Guild Wars 2

I feel many skills are well balanced, but some(dancing dagger especially) suffer from the reduced power, yet keep a high initiative cost. Maybe a look into balancing init cost with the skills as they are is in order? I would love to see DD reduced by one init. This would go a long way into to balancing the thief more effectively without just cutting the damage output in seemingly random swathes.

In the term of the gameplay impact of the Thief class, my opinion is that the majority of our so called “OPness” is caused by the culling issue/rendering bug, making the well timed C&D + BS combo visually permastealth. So I would start from this and the other bugfixes as well (to be honest, some classes have much worse situation when it comes to bugs, f.e. elementalists), and after that it will be clear what is really OP and what isn´t.

Hey there. My post/s will only concern Thief PVE issues.

Firstly, venom sharing (with leeching venoms) has potential to be a very good PVE support choice, the recent buff to leeching venoms is much apperciated. However i feel that the range of Venomous Aura is far too short for it to be viable in the vast majority of PVE situations. If everyone in your group is not recieving the venoms, then the spec is basically pointless. Also, I feel like the spec needs abit of a damage buff to be viable in PVE, perhaps you could add a trait in Deadly Arts which makes you damage a target whenever a venom is applied to it, this should ofcourse spread to party members whom you have venoms shared with, it should also scale with power or something. Some of the durations on the Venoms could also use a buff. I also find Basilisk Venom to be a very poor excuse for an elite skill, its only really useful in TPVP matches on venomsharing Thieves, for PVE its useless and needs to be reworked. The fact that Basilisk Venom is also our only underwater elite skill needs to be changed also.

Secondly, dual pistols could use a PVE damage buff, or perhaps some kindof buff to Ricochet in the Trickery traitline so the bullets bounce much more often. The recent change to the Body Shot cast timer was nice, but in PVE at the moment P/P is only really usable on ranged single target fights, which does not apply to many situations.

Thirdly, I feel that the 15% nerf to Pistol Whip was unjustified in PVE terms. As far as I can tell, its damage was only nerfed due to burst issues in pvp when stacked with Quickness/Haste against glass cannon players who do not take stunbreaks and do not learn to dodge perhaps the most predictable skill ingame (Pistol Whip). The damage should be refunded in PVE because at the moment you can do almost as much DPS autoattacking with the S/P combo. Pistol Whip is a dual skill that should out DPS autoattack by a decent margin. Black Powder on the pistol offhand is a great dungeon tool and should not be nerfed in any way.

Fourthly, I feel that Traps are very lacklustre at the moment. I have used each Trap maybe five times in PVE and overall I find that the Traps are not worth the utility slots.

Next, I think that Thief should be given an elite skill that when equipped provides a passive magic find and money drop boost to all party members, this obviously would not stack if other Thieves were in the party using the same elite skill because that would be overpowered. After all, arent Thieves supposed to be the ones that get the job done then bring back the loot?

Next, I would say that the Sword/Dagger combo is very poor for PVE, I only use it on the Mesmer boss in TA to remove her buffs.

I am glad you only implemented the Backstab nerfs in PVP, if they had been implemented in PVE also it would have destroyed crit daggers. However, I do not see why Dancing Dagger had its damage nerfed in both PVE and PVP, it was only an issue in PVP. The damage should be refunded in PVE.

I also feel that Sword should be available for use in the Offhand slot giving us another few weapon combos. Dual swords would be nice if designed well.

Dancing Dagger was heavily nerfed without any compensation. I never heard of anyone complaining about this ability in PVE. For non-condition D/D specs and any x/D specs, it was the only source of burst AoE.

Pistol Whip does less DPS than auto attack, roots us, yet provides evasion for less than half the duration. By rooting us, it’s often a higher risk attack then just auto attack while strafing and dodging. This ability needs to be looked at for cost/reward/risk ratios.

Backstab is a high damage attack but is single target only, which is a weakness on its own in PVE. Yet in PVP, many feel it’s overpowered. However, without Mug+CnD combo, it’s actually a perfectly balanced ability given its setup requirements. If you decide to do any further balancing around this ability, please keep that in mind. Nerfing the Backstab ability itself will destroy the viability of any PVE builds that rely on it.

Thieves are very squishy even when specced for survival. Currently this is balanced by our ability to stealth and do high damage. Continuous nerfs to our DPS without any compensation to our survivability will lead to the class being broken.

Okamakiri.8746:

Thieves are very squishy even when specced for survival. Currently this is balanced by our ability to stealth and do high damage. Continuous nerfs to our DPS without any compensation to our survivability will lead to the class being broken.

I don´t think that last sentence is true, pal. If we get nerfs in the terms of DPS and boosts in the term of Survivability, we won´t be Thieves anymore, we would be medium-armored-tanks, which doesn´t suit the Thief class at all imho.

The overwhelming majority of Thief complaints come from inexperienced players. This makes sense since building a high burst thief build is easier than building high burst with other classes. And yet Thief burst is not as damaging as a shatter mesmer build.

There is a vast differance between how Thieves function in hot join PvP, where at least 50% of the people use straight out berserker gear with no toughness, and how thieves function in tPvP. It was very noticeable to me when I played a few days of tPvP and watched thieves, that while they had something to offer their parties, they were not as powerful and useful as guardians and mesmers. This was before Dancing Daggers nerf.

The problem is that many hot join players with not much PvP experience do not know how to counter backstab thieves, as winning over them requires awareness. How can such a problem be solved without hurting the thief in tPvP, where the profession is well balanced, I am not sure.

The Thief is tricky to balance. Right now they are fairly balanced at the high end. If you run into skilled players they can stand up to a Thief 1 on 1 and will know how to counter.

The masses in WvW and hot join sPvP are by a huge majority unskilled and don’t have knowledge of game mechanics. Thieves mop up (pubstomp) these people like crazy due to the fact they require the most understanding of mechanistic to counter. You are almost required to play a Thief to understand their mechanics since their initiative system and stealth is so drastically different than all other professions.

Anet has to choose to just deal with all the QQ and nerf calls in order to keep Thieves balanced for the higher skill/knowledge end of PvP or they give in and nerf them for the masses making them useless for high end PvP.

I personally hope Anet continues to allow other professions to have what they need to counter Thieves but faults the players for not using them correctly instead of just pointing to the Thief as OP.

So far the Thief changes and some developer comments in the sPvP forums have supported this idea of holding players accountable and not letting them get away with generalized Nerf whine/pressure translating to code changes to appease the masses.

edit: pretty much same thoughts as LiuliRenai above..

Pragmatist.1349:

Hey there. My post/s will only concern Thief PVE issues.

Secondly, dual pistols could use a PVE damage buff, or perhaps some kindof buff to Ricochet in the Trickery traitline so the bullets bounce much more often. The recent change to the Body Shot cast timer was nice, but in PVE at the moment P/P is only really usable on ranged single target fights, which does not apply to many situations.

Thirdly, I feel that the 15% nerf to Pistol Whip was unjustified in PVE terms. As far as I can tell, its damage was only nerfed due to burst issues in pvp when stacked with Quickness/Haste against glass cannon players who do not take stunbreaks and do not learn to dodge perhaps the most predictable skill ingame (Pistol Whip). The damage should be refunded in PVE because at the moment you can do almost as much DPS autoattacking with the S/P combo. Pistol Whip is a dual skill that should out DPS autoattack by a decent margin. Black Powder on the pistol offhand is a great dungeon tool and should not be nerfed in any way.

Fourthly, I feel that Traps are very lacklustre at the moment. I have used each Trap maybe five times in PVE and overall I find that the Traps are not worth the utility slots.

Next, I would say that the Sword/Dagger combo is very poor for PVE, I only use it on the Mesmer boss in TA to remove her buffs.

I am glad you only implemented the Backstab nerfs in PVP, if they had been implemented in PVE also it would have destroyed crit daggers. However, I do not see why Dancing Dagger had its damage nerfed in both PVE and PVP, it was only an issue in PVP. The damage should be refunded in PVE.

I also feel that Sword should be available for use in the Offhand slot giving us another few weapon combos. Dual swords would be nice if designed well.

This poster expressed everything I wanted to say (and more, so I only quoted the points which I also wanted to make), so like many others who want to have a voice on these concerns, I’m posting if only to echo my agreement.

ledzep.9504:

This doesn’t look good at all.(for thieves)

Or it might be very good, at least they’re coming to us for input.

Okay, let’s see … So you know, all this input is about PvE, I don’t do PvP:

Pistol/Pistol suffers for lack of many good abilities, most of the time ya end up falling back on Black Powder and Unload for almost every situation … and BP is a little expensive for a very short blind.

Stealth is Awesome, I love the way stealth works in the game. I wasn’t sure I would, because I like classes with permastealth for exploring, but it compliments the class so well I wouldn’t change anything; though there’s some problem with rendering in PvP apparently, what is causing allota problems and bickering. (this isn’t a problem with Thieves being too powerful)

Steal; I love Steal, it traits up very nice if you want to spend yer points that way and is literally that ace up yer sleeve.

Initiative; I don’t think the class would work without initiative – you’d need ta do an entire rework. Init lets us be the bouncy, slippery, always moving class that we are. The only way you could do away with it an’ keep the class would be to give every single weapon skill a movement secondary.

Traps; Ambush Trap is great, so is that cripple trap – that’s about it. We need more traps; better traps; larger AoE maybe, longer effects, longer duration … even that cripple trap is pretty useless compared to caltrops.

Elites; Dagger Storm is very nice, love me some Dagger Storm; Thieves Guild, same thing. Most of the other elites … worthless. The avatars don’t last long enough ta be useful, the poison might be okay for PvP (I dunno) but is pretty much pointless in PvE. Why don’t we have a Stealth Elite? I was noticing this when running medic this weekend for Lost Shores.

Weapons; I like the weapons we got, but we have the smallest weapon choice in the game, and we don’t have any utility items for our off hand. I know we need to have some tradeoffs for some of our other benefits, like Init, but we are the squishiest class in the game on top of that. (don’ get me wrong, I love frantically bouncing around in fights, but we’ve gotta weigh how many drawbacks we’re getting vs our benefits)

The change to Dancing Dagger was crazy bad. Please, if yer gonna nerf a skill, please lower the cost on it so it’s still worth using.

Downed State; I’m sure ya know that our “drop aggro” skill is pointless, you use it, then the second you start healing the monsters target you again.

And that’s all I can think of right now … prolly more later.

I’m really happy to see this thread! Here are my thoughts in random order:

1. I’m a little unhappy how with some builds you can be very successful without using all that many abilities. I’ll take Pistol/Dagger condition damage for example where all you really need to use to be successful is #1 and #5. There are also good situations for using the other 3 skills and you can learn when to use them properly however the extra effort doesn’t really give you a big advantage over someone who doesn’t and it feels like it should, after all you’re trying to fit in 2.5 times more abilities. For the P/D example, you generally also don’t need to swap to a second weapon set unless maybe you’re traveling and would like to use the shortbow for that. Having 10/10 weapon skills be important is a lot to hope for but using 2/10 and beating groups of people is pretty sad.

This also applies to other builds where generally 2 abilities for each weapon set are pretty useless and it makes the game play kind of boring. As is, GW2 has less abilities than other games, lets try and update them in a way where they’re more useful. I feel that having more complex rotations and more solutions to various problems from which I can pick will make the thief profession just much, much more interesting. Right now it’s in danger of getting boring very fast.

2. I still think backstab thieves do a bit too much damage without really needing to work for it. While in a 1v1 situation, if you’re pretty good and with a bit of luck you can generally counter their burst, if you’re facing 2 opponents and you get stuck in a immobilize or a stun just for 1-2 seconds it usually means the end of you.

3. Shortbow just looks like an AoE PvE/WvWvW weapon and that’s it. I wish this weapon had a little more juice so you could actually use it in sPvP successfully without kittening yourself.

4. Pistol/Pistol also feels a little weak however I don’t have that much experience with it to point out what’s wrong.

5. This is an issue that’s not particularly just for thieves and it applies to all other professions. We’re currently lacking some stats combinations in gear which holds us back from playing some builds to their full potential.

6. I’m a little worried about the nerf approaches. There were some recent nerfs where skills just had their damage reduced by a % and while it helped tone down the bursty builds, builds that were already balanced and fun also got nerfed. I think a better approach would be to modify the way damage is currently scaling so that after a certain point you gain less from investing into offensive stats. I can’t really think of a situation where playing a glass cannon build is a great idea. In PvE it usually was viable in other games but in this one, it certainly isn’t, since there is no holy trinity and everyone needs to be able to hold their ground. All it does is allow some players completely dominate others without much effort.

Thanks for an awesome game!

Build diversity is the biggest issue with Thieves IMO. Every other build is overshadowed by Backstab Burst and P/D condition. S/D isn’t effective at tournament level, neither is P/P or other balanced builds.

The next issue is that many utility skills are simply lacking. Traps and venoms (except in venom shares) are basically worthless. Also, a lot of traits are, to put it nicely, crud.

I like the feel of the Thief, it just needs tweaking and fixing.

Stealth:
fix rendering
fix channeling spell on stealth

Mug – reduce damage
Backstab – reduce back damage by 10%
Backstab – increase cast time (1/4 to 1/2)
Dancing dagger|headshot – reduce cost 3 ini
Exposed Weakness – replace to “Going stealth apply 3/4 stacks of vulnerability (5s)”
Shadow Shot – remove root before second strike
Body Shot – replace to 1 stack confusion or poison attack or cripple attack
Caltrops – bugged, add 2 stack in 1 second, tooltip say 1 stack in second
Flanking strike – remove second strike
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Small-buff-Flanking-Strike-after-huge-nerf-sd/first#post803952
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Flanking-Strike-after-patch-need-buff/first#post805065

There’s a problem with condition thieves – they are too weak. This is mostly due to Pistol’s bleed lasting 4 seconds, and only being available on the auto attack. P/D thieves are doing very well in WvW, though IMHO that’s because they can use +40% condition duration food which frankly shouldn’t exist in the game.

sPvP condition thieves do not have the luxury of food. The highest duration pistol bleeds can reach is 7 seconds, and you need to sacrifice damage for duration to reach it. Compare this to two other ranged build professions – necros and rifle warriors. Those other professions have traits that increase bleed duration by quite a lot, as well as traits that give extra bleeds on critical hits. While a thief can use Superior Sigil of Earth, it can only proc a bleed once per 2 seconds. Not so great.

The lack of traits to proc more bleeds or increase bleed duration, combined with P/D and P/P having zero bleed stacking skills besides the auto attack, puts condition thieves in a large disadvantage compared to other ranged condition professions. Yes, they can CnD to stack 5 builds fast, but that requires them to be in melee range for 1 seconds while casting, which is easy to interrupt.

I’m thinking a good solution would be to increase the direct damage portion of the auto attack, which is currently miniscule. That way thieves that spec into both power and condition damage would be viable. The way things stand now, it’s useless to spec into power alongside condition damage, it’s either or.

Also, both D/P and P/D’s third skill, the dual skill, are utterly useless. That really needs to change as Thief weapon variety is quite lacking already.

I think Sword / Dagger needs a look at. Since the very beginning it’s been the least favourite, and least useful combo. I’d suggest that either changing the dual skill, or tweaking it would be good.

Also, it messes up a lot. When you use it on uneven terrain, such as a staircase, you swing around the mob and go out of range so the strike doesn’t land. Very annoying.

Jack of Tears.9458:

ledzep.9504:

This doesn’t look good at all.(for thieves)

Okay, let’s see … So you know, all this input is about PvE, I don’t do PvP:

Pistol/Pistol suffers for lack of many good abilities, most of the time ya end up falling back on Black Powder and Unload for almost every situation … and BP is a little expensive for a very short blind.

Stealth is Awesome, I love the way stealth works in the game. I wasn’t sure I would, because I like classes with permastealth for exploring, but it compliments the class so well I wouldn’t change anything; though there’s some problem with rendering in PvP apparently, what is causing allota problems and bickering. (this isn’t a problem with Thieves being too powerful)

Steal; I love Steal, it traits up very nice if you want to spend yer points that way and is literally that ace up yer sleeve.

Initiative; I don’t think the class would work without initiative – you’d need ta do an entire rework. Init lets us be the bouncy, slippery, always moving class that we are. The only way you could do away with it an’ keep the class would be to give every single weapon skill a movement secondary.

Traps; Ambush Trap is great, so is that cripple trap – that’s about it. We need more traps; better traps; larger AoE maybe, longer effects, longer duration … even that cripple trap is pretty useless compared to caltrops.

Elites; Dagger Storm is very nice, love me some Dagger Storm; Thieves Guild, same thing. Most of the other elites … worthless. The avatars don’t last long enough ta be useful, the poison might be okay for PvP (I dunno) but is pretty much pointless in PvE. Why don’t we have a Stealth Elite? I was noticing this when running medic this weekend for Lost Shores.

The change to Dancing Dagger was crazy bad. Please, if yer gonna nerf a skill, please lower the cost on it so it’s still worth using.

Downed State; I’m sure ya know that our “drop aggro” skill is pointless, you use it, then the second you start healing the monsters target you again.

And that’s all I can think of right now … prolly more later.

Also agree very much with these points.

My feedback? Focus on fixing the permastealth culling issue/rendering bug. Once that is fixed, you can work on properly balancing the Thief class.

Marduh.4603:

Stealth:
fix rendering
fix channeling spell on stealth

Mug – reduce damage
Backstab – reduce back damage by 10%
Backstab – increase cast time (1/4 to 1/2)
Dancing dagger|headshot – reduce cost 3 ini
Exposed Weakness – replace to “Going stealth apply 3/4 stacks of vulnerability (5s)”
Shadow Shot – remove root before second strike
Body Shot – replace to 1 stack confusion or poison attack or cripple attack
Caltrops – bugged, add 2 stack in 1 second, tooltip say 1 stack in second
Flanking strike – remove second strike
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Small-buff-Flanking-Strike-after-huge-nerf-sd/first#post803952
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Flanking-Strike-after-patch-need-buff/first#post805065

This is really constructive post, dude. /irony
I don´t know but the CC asked for constructive discussion, right?
Also it seems that you listed some random issues of this class and added your own nerf suggestions, this is not the right path to go imho…

This is a purely cosmetic concern, but it bugs me to no end. And before anyone says “lol roll another race/gender” my preemptive response to that is: in a well-designed game I shouldn’t have to.

Dagger Storm on human female: spinning crucifix ROFLCOPTER. It’s just… stupid. When charr or asura perform this ability, it actually looks somewhat like they’re whipping daggers from out of their clothes, spinning around and throwing them. Human female animation for Dagger Storm is just embarrassingly bad.

Please do something about this.

Stiv.1820:

You are almost required to play a Thief to understand their mechanics since their initiative system and stealth is so drastically different than all other professions.

But please god don’t change this! Don’t homogenize us to make us “easier to understand”! The draw of the Thief class is that we’re mechanically different and require a new set of skills to play … you take that away and you might as well delete the class.

Many other games, including GW1, have shown that playing against a character that appears right next to you out of nowhere and outright kills you or at least heavily damages you is not fun.
So what needs to be changed is the high burst damage some Thief builds can dish out off the cuff. An inelegant way of doing this is do simply decrease the damage and Initiative cost, a more elegant way would be to give high-burst skills some requirements they need to fulfill first to unfold their full potential.

An example of such a change is to reduce the base damage of Backstab and give it a damage bonus for every stack of Bleed on the target. Then the Thief or one of his teammates has to apply those stacks of Bleed first and then could spike the target down.

At the same time such a change would improve the Thief in PvE because it’s easier to set those combos up. E.g. a player character with 25 stacks of Bleed is in most cases as good as dead so a Backstab with ridiculous amount of damage won’t be gamebreaking, but against a PvE champion who easily survives several minutes with so many stacks of Bleed it would be a huge damage boost.

I think thief play in WvW is a bit lackluster. I am a group player, and enjoy conditions, but seems that any time I am helping my guild assault a tower, I am stuck shooting a cluster bomb at the top of a tower, hoping it may hit someone. The sad part is, my character is built now for P/D and D/D, so I just carry a spare SB in my inventory for the one ability.

The shortbow is a weak weapon for the most part, and when you can only use one attack from all your weapon sets, for siege (tower offense) it gets a bit boring. It would be nice to have a ranged weapon set that could be helpful in WvW tower offense. I could see replacing my D/D portion of my weapon set up for SB or some other weapon be it that I could have a bit better tower offense/defense.

The very fact that a member of staff INITIATED a thread like this gives me a sliver of hope.

Pretty much everything I wanted to say has been said.

I’d like to emphasise, though, that before long, if the nerfs and “rebalances” keep coming, we’re going to end up as pseudo-Warriors that get wiped when sneezed on. It’s crucial that proper compensation is given, whether it’s damage output or utility (expansion of venom range, traps etc.). I want to feel like a Thief, not a Warrior with pitiful defence and an invisibility cloak.

Jack of Tears.9458:

Stiv.1820:

You are almost required to play a Thief to understand their mechanics since their initiative system and stealth is so drastically different than all other professions.

But please god don’t change this! Don’t homogenize us to make us “easier to understand”! The draw of the Thief class is that we’re mechanically different and require a new set of skills to play … you take that away and you might as well delete the class.

Not sure if you thought I was advocating for that to change but just in case, I’m definitely not. Just pointing out that we take the most effort to learn to counter.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/We-would-like-answers-Please/first#post756749

Here’s my feedback, in a separate post I started days ago. (Ignore the questioning tone, seeing as I’m just putting it here to air my take on thief patch changes)

tl;dr: Your nerfed Dagger OH into the ground to weaken instagib specs. It had the greatest impact on more balanced specs, hurting our DPS to survival ratio enough to make alot of specs a poorer choice. We would be better off going instagib after the patch. You made sure to nerf Dagger OH (which we’re nearly forced into using, due to Pistol OH specs have issues), but you didn’t bother to touch the issues plaguing our other weaponsets, details about this in my post.

Our “survivability compensations” were lacking. Blinding powder change was necessary, as it was wholly inferior to SR in 95% of situations, scorpion wire (and all other ranged abilities) still get mysterious obstructed issues over open ground, and you didn’t bother to look into our severely underperforming utilities (traps and venoms).

tl:dr tl:dr: Dagger OH nerfed, no weaponset fixes to allow us to try pistol OH specs. survivability compensations were inadequate, to the point where they werent really survivability compensations.

Stiv.1820:

Not sure if you thought I was advocating for that to change but just in case, I’m definitely not. Just pointing out that we take the most effort to learn to counter.

No, just wanna make sure Anet doesn’t get the wrong impression.

Thanks for opening the thread. I enjoy a lot of things on my Thief, from the play-style of D/D to the ability to rain destruction with the Shortbow, but I have some issues as well. I mostly PvE, so my input will mostly surround that:

Stealth – Stealth has a lot of bugs. It does not work reliably as an aggro dump in PvE like it should, mobs will still chase you even when taking damage from another source. It doesn’t seem to last long enough for PvE to use it as an escape tool (I would have made it 5 seconds), the rendering issue gives thieves an unfair advantage in PvP and makes them seem more OP than they actually are. It will lock you in combat and force you to log out and log back in to get out of it. Just lots to address here. And addressing it is important, because Stealth is the primary utility a thief has for avoiding damage. With low health and medium armor, Stealth needs to work well to make thieves worth playing in PvE.

General Squishiness- Related to the above and the below. It gets a better as you level and get good traits and utilities, but at low level Thieves are noticeably harder to survive with (and therefore generally less effective) than other professions because they’re melee focused, not especially strong offensively, have super low health, and their primary danger avoidance/damage mitigation tool is weak-ish and buggy.

Downed State – Thief’s is the worst by far out of the classes I’ve played (which is everything but Necro and Engi), when, because of their squishiness and dependence on being slippery, it should be one of the best. It’s very difficult to get a rally because of the weakness of #1, and #2/#3 almost never work like they should for escaping and healing. My suggestions: Make #1 Bleed instead of Cripple, make the Stealth last 5 seconds instead of 3, and/or make Shadow Escape range 900 instead of 600 yards.

Dancing Dagger was OP, but instead of a straight damage nerf it should have been altered to do full damage on the first hit then reduced damage on each bounce (75%, 50%, 25%). This was an obvious one, I don’t know people were thinking.

In general, weapons without AoE capability are strictly inferior to weapons with it because zergs are common and damage is not reduced against multiple targets like it really should be in some cases. This is a broader problem than with just Thieves, but in any case-

Pistols are just very lackluster. There is no cripple, there is no AoE, there is no stealth, and there is no big damage, and they aren’t even that great as bleeders. However, that is all secondary to what I think their actual real problem is- Vital Shot’s rate of fire is slower than it was obviously intended to be. There is either a bug with the skill’s activation timer or a design issue with the MH Pistol animation/responsiveness making it about as slow as the Warrior’s Rifle while being significantly weaker. It can only stack up to 5 bleeds, which combined with its terrible upfront damage and 900 yard limitation makes it dramatically underpowered. Please spend some time evaluating the activation speed and the general responsiveness of the skill at it was clearly designed to fire at a faster rate than it actually does. I believe this is a broader design issue and extends to other professions, such as the Engineer’s Pistol and Longbows for Warriors and Rangers. When the #1 of a weapon set is kittened, that set is broken. This should be top priority.

The Offhand light skills are pointless. It would be really, really cool if it was actually viable to single wield. Many people like the idea of a Thief with a single dagger, pistol, or sword and it just plan doesn’t work in GW2 which is a shame.

Venoms are cool in theory but just poorly implemented. I’d like to see them redesigned, which could be any number of ways. Basilisk Venom is terrible for an Elite.

Caltrops seem to be exceptionally good for a utility skill in PvE, and in fact it is one of the only things that makes Thief not absolutely terrible in PvE. I’m not sure if the bug the person stated above is accurate but if it is that should be looked at.

Haste is broken because Quickness is just silly. However, instead of changing anything with Haste, the Quickness buff should be altered to provide 25-50% increased speed instead of 100%. Un-nerf Pistol Whip so it isn’t weaker than autoattack.

Flanking Strike needs to track better, but is otherwise a decent and fun skill.

Steal is…. I dunno, it’s neat in a lot of ways but it just doesn’t feel quite right. Maybe it should be a utility skill and and the Keys should be unique thiefy weapon attacks that will never become true weapons, like a dart/blowgun attack, a sap, and/or a shuriken spread. Or maybe we should have a (non-permanent) Stealth on the F slot instead, since it’s our primary defensive tool.

In WvW capturing/holding points in stealth needs to go, my main is thief and I have absolutely refused to use this tactic. Takes very little skill, much less than actually fighting the enemy imo, and no other class has a hope of holding a camp for 30 minutes with just 1 or 2 skills. Also the minor trait Hidden Assassin grants 2 stacks of might on stealth, idk if this is intended as it just says “Gain might on stealth”. Still also getting random steals/shadowsteps into objects, much less now though. As well as what others are saying; the rendering issue is probably the biggest problem atm in terms of class balance.

As for buffs/changes it’s really hard to say, but it seems to me that there are a variety of more complex builds available to the thief, yet no one is trying them/using them b/c the easy builds are winning due to the rendering issues.

Backstab thieves can kill almost anybody in a second, thats a serious issue with the class and the other thing that bothers me is the initiative system. Add some diminishing return (so noobies dont spam heartseeker for win -.-), like it only does a third of its original dmg after the first use for like 2 or 3 seconds.

Personally I am enjoying the thief class very much, the only thing I would like to see changed are poisons and traps… imo the poisons do not worth a utility skill and traps just don’t fit in any of the thief’s play style (including ranged specs)

Also i would very much like a clarification on the following matter since it has been reported many many times since beta and nothing has changed, i don’t know if it is to hard (or time consuming) to fix or if it is actually working as intended.

Its about channeled abilities (some pets and clones) following thieves wile in stealth.
imo the caster, after loosing target should continue channeling towards the direction the caster is facing and not follow the lost target. BUT if it is working as intended i have already learned how to deal with this so, its not to bad.

A replay from a dev on this matter would be highly appreciated.

I play a thief in WvW and PvE.

In WvW, I think the complaints about thieves largely stem from players having a difficult time interacting with thieves, due to overlong stealth and super-quick spikes.

1. Culling. Every time a stealthed thief attacks me, I get hit 3-4 times before I can actually see him. I know this isn’t intentional because NPCs see you instantly after the first attack lands. I always shadowstep away when Backstabbed, because there’s no way I can make up Backstab and several other free hits. I understand that WvW culling is a big issue in general, but it’s especially annoying when it impacts you repeatedly in the same fight with thieves.
2. Contesting camps while stealthed. There are counter-strategies, but it’s still an annoying process. All the same reasons you can’t do this in SPvP should apply to WvW as well.
3. Big super-fast spikes. Lots of players complain about these. The overall damage itself is actually fine, in my view, but the spike compression — not damage! — that you get from C&D->Steal->Backstab is a bit much. My impression is that the problem isn’t that Backstab does a lot of damage, it’s that you get C&D and Mug and Sigil of Air all hitting at the same time, then Backstab almost immediately afterward. I think the best fix is turning the Backstab combo into more of a clear two-part spike, with a greater delay between the initial C&D burst and the Backstab follow-up, thereby giving players a chance to dodge, block, &c. My preferred solution would be adding an aftercast to C&D rather than tweaking damage numbers.

More generally, I think the game has a problem with quickness. We’ve seen both thief and ranger nerfed because they had abilities that were alright by themselves but over-the-top ridiculous with quickness. Seems like every ability is potentially problematic with quickness, which points to quickness itself needing some scrutiny.

masztipapa.7519:

Backstab thieves can kill almost anybody in a second, thats a serious issue with the class and the other thing that bothers me is the initiative system. Add some diminishing return (so noobies dont spam heartseeker for win -.-), like it only does a third of its original dmg after the first use for like 2 or 3 seconds.

imo if the Mug traid gets (his dmg reduced it will be worthless) replaced with a new trait, this will reduce the amount of dmg output from a BS build thief in a short period of time.

As for HS spammers, most experienced pvp players do not dye to it, in fact is very easily counterable. Puting it in your terms, only noobies die to HS spamming noobies.

2 Main Issues:

1) Culling
2) Can use Full zerker build and still have the same survivability and very little downside compared to other classes that have to spec for survivability (at the cost of dmg).

Hello! I’ve been playing Thief from pretty much day 1. Pragmatist covered most of what I’d already have said (traps need a pass to make them more viable in PvE, balancing PvP separately is a great decision, and some abilities need looking at to make them appealing compared to other sets, like how most stuff outshines dual pistols or how Flanking Strike doesn’t home reliably.) I’m sure that a lot of other people can elucidate on PvE much more clearly than I can. Similarly, other people can go into hits/misses on nerfs/buffs (like what happened with Pistol Whip when the real problem was Haste, or what happened with Cloak And Dagger and the collateral damage to other specs compared to the slap on the wrist Backstab-oriented ones got). I’m gonna talk about something more abstract.

Let me start by mentioning that I love a lot of the game’s design already, and that I really admire how well you’ve pulled off one of your design goals so far: diversity and customization. I’ve been experimenting with builds and I love that I can at least try to go in as many directions as I can. I love that I’m not as pigeonholed as I’ve been in other games – personally, I like stealthy characters but hate burst playstyles, so the skirmishing and zone control that a survivable condition damage thief with Pistol/Dagger and Caltrops has just – really hits this crunchy, satisfying accord with me. In PvP, there’s room for a lot of counterplay from the opponent when I go that spec, and that feels exactly right for making sure that both people have fun in the fight. (On that note, I also love that stealth doesn’t last long and is best used for a quick reposition – you have to use it intelligently and actively instead of always skulking through the battlefield unseen. It makes a traditionally passive mechanic into an active one, which is really admirable of the guy that made that design decision!)

I think that from an objective game design standpoint, specs like the Basilisk Venom-Cloak and Dagger-Mug-Backstab combo don’t give the opponent enough time to react to allow for counterplay. With the condition damage bunker build, the game is more about strategy – are you smart enough to dismantle my build and figure out a weakness in my pattern? With the backstab combo, the game is more about execution (and this burden of execution is really on the thief’s opponent to dodge than the thief themself to attack) – can you react fast enough to stunbreak and move out of the way of the giant wrecking ball of damage?

[This link is a great read] for what I’m talking about. Right now, the design of PvP feels inconsistent – do you want to value strategy or execution more? I can’t really tell. There are elements of both, but they don’t really mix – when the rewards for an imbalance of execution are high enough, there’s simply that much of an execution barrier to new players – “you must be able to fend off a six-pool/pull off one-frame Sakura timings/stunbreak out of Basilisk Venom.”

I’m not saying one is strictly better than the other all the time, but a question to ask yourselves when you go into your next design meeting is “Which style does Guild Wars 2 better lend itself to? What’s better for all players involved, and not just one side of the fence?” Personally, my vote’s for a strategy-heavy game. (I mean, there has to be SOME level of execution barrier, otherwise you get complaints about Heartseeker spam, but then there’s going too far in the execution-fetishism end.)

Thanks for your time, and double-thanks for asking us for feedback! Especially during the Thanksgiving holidays, I’m sorta surprised you guys are in at this time of the year. Have a good weekend, y’all.

Volrath.1473:

Personally I am enjoying the thief class very much, the only thing I would like to see changed are poisons and traps… imo the poisons do not worth a utility skill and traps just don’t fit in any of the thief’s play style (including ranged specs)

That’s not true; I use traps in my P/P spec all the time; and Ambush Trap takes aggro off me and does some decent damage when I need a breather (great for dropping when yer forced to run away, too) Problem is, there’s only 1 or 2 traps, max, that are any good. Poisons … problem with poisons is really there are only – again – 1 or 2 that are worth using and the rest are just kinda meh. (and since ya only have room for 2 poisons and a condition break, you’ll always pick those same two poisons)

I’m going to emphasize what I said in the post above so people are more likely to see it because I think it’s serious would like for other people to test it out:

I believe Pistol #1 is bugged and does not fire at a rate of 2 shots/second like it’s supposed to. I think this is why everyone complains about it feeling extremely weak. The lack of utility is secondary. I’d bet that the activation timer is in actuality the same as the warrior’s rifle, 3/4 second.

Amins.3710:

2) Can use Full zerker build and still have the same survivability and very little downside compared to other classes that have to spec for survivability (at the cost of dmg).

I don’t think this is exclusive to thieves. The game mechanics naturally favor active defense and big damage over passive defense and mediocre damage.

Doman.3042:

Let me start by mentioning that I love a lot of the game’s design already, and that I really admire how well you’ve pulled off one of your design goals so far: diversity and customization. I’ve been experimenting with builds and I love that I can at least try to go in as many directions as I can. I love that I’m not as pigeonholed as I’ve been in other game

Just ta add some happy gushy stuff here, too: this is the first MMO I’ve ever stuck with one character long enough to get to max level. (aside from GW1 that is) Every other MMO I’ve played has lost my interest because classes get stale and samey … there’s no diversity. So, yes please, whatever ya do, please expand upon that, don’t take away from it!

I don’t mind the damage thiefs can output but the amount of damage in such a short amount of time.

Read my thread for proof as to why a character should not die in less than a second:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/FlameShieldOn-16k-Damage-in-1-Sec-OP

Solution? Simply put a CD in between the skills themselves kind of like you do for elementalist on attunement swap. Make it like 1 second or .5 seconds. That way the thief can’t just face roll on their keyboard and deal 16k+ (I heard up to 20k!) in less than a second. Couple that less than a second burst + culling issues = nightmare in WvW.

Volrath.1473:

masztipapa.7519:

Backstab thieves can kill almost anybody in a second, thats a serious issue with the class and the other thing that bothers me is the initiative system. Add some diminishing return (so noobies dont spam heartseeker for win -.-), like it only does a third of its original dmg after the first use for like 2 or 3 seconds.

imo if the Mug traid gets (his dmg reduced it will be worthless) replaced with a new trait, this will reduce the amount of dmg output from a BS build thief in a short period of time.

As for HS spammers, most experienced pvp players do not dye to it, in fact is very easily counterable. Puting it in your terms, only noobies die to HS spamming noobies.

Never said they kill me, usually dont, but pvp is not 1v1 mostly and they do way too high dmg for no effort! Tried it once, 21k hp and 3k armor still hit me 3-4 k for 3 times…

I ask for one thing: Longer range on Cloak & Dagger, need not be much just a little bit more!

Einlanzer.1627:

I believe Pistol #1 is bugged and does not fire at a rate of 2 shots/second like it’s supposed to. I think this is why everyone complains about it feeling extremely weak. The lack of utility is secondary.

No, I’m almost certain it’s firing at 1 shot a second. I’d about put money on it.

Jack of Tears.9458:

Einlanzer.1627:

I believe Pistol #1 is bugged and does not fire at a rate of 2 shots/second like it’s supposed to. I think this is why everyone complains about it feeling extremely weak. The lack of utility is secondary.

No, I’m almost certain it’s firing at 1 shot a second. I’d about put money on it.

I’m reasonably certain that it’s actually the same as the warrior’s rifle, 3/4 second activation time, when it’s supposed to be significantly faster because it does less damage, has less range, and a much shorter duration bleed. At any rate, I feel pretty confidently that this is why Pistol is unanimously reported to be weak.

PvE: Thieves have little to no combo fields, bring barely any support in Dungeons aside from Shadow Refuge and die quick due to low health, low toughness and no access to protection boon.

Initiative on it’s own is both a blessing and a curse, because Initiative is the resource and the skill is the result in PvE it’s mostly pressing the best skill on the bar and repeat that (Pistol Whip) it doesn’t involve any tactical decisions and therefor is boring and bland.

PvP: In sPvP Thieves are great, this is where initiative and choice of skill shines. This is because here mistakes are punished especially in higher end PvP. I have Rank 30 and Champion Title so I think I have some credit in saying stuff regarding sPvP. Even here Backstab does alot of damage and it can frustrate people that are killed by it, but the truth is that you designed us like this. You gave us abilities and we figured out how to quickly kill something which is as intended because we lack damage soaking abilities.

Yes we can run away with great easy, I can pretty much escape any fight when i’m on the losing end but thats how it was designed right? People like to link that running away =/= survivability but it’s not, survivability is surviving a fight by staying in it and negating incoming attacks or keeping yourself up during attacks. Stealth is not a survivability tool by definition, it’s an attack tool by design because of the special stealth skill.

Weapon sets: Weapons are currently very bland or bugged and just all over the place, what does Pistol/Pistol actually do? Is it tanking? Is it bleeding? Is it unload heavy damage?

Sword/Dagger was nerfed for what purpose? Too long of a daze duration on a Moa in PvE? Or repeated long daze in PvP?

D/D follows the same example as P/P, why is it’s dual skill condition based if it’s sneak attack is power based?

Overall I feel Thieves deserve one or two extra weapons, a Rifle would be very suited and is wildy accepted by the Thief community. People have also been screaming for an offhand sword which fits the bill too, and opens up for AoE (whirlwind kind of attacks that will work very well in PvE)

With initiative it goes like this: chain – payoff.
Initiative is the resource but it doesn’t motivate strategic gameplay, in PvE and some abilities in PvP such as heartseeker can be spammed for direct effect and pay off it is not ‘’building up’’ to your big move that is going to be the decisive outcome of the fight.

Utilities: Venoms are incredibly useless on their own except for Basilisk, they have little use in solo and teamplay while a Necro can just use their marks for the same effect but AoE with no cost of utilities.

Blinding Powder could be changed to leave a smoke field for a few seconds, Thieves would start using this ALOT. Rest of the utilities are fine in my book and I use them all frequently with the exception of venoms and traps.

STEAL
Now this is something I have wanted to discuss for a while due to the recent nerfs. Why is Steal even our class special ability? Environmental weapons are a gamble in PvE which it never should be. In PvP I can use each stolen item to work for me in my adventage but still I feel it should be different.

9 out of 10 times I use steal for a gap closer, mug damage or initiative regain, not to use a specific Environmental weapon which was it’s design. Also the enemy I used steal on doesn’t suffer a penalty which is stupid, I just ’’stole’’ his weapon he should be affected by something of a debuff.
Steal should therefor be a utility skill and not a class special ability.

Recent nerfs: Every nerf so far has been from a PvP standpoint, PvE Thieves suffer because of this and there is no excuse for that. I and i’m sure many other Thieves feel more of a burden to a team rather than a helping hand, because usually Thieves are the first to fall on their kitten in PvE due to many mobs and AoE. This is a direct result of less damage output due to PvP based balancing decisions (such as the Pistol Whip one) but also due to the fundamental design that Thieves kill before they are killed, a philosophy that doesn’t work in PvE with veterans and champions because they cannot be killed as quick as we are designed to do.

ArenaNet stated that they would look into the Backstab damage and probably lower it but to compensate for that they would balance other skills to make up for lower damage but you didn’t instead you took a kick to the testicles in other weapon sets.

We excel at escaping, we excel at going in and out, we are a very fun class when it all works together. We can be that one tool to turn the tide but it’s hard to find a person that understand the Thief like that.

In mine opinion, before damaging the class, like it happen with the mesmer with last patch, it would be wise to find a workaround to the culling issue. This alone should allieviate part of the problem.
If it doesn’t, you can always tide a bit up the use of steath in both’s PVP mode while also dramatically decrease the class damage ability in exchange for lot’s more initiative.
In this very event, it would be crucial to redesign all spammable skill like “heartseeker” which should be also tied to a skill cooldown after a limited time of usage.

bettadenu.5483:

PvE: Thieves have little to no combo fields, bring barely any support in Dungeons aside from Shadow Refuge and die quick due to low health, low toughness and no access to protection boon.

Initiative on it’s own is both a blessing and a curse, because Initiative is the resource and the skill is the result in PvE it’s mostly pressing the best skill on the bar and repeat that (Pistol Whip) it doesn’t involve any tactical decisions and therefor is boring and bland.

PvP: In sPvP Thieves are great, this is where initiative and choice of skill shines. This is because here mistakes are punished especially in higher end PvP. I have Rank 30 and Champion Title so I think I have some credit in saying stuff regarding sPvP. Even here Backstab does alot of damage and it can frustrate people that are killed by it, but the truth is that you designed us like this. You gave us abilities and we figured out how to quickly kill something which is as intended because we lack damage soaking abilities.

Yes we can run away with great easy, I can pretty much escape any fight when i’m on the losing end but thats how it was designed right? People like to link that running away =/= survivability but it’s not, survivability is surviving a fight by staying in it and negating incoming attacks or keeping yourself up during attacks. Stealth is not a survivability tool by definition, it’s an attack tool by design because of the special stealth skill.

Weapon sets: Weapons are currently very bland or bugged and just all over the place, what does Pistol/Pistol actually do? Is it tanking? Is it bleeding? Is it unload heavy damage?

Sword/Dagger was nerfed for what purpose? Too long of a daze duration on a Moa in PvE? Or repeated long daze in PvP?

D/D follows the same example as P/P, why is it’s dual skill condition based if it’s sneak attack is power based?

Overall I feel Thieves deserve one or two extra weapons, a Rifle would be very suited and is wildy accepted by the Thief community. People have also been screaming for an offhand sword which fits the bill too, and opens up for AoE (whirlwind kind of attacks that will work very well in PvE)

With initiative it goes like this: chain – payoff.
Initiative is the resource but it doesn’t motivate strategic gameplay, in PvE and some abilities in PvP such as heartseeker can be spammed for direct effect and pay off it is not ‘’building up’’ to your big move that is going to be the decisive outcome of the fight.

Utilities: Venoms are incredibly useless on their own except for Basilisk, they have little use in solo and teamplay while a Necro can just use their marks for the same effect but AoE with no cost of utilities.

Blinding Powder could be changed to leave a smoke field for a few seconds, Thieves would start using this ALOT. Rest of the utilities are fine in my book and I use them all frequently with the exception of venoms and traps.

STEAL
Now this is something I have wanted to discuss for a while due to the recent nerfs. Why is Steal even our class special ability? Environmental weapons are a gamble in PvE which it never should be. In PvP I can use each stolen item to work for me in my adventage but still I feel it should be different.

9 out of 10 times I use steal for a gap closer, mug damage or initiative regain, not to use a specific Environmental weapon which was it’s design. Also the enemy I used steal on doesn’t suffer a penalty which is stupid, I just ’’stole’’ his weapon he should be affected by something of a debuff.
Steal should therefor be a utility skill and not a class special ability.

Recent nerfs: Every nerf so far has been from a PvP standpoint, PvE Thieves suffer because of this and there is no excuse for that. I and i’m sure many other Thieves feel more of a burden to a team rather than a helping hand, because usually Thieves are the first to fall on their kitten in PvE due to many mobs and AoE. This is a direct result of less damage output due to PvP based balancing decisions (such as the Pistol Whip one) but also due to the fundamental design that Thieves kill before they are killed, a philosophy that doesn’t work in PvE with veterans and champions because they cannot be killed as quick as we are designed to do.

ArenaNet stated that they would look into the Backstab damage and probably lower it but to compensate for that they would balance other skills to make up for lower damage but you didn’t instead you took a kick to the testicles in other weapon sets.

We excel at escaping, we excel at going in and out, we are a very fun class when it all works together. We can be that one tool to turn the tide but it’s hard to find a person that understand the Thief like that.

Was a decent post until you said stealth isn’t a survivability tool.

-Most venoms and traps feel like a waste of a utility slot, especially in PvE.

-Steal is a lame, forgettable prof mechanic. Without traits, it’s mostly used for the fact that it’s a free shadowstep. Goes on cooldown even when it completely fails. It’s also underwhelming with ranged builds.

-Flanking Strike.

-Many traits are really bad (never used) or too niche. Examples include: Corrosive Traps, Sundering Strikes, Improv, Quick Venoms, Residual Venom, Ankle Shots, Patience, Assassin’s Retreat (too short), Master Trapper, Hard to Catch (too long cooldown), Ricochet, Initial Strike…

-Many traits feel misplaced. Deadly Arts, for instance, promotes too many things: Direct damage, condition duration and venoms. It’s hard to mesh these 3. Critical Strikes is a lot more defined, for instance.

-Underwater combat has no good option for condition damage.

Friends of ARENA.NET please do something to improve a build which I love: sword/dagger. Improved flanking strike that today is nothing short of embarrassing. And then, ok you have reduced the daze that was the only skill that made this build competitive, ok you have reduced the damage of c/d and dancing dagger, but at least risen more damage output than you already did … If not this build will stay to play it just me because I find it hard to abandon the things that I love. Thank you. I belive in you…

To me the thief profession has the most potential but because of underwhelming utilities such as traps and venoms, traits which trigger internal cooldowns or support the underwhelming utility skills and the unsynergistic weapon sets (P/P is the perfect example of this) it’s the profession which has to rely mostly on gimmicks which in response gets Anet to nerf the Thief over and over.

The problem with constantly nerfing the thief is 1) the nerfs totally miss the point or 2) they take away the only viable options for the thief to remain viable.

What I think needs to happen in order to fix these issues is a redesign of most thief traits, especially the ones that trigger internal cooldowns and a redesign of the weapon sets (not all the abilities need a redesign but there are weapon abilities which are clearly not worth using and which lack synergy in the weapon set).

The original thread in the pvp-section was killed with this move (moving it to the thieves-forum and merge it with threads from other forums). There is no way to keep a debate going with the gazillion topics emerging. Even if the debates can be a bit ugly, I find it infinitely more constructive than pure statements that are never to be challenged.
So no .. I don’t find the merged thread to be a good move … even if it was well intended