Guild Wars 2

I can’t be the only one who feels the irony here. I’ve got limited experience with my thief so far, but what I’ve learned since then is that Guardian, Warrior, Ranger, Engineer, and Elementalist are all more equipped to navigate terrain than the thief.

Ledges my guardian can easily leap across will burn my initiative, cooldown, and not move me an inch in any direction much less across the gap I wanted to shadow-step. My guardian’s teleport ability can teleport in any direction, horizontally or vertically, often with things obstructing my view. I’ve tested all of the abilities that involve shadow stepping, and every single one is just as likely to break and do nothing as it is to work when you aren’t on anything but the most smooth terrain.

Why is this? The other classes have leaps and boosts that get them all over the place, and I can’t even shadow step down a flight of stairs as my thief. Its frustrating as hell, half the reason I picked the class is because I want to be able to move around and navigate areas easier than other classes (Something that I feel is inherently implied within the shadow stepping mechanic) and while I’m sitting there burning cooldowns and initations, other classes are leaping and boosting past me.

I posted about this three times during the beta weekend event (On other forums), and nobody seemed to take issue with the fact that of every class in the game, the thief is near the bottom of the totem pole in terms of mobility and navigating. If this is a matter of balance regarding map control in PVP and jump puzzles, lets either start by making shadow stepping not-useless, or start nerfing the other classes abilities to get around, as it stand it is extremely unfair that a class meant to have more mobility than any other is infact the least mobile.

Thief is the fastest and most mobile Profession in the game my friend. Really, they are. I’m consistently the fastest player on any team I’m on. You need to use your Shadowstep, Roll utility skills, Infiltrator’s Arrow and Swiftness rolls.

this sounds silly to me. i honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. i’m able to use Shadowstep and Infiltrator’s Arrow to move around terrain just as easily as any other class can.

i really do want to know what it is you’re complaining about though. is it combat mobility? Thief has more evades, more dodging, more endurance regen, and more combat teleports than any other class. is it map crossing speed? Thieves have a signet that grants a passive +25% run speed at all times. This is as good as it gets for any class in the game. Is it literally just that you are bad at putting your Infiltrator Arrow target on the right spot? Have you not figured out how to use one of the best unrestricted teleport abilities in the game?

In regards to the ability to shadowstep using the multiple techniques we have to ledges or across gaps and whatnot, I get it and sorta wish we could do that. I cant really compare to other classes as i havent spent enough time on any of them to have input on their mobility abilities.

BUT- I can say that I have my thief specced for high mobility/escapability and was able to harass an enemy ARMY (not just one player but like 10-15) and survive for a good 20 minutes in WvW before they caught me simply because of my stealth and absurd mobility.

Im not discrediting you by any means as again, i cant compare against the other classes. Im just disagreeing based on what I have been able to do mobility-wise with the class.

Also, wouldn’t shadowstepping (etc) across gaps, up ledges, etc kinda ruin the point of the jumping puzzles?

While the title is just not true, the problem you are describing very much is.

Shadowstepping through AoE’s (like these stun force fields bosses in the crucible have for example) also applies the effect of the AoE, which means, when i shadowstep somewhere, crossing a AoE, I’m still affected by the AoE as i would have just walked through it.

While shadowsteps are meant as a teleport through the shadows, in reality they seem to be more of a very fast movement increase, only looking like a teleport.

You can’t actually shadowstep over gaps and you can’t shadowstep through/out of AoE’s, which leaves the shadowstep as a costly super swiftness buff, not teleporting, but rapidly moving your character, while also only available if you could have just walked to the destination of the spell.

Kind of needs a “fix”, which means the whole mechanic is flawed.

metaphorm.6904:

Have you not figured out how to use one of the best unrestricted teleport abilities in the game?

Thats exactly not what it is.

Nyhm.3728:

Also, would shadowstepping (etc) acros gaps, up ledges, etc kinda ruin the point of the jumping puzzles?

How would this ruin jumping puzzles? For who?

In the betas (i mention that because i don’t know if thats still possible) i met a random Mesmer player in a jumping puzzle, and before every tricky jump, he layed down a portal, so if we would fall down, we just could teleport up again.

Was that ruining the jumping puzzle, or did we exploit something?

No, it was just immense fun using that game mechanic in a creative way, and i will remember the fun we had with it at least for a very long time.

Who gets hurt by thiefes jumping over gaps in jumping puzzles? Or better, who profits from Thiefs not being able to do that?

Yes? Nobody?

And now don’t tell me it would be unfair for other classes. Every class has advantages and disadvantages. It’s not unfair that the Guardian can push people around like crazy, while my Thief can’t do that.
It’s just an awesome mechanic the Guardian has, while the Thief doesn’t.

And if you don’t want to use shadow steps to do puzzles (if they would be working) while playing as Thief.. just don’t do it.

You have “limited experience” with thief? Well that’s pretty obvious if you think they aren’t mobile.

Thief has tons of ways to move around the battlefield.

Nyhm.3728:

In regards to the ability to shadowstep using the multiple techniques we have to ledges or across gaps and whatnot, I get it and sorta wish we could do that. I cant really compare to other classes as i havent spent enough time on any of them to have input on their mobility abilities.

BUT- I can say that I have my thief specced for high mobility/escapability and was able to harass an enemy ARMY (not just one player but like 10-15) and survive for a good 20 minutes in WvW before they caught me simply because of my stealth and absurd mobility.

Im not discrediting you by any means as again, i cant compare against the other classes. Im just disagreeing based on what I have been able to do mobility-wise with the class.

Also, wouldn’t shadowstepping (etc) across gaps, up ledges, etc kinda ruin the point of the jumping puzzles?

Hey, maybe I just need more practice and I’m overreacting. I’d rather be wrong in this case than right, so I’ll have to keep trying

neithan.9750:

You have “limited experience” with thief? Well that’s pretty obvious if you think they aren’t mobile.

Thief has tons of ways to move around the battlefield.

Good that you read more than the title.

CQReborn.9827:

Hey, maybe I just need more practice and I’m overreacting. I’d rather be wrong in this case than right, so I’ll have to keep trying

Don’t back of that quickly.

Yes, the Thief is indeed pretty much the most mobily class in the game, but your complaint about shadow steps is more than legit.

Shadow steps are coded in a very, very weird way.
The terrain in GW 2 seems to be made out of “blocks” or “tiles”, while it’s not always clear where one ends, and another starts.
And while you can normally walk over them, run over them with swiftness, leap over them, jump over them and so on, shadow steps are stuck when you try to cross these transitions of terrain blocks, which tends to be rather annoying (not even mentioning clear terrain gaps).

When you shadow step, every gap or transition is like a wall, breaking the shadow step, and while not being able to move over gaps may have been a (somewhat crappy) design or balance decision, being stuck at tarrain transitions flat out sucks.

The thief class is not the most mobile class in the game. A warrior can run just as fast with a greatsword as you can with a shortbow. I’ve tested it out… the only skills affecting mobility I wasn’t using were Shadow Step and Signet of Agility. 2 init/10, Shortbow, Swiftness on dodge, Endurance on dodge, Signet of Shadows, RFI… but nope.

The more wonky the terrain, the bigger our advantage, but on flat ground? We’re by no means ahead of every class when it comes to travelling.

I think you must be missing something. My Thief is the most mobile of all the professions I’ve played. And I’ve played all 8 of them! Maybe it ties with Ranger, but it’s still amazingly mobile.

Thief is the king of mobility in this combat on the run system we have in GW2. What other prof can build for acrobatics? That’s what ultimately has hooked me both in the concept/research prelaunch & stress testing phase as well as now post-launch as a full main. Every build I come up with hinges on sprinting and a large amount of dodge and evasion.

DrakeWurrum.6049:

I think you must be missing something. My Thief is the most mobile of all the professions I’ve played. And I’ve played all 8 of them! Maybe it ties with Ranger, but it’s still amazingly mobile.

ranger isnt very mobile apart from warhorn which isnt very good for fights. Warriors ele’s and engineers all have much better mobility.

I think all the people saying they are king on movement didn’t really read what he originally posted…

You might walk / run fastest but that’s not what his post is about.

Keep on the forums, if you don’t like something say it. The only way things are going to be improved is if we keep on here telling what we think needs to change. When enough people come on here in the same manner on the same subject then problem will be viewed more seriously I think.

No no, im not totally disagreeing with you OP, I do agree that I wish we could shadowstep to ledges and whatnot. And when i say shadowstep i mean the multitude of options including infiltrators arrow etc. I very much want to be able to do this.

The issue i imagine from A-Nets perspective would be allowing thieves to step up onto keep walls in WvW. While i would LOVELOVELOVE to do this, im just guessing this might be part of the reason why its not allowed. Just a design decision.

As far as ruining jumping puzzles, it would remove the challenge completely being able to teleport to a ground targeted location I think, completely trivializing it. I understand the whole “you dont have to use it” and im not defending the choice, im simply stating why I imagine it was designed the way it was. I mean it makes sense if they were trying to limit these things.

Laughed so hard when I was reading the title of this post.

Signet of Shadows is 25% speed boost, i dont believe anyother class can have that speed besides short duration Swiftness 33% and we can trait for that in dodge roll and stealth

After reading the topic of the OP, I had to struggle to open the thread to read the actual post without dying from laughter. To suggest that Thief has the lowest mobility is absurd. The sPvP teams that run Thief do so for one real reason: to gain access to the best mobility and roaming capability IN THE GAME. You don’t even need Signet of Shadows (it’s rarely used in sPvP); Infiltrator’s Arrow guarantees that Thief has the best mobility in the game by itself. That’s not even addressing the other bonuses to movement the class can offer.

Yes, Shadowsteps can be somewhat buggy and/or strict in their targeting. While this could be improved a bit, some degree of it is a necessary evil. When designing any kind of teleporting ability, developers must be very careful to not let it potentially circumvent map geometry.

Edit: Now 33% less snooty.

Omg…..I cant believe this, and its such a simple skill running wise…

Learn to use heartseeker strike…..

dodge dodge swiftness, spam heartseeker…….

and u were talking about steps, just heartseeker down steps, so simple

As far as I know, no teleport in the game allows you to travel to a point that you can’t jog to. If you have to jump, you get stopped at the edge (although you can teleport from tip to tip of a short “U” shaped cliff or something). The only ability that can teleport across genuine gaps it the Mesmer portal, but it can do this because you have to reach the destination to set it, meaning you have to earn it before you can burn it.

Thieves are highly mobile, plenty mobile.

mickers.2715:

DrakeWurrum.6049:

I think you must be missing something. My Thief is the most mobile of all the professions I’ve played. And I’ve played all 8 of them! Maybe it ties with Ranger, but it’s still amazingly mobile.

ranger isnt very mobile apart from warhorn which isnt very good for fights. Warriors ele’s and engineers all have much better mobility.

Rangers are plenty mobile. You just have to build it right. Though, to be fair, I should say that Mesmer is what it would tie with. Mesmer and Thief have very similar “roles”

Good joke thread.

Infiltrator’s arrow is not unrestricted. At all.

Shadowsteps are broken and rarely take you across gaps whereas guardians and warriors are leaping across gaps and elementalists are dashing through them.

I hope they fix shadowsteps soon, along with Heartseeker missing a lot.

But other than that, I agree with the posts in response to the OP – thieves are quite mobile. Arenanet just needs to fix what they broke.

I see you’ve never heard of necromancer.

Shadowstep needs to be able to traverse terrain like it used to be able to back in beta 1, or guardian/warrior/ranger/engineer leaps need to NOT traverse terrain. The imbalance is out there. It used to be balanced. Every class had a way to traverse gaps via a skill, whether it was leaping like warrior/guardian/ranger, rifle jumping with engineer, shadow stepping with thief, lightning flash/blink/ride the lightning with elementalist/mesmer, or necrotic transversal with necromancer. In BWE 2 they disabled any teleport effects from being able to do it, but left the jumping skills.

It’s not balanced.

Aside from that, I think Thief’s capability for swiftness is meager. We have a permanent 25%, but Elementalists and Engineers can have permanent uptime on swiftness to cancel that out.

Our only ways of getting swiftness are:

traiting acrobatics for 2s on dodge rolls
traiting trickery for 10s on steal (42s cooldown when traited 10 deep)
getting an ectoplasm on steal (which would put us in combat and slow us down anyway)

The result is we’re more mobile than average but might be less mobile than an engineer or elementalist with 100% swiftness uptime and utilization of rifle jump/ride the lightning.

Keeping Swiftness up on an Engineer or Elementalist is a serious pain, the 25% passive on Thieves is much more useful. Plenty of other classes don’t have anything close to either. And while yes, some classes have abilities that leap across gaps (like Heartseeker), I would never use these abilities during a jump puzzle because they are too unpredictable. Any gap you’re meant to jump, you can jump using. . . jump.

So now we need to balance classes for PvE, WvW, sPvP and jumping puzzles? I’m not saying infiltrator’s wouldn’t be nice, butkitten aren’t there bigger fish to fry?

Infiltrator’s Arrow could benefit from its behavior being a bit more intuitive, but the requirement that there exist at least 1 walkable path between the start and finish is a sensible one and should stay. They could maybe adjust it to go over/around small obstacles better.

Most likely the game client is doing a pathfinding check to see if the destination is reachable whenever you use it; there’s probably a maximum number of paths and maximum path distance that will be considered during this check.

That being said, you could take IA completely out and Thieves would still be the most mobile class in the game, so the thread title is both hilarious and absurd.

Except that you’re wrong. Without IA thieves would be behind at least 3 other classes.

There’s no way we’d be most mobile without IA, but with it, we easily are. It’s that good, and I kind of wonder how that’ll end up affecting class balance in the long run.

I seriously thought this was a troll thread at first… thief as the slowest, made me crack up. I can out-dodge/maneuver anyone I know (Specialized as a dodge thief).

As for long-distance run, it’s no contest. Equipment dagger, 25% move signet, swift on dodge, roll heal, ini regen traits, then spam Heartseeker. I have never been caught by another class in a long chase… been playing WvW as an 80 thief for about 2 weeks now.

Didn’t bother reading this~ jus’ saying… by reading the title you got your impression of Thief backwards. >.> No one ever catches me, nor will they ever. Your TVs are mine.

You see that? Doggie already has your TVs. That’s how mobile thieves are.

CQReborn.9827:

Ledges my guardian can easily leap across will burn my initiative, cooldown, and not move me an inch in any direction much less across the gap I wanted to shadow-step. My guardian’s teleport ability can teleport in any direction, horizontally or vertically, often with things obstructing my view. I’ve tested all of the abilities that involve shadow stepping, and every single one is just as likely to break and do nothing as it is to work when you aren’t on anything but the most smooth terrain.

^THIS^

i dont think we lack mobility. it is fine in theory.
the fact is that there is a general fail in many skills that involve movement or teleportation.
and if they dont fix this almost-gamebreaking problem i wont be playing for much longer.
but im sure they’re working on it.

Simple. You are playing thief wrong.

Pirhana.8935:

Signet of Shadows is 25% speed boost, i dont believe anyother class can have that speed besides short duration Swiftness 33% and we can trait for that in dodge roll and stealth

fyi, it stops if u get hit, and activates when u leave combat. not THAT imba really.

Trikittenistos.3046:

Pirhana.8935:

Signet of Shadows is 25% speed boost, i dont believe anyother class can have that speed besides short duration Swiftness 33% and we can trait for that in dodge roll and stealth

fyi, it stops if u get hit, and activates when u leave combat. not THAT imba really.

Nope, it continues into combat, it’s just less noticeable because you went to “combat mode speed” like everyone else. There are two different run speeds, out of combat and in combat. The +% run speeds affect both.