Guild Wars 2

This trait is so powerful it’s astonishing. It effectively reduces the cooldown of dodges by 30%. It’s effect is even stronger with vigor.

If you look at something comparable, such as ability cooldowns you get a range from 15-30% (usually 20%), but those effects can’t be stacked with anything.

I’d prefer to see tihs trait be more active. Such as gain 15 endurance when you dodge an attack, limit 15 per dodge.

Quite simply the risk/reward for this trait and builds that use it is not in a proper place.

30% aren’t so much and beside of that are evades (and stealth) the only way for thieves to avoid damage and they have nothing else to do that unlike to the other classes who have access to many (different) deffense skills.

I agree with your statement that the trait is powerful, and yes, Vigor makes it even stronger. However, you have to consider cost in addition to its risk/reward.

Thief survivability depends on not getting hit, either using stealth or evades. If you trait for Feline Grace, you can only get one GM trait outside of Acrobatics. The more you set up for defense, the less traits you have for offense. Thief have two traits to get Vigor. One is an Acrobatics Adept and the other is a Trickery Master on-steal.

I don’t agree with your take on the trait and wanting to see it be more "active". There’s a huge difference between spamming dodges and having the experience/skill to use them to deliberately evade certain moves while staying in to deal your damage. It can’t get more active than that.

I’m not that good. When I see someone who is, it makes me want to learn to play better.

Please stop whining. Evades are one of our only two options of defense. With the reveal debuff and the buff on rangers to screw us up there’s not much we can do. Plus that one more extra dodge or so won’t last forever== just time yourself right and initiative can be really unforgiving at times.

The thing is, Feline Grace is one of the key reasons why a Thief can even be used in sPvP. If there was no option to go with a stealthless form of defense, a Thief could never defend/attack a point properly.

I main thief. And I understand what the trait does for thief. My issue is that it allows me to be too effective for no risk. I can waste dodges and bait abilities from players for little to no penalty.

There’s no reason I should be rewarded with endurance when I don’t dodge something. I also shouldn’t have so much endurance that I can consistently use it to chain evades off initiative and slot skills thereby baiting players to waste their cool-downs with alarmingly high success. It’s so successful that it makes more sense to not waste cool-downs on someone running an Acro builds, which is a red flag that there is an issue.

Well if they’re spamming dodges in a fight, they’re most likely going to get the endurance back anyway as they avoid an autoattack. The result will be the same. If dodges are truly being spammed, they won’t have the endurance to dodge the big attacks, just as they wouldn’t before.

This would however affect using dodges to reposition which is one of the benefits of traiting D/D into acrobatics

To be honest, I kinda agree. Feline grace promotes a lot of wasteful dodging (i.e. autoattack 2-3 times —> dodge, CnD --> dodge, FS —> LS --> dodge). This is pretty much a win-win scenario. If they attack, you avoid it. If they don’t attack, you still reposition and cancel animations. There simply isn’t a high enough cost to dodging when using feline grace.

With signet of agility, FS, and IS, it’s very difficult to hit even mediocre S/D teefs with feline grace/vigorous recovery — not only because dodging is spammable but also because the benefits of dodging far outweigh the (now minimal) costs.

Question: Why does the thief need to add more skill into it’s gameplay?

It is the most noob-unfriendly class in the game, useless in most situations unless the player is very good and giving it “more skill to play” is only going to drive it deeper into the gutter its already in. The profession has enough skill, now give it some DIVERSITY.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Question: Why does the thief need to add more skill into it’s gameplay?

It is the most noob-unfriendly class in the game, useless in most situations unless the player is very good and giving it “more skill to play” is only going to drive it deeper into the gutter its already in. The profession has enough skill, now give it some DIVERSITY.

Well, it’s never a bad thing to promote skillful play, and 20066 S/D isn’t that difficult to pick up. I think that if feline grace were nerfed to only return endurance on successful evade, it should also be compensated with something like 1 stack of might on successful evade. This way, dodges are used more sparingly, the trait gives you more on evade, and you get some additional sustain because you can now take assassin’s reward over power of inertia.

The change doesn’t have to be my suggestion, it’s just the first thing that came to mind without thinking much about it.

Can we stop the endless nerf wish chain now, please? Playing a thief nowadays is anything but a cakewalk, and as multiple others already have stated, spamming dodges doesn´t bring you anything other than making bad opponents fail. Good opponents know how to deal with S/D thieves properly, and S/D thieves have more than enough natural enemies.

Right now Feline Grace gives back 15% of endurance on dodge, effectively making a single dodge cost 35 endurance instead of 50. If you want to reduce that, then please make sure to finally recompensate thieves for doing so. Nerf after nerf after nerf and its still not enough – S/D builds got nerfed so many times, and now everyone jumps onto Feline Grace as the next culprit. I guess when your wish is fullfilled, you sure want to have higher ini cost on IS and IR? or how about another nerf for FS and LS?

A thief needs that much evasion to stay alive. Take some of the evasion, give something else. More swiftness on dodge from Expeditious dodger for example, like 5 seconds base instead of 2, with added vigor (2-3 seconds) on a successful evade. Or reliable access to stability. Or making IR castable during being stunned but not breaking the stun, much like Phase Retreat for mesmers works.

But if you just nerf Feline Grace, S/D is even more dependant on low Steal CD and the vigor from Bountiful Theft. I returned to 26060 in order to not play the meta anymore (sucks when anything you do suddenly is meta, just because some famous PvP thief started using it two months later and now you get accused of copying that from him). That means i do not have much access to vigor, thus Feline Grace is much more important.

Shockwave.1230:

I main thief. And I understand what the trait does for thief. My issue is that it allows me to be too effective for no risk… baiting players to waste their cool-downs with alarmingly high success.

Um, Shocky, most folks would call that playing well.

It’s not your fault you’re better than the people who let ya do that. pat pat pat

No offense but you shouldnt be wasting your skills on a acro thief or anything with perma vigor.

Yes you can random dodge alot with acro but its also your fault for not landing your skills at the right time.

Its like saying D/P has too much blind when in reality its the person that fights the D/P thief that dosent use his skills correctly.

glock.6590:

No offense but you shouldnt be wasting your skills on a acro thief or anything with perma vigor.

Yes you can random dodge alot with acro but its also your fault for not landing your skills at the right time.

Its like saying D/P has too much blind when in reality its the person that fights the D/P thief that dosent use his skills correctly.

This^^ thief survivability is not op there is no need to Nerf it. Its also one of the classes that require more skill to be successful no need to make things harder. Fg is one of the main reasons to go into trickery we should be advocating for more options not reducing them.

vincecontix.1264:

glock.6590:

No offense but you shouldnt be wasting your skills on a acro thief or anything with perma vigor.

Yes you can random dodge alot with acro but its also your fault for not landing your skills at the right time.

Its like saying D/P has too much blind when in reality its the person that fights the D/P thief that dosent use his skills correctly.

This^^ thief survivability is not op there is no need to Nerf it. Its also one of the classes that require more skill to be successful no need to make things harder. Fg is one of the main reasons to go into trickery we should be advocating for more options not reducing them.

I think FG is the only reason to go into trickery

yolo swaggins.2570:

Question: Why does the thief need to add more skill into it’s gameplay?

It is the most noob-unfriendly class in the game, useless in most situations unless the player is very good and giving it “more skill to play” is only going to drive it deeper into the gutter its already in. The profession has enough skill, now give it some DIVERSITY.

Yes, thank you, someone else that thinks the same thing.

Maugetarr.6823:

Well if they’re spamming dodges in a fight, they’re most likely going to get the endurance back anyway as they avoid an autoattack. The result will be the same. If dodges are truly being spammed, they won’t have the endurance to dodge the big attacks, just as they wouldn’t before.

This would however affect using dodges to reposition which is one of the benefits of traiting D/D into acrobatics

^ Yeah pretty much this. In terms of combat the suggestion (giving back 15) wont really effect anything aside from repositioning.

If anything it will harm the thief outside of combat, in terms of mobility/running distances.

Shockwave.1230:

This trait is so powerful it’s astonishing. It effectively reduces the cooldown of dodges by 30%. It’s effect is even stronger with vigor.

If you look at something comparable, such as ability cooldowns you get a range from 15-30% (usually 20%), but those effects can’t be stacked with anything.

The purpose of Feline Grace is to give Thieves one extra dodge. Since vigor has the same effect to everyone else, this is working as intended.

The reason why this seems to be perceived as “powerful” is the fact that Thieve’s are made squishy that one mistake will break the Thief.

What needs nerfing is the damage output. An agile profession should not be able to deal massive damage using one skill. The mechanics behind GW’s Assassin and WoW’s Rogue classes is the best fit for an agile profession where the former requires to land lead and off-hand attack before the massive dual attack and the latter requires to build combo points for a massive damage. A big damage backstab without setup is just wrong IMO. This is why traits like Feline Grace are receiving hate.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

What needs nerfing is the damage output. An agile profession should not be able to deal massive damage using one skill.

My autoattack hits for something between 480 and 1480. If I want to backstab I have to use some other skills – not sure your point is that valid. Besides, other classes are able to deal that much damage with using “one skill” and are as agile as thief.
Edit: And well, not every thief is a backstab thief, especially not those using the acrobatics line.

Jana.6831:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

What needs nerfing is the damage output. An agile profession should not be able to deal massive damage using one skill.

My autoattack hits for something between 480 and 1480. If I want to backstab I have to use some other skills – not sure your point is that valid. Besides, other classes are able to deal that much damage with using “one skill” and are as agile as thief.
Edit: And well, not every thief is a backstab thief, especially not those using the acrobatics line.

She does bring up some good points…
Although there’s no solid markers (be it combo-points, or must use off-hand attack before dual), you do need to enter stealth in order to backstab, though there are many options on how to enter stealth. (will you spend some points to try a CnD, or blow your heal? or maybe a utility skill)
I would say eviscerate doing as much damage (and more) without having as strict of a requirement as backstab. Backstab: enter stealth, position behind target. Eviscerate: build up adrenaline (if you aren’t it probably means you’re not attacking, and that’s a bigger issue). Though people can retaliate by saying it’s a class mechanic and that it still requires a bit of set up (getting adrenaline) and that stealth (STEALTHZORS!!!) contributes on it’s own when trying to set up for the backstab.
:P There’s probably a better example of a skills that requires no setup and does the same/more damage as backstab.

:/ Though yeah, I liked how gw1 assassin functioned (even though it too got hit by the nerf bat about a million times).

lol acrobatic backstabbing thieves, that just sounds funny. (Imagining a jester-like character doing a backflip over it’s victim and then backstabbing them)

mango.9267:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Question: Why does the thief need to add more skill into it’s gameplay?

It is the most noob-unfriendly class in the game, useless in most situations unless the player is very good and giving it “more skill to play” is only going to drive it deeper into the gutter its already in. The profession has enough skill, now give it some DIVERSITY.

Well, it’s never a bad thing to promote skillful play, and 20066 S/D isn’t that difficult to pick up. I think that if feline grace were nerfed to only return endurance on successful evade, it should also be compensated with something like 1 stack of might on successful evade. This way, dodges are used more sparingly, the trait gives you more on evade, and you get some additional sustain because you can now take assassin’s reward over power of inertia.

No. Add as much skill as you want, it is not going to change anything except player’s distaste for playing the class.

It is completely amazing how adamant people are when it comes to pointing fingers at a single class that kills them all of the time. Thanks to the wonderful community, they’ve brought the thief and profession balance forums some creatively veiled threads like “Promoting skillful play”, “Fixing exploits”, “No viable counterplay”.

Thing is they all lead back to one thing: “Thief killed me. I want blood.”. The only ones who fall for those masks are the ignorant.

Okay. Remove Feline Grace.
Give 3 seconds Protection Boon upon dodge roll.

Tao.5096:

Okay. Remove Feline Grace.
Give 3 seconds Protection Boon upon dodge roll.

That’s against the class mechanic of a thief. You’re not supposed to facetank attacks with protection but avoid them with stealth or dodge.

Who cares?
Someone in some other thread has already stated how Balance looks like.

5 nerfs for thief
1 power up for other classes

And they still struggle vs thief.
Now look.
Omfg Thief dodge roll.
Sure, remove it and give it Protection Boon.
Soon they’ll complain about it too but whatever.

I bet 80% of those whiners did roll a thief to feel OP.
But reality did faceroll them with mud on every corner they went.
So they went back/made other class which is tanky.
And look now. They fail vs the same class that they did quit due to easy roflstomp.
So now they ask for some stupid nerfs, because oh hey, they cba to learn how to fight thief class, and even if they wanted to play it, they cba to learn to play it.

Anet really should stop carrying lazy scrubs who only keep whining and whining.

Tao.5096:

Okay. Remove Feline Grace.
Give 3 seconds Protection Boon upon dodge roll.

We’re not rangers :

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Companion%27s_Defense

yolo swaggins.2570:

mango.9267:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Question: Why does the thief need to add more skill into it’s gameplay?

It is the most noob-unfriendly class in the game, useless in most situations unless the player is very good and giving it “more skill to play” is only going to drive it deeper into the gutter its already in. The profession has enough skill, now give it some DIVERSITY.

Well, it’s never a bad thing to promote skillful play, and 20066 S/D isn’t that difficult to pick up. I think that if feline grace were nerfed to only return endurance on successful evade, it should also be compensated with something like 1 stack of might on successful evade. This way, dodges are used more sparingly, the trait gives you more on evade, and you get some additional sustain because you can now take assassin’s reward over power of inertia.

No. Add as much skill as you want, it is not going to change anything except player’s distaste for playing the class.

It is completely amazing how adamant people are when it comes to pointing fingers at a single class that kills them all of the time. Thanks to the wonderful community, they’ve brought the thief and profession balance forums some creatively veiled threads like “Promoting skillful play”, “Fixing exploits”, “No viable counterplay”.

Thing is they all lead back to one thing: “Thief killed me. I want blood.”. The only ones who fall for those masks are the ignorant.

Feels good to of quit this game lol.

I grew tire of trying to correct peoples horrific suggestions which had no benefit except for themselves. People should know by now straight nerfs are not healthy, and have done nothing but kitten off a lot of players.

Even if sometimes its just venting or over exaggeration, most people have valid points to be angry. What most people don’t seem to have are valid suggestions that make sense to anyone but themselves.

I guess keep fighting? Maybe there will be some collaboration between the dev’s and what the community wants for each class. Idk, I tried to hold out and I failed after 2.5 years :/

NinjaEd.3946:

yolo swaggins.2570:

mango.9267:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Question: Why does the thief need to add more skill into it’s gameplay?

It is the most noob-unfriendly class in the game, useless in most situations unless the player is very good and giving it “more skill to play” is only going to drive it deeper into the gutter its already in. The profession has enough skill, now give it some DIVERSITY.

Well, it’s never a bad thing to promote skillful play, and 20066 S/D isn’t that difficult to pick up. I think that if feline grace were nerfed to only return endurance on successful evade, it should also be compensated with something like 1 stack of might on successful evade. This way, dodges are used more sparingly, the trait gives you more on evade, and you get some additional sustain because you can now take assassin’s reward over power of inertia.

No. Add as much skill as you want, it is not going to change anything except player’s distaste for playing the class.

It is completely amazing how adamant people are when it comes to pointing fingers at a single class that kills them all of the time. Thanks to the wonderful community, they’ve brought the thief and profession balance forums some creatively veiled threads like “Promoting skillful play”, “Fixing exploits”, “No viable counterplay”.

Thing is they all lead back to one thing: “Thief killed me. I want blood.”. The only ones who fall for those masks are the ignorant.

Feels good to of quit this game lol.

I grew tire of trying to correct peoples horrific suggestions which had no benefit except for themselves. People should know by now straight nerfs are not healthy, and have done nothing but kitten off a lot of players.

Even if sometimes its just venting or over exaggeration, most people have valid points to be angry. What most people don’t seem to have are valid suggestions that make sense to anyone but themselves.

I guess keep fighting? Maybe there will be some collaboration between the dev’s and what the community wants for each class. Idk, I tried to hold out and I failed after 2.5 years :/

Lol you’re like me, except I still log in once or twice a day to flip on TP… working towards my legendary/precursor! It’s funny how much progress i’ve made after i started to play less.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

What needs nerfing is the damage output. An agile profession should not be able to deal massive damage using one skill. The mechanics behind GW’s Assassin and WoW’s Rogue classes is the best fit for an agile profession where the former requires to land lead and off-hand attack before the massive dual attack and the latter requires to build combo points for a massive damage. A big damage backstab without setup is just wrong IMO. This is why traits like Feline Grace are receiving hate.

For this to be taken seriously they need to fix celestial might stacking first. Besides there are many skills that deal high damage requiring little to effectively no to actually no setting up. A couple of death shroud auto attacks from a power necro? An eviscerate? Warrior hammer 2 with intelligence sigil? Telegraphed so what? DS auto is spammable (duh, it’s auto), and those warrior skills you need to dodge every single one among others on the set, while they only need to hit you once if you’re a thief and significant time gets added to the fight while you recover - that, or you just died or need to bail.

It’s not like it’s the strongest strike either. Sequences that take longer or more effort to put together hit higher, such as ranger’s maul with moment of clarity. Not only that, but it can hit multiple targets within range as opposed to just one.

Risk vs reward pffft. There’s plenty of risk when the opponent is tanked up to last the best part of a minute in a 1v1 while also able to hit as high as you. Who needs to focus on offensive stats when the attacker is glass... Something that always seems to be overlooked in these discussions.

Zero Day.2594:

Jana.6831:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

What needs nerfing is the damage output. An agile profession should not be able to deal massive damage using one skill.

~snip~

~snip~ you do need to enter stealth in order to backstab, though there are many options on how to enter stealth. (will you spend some points to try a CnD, or blow your heal? or maybe a utility skill)

We both know that CnD is not a reliable way to get in stealth due to the chances of missing and its cost. The problem is the existence of a skill that is both cost effective and without requiring a target — not to mention, it also place you in a good position for backstab.

I would say eviscerate doing as much damage (and more) without having as strict of a requirement as backstab.

More the reason why Thieves needs more survivability. The more survivability we have, the less we have to go on stealth, dodge, or evade. The less damage that backstab deals, the less we have to rely on it to deal damage.

Backstab: enter stealth, position behind target. Eviscerate: build up adrenaline (if you aren’t it probably means you’re not attacking, and that’s a bigger issue). Though people can retaliate by saying it’s a class mechanic and that it still requires a bit of set up (getting adrenaline) and that stealth (STEALTHZORS!!!) contributes on it’s own when trying to set up for the backstab.
:P There’s probably a better example of a skills that requires no setup and does the same/more damage as backstab.

That’s the thing. Every profession is just dealing more and more damage and it’s becoming that who ever gets the first hit wins. If the damages are toned down and the power building mechanics only ramp up during combat, we’ll have a much better combat experience. But if an Ele, a Warrior, or a Thief gets the first attack — the combat is pretty much over because they deal a large amount of damage in the first few seconds of the fight. That’s the main source of frustration, not having a chance to react to an ambush from them.

:/ Though yeah, I liked how gw1 assassin functioned (even though it too got hit by the nerf bat about a million times).

In the end though, I think it is where it should be. When Factions launched, I was one of the players who rolled Assassin because it was undeniably OP. Right now, you need to be more tactical and invest on defense and the builds that came out of it are very interesting. Also the secondary profession gave the classes a wide range of build possibilities.

lol acrobatic backstabbing thieves, that just sounds funny. (Imagining a jester-like character doing a backflip over it’s victim and then backstabbing them)

Sounds like an ex-girl-/boyfriend.

@Sir Vincent III.1286
Yeah, the underlining theme for the majority of QQ’s is essentially what you’re saying, not having a chance to fight/wanting a “fair” (chance to) fight. In a weird/extreme way thief is “balanced”, in the sense that it’s ambushing power, that you mention, is the reason for the overall squishiness/fault intolerance. And yet, many of us probably want an option/way to not be balanced by/because of the two extremes, in short build/role diversity.

And I think we’re sort of derailing this thread…

Zero Day.2594:

@Sir Vincent III.1286
Yeah, the underlining theme for the majority of QQ’s is essentially what you’re saying, not having a chance to fight/wanting a “fair” (chance to) fight. In a weird/extreme way thief is “balanced”, in the sense that it’s ambushing power, that you mention, is the reason for the overall squishiness/fault intolerance. And yet, many of us probably want an option/way to not be balanced by/because of the two extremes, in short build/role diversity.

That’s the main issue for a very long time now. It didn’t have to be that way. Like we always say in this forum, Anet needs to sit down and clearly define what they want Thieves to do. That way, it will eliminate all the QQs and we can suggest some things along that line.

The absence of the Thief’s purpose is what gives fuel to the QQs simply by making up their own definition on what role the Thief should perform. If the Thieves role is clearly defined, half of the QQs will not even have a ground to stand on because the profession is working as intended.

Of course, it is too much to ask when looking at the game as a whole seeing that they can’t even define what game they are developing, let alone hope that the Thief profession’s role will soon be defined.

And I think we’re sort of derailing this thread…

Nah, it’s all related. Our discussion rests upon the foundation that is the tears about Feline Grace.