Guild Wars 2

This only relates to SPVP

TLDR:

1. D/P too stronk, so give all other weapon sets on demand stealth.
2. SB too mobile; perhaps buff staff mobility or other forms of mobility.
3. Stop the mindless dodge spam cancer before it goes mainstream (kill signet)

1. D/P rekts, why is that? On demand stealth, on demand rupt, on demand blind+gap closer (best skill evar), amazing auto with poison and high dps, nice stealth attack, etc. . . .(I bold things so they pop out at you :< )

I don’t want to nerf any of that. Thief right now has a pretty decent spot in meta I think, along with pretty much every other class having at least one option and I don’t want to disrupt that balance(lul).

I’m not for giving every weapon set ALL of those things, that would be stupid. But the easiest thing to tackle is stealth.

Every weapon set has a pretty cool stealth attack, but not every weapon set can have stealth. That’s stupid. Here’s what I’d do (like anyone cares or any dev would pay attention to it, but I’m annoyed so I’ll say it anyway)

Rules: None of the stuff I’m adding needs to hit the target to grant the stealth; the stealth applies after the hit to not f with reveal of course. Also keep in mind that currently the BP HS combo grants 3 seconds of stealth regardless of any trait (SA does not increase stealth duration from combos)

Dagger main: Remove combo finisher of HS. HS now grants 2 seconds of stealth on use. Increase ini to 5 (what like you used this for anything other than stealth? It’s a net buff :p)

Pistol main: Body Shot now also grants 2 seconds of stealth. Increase ini to 5.

Sword main: Infiltrator’s Strike now also grants 2 seconds of stealth on initial cast. 5 initiative. I would honestly just remove the ini cost of the secondary cast.

Short bow: Disabling shot. 2 secs of stealth 5 ini you get the idea lul

Staff: Either Dust Strike or Debilitating Arc, IDGAF lol 5 ini 2 seconds of stealth.

2 seconds might not be enough to reliably land your stealth attack, perhaps 3 seconds of stealth and 6 ini?

But wait ohmuhgawd what about cloak and dagger and bound+bp, you will give dual wielders perma stealth!

Right now anyone running D/P and bound already has perma stealth (yes, even without SA). It’s not that big of a deal since outside of dueling dash is better. Also this is why reveal is a thing, l2p?

2. SB 5 is ridiculous. It makes SB a necessity in any serious form of play. I don’t wish to nerf it as mobility is what thief basically brings to meta. Without it we probably wouldn’t be there.

I don’t have a good solution for this. I thought about gutting the damage of vault and making it 900 range so it can basically be a SB but would that just be too ridiculous?

Really just at a loss on this one

3. Dodge spam builds, both acro staff and condi d/d varieties are kitten to this world. Kill them with fire. I don’t want acro nerfed; instead I think it is simpler and probably enough to just change signet of agility to do anything other than give you 100 endurance back.

BUT WUT ABOUT THE DAREDEVIL HEALLLLL

Acro doesn’t give you big hits. They also need to twine in bound with the vault to do decent damage I think. If they take the Physical heal with bound and standard acro staff traits, they could get CCed to death. If they take dash to not be CCed to death, then they lose a lot of damage and rely on vault. It won’t get them far.

If it’s still an issue then a further nerf to physical heal or acro could be fine I guess, but I think agility signet’s death would be enough.

Sorry to waste your time if you read all this; everyone knows ANET isn’t doing anything atm lol

anet devs will ignore this post

Ya I know ;-; I’m sad I wasted time writing it tbh

I still can’t believe ppl complain so much and song want to believe it’s a l2p issue. My minionmaster necro that I play with in pve, wvw, and pvp kills all the Dodgers and d/P just fine. When I play thief, I, particularly the staff dodge (some I’m not good with dp yet and liked the idea of having a beating stick), find trouble with necros, eles, guardians, some mesmers. Basically trouble with anyone able to create aoe and stay in their aoe to fight. That’s at least half the classes. So people like this want thieves to be useless against the rest of the classes too? Then we just lose a class in gw2 that a lot of ppl love playing.
Also, if we are sharing unique abilities (which stealth really isn’t anymore), how about thieves get minions, phantasms, high armor, and high base health and a pet?
D/P doesn’t wreck every other build. It just wrecks noobs (which most good builds do), as well as ppl dining around with very low health (which is the whole risk/point/Balance of a glass cannon)

I’m not sure you read more than the tldr^^; No nerfs to DP, just a buff to everything else including staff ( by giving it stealth)

The nerf would be to the fact you can literally press dodge and 5 on staff or dodge and 3 on dagger dagger 10 billion times because of acro/physical heal/and agility signet.

IMO it’s just not a healthy playstyle

1)

No, sets have a purpose (apart d/d which is weird) and should stay on that purpose. I fail to see how staff (i play staff myself) with on demand stealth would be healthier for the meta. Balance doesn’t mean “all builds should have the same things” but “for every thing, there should be counters of at least similar availibility”.

So let’s forget about giving all others set on demand stealth this way. On the suggestion of removing the combo on HS but give it stealth the problem is :
You remove clever play of HS on others field (like the ranger stolen skill) and remove on of the few ways a thief can work with a team.
The new ways for d/p to stack stealth (aka HS spam) is harder to counterplay since you don’t get the BP tell that is gonna stealth AND you increase their mobility since they can just 3 HS in the direction where they want to go this way gaining 4s (6s from skill minus 2s of cast time) of stealth and moving 1350 units in the direction whereas now they have to BP, HS several time in THEN move which takes way longer and allows way more counterplay than your proposal.

2)

Staff seems to be a tf/dueling weapon for me whereas D/P is more roamer/ganker style so i don’t see why you want to nerf tf/duel potential of staff and increase its mobility when i still won’t either compete with SB in terms of mobility nor compete with D/P in roaming/ganking potential.

3)
By CC you mean soft CC right ? since on accro you got Hard to Catch to “deal” with hard cc and the CC are dealt with dash as you say. The thing is that the #3 staff removes immo and most staff build takes EA which cleans condi and will deal with the others.

Tbh if you are willing to nerf the whole dodge spam thing, better nerf the DD skills/traits than signet of agility (because signet is core and you don’t want to nerf core, core thief life is enough hard today) but i don’t think that deserves a nerf since it’s countered by proper timing and positionning.

Don’t forget the point of this thread: D/P SB is your only choice for competitive play, and dodge spam is cancer. What can be done about this?

I appreciate the feedback but you’ve only shot down my suggestions without providing some different ones for the above issue.

I actually don’t care if all sets get stealth, I just thought it would be an easy way to make all other sets become more viable while not needing to nerf D/P, and as I stated, I really don’t know how to fix the SB problem.

We got staff thieves (either DA or Accro) going up to legend this season especially in NA I think so we know that weaponset is strong and is part of the meta.

As for the competitive side, we don’t have anything competitive since ages so let’s see how the tournament hosted by sind & helseth shows before speaking of the competitivness.

For the dodge spam the thing is that a thief can’t eat damage and being useful, so you have to rupt/dodge/blind/stealth spam.
If you nerf the dodge spam, what happens :

• thief have ways to eat damage : thus becomming a weaker version of rev
• increase the rupt spam : see the outcry against PI
• increase blind spam which strangly i don’t see many complaints against : may be the way to go
• increase stealth spam : does nothing in spvp and will make the wvw people riot again
• increase thief damage so nobody have time to damage it : you basicly kill staff in tf or remove d/p +1 on 2v2 / 3v3 fight (since it can’t eat damage) and reduce him to 1v1 (staff) or +1 on duel / decap (d/p) which may be a solution but i already see the “a thief killed me in 2s that’s unfair blablabla” that a big part of wvw is fan of coming in spvp.

For d/d the real problem is the awkardness of the set with a condi skill on a power set, the d/d condi build is more of an annoyance that a OP set. I would gadly have condi damage reduced/removed but the evade kept the same (because it’s useful for power d/d that know how to use it) with maybe a bonus (like a condi removal or a might stack to help the damage) and have anet release a proper condi set (like p/d is) on the next xpac.

I personnaly feel that thief is overall fine. Every profession have mandatory wepaon (focus on ele) or skills (Rampage as One for druid) or traitlines (defense on warrior).
Staff being strong (with the option of going DA or Accro), the “moving” traits like Impro or Executionner, the utility choices (Bandit’s Defense or Blinding Powder or ShadowTrap once Anet fixe it) : all theses things that thief player still got some choices in his build and playstyle and still be relevant. It’s imho a sign of good overall health.

edit : fomating

Good points, and you are right about thief needing on demand blind/stealth/dodge etc to stay alive.

But there is a difference between skillful timing of those mechanism and literally pressing nothing but v and 5 repeatedly with an occasional heal and press of a signet.

I don’t think spam play is healthy, but there is a fine line between having it on demand and spammable, so I see where you are coming from.

The only other thing we disagree on is thinking that the state of thief is fine. I want more viable weapon sets; I understand this is a problem for pretty much all other classes as well, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to speak up about it.

Take P/P for example: The auto attack is garbage, the stealth attack is an awkward condi hybrid attack, #2 is next to useless, #3 is a massive initiative dump with an awkward might stacking component, #4 #5 are available on D/P so meh.

There are so many things they could do to make this weapon set work; make #2 stealth, block, evade, blind…like…anything?

ive got a brilliant idea
lets remove bp smoke field
thatll sure open up some more weaponsets
HEY GUISE P/P WERX NAO

Madisonlee.9641:

But there is a difference between skillful timing of those mechanism and literally pressing nothing but v and 5 repeatedly with an occasional heal and press of a signet.

True but mind that Death Blossom and Vault have downtimes that are used well by proper players that know how to counter spam. I remember a power warrior using shield bash only to have me vault through him so he could time his headbut – zerk – f1 GS and kill me. The evade spam builds are really strong in low tier but their power decrease with the ability of their oponents and it’s where a good staff thief will stand out because he will play mindgames and think and not juste press X.

But yeah the spec is easy to use at good enough rewarding.

Madisonlee.9641:

I don’t think spam play is healthy, but there is a fine line between having it on demand and spammable, so I see where you are coming from.

The only other thing we disagree on is thinking that the state of thief is fine. I want more viable weapon sets; I understand this is a problem for pretty much all other classes as well, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to speak up about it.

Imho staff is fine too but I agree we should try to think how to give every weaponset a purpose.

Madisonlee.9641:

Take P/P for example: The auto attack is garbage, the stealth attack is an awkward condi hybrid attack, #2 is next to useless, #3 is a massive initiative dump with an awkward might stacking component, #4 #5 are available on D/P so meh.

Do not underestimate the power coefficient of the stealth attack. It’s not backstab tier but with the might stacks from unload the damage aren’t that bad and it works pretty well with combo field like SR → Stealth Attack for massive lifesteal.

1. (rupt + PI) and #5 (blind spam with projectile finishers + stealth with bound or blinding powder) are still strong even on P/P.

But yeah P mh smells condi, it’s d/d the other way.

Madisonlee.9641:

There are so many things they could do to make this weapon set work; make #2 stealth, block, evade, blind…like…anything?

I remember the old times where people cried about the #2 spam immobilize :p

I would suggest some weakness (like between 6s and 8s). A blind stack with immo seems pretty useless against melee comp since you kite, the blind stack is likely to vanish before the immo wear of and the oponent reach you again, and weakess does reduce the damage taken by the thief (not working against condi specs but thief has others tools) and the amount of dodge from oponents to help the unload burst. An 3s → 5s for the vulnerability may help for sustained damage.

But imho P/x suffers of a lack of role since it’s bad in tf (because thief), average in 1v1 (kitting) and meh in +1 (unload burst is nice but too much projectile hate in this game).

1. I kind of understand where you are coming from. Stealth on demand on every weapon is insanity. I do not want this game to turn into a “whoever gets reveals first dies” type of game.

They honestly should not have given so professions so much access to stealth, i am thinking about the Scrapper and its drone and the mesmer. Who basically out-stealth the thief in some cases.

2. More staff mobility..? no.

3.Also don’t agree.

It’s really the fault of the Dev (who I heard doesn’t even main Thief), but came with the Daredevil idea.

Players automatically choose the utility set that maximizes their damage/gameplay the most efficiently. I don’t think it is fair to create a new Elite and realize later how it can tweak for “abuse”.
It’s their fault for not realizing that.

I want to add one last thing:

I am willing to wait it out and see the next Elite specs, this will spice things up a bit. Some of us will remain Daredevils, some will switch to the next and grab a rifle. So gameplay experience will drastically change when that happens. So maybe we won’t even need to add stealth on every weapons like you suggested, or scrap signets.

They need to put the right devs for the job though. This is crucial.

This game won’t become skillful again unless there’s nerfs all around. Giving every set what D/P has wouldn’t make anything better, ignoring the passive block spam and weird damage coefficents for other classes won’t help either.
It needs the right dev for every profession.
That will likely never happen.

Also:
Power D/D for life – and I’m still running vanilla, but that mostly because CiS, which would be an easy to fix issue but that again would need the right dev.

Thanks for all the good feedback

Quick guys, thief is performing well for once, better nerf it immediately!!! /S

My face is too precious for this:

I like your idea of Sword 2 granting stealth!

On-demand and sustained stealth on all kits including in other professions should be removed, and then the kits reworked and the thief at its core improved. The problem isn’t that the other kits need to be more like D/P but D/P is just powerful on the conceptual level while the rest are underpowered in their implementation, too. It doesn’t help ANet keeps adding in synergy to exclusively the OH pistol, intentional or not (either way, poor design).

Most existing abilities and traits across the game need substantial changes; unfortunately this is very unlikely to occur given ANet’s love for non-competitive profession design.

DeceiverX.8361:

On-demand and sustained stealth on all kits including in other professions should be removed, and then the kits reworked and the thief at its core improved. The problem isn’t that the other kits need to be more like D/P but D/P is just powerful on the conceptual level while the rest are underpowered in their implementation, too. It doesn’t help ANet keeps adding in synergy to exclusively the OH pistol, intentional or not (either way, poor design).

Most existing abilities and traits across the game need substantial changes; unfortunately this is very unlikely to occur given ANet’s love for non-competitive profession design.

This is extremely accurate^

And one thing I forgot to mention in my OP is that I was slightly afraid of sustained stealth becoming too easy, when I just wanted access to on demand stealth for skillful use of stealth skills without having to use pistol offhand + bound on one set (or D/P)

So we are left with two options. First, do exactly what is stated in your quote; though as you said, it ain’t gonna happen.

Second is buff all other weapon sets to compete with D/P SB, whether via giving them stealth or other things as Khronos suggested, I don’t really care what they do as long as it makes the weapon sets competitive.

Though I think all good thieves and good players in general agree that power creep needs to stop and all around nerf bats for SO many things are in order just to tone down the skill-less convoluted game play we have now.

I don’t thibk stealth is the way to go tbh. Then playstyle for the entire class becomes stealth, hit, run, repeat. I like how some sets are supposed to function without the use of stealth (originally through evades but dd threw that out the window). What needs to happen is d/p needs to be toned down slightly so it isn’t the objectively best set on the thief with 0 drawback (not talking full nerf hammer but some tweaking to numbers is in order) and then other sets needs to achieve the same level of synergy with the mechanics of the class so we can see an emergence of more competetive builds for the thief.

MH Pistol, , D/D 3 skill, OH Dagger, Sword… all those can be changed and adjusted to be more competitive without any effect on D/P.
D/P is in decent position atm and shouldn’t be nerfed for the sake of making it equal to sub-par weapon choices. If only someone from balance team took few hours and fine-tuned them, we’d see more weapons in play instead of 99% people playing pretty much only viable PvP option.

It’ really strange that Anet isn’t doing much regarding the balance of other underused weapon sets. Problem is evident and yet nothing much isn’t done. What’s the worst that can happen if someone gets a bit happy with the numbers and coefficients on those underused weapons? Not like they can do anything to make them op…

Some of you are weird ..really ..so you want force ppl to use unplayable weapon sets by nerfing only viable option for this class ?

lol ..you know what will happen if anet make your wish true?

People will just switch to some other cheesy class instead of torturing themselves with some horrible set of skills.

Get some brain and ask for other weapon sets improvements instead of moaning over something which work well.

Is it the only viable build or is it just simply too good not to use? The only real reason why I struggle to use s/d in wvw and pvp is when a d/p thief is around. Any other class i face uo agaisnt and it’s not a huge issue unless they are better skilled then me the ofc I should lose or have an up hill fight.

IMO it’s Def that it’s the only viable build. They’re are other builds that work, but not as well and they have lots of counters and neutrals. DP is still squishy, has a bunch of easy counters, and takes a lot of skill to use comparatively; they aren’t OP. people often don’t like playing differently for different situations or paying attention to surroundings at all. Because it’s not a build you can run head on without a thought, ppl QQ, but a good player can force a good thief to run away due to stalemate/wasted time or better often times.