Guild Wars 2

So I enjoyed Daredevil, but its not for me. I feel like its a lesser powered Rev staff. The trait line is OK.

The main thing I want to hit on this thread is adjustments to the CURRENT Thief.
The current Thief is basically D/P as your only choice. I know other people play other builds. If you want to stand a chance against every other build out there you take D/P. You also run SA because of the condi meta atm. (even with the condi clenase on evade with Daredevil, it isn’t enough without SA. Every moment you’re out of stealth and not dodging, they’re stacking condi’s and ALOT of them). Now I don’t want to hear, “take Trickster so your heal clears a condi and roll for initiative.” that gets rid of Bountiful Theft which is sooo valuable.

Now all I’m asking for, is to make dagger offhand worthwhile again. Because right now, it is GARBAGE and a free kill to anyone that knows how stealth works. Even S/D is nothing like it used to be. I’m not crying bout the massive amounts of dodges, I’m talking raw damage and the ability to out play your opponent with it. This is also the same for p/d builds. I never seen them anymore haha. D/D Thieves I see are 1 trick ponies that can only blind side squishy classes. I would like to see some other utilities get some love as well.

Also, Yes I know there are ways to take the blind on stealth trait and still have sustain, but then you’re rocking mango pies, and possibly dolyak runes. Which I know sounds stupid rofl but it helps since we’re giving up Shadows Rejuvenation for the blind.

Now I have seen numerous threads asking for the blind on stealth to be either put in a master trait or actually on Cloak and Dagger.

Doing this would open up the dagger offhand again. I’m not gonna beat that dead horse I just want access to Shadows’s Rejuv, Shadow’s EMbrace, AND Cloaked in Shadow. Some other things that would help the thief class:

Signet of Malice: heals for less when you attack, but heals everytime you do an attack whether or not it lands on an enemy or not. Keep the activate heal similar to what it is.

Elementalists Signet Heals for every spell casted regardless if it hits an enemy or not and it heals in the 300’s plus a decent activate heal.

I understand thief attack speed is alot faster with auto attacks and we have access to quickness, but comparing it to an ele combo and how fast they can spam spells, it’s pretty similar to our Auto’s. I understand they have cd’s but our Signet of Malice is very underwhelming.

Hide in Shadows: I want to see this clear more condi’s especially movement impairing ones. Also, this heal would have more play if you could blind on stealth without sacrificing your sustain.

Hide in Shadows is begging to be interrupted by pretty much any class with access to CC. It’s not worth taking especially because Shadow’s Embrace doesn’t cleanse movement impairing condi’s anymore. So withdrawal is basically a must for the cleanses to movement impairing condi’s making this heal pretty much obsolete.

Signet of Shadows: Should be a stun-break.

Again, Elementalists Signet of Air is very similar to Thief except that signet is a stun-break. Ranger’s Signet grants 50% more damage. Necro’s signet steal’s health from nearby foes.

Everyone of those Signets is on a 30s CD baseline except ele, which is on a 25s CD.

Our Signet only blinds. It would open up alot more Rune combo’s and utility for different builds.

All the other utilities i feel are fine how they are.

I don’t want you to tell me to wait for Daredevil, because I’m not going to be playing it. I like to play my thief how I like to play it. I have been running d/p meta since the big balance patch and I am sick and tired of that weapon set. It takes very little skill to be good at.

I’m frequently out-numbered when I play, whether it be PvP or WvW, and the oldschool thief in me doesn’t back down from a challenge, so I duke it out to my death or theirs. Having said that challenge statement, I understand its a challenge to not run SA, but I don’t want to just ignore a condi player, I want to be able to show that condi player that skill overcomes anything, so I take SA because without it I melt like butter to a hotpan against condi’s.

That’s all I can think of.

puh-puh-peace!

All things that were already been mentioned I would prefer if SoSh applied AoE slow in addition to blind but everything is on point especially blind on CnD it would be easier then putting CiS back at master level and it would only help the sets that needs it. The most important is DD is supposed to be optional and has no relations to SA.

CnD blind and Dancing Dagger damage upped a bit again would go miles for build variety without gimping yourself too much.
That as well as many, many other things currently lacking in the core specs (no, Daredevil is fun and quite good, but it doesn’t make make up for a bad core) as well as weapon sets and lackluster utilities.

S/d is not bad, although it isn’t perfect. I’ve been running it for a year and half (since I’ve been back) thanks to redeemer for helping me in game with that. I do realise s/d lost a vital trait in the acro line. As well as this I understand your point on d/p being its the only viable build for thief atm. Although I do don’t believe this, it takes very little to shut down an d/p thief mainly interrupt.

Thief have an interesting aura about them at the moment, they are seemed to be a underdog. Who +1 and cause havoc in wvw, backcap, or whatever a thief does in pvp (not my area of invested interest). I know many don’t like being a +1 bot or whatever, so don’t. Not simple as that I know, i know.

I’ve played d/p for about a week, cs and sa variants. I liked neither of them but I was having a very easy time winning 1v1s and 2v1s. I then stopped to realise I wasn’t having fun, at all. I put my s/d back on, swapped between cs and acro variants, now currently running acro with zerk armour and some vit trinkets. Putting me at 2.5k base power and 16k health base. Not inc wvw buffs, bloodlust etc etc. With that being said, d/p isn’t your only choice, you’re not going to get burst down. Play thief with a mentality that, everything must be for a reason, this way you are making sure you dodge when needed, not just mashing it in hopes of prolonging your death. Use your weapon set abilities for a reason, everything is for a reason.

Thief may have been beaten down and kicked in the stomach by our beautiful dev. But we can’t think that we are confined to d/p. The enjoyment and reward from outplaying a mindless d/p, or a experienced d/p thief is amazing. Downing 2 kitteny enemies because you were untouchable with purposeful uses of abilities is something you get addicted to. We do require buffs, this is without a doubt. If only the devs had a way to talk to us and communicate, I wonder how we could do that….

Sorry for the long kitten story. But check out redeemer: http://youtu.be/8ULl62omaHw he is happy to help anybody. He helped me extensively when I whispered him with counter play issues and concerns.

And feel free to add me in game, Mc Daggerss. Love to roam with thiefs or any other classes. AR btw xD

Here is a suggestion.

Signet of Shadow removes Reveal debuff plus its original traits but have its cd on 40 sec instead of 30. This should add more incentive to use Signet of shadows instead of its 25% movement speed passive and its really not so much crappy… 1 time blind… active

Here’s a quick fire list of stuff which Thief skills needs in terms of changes (all IMO):

- Sword 2, Infiltrators Strike, the return needs to be instant. Remove the cast time.
- S/P 3, Pistol Whip, reduce or remove the cast time.
- Shortbow 3, make the animation not teleport you back 50 range units (visual bug)
- P/P 3, Unload, reduce it’s initiative cost to 4 or 3.
- P 1, Vital Shot, increase it’s physical damage by double, maybe more.
- P 1, Sneak Attack, increase it’s physical damage by double, maybe more.
- D/D 3, Death Blossom, double/triple the evade time, double/triple its damage, reduce initiative cost by 1.
- Dagger 5, Cloak and Dagger, reduce initiative cost by 1 or 2. Add a Blind instead of Vulnerability. Increase its range to 250 or make it a small teleport (500-600 range).
- Hide in Shadows, reduce cast time to 0.5 seconds. Change it’s condi clear to same as Withdraw.
- Assassins Signet, change it to 20% increased damage. Maybe add a stun break.
- Signet of Shadows, like Cronicle.5691 said, make it remove the Revealed debuff and increase the cooldown to 40s. Change the 25% movement speed to 50% movement speed whilst in stealth and every 5th attack causes AOE Blindness.
- Shadow Trap, make the teleport more reliable. Right now it moves you very fast in a straight line to your targer or to the trap. If a tree is in the way, you’ll teleport to the tree. If the trap is up a cliff, you’ll get “no valid path”.
- Tripwire Trap, reduce it’s cooldown to 20 seconds.
- Scorpion Wire, make the pull more reliable, double it’s damage, cause 5 stacks of bleed and a 3s cripple.
- Haste, reduce the cooldown to 30 seconds from 60 (60 seconds?!?!?).
- Smoke Screen, make it an AOE Ring that when activated forms around you in a circle. Maybe make it so that they can’t see through the ring of smoke but you can see out. (Like Graves Smoke Screen from League of Legends but in reverse). Enemies inside the smoke screen circle get blinded every second for that they’re inside.
- Signet of Malice, increase it’s heal on hit to 300~. Change the active part to heal based on how much Initiative you have. Full Initiative: 4k – No Initiative: 2k. If you’ve only got 5 or 6 then it would be worked out proportionately
- Thieves Guild, increase the damage of the Thieves, reduce the cooldown to 120 seconds.

This is all excluding Traits. There’s loads of issues with our Traits. Things being where they shouldn’t. Traits being split into two traits which reduces our choices. Some Traits being completely useless… The list goes on.

One thing I’d like to see on core weapon sets is Cloak and Dagger actually cloaking even if you miss… This would make off hand dagger that much more comparable with pistol off hand.

Zakka.2153:

One thing I’d like to see on core weapon sets is Cloak and Dagger actually cloaking even if you miss… This would make off hand dagger that much more comparable with pistol off hand.

let’s play the easy way.

Theres many things that the Thief needs gettign changed, the class currently feels so extremely butchered and underpowered compared to all other more or less face role builded classes (mesmer, cele ele, condi necro, warrior, burn guard, RF ranger) its absolutely not funny anymore.

The game is since the stupid trait/condition patch from june to freaking messed up beyond any sanity, that it essentially makes you want to scream out loud everytime you get face rolled by one of those brain dead faceroll builds, how anet ruined the game totally and especially for thieves.
With this I don’t want to say now, that Thieves should receive not such skyrocketign power creep changes, like lately all the devs fresponsible for the other classes are giving them.

Now, I for myself just want to see this condition change garbage to be rebalanced. Conditions were NEVER EVER be supposed to braindeadly easily surpass massively the DPS of direct damage builds.
It was never the intented role of Conditions to be used mainly for DPS. Conditions are supposed to be the games main CONTROL mechanic and not Damage Mechanic, if ypou want to fulfill the role as a main damage dealer, then you go play a direct damage build, because it is supposed to fulfull this role by simple design.
Direct Damage builds will never be able to fulfill either the role as support or control, eventuell only control, if the direct damage comes alot paired together with hard CC effects and many soft cc conditions.
The game has already way too much Damage over Time Conditions than it is good for the Game Balance.
In my honest opinion a condition like Torment should have never been implemented as a Damage over Time Condition, because it is paired together with Confusion and Burning such a braindead pain in the kitten , that it destroys all the fun of the combat .
Especially since Confusion is now with its also damage over tiem effect way too OP.

The problem with the Thief Class is, that it has way to unreliable Condition removals for all this Condition Spamfest that GW2 has turned into late,y as also way too low base health to be able to survive this crap long enough.
Getting pestered full constantly with high confusion, torment, bleedigns and burenings is basically a thieves instant death, even with a high vitality build!!

The problem here is with the general game balance, because the defensive stats of this game are just useless garbage with no synergies, while the offensive stats are just way too superior with all their synergies.

Condtions shouldn’t ignore defense and they should also require like direct damage multiple stats to deal high damage. There needs to be a stat, that increases condition duration and all skilsl tghat aply conditions hsould get their base durations drastically reduced, so that condi players need to use also that condition duration increasing stat to get back their normal long durations.
That woudl balance also then finally for WvW all those OP stupid +40% condition duration foods by simply decreasign the base duration of all conditions in the game by 40%, gettign these 40% back only, if you are high in the condition duration attribute.

If Conditions would last so extreme long, then wouldn#t struggle also thieves with their super inferior condi removals alot against condition spammers to much, because a condition spammer then wouldn’t be able anymore to have at the same time super long lastign conditions while having also vwery high condition damage.
Condition Playersa finally need to sacrifice Condition Damage over Condition Durations. They need to decide if they either want to deal high damage, but on short duratino only..or if they want long lastign conditions, but deal therefore significantly lesser condition damage.

The Base Health of all classes need also finalyl to get rebalance.
It makes absolutely no sense to balance the base health for all clases after Low, Medim or High.
It would be much better, if ANet would finalyl balance the base Health for EACH CLASS completely individually.
In my Opnion An needs to switch the Base Health from Thieves with Mesmers.
mesmers are by now much more better in defending themself, that Thieves, it makes absolutely no sense anymore, that they even have more health than Thieves.

- Thieves have not so much access to all kinds of boons like mesmers
- Mesmers are now much better at Stealth than Thieves, what is in itself already ridiculous!
- Mesmers have constantly clones and phantoms aroung themself, giving them alot more constant DPS, even while beign stealthed, without freaking getting revealed!!!
- Mesmer Bursts are alot more deadly and don’t require perfect positioning and timing as much as like it does for a Thief, especialyl when playing as D/D, a stupid mesmer just needs to rely on it that theirclones and phantoms mostly do the work for them, while they can hide most of the time in stealth..

and thats just them, dont want to start on Cele Eles and Burn Guaridans.

I just believe, if anet would just get finally some general game balance changes right, that aren’t really needed to be class specific, this would help Thieves currently alot more, than to change tons of Thief skills and traits only.

Sure, some changes to traits and mainly weapon skilsl would be nice, but I think changes there will be only totally a waste of time, as long this condition garbage doesn’t get nerfed back to the ground to its supposed main control role, instead of it trying to replace direct damage as damage role making out of it a seeming competion, which dmaage typ can outclass the other side better and easier, where Conditino Damage currentkly is the clear winner since all this power creep around it thanks to the last balance patch that brought everything about it totally out of control.

Ill post some changes I think would be appropiate, if ANet would fix first the terrible condition meta now and base health imbalances.

Thief sucks. Play metal gear solid 5 and feel 1000% more sneaky and thiefy…

First how I think that Base Health should get rebalanced:

Thats from Top to Down the Base Health Values, how I think under the current game balance State should they get changed.

Warrior: 25000
Necromancer: 23500
Ranger: 23000
Thief: 21500
Mesmer: 18000
Revenant: 17000
Engineer: 15500
Guardian: 14000
Elementalist: 13000
—-

Condition Damage needs to get reduced for Torment, Confusion and especially Burning.. these 3 alone paired together are currently destroying the whole game Balance mostly alone!! When you can reach in this game Condition damage DPS thats high enough to kill ANYONE in a matter of like 2-3 seconds, before that person literally had a chance to react fast enough to get all the conditions off, before its already to late preventign to eat the dust, then you know exactly, that somethign in this games balance is currently massively WRONG! Not to mention that theres no way except Resistance to mitigate conditon damage, or lower it, with boons like Protection ect, but instead of that ANet even lets it increase with makign Vulnerability also increase condition damage by whopping 25% if you get high stacked with it!!
This change needs to get removed as well!! Instead of increasing the condition damage, Vulnertability should increase the condition durations to support condition players in gettign longer durations after the base durations got decreased by said 40%, so that a condition player actually wants to use alot of Vulnerability, not only as just a cover condition, but mainly to get longer condition durations!
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Based on the above points, i’d change the following Thief Mechanics

Dagger
Auto Attack:
Increase the Amount of Hits from 4 to 6, the first two hits should hit targets twice. By adding more its, should get also the Damage of the AA get buffed and the Attack Speed should get increased by felt 25% of the animations. Thief should have with D/D the absolut most superior fastest AA from all classes to give Thief players an incentive to play with D/D over builds like D/P and to give D/D thieves with Quickness an evenbore significant DPS boosting impact then!!

Backstab
Mechanic changed into a steal like Shadowstep into the back of your target. To reduce a the obnoxious perfect positioning, while giving the D/D thief a bit more mobility also, that you need to have here for a tiny time window!! while no other class needs such immensive precision and positioning without failure just to burst!

Twisting Fangs:
Significantly boost its damage, because in its current state it doesn’t compensate at all the loss of your stats from not using your offhand weapon!!
Make it a Whirl Finisher. increase its range and let it hit more targets. reduce its Initiative cost to 2-3

Death Blossom
Buff the Damage by like 100%, let it deal instead of Bleeding Torment and increase the Evade to its full animation duration and let it give you Stability and Resistance for that time

Dancing Dagger
Raise the velocity and damage by like 50%. add an affect, that it also removes boons, when being hit twice by the same dagger, to force an enemy to dodge or use an block skill, if they dont want to lose their boons.

Cloak and Dagger
Change its Effect to an on demand stealth with no requirement anymore to have to hit a target+ dodge roll that will ignore damage done by daredevil dodges, so that you won’t get instantly revealed. When used, the create Smoke Bomb should aoe blind and weaken instead of vulnerability
—-
Sword
AA’s
2nd and 3rd Attack shoudl get their animation speeds increased by halving the times forvthem from 1/2s to 1/4s for both skills

Infiltrators Strike
Initiative Cost should get reverted, Start 2 IP, and on return 3 IP. Return should have no cooldown, remove the silly 1/2s time delay and it should cure 2 conditions not only 1 Starting it should work also as Stun Break/Immobilize remover

Stab Completely replace this utter boring skill with something, that feels attrative to play with for abandoning your offhand weapon, and make it powerful enough, that it compensates for not using an offhand weapon!! Reduce its Initiative cost to 3
Never seen in a game a more plain borign uninspired useless skills than this!!

Pistol Whip
Increase the duration of the stun either to 1s, fix its facts by adding also the info that this skill lets you evade attacks. and if you don’t want to increase the stun duration, then remove the rooting effect to make it possible to use this skill also while moving and let it gain you Fury. This skill absolutely lacks on damage impact, where Fury alone would help out alot, since you permanently butchered Thieves Criticial Hit rate into oblivion with the latest patches!!!

Shortbow
AA: Increase the range to 1200, increase the velocity by 25-33%. Let it convert over conditions from you target to the target and steal boons from it also, if an arrow hits a foe twice and and was over 50% health to make SB a much better self support weapon for when fighting vs condi players, especialys Mesmers and in crowded battles where its likely to hit often multiple targets with SB that will be at the fitting health threshokld to let these effects trigger. Either make this a baseline improvement, or add a SB trait for these effects to make SB a more viable weapon for in combat, than just only a mobilityand blast finisher on demand tool mainly

Cluster Bomb
Change the Bleedings to BURNING!! We make everythign around our target nuke and explode and everything they get is BLEEDS? For real??? CLuster bombing a target should make the enemies vulnerable and burn!! raise the velocity of Cluster Bomb, raise its range to 1200 (we shoot it in a high arc!! make Shortbow for thief finally again a viable WVW defense weapon!!) Add a trait which increases the radius of clusterbomb and the amount of targets that you can deal damage with from 5 to 10.

Disabling Shot
Reduce the initiative cost to 3, raise the evade distance from 240 to 450. Change the cripple to slow. Rename the Skill “Evasive Shot”

Choking Gas
Should Stun targets, that stand longer than 2 seconds inside of it! Increase the base damage of this skills. The trait, that increase the maximum target number for cluster bomb to 10 should also increase the target number here to 10 also for Choking Gas

Infiltrators Arrow Should give you initiative and health back, if you blind enemies with it to incentivize and reward skillful play with it. Should stealth nearby allies and you, if you blind with it a target also, to give the skill better group support potential
initiative cost should get reduced to 5.
—-

Pistol

Body Shot Should weaken instead of immobilize, reduce initiative cost to 3. Should pierce and hit foes in line of size and have a base lined ricochet effect agaisnt vulnerable foes.

Repeater again here, buff the damage for compensation of havign no offhand weapon!! reduce the initiative cost to 3. Make it 100% projectile finisher. Let it grant might stacks per shot that hits. and Vigor, when you emptied with it your initiative.
Normalize its animation time with that of Unload to have the same time!

*Unload:
Add a Vulnerability Chance to it for every hit.

Headshot
Raise the Initiative cost, rase the range to 1050, increase the daze duration from 1/4s to 1 1/4s Add a self raising Confusion to it for every 1/4s second the enemy is dazed for maximum of 5 stacks of confusion if the enemy uses no stun breaker and sits out the daze duration completely

Black Powder
Raise its radius from 120 to 240. Let it pulse 4x, once per second of duration.
Give the thief a trait that lets him create on usage of Black Powder a Smoke Screen instead to give Black Powder a better defensive support effect for on demand projectile blocks.

Hide in Shadows
Should remove Burning, Confusion, Bleeding and Torment
Exchange the Regeneration with Protection. and minimally improve the Base Heal by letting Healing Power significantly raise the base heal more. Reduce the Cooldown from 30s to 20s and reduce the activation time from 2s to 1s

Signet of Malice
Increase significantly the Healing Power affect here for the passive heals, improve the active affect by letting all conditions on you convert over to your target and set the targets heal skill on cooldown.

Skelk Venom
Reduce the recharge time from 40s to 30s Add regeneration as side effect for successful hits and let successful hits remove also conditions from you.

Withdraw
Should give also initiative back
——

and in regard of Utility skilsl should anet just merge alot of them and use the created gaps to give the Thief some new more useful utility Skills.

Like merging Signet of Shadows with Asssasins’s Signet
Like merging Shadow Step with Blinding Powder
Like merging Shadow Refuge with Ambush
Like meging Signet of Agility with Infiltrators Signet
Like merging Needle Trap with Shadow Trap
Like merging Roll for Initiative with Haste
Like merging Devorer Venom with Ice Drake Venom
Like merging Scorpion Wire with Spider Venom

That wold be instantly space for much better designed, more useful and generally more group supporting 8 Utility Skills for a potentially much better and more fun thief class