Guild Wars 2

Hey there I have a lvl 80 thief and I am afraid that people that does not know the class will nerf it so bad that till the point where you cant play thief anymore. I am mostly a WvW player and I run a stealth survival build witch is 0/20/30/20/0 and I take all the healing I can get out of it and condition removal. My main weapons are dual pistols witch I know is not the best set to use but I like them since I dont like running after people but anyway even with this build I tend to get beaten down fast if I dont doge properly or I get stuck in one place for to long. Maybe you can up the defense a bit so I dont get owned in 3 seconds by a warrior with its great sword. I get that we are thiefs but with a more tank build for a thief I want to take a few hits not get beaten down in 3 seconds. I think the pistols really need work as well a lot of people are complaining about this are you ever going to do something about the pistols? I use my build because it has the skill to heal for 3 seconds or 4 seconds when you are in stealth you get like a 1000 health back I think my unload can take that away in one go with out any traits so not really that good but it help. Basically what I am saying dont listen to players that dont know the class since they think every thing out stealth is OP and it is unlimited.
Just my 3 words

Rauphz.2869:

Ralathar.7236:

STRanger.5120:

Ralathar.7236:

To tell you what I mean by extreme damage. My level 35 Engineer is toughness/vitality spec’d all the way. I run around with close to 3k armor. I have 29k health. A thief took me down not 20 minutes ago in under a second.

Sorry to argue, but this is not possible anymore, not by single-roaming Thief.
Maybe if he has a 25 stacks of might, fully stacked power sigil and crit food, you were vulnerability-stacked and he had a ton of luck critting avery ability used, then he could burst you down. But I kinda doubt that this ever happened so far….

I don’t have to convince you. It happened, as simple as that. Either it’s still possible or there is an exploit out there atm making it possible. No vulnerability involved and he had a few stacks of might but nowhere near 25 stacks.

You are lvl 35, omg. You’re wasting your time here, go back to PvE, and stop QQ. You haven’t no reason to complaining about nothing.

Oh man, I must be blind. I totally missed that he is lvl 35
Then of course you got pwned by lvl 80 full exotic Thief, nothing against it
It´s like you were complaining that some class with full PvP set in another game facerolled your fresh lvl 80 toon, accept that, because that´s how the WvW is set…

That is what is happening. Nobody knows anything about Thief, how fragile is this class (with the lowest base hp game). Then go to WvW with your pro char lvl 30 (full green), dies for a Thief Glass Cannon (full exotic berserker), and come to forum complaining about how Thief is OP. We haven’t any other way to finish """"""safe""""" plp (only in stheal), and plp still complain about it, OMG! Play with a Thief and later come here give us your feedback.

Marduh.4603:

Stiv.1820:

Noooo don’t change throw gunk it’s amazing in WvW. Probably not as good in sPvP due to the confusion nerf. It’s an Ethereal field so you can throw it un-targeted in stealth so it doesn’t hit the engie and if you use a pistol stand in it an unload 7+ stacks of confuse on them. They kill themselves spamming grenades at you. Even if you hit them by accident you can get 4+ stacks on them with just auto attacks.

At that time and again that if you do not have a gun in your main hand, then steal useless, does not help, even with the immobilization of the sword. A bomb will be useful to all builds.

Dagger would give you chaos armor with Heartseeker. Doesn’t sword just suffer from a lack of finishers in general?

Lyneth.3496:

its pretty simple:

hidden thief and assassin signet are triggering auto-attack of your skill 1 when you are in range of the skill 1. Means if you use the skills in the 130 range, while you have autoattack active, it will kick you out of stealth instantly or use the signet buff instantly.

out of the same reason hidden thief and assassin signet are not working with range weapons with auto attack.

Its not broken, its always been like that. You may just haven’t payed attention to it. If you want to steal&stealth while in mele combat, it will kick you out if you have auto attack activated. It will not, if you deactivate autoattack.

I have a feeling if this effected your spec you might be more up in arms about this

As a bleed/steal speeced P/D theif, I thought this would be a cool way to stack our short bleeds(sneak attack). This is a master trait and should work for more then just melee.

11-28-2012 Still not working.

Blinding Powder bugs A LOT with pistols and simply does not stealth you if you use it while attacking. I often have to sheath my pistols quickly, stealth and then use #1 attack to get it to work correctly mid-battle.

Usually it’s always a good think to set autoattack off, expec for a stealth class…this also gives you more control over your skills, landing one only when you need to, in a close fight autoattack can totally ruin your stealth forcing you into an unwanted 3 secs revealed debuff…with maybe everything on cd..or just to give another example Shortbow autoattacking targets behind walls or that already got away revealing your position… Always hated auto-things…hand made stuff is always better imo.

Traits are supposed to let us enhance specific areas of ourselves right?
There is an unfair emphasis on stealth
Heartseeker into Black Powder
Heartseeker into Smokescreen.
Cluster bomb into Black Powder (Clunky!)
Cluster bomb into Smoke screen (Clunky too!)
Cnd, Hide in Shadows, Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, Stealth on Steal, Stealth on downed, Stealth if you lose 20% health in one hit, Stealth when health hits 25%, stealth on fall damage, condition removal on stealth, increased initiative regen in stealth, 2 initiative gain on stealth, 33% movement in stealth, ally regeneration on stealth, special regeneration in stealth, 100% critical in stealth, stealth last 1s longer, gain might on stealth, special skills in stealth.

Am I missing anything? Possible, because the amount of emphasis on stealth is mind-boggling, not because it exists, because in comparison other things are ignored.
Blindness is not improved outside of Condition duration, and in all cases where it’s applied via traits…it’s with stealth. Outside of armor runes, our only source of swiftness is 2s of…dodge.

It seems odd that with blindness also being so prevalent, we can’t trait for it, especially when out of our two off-hands, one specializes in it and the other stealth. With our only two-handed weapon, it also provides blind.
Wasted opportunity as I see it, and more favoring of D/D to be blunt. Two skills provide it in fields, but the fields can’t be increased, we can’t making Choking gas larger, or BP, or Shadow Refuge, or Smoke screen, nor our traps. Interesting stuff to specialize in just isn’t there. There’s venoms, mind you venoms suck without traiting.
Traps suck period, blindness is an after-thought, Poison gets a duration increase at best…
Then the non-thieves are going to come in here about Stealth, like it’s emphasis isn’t a clear statement that we should be using it… a lot as far I feel for it.
I’d love to go hunting back to those early interviews when we were told not to sweat Stealth. I don’t care about the power of it, but the emphasis on it sucks because it feels like other aspects of us are neglected because of it.

Condition thieves are very poorly designed. They only have two skills that do decent damage – Vital Shot/Sneak Attack and Death Blossom. Both this skills have a really big problem though: they do a tiny amount of direct damage, so tiny that scaling up power will barely boost the thief’s damage output.

Why is this a problem? Because of the existing equipment. All the +condition damage amulet choices in sPvP have one stat which is near useless to a condition thief. With direct damage being near useless to them, they can only invest in +condition damage and +condition duration for damage. So let’s look at their choices.

They can go cond/power/vitality. Power is wasted due to the insignificant direct damage of both Dagger/Dagger and Pistol auto attacks as well as Death Blossom. Power only really works for thieves if they also heavily invest in +crit chance as well as a lot of +crit damage, and condition thieves can’t invest in both those areas as well as in power.

They can go cond/precision/toughness. This is a good choice for necromancers and warriors, since they have traits that offer them extra bleed procs on critical hits. Thieves however do not have any such traits. All they can recieve from a high precision is bleed procs through superior sigil of earth, but those have a 2 seconds cooldown, making the benefits of investing in precision rather small.

They can go toughness/cond/healing. Healing is a weak attribute for a thief. The best healing a thief can get comes from leeching venoms, and that trait was changed to scale with power instead of healing (and poorly at that).

And finally they can choose precision/cond/power/vit, which will leave them weak on all fronts, with their dominant stat being precision, a stat they barely get anything out of.

To fix this I’d suggest doubling the direct damage on vital shot (while leaving sneak attack damage the same). This skill’s damage is very lacking at the moment at any rate, since it’s bleed duration was streamlined along with Necromancer’s scepter – except necromancer can increase bleed duration by quite a lot through traits while thieves cannot and also apply poisons on auto attack. No other ranged condition weapon has such short bleed durations (engineers can apply multiple conditions with pistols while thieves cannot), and activating sneak attack often requires closing into melee range to use CnD. Raising the direct damage of vital shot will put it in line with the ranged bleed abilities of other professions and will make investments in power worthwhile for condition thieves.

Alternatively, condition/toughness/vitality gear could be added into the game.

The thing that doesn’t make sense is it stealths you on steal. So the next attack should be the weapons special stealth ability, not a normal auto attack. I think it’d almost (although still annoying), be tolerable if it unleashed the proper move afterwards.

I want to use this trait but feel no need to.

Also can vouch for above, blinding powder has some very iffy moments for sure.

Yasha.5963:

kineticdamage.6279:

This thread is becoming ridiculous, with people who don’t even play a thief coming to complain about how they don’t want to lose against a Thief anymore.

We had a legit and serious discussion in the spvp forum about one particular aspect of thief gameplay underwater making it almost impossible to take the node from them. That thread was closed and the mod said to post in here.

:(

It would really make a difference if the mods checked in and posted some feedback. Better yet a dev just to say what they’re looking at and what they are going to consider. Otherwise the pertinent info will be lost and this will all be pointless.

Lyneth.3496:

its pretty simple:

hidden thief and assassin signet are triggering auto-attack of your skill 1 when you are in range of the skill 1. Means if you use the skills in the 130 range, while you have autoattack active, it will kick you out of stealth instantly or use the signet buff instantly.

out of the same reason hidden thief and assassin signet are not working with range weapons with auto attack.

Its not broken, its always been like that. You may just haven’t payed attention to it. If you want to steal&stealth while in mele combat, it will kick you out if you have auto attack activated. It will not, if you deactivate autoattack.

So a trait that’s supposed to stealth you, but reveals you instead is not broken?

Why on earth was the thief feedback thread merged with the thread about hidden thief being broken?

Edit: Specifically, why was the current title chosen for the merged threads?

Ravrohan.8231:

It would really make a difference if the mods checked in and posted some feedback. Better yet a dev just to say what they’re looking at and what they are going to consider. Otherwise the pertinent info will be lost and this will all be pointless.

Oh, the mods do check this thread. I have several of my posts deleted because I posted why I accurately describe as impersonal unemotional yet extremely negative feedback on both the changes and arenanets balancing modus operandi, and reasoned in a logical way why and how this thread is utterly pointless other than damage control.

So yes, the mods do read this thread, and the devs will not change anything because anyone in their right of mind and even when they didn’t know how popular builds worked at this stage (lol, devs dont know how much bs glass does at this stage of the game that they have to try on dummies?) would have noticed the changes were going to deeply affect other builds more than the one they stated they wanted to nerf.

Anyway, maybe this less structured post will resist the fury of the delete button. Or perhaps I should sing kumbaya and stick to the “feedback” posts that they want. Which seems to be irrelevant discussions of whether its 33% or 25%, rather than feedback about how they don’t know what they are doing.

Also I like how the title of the thread mutated from “feedback” to " Steal stealth trait (Hidden Thief) totally broken now"

Stiv.1820:

Dagger would give you chaos armor with Heartseeker. Doesn’t sword just suffer from a lack of finishers in general?

Chaos armor(3 sec) vs tool belt
Seriously?
On the other side there is no skill to engineer Eternal field. Therefore, this skill is not the place.

Marduh.4603:

Stiv.1820:

Dagger would give you chaos armor with Heartseeker. Doesn’t sword just suffer from a lack of finishers in general?

Chaos armor(3 sec) vs tool belt
Seriously?
On the other side there is no skill to engineer Eternal field. Therefore, this skill is not the place.

Just saying it’s an option. I use pistol main hand so the confusion stacking in WvW is better than anything.

Just throwing this out there but:

I would love it if the Steal Recharge on Trickery Traitline was replaced and worked like Expertise for rangers on GW1. Say every 1 point in Trickery reduced Initiative cost by 1% on all of our skills. Before people go getting all worked up, the typical backstab thief either doesn’t go into this tree at all, and if they do, its not very far. So I don’t wanna see a dozen replies of “omg 30% ini cost on all backstab thieves”, because splitting their traits so far just to reach that would severely hamper their damage to begin with… but I do think it would be a nice boost to condi thieves, which rely more on initiative to output/sustain damage, and already go 20-30 points in the tree. Thoughts?

We need more access to Fury/Swiftness… :/

The original pre-merged post said thief gameplay feedback, and I will discuss what gameplay means to me. The idea of gameplay is that there are 3 areas of the game that need to be addressed: PVE, WVW, and PVP. PVE is the easiest to deal with as it is designed to be a friendly and cooperative environment where you can join up with strangers and not even be in the same party to fight monsters. WVW and PVP are different in that the environments are much more hostile and you need to have a group you are with to survive. The most difficult gameplay area of WVW and PVP is tPVP, and if you want to improve gameplay, you must look to that area for advice. The posting of this thread in the thief section was the first mistake made and created a post full of whining and few legitimate suggestions-for example the level 35 engineer in WVW that did not understand gear modifiers and the impact of grandmaster level traits. With this being said, I will discuss the thief from a tPVP perspective.

Overall issues of burst and stealth/culling…

From a burst perspective, all classes should have the option to play glassy or bunkery if they want. The good point of GW2 is that there is always a tradeoff for what you want and that makes the game balanced. If a burst thief can’t kill a bunker or prepared player, he has to run away to recharge stealth or he will die-and that is the balanced tradeoff. A thief that is a burst backstab spec usually can kill their target without running out of initiative which is not balanced. This is the real problem as these thieves are never required to use their autoattack to kill people-even those specced for toughness (and I am assuming their stunbreakers/dodges are on CD). Other classes rely on autoattack to kill their opponents. Looking at the combat logs it is always mug, c/d, backstab…where the real issue is that all of these moves are executed very quickly and sometimes defensive procs don’t have time to activate. Another user End suggested that mug be changed to add confusion instead of dealing damage, and I think that is a great idea. If it added 6 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds, I think there would be a lot less issues. First because venoms can’t proc when you don’t do damage, and second, the crit damage is no factor.

Improvements have been made in revealing a thief from stealth, but there is more to go in this area. On the opposite side of thieves being targeted in stealth, channeled skills continue to target and track stealthed characters mid channeling. This can be seen from elementalist skills to ranger skills. If a character stealths, the channeled attack should be aimed at the last known position.
A major change to stealth should also be that if an attack is made by the character that is missed or evaded, they should be revealed. This would line up the risk and reward aspect of stealth attacks. This change would go a long way to balancing gameplay in tPvP.
Gameplay really comes down to 3 things-a unique class experience, a balanced class, and multiple viable builds. Right now there really are only 2 viable builds-burst backstab and condition. I have already discussed the balance/tradeoff above, but the viable builds remains an issue. This is caused by a lack of useful skills and traits-something I know over time will improve. I will build on some things discussed by Tulisin.6945 as it was one of the posts actually worth reading.

Steal – Powerful when traited, average with no modifications. That is ok with me.

-Short Bow/Pistol-
This weapons seems to cause dual pistol to look ineffective as pistols do not aoe AND hit less hard for direct and condition damage. Choking Gas needs to cause a small amount of damage to unstealth thieves.
Pistol needs a chain for the skill 1 slot.
Swift shot (chain 2) gain swiftness for 1 second on hit.
Chill shot (chain 3) cause chill for 1 second on hit.
P/P – Unload – It is…not…bad, but it isn’t good either. Unload is pistol’s only pure power damage based skill. It simultaneously has the most power-based DPS of any pistol skill while also having mediocre DPS as a whole (lower than the melee auto attacks). Is the ranged nature a viable tradeoff for dumping so much initiative for that kind of DPS? Hard to say. I’d like to see Unload have something else going for it, maybe piercing shots for some pistol AE capability? Yes, it is weak and piercing would be very useful and provide a reason to spend initiative and spec to this weapon set.
4. Headshot – The favorite suggestion I’ve heard to make this one a little more interesting is to give it a 100 % crit rate (it is a headshot, after all). I like this suggestion.

Sword
3. S/D – Flanking Strike – I believe the design of this skill was meant to support quickly shifting to the back arc, but I don’t think the developers realize how little thieves can actually benefit from that. That leaves its only real role as a boon removal skill, and only because it is the only one thieves get. That said, my suggestion would be to get rid of the fanciful movement and dual-strike nature, frontload everything onto that initial strike and simply shadowstep the thief behind their target (along with a 180 degree facing). No evade, but no eternity of animation either. Consider also making this skill a whirl finisher to give thieves more access to combos. -The evade is huge and shouldn’t be removed. The skill should position you behind your target facing them. If this is done with a shadowstep or drastically increased animation speed, that is fine. A whirl finisher would make this more useful and with the dagger offhand nerfs would create a reason to spec S/D again.
S/P – Pistol Whip – Burn application upon the initial shot. This gives thieves access to the burn condition, boosts PW’s damage in a non-power based manner, and creates a bit of condition synergy when using S/P. It also means the initial reason PW was nerfed, Quickness combos allowing a bunch of PWs to be executed in a couple seconds, won’t be as potent due to damage being less frontloaded because of Burning’s duration-stacking nature. This is a great idea.

-Dagger-

Backstab – My suggestion? Take a leaf out of auto attack’s book and make back stab steal endurance. Now you’ve still got a positoning-based ability that is powerful, but it follows an established theme in dagger skills, synergizes with the thief Acrobatics line, and is uniquely painful in PvP (reducing an enemy’s mobility in a way no other skill does) without being a boring instakill solution. No more one-hit-wonder combos, no more incredibly low skill floor on using thieves competitively. This is a great idea as well. If you change mug to confuse this may not be necessary.

1. Autoattack chain is not used typically.
2. Heartseeker – Good decisions for damage threshold.
3. D/D – Death Blossom – useful in both major builds.

4. Dancing Dagger – Needs to have initiative reduced as it is only a cripple and projectile finisher now. Offhand dagger is now a control weapon only.

5. Cloak and Dagger – Really only stealths you now…for 6 initiative…if it hits.

One weapons set has not been addressed at all by anyone, and that is the empty offhand set. Currently you have no skill for 4/5 skill slots and there is no surprise why noone will ever run this setup. It was clearly an afterthought and there is no incentive to do it.

Empty offhand

4-iron palm, remove a boon for each condition you have-unblockable, counts as a chain in the skill 1 slot (130 range)
5-uppercut, damage and knockdown-count as a chain in the skill one slot. (130 range)

I will not discuss underwater combat as my experience is limited except for the lack of elite options which is unacceptable. Bandits at the submarine in the starter Charr area can attack underwater, so I have a hard time believing that you can’t do it with Thieves Guild.

-Utilities-
Thief utilities run the gamut from awesome to useless, some have innate power that is largely unaffected by traits, and some really shine when properly synergized.
Blinding Powder – Great change in the update.
Assassin’s Signet – It would be interesting if it stacked 5 vulnerability for 10 seconds for the next 5 attacks.
Marduh.4603:
Can be swapped active effects Infiltrator’s Signet and Signet of Shadows.
Signet of Shadows
Passive: Grants a 25% increase in movement speed.
Active: Shadowstep to your foe.
Infiltrator’s Signet
Passive: Regenerates one extra initiative every ten seconds.
Active: Blind foes near your target.—would be a good change
Ambush – Good variety of uses.
Needle Trap/Tripwire – Weak compared to other skills, only work on 1 person-see ranger traps.
Shadow Trap – Great change with the update.

These are things that need some fixing:
Venoms – They are almost useless without all traits affecting them and with them they are just fine, nothing special. The best solution is imho rework to something like signets – you get one venom strike every X seconds or on every X attack and you can activate the venom for the same effect it has now. This would be similar to the guardian virtue of justice. Venom sharing would have to share the active effects of this and the area affected should be increased as it is too small right now-600 is good.
Scorpion Wire – Range 1200 is a good change for wvw at least.

Traits are also generally placed in lines that don’t make the most sense…but that is something that can be addressed later.

Future ideas for elites just for fun:

Elite Signet
Assassin’s Promise
-passive gain x initiative for each foe’s death
-active, gain passive effects of signets and share them for 20 seconds

Elite Stance

Flashing blades-5-10 seconds duration. 75% chance to block attacks while attacking, and melee attacks blocked cause x stacks of bleed and x damage-only effective if sword or dagger is equipped MH or OH.

TL:DR

I think a lot of the problems with thieves are that we seem to be being pigeon-holed into a small number of builds. Some of our weapon sets are lacking, Condition builds have issues (poor scaling, enemy abilities to reflect/ remove/ convert them to boons, etc). And now I see in the WvW forum that the we will shortly be no longer able to prevent capping while in stealth. So that’ll remove the ‘perma stealth’ build as that was all it was really much use for. So looks like D/D and backstabbing it is, at least til the next round of nerfs which don’t really affect the build, but hurt all the other ones….

Oh, and can this thread get renamed again please??

magicthighs.5372:

Why on earth was the thief feedback thread merged with the thread about hidden thief being broken?

Edit: Specifically, why was the current title chosen for the merged threads?

Also what happened to the thief feedback thread that was sticked in the spvp forum?

daleyb.3029:

I think a lot of the problems with thieves are that we seem to be being pigeon-holed into a small number of builds. Some of our weapon sets are lacking, Condition builds have issues (poor scaling, enemy abilities to reflect/ remove/ convert them to boons, etc). And now I see in the WvW forum that the we will shortly be no longer able to prevent capping while in stealth. So that’ll remove the ‘perma stealth’ build as that was all it was really much use for. So looks like D/D and backstabbing it is, at least til the next round of nerfs which don’t really affect the build, but hurt all the other ones….

To be honest, I think most classes lack a lot of variety, not just thieves.

Stin.9781:

Marduh.4603:

Steal
Cooldown 45 second – too big cooldown compared to other professions.
35 second – ideal number, 27 second with full Trickery line

Mug – Too much damage to Adept trait. Need to reduce the damage by 30-50%.

Professoin:
Warriors – Whirling Axe – awesome
Necromancer – Skull Fear – awesome
Thief – Blinding Tuft – awesome
Guardian – Mace Head Crack – awesome
Mesmer – Consume Ectoplasm – awesome
Ranger – Healing Seed – awesome
Elementalist – Ice Shard Stab – awesome
Engineer – Throw Gunk – totally useless and break stealth
Thieves simply can not use a professional skill against the engineers. You need to replace this useless Junk on Big Ol ’Bomb.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Big_Ol%27_Bomb

My inner thief does not agree stealing from warrior is awsome :<

Gunk is amazingly versatile

• It grants us chaos shield when combined with leap or blast
• It grants us the only way to stack confusion through projectiles
• It does AoE damage and applies burning

It is one of the best stolen abilities we have, just because it doesn’t deal direct damage, daze or stun doesn’t make it useless.

If I could change any stolen item it would be Guardians mace headcrack. I think it would be better to steal protection, aegis, spirit weapon or retaliation.

Aratoa.7398:

Ralathar.7236:

Honestly the onus in on ANET unfortunately. Unfortunately I don’t run a glass cannon thief because insta-gibs are not fighting to me and I prefer fighting.

Yes it’s outlandish. Why do you think I’m so surprised and insinuated it could have possibly even been someone exploiting?

Honestly, ANET didn’t make the outlandish claim, you did so that means you’re the one who has to prove it but I’m gonna give up on this. You have no proof of anything and we’ll leave it at that. If you think there is an exploit at play though, you should report it or post about it in the bugs section, rather then in a thread that is supposed to be about feedback about Thieves and not about exploits.

That’s not true at all, because if what I say is true it’s seriously bad for the game. ANET has a responsibility to know the limits and capabilities of each class and try to balance them correctly. This is before I even enter the situation. Mainly because if they don’t they will end up losing money. It’s buy to play, yes, but people still spend money on this game and population is needed to keep it fun.

STRanger.5120:

Oh man, I must be blind. I totally missed that he is lvl 35
Then of course you got pwned by lvl 80 full exotic Thief, nothing against it
It´s like you were complaining that some class with full PvP set in another game facerolled your fresh lvl 80 toon, accept that, because that´s how the WvW is set…

This is why I listed my defensive stats. Or does being lower level suddenly make the actual stats I bear worthless? Almost 3k armor and 29k hp as a reminder. Most lowbie issues are due to inferior gear and weapon DPS. My gear isn’t quite to the level it would be if I was 80, but it certainly isn’t anything near squishy. As I said I tank most people fairly easily, even other “burst” classes like Greatsword warrior and Shatter spec Mesmers. Not the kitteny ones either, the ones that actually vape lowbies often.

Also the guy was vaping 80’s in the zone with full exotics as well. So that’s further not an excuse. Dig more.

I don’t like the backstab combo, I want more PASSIVE (non-bursty DPS) this means more boons like FURY.

I want to NOT rely so much on SoS, that means more boons like swiftness.

MORE Boons and group buffs, currently we have none.

My opinion is the following. Thief is a class you must know. I’ve played all profession now, except Engineer.

A profession that you don’t play, but seems to do impressive stuff, always seems op. This goes for 100b warrior, this goes for cloacking thieves, that smash you to dead with combo’s.

However having played now both warrior and thief, I must say those professions don’t feel overpowered. Most profession have a steep learning curve to get the full potential out of it. Thief especially.

I think thief profession would have no point if damage is nerfed further. Thief is about hiding, coming out, doing a combo, and vanish again. They are punished with heavy squishyness, so a mistake is punished quickly. Being mainly a melee profesion, we almost have no defence, except our profesison mechanism, cloacking. And it works greatly. It’s for sure true that, a cloacked thief, using up all Initiative, will crank out a lot of damage. However is this overpowered? nope. Because any other profession, responding with Protection, retaliation, Stability, Dodge, or any other defensive moves, will have a lot of chance to survive this combo. And after this combo, the thief is an easy target. If he can’t cloack to escape, he’s a dead man. That’s how it works. High risk, high reward. Don’t see the problem with it tbh.

If you ever nerf thief (wich I really think is unnecessary) then boost armor/Utility/survival. For instance our condition removal ain’t that good either. Another punishment me think? Everlasting swiftness, that a lot of profesisons have, we don’t have either. While this isn’t bad (we got a signet of shadows for that), it’s still a downside. We also have skills like shortbow 5 but those cost initiative.

In my opinion the problem is people crying they died by a capable thief. I’ve met thief, that were incredible easy to kill (easier then almost any other profession). However their skills were not so good. However capable thiefs really can be a pain. But isn’t that the point? I mean good mesmers, guardians, warriors, ele’s, etc can be a pain too in their own way. I think lot of players are also yealous of thiefs. It’s one of the few professions that can escape a ‘lost battle’ so well. It’s indeed annoying when you finally have a thief almost down, that he disappears and doesn’t come back. But that’s how the profession works. If you like it, make one yourself. But since you keep crying, i think the issue is, people want to play the easier profesisons (at least for them personally), and still get the same rewards, as they think a thief gets. But they struggle when actually playing one, so instead of accepting it, they go QQ (whine).

Keep as it is in my opinion.

Ralathar.7236:

I swear, thieves in this thread seems absolutely desperate to keep their OPness. Whatever it takes eh?

That’s funny.

I was thinking some people won’t be happy until the thief is useless. Keep crying though, almost there.

Ralathar.7236:

I swear, thieves in this thread seems absolutely desperate to keep their OPness. Whatever it takes eh?

I love that Moderators have removed several Thief posts trying to combat the sheer stupidity of “zomg I just got gibzd in WVWVWVWVWWVW… nerf Thief prz!!!!!@!” posts. But the above post… that one’s constructive.

Mmmmmk.

Dear Mods, since you requested us to post thief gameplay issues in this thread could you please change the title back to something more appropriate, like “Thief gameplay issues”? For some reason the thread title was changed and it is no longer apparent that we are meant to post in here.

(Edited to add “Dear” before Mods)

(Edit 2: thanks you for changing the name of the thread back to something relevant!)

Lalangamena.3694:

My main issue is that due to PVP bugs (and whines) our PVE is getting nerfed…
it is very hard to play PVE/dungeons, after each fight I am left with minimal HP (I run stealth/toughness build)
1) I don’t have mitigation, my survivability is based on running away from fight… and I am not even french…
2) it seems that in PVE some mobs can see through stealth (the karka and some of the veterans in orr, if I engage combat, then stealth to regenerate, they still attack me!) and hit me when i am stealthed..
3) offhand pistol don’t solve the problem as it takes all my initiative only to blind two attacks.

4) I cannot take multiple Enemies at all…

this is the current build I run
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmiP3dS9E95EC3DjSpaKfGOIZpfgmA

glass cannons are even worse…

Hi colleague

The mobs in general PvE (exploring maps etc.) don´t see through stealth, except cases that they channel some ability when you go to stealth (channeled abilities, like the young karka projectiles, are tracking us regardless of stealth unfortunately, but noone knows if it´s intended or bug, devs didn´t post their opinion on this if I didn´t missed it).
The most mitigation Thieves have is through stealth and evading attacks (depends on build, D/D direct dmg builds favorizes stealth usually, D/D condition has a lot of evades, S/P has some evades, but mainly the black powder skill – hint: melee mobs will stay in the smoke field it creates and it blinds them every second that way, very good mitigation. P/D has stealth mostly)
So this is more an issue of your ability to use these things, Thieves are kinda forced to use active dmg mitigation (no protection boons etc.).

So just try to find a build that suits your playstyle and use the mitigation it offers, if you want any advice, send me a PM with a detailed description of your build and I´ll try to help you

I think there are some problems with the trait trees. Steal related traits should be in Power line, venom ones in the condition damage trait line. When making a condition damage build, for example, I will have to spend a lot of trait points in Power, when it has nothing to do with the condition damage.

Minor things:
- Roll for initiative should leave caltrops if you have the Uncatchable trait.
- The direct damage of Death Blossom is too much low.

The problem I see with thieves (I don’t play one):

1 – WvW – Culling issue. I can see the attack graphics but I still can’t target them until 1-2 secs later. ANET said this will be fixed so I’m fine for the time being.

2 – Ability Spam – This is tie to their init mechanic so there’s really no way around it unless they redo the class from the ground up. I’m fine with it for the most part. What I do have an issue with is spamming heart seeker. The damage is fine – it’s the range that bullkitten. No other class have a spammable gap closer like this.

i posted this on the spvp forum and they closed it. so here:

the real problem to me with thief burst is…
… that it ruins a ton of otherwise completely fun and viable builds for other classes.

this isnt meant as a QQ. as an ele and ranger, ive made a number of builds that deal with thieves quite well (toughness, stun break, aoe, invuln, etc). the problem is, these balanced/defensive builds kitten your offense, but also isnt bunker enough to be a main tank on a point.

so the problem is, when i craft builds that use glass gear/stats, but active defensive traits and utilities. with these builds, i can use my reflexes/stun breaks/cc/gap creators to stay alive, even when outnumbered, vs pretty much any class (or 2). however, last night on my ele (glassy, but 18k hp, low toughness but on demand protection), i was at full life, with all my cds up (3 stun breakers). was jumped by a stealth thief, and the SECOND i noticed he was on me, it hit my invuln (which is bound to my mouse button so its fast). but i was dead before i could even click the button. this thief got me like that twice before i had to switch to soldiers gear to try n give myself enough time to react.

so thats my rant. if i had a half a second to pop a skill, i can reset the fight n have a chance. i can understand getting stomped like that if im depleted from fighting, or my kitten is on CD. but i should have enough time between realizing the thief is on me to press a button, and i dont. which completely ruins the build.

im sure a lil more toughness would help (or if i had time to pop my on demand protection). but with the gear limitations, its hard to grab a lil without going all in.

tl:dr? the burst/stealth combo hard counters way too many offensive or balanced builds for other classes, where theres not enough reaction time to even hit 1 skill. suggestion: make thief skills hit less hard but cost less initiative.

The problem with thieves is burst is all we got, and it simply makes everyone use bunker builds, and we have no way to kill good bunkers, Bunker Eles/Guardians are almost impossible to kill…

I remember hearing thieves would not have access to full stealth. But I see thieves using combo fields to have almost constant stealth. Needs a fix. It goes against Anet’s goals for the thief class.

Daecollo: that IS the problem. the mere presence of a thief more or less forces the opposition to have to stack toughness/defense to have a shot. any build that requires active defense becomes kitten, since u can’t see the thief coming, and then he can burst u down before u have a chance to pop a single skill. even if that skill is the perfect one for the situation (stun break, invuln), whats the point if u do not have enough time to hit it between realizing the thief is on you and going down.

this is both frustrating, and makes it hard/impossible to run an offensive build on another class since the thief trumps it. so i have to run a less fun and less group optimal tanky build to deal with the thief.

so any offensive build i run is hard countered by thief, which takes me out of the game. or i can run a defensive build that takes the thief out of the game. there’s no middle ground it seems, and each build type is ruining the others fun

First off i love this profession and all the nerfs to the profession hasn’t hit my builds i play but i have played the ones that have been nerfed and here i am to give my input on the profession.

1. Weapon skills. Sword /pistol. The pistol whip nerf was needed but not that much of a nerf i would like the damage to be increased a little more but not to what it was at, but i personally dont like the whole i cant move while doing this skill.
Sword/dagger. Flanking strike needs to have its pathing fixed and have it follow your target so it would be more better in pvp because using it on a moving target very annoying.
Dagger/dagger. Backstab is fine how it is. People just cry when they get hit really hard very fast its common, they just need to get over it. Heartseeker spam is a show of bad skill. Dancing dagger nerf. The nerf to this skill was needed so plz increase its damage back to what it was cuz the dagger was a good way to slow your target and if they was to the point of dying a good way to finish them off but after the nerf its just use for the slow cuz the damage is not worth it at all.
Pistols. Bodyshot needs it cost reduced and damage increased because its just not worth using.
2. Stealing. Ok the trait that has us goin into stealth when using steal can start an auto attack right when he is used taking us out of stealth which need to be looked at.
3. Stealth. ok in wvw the whole culling thing needs to be looked at and explained to us what the game is doing and why we cant see some thieves coming out of steatlh. My main problem with stealth is that everything that should give us the stealth debuff does not give it to us meaning ppl can chain stealth if they wanted to but its not reconmended they do it.

Well that all i can think of but like i said u havent nerfed my builds i use, but atm the profession is goin downhill and im seeing if u nerf a few other things the profession will just be a waste to play.

I play a rather glassy thief in WvW (where you can gear for massive crits and C&D still does big damage). I don’t use stealth that much: usually just C&D and no utilities, and most of the time I’m on Shortbow rather than my melee set. Other than times I’ve been trying to revive another player, I don’t think I’ve ever been killed by a D/D thief without having a chance to react.

Am I just lucky? Does “react” mean something different for other classes?

typingofthedead.5614:

Daecollo: that IS the problem. the mere presence of a thief more or less forces the opposition to have to stack toughness/defense to have a shot. any build that requires active defense becomes kitten, since u can’t see the thief coming, and then he can burst u down before u have a chance to pop a single skill. even if that skill is the perfect one for the situation (stun break, invuln), whats the point if u do not have enough time to hit it between realizing the thief is on you and going down.

this is both frustrating, and makes it hard/impossible to run an offensive build on another class since the thief trumps it. so i have to run a less fun and less group optimal tanky build to deal with the thief.

so any offensive build i run is hard countered by thief, which takes me out of the game. or i can run a defensive build that takes the thief out of the game. there’s no middle ground it seems, and each build type is ruining the others fun

Well a lot of our traits and utility is terrible, we have little access to buffs and boons, and we have the highest burst in the game, little HP, we have very little choice then to kill them before they kill us. If we can’t kill them (bunkers/people who trait for protection when they get hit big.) we HAVE to run away, our DPS goes from awesome to suck, why? because of our traits…

We have VERY VERY VERY little passive buffs, did you see the traits we have? most of them are horrible compared to even RANGER and Necromancer, we mainly take traits for stats.

Shadow Arts is the only interesting tree we have.

How many Thieves do you see using Venoms? None.
How many Thieves do you see using two Pistols? None.
How many Thieves do you see using Traps? None.
How many Sword/Dagger, Sword/Pistol Thieves do you see? Barely any, both do poor damage, there are no traits that improve sword critical chance like 3 OTHER classes.
Most of our boons last 10 seconds, and have HUGE cooldowns to boot…
Gain Fury for 10 seconds every 45 seconds? … how is that fair when other classes can get perma fury?
Gain Swiftness for 10 seconds when you steal? (45 second cd.) how is that fair? other classes get perma swiftness…

Thieves can kill with a burst, but they die pretty easily as well.

If there is something OP is the almost permanent stealth.

Daecollo.9578:

How many Thieves do you see using two Pistols? None.

I’ve actually seen a ton of them in WvW this week. No idea why. I guess they work well in packs?

(Truth be told, they were actually fairly scary whenever they outnumbered me, on account of my glassy gear.)

Daecollo.9578:

typingofthedead.5614:

Daecollo: that IS the problem. the mere presence of a thief more or less forces the opposition to have to stack toughness/defense to have a shot. any build that requires active defense becomes kitten, since u can’t see the thief coming, and then he can burst u down before u have a chance to pop a single skill. even if that skill is the perfect one for the situation (stun break, invuln), whats the point if u do not have enough time to hit it between realizing the thief is on you and going down.

this is both frustrating, and makes it hard/impossible to run an offensive build on another class since the thief trumps it. so i have to run a less fun and less group optimal tanky build to deal with the thief.

so any offensive build i run is hard countered by thief, which takes me out of the game. or i can run a defensive build that takes the thief out of the game. there’s no middle ground it seems, and each build type is ruining the others fun

Well a lot of our traits and utility is terrible, we have little access to buffs and boons, and we have the highest burst in the game, little HP, we have very little choice then to kill them before they kill us. If we can’t kill them (bunkers/people who trait for protection when they get hit big.) we HAVE to run away, our DPS goes from awesome to suck, why? because of our traits…

We have VERY VERY VERY little passive buffs, did you see the traits we have? most of them are horrible compared to even RANGER and Necromancer, we mainly take traits for stats.

Shadow Arts is the only interesting tree we have.

How many Thieves do you see using Venoms? None.
How many Thieves do you see using two Pistols? None.
How many Thieves do you see using Traps? None.
How many Sword/Dagger, Sword/Pistol Thieves do you see? Barely any, both do poor damage, there are no traits that improve sword critical chance like 3 OTHER classes.
Most of our boons last 10 seconds, and have HUGE cooldowns to boot…
Gain Fury for 10 seconds every 45 seconds? … how is that fair when other classes can get perma fury?
Gain Swiftness for 10 seconds when you steal? (45 second cd.) how is that fair? other classes get perma swiftness…

so, ill agree, build diversity and viability is a problem for all classes. and it seems if thief could compete by not going full glass, it might help.

that said, i have no problem with this class design for thief. nor would i have a problem with their survivibility tweaked, or if their burst was stronger but took slightly more time to pull off.

the only problem i have is when i literally have 0 time to hit a single skill i have bound to the mouse button right where my finger is between the time i notice the thief is on me and the time i am downed. enough time to use a SINGLE skill.

if they, say, appeared right before they hit me. or the burst took 1 or 2 more hits, id have a chance. if my cooldowns are down, youd win, and thats fine. but it pisses me off when all my cooldowns are up and i have full hp and i get instablicked by a thief running a build i have no problem surviving with versus any combination of other classes.

typingofthedead.5614:

Daecollo: that IS the problem. the mere presence of a thief more or less forces the opposition to have to stack toughness/defense to have a shot. any build that requires active defense becomes kitten, since u can’t see the thief coming, and then he can burst u down before u have a chance to pop a single skill. even if that skill is the perfect one for the situation (stun break, invuln), whats the point if u do not have enough time to hit it between realizing the thief is on you and going down.

this is both frustrating, and makes it hard/impossible to run an offensive build on another class since the thief trumps it. so i have to run a less fun and less group optimal tanky build to deal with the thief.

so any offensive build i run is hard countered by thief, which takes me out of the game. or i can run a defensive build that takes the thief out of the game. there’s no middle ground it seems, and each build type is ruining the others fun

There is no other class that you don’t need active defences against such as stun breakers and invulnerability , there is no class that can’t put you down just as fast as the thief.This is not WoW or other MMO , here you don’t defend yourself by stacking toughness .Learn how to counter it.L2p
There is plenty of time to react , and people like you needs to stop saying that they don’t see the thief comming.None sense.Look around , he surely isn’t invisible.Don’t and die.Its the same for any other class.

Thiefs are OP , and evrybody know that , and plz dont tell my l2p.Its ridiculous that thief can kill engi with over 3400 armor in 1 combo , and yes u can dodge/evade that combo but he will do next combo and u are dead.Next thing is stelth that is bugded , thief can hit u few times when u can see him and that its a huge bug. For example i play necro , to evade thief i can use DS , ok so i see thief is comming , use DS he use 1 combo and im out of DS , thief goes stealth , ok i have marks too oh w8 thief can fear me for 4s wow im dead.Funny

What next combo ,can’t do another combo for another 45 seconds, once he’s done his combo and missed he has no other choice but to run .And a necro whit 3 health bars can’t come here and complain that they get killed in 1 combo , Its impossible.

NightyNight.1823:

typingofthedead.5614:

Daecollo: that IS the problem. the mere presence of a thief more or less forces the opposition to have to stack toughness/defense to have a shot. any build that requires active defense becomes kitten, since u can’t see the thief coming, and then he can burst u down before u have a chance to pop a single skill. even if that skill is the perfect one for the situation (stun break, invuln), whats the point if u do not have enough time to hit it between realizing the thief is on you and going down.

this is both frustrating, and makes it hard/impossible to run an offensive build on another class since the thief trumps it. so i have to run a less fun and less group optimal tanky build to deal with the thief.

so any offensive build i run is hard countered by thief, which takes me out of the game. or i can run a defensive build that takes the thief out of the game. there’s no middle ground it seems, and each build type is ruining the others fun

There is no other class that you don’t need active defences against such as stun breakers and invulnerability , there is no class that can’t put you down just as fast as the thief.This is not WoW or other MMO , here you don’t defend yourself by stacking toughness .Learn how to counter it.L2p
There is plenty of time to react , and people like you needs to stop saying that they don’t see the thief comming.None sense.Look around , he surely isn’t invisible.Don’t and die.Its the same for any other class.

this isnt learn to play. ive made plenty of thief counter builds. they work fine. the problem is if u try to do an offensive build yourself. im running an ele build thats fairly glass stats, but with lots of defensive traits and utilities… and 18khp. I’m NOT exxagerating that twice in 1 tpvp match, the thief (that i had no idea was around due to stealth and just entering the fight as a roamer) was able to down me from full to 0 before i could hit the invuln/stun break bound to a mouse button. literally reacting as fast as i could.

i have no problem reacting and surviving with this build vs any other class, even 2 classes at times. if i could have gotten that 1 skill off (toughness, stun break, invuln), id be able to separate and be fine. but its not an eggageration, or L2P. maybe other classes, or if i was rollin with a bit more toughness (even tho i have good vit), mighta had the time to get that 1 skill off. i have 0 problems with this build in any other situation. so then im forced to put on tankier gear, and sure i can kitten up the thief then, but im unable to perform my role optimally otherwise vs the rest of their team