Guild Wars 2

From the necromancer forums, a nice read:

JonathanSharp.7094:

So, quickly, on the design philosophy at play here (you can feel free to disagree, but this is what I feel):

We want the Thief to be the class that most “slips through your fingers”. Other classes like the Ele and Mes have some of it too (and rightly so), but if anyone is escaping a fight, that should be a slippery Thief.

The Necro, on the other hand, should be the dude you CANNOT get away from. It’s an attrition based class, so the idea is that if you lock horns w/ a necro, know what you’re getting into: you’re fighting a class that’s built for attrition. It can dot you, dps you, rip your boons, and severely hinder your movement. AND it also has the ability to soak up a lot of damage. So the longer the fight goes, the stronger the Necro should get. That’s the idea behind Death Shroud, but little escape ability.

So we don’t want that attrition class to also have great ways to escape. This used to be the case, and we felt the Necro was just too strong if it was great at attrition as well as movement/escape. We wanted the Necro to be more about attrition, and for other classes (Thief, Ele, Mes) to be more about escaping and mobility.

Hope that makes sense.

Whilst he didn’t say “thieves aren’t supposed to be bursty”, Arenanet’s design philosophy seems to edge more towards a character with many ways of escape, rather than the iconic phrase thrown about in the thief subforums, all too often “we’re supposed to be bursty like that!”

It’s up to interpretation. It means nothing if the thief doesn’t have some attack to do inbetween the initiation or the “escape”. Otherwise all it a thief would be is a class that runs away.

Some can argue burst dps IS a slippery thief. Use your skills quick before they can notice and react, then get out of there with all your skills used and a dead opponent, in other words, slippery. You don’t want to stay there doing condition damage. That isn’t slippery.

If you nerf the damage then whats the point of a “slippery” thief? To simply run away? A slippery thief requires some sort of dps burst to be slippery. That’s the whole point.

If you can drop 25 stacks of bleed and run away, I’d say that’s slippery. But that’s to counter your point about condition damage.

No, I don’t agree at all with what you said. A slippery thief would be one that impedes the opponent from delivering damage, just in the nick of time, every time. If I got blinded mid jump during my warrior’s burst attack, I’d think to myself, this guy is slippery! (actually I’d never use that word, but you get what I mean).

So yeah, in MY interpretation, been slippery has NOTHING to do with damage. All classes can do damage, that’s a given. A thief, going off Jonathan’s description, IMO, does not shine in dealing damage, but rather, in preventing others from dealing it.

Of course Thieves should be bursty. Thieves are all about the burst. This however is a tad bit excessive.

kKagari.6804:

From the necromancer forums, a nice read:

JonathanSharp.7094:

So, quickly, on the design philosophy at play here (you can feel free to disagree, but this is what I feel):

We want the Thief to be the class that most “slips through your fingers”. Other classes like the Ele and Mes have some of it too (and rightly so), but if anyone is escaping a fight, that should be a slippery Thief.

The Necro, on the other hand, should be the dude you CANNOT get away from. It’s an attrition based class, so the idea is that if you lock horns w/ a necro, know what you’re getting into: you’re fighting a class that’s built for attrition. It can dot you, dps you, rip your boons, and severely hinder your movement. AND it also has the ability to soak up a lot of damage. So the longer the fight goes, the stronger the Necro should get. That’s the idea behind Death Shroud, but little escape ability.

So we don’t want that attrition class to also have great ways to escape. This used to be the case, and we felt the Necro was just too strong if it was great at attrition as well as movement/escape. We wanted the Necro to be more about attrition, and for other classes (Thief, Ele, Mes) to be more about escaping and mobility.

Hope that makes sense.

Whilst he didn’t say “thieves aren’t supposed to be bursty”, Arenanet’s design philosophy seems to edge more towards a character with many ways of escape, rather than the iconic phrase thrown about in the thief subforums, all too often “we’re supposed to be bursty like that!”

I’m scratching my head at this one. He basically said the necro is supposed to be the one who can kill anything and thief is the one that should run away from everything… except for necro, because the necro should be able to kill him anyway. Now I assume the point is that the thief is stronger early in the battle and the necro is stronger later in the battle, but without front-loaded burst damage on a thief, that simply wouldn’t be the case.

kKagari.6804:

slippery has NOTHING to do with damage

This.

He wasn’t talking about dmg. He was talking about mobility.

That the Thief was intended a mobile profession (which he is), has nothing to do with the damage he is capable of dishing out.
I don’t get where you drew that connection from.

Besides that, a class can’t be nothing but slippery. What would that class do? Run until it’s reaching 80 and then run back?

Also slippery most often means actually doing a lot of dmg (not slippery means that, but the logical result of being slippery).
A slippery class can’t also be tanky like a rock.
A slippery class would be crap if it would start weak and get better over time of a fight (condition dmg), since it hasn’t the defense to stick around.

A slippery class has to burst out fast damage, and then, well, slip.. away.

I didn’t realize you could go anywhere and complete everything by just being mobile and evading and stealthing your way passed every end boss.

Asum.4960:

kKagari.6804:

slippery has NOTHING to do with damage

This.

He wasn’t talking about dmg. He was talking about mobility.

That the Thief was intended a mobile profession (which he is), has nothing to do with the damage he is capable of dishing out.
I don’t get where you drew that connection from.

Besides that, a class can’t be nothing but slippery. What would that class do? Run until it’s reaching 80 and then run back?

Also slippery most often means actually doing a lot of dmg (not slippery means that, but the logical result of being slippery).
A slippery class can’t also be tanky like a rock.
A slippery class would be crap if it would start weak and get better over time of a fight (condition dmg), since it hasn’t the defense to stick around.

A slippery class has to burst out fast damage, and then, well, slip.. away.

I don’t understand what you’re saying. You don’t know where I drew that connection from but you just drew the same connection in the bottom half of your post…I mean exactly what you mean, that a slippery thief without any real abilities besides condition damage doesn’t make sense. A thief doesn’t have the time to stay around and apply bleed, otherwise he isn’t slippery. The whole point of being slippery is to get in and do it fast, then get out, that’s why we have 25% passive signets, shadowstep, stealth.

frans.8092:

I didn’t realize you could go anywhere and complete everything by just being mobile and evading and stealthing your way passed every end boss.

There’s nothing left to discuss if you’re gonna be daft and presume I’m saying that the devs think thieves should do NO damage at all.

To clarify: In the statement about design philosophy, which may not be the one and only, nor conclusive statement, thieves are supposed to be slippery, which they are, but it does not state that they are supposed to deal the greatest chunk of damage in the shortest amount of time. Which they do. You don’t need to ‘slip away’ from corpses.

They win in DPS, they lose in DPM.

The point I’m trying to make it that everything, every last trait and every last skill is put into a chain that has a 1 second execution time and 60 second cooldow. Anyone out there can dodge twice in the time it takes to execute it, and it is avoidable if you know what you’re doing, and once you avoid it, then it’s over for the thief and you win because he’s got nothing left, skills exhausted, almost half the initiative gone, super low toughness, super low defense.

And it kind of makes sense if you think of it, do it quick and get out of there fast, that’s how I imagine one would be slippery, not using blind (which I find is minimally effective unless again OHK wonders, ie, another backstabbing thief)

“Other classes like the Ele and Mes have some of it too” Some of it? Seriously. Right now a Mesmer is 100% more slippery than a thief. Clones + stealth + 1s of vigor per crit? having played both to 80 there is no comparison.

Not only does the mesmer have more base hp, he approximately the same amount of stealth skills (prest/veil/decoy/mass invis(elite) vs C+D/blind. powder/shadow ref./hide in shadows(heal), shadow trap) he has better condition removal (null field for AOE condition and boon removal and an ethereal field, or arcane thievery for single target).

On the subject of dodging, thief has Feline Grace (15pt some endurance returned) Bount. theft (20 pt 15 sec of vigor) and vig. recovery (10 pt 10 sec of vigor upon heal);
mesmer has vig revelation (10pt 5 sec vigor upon shatter) and crit infusion(5 pt 1 sec of vigor upon crit).
I give this to the thief, but barely, since I find that with my mesmer wielding sword/focus/greatsword and having around 50% I have vigor up near constantly due to multihit skills. I dont have to use any utilities, or go any higher than 5 pts in the crit tree for this.

And then you have what I consider the clinching arguments for thief vs mesmer “slipperiness”.

1.-)Clones/phantasms. Whether you can instantly recognize them or not the matter is, you have to make a decision. That is DPS time lost immediately. Also at 1200 range, it isn’t easy telling a mesmer from his clones without utilising some of the bugs (i.e explorations star)

2.-)The mesmer does not, at all, have to spec defensively to gain most of these benefits. Clones/phantasms are always available to you. Some do massive damage (Iwarden/Iduelist come to mind) They can be shattered to cause more damage or daze, or distortion! So even when the mesmer is purely focused on evading you, he can still be dealing pretty good damage.

Right now, the only thing thief has, is burst. And to be perfectly honest, I’d rather play a warrior for that. Might take me a second longer to kill someone, but I get heavy armor, 80% more hp and 2 1200 range weapons, one single target one AoE.

Thief is currently best at: burst damage, Stealth (just barely) and perhaps dodging.

They do have 25% Mov. speed in a signet, which is genuinely amazing and is the one area where they certainly trump mesmer.

You can debate Blink/shadowstep/portal/traps etc… But overall I think mesmer is incredibly more survivable without even speccing for it, whilst thief has to invest heavily in survivability to compare.

Clearly this is just my opinion, but it is what I have found so far in my time with both classes having played 730 hours, 135 on mesmer 359 on thief. I also have an 80 guardian, and a 53 elementalist, in which I have found a class that with D/D plays much more like I hoped thief would, just without the stealth.

Sorry for the stupid length xD.

Doomdesire.9365:

They win in DPS, they lose in DPM.
The point I’m trying to make it that everything, every last trait and every last skill is put into a chain that has a 1 second execution time and 60 second cooldow.

You’re talking about a very specific build (based around haste I assume, because it’s one of the few utilities that actually has a 60 second CD, untraited) that is in no way the only way to deal very high burst damage.
And even in this build if you should choose to blow every single utility you have (which is in no way necessary to have good burst), you will still have enough initiative to cloak & dagger/backstab again for some very respectable damage or cloak & dagger/Hide in Shadows to stealth away.

There are classes that have to trait and build very specifically to do well in PvP, effectively kittening many of their other options; thief is not one of these classes.
On my thief I can choose to do an insane Alpha-strike, blowing everything I have (on semi-long cooldowns) or just as easily choose to do a very good Alpha-strike and still have plenty of utility/initiative left to slip away and/or slip in and out of the fight for quick bursts.

tl;dr: Making out like a thief’s only option is to blow everything and then hide for 60 seconds or die is facetious at best.

Hehe if what he is saying is true.. Who should then handle necroes? He says that necroes should dps, suck dmg, dot and get stronger the longer the fight last. Ehhh so with no burst what to do with the necroes.. Just flee xD think thief should be the hit’n’run.. Qucik dmg and CC and escape.

Thief is more ‘slippery’ from being able to spam C&D every 4 seconds to stay invisible almost 100% of the time and troll super hard.

Thief is also easier to escape with, thanks to the higher movement speed and short bow blink.

Mesmer is much more slippery when actually engaged in combat, between fast recharges on blinks and stealths and pooping clones everywhere.

Any of you ever played a condition death blossom spec with high toughness/healing and condition damage? Might, Swiftness and caltrops on dodge roll, heal on every single attack and death blossom counts as an evade. I’ve been playing this in sPvP, seen it played in tournaments and am soloing with it. It’s slippery as an eel since you do damage through evading damage and you can keep up 15+ stacks of bleed among with almost perma cripple.

I have no idea on how it works in WvWvW to be honest, but I doubt that being able to jump in and add 16 bleeds on aoe using evades and then slipping out again before they can react is a bad thing. Plus shortbow “2” adds a bleed and should be good for siege warfare, especially defence.

I totally agree with you, Thief is supposed to be a “goofy” sneak araund and fool araund, tricster.
But the gameplay clearly states its Assasin. Its propably because of the bad design : Taking aways the Assasin, and compliment it with Thief.

The only opponent I have real trouble with in pvp is necroes funnily enough, I stack about 20 bleed on them straight off the bat and all they do is go to their (something magnificent)/dagger weapon set and put all of them right back into my face, all while just being tough as hell. Tho warriors, burst rogues… even meditation guards fall as easy as anything else.

Then dont stack 20 bleeds on them straight off. Necros are meant to control and nullify conditions pretty easily.

Problem with that “slipperyness” is, that it is totally useless in a group pvp enviroment. You reach your slipperyness often with stealth and that means that the whole enemy group will just have 4 targets to kill isntead of 5 and can more easily spread or focus their dmg.
Not to mention that most slippery builds dont pack such a big punch, nor do thiefs debuff the enemy heavily.