist. It was just overwhelming because a build like CS/SA/Tr had huge amounts of initiative regeneration access to the point where it never really got low so long as it critted at a decent rate. The resource was almost non-existent in the hands of good players.

All I can see as being reasonable is bumping Kleptomaniac to baseline and reducing its base cooldown (and getting rid of the cooldown reduction on Sleight of Hand) for better sustained initiative use. Preparedness might be excessive and wouldn’t really help us for fights lasting much longer than a few seconds, and makes thieves think more about their approaches to a fight.

Yes, you can also make the initiative options not options, but baseline. This reduces the risk of initiative management stacking between traitlines.

Bojoo.7819:

Other problem is Sleight of Hand and its 20% faster recharge on steal. I never understood that 20% faster recharge. Solution would be to put steal on 25 second recharge without Trickery and 20 second recharge with Trickery with Lead Attacks. Bewildering Ambush wouldn’t be OP with shorter cd, it still would 5 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds when traited. 5 stacks for 5 seconds on 20 second cd is nothing to write home about next to classes literally spamming confusion stacks but its still useful trait for condi thief.

Any traits that improves the Thief’s main mechanic will always be desirable. May it be Steal CDR, init regen or increase man init, that trait line will be mandatory — it just so happen that all those features are in the same trait line.

The problem is not that Trickery has many good traits, rather other trait lines has too many trash traits. If CS, SA or Acro triggers an ability competitive to the likes of Mug and Thrill when using steal, then they would also be desirable, thus it’s quite obvious why DA and Trick are the best picks — and by extension DD since it grants a bar of endurance on steal.

Next up is Steal. Call me crazy, but Steal should steal boon (1) when untraited with Trickery. I don’t know how it should change Bountiful Theft.

BT doesn’t actually steal boon, rather it strips and copy the boon. The only real boon steal is from S/D. IMO, the introduction of boon steal is a result of a bad decision from ArenaNet. I don’t believe that Steal or Thief as a whole should be able to steal boon. Such feature should be reserved and restricted to Mesmers. If Thief would ever steal boon, then it should be Elite spec driven, like making Thief an Arcane Thief using an off-hand Focus, but the Core Thief should be restricted in stealing tangible obejects (i.e. Axe, Seed, etc.)

Also worth mention here is boon stealing effect. If you remove by stealing multiple stacks of same boon you should get every stack you stole on same duration.

To be honest, ArenaNet should abandon this path for the Core Thief and keep it an Elite spec if they are to give Thief a boon steal effects.

Last thing i want to touch up are stolen skills. Some of them are just embarrassing. Revenant…Engi…who stands in gunk???

Nobody. With P/P, your projectile finish it to apply confusion sanme when used with whirl. You leap finish it to apply chaos armor. I love chaos armor on my condi D/D Thief.

Sure, OP, the changes wouldn’t be overpowered or anything but… it’s power creep. And what need is Preparedness baseline if we do more damage over time in our auto-attacks, which puts less pressure on our initiative use? And you’re right, we could use more initiative gain in other trait lines. They’re even doing that next patch with one of the Acro grandmasters. They also have alternative ways to buff Steal in the game as well in every trait line (Improv, Mug, Stealth, Sword Equilibrium). Steal doesn’t need a baseline cooldown nerf.

Unfortunately with this game, we can’t go by “it wouldn’t hurt,” just to buff it. Because when the nerf train comes it’s just going to hurt even worse and the class may fundamentally change in other ways.

Proven.2854:

Sure, OP, the changes wouldn’t be overpowered or anything but… it’s power creep. And what need is Preparedness baseline if we do more damage over time in our auto-attacks, which puts less pressure on our initiative use? And you’re right, we could use more initiative gain in other trait lines. They’re even doing that next patch with one of the Acro grandmasters. They also have alternative ways to buff Steal in the game as well in every trait line (Improv, Mug, Stealth, Sword Equilibrium). Steal doesn’t need a baseline cooldown nerf.

Unfortunately with this game, we can’t go by “it wouldn’t hurt,” just to buff it. Because when the nerf train comes it’s just going to hurt even worse and the class may fundamentally change in other ways.

A big flaw in your argument about Preparedness, they are balancing thief Initiative costs around 15 initiative pools, which is a problem either balance initiative costs around the 12 ini pool or provide Preparedness Baseline

How do you know that? They are only balancing around that if a Thief with Prepardness is by and far the apex build. If they balance accordingly, it doesn’t have to be.

Serious Thought.5394:

Slayer- all of the other classes aren’t taking it for every build. Mesmer can take Dueling, but if you want assassination you go Dom/Chao/Illusion or the bunker is Illu/Chao/Chrono. Dueling is used for stall builds or condi, focused on testing your reaction and cooldown usage- its not mandatory. I’ve never used Valor on Guardian, meanwhile Honor has been RARE. I’ve used Fast Hands once or twice. Ranger has no mandatory line, literally every line is potent. Necro same thing. Ele, most take water because they want to bunker- but the bunker build is water/earth/tempest, while an assassination build is air/arcane/tempest-fire (one or other). Revenants are new, so they are using crutches (retribution). Engineers are mandatory HGH trait, same position as us.

:D Thought I’d let you know. Oh, and I’ve had no trouble and no builds that relied on one line over all others.

You run a DPS build without the free 8k healing, ridiculously high fury uptime, and the utility CD? You run a support guard without pure of voice, the shout CD reduction, and the res trait? Yea, I don’t think you went far enough with your guard.

Not using fast hands is a huge drop in DPS. No need to comment much on that.

FA ele is a stealthless thief with less mobility and only slightly better sustain. Their DPS is also a lot worse than thief’s. Also, they can only run bunker (although that quickly disappearing on 1/26).

You either solely PvE or are being hard carried by a good WvW guild since none of this would fly in sPvP.

I use it in spvp and I hear your concerns 24/7. Did. Will? Merg. Your first question is…confusing, idk who its for. I’ve never ever played support- EVER. I play nuke always. Fast Hands might be a dps drop if you were focused on dps. Nuke, dps, much different. FA ele works well enough if you make a build and not some garbage thing like cantrip fa. That’s garbage. And no, thats not the only thing they can play. Grab a carrion amulet, go fire/arcane/tempest- pick all the burning goodies (burn on arcane too, yes) then just press burning speed+ring of fire, swap to earth 4/2, swap to air 3/5/4/2, swap to water 4/3. If they aren’t dead, you played way wrong.

Anywho, its difference in playstyle. Trying for some Ad Hominem is a bad idea when everyone plays differently and meta means literally nothing (except this one season, because holy kitten was the bunker unreal).

Here’s some learning for you on how to properly make a point: http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/rgass/fallacy3211.htm
Enjoy. If you want build help and to figure out how not to be a sheeple, pm me. I’ll get back to you in-game next Tuesday. Maybe. BnS/Smite/Lol are far more entertaining for me, and I’m surfing Steam.