Guild Wars 2

As with many others I’m of the opinion that thief is in a bad spot in competitive PvP/ WvW. PvP is particularly bad, build diversity is non existent and you will see only d/p sb. At least S/D was viable before acro was gutted. Gutting an existing trait line and adding it back under the guise of daredevil was not a smart balance move.

Even speccing as a meta d/p sb build, you will have: poor 1v1 potential, poor sustain and be unable to hold conquest points. Other classes are doing this whilst having comparable dps. Thief might win out marginally in in manoeuvrability, but what is the point of moving to a point if you cannot defend or attack it? Also worth noting that thief manoeuvrability is very situational. We have 2 weapon sets (d/d, p/p) which have no manoeuvrability skills whatsoever.

Some questions (restricting to weapon sets to keep text down):
- why are skills #2, #4 and #5 near useless on p/p?
- why is p/p #3’s damage comparable to shortbow #2, despite the same range and p/p #3 costing an extra 2 initiative?
- why can you outrun the shortbow #2 projectile? -_-
- why is skill #5 useless on s/p?
- why is skill #3 useless on d/d?
- why does d/p #3 do more damage than d/d #5, gives blind, costs less initiative and acts as a gap closer? It encourages spam.
- why is sword auto attack so slow? You will rarely pull off a full chain, hence auto attack DPS is laughable compared to dagger.

possible fixes for the above bullet points:

- Decrease shadow shot damage by 40%, increase thief dagger auto attack stage 1 by 20% for compensation.
- Up backstab damage by 5%-10%.
- Add a blind to dagger offhand #5 for when it connects. Keep the vulnerability too, its 6 initiative for a telegraphed skill. As it currently stands Dagger main #2 spam does similar damage – skilled play should be rewarded.
- Split #5 skill on pistol offhand across PvP + WvW vs PvE. Leave as is for PvE. Increase radius to 240 for WvW / PvP.
- Increase immobilize on pistol main #2 to 1 1/2 seconds so that it can be used defensively, or offensively for a full unload.
- Make p/p #3 a two part skill. Add the skill, hidden pistol (charr racial), being made available for up to 4 seconds after pressing #3. Add a 3 second cripple to hidden pistol.
- Increase pistol auto attack direct damage by 30% to remove total dependency on p/p #3 for damage.
- decrease sword auto attack chain by 0.5 seconds
- make infiltrators strike a blast skill, so s/p can actually leverage black powder on #5. Ensure the stealth applies in a similar way to heartseeker, so a hit does not cause reveal.
- decrease shortbow #2 damage by 15%, increase projectile speed by 50%.
- remove the pre cast from death blossom on d/d #3. Make the evasion 1/2 second. Leave the after cast as is.
- revert s/d #3 to strip 2 boons

Side note, can we please normalize reveal to 4 seconds in WvW?

Why is it always P/P when you guys moan about thief?
Ranged weapons shouldn’t do as much/more damage than melee weapons – we currently have the opposite with rangers and mesmers and also warriors -that promotes lazy and passive gameplay – and of course pirate ship meta – which is plain boring.
Don’t decrease anything further on SB, please – it’s in a pretty bad spot and I’m not really sure how #2 is a projectile anyway.

Saw this too late:

Side note, can we please normalize reveal to 4 seconds in WvW?

Ok, a troll post.

Not wanting to delve into other points mentioned. But I feel like this bullet point:
“why is p/p #3’s damage comparable to shortbow #2, despite the same range and p/p #3 costing an extra 2 initiative?”

Has the obvious answer of projectile speed.

OK, I admit it – I have no real idea what this thread is about – looks either a bit weird or I’m brain afk today.

4 second reveal is annoying for anyone who regularly plays WvW and PvP, it throws your timing. 3 second reveal also makes the revealed training trait nigh on redundant. I would also mention that certain builds (PU mesmer, cough) are abusing perma stealth in WvW at the moment.

The projectile speed argument is mostly moot since you will usually see 1/3 or more of an unload dodged due to it being channelled. Another counterpoint is how shortbow #2 is multi target, p/p is designed to be single. Should not cleave skills generally do less damage?

Its also worth noting that I suggested increasing shortbow #2 projectile speed drastically to compensate for the damage loss. I just find it laughable that as a ranged weapon its has to be in melee range to deal good damage.

Skill #5 useless one s/p? Leaving aside that it isn’t useless, there’s the fact that it would destroy d/p. And, because the dagger offhand is comparatively terrible, what would thieves be left with in sPvP?

The issues highlighted are only in regards to thief weapon set imbalances . i.e. how everyone plays d/p sb. A slight nerf to d/p is actually a sensible solution – it would then make it possible to buff thief as a whole via traits whilst preveniting people from crying about OP d/p builds.

Fixing thief’s power relative to other classes is another matter. Personally I think an outright buff to thief sustain is needed. Condi removal and possibly even thief health tier might be a good place to start.

The only time I can think of when s/p would use black powder on #5 is when switching to another weapon :/.

Clusterbomb does 1,428 dmg, unload a total of 2,448 – I don’t see how the 5 initative isn’t justified in comparison – even more so as dodging a clusterbomb as a whole is a lot easier that dodging 8 shots of unload. So, your argument that clusterbomb does as much damage as unload doesn’t fit – unless I’ve gotten you wrong.
If you decreased the damage further the whole purpose of clusterbomb would be blast finisher – and it is kind of at that point. If you’d increase the speed it would mess up a lot of combos – and that in thief and his allies favour – “want to get 25 might stacks in 3 secs? no problem!”

4s reveal was/is a mistake in pvp and I’d rather have it removed from pvp than to adjust pve and wvw to it as – the damage in wvw is a bit higher, the conditions are a bit more dangerous and most of thief’s sustain is still tied to stealth. Also I’d like to keep my D/D rotation in dungeons. I don’t think the purpose of making one single trait useful justifies an increase to 4s.

Again: None of what makes D/P great has got anything to do with any other weapon set – it’s a pretty balanced weapon set which has got pretty good traits in SA – but most of it isn’t of use for other thief builds – so you’d rather want to buff other builds than to nerf D/P as in the end even that build is mediocre at best in comparison to other classes right now.

Edit: Typos – a lot of typos.

Please spell Balance right.