Guild Wars 2

Hello guys, just wanted to give a quick suggestive fix, that I feel could potentially put Thieves back to where we were pre patch, and would appreciate opinions if possible

I feel as though this change to Thief should have an optional functionality played toward it, because as we know, this change was put in place to balance and counteract the new Grandmaster Shadow Arts Trait. Rendering Shade. I propose Anet simply devise a plan where anyone who wants to use Rendering Shade, gets penalized with this 1 sec ICD. While reverting the ICD back pre patch (7/26/16) to those people who are not using the trait.

I received great discussion and read many feelings on the other thread I created. I hope this thread can reciprocate that, and mirror the activity.

I would like to hear some feedback from you guys, please and thank you. Constructive criticism is welcome as well. What are your feelings on my suggestion?

Link to my other discussion driven thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/1s-ICD-for-Stealth-attacks/first

Link to Reddit post created by DeceiverX talking about the R.S suggestion I proposed:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4vpazy/pvpwvwfixing_thief_with_the_icd_on_stealth_skills/

Rendering Shade should steal life for each boon stolen IMO instead of the 10% damage reduction. The way boons are spammed now you can go full anti-boon thief and you’ll still never get that damage reduction.

Why not just revert the completely uncalled for and unnecessary nerf? This is getting ridiculous. Why people ask to soften the blow from nerf instead of completely reverting nerf that shouldn’t even happen?

Agreed with martin, the 1 sec ICD on stealth attacks wasn’t neccessary and is simply a failed attempt at nerfing D/P. If Anet don’t understand this already then I give up on the class. The nerf should not have happened, not in a million years.

That trait is such useless: 2 stolen boons with stealth attacks ( and you give us 1 sec ICD on them) and -10% dmg reduction if enemy has NO boons… here the funny thing: find out 1 single class who could fight without boons more than 1 sec; thief maybe? Or war? And the other classes whom we could have “problems” like druid, dragonhunter, scrapper, revenant, any tempest, any mesmer? Then If you chose Shadow Arts (instead of Deadly arts I guess), where the damage should came from?
10% damage reduction and these classes have perma boons, that makes this bonus useless. I rather roam with Shadow Rej at least…
I personally think that Anet give us some reworked kitten to cover them as “buffs” .
All venoms has been nerfed, they always have the SAME cooldown. Mesmers have seen a reduction (again, after the increase) of mantras for example…
Where Anet will bring us now?

Just comparing Rending Shade with Dash (both GM traits), shows you how little planning went into making this trait. Dash gives you whole new mechanic (longer dodge plus condi removal) and 10% reduced damage regardless of your enemy and you pretty much have full control over it. Rending Shade compared to this is minor trait at best.

The Thief class needs finally a bigger redesign to make all of its builds properly viable.

Especially this is needed so that all the traits of the thief get finally put into places, where the effects of the traits actually do make SENSE.
The trait setup of the thief class is sicne game release a complete utter mess with trait effects in places, where they make absolutely so sense and thus lead you to the problem, that you are forced to put points into traits to get specific traits, because certai ntraits are currently so mandatory for the overall thief to be at all meta worthy, that there exists basicsally absolutely no build diversity for this class.

Andthis problem can be fixed only be moving the traits to places, where they make sense, merging skilsl and traits together, that are already long overdue to be merged to make space for useful new traits and skilsl that could add more build diversity to the class, because of mandatory skilsl effects and traits becoming more baselined.

Then there are gameplay aspects liek the venoms, which should get comletely integrated into the whole gameplay of the thief and not be external utility skills by moving the Venom Gameplay into the F3 and F4 Slot,s so that thieves should always have 2 different venoms with them with that they can change out completely temporarely their gameplay to become more unpredictable and receive more strategetical broader gameplay choices in combat due to venoms changing more to all weapon skilsl , than addign only some kind of condition effect to a fw upcoming attacks.
Venoms should change the combat skilsl completely for the durations of the venoms.
Yes, that would mean givign thieves more skills, but thats exactly what this class needs to get more build diversity together with more flexible traits.

But thats just one half of the medal that needs to be doen for better balance…

The other half of the medal is that the Condition System needs a heavy rebalance and reduction of Conditions as also a reduction of Boons.
This game has by now way too many conditions and boons. It would do this game really good, if ANet would reduce the amount of boons and conditions by at least 33-50% through mergings.

Thus would become boons and conditions more meaningful, whil at the same time this change would mean a performance boost for the game, because the game woudl have to calculate then alot lesser boons and conditions per second in combat = alot lesser LAGs

The base health value system needs also finalyl a redesign, its an old system that was designed after the game balancestate of 2012!!!!!! when the game was fresh released and by far hand’t all this power creep that the game has now.
The health system needs finally a redesign to let it reflect also all the other changes of balance that this game received over the last nearly 4 years, so that Thieves receive finally a proper increase in max health to at least the state of rangers/mesmers, so that their new max health values are better balanced towards the current game balance where everything by now hits alot harder and deals quicker damage, than anythign did back in 2012!!!
A change, from that not only thieves would proofitate from, its just a neccessary long overdue change that should have been done already back on the patch of 23rd of july last year when all this condition crap power creep began with the massive changes in the condition system without doing any proper changes to ensure to keep the condition system under control… but literally anet did since then absolutely nothign to keep the condition system under control until today., and the introductino later of the elite specializations without fixing first the massive power creep that came from the condition changes made everythign after that point just worser…

So more is it finally needed, that Anet takes finalyl also the old systems that take part in the combat system into consideration finally to fix them and improve them properly to the current game balance state to get first again the condition system under control.

That will help then also in return the thief to balance them better, because thieves are still together with engineers one of the very worst classes in regard of condition removal, unless you play a SA build with lots of stealth and sigils nd equipment runes that help you in receiving additional passive condi removals, which means naturally to more the condition system is out of control, so harder hits it naturally the classes that are terrible agaisnt condition spam to survive agaisnt condi builds, which are already from begin on brain dead gameplay builds, because condi builds require no player skills, when a gameplay mechanism just automatically deals secondly damage for you ignorign all enemy defense, compared to a direct damage build that requires player skills to actually deal significant damage, where no automatic mechanics deal damage for you, regardless if you hitted the enemy or not …

Thats where I think that condi damage needs to get nerfed, condi damage hsould never be more effective than direct damage. conditions should SUPPLEMENT diract damage, but it should never become superior to direct damage.
The moment where condition damage deals alot more DPS, that direct damage, is when a game balance of a game runs completely out of control!!!

Conditions should change combats to your favor, they should never win for you automatically the combat without that you need to do something and just watch your foe dieing from all the d.o.t.s or completely shuttign your enemy down, because of so many reactive dots like confusion, torment, retaliation ect that if you do something, that you literally kill yourself instantly …

Logn story short.. it is simply not done with it with making changes on the thief class only, to balance the class. There need to happen first alot of other overall combat system rebalancings first to sett the required foundation under which the thief class can actually get balanced.

As long the condition/boon & health systems stay so heavily unbalanced, so long can make Net as many changes on the thiewf class as they want, they class will always stay not balanced and that not to our favor.

Thief is among the Ranger and Revenant class currently the only clas,s which requires badly to get completely redesigned from scratch.

These 3 have all somethign in common that would make it possible to merge them 3 theoretically together into 1 class and turn Thief , Ranger and revenant into basically elite specializations, because the revenant has gameplay mchanics, that should rather belogn to the Thief, both thief and Ranger were originally the only trapper classes, both the only classes that use shortbows

both ranger and thief have gameplay mechanics that need to get redesigned.. in case of the theif its its complete trait design.. in case of the ranger it is its complete pet gameplay design and control mechanics of pets which is lackign since game release date until today and until today one of its biggest criticism points that never has been fixed by anet, exepct that thsy fixed finally after nearly four years the naming problem of pets (wow)

Theres this concept postign from kaseigiX or how his username here was exactly again which I keep in my mind, which is something where I wbeleive, thats the way into which the thief traits and the gameplay should get changed to to make the thief conceptually as like in terms of gameplay again viable and fitting in regard of one would expect under a thief, what they should do.

• Stealing (alot Boon Stealing included, Disarming Enemies stoppign them temporarely from using Weapon Skills or weakening Attributes by stealing temporarely Enemy Equipment for the time that combat is active)
• Trapping (including Trap Removal and seeing enemy traps, as thieves should have sense for them to make thieves the natural counter class to trapper builds, including especially DHs!!)
• Venoms as integral part of the whole thief gameplay without that players have to waste utility slots for them, they hsould become part of ther F-Button gameplay to temporarely change their weapon skills sets out in cobmat based on which venom you use, while a baselined venomous aura gives your allies periodically in your near condition effects to improve this way the group support of thieves.

Mobility (Thieves should be the absolute fastest moving class, they have way too less access to Super Speed, they need to get eithr baelined or as trait an effect ,that turns automatically all Swiftness they receive into Super Speed) As long as warriors in *heavy armors with nike coward runaway build can easily outrun a thief, this game isn’t balanced as long this is the case… shadow steps need to be increased more into the overall gameplay of the thief to make them faster moving especially in combat to switch faster between targets and to avoid beign hit through shadow stepping to an other location nearby. (call it Flash Dodges – passive dodges that cost no endurance and move to to an other position that you have marked previously)

Brief said, the thief class has alot of wasted potential that anet could make still use of to make this class alot more fun to play by giving it finally the gameplay elements, one woudl expect from a thief, what a thief should be able to do in combat.

For a Thief Class, we “steal” way too less in combat, we are too unflexible currently, react too slowly to incoming attacks and can’t sense the thing, which we should be able to see and sense, because removing traps is a thief’s daily bread and butter!!!

If Rending Shade works like the other boon stealing on a thief, it is almost pointless in the current meta. The crap that typically kills begins and ends with might stacks.

Problem is the order of boon stealing is fixed. Fury, might, resistance and quickness are near the end of the priority list so when something with 15 might stacks gets near a thief the chances of actually stealing it are very slim.

Even then when we steal it we only get 1 stack regardless of how many they have.

Straegen.2938:

If Rending Shade works like the other boon stealing on a thief, it is almost pointless in the current meta. The crap that typically kills begins and ends with might stacks.

Problem is the order of boon stealing is fixed. Fury, might, resistance and quickness are near the end of the priority list so when something with 15 might stacks gets near a thief the chances of actually stealing it are very slim.

Even then when we steal it we only get 1 stack regardless of how many they have.

The trait itself is bad, too, even if boons weren’t so easily-applied. The boon rip won’t happen because the stealth attack won’t happen.

Ok where do people get the notion from that the one second ICD on a stealth attack was there due to Rending Shade? If a devv mentioned this it makes little sense to me.

If I was worried about rending shade stealing too many boons I would put the ICD on the trait itself.

Next this is very underwhelming as a GM trait and in particular the seond part of the trait. The Boon rip can be ok and whether or not two is enough or it should be three warrants further testing but having played with this for some time the second part , that 10 percent damage mitigation , rarely kicks in.

The difference between a person having zero boons on them or one is just too great and having one single boon far too easy. One boon turns this partof skill off.

I would suggest this change given in two versions.

1>Take 1.5 percent less physical damage per boon on you.

This rewards boon theft and makes it more worthwhile using. Given there 10 boons that can be stolen it means 15 percent damage mitigation tops which is still less then what a lot of other classes get with various skills and traits.

2>Take 1 percent less Physical and condition damage per Boon on you.

The percentage less but it covers both condition and physical damage.

Both this variants also act not to force a person to take trickery. If you want ten percent mitigation in current version you are all but forced into trickery and even that will not keep all boons off for any length of time. With this you can skip trickery and rely on the boons you steal via this trait plush those that are self cast for mitigation.

stop ignoring that double Surprise Shot was a problem

The point is: the currently setup is really really far from the one pre 6/23 last year patch. Previously, playing a different setup had a sense: D/D, D/p , S/D offered to you more playstyle; every single build offered a different things (the old 0/6/6/2/0 or 2/6/6/0/0 just to have an example)… Now you are forced to play always the same build, same gear, and the last patch seen d/d useless more than ever.
Thief needs to be as the pre 6/23 patch to be competitive. Previously Acrobatics had a sense, but now it’s such useless.
And this new trait on SA explain how Anet is cheating on us on regard.