Guild Wars 2

And here we are, the first set of results from the State of Thief held last week. Weapon skills were also talked about during this event but due to burn out those are not entirely complete and will be posted another time.

OML has also asked me to notify everyone that future SoTs will be held in the near future which will go into other parts of the thief profession so we get the entire profession covered. Details will be posted as we get them. Onto the post…

k u can post

Name: Serpent’s Touch
Rating: C
Comment: Second part of the trait doesn’t really do much.
Suggestion: No change recommended. 2s of poison is nothing and you are usually dead anyways. So it really doesn’t matter what happens to the second part.

Name: Dagger Training
Rating: F-
Comment: This trait is useless and redundant. 33% chance of doing 2s of poison on a weapon whose auto already poisons. 2 seconds of any condition can be countered by doing nothing. Unless the uptime was amazing the effect this trait provides will not make much of a difference in combat. This is why nobody will use it over Mug or Trapper’s Respite.
Suggestion: Extend the effect to all weapons, increase the poison inflicted to 6 seconds and then tack on a 1 second CD. That way this trait can be useful for most builds instead of builds that maximize poison (which are rare anyway).

Name: Mug
Rating: A+
Comment: This trait is nice even without it’s ability to crit. 2k healing is amazing for thieves given their low HP.
Suggestion: No change necessary.

Name: Trapper’s Respite
Rating: A
Comment: The trap is awesome and goes well with Deadly Trapper. Good for power builds and amazing for condition builds as you can place 2 needle traps in the world at the same time. Not overall amazing but it makes using healing skills a better choice.
Suggestion: No change necessary.

Name: Lotus Poison
Rating: A-
Comment: Overall good trait. Weakness would be a good addition to our defenses if only we had more access to it.
Suggestion: Reduce the CD to around 7-8 seconds.

Name: Deadly Trapper
Rating: A
Comment: It makes traps useable and goes great with Trapper’s Respite. Thanks Arenanet for getting traps out of their gutter.
Suggestion: No change necessary.

Name: Revealed Training
Rating: D+
Comment: While on reveal traits are nice this one doesn’t particularly help as much as we’d want. It is probably good in boosting the 2 spam of the 5122222 technique but since [Teef] is looking for diversity this trait needs to change.
Suggestion:Instead of 200 power, we recommend that we have protection for the duration of the reveal. Our reasoning for this decision is that with one of our two defense mechanics shut down that the protection would balance out the harsh counter Revealed provides and make Revealed an “OH ****!” button against thieves while not entirely screwing thieves over in the process. More on-revealed traits would be nice too so there is some sense of investment added to this trait.

Name: Panic Strike
Rating: A+
Comment: Good trait.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Exposed Weakness
Rating: A+
Comment: More damage is always good. And this goes into effect often given the nature of conditions.
Suggestion: No change necessary.

Name: Potent Poison
Rating: C-
Comment: With the lack of natural condition duration in this game (by natural I mean from traitlines) this trait is decent. But nobody will choose this over Improv or Executioner. The reason being is because the damage doesn’t provide anything and the condition duration while nice doesn’t compare with what the other two GMs bring.
Suggestion: Since we are talking about Poison, sometimes you get spasms. Sharp pains that sometimes make you stagger for a split second. In the spirit of those spasms, we suggest changing out the 10% damage for a 20% chance to interrupt channeling each second while the target is poisoned. This effect will also have a 5 second CD when it activates so it doesn’t make it impossible to channel anything while poisoned. This will add a little defense to thief via poison.

Name: Improvisation
Rating: A+
Comment: The only gripe we have is the RNG.
Suggestion: While we agreed that recharging 1 utility type in the utility bar would be our verdict, I feel that would be overpowered especially if you use all of a single type. So either 1 random skill on the utility bar recharges or no change.

Name: Executioner
Rating: A+
Comment: This trait is universally adored.
Suggestion: Increase damage to +100%. Jking no change needed.

Name: Keen Observer / Flawless Strike
Rating: C
Comment: Both of these traits are nice for min/maxing. However 1 hit and the effect is gone and that isn’t really useful at all considering thieves have a hard time maintaining even 50%.
Suggestion: 75% would give us some wiggle room and allow us to stack a little more HP for survival.

Name: Side Strike
Rating: C
Comment: While the crit rate boost is nice, it could be better.
Suggestion: Add an effect that counts flanking attacks as back attacks. This will add some utility to the trait and make backstabs and Tactical Strikes a little easier to land.

Name: Signets of Power
Rating: C+
Comment: While this does make some of our crappier signets more appealing it doesn’t negate the fact that a lot of our signets are situational.
Suggestion: We recommend that instead of might, that signet passives remain when the signet activates. This will make each signet useable.

• Assassin’s Signet suffers from it’s passive translating to the bonus it’s active applies to your attacks. It’s issue is that when you use it you lose the DPS after those kittens. With it’s passive remaining upon activation, the boost it provides will have a noticeable effect
• Signet of Malice has a decent passive while it’s active entirely sucks. The healing the active provides is puny aswell. With it’s active remaining during activation, SoM will become more of a choice when it comes to heals because the active will provide a small HP boost mid combat without the thief worrying about it’s sustain.
• I can’t say much about Infiltrator’s Signet. The passive sucks and the active is good. 1 ini every 10s all the time isn’t bad I guess.
• Signet of Shadows actually is decent for positioning and a decent “OH ****!” button when there is an oncoming attack. This however affect’s the thief’s ability to reposition and can screw over a thief that isn’t careful. Keeping its passive will aid in the thief’s survivability, even when activating it’s blind.

Name: Unrelenting Strikes
Rating: B+
Comment: This trait has good synergy with No Quarter.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Sundering Strikes
Rating: D+
Comment: This really does not work well anymore. It would’ve competed with Ankle Shots and Practiced Tolerance if it remained on hit instead of on critical hit.
Suggestion: Change it back to on hit.

Name: Practiced Tolerance
Rating: A+
Comment: Love the trait but the name is off.
Suggestion: Change it to “Practiced Ire”.

Name: Ankle Shots
Rating: D-
Comment: This trait simply sucks. It is really only good for p/p and even then only a half of it’s effects are beneficial.
Suggestion: While [Teef] agreed to reduce the CD for the cripple effect down to 3 seconds, I feel that also including SB in on this trait will give the weapon a little bit of the TLC its been needing for the past year.

Name: Ferocious Strikes
Rating: B
Comment: This trait is pretty good for a minor.
Suggestion: We figured that it could be better though and that adding another 5% wasn’t going to do much. A lot of our DPS gets outmatched by other professions as fights drag on so we feel that this small buff is a good idea.

Name: Hidden Killer
Rating: C+
Comment: Even if this trait doesn’t help us crit ALL the time, it is still a good trait. BUT it isn’t good enough to compete with No Quarter and Invigorating Precision.
Suggestion: Since, once again, our long term DPS tends to get outmatched by other professions we recommend that this also provides +50% damage to stealth attacks only. This way stealth skills like Tactical Strike, Surprise Shot and Sneak attack a little boost and see more use while not entirely overbuffing d/p. Also makes d/d compete a little better in this DPS race.

Name: Invigorating Precision
Rating: B-
Comment: While useful in pve, it is useless in pvp. Some players would like to see it used more.
Suggestion: We feel that another 5% isn’t going to hurt especially since thief survivability needs a little boost.

Name: No Quarter
Rating: A+
Comment: Permafury is awesome. Makes Valkyrie stats more worthwhile.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Merciful Ambush
Rating: D
Comment: The miniscule stealth and Revive Speed it provides really does not help. We still have to use Shadow Refuge to somewhat safely revive a player making this trait seem like a waste.
Suggestion:Instead of the 10% revive speed, we suggest that this trait allows us to stealth the downed player and ourselves and remain that way for the duration of the revive. Interrupting the revive in any way will reveal both the downed player and the thief. The stealth will end once the player is revived. This will not only allow us to save utilities for critical moments but make the Ninja Nurse a thing. This will make thieves great support, something they really suck at doing.

Name: Last Refuge
Rating: F+
Comment: This trait is simply not good. Never was. It isn’t friendly for newer thieves to use simply because it is unreliable in it’s activation. Unless you are great at monitoring everything in combat, you’ll never want to touch this trait in your life.
Suggestion: Even though it was agreed that removing traits was a nogo, this trait has a history of being bad. The consensus was that this was to be replaced with 2 might every 3s in stealth.

Name: Concealed Defeat
Rating: F
Comment: “Nothing says ‘Kill me here!’ like a giant wall of smoke.” Like seriously, this trait doesn’t help in the slightest. When you get put on your butt everyone knows where you are because the smoke screen gets planted right on top of you.
Suggestion: Instead of Smoke Screen, it uses Blinding Powder. That way we have more of a chance at surviving since we can combine that and the second downed skill to confuse players.

Name: Shadow’s Embrace
Rating:A-
Comment: While this is great for stealth users our biggest condition issues currently are burning and confusion.
Suggestion: We suggest that the priority is set to burning first and confusion second followed by everything else.

Name: Meld with Shadows
Rating: A
Comment: Good trait. Could always use a little more stealth though.
Suggestion: Bumping the effect up to 2s won’t do much but make deception skills a little more appealing.

Name: Shadow Protector
Rating: C-
Comment: While regen is nice, it is weak in the healing department. And it only providing 3s when applying stealth essentially makes it not worth using.
Suggestion: What thieves do not have is access to protection outside Consume Ectoplasm. So when you stealth yourself or an ally, you apply 3 seconds of protection every second. Protection applied this way is refreshed.

Name: Hidden Thief
Rating: C+
Comment: Effect isn’t that great but it isn’t bad enough to change.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Leeching Venoms
Rating: A+
Comment: Makes venoms useable which is good in our books.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Resilience of Shadows
Rating: B-
Comment: With the protection traits we decided on, we figured that we would start thinking about stability which we have crappy access to. This trait was awesome when we had 50% damage reduction but the nerf to 25% made it not so great.
Suggestion: This will work like Shadow Protector except that it will be Stability instead of protection and the Stability will not be refreshed. This combined with the protection traits will effectively turn SA into the tank spec for thief, something else that thief CANNOT do. This will also increase thief’s diversity.

Name: Cloaked in Shadow
Rating: B-
Comment: While the first part of the trait is fine, the second part isn’t.
Suggestion: Its kind of stupid that warrior can use the blast finisher from their fall trait every second. We figured that dropping the Blinding Powder effect CD to 10s won’t mean anything seeing as how the fall damage trait is only good at grenth anyway.

Name: Shadow’s Rejuvenation
Rating: A-
Comment: This is a good trait but it doesn’t quite do enough.
Suggestion: Small increase to healing and 1 ini every 2s instead of 3.

Name: Venomous Aura
Rating: A+
Comment: While it does keep venoms from becoming something better than they currently are untraited, the recent meld of most of the venom traits has made venomshare less of a total commitment. So we do not hate this trait anymore.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Expeditious Dodger
Rating: A
Comment: Hasn’t really bugged us. Good trait.
Suggestion: Giving it 4s of swiftness wouldn’t hurt though. ;D

Name: Fleet Shadow
Rating:A+
Comment: Great trait.
Suggestion:No change.

Name: Vigorous Recovery
Rating: A-
Comment: After the vigor nerf it was meh but the acro line increases the boon’s effectiveness so its decent.
Suggestion: No change we can really think of.

Name: Pain Response
Rating: B
Comment: While this trait is decent, thief currently has one of the worst condition removal capabilities in the game. And since conditions are thrown around like water balloons, everyone needs as much condition removal as they can get. As of now it doesn’t compete very well with Vigorous Recovery nor Fleet Shadow.
Suggestion: Halve the CD and it will see more use.

Name: Feline Grace
Rating: B-
Comment: This was an interesting discussion. We probably redesigned it about 4 times before we agreed on something. What we all agreed on, however was that vigor on a successful evade sucked. It was nice they were encouraging us to properly evade things, but with our evades being so lackluster this little bit of encouragement isn’t enough for us to use them. Evades are currently not noob friendly so this trait suffers a bit.
Suggestion: We suggest that using a regular dodge gives back 10 endurance and successfully evading with anything gives back 5 endurance. 1s CD. This way thieves get rewarded for evading properly.

Name: Swindler’s Equilibrium
Rating: C+
Comment: While the trait was nice and encouraged proper evasion with the sword, it really was only good for s/d. However since the issues revolving around s/p are a bit more mechanical we figured that we might as well put a little flavor into it while we were discussing it.
Suggestion: Instead of a flat 1s, we suggest that it takes off 10% of the remaining charge. For example 3s at 30 seconds, 2s at 20 seconds remaining, etc. It is an interesting and more appealing way to get thieves to dodge properly.

Name: Guarded Initiation
Rating: C
Comment: Slow removal is nice. The issue here is the threshold. 90% is a single hit away from not working like the other 90% threshold traits.
Suggestion: So like the other 90% threshold traits, we recommend that the threshold gets reduced to 75% to give thieves some leeway before we get robbed. Tiny thresholds on a class with poor healing and low HP never works.

Name: Hard to Catch
Rating: A+
Comment: THANK YOU! Thank you for changing THE WORST TRAIT in the game into something this awesome.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Endless Stamina
Rating: A+
Comment: This makes the vigor nerf not so bad and lets us keep our evasive theme better.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Assassin’s Reward
Rating: F
Comment: This has probably the worst heal scaling in the game. It might exist to compliment Signet of Malice but the healing it provides, given max healing and constant use of initiative gives thieves an HPS of ~200-300 hp per second over an extended period of time. And we are constantly out of initiative in the process. It won’t really help us survive long term even when we already have Invigorating Precision.
Suggestion: Instead of healing, provide 12s of 1 might on successful evade with a 1s CD. This will help evasion builds have a better chance in the DPS race and put it on par with Don’t Stop. The healing base and scaling on this trait is just not going to work.

Name: Upper Hand
Rating: C+
Comment: The effect is not so big but more initiative is never a bad thing.
Suggestion:It could use a lower CD however. 1 or 2 second CD would put this almost on par with Don’t Stop aswell.

Name: Don’t Stop
Rating: A+
Comment: This trait is amazing. Cripple tends to screw over thieves more than other professions and this mitigates movement impairment so much.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Kleptomaniac
Rating: A
Comment: Good trait. Initiative gain is always good.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Uncatchable
Rating: A
Comment: This trait is awesome. It turns evasion into a tool for both offense and defense. Very creative.
Suggestion: The circle is tiny though. We think that increasing the radius by 30 would put make this be considered as much as Thrill of the Crime.

Name: Flanking Strikes
Rating: C-
Comment: Good in theory but the long cooldown is a bummer. And there’d be a few instance it’d activate while stunned. While the stun break is always good it feels like this trait won’t see much stun breaking.
Suggestion: Our solution to make this more on par with Thrill of the Crime is to just provide the quickness instead of quickness and fury, keep it a trick and lower the CD to 25s while removing the Stun Break ability. The stun break just won’t work with the trait simply because that mechanic is better suited for manual input.

Name: Thrill of the Crime / Preparedness / Bountiful Theft
Rating: All A+
Comment: Good traits. All of them.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Trickster
Rating: B-
Comment: It is nice that this trait encourages us to use tricks and evade builds since 2 of the tricks just so happens to be evades. However, this still does not help evasion builds compete with stealth. A single condition clear isn’t enough. Another issue is that evasion tricks do not work when immobilized sometimes. It kills us often.
Suggestion: We recommend that it causes a transfer of 1-2 conditions during the aftercast. This is much more appealing because it makes up for the lack of utility it has vs. stealth. Evasion builds will feel more useful since the only 2 evade utilities are tricks.

Name: Pressure Striking
Rating: A+
Comment: Good for x/p condition builds involving perplexity runes.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Lead Attacks
Rating: A
Comment: Again more damage is always good.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Quick Pockets
Rating: C+
Comment: Maybe if thieves had a lower swap CD this would be nice. However it doesn’t compete with Sleight of Hand or Bewildering Ambush.
Suggestion: Make it 5 initiative and 3s of super speed. It is a known fact that unless a thief wants to take advantage of weaponswap effects that weapons swap only serves to change up combat. Thieves do not have rotations because initiative prevents rotations for continuing on into infinity. The 5 initiative will help greatly in terms of survivability and the superspeed will assist in repositioning. Both will make Quick Pockets an option and open up builds involving on swap effects.

Name: Sleight of Hand
Rating: A+
Comment: The daze and the added steal CD is awesome all around.
Suggestion: No change needed.

Name: Bewildering Ambush
Rating: A+
Comment: Goes great with condition builds.
Suggestion: No change needed.

nice write up. The suggested FG change is what I had hoped they would do instead of adding 2s more vigor. Vigor isn’t really very interesting on a class that’s supposed to to be king of dodges since a lot of classes have access to vigor, while straight endurance gain seems more fitting. Perhaps replace Assassin’s Reward’s heal on init spent with endurance on init spent would be interesting.

And yeah the poison aspect of DA really needs some buffs. I feel they really held back thinking the condi changes would make it too OP. Even running hybrid builds or straight condi builds, Dagger Training is no where near as beneficial as Mug or even TR. Hope they realize that someday

Surprised about the A+ rating on Pressure Striking. At least for PvP that is, since perplexity runes don’t exist in PvP. Also not quite sure how I feel about having to spec into a x/p condi build just to get effectiveness out of Pressure Striking. With all of those loadouts being kinda weak in the condition application area.

Agree with Quick Pockets. Personally I’d like it if they just did what your comment mentions and made Quick Pockets also reduce the cooldown of weapon swaps to 7s, maybe upping the initiative gain to four also.

you’re doing gods work yolong swggers

man guarded initiation and swindlers need help… the entire acrobatics line needs help from what it looks like, something many people already intuitively understood

Don’t really agree with side strikes and hidden killer – I think both traits are fine as they are – but I have no troubles to backstab my opponents, except if my game bugs and lags and the targetting system isn’t that good either. But otherwise it’s just something to get used to, I guess.
I’m not happy with Signet of shadows, I use it (yes, I know) but once activated I’m dead. Also I still seem to be a lot slower than everybody else, not sure why that is – so in my opinion it could use buffs all around (I often turn it off now because it’s more or less useless, I’m just too used to it to ditch it completely).
I still want CiS in master tier, I want to be able to take SE, CiS and Shadows Rejuvenation. I don’t really understand why there’s two traits in the same line which regenerate health.
Also I’d like a way to counter fear as previously possible with SE and it would be great if condis were removed faster, or if the condis were toned down in general – it’s really depressing to watch myself die to 5 stacks of confusion I can’t clear.

As usual I’m talking about the traits and skills I use from the viewpoint of wvw – I don’t think anet should leave that game mode out when it comes to balancing – or they should remove runes of perplexity from the game if it’s not allowed in pvp, the game mode used for balancing. We really could use some help in wvw.

Edit: Good job Teefs (and leader and yolo) =)

You missed Fleet of Shadows buddy^^. Love the new idea of FG!!! Absolutely luv it. Love you too Jana!

A couple of the changes suggested are completely out of line and wouldn’t be balanced if implemented whatsoever.

Permanent protection uptime with the regenation from Rejuv + high evade and blind pressure + mobility would put D/P and P/D into OTT ridiculous-tiers of skirmishing. There’s way too much synergy with the existing burst and stealth rotations and continual 2/3-spam from most of the strong builds to warrant increases in this department.

Stability on stealth doesn’t allow for counterplay. CC’ing thieves out of SR or into a non-stealthed state is part of critical counterplay to stealth-based builds. Stealth builds are already frustrating enough as it is, and there are many ways a thief can safely SR through a variety of movement/blink abilities, evade cancelling, etc. It’s also an important aspect other classes bring to the table for the thief to utilize, just as how the thief can bring permanent AOE stealth and extremely high damage to a group.

Coming from a thief who plays for big backstabs, the proposed changes to HK are not okay. I would be able to one-shot kill or come extremely close (so dead in one CnD/Stab, still) almost any build in the game except for maybe a rampaging sentinal warrior with said change. We’re talking stabs so large that against another thief, one backstab of mine would kill them through their downed state from being up and running. Do you want that to happen to you? Probably not. Further, D/P and backstabs/stealth attacks in general don’t need more damage and doesn’t really use CS as much as D/D. If we were to see any changes in regards to stealth skills/HK, I would suggest making HK remove a condition or two upon successful stealth attack, allowing CS builds not investing in SA to get a small boost in condition clearing that the thief desperately needs, and buffing the viability of CS/SA/Trickery skirmishing builds as a solid performer against condi bunkers, while keeping up the usefulness of Invigorating Precision as a heal for SA builds that don’t feel the need to cleanse more.

Your signet proposition destroys the purpose of signet builds. The might is fine. Your mentionings about Assassin’s signet on activation losing damage is also factually incorrect; it only loses damage after the five-hit buff expires, which in most cases only really occurs in PvE or outnumbered situations, in which case, the signet shouldn’t be activated unless it’s per the player’s analysis that it would be ideal to do so. The signet active, despite a loss of 30 power, leads to absolutely massive damage increases due to the way damage modifiers scale with each other. I think signets just need better activated effects to make them worth using in non-signet builds, or shorter cooldowns since their utility effects aren’t that great compared to the rest of the utility skills. If you really feel the need, just bump SoP to 6 stacks of might to make AS provide equal might.

Shadow Rejuv doesn’t need a buff. Sorry. The initiative regen already allows for permanent stealth uptime. It shouldn’t be made any easier, and 52223333 Shadow Shot Saviors and Heartseeker Heroes don’t need more power. Offhand dagger doesn’t even really benefit from this as it already gets its full initiative back.

I’m hoping you just missed an ICD change to Ankle Shots. It’s bad more because of the fact that it only has 50% uptime for the damage modifier for P/P builds, not because of its limited-availability. If anything, it works best on D/P (surprise surprise) because Shadow Shot spammers get even more reward for spamming 3 by getting 10% more damage and cripple on the skill effect.

Otherwise the rest of the suggestions seem pretty reasonable.

DeceiverX.8361:

A couple of the changes suggested are completely out of line and wouldn’t be balanced if implemented whatsoever.

… (Quote cut off to prevent page stretch)

^ I agree with that list. There are a lot of good ratings here that I agree with for sure. Some of the suggestions are just too strong though, and some of the current traits got a good rating when I don’t think they should have.

The suggestion for Pain Response to decrease its cool down to 10 seconds would be way too strong for an adept trait. It would apply permanent regeneration and clear 3 damaging conditions every 10 seconds, making it stronger overall than Shadow’s Embrace without the requirement of being in stealth even.

One of the traits that I was surprised at the high rating it got was Fleet Shadow. A stealth related trait in the Acrobatics line doesn’t fit too well, and similar results can already be achieved by taking the Don’t Stop gm trait in the same line on top of the swiftness we can get from dodges etc.

I’m not going to write a list of everything you said, but i do have a problem with your reasoning behind Flanking strikes/Trickster/

flanking strike needs fury. This is for synergy with No Quarter, and since flanking strikes and thrill are in the same line/spot, it makes sense that it gives fury, (you also forgot to mention that Trickster works on the trait Flanking strikes bringing the CD from 60seconds to (…47??) these work good with sword builds and as swords do less damage then dagger offhand it’s a good method to make up some of your lost dps through the use of Haste + Fury + No quarter(though i will admit you are still probably better off with Thirll + bount) but 3+ years of the same trait, a little variety is good.

Withdraw and Roll for initiative should remove Burning..
Stop drop and roll! as we where all taught as kids ":D

Agree with most of the reasons behind the suggested changes but there are some odd ratings on some traits. Like fleet of shadow seems really obsolete with how mobile s/d already is along with acrobatics having no relation to stealth and pressure striking is only best utilized on OH pistol which provides very limited defense to support a suitable condition build and no conditions on its own. With no reliable method of re applying stealth to get sneak attack in, maybe d/p condtion? But still its nothing you can stack with and never will be given our initiative mechanic. And also adding protection and stability isn’t really thief related. I know Mesmer has stealth like us and these boons but that’s their thing, ours was always about mobility/stealth/evasion and I’d hate to change my perspective of thief defenses to become boon dependent. That’s just me though, I’m sure that whole discussion was from multiple people agreeing at some point.

Good read none the less.

The whole rating seems pretty random to me.

Overall Acro is slightly higher rated than SA. What?

Shadow’s Embrace has the same rating than Vigorous Recovery. What?
To clarify this, the first one is our single best condi remove and the whole reason why SA is meta, the second one is completly useless because you will have permanent Vigor with every Acro build, and nobody uses it.

No Quarter is not rated at all?

Hidden Killer with a C+? What? Rated lower than Invigorating Precision?
The first one allows us to sacrifice precision for vita in some builds. There are builds that are build around that trait. The second one is useful when you solo some dungeons. WTH?

I could go on but yeah, if the forum thief guild has such a perception on traits, I don’t have to wonder some balance descions of the devs.

Yeah when I was posting this it felt CS was lacking. I think what might have happened was when they were discussing that there were a few that were fine as they were and skipped over to expedite the discussion.

Another thing to consider is that [Teef] is not soley focused on PvP so they probably reviewed and rated them in a “natural” view rather than a situational one, like only in pvp. You know what I mean?

Anyway I’ll talk to him and tell him his notes are lacking in the CS department.

Just a few ideas from me…

Traits

Trapper’s Respite:
Remove the ICD. Or make it 9 seconds. It’s already gated by the heal’s cooldown. It gets annoying to know whether or not I need to aim my Withdraw.

Revealed Training:
Grant Resistance and Stability on Revealed. Remove the increase Power if you wish. Give the trait some actual meaning to its name. Or even allow backstabs from non-stealthed Thieves if attacking from the back.

Baseline

Give Thieves a 15-25% movement speed increase. A slow thief is a dead thief.

Since the initiative pool is shared between weapons, give thieves (near)instant weapon swap. Many use Shortbow for utility instead of damage anyway. A few code checks can prevent sigils and weapon-swap traits from being abused. And if you must, make this a trait-based feature with Quick Pockets.

As mentioned before, give Thieves some big damaging attacks without having to stealth or combo or get rooted. Attacking from the rear should get a significant damage bonus when not in stealth. If not every skill, at least give us Backstab.

Go ahead and make Thieves the “assassin” class. We are already made of paper. Other professions can already out-damage us. Give us (traited if not baseline) the ability to ignore defenses. Protection, Resistance, Stability, Aegis have no effect against Thief attacks. A Warrior that’s rampaging or enduring pain cannot escape its fate from the Master of Death.

Quality of Life

For the sake of all that is good and right in the world, give us on-screen indicators of trait/rune/sigil cooldowns please! I want to know when my next Panic Strike or Hard to Catch or Flanking Strikes is going to proc. I need to know when Merciful Ambush is going to stealth my ally in a Courtyard match and when it will not.

Reasoning

Post-patch, the Thief is playing catch-up with everybody else. There’s no sense in being as fragile as we are without having compensation. Why be a “glass cannon” when others can be “steel cannons?” It doesn’t make sense for a Thief to NOT be able to go head-to-head against any given profession. Who said we are supposed to be decappers and +1er’s? I may not be able to sustain a fight on point, but I should have the capability to burst someone down who’s sitting on a point. If he defends against the burst, he wins. If he doesn’t, I win.

Ok, I’d best stop there before I bring in a trait like “Ninja Training” that decreases all condition damage by 50%.

lol, you just wasted your time. They dont give a rat’s kitten about thief class.

What was the name of that Critical strikes trait that converted precision to vitality? The one that was removed/changed? Was it Practised tolerance? I’d like to have that back to have some meager survivability without investing points in SA or acro (I know, fat chance lol).

Anyway, I mostly agree with this list. Good job [Teef], now let’s hope Anet will listen

Thanks for the post. might give feedback when not typing on handheld

Thought about it some more – side strikes could need a percentage buff since critical chance has been stealth nerfed.

Name: Dagger Training
Rating: F-

Response: There are not enough minuses on this rating. Suggest adding three or four more. My suggestion is that rather than continue with the poison motif, simply change it +1 initiative per critical strike with dagger with a 5 second CD (should be about +10 initiative every minute). This will start to make up for the entirely questionable, unreasonable if not downright obnoxious decisions ANet made to buff initiative regen while simultaneously and over time stripping every reasonable initiative bonus trait out of the class making us overall worse off.

Name: Revealed Training
Rating: D+

Response: Won’t argue the rating for PvP. I use this in PvE and I don’t mind it at all as is. I play D/D and I tend to move in and out of stealth frequently so I find it has a better benefit up time than Panic Strike. If I PvP’d I would definitely take Panic Strike over it however. Also, might seem a bit counter-intuitive but I think this should be in the same position in the Shadow Arts line where Leaching Venoms are now and Leaching Venoms moved to this line at the same level.

Name: Signets of Power
Rating: C+

Response: I run this trait for a couple of reasons: 1) I run Strength runes and 2) I can’t stand the current iteration of Acrobatics so I use the runes plus food to get me most of what I can from that line without the dead weight of the Acrobatics line. I find myself using them (the Signets) more than previously, and the Might is a decent boost on a short CD (most of them at 24 seconds). However, what you are recommending here would be an overall improvement even with the loss of Might.

Name: Invigorating Precision
Rating:B-

Response: Won’t argue the rating for PvP but I think for PvE its an A to A+. I vacillate between this and No Quarter with this one winning most of the time since it is kind of “god mode” for most PvE content. Love to see another 5% on top though.

Name: Shadow’s Embrace
Rating: A-

Response: No, this used to be an “A” trait and now it is at most deserves a B. Your suggestion doesn’t go far enough. Look at this page carefully: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition#Skills_that_remove_conditions. Thieves have by far the worst trait-based condition removal options. Our utility and healing skill-based condition removal is also at the bottom or very near the bottom of the pile – both in terms of the number of options and their effectiveness. This is just simply not ok anymore. Revert the recent nerf should be the recommendation.

Name: Fleet Shadow
Rating:A+

Response: My experience is that this is a situational trait that gets swapped to when necessary. These kinds of traits don’t deserve such high ratings. The fact that it doesn’t suck doesn’t make it an A trait, again, a B trait at best.

Name: Vigorous Recovery
Rating: A-

Response: Deserves a B at most. This trait should give a flat +25% boost to endurance recovery – similar to the boosts that many other classes with much better health and armor and sustaining boons already have.

Name: Feline Grace
Rating: B-

Response: Agree 100% with the suggested change only thing better would be a complete reversion of the recent nerf.

Name: Assassin’s Reward
Rating: F

Response: kitten fine suggestion.

Name: Don’t Stop
Rating: A+

Response: As a grandmaster trait I would give this a C. Compare this to the Warrior trait Dogged March (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dogged_March) which is an Adept tier trait on the heavy armor class + highest health class in the game. Have we all become so beaten down by ANet that we cannot recognize when they are handing us second hand crap that other classes get without much fanfare? For this to be an A-class Grandmaster trait it should remove all movement impairing conditions on a 10, 12, max 15 second cool down.

Revealed Training would be cool if I ever came across Engies or Rangers putting revealed on me or hitting the reveal traps in WvW but that’s almost never the case. I leave it on most the time just in case though. Some day it will pay off! Some day….

I’m a fan of Signets of Power + Assassins Signet. The extra 150 power you get with the passive effect isn’t really lost with SoP traited as the 5 might stacks make up for it.

Honestly, with the CD reduction on signets you aren’t fighting minus the 150 power for long once the kittens are up and that 15% damage for 5 attacks gives some kitten nice burst, especially on my S/D setup.

Recieved and added No Quarter.

Gonna go through and place links for traits for clarity.

One rating system that may be interesting would be to add percentages to the 3 trait choices at each tier.

33/33/33 would be completely equal trait values.

50/50/0 would mean two are equal, while one is absolutely useless.

100/0/0 would be an absolute no-brainer in any situation.

Of course, I doubt there are many 100% traits for use at all times, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some near zero!

My only comment would be that I can’t seen Shadows Embrace getting an A-

I wasn’t able to hop on for the discussion, but I’ll toss my thought out here anyways…

With SE getting nerfed to where it it now ONLY clears damage conditions (and the new terrible placement of the skill forcing a choice between 20% deception), and at the same time the whole game got massive buffs to conditions… it is nowhere near up to par, or worthy of an A-

Considering that stealth used to be able to clear: Fear, Weakness, Vuln, as well as every other situational condition that is often detrimental to thieves, I wouldn’t rate it any higher than a flat C.

yolo swaggins.2570:

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Name: Revealed Training
Rating: D+
Comment: While on reveal traits are nice this one doesn’t particularly help as much as we’d want. It is probably good in boosting the 2 spam of the 5122222 technique but since [Teef] is looking for diversity this trait needs to change.
Suggestion:Instead of 200 power, we recommend that we have protection for the duration of the reveal. Our reasoning for this decision is that with one of our two defense mechanics shut down that the protection would balance out the harsh counter Revealed provides and make Revealed an “OH ****!” button against thieves while not entirely screwing thieves over in the process. More on-revealed traits would be nice too so there is some sense of investment added to this trait.

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This is tricky. Although I agree when it comes to PvP (both sPvP and WvW), but in PvE this is where it should be.

I would hate to see this to change from “+200 power” to a “3s Protection” since Protection is not a good buff. The +200 power actually applies to more builds than what the Protection can offer since 3s-4s is not long enough…we’ll dodge/evade away by instinct anyway, so having protection is somewhat useless.

If PvP rate it D+, I would have to argue that it is A+ in PvE with S/P and P/P trapper builds.

yolo swaggins.2570:

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Name: Assassin’s Reward
Rating: F
Comment: This has probably the worst heal scaling in the game. It might exist to compliment Signet of Malice but the healing it provides, given max healing and constant use of initiative gives thieves an HPS of ~200-300 hp per second over an extended period of time. And we are constantly out of initiative in the process. It won’t really help us survive long term even when we already have Invigorating Precision.
Suggestion: Instead of healing, provide 12s of 1 might on successful evade with a 1s CD. This will help evasion builds have a better chance in the DPS race and put it on par with Don’t Stop. The healing base and scaling on this trait is just not going to work.

A quick suggestion for this trait would be to add some condi removal on top of the healing,
Like remove 1 condition for every 4-5 initiative spent, that’s like 2-3 condis every 10 seconds if we keep attacking.

I would give revealed training 3s of stability on reveal (possibly keeping the 200 power). This is a trait that existed before the big trait change so I could see it coming back. Still won’t beat out panic strike for many builds, but on the other hand will help a lot of the non-meta builds that run revealed training.

Also I think most folks that use concealed defeat use it for the 20% cdr on deceptions. Agree that bp on down would be better, not sure about the F rating though.

Why not synergize Dagger Training and Potent Poison in a better way?
For example Potent Poison creates effect when poison reaches certain number of stacks. Maybe detonate all poison stacks into physical damage per stack or something like that.

yolo swaggins.2570:

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Name: Meld with Shadows
Rating: A
Comment: Good trait. Could always use a little more stealth though.
Suggestion: Bumping the effect up to 2s won’t do much but make deception skills a little more appealing.

An alternative would be 1s in combat, 100% extra out of combat (like PU, but not as ridiculous).

yolo swaggins.2570:

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Name: Hidden Thief
Rating: C+
Comment: Effect isn’t that great but it isn’t bad enough to change.
Suggestion: No change needed.

I recommend making it blinding powder on steal with a 10s icd (post patch that was what it was, but with full BP cooldown). Basically the same thing, but blinds and can blast X/P 5 for extra stealth if desired.

I’d also like to see Trappers Respite icd back down to 10s like it was on patch day.

My Idea on Acrobatic line

Name: Fleet Shadow: Change to Fleeting Lotus
When you Stealth you get movement speed.For 3 second gain 3 stack of might (6 sec) for each second you moved.This trait will have 14 second cool down.

This will encourage thief to reposition then use Stealth attack but not perma stealth to get might stacks then burst people down.

Name: Pain Response
Extend the list to Torment , confusion.

Name: Hard to Catch
When trait proced gain 50% of endurance bar. And your next dodge instantly refilled 50% of endurance.Also keep the break stun.
This trait kinda too situational right now this buff will make the trait a little more easier to use.

Name: Upper Hand
Option1 : Add Aoe weakness when sucessfully dodge with weapon skill.15 Sec cooldown.
Option2 : Also make evasion on weapon skill gain 1/4 sec more evasion time.

Name:Assassin Reward
Gain stack of Assassin Reward when you use skill that spend initiative and hit people with it. When you get hit or the trait timer is expired you are healed. This trait will have 1 sec cooldown.

Current use of this trait is not really promote thief for staying in fight because when you run out of Int you are dead. And this trait lock you down in a fight instead of letting you go when fight not in your favor.

yolo swaggins.2570:

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Name: Ankle Shots
Rating: D-
Comment: This trait simply sucks. It is really only good for p/p and even then only a half of it’s effects are beneficial.
Suggestion: While [Teef] agreed to reduce the CD for the cripple effect down to 3 seconds, I feel that also including SB in on this trait will give the weapon a little bit of the TLC its been needing for the past year.

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P/P without Ricochet, Pistol Training, and Dual wield training (I think those were the names) is a waste of Initiatives. I’ve been using P/P ever since I’ve rolled my Thief but with the crap traits that we have now, I can’t find any build that can make CS work for P/P. Ankle Shots is such a bad trait that even if the bonus damage is increased to 20%, it’s not enough to replace the loss of damage from those traits.

I actually disagree on merciful ambush, combined with resilence of shadows it is one of the best things about thieves in pvp atm and what keeps them in meta

i won countless fights/matches thanks to that trait

i wouldn’t change it

It’s fine as is, but no reason it couldn’t be better. I really like the idea of ninja nurse being a legit support role, personally.

One thing to keep in mind before we can accurately give ratings and suggestions to various skills is that all professions in a state of flux.

So as example if you look at the new traitlines that have already been released along with the Revenant as a class we are seeing a lot more in the way of condition sources (in particular burning) and yet another reveal type skill.

We might well make a suggestion for ore condition removal and find even that is not enough as warriors/mesmers/elementalists/revenants/guardians all come at us with even more burning, If you read the feedback on each trait those things are rarely downtweaked after a beta test weekend but boosted ever more upwards.

We do not yet know what else we will have to deal with from warriors, engineers and rangers let alone what is coming our way from the announced new spec lines already announced.