Guild Wars 2

I’m aware that this is a bit long-winded and does not necessarily provide any new ideas. However, coming from a Thief, I want to address a few problems thoroughly and hopefully simple and effective solutions to those problems in the current state of Thief and its interactions with stealth, reveal, and conditions. A TL;DR will be provided at the end if you so desire.

So, going into the expansion and where things seem like they might be adjusted, I wanted to bring some not-so new ideas to the table again and how I think they would fit in currently with the state of Thief.

I think by now anyone who reads the thief forums at all realize that there are plenty of issues with where Thief is right now, balance-wise in a PvP setting. Granted, a lot of it is exaggerated and there is certainly a lot of complaining for the sake of complaining, but at the end of the day, I don’t think anyone can doubt that a lot of other classes have gotten stronger with each balance patch while Thief has either stagnated or been hammered. I’m looking at you, Feline Grace.

Nevertheless, I do think that Thief isn’t necessarily in as bad of a spot as people might say. Thief has been given a lot of options in place of passive strength. It has access to some of the strongest mechanics such as stealth and shadowsteps.

The issue is, it seems like one thing in particular is no longer okay with the balance team, and that is stealth. With more and more reveal applications being tossed around, targeted and untargeted, it seems one of Thief’s main defensive mechanics is now eliminated against many classes. Scrapper, for example, has a low CD reveal that renders Shadow Refuge completely ineffective. Now, I know there are a lot of people out there that hate stealth and any time spent more than a few seconds is “camping”. But at the end of the day, the only two trait options given to thief including the Daredevil specialization defensively are evades and stealth.

If stealth becomes unviable against multiple classes, then all that’s left is evades. That in itself isn’t necessarily the end of the world. I used to play Acro thief before the specialization update. But I do think that the thief has always had the issue of relying on stealth if they didn’t choose Acro (now DD), and I think that’s one of the things that has landed the class in the situation it’s in right now.

Which is why first I bring up this old idea: Traits that are active in stealth are active while revealed. Shadow’s Rejuvenation healing is reduced by 50%.

Now I think this addresses two things. Against classes with no reveal, Shadow’s Rejuvenation is not as incredibly strong, which I’m aware is a complaint with the Shadow Arts line in general. It’ll take more time for a Thief to “reset” a fight, and invest more into doing so. On the other hand, a Thief running the Shadow Arts line is not completely shut down by one or two skills.

I know that the game isn’t balanced around duels, but for the sake of an example, I bring up a fight against a condition Engineer that I experienced a while back. They led with an Analyze (which a condi Engi has no reason to play other than to 1v1 a Thief) which applied 6 seconds of reveal, and then applied the standard conditions. Some were cleared with Shadowstep, but still multiple damaging conditions stuck. After 6 seconds, I tried a stealth, but along with Aim-Assisted Rocket and Lock-On, that was quickly removed and more damaging conditions were applied. In total, 12 seconds of reveal were applied, and with a health pool as low as a Thief’s, that’s more than enough time for conditions to kill.

Now I’m okay with Engineer being a difficult fight for Thief. It always has been for many. However, no other class is treated quite like this. With one instant skill and two passive traits, a Thief was killed by passive conditions and autoattacks. Something about that strikes me as not okay.

The Shadow Arts change would address that handily. Even given one of the consistent condition removals in the game (Shadow’s Embrace), it is still one of the few options that Thief has to remove conditions. With Shadow’s Embrace being active while revealed, a 12 second reveal is no longer a death sentence, but also doesn’t allow the thief to get the “drop” on someone (see: Meet the Scrapper: Engineer’s Elite Specialization).

This brings up conditions as a whole with regards to Thief. Since Thief has been given the lowest current health pool, damaging conditions are especially punishing in %health per tick terms. A few stacks of burning can kill a Thief without expending half of the applied duration.

Which brings me to my next idea: Escapist’s Absolution now removes one condition on dodge roll instead of a successful evade.

This makes the trait more reliable. Now, a thief can choose when to remove a condition rather than relying on the enemy to attack and then evade it. This prevents a single condition bomb and then not attacking again from killing a Daredevil, but to compensate, it will no longer trigger on weapon set evades.

Basically, I think that these two changes would make both reveal less devastating for stealth users, one of two defensive options for thief, and conditions from being as punishing on a class with the lowest possible health pool. I won’t comment on any other changes to thief as a whole, but these two issues are the most glaring problems in the state of Thief currently in my opinion.

TL;DR: Reveal and conditions are far too punishing for a Thief currently with its two defensive trait theme options.
Changes: Shadow’s Rejuvenation and Shadow’s Embrace now are active while revealed. Shadow’s Rejuvenation is 50% as effective.
Escapist’s Absolution now activates on dodge roll instead of all successful evades.

Thoughts? Issues?

Go away dude

you want to nerf shadows rejuvination which is one of our only good traits left.
have you seen druids healing ? and you want to nerf shadow’s rejuvenation.

The idea of replacing external reveal with “spotted” which allows the shadow arts line to function is better than your idea.

go away you are not helping the thief situations. Read my posts for good ideas to fix the thief

No, just no.
While I (and I think everyone who ever played thief) agree that our defensive aspects needs some serious work, the change you propose won’t work.
Maybe if Shadow’s Rejuvenation was 50% effective during revealed (but 100% during Stealth) then sure, I could agree with your proposed SA changes.

As for Escapist Absolution, I very much prefer it in the way it currently is. It rewards Skilful gameplay which aids in bringing back our old “high risk, high reward” shape. Besides, your proposition would actually nerf the access to condi cleanse by a lot.

So no.
Great that you’re thinking about ways of improving the thief class, but this won’t do.

acrobatics already has some interesting condi defense ideas. buff that instead to be our anti-condi line, give it some cool stuff. reward thieves in a way that doesn’t ask them to sit in stealth all day.

as for EA, i’d sooner remove the internal cooldown on it than make it on dodge, because at least then it would still be rewarding thoughtful play (and let’s face it, no one will just stop attacking a thief to keep them from condi clearing), but we all know that trait would be utterly broken with no ICD.

Vornollo.5182:

No, just no.
While I (and I think everyone who ever played thief) agree that our defensive aspects needs some serious work, the change you propose won’t work.
Maybe if Shadow’s Rejuvenation was 50% effective during revealed (but 100% during Stealth) then sure, I could agree with your proposed SA changes.

As for Escapist Absolution, I very much prefer it in the way it currently is. It rewards Skilful gameplay which aids in bringing back our old “high risk, high reward” shape. Besides, your proposition would actually nerf the access to condi cleanse by a lot.

So no.
Great that you’re thinking about ways of improving the thief class, but this won’t do.

My object isn’t really to ask for a nerf to Shadow’s Rejuvenation in general, but the fact is that Shadow’s Rejuvenation has historically been a point of contention among the people who complain about Thief. The main reason I suggested a 50% reduction is to prevent that from happening again. Besides, numbers can always be tweaked. If 50% is too weak, then 75% could work too. 100% in stealth and 50% out of stealth is also a viable option. That’s not really the important part. The important thing is that external Reveal application isn’t as devastating for a Thief using Stealth, especially in regards to Shadow’s Embrace.

I realize that the entire point of “on successful dodge” was to promote skilled gameplay, including the Feline Grace nerf, but given my point of “conditions are too punishing for a lowest-health class”, I would choose reliability over a short duration over more chances over a long duration. Given the tick damage of Burning and Confusion, I would still choose that unless more priority is put on those two conditions per successful dodge (as of now, Confusion seems to have lower priority than vulnerability).

Shadowscamp.8065:

It has access to some of the strongest mechanics such as stealth and shadowsteps.

It may be a matter of semantics here, but I kind of cringe when I hear things like Stealth and shadowstepping… or hiding and mobility general being called strong.

Yes, hiding and mobility are “strengths” of Thieves, in the perspective of that’s what they do well. But I would not consider them literally “strong.”

To me, “strong” suggests a matter of “force” or “opposition to force.” Or even the potential of such.

Sadly, the Thief is not relatively “strong” offensively (damage output and control). And it is downright “weak” defensively (absorbing or ignoring damage and control).

I know it’s a “word game,” but I really do wish people wouldn’t say something like, “the Thief is strong” just because it can decap and +1 faster than anybody else. Instead, I wish they would say, “the Thief is fast” or “the Thief is mobile.” It is a much more accurate statement… at least in my opinion.

And as for active defenses compared to passive defenses, I would argue that the Thief is “evasive” or “slippery.” So yes, “weak and evasive” seems to describe the Thief defensively.

On reveal effects are bad this has been discussed many times already you can receive infinite conditions or damage while revealed not the same for stealth if on revealed effects have to exist they have to be offensive. SRej is adept minor level unless you have a way to guarantee the heal only d/p can ever since CiS became a GM making the heal useless and inferior for the rest of the sets because they were all stronger than d/p :/ good move “dev”. So no nerfs are not needed especially now. For DD EA just needs to be a minor and heal on evade higher however it still remains a hindrance to Acro’s health.