Guild Wars 2

I think one of the bigger problem with thieves is simply stealth itself. Stealth gives thieves the ability to disengage fights extremely easily and generally the ability to avoid a lot of damage and make it frustrating for anyone to try hit them. Not being hit in the first place > traits/skills/armor that deal with being hit.

I understand it is one of the thieves main game mechanics but maybe one small change that could be implemented is that damage still shows if you hit someone in stealth. This would make landing aoe a lot easier and also gives the player some idea as to where the thief is so they can react better ie use cyclone axe on war and see dmg behind you and you know the thief is going for a backstab so you can dodge or aoe an area and see dmg and you will know the thief is going in that general direction. Im not even advocating the popular idea of breaking stealth on dmg as i believe that would make stealth pointless but just seeing the dmg would give a better idea on how the thief is moving while also still allowing them their invisibility so some smart movement will still be able to allow them to disengage fights safely.

For wvwvw the stealth problem is magnified by culling issues but anet is already looking into this. Otherwise atm thieves are able to just perma stealth (or maintain for a very long time) and keep a camp from being taken by contesting it. I wonder why the spvp formula wasnt brought in as thieves aernt able to contest point capture in spvp and i believe the same should be brought over. Naturally id like that to apply to other similar skills eg elixer s which also contests capture in wvwvw but not in spvp.

In pve there isnt too much problem with thieves as they are squishy enough that it shows during dungeons. One skill that does come to mind is shadow refuge which is able to keep a user and their party in stealth for a very long time and thus allow us to run past a significant amount of mobs in the dungeon. I remember having thieves during the dredge fractal and during the bomb portion of the fractal all we did was have two perma stealth thieves run the bombs and pretty much finished it without aggroing any of the mobs at all.

The duration of stealth is also a problem. Thieves are able to reach excessively long amounts of time in stealth with popular combos like sitting in shadow refuge, heartseeker+dark field, CnD to name a few. Perhaps making a cap on the time allowed in stealth or increasing the revealed duration means that thieves actually need to use the stealth tactically at the right times instead of using it without impunity and fear of any retaliation.

I do believe the bigger complaints about thieves being overpowered is that there are near zero ways atm to detect thieves in stealth. No other class mechanic seems to give such near absolute defense ie it is still possible to detect the real mesmer in the clones is you just look carefully on how he moves (rolls, sidesteps etc). Otherwise i dont even have that much issue on thief damage. Some of the skills could be toned down a slight bit like backstab+mug combo but overall most can be negated by a stun break, blocks or good positioning and dodging.

Sword/Dagger set:
#1. Flanking strike – This is skill is too unreliable. Sometimes it works, other times it just sends you to your right side far away from the target regardless the target is moving or static. This issue exists for so long and seems to be not addressed by developers. If it were too hard to fix the positioning issue, one solution is making it teleport the user to the target’s back.
#2. Dancing dagger – The nerf is over top yet the cost is still too high. Solutions are reduce the cost to 2-3 initiatives to make it fit with new reduced damage, or make 2 different damage sets – pre-nerfed version for pve and post-nerfed version for pvp.
Pistol/Pistol set:
#1. The attack speed is way too slow. Short bow’s auto attack can hit up to 3 targets, deal pretty much the same damage, and has way faster speed.
#2. Body shot is just useless. Its effect duration is too short and unimpressive to waste 3 initiatives for it.
#3. Head shot is too costly for solely 1/4 second stun.
#4. This set has no skill to help you get away of trouble when you get attacked by several enemies. Black Powder makes you stuck at one place for 4 seconds. If you get out, you will be dead. When 4 second is off, you will still be dead due to those mobs surround you.
Utilities:
#1. Traps: Only able to set up 1 trap at a time, long cool down (30 seconds), and very short effect duration (except Ambush) make traps near to useless.
#2. Venom: Again, long cool down, short effect duration and without venom aura trait make it unfavorable to use.
Elites:
#1. Basilisk Venom is totally useless in underwater combat (only 1.5 second breakable stun and 45 seconds cool down just kill it) yet it is the only elite skill that thieves are able to use underwater.

@ Reiven.2543:

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read your entire post, but I rather just looked at the post and something caught my attention:

“The duration of stealth is also a problem.”

You don’t play thief do you? All stealth skills are 2~3 second (excluding trait-ing, which gives you 1 extra second). The only exception to this is shadow refuge. If a thief uses shadow refuge, and then sits in it till the end of the duration, they can have about 10 seconds of stealth. However, if they leave the field anytime before the field collapses, they are “revealed” (meaning they are unable to re-stealth with ANYTHING for 3 seconds). So, what can ANYONE do about this? Oh, idk…maybe bombarding the refuge (you know…the big field with the little house icon on top) with aoes is a good idea considering he’s stuck either sitting in there eating EVERY SINGLE AOE…or he runs out, and then eats every hit because now, he’s “revealed”.

Stealth in GW2 is PERFECTLY fine as is. In fact, it’s the best set-up of stealth I’ve seen.

What needs to be fixed is culling issues in WvW. There’s ABSOLUTE NOTHING wrong with stealth skills…just players who fail to adapt and identify the weaknesses of certain skills.

@ Kurow.6973:

Yeah fair point about shadow refuge although my point there is more aimed at its uses in PvE. Ill also admit that the perma stealth problem is prob more an issue on the culling which occurs over the duration of the Revealed status and it will probably be easier to make the arguement that “stealth duration is too long” perhaps after culling is fixed fully so i acknowledge that i may be faulted on saying that.

Reiven.2543:

For wvwvw the stealth problem is magnified by culling issues but anet is already looking into this. Otherwise atm thieves are able to just perma stealth (or maintain for a very long time) and keep a camp from being taken by contesting it. I wonder why the spvp formula wasnt brought in as thieves aernt able to contest point capture in spvp and i believe the same should be brought over. Naturally id like that to apply to other similar skills eg elixer s which also contests capture in wvwvw but not in spvp.

Good point, but if the capture of a point is very closely contested and the remaining thief goes into stealth he shouldn’t be not counted anymore, it would need to exclude thieves not in combat instead, because when in combat you have that crossed swords icon showing vaguely where you are and if it is just one guy against many he would lose the point but 1v1 there’s a chance he can defend.

Reiven.2543:

I do believe the bigger complaints about thieves being overpowered is that there are near zero ways atm to detect thieves in stealth. No other class mechanic seems to give such near absolute defense ie it is still possible to detect the real mesmer in the clones is you just look carefully on how he moves (rolls, sidesteps etc).

A more skill based way of this is to have particle effects/the animation when a thief goes stealth (that spiral of black lines) when they are hit in stealth, those black lines stand out against everything, a fair compromise, that way everyone can see his location rather than one guy who might not be watching all his AoEs

Amins.3710:

2 Main Issues:

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 think you meant the warriors with that one…

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

I think Thieves needs a HP buff, in my opinion.

My concerns?
I’ll start with the way people discuss Thief issues here. Not going into detail – you know, what I mean. Lets ban those vague rumors from a serious forum:

(1) Only speak for yourself
Who cares if your friend dislikes Thieves, died to them, left the game etc.? You heard other people saying something about Thieves, post silly screenshots etc.? Who cares? It’s only your(!) opinion, that matters. If you see 20k+ backstabs every 5s and thieves wiping whole groups while being 90% of the time stealthed… ok —> move on to (2)

(2) Prove it
Full length non-edited video(!) – or it didn’t happen. We want to see, what you saw, what you might have been able to see, what you might have been able to do etc. Of course even the video will not tell everything, but at least it’s better than nothing.

(2.1) For the real determined
Prove, that YOU can do, what a Thief did to you or your group and how easy it is. Same rules as in (2) apply.

(3) Language please
Keep it nice and friendly.

Why that suggestion? Well… I am not one of these pro players on our server and I know that. So from time to time I record video while I play and then watch it again to see, what was good, bad and – very important – to see all the little details I didn’t notice when I was playing. Many times I found, that I missed something and died to my own bad reaction, positioning, wasting of abilities and so on.

With those videos, detailed descriptions etc. we can separate myth and reality. Come on – let’s do it.

Kind regards,

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

As its been said before, balancing will not be done due to wvw, and last time I checked a full zerker warrior will wreck you even worse with kill shot, the fact that wvw uses pve gear that can attain values of 104% percent crit damage and along with food you can boost it up to 114%, so anything that hits high will hit like a truck, its not uncommon for killshot for kill shot shot in wvw to level 80’s and with kill shot if they are not paying attention its 1 hit, the famous backstab combo gives you sometime to react.

People are complaining about the thieves “insane burst” when it is not even the highest in the game.

Is there a particular reason why Black Powder is a projectile finisher and not a blast finisher?
Changing it over to a blast finisher would open up a lot of new tactics like providing AoE heal on healing wells or using most of your initiative to AoE stealth.
I don’t quite understand how it being a projectile finisher does it any good.

I’ve also never used my trap skills. They’re either weak or just aren’t interesting/versatile enough to use over other skills.

This is a longshot and it applies to many other classes as well but getting access to some new weapon types couldn’t hurt.

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

Full glass cannon thief 2199 P 14,6kHP
Backstab DMG =(weapon damage 981)power 2199(skill coe. 2,405 on back attack)/enemy armor=518811,695/enemy armor
Enemy armor 1500=3458,74 DMG
Enemy armor 2000=2594,05 DMG
Enemy armor 2200=2358,05 DMG
Enemy armor 2500=2075,22 DMG
Enemy armor 2755=1883,22 DMG
Critikal damage bonus with all CD and traits is 270%

DMG for 9500crit=+-3492DMG non crit = your armor is max 1850—>glass cannon =)

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

i notice that you have less than 2300 armor. less than half of my own gear has toughness on it, i only gain 200 points from traits, and i’m at around 2600 armor. what relevance does that have? well, i’ve run into glass cannon thieves many many times, and never once have i been hit for that much damage. (the highest i’ve ever been hit for was 3k, 4k, and 8k, but that was before the change to assassin’s signet.) now, if less than half of what i’m wearing has any toughness on it, and i still have 300 more armor than you, that leads me to one of two conclusions. either you’re a glass cannon build yourself, which according to the pop up over your armor score, you’re not a full glass cannon. though, you do still have lower cores in both toughness and defense than i do, with less than half of my gear having toughness on it (1535 toughness and 1064 defense, compared to your 1368 and 920). or you’re wearing cloth armor, in which case you have other ways to deal with the damage. just ask any competent d/d elementalist. if you were caught by surprise by the thief’s burst combo, then that’s really more a problem with your situational awareness. add in the fact that you have very little invested into your damage mitigation, and well, there’s your problem.

simply posting a pieced together partial screenshot is in no way, shape or form a compelling argument for anything, on any planet. using words, details and facts to present a case will have much more gravity than photoshop ever will.

now, to comment on the class itself…..

shadow refuge
a fantastic skill in PvE, not so much in PvP. the debuff forces the thief to stand in for the full duration, and the house symbol might as well be a giant neon sign that says ’HEY! THROW ALL YOUR AoE HERE!!!" my suggestion is to remove the debuff unless the thief actually attacks something while in stealth, remove the giant obvious house symbol from a stealth skill, and make it an elite skill on a 90 or 120 second cooldown.

shortbow #1
the arrow bounce on the #1 skill may seem nice, but it’s counter productive to the real reason people use bows instead of guns. bows are silent. you can sneak in somewhere and accomplish your goal and get out without alerting everyone of your presence. however, if that arrow starts ricocheting around to enemy players/mobs, you’ve drawn a ton of attention to yourself and are most likely about to die. my recommendation is to change the power shots trait in the shadow arts tree to “trick shots” to allow both it and the harpoon gun to bounce to multiple targets and make that a tier 1 trait.

shortbow #2
cluster bomb is the only 1200 range weapon skill the thief has, at all. it’s absurdly slow and mind numbingly simple to avoid at range. it can only be fired after the initial shot has already landed or was prematurely detonated. it’s main use is to get up into melee range and shoot it directly down at your own feet over and over. that’s, quite possibly, the worst tactical use of a bow in the history of archery. my recommendation is to keep the 15% damage nerf, and speed the arrow’s flight up considerably.

shortbow #4
choking gas sounds like a wonderful skill, in theory. poison doesn’t create damage stacks, so you only really need to use it once the initial poison has worn off. add in that it only has a 900 range, and it’s pretty much just good for throwing the occasional one into the cluster bomb foot spam. my suggestion is to increase the range out to 1200 and increase the speed of the arrow’s flight as well.

pistols
i think most of their deficiencies have already been covered already, but i do have a suggestion for them as well. i recommend changing the trait that allows the bullet to bounce, to allow it to piece multiple targets, and to increase the likelihood of this happening up to 50%. have it do only 75% of the possible damage per each target it’s pierced.

daggers
the weapon set that receives the most thief hate directed toward it. though, to be fair, it’s really just one particular combo on one particular build: the glass cannon preloaded CnD->mug->backstab. how do we remedy this situation without just pointing to the people who have already learned how to deal with it and say “LOOK! just do what they’re doing!”? well, you could get rid of the ability to use mug in the middle of the CnD animation to get both off and end up in stealth, though other classes are able to perform the same combination actions so that wouldn’t be fair to thieves. you could nerf mug damage, but that would affect other builds who don’t use the 3 hit combo. you could nerf CnD, and you did, but that affects anyone who uses a dagger in their off hand, regardless of what’s in their main hand. you could nerf backstab, that would affect anyone who uses a dagger in their main hand, regardless of what’s in their off hand. so it’s quite a conundrum. personally, here’s what i recommend, instead of the 33% nerf to CnD, change it to only a 10% nerf. tone down backstab by 10%. change what mug does. perhaps a 1 second knockdown, or push back, or confusion, or daze, or anything besides burst damage really. then create an instructional video on how to avoid the combo and post it any time someone complains that they were killed by it.

now to break off on a few tangents.

culling
the biggest problem that has created the most misconceptions and rage about the thief class. fix this, and a large portion of the thief hate disappears immediately.

preventing WvW caps via stealth
it’s fun and exciting for the thief, and it can be countered by the people attempting to cap the camp if they know what they’re doing. however, sPvP prevents stealthed players from affecting the capping circle, so it really only makes sense that WvW would adhere to the same standards.

stealth and initiative
someone earlier had suggested making stealth drain initiative. this could be feasible, depending on how it was implemented. it would have to be a completely separate system to the current short term, in combat stealth already available. make it similar to the “perma stealth” that other games already have. lower the movement rates, have it cost 1 initiative per 2 minutes of stealth, give it a fairly long debuff on it (somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-5 minutes), have it create the normal revealed debuff when any attacks are used so that the player can’t immediately enter one of their short term buffs, and have it only able to be entered when out of combat. i’d also recommend giving players a 1 in 10 chance to see though it, to reveal the semi transparent image that thieves see on their own screen while currently in stealth.

though, what i’d really prefer is environmental stealth. let me hide in a bush, let me blend in with some rocks, let me use camouflage to hide like it’s done in real life. this would require 4 things to happen, and really only 4. number 1: fix culling. number 2: get rid of the annoying chat spam when using emotes such as /kneel, /sit, /sleep. number 3: provide a way to remove the giant neon sign floating over a thief’s head when out of combat as well as auto-target options. mouse clicking to target would still work. number 4: let the actual dye colors of the thief’s armor to show up on everyone’s screen, at least until they’re targeted. then it becomes a matter of one player’s perception vs the other player’s knowledge and skill with hiding. true player versus player.

Caffynated.5713:

1. Steal has to interrupt any skill that is in use when it is activated and it needs at least a 1/2 second aftercast. This will give people who are attacked about 1 second to register that they’re in danger and do something about it before CnD -> backstab ruins their day.

This could be the worst thing to do to the thief. Think about other specs and not only backstab. I’m a S/D user and Anet nerfed the build I used to use into the ground. At this time, my only reliable burst is CnD/Mug and its far from OS anyone. S/D is already pretty hard to play since the daze nerf and will be destroyed by a change like this.

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

Your armor was a bit on the low side which probably had a lot to do with that. As a Thief my armor in 1500 and I’m not built as a bunker.

Elthan.5246:

Caffynated.5713:

1. Steal has to interrupt any skill that is in use when it is activated and it needs at least a 1/2 second aftercast. This will give people who are attacked about 1 second to register that they’re in danger and do something about it before CnD -> backstab ruins their day.

This could be the worst thing to do to the thief. Think about other specs and not only backstab. I’m a S/D user and Anet nerfed the build I used to use into the ground. At this time, my only reliable burst is CnD/Mug and its far from OS anyone. S/D is already pretty hard to play since the daze nerf and will be destroyed by a change like this.

Agreed, this would hurt S/P as well, we can use steal to relocate in mid pistol whip.

Most sure everyone has already posted a ton of repetitive feedback about certain broken Thief skills such as Flanking Strike (everybody’s favorite) and weird skills such as Dancing Dagger (lol damage and 50% slow for 4 initiative) so I’ll just say what I generally think about Thieves.

They offer horrible utility to the team. Seriously you make this game a team game giving completely no options for 1v1 or at least 2v2 pvp and in these conditions Thief ends up as a solo play class. Every other profession has a variety of skills to offer to their teams (hi Guardians), shield fields, combo fields, buffs, massive debuffs on enemies etc. Thief has nothing except decent damage [8/10] and moderate mobility [6/10] (people who actually play the game already know that GS Warrior has way more mobility let alone Mesmer’s portals).

But even in rare 1v1 occasions anyone who is smart enough to get some vitality/toughness can deal with Thief easily. Im not speaking of broken bunker Guardians, Engineers, Necromancers or Elementalists, even simple semi-tanky Mesmer can beat Thief by simply running around and spamming illusions while doing Blurred Frenzy sometimes to block occasional Thief’s burst. The only thing Thief can kill are dumb glass cannons who only think about getting more kills and then run on forums to complain about OP Thief. Thief always strikes first and thats why they easily kill other profession glass cannons.

Thief has the worst sustain and zero tankiness, every other class has a better heal skill than Thieves, of course Thief also gets invisibility, but seriously what serious player would be confused by 3 sec stealth now? You just keep swinging weapon or throwing AoE in the location where you saw Thief last time or behind yourself thus Thief only harms himself by relying on deceptive safety of stealth.

ANet wanted to grant Thieves good mobility and elusiveness instead of utility and tankiness but they only partly succeeded let alone that no mobility can compensate being useless in your team apart of doing damage (everyone can do that). And now ANet does weird stuff with cutting Thief damage even more while there already was no way for Thief to deal with bunkers no matter what Thief build do you use.

On top of everything else Thief has laughable crowd control, while of course it would be stupid to turn assassin class into a CC machine like in some other games, Thief’s CC right now is simply a joke. The only CC worth attention is Headshot and Venoms. While Headshot is a good interrupt for its instant cast you would hardly find yourself using a Pistol in off-hand let alone that it deals near to no damage and costs 4 initiative. Venoms… really? EVERY hostile action uses a venom stack: Heartseeker, Caltrops, Traps, Chocking Gas, even kitten Infiltrator’s Arrow that deals no damage uses up a Venom stack but doesnt give its effects. Thus if Thief has enabled poisons he cant use his 2 main mobility skills if he doesnt want to lose poison stacks.

About bunkers its a whole different story, seriously how could you make armor/hp completely outscale all the damage components in the game where the only competitive game mode consists of holding a point and not moving anywhere what clearly favors all this armor/hp stacking. Passive gameplay like this should be severely punished in conquest game mode but ANet isnt even going to move away from this. But thats unrelated to the topic.

Fixing Thief: add tankiness, add healing, add team utility, add at least 2-3 RELIABLE CC, if its necessary cut some damage and/or mobility. You’ll have to take away some assassin components from Thief because currently that option has no place in the game let alone that ANet keeps pointing at how they dislike the damage Thief deals. So it would be easier for them to remake the class than remake the game.

End of the rant.

Why are you spamming to try and justify doing that much damage? I’m not glass cannon. I’m in full toughness/vitality gear. My runes have toughness on them. My weapon has toughness on it. Elementalist’s wear light armor. We do not get 2600 armor. No one should be hitting me in my gear for 7kx2 followed by 9k+ in the span of 3s. It’s flat out broken. Period.

Evilek.5690:

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

Full glass cannon thief 2199 P 14,6kHP
Backstab DMG =(weapon damage 981)power 2199(skill coe. 2,405 on back attack)/enemy armor=518811,695/enemy armor
Enemy armor 1500=3458,74 DMG
Enemy armor 2000=2594,05 DMG
Enemy armor 2200=2358,05 DMG
Enemy armor 2500=2075,22 DMG
Enemy armor 2755=1883,22 DMG
Critikal damage bonus with all CD and traits is 270%

DMG for 9500crit=+-3492DMG non crit = your armor is max 1850—>glass cannon =)

Cool story on math.
You forgot how cloak and dagger applies vulnerability.
And whatever weapon sigils were used. I don’t know that info.

I was only hit with the three abilities in the screenshot. There is no time at all to react to that. That’s why it is overpowered. I have 10 points in earth, not 30. Major trait in earth is Armor of Earth at 50% health. It didn’t proc due to rapid damage. The system is flawed to allow that much damage that rapidly through the gear I’m wearing. I’m not the only target thieves are demolishing people with. You can’t just make a class that gives no reaction time in pvp. That’s just bad design.

Ah, a “go whine in that corner and stop disturbing the peace” thread. I am disappointed with the changes trend. Arenanet has no qualms in obliterating everything to the ground in their quest to deal with specific cases. In the last “episode”:

- Bs burst glass cannon builds doing insane damage in spvp? Nerf bs and cnd damage to everyone.
- Dancing dagger glass cannons hitting other glass cannons for insane damage in spvp? Nerf dancing dagger for everyone.
- Tactical stike overdazing when used with a particular signet? Nerf tactical strike for everyone.

I only do (or did) wvw. I have no interest in playing on borrowed time (arenanet obviously thinks the correct balance is in spvp), using gimmicky builds (glass backstab), playing miniwarriors (pistol whip) or miniengineer (kiting with a pistol).

s/d (even with its broken flanking strikes and the slow 3rd slash which everyone knows not to be hit by) provided long entertaining fights, with stuff you could kill, stuff you could not, and stuff you’d end up in a tie. dancing dagger was good enough for its initiative cost, and made you think about whether you should move to the mobs to use them for your purposes, rangers actually managing their pets or people considering whether they should go for a res or not.

Basketball arenanet style: “We have a few people who are 4m high. As this is unfair, we will be chopping everyones legs by the knee to ensure a level playing field. Also as compensation to reduced leg length everyone will be getting an extra drink.”

katniss.6735:

Why are you spamming to try and justify doing that much damage? I’m not glass cannon. I’m in full toughness/vitality gear. My runes have toughness on them. My weapon has toughness on it. Elementalist’s wear light armor. We do not get 2600 armor. No one should be hitting me in my gear for 7kx2 followed by 9k+ in the span of 3s. It’s flat out broken. Period.

Again I repeat…. WVW offers 114% crit damage, its not the class that is broken. Also please refrain from twisting the facts, your screenshot showed 2,288 armour which makes me doubt you were full toughness. If you would be so kind to show your gear?

Phantom.8130:

now to break off on a few tangents.

culling
the biggest problem that has created the most misconceptions and rage about the thief class. fix this, and a large portion of the thief hate disappears immediately.

Culling is by far one of the biggest issues, people in general will always react badly to stealth classes, it’s the surprise element that people don’t like. When something appears suddenly and you lose a large portion of your health. So when you see your health going down and you don’t see where that damage is coming from and therefore you cannot fight back reliably, that leads to massive frustrations and justifiably so.

Honestly I can’t see aNet fixing this problem.

For anyone posting any screenshot to try validate their arguments. Show the whole screenshots. Time stamps would be recognized (to ensure it is recent and not from months ago before nerfs).

@ katniss.6735: I’m sorry, but 7000+ steal and 7000+ c&d? I’m not buying this at this point in the game. Maybe back when signet was doing 150% damage…but not now. What is your level? You realize level difference still factors in bonus damage (regardless of the fact that the game bumps your base stats up)…right?

PS: The main reason I don’t believe you, is because my lvl 80 with similar stats like that doesn’t, and hasn’t been hit that hard since the signet nerf. Not to mention the fact that BS thieves can never kill me unless they attack me in an unfair match up like 3v1, 4v1, 5v1, Zv1 in WvW…but really…that’s not a valid reason to nerf a build.

best solution for thieves is to give all other classes stealth and we all will be playing hide and seek glass cannon builds.
now with bs 8k hs7k steal7k it feels like my thief is like f1 doing street race against porsche and kicking his butt.
class change and revamp is a must.

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

Are you kidding? Your armor rating is seriously low. You are in squishy territory. You are complaining about being fragile as a glass cannon.

The stealth mechanic is necessary due to the use of initiative to give a thief time to regen his weapon skills. Some classes can stealth while others become completely invulnerable or at the very least completely block or evade attacks… Competency matters.

Other than stealth, there’s skills that provide evades while in attack animation. Like dodge, good timing helps a lot in execution of the skill.

Now with all the nerfs, solo play-style thieves are forced to a guerrilla build, namely hit and run. Why? They can burst heavy only once, if they misses(especially if the other players are competent enough to dodge or use evasion skills) they are literally out of initiative. Solo has 2 traited forms, stealth tank (mainly for harassment) or raw glass cannon(either you are dead or he’s dead).

Groupstyle or “support” thieves, which I prefer, uses conditions and boons. I share venom which in turn provides up to 8 stacks of mights as well as 1 fury/swiftness/might boon with stealthrill of the hunt. Shadow refuge for stealth, regen and emergency revive. Works good in all settings.

The nerf, dancing dagger. Now it’s a heavy 4 initiative cost that does less damage than my auto-attack. It has become a liability since I found myself completely out of initiative often and earlier. E.g Used to take down a moa in about 5 seconds, throwing the dagger to cripple it when it tries to run away. Now I take about 8 seconds. Note I can still take down that moa in about 5 seconds using pistols.

1. Revealed needs to be increased to 5 seconds. The stealth spam is still a problem, it’s too easy for the Thief to disengage and keep up insane pressure through Stealth skills. Sneak Attack (Pistol Stealth skill) and Tactical Strike (Sword Stealth skill) need to be buffed accordingly to make up for the lost damage. This change alone will also adjust the insane trait defense that come through Stealth, like Condition removal every 3 seconds, health regeneration and AoE Blind spam.

2. Trick Shot’s damage needs to be nerfed slightly. Thief has way too much AoE damage that he can apply way too easily.

3. Flanking Strike needs be changed for greater functionality.

4. Traps could use a little buff in functionality as well, and a buff to overall power. E.g. buff Corrosive Traps, it’s not really worth it right now.

5. Skale Venom and Ice Drake Venom could use a buff.

6. Shadow Refuge needs a nerf of some sort. It’s pretty much mandatory for PvP in its current state.

7. Signet of Shadows active needs a buff. It’s clearly intended to be left on the bar and never used, but why is it a Signet then?

Edelweiss.9815:

1. Revealed needs to be increased to 5 seconds. The stealth spam is still a problem, it’s too easy for the Thief to disengage and keep up insane pressure through Stealth skills. Sneak Attack (Pistol Stealth skill) and Tactical Strike (Sword Stealth skill) need to be buffed accordingly to make up for the lost damage. This change alone will also adjust the insane trait defense that come through Stealth, like Condition removal every 3 seconds, health regeneration and AoE Blind spam.

2. Trick Shot’s damage needs to be nerfed slightly. Thief has way too much AoE damage that he can apply way too easily.

3. Flanking Strike needs be changed for greater functionality.

4. Traps could use a little buff in functionality as well, and a buff to overall power. E.g. buff Corrosive Traps, it’s not really worth it right now.

5. Skale Venom and Ice Drake Venom could use a buff.

6. Shadow Refuge needs a nerf of some sort. It’s pretty much mandatory for PvP in its current state.

7. Signet of Shadows active needs a buff. It’s clearly intended to be left on the bar and never used, but why is it a Signet then?

I agree with revealed, but make the 5 seconds for pvp only and keep pve with 3 seconds.

Some people here are requesting things because they 1) got beaten by a Thief and ran here to cry and 2) need to learn to play against the Thief. Culling is the big issue in WvW. Nerfing stealth and adding longer revealed debuffs will change nothing. You could take stealth completely the kitten away and I will still kill you. For goodness sakes, Rogues in World of Warcraft have had permanent stealth from day 1, 3 shot any cloth class in the game and people still play them, still kill people and people still whine about stealth. It will never end until people cry enough that the game just dies like every other MMO out there but World of Warcraft.

Trick Shot’s slow missle speed and amazingly hard hitting 200~350 damage auto shots really tear it up huh? You can’t be serious about this. The missile is 3x slower than anybody else’s long range attack, about on par with Ranger’s longbow speed. The only saving grace is of course that it can bounce like Dancing Dagger. Shadow Refuge doesn’t need anything else done to it. It’s useful, it’s one of the most useful skills we have. Buff everything else we can use up to that level and maybe the thought of tossing Shadow Refuge off our bars will happen. It’s invaluable for saving half my team depending on where I drop it to res or to stomp people and lets me get a lot of people the hell away from danger while healing them. It’s no different than any other bunker classes super shields outside of the fact that mine gives a few seconds of stealth.

But seriously, leave the stealth alone until they fix culling. If revealed time goes up, then major damage would have to start happening along with more survivability or longer stealth times to compensate. People just don’t seem to understand that the reason why we can survive at all is because we have an ENTIRE trait line dedicated to us not dying so easy as long as we can go into stealth a lot. And if we have speced into that entire trait line, guess what? We’re not glass cannons. So bite me, learn to play, tell Anet to fix their broken WvW culling stuff and move the heck on. Lubs! <3!

I love how thieves can use skills over again if they choose. This brings alternative and interesting gameplay opportunities to pvp.

I love how thieves are so slippery. The 3sec stealth mechanic on such a squishy class works well because it rewards skillful play without giving the thief any sort of invulnerable ability, which would contradict the class type. Infultrator’s arrow also works here. Well done!

Although heartseeker can be countered, I feel that the effort/reward curve is too shallow. It’s just so easy to spam this ability because it deals decent damage and also tracks your target as they move. I suppose that it’s too spammable. Either raise the initiative cost to reduce spamming or drastically lower the damage at higher levels of HP.

Venoms skills in general are very lackluster. only spider venom and drake’s venom are worth taking at all. Venoms require full traiting to be useful in pvp, and even then they can be wasted by enemies blocking/dodging or moving behind an object. I realise that venom sharing is a powerful ability (potentially), but the sharing range is very small, resulting in inefficiency. In my opinion venoms would be more balanced of they provided greater power to the thief, but reduced (half) power to allies.

Most traps are useless in pvp. There’s no reason to get them as they only effect a single target, compared with ranger traps, which have a better shape. The thief trap and the teleport trap are good, niche abilities for certain builds (venom sharing and point defending/roaming), but the other traps need more power + area effect to be of any use.

Thieves need more variety in weapon sets. They get pigeon-holed into ‘spamming’ certain skills or skill rotations, but only because a few skills are viable within some of the wepaon sets. Take a condition damage build. DD – Dealth’s Blossom is your only damage skill. P/D – auto attack and cloak and dagger are you only damage skills. Power/crit builds would tend not to waste initiative on Death’s Blossom, limiting the thief’s arsenal.

Maybe it’s already been fixed, I don’t do enough WvWvW to know, but in my opinion anything even resembling permastealth should NEVER be achievable for the thief. Regardless of the amount of skill that it might require to pull it off, something like that is just totally unfair to other players and I refuse to use it, no matter how effective it is.

Anyway the rest of my Christmas List consists of a buff for P/P, because I don’t like feeling pressured into using daggers in dungeons for the sake of damage and at the huge expense of safety, and a little more durability for Thieves.

I really like how much the profession relies on evading, and it’s probably the main reason I don’t get bored with spamming Unload on my P/P build. That said, I do think that the squishiness should probably be dialed back just a little bit.

As many others have said, a little more support to offer in groups would be welcome too.

I think the main problem of thieves is the culling in PvP. Yes, you tried to fix it in sPvP. However, thieves only get visible after 1-2 seconds after they did the damage to you. You have to change this. Not sure if you can but that’s the main problem of the class probably. If you fix that, you can start balancing thieves. A half-fix (in case the engine can’t without the 1-2 seconds of rendering) would be to make the names instantly appear. Or something else, maybe like a white flash?

Perhaps backstab could be brought in line (although I really don’t think its damage is out of line) if the deep wound condition were brought back from gw1 and applied instead of double damage from behind. Have it stack intensity with a cap of 4, starting with 15% health reduction, 2 stacks at a total of 25% health reduction, 3 stacks for 30, and 4 stacks for 33. Really if someone can make it up to the 4 stacks without removing the condition, then they deserve to die, but then backstab would scale better with the target being attacked, whether they be squishy or a tank. It might also change the playstyle mechanic of backstab because instead of using it in a front ended burst, they would use it as a finisher since it could be removed as a condition.

At this point, venoms seem redundant. Apply poison same as dagger auto attack? That seems like a useful reason to put it in a utility slot. Instead of poison for dagger autoattack, why not bleeding for 4 seconds? It would make spider venom a unique condition and therefore worth taking. This would also bring D/D 1&3 in line with each other as a nice stacking combo.

Also, I don’t think the stealth mechanic needs any changing. If this is due to a processing power problem with the servers or something, why not make the revealed animation of the swirling shadows last the entire length of revealed, since this is what players should look for because of the rendering issue. It may only be a stopgap until the rendering issue can be fully addressed wherever the problem may lie, but it would give people a target to attack in the meantime.

I could take or leave a sword off hand. It may be a chance to reintroduce flashing blades (if I’m remembering my names properly from gw1) as a dual skill, allowing for maybe a more defensive offhand which doesnt rely on blind.

It would be nice if our traits allowed the chance to cause bleeding on a crit somewhere along the line. Maybe putting it in trickery and calling it barbed blades or in the accuracy line since the more accurate you would become the more likely you would aim for an artery.

Venoms could be left to do the exact same abilities if instead of applying them to weapons, you threw down a venomous smoke bomb at your location with an AoE effect (radius 240). Then venomous aura could leave combo fields on top of those as well. You get cc that makes sense for a thief as well as a cool venomshare build. Basilisk venom could have the same radius as bps, or maybe a tiny bit smaller, and leave a confusion combo field.

Evilek.5690:

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

Full glass cannon thief 2199 P 14,6kHP
Backstab DMG =(weapon damage 981)power 2199(skill coe. 2,405 on back attack)/enemy armor=518811,695/enemy armor
Enemy armor 1500=3458,74 DMG
Enemy armor 2000=2594,05 DMG
Enemy armor 2200=2358,05 DMG
Enemy armor 2500=2075,22 DMG
Enemy armor 2755=1883,22 DMG
Critikal damage bonus with all CD and traits is 270%

DMG for 9500crit=+-3492DMG non crit = your armor is max 1850—>glass cannon =)

Steal+CnD = 10K on squishy = insta dead squishy

I love the PvE gameplay of d/d with a stealth build. I built my thief to be tanky, so I have over 3k toughness and about 18k health. I don’t get hit much in crowded PvE fights because I also take the trait for aoe blind on stealth. The controlling effect of aoe blindness is quite amazing in the vast majority of the fights I’ve done.

I also use shortbow for its kiting potential in fights where melee isn’t the best option. I have yet to see another profession match my kiting ability with this weapon. It also adds tons more mobility, allowing me to play an evasive and mobile medic in fights like giganticus lupicus.

I have 3 characters to 80 so far: mesmer, guardian, and thief. What keeps me sticking with thief is the evasive and mobile gameplay it offers, even when going melee.

About D/D in PvE

• The pause after Lotus Strike is too long
• Double Strike, Wild Strike and Lotus Strike are all single target skills. However, in 1v1 battle, dagger thief doesn’t really have better performance than sword thief. Those dagger skills might require bleeding.
• Poison from Lotus Strike makes Spider Venom meaningless. Again, giving Lotus Strike bleeding seems more effective …. and maybe more reasonable.
• The most inconvenience of Death Blossom is that after using this skill, all the enemies are behind thief. The hotkey to change facing direction doesn’t 100% work when your character just finishes the DB animation. It will be much more convenient for players if thief can directly face the targeted target after using DB.
• Dancing Dagger. I personally don’t mind its damage nerf. But I feel really sick about its cost, especially when there is only one target. The description says that thief throws the dagger and it will return to thief — is it possible that making some checks, if the skill doesn’t hit max targets, thief can gain initiatives back. ex: hit 3 gain 1 back, or hit 1 gain 3 back.
• Cloak and Dagger. It doesn’t make any sense that thief still need 6 points to use this skill during Revealed debuff. If the thief is “Revealed”, C&D should just be considered as a heavy damage single target skills and should cost less than 6.

Setima.8741:

For goodness sakes, Rogues in World of Warcraft have had permanent stealth from day 1, 3 shot any cloth class in the game and people still play them, still kill people and people still whine about stealth. It will never end until people cry enough that the game just dies like every other MMO out there but World of Warcraft.

Rogues in WoW couldnt kill anyone in 3 sec
They could stunlock their victim to death , for 5-6 sec (With Cata-Wotlk PvE gear) (max 9 sec , but 6 sec was enought)
The healers had 5 sec to react and full heal u , if he wasnt cc-ed
And in this expanion (Pantacareland) they normilized their damage and magically all the whinning on the forums stopped :P

Just give some classes the ability to heal each other in 2 sec at full life and everything will be ok :P

Reiven.2543:

I understand it is one of the thieves main game mechanics but maybe one small change that could be implemented is that damage still shows if you hit someone in stealth.
…
Thieves are able to reach excessively long amounts of time in stealth with popular combos like sitting in shadow refuge, heartseeker+dark field, CnD to name a few. Perhaps making a cap on the time allowed in stealth or increasing the revealed duration means that thieves actually need to use the stealth tactically at the right times instead of using it without impunity and fear of any retaliation.

1. As a thief I agree, with a caveat. One of the main reasons I don’t have as many problems hunting down stealthed opponents on my thief is that Signet of Malice gives great positive feedback when you hit a stealthed opponent. This, combined with other tells, make tracking enemies in stealth possible. However, I think every damage hit popping up red numbers is a bit excessive, especially with AE effects. My suggestion would be as follows: Critical hits done to stealthed targets show numbers. This lends more weight to certain stats as a countermeasure and allows some specialization in tracking stealthed targets.

2. The costs associated with remaining in stealth long-term more than make up for the benefits of it, especially considering the majority of stealth’s use is gone if you’re remaining in an area where the enemy knows you are.

Doman.3042:

Someone needs to give Tulisin a medal. I really couldn’t have said it better than his posts.

Absolutely. It was worthy of “print out 10 copies and bring them to meetings” that was said by Johnathan Sharp.
I agreed with basically everything Tuislin said.

if thief needs balance in PVP, nerf it in pvp only. it seems silly to take their damage down without compensating in PVE, as you only make life harder for them in such. especially the pistol whip nerf, it makes absolutely no sense to hurt it’s pve values and not compensate for it.

Just a little addition:
As a thief, I found a biggest counter to myself to be necromancers, so I rolled one to understand thieves better from the side.
What I found out (in spvp) is that outside the dazelock build (now nerfed, still questioning why sigils/runes dont work on it) thief is practically reduced to damage dumper. Unlike almost any class I face as a necro, thief is nearly incapable of adequately contributing to any of spvp goal.
To put simply, thieves have so few options to choose from than for almost every occasion there is a solid BEST solution of build/tactic.
What was failed to be noted by a-net devs is that initiative-based skills should not be designed and balanced by the same means as cooldown ones.
I would like most of all to note – I can deal with any kind of issue eventually as a thief – but it gets stupid if there is simply nothing to choose from.
And remember – nerfing a SINGLE thief weapon skill is nerfing also WHOLE weapon set AND actually nerfing initiative system, that is already unstable enough. The 15% nerf to PW is, for example, is a nerf to whole weapon set (being main skill of it for same resource) and a nerf to initiative (as overall use/initiative ratio is lowered for ALL skills)

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

So.. ? What’s prove? Nothing. Where SS to see the buffs in the Thief?
In SPvP, my team stack might, and I can do 10k+ BS easy in players with that armor or more.

Reading this whole discusion was quite a pain but here’s my conclusion and own ideas.

Curent dancing dagger is lackluster, and even useless againsnt single target. Remake the change into D/D hitting 100%>75%>50%>25%

In comparison to old dancing dagger it would do 3/8 less damage, yet it would be reliable single target hit. Instead of 50/50/50/50 of old dancing dagget. It is not much of a boost just 60% of old dancing dagger damage instead of 50% that is now. Yet much more usefull in 1on1.

2bad thing is CnD nerf. Sure its needed to lower burst but done in wrong place, and affects other sets as much if not more( S/D got bigger nerf then d/d).
The fix to this would be, give CnD 25% dmg buff, remove stacks of vurnuability. This would reduce D/D damage output but around 13% but would not affect sword.
Reasoning if target has a condition you do 10% more damage, from 25 trait points in power tree, yet if no vurnuability, no 10% extra damage and no 3% extra from debuff.

Third problem, Culling, i will not adress this problem as it is WvW problem, and unless dews make WvW only change it would ruin thiefs otherwise.

Flanking strike: i still dont get how ranger has working version of this while thief doesnt. Give thief rangers type of animation, thats it.

P/P change skill number 2 into confusion shot, applys 1 stack of confusin for 6 seconds, make it shoot at ground(etc ground targeting), and be blast finisher, this would also give some acess to stealth to p/p as black powder is combo field when mixed with blast finisher gives stealth. Not a reliable but, some way to acess stealth at least.

Shadow shot: remove rooting yourself in place after shot, as it is ridiculous, for a gap closer to root you, unless it roots both you and enemy at the same time.

Backstab: change extra damage from behind into extra 15% damage for each condition. It would always deal same damage as backstab from behind if you had 6 diffrent conditions( if you got that you wont live long anyways.

Common suggestion for all classes: conditions stay after target is downed. It is next to imposible to damage target down with condition playstyle, before help arrives.

P.S might be lots of mistakes in text, as wrote this all in a hurry.

Kurow.6973:

@ Reiven.2543:

Stealth in GW2 is PERFECTLY fine as is. In fact, it’s the best set-up of stealth I’ve seen.

What needs to be fixed is culling issues in WvW. There’s ABSOLUTE NOTHING wrong with stealth skills…just players who fail to adapt and identify the weaknesses of certain skills.

I have seen many thieves with much higher uptime on stealth than that. Look around at some thief videos for ideas on how to maximize (abuse) stealth durations.

Stealth stacks, in time. So using CnD + blinding powder + your heal will end up 9 seconds stealth. However for that you need to blow 2 utilitys. Or shadow refuge for 10 seconds movable stealth(1 utility).

However withouth using utilities just to stealth is particulary what he meant. If thief specializes into stealth using utilities, he wont have any damage/cc or stunbreakers in those slots.

CC Charles.3675:

Hello everyone,

Due to the amount of threads about thief and its gameplay impact, we have decided to open this thread in which you can discuss your concerns about Thieves in PvE, sPvP and WvW.

This will allow us to collect your feedback with more efficiency and forward them to the appropriate teams.

You can articulate both, positive and negative feedback for it, but we ask you to stay constructive and polite when you want to express your opinion, all posts that break the forum code of conduct will be removed.

Thank you!

So, moderators only show up in thief threads? abandoned other classes eh? if not, why the bloody hell no one can get official response on Anything at all. ( apart from the hated thieves.)

Rauphz.2869:

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

So.. ? What’s prove? Nothing. Where SS to see the buffs in the Thief?
In SPvP, my team stack might, and I can do 10k+ BS easy in players with that armor or more.

The thief’s buffs don’t matter at all. He could have every single buff imaginable. It should not be possible for any profession. You even say so yourself, it’s easy to do that. And I agree, it is easy. It shouldn’t be easy at all.

5 guys vs 1… sure. 2sec kills are fine.
1 guy with 5 guys buffs? No. Should not be possible.

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

don’t get me wrong but your armor is extremly low for WvW

Evilek.5690:

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

Full glass cannon thief 2199 P 14,6kHP
Backstab DMG =(weapon damage 981)power 2199(skill coe. 2,405 on back attack)/enemy armor=518811,695/enemy armor
Enemy armor 1500=3458,74 DMG
Enemy armor 2000=2594,05 DMG
Enemy armor 2200=2358,05 DMG
Enemy armor 2500=2075,22 DMG
Enemy armor 2755=1883,22 DMG
Critikal damage bonus with all CD and traits is 270%

DMG for 9500crit=+-3492DMG non crit = your armor is max 1850—>glass cannon =)

almost correct , but you didn’t took in consideration the posibility of 25 stacks of bloodlust and the vulnerability from C &D , and first strikes /expose weakness traits
2200 -2300 is very low armor in wvw , i got 2900 on my thief
anyway no point to have this discution over and over again… all he had to do was 1 dodge roll to avoid entire combo. Is already imposible to kill bunker guardians and specialy bunker elementarists / necro. Warriors kill thieves in 3 seconds , but still thieves are OP.