Guild Wars 2

Having spent the majority of the past year in GW2 learning to play thief, mostly in pvp, I’ve tried to summarize why many people view Thieves to be under powered in comparison to other classes. It is my personal belief that the following points are the direct reasons as to why Thieves in PvP (and likely relates to WvW and PvE in a similar fashion) perform worse in general than other classes. Just a precursor before I continue: I do not know every build or every class well, so I chose to analyze class differences through traits and skills for comparison in the first part of this post.

Defensive boons and Mechanics

The first point I’d like to make has to do with trait, skill, and class mechanic access to certain boons and mechanics; this includes protection, retaliation, might stacking, stability, and invulnerability (both direct and full immunity) access. This summary of mechanics access excludes weapon skills, as this is a whole issue in itself for Thief.

Classes with access to protection directly: Every class but Thief

Classes with access to retaliation directly: Every class but Thief and Ranger

Classes with sustainable might stacking: Every class but Thief, Guardian*, and Mesmer*

Classes with access to full immunities: Guardian, Mesmer, and Elementalist

Classes with access to direct damage Immunity: All classes but Thief and Necromancer

Combined stability access (traits and skills): Warrior 5x, Mesmer 2x, Ranger 4x, Engineer 5x, Revenant 3x, Thief 1x, Necromancer 6x, Guardian 5x, Elementalist 6x

Conclusions:

Thief has no direct access to protection or retaliation. Thief has the worst access to stability and is forced into doing so through an elite skill on a 90 sec cooldown that is likely to get you killed; this skill also conflicts with the new DD mechanics being loaded into dodge skills. Thief has no viable way of might stacking without wasting all utility slots and giving up defensive cooldowns. Thief has no immunities, and have just recently recieved a single means of blocking that may be beneficial or may get you killed thanks to the way the skill works.

Before all you thief haters rageslam your keyboard saying that thieves have tons of stealth access, please think about the following. Revealead exists as a self regulating mechanic in combat and now several classes have means to reveal a stealthed player. Many of the classes that excel in pvp or at the very least in conquest (the majority of pvp) have high point contention and multiple ground targeted aoe’s that will rip apart any stealthed player. The shadow arts and acrobatics line of traits have been continuously nerfed since release in terms of a Thieves defensive buffs when using stealth; most notably less and less useful condi clear, a huge nerf to damage reduction while in stealth 50% down to 25%, and normally no way to access the +50% movement speed in stealth because devs enforce this must be in the acrobatics line (a line that has since been gutted to make way for the DD traitline). In general when I find myself trying to stealth for defensive reasons, 50% of the time I’m spammed to death by auto attacks and or aoe spells in both 1v1s and group fights. In sPvP I find stealth to be a very poor defensive mechanic, and find it far more useful for offensive purposes.

Now where does this leave Thief?

- Worst boon access in the game; no viable celestial build, but I don’t mind as I believe celestial might stacking builds are a plague and cause meta stagnation within GW2 pvp.

- Smallest HP pool (alongside guardian and ele) with medium armor and no protection access which allows for huge damage mitigation; effectively the weakest stat based class in terms of defense.

- Worst passive/active defensive mechanics; bad dodges punish the player while every other class with immunities and good defensive mechanic access can just pop skills and make up for mistakes. Meanwhile a Thief player is punished and often one shot when a mistake is made.

- Hybrid weapon sets that function best 9/10 for power based builds, leading to no truly viable condi build for pvp. Another contributing factor is bleed and poison are the main condis a thief can apply, both of which are the poorest scaling conditions (I exclude confusion and agony as they have passive and active dmg which in turn make them more useful than bleeding and posion in terms of straight damage). There is also little access to more than 3 condis at a time, making any players condi clear extremely effective at shutting down condi Thieves. Strong condi builds generally have access to burning, which imo needs to be put in line with other conditions in terms of damage. Venoms leave you with no defensive skills if you want more condition access. The list really just goes on and on for this part…

- Worst passive aoe and ranged aoe in the game. With the removal of ricochet and the nerfs to choking gas, there are no means to safe ranged aoe damage in pvp for a Thief. Thieves are also outranged by almost every classes when it comes to ranged combat.

- Initiative. There are a lot of benefits and drawbacks to a resource managed class. My biggest issue with this is that this severely limits the potential of certain skills due to the possible nature of spamming them if you have the initiative; some notable skills here include body shot, choking gas, headshot, and pistol whip, all of which have severe drawbacks in terms of damage or negative effects such as the root on pistol whip (meanwhile mesmer gets a secondary effect of being invulnerable…). On the flip side initiative allows thieves to be incredibly bursty in perfect scenarios. A system such as initiative is honestly a very delicate one, and I’ll admit it is far from easy to balance being so far in to a developed and functional game.

- Useless utility skill categories. I find signets, traps and venoms to be almost useless in pvp. Most signet active effects are very poor and are often outweighed by similar trick and deception skills. Linear traps are much harder to use than Ranger and DH counterparts, they offer no real damage outside of the ambush trap (trapper trait for might is outweighed by a power based build that needs mobility, stun break, and condi clear to surive), and don’t really provide a secondary bonus unless traited. Venoms are bad, and in all honesty they need a redesign as do the traits relating to them (I will expand upon this later in this thread). Utilities such as this and Thieves innate lack of defensive boons/immunities shoe horn players into rolling 3/3 stunbreaks, mobility, and condi clear utilities.

Now, if you’ve made it through the post so far, I hope you can begin to see as to why Thieves really have a lot of core class issues and also why the sheer number of them make it incredibly hard for devs to actually change much without a huge redesign. What can we make of all this, and what can I/we personally suggest?

Short term/simple general solutions:

- Grant trait or skill access to defensive boons

- Ranged weapon buffs to improve aoe damage through traits or base weapon

- Increase base HP to be inline with other medium armor classes

- Add secondary functionality that is universal for Thieves of any spec to Traps and Venoms; i.e. stun breaks, boons and so on (that are strictly not through traits, as the current traits that grant might on traps/signets/venoms are always left in the dust for another, better trait or traitline).

Long term/Large redesign solutions:

- Redesign venoms* (see explanation in the next section)

- Major overhaul of Acrobatics, Shadow arts, and Critical strikes lines to accommodate possible skill and weapon redesigns as well as better functionality over; removal of useless traits such as guarded initiation, trap mastery, might on signet activate etc…

- Redesign/modify weapon sets to create a more definitive weapon set for condition based builds.

- Redesign of traitlines for a form of self might stacking like other classes, or remove the ridiculous amount of self might stacking classes such as engineer, necro, ele, and ranger can apply. CELESTIAL BUILDS ARE THE PLAGUE OF PVP, why else do you think we see these classes performing best in general in pvp.

- Remove/redesign duplicate traits. Specfically Deadly Trapper, Signets of Power, and Leeching Venoms. Seriously Anet?! Three traits that do the same exact thing, and 3 traits that are never taken in pvp, pve, or wvw because Thieves are shoehorned into 3/3 defensive utility skills the majority of the time.

- Remove Celestial amulet from sPvP thumbs up; for the sake of role differentiation and promoting a more healthy style of pvp in conquest mode.

Specific changes/suggestions

- Venoms and Shadow Arts Traits. First off, basilisk venom is not worth an elite utility slot when venoms can be consumed on dodge/blind and due to the nature of hitting with multiple attacks at the same time, be consumed back to back for a minimized duration. It is also not worth an elite utility slot and cast time when necromancers chilled to the bone exists; base cc, dmg, and chill… Make it a single stack and increase the stone duration to 2-3 seconds flat.

Again I ask why is it that that venoms are consumed on a dodged or blinded attack when logically you aren’t actually hitting your enemy? Venoms should only be consumed on connecting an attack or when hitting an opponent that is blocking, not under any other circumstances.

Venoms desperately need secondary affects as with Thieves current lack of defensive boons and immunities, will almost always slot a trick or deception skill over a venom out of necessity. A viable means of accomplishing this could be by replacing the Venomous Aura trait with a new trait such as “Mutated Injection”.

Mutated Injection – “Flavor text here about being continuously exposed to venoms and so on…” The Thief also injects the activated venom granting might (moving the might from Leeching venoms trait to the new grandmaster) and secondary effects to the thief; here devs could decide which buffs best fits with each venom: cc break, quickness, protection, regen and so on for each individual venom.

To still make use of Leeching Venoms and Venomous Aura, the two traits could be combined into a new trait that still provides the aura and life leech without granting might as a master level trait.

That’s all for now folks, please leave your comments, opinions and suggestions.

Sadly, the longer I’m around here, the less I believe the Thief is going to get fixed any time soon… unless you mean “fixed” in the way that dogs get fixed. I would say that I am losing faith, but I have no faith. Unless the devs are secretly overhauling the Thief behind the scenes, I just don’t see it happening, sadly. If they were doing it any other way, then you would see simple things like Withdraw’s healing increasing 10% in one of these small patches. We are literally talking ONE number in ONE line of code… or perhaps two numbers if you count the Healing Power coefficient.

Unfortunately, virtually every change AFTER June 23rd has been negative for the Thief. Yeah, 3 of 10 pistol skills got a damage increase, but all 10 got their range reduced. Improvisation can reset Physical skills now, but that’s a double-edged sword in itself. In fact, the ONLY truly positive thing I can think of is Death Blossom’s evade duration increase.

By the way, let’s not forget about the extinction of Vampire runes. The Thief was the one profession that needed them the most for survival.

AegisFLCL.7623:

Thief has no viable way of might stacking without wasting all utility slots and giving up defensive cooldowns.

- Redesign of traitlines for a form of self might stacking like other classes

I think Might stacking would go a long way for the Thief. It could allow us to start taking Vitality and Toughness gear so we can survive without losing all of our damage output. And it would also allow Glass Cannons to actually hit like Glass cannons should!

As in my Of Shadow and Flame post, as much as I dislike the Shortbow, I say add a Fire Field on Cluster Bomb (or Detonate Cluster) even if it’s only for one second. Let it self-combo just as Black Powder does.

It takes half a second to shoot a Cluster Bomb. It also costs 3 initiative. Plus, it takes time to actually hit the ground (depending on distance). Yes, we can “spam it,” but it takes time to max it on ourselves and depletes all of our initiative. It can be used for ranged team support, but getting Cluster Bombs downrange can be SLOW.

EDIT:
Unless I’m mistaken, it will take 9 Blast Finishers to reach 25 stacks of Might with a Fire Field.

9 Cluster Bombs = 27 initiative

27 – 15 (initial initiative) = 12 initiative = +12 seconds of recharge

In other words, stacking Might will take significant effort and time, and even when completed, the Thief is left with no initiative and probably about 5 seconds (or less) of a full 25 stacks of Might. To reduce the time required to stack, you’ll have to start traiting or using/slotting utilities to do so.

It would be really cool if they gave Acrobatics some sort of identity, such as granting boons and increasing the duration of boons! They could even have a trait where we were granted a single stack of Might when we use a dodge. They could call it Power of Inertia or something like that!

I strongly believe a minor acrobatics trait should give stability off dodging or something of the sorts.

As far as might stacking is concerned I think mixing might with entering and leaving stealth could be interesting rather than just spamming blasts in a fire field. I’d rather have a more rewarding means of getting the might stacks; amazes me you can toss pots and spam flamethrower on engi and spam attacks on a necro and get 25 stacks of might without a problem.

I think some access to protection would be a huge turn around in the current meta as a very very simple fix.

The issue at hand is that there is so much to change to really make Thief all around better and address everything; basically redesigning the core class and I just don’t think they’ll dedicate the man power to doing so.

Oh! And THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS AEGIS! This is a fantastic and comprehensive summary of current Thief issues and I hope if someone takes the time to see what players think about Thief and GW2 in general, they’ll read this.

I just hate how thief Traps are the only Traps you have to actually lure people into, and there the only ones that aren’t worth it. I know we won’t get a rework, but a nice bandaid would be dropping the trap slightly in front of you, so its more consistent when you’re already in melee range. Other than that I’d love ground targeted caltrops, and it seems like a no brainer to put some protection into the acro line, for instance at the end of a roll, or whenever you drop below 75%.

Pretty accurate.

Overall a great post but you forgot one thing the fact that backstab deals very average damage compared to a lot of other classes abilities for example ALL of scrappers hammer abilities except for the auto attack deals more damage and dragon hunter has a short cd attack like 2sec that hits harder. I think they should up the damage by a bit and maybe give it a little utility if you could get like 8k Crits with it regularly in pvp with a marauder amulet that would be nice since we can only use it every 4sec and we need to line it up too. Sry if my English isn’t the best it’s not my native language

Great post, thank you for putting it together.

Reklaw.1496:

I just hate how thief Traps are the only Traps you have to actually lure people into, and there the only ones that aren’t worth it. I know we won’t get a rework, but a nice bandaid would be dropping the trap slightly in front of you, so its more consistent when you’re already in melee range. Other than that I’d love ground targeted caltrops, and it seems like a no brainer to put some protection into the acro line, for instance at the end of a roll, or whenever you drop below 75%.

To me the only trap that makes sense with linear coverage is Tripwire, all the other traps from a contextual view do not need to have the same linear format. This would at the very least help with them be more reliable.

As for acrobatics I agree. This traitline needs some love, and stability/protection based traits would be a great place to band-aid in some passive defenses that Thieves lack compared to every other class.

Felwal.9618:

Overall a great post but you forgot one thing the fact that backstab deals very average damage compared to a lot of other classes abilities for example ALL of scrappers hammer abilities except for the auto attack deals more damage and dragon hunter has a short cd attack like 2sec that hits harder. I think they should up the damage by a bit and maybe give it a little utility if you could get like 8k Crits with it regularly in pvp with a marauder amulet that would be nice since we can only use it every 4sec and we need to line it up too. Sry if my English isn’t the best it’s not my native language

I personally find that the damage off backstab is fairly balanced when running any power based build. I believe the bigger issue is the number of passive immunities, blocks, and blinds that other classes have; Mesmer blinds, ele blinds, guardian blinds, all passively proc and may often leave you out of stealth by the time you attempt to backstab a second time.

For power builds, Thief damage in pvp is actually fairly good in my opinion. What Thieves lack is the sustain to back up that damage. And to anyone thinking mobility with SB counters this and allows a thief to reset, try telling explaining to your team why you can never cap a point 1v1 even if there was no enemy player on the point when you were decapping; equally skilled players will always favor the class that is not thief in 1v1 scenarios.

Please keep the suggestions and ideas coming people. The fact that everyone’s ideas and suggestions exist in one thread make the chances of getting at the very least some changes much greater.

AegisFLCL.7623:

For power builds, Thief damage in pvp is actually fairly good in my opinion.

I can understand that if all of the different types of numbers were isolated. Unfortunately, they’re not. Just as you said that the Thief doesn’t have the sustain, that means that the offensive numbers aren’t properly balanced. Either the Thief’s sustainability needs to go up or the offensive ability does.

I’d be very happy to have a Thief that can sustain while putting out current numbers. But I would also be happy to have a Thief with the current sustainability that can hit much harder in order to offset the fragility.

Personally, I’d like to have the choice to build for balance between the two or focus all into one. But it would take more than just number increases. Like you said, there are too many passives out there that counteract us.

My only gripe is how misleading bounding dodger is (all that apparent height when, in reality, your basically moving along the ground).

Thank you for this post… so true. Thief is the most neglected class in the game and I don’t imagine that will ever change.

this is a saddeningly accurate post, but there’s one thing I’d add:

Weapons:

Thief has one of the smallest weapon pools in game short of Ele and Engi – who have mechanics to balance it (such as 4x skills per weapon, or 5-skill kits, far superior to our dual skills.)

Thief also has one of the least sensible condi/direct damage distribution across weapons. Shortbow, Dagger and Pistol all have a confusing mix of direct damage and damaging condition skills, leaving no clear choice on which way to build them. this leaves both sides a little short. (for example, theif dagger has 1 poison on the 3rd Auto attack. compare this to scepter on mesmer – torment torment clone, or on necro – bleed bleed poison.)

add on that none of these weapons provide passable AoE* (shortbow AoE is pretty bad) or range (capped at 900, the only class with no 1200 range now), and our weapon selection feels wanting.

*I mean actual clearly defined areas of effect. not melee cleaves.

Good stuff from the OP! Unfortunately, I think it’s a waste of time to deliver core Thief feedback at this point. People have tried every form, length, and tone of delivering feedback on the profession, and little to none of it has actually amounted to anything.

I was hoping that pre-HoT work on Daredevil would mean more developer attention on Thief and a chance of getting at least a few core issues looked at (like Robert Gee did for Mesmer, Necro, and Warrior), but the expansion is now out and that feedback was all ignored… as was feedback on the many broken things about Daredevil, for that matter.

tl;dr
Sadly, unless ANet actually solicts Thief feedback, I wouldn’t waste your time. It won’t get read, and it certainly won’t get acted on.

I applaud the OP for once again shedding light on what is causing the thief to suffer, but at this point I don’t really have any belief that:

1.) Thieves will receive a rework
2.) Players that do not play thief won’t cry in the event we get a rework.

Its like: we started off with all of these neat mechanics to devour people whole in 1v1, but gradually just had everything that made some inkling of sense removed. And now classes are getting reveals. invisible ones at that, in the case of dragonhunter, which is just a stupid counter to our only meager source of damage reduction in the game.

It’s whatever, really. There has to be one painfully difficult class for PVP to be ‘structured’. It would be very nice if a developer could sit down with mains, touch base with them and see what the general consensus was on gameplay and then implement the changes they request, while at the same time weeding out the “waaah, stealth so op!” from the players that dont know how to fight something they can’t see-

But I’m not holding my breath.

I knew what this was.

Rogue classes are never balanced. they start off strong and then end up being sandbags halfway into a MMO’s life. This was no different.

If a person is going to complain, this is the best way possible. Very good analysis that unfortunately will be ignored/unread by those that matter.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I applaud the OP for once again shedding light on what is causing the thief to suffer, but at this point I don’t really have any belief that:

1.) Thieves will receive a rework
2.) Players that do not play thief won’t cry in the event we get a rework.

Its like: we started off with all of these neat mechanics to devour people whole in 1v1, but gradually just had everything that made some inkling of sense removed. And now classes are getting reveals. invisible ones at that, in the case of dragonhunter, which is just a stupid counter to our only meager source of damage reduction in the game.

It’s whatever, really. There has to be one painfully difficult class for PVP to be ‘structured’. It would be very nice if a developer could sit down with mains, touch base with them and see what the general consensus was on gameplay and then implement the changes they request, while at the same time weeding out the “waaah, stealth so op!” from the players that dont know how to fight something they can’t see-

But I’m not holding my breath.

I knew what this was.

Rogue classes are never balanced. they start off strong and then end up being sandbags halfway into a MMO’s life. This was no different.

I believe if they want anyone to take the upcoming PvP Leagues seriously, they have to begin addressing these issues. If you’re going to put in place a more rigid ranking and rewards system you HAVE to address issues like this, otherwise it won’t be just Thieves crying about how terrible their class is, it will be everyone. I’m also well aware a lot of people do make threads expressing their dislike, not in the best way, but threads such as that will become even more widespread.

I honestly don’t think ANET understand’s the rough road they’re in for if they plan on such sparse quarterly balance changes in terms of community outcry. As they stated jokingly in regards to their plans for balance changes, “…In order to shake the meta up…”, don’t seem to be taking PvP very seriously. Want a good PvP system, dedicate the man power to a team who focus solely on PvP, live for GW2 PvP, and truly want to make it a better experience. Let their players know that this sort of “team” exists, and it will go a long way in helping stave off threads crying about this and that.

It’s very hard to know what goes on behind the scenes, and we may agree or disagree upon how things are executed. But the fact is a player may have a better idea than a developer, just like a better athlete will eventually come forward and eclipse the shadow of a previous star. If they’re going to ignore suggestions, ideas, and constructive criticism it is truly a shame, as it will only help them grow.

On the flip side, after the way they addressed and did consider feedback from the beta weekends, I have hope that our suggestions and ideas do get across in some form or another. The best thing we can do is stop crying, stop being sarcastic, and consolidate our efforts to really try to get something accomplished.

A short note, to people posting ideas in this thread I would like to edit them into the original post at some point as quotes (soon as I get a day with some more free time that is). The more suggestions here in one place the better. Keep it coming folks!

Bumping this.

Anet, you really need to give some sort of feedback to your player base. I stress once more, if you think having sPvP leagues was going to make players take your game more seriously, think again. If you do not address balance issues within PvP and provide community feedback in a timely fashion, no one will.

Communication is your friend, look at all the helpful and constructive feedback/changes that came from the BWE’s…