Guild Wars 2

Introduction:
I’m not a game design expert, but I’ve been playing thief for years and I’m ready for some changes. The class has been pigeon-holed into one or two meta builds for the last two years. It’s time to give thief players some options.
[Note: These changes are primarily directed towards WvW, and to a lesser extent, PvP.]

Goals:

• Make the class as a whole less frustrating to play against
• Increase build and weapon diversity

General Changes:

• Stealth attack skills no longer have a 1-second recharge if they do not successfully hit.
• Stealth attack skills now have a 4-second recharge if they successfully hit.
• Preparedness made baseline across the whole class.

Trait lines:

Shadow Arts:

• Shadow’s Embrace: This trait has been reverted to its previous iteration which reads “Remove conditions periodically while in stealth” (prioritizes damaging conditions).
• Shadow Protector: This trait has been removed from the game.
• Cloaked in Shadow: This trait has been moved from Grandmaster tier to Master tier.
• New Grandmaster trait: Deception skills remove Revealed (from the user only).

Trickery:

• Preparedness: This trait has been made baseline.
• New minor trait: TBD

Daredevil:

• Impacting Disruption: The internal cooldown of this ability has been increased from 0-seconds to 5-seconds.
• Unhindered Combatant : The damage reduction from this trait has been removed.
• Bounding Dodger: The damage of this trait has been reduced by ~15%.

Weapon Skills:

Offhand dagger:

• Cloak and Dagger: This ability now blinds the target upon successful hit.
  [Note: This change is unnecessary if Cloaked in Shadows is moved to Master tier]

Staff:

• Vault: The initiative cost of this ability has been increased from 5 to 6.
• Vault: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 25%.

Shortbow:

• Disabling Shot: The evasion component of this ability has been increased from 64% to 100% of the skill’s duration.

Dual skills:

• Flanking Strike: This ability no longer needs to successfully hit a target before giving access to Larcenous Strike.

Utility skills:

• Bandit’s Defense: The cooldown of this ability has been increased from 15-seconds to 25-seconds.
• Blinding Powder: The cooldown of this ability has been increased from 40-seconds to 45-seconds.
• Needle Trap: This ability now does a small amount of damage.
• Roll for Initiative: The cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 60-seconds to 45-seconds.
• Scorpion Wire: This ability has been made more reliable on uneven terrain.

Elite skills:

• Basilisk Venom: This ability is no longer unblockable.

Intended Weapon Strengths and More Suggestions:

Dagger/Dagger:
Ideally, D/D would be one of the highest burst sets thief has access to. It’s melee, lacks a reliable defense mechanism, and requires proper positioning to be successful. There is an abundant amount of counterplay to Cloak and Dagger and players should be rewarded for using it correctly. Death Blossom should be adjusted to reduce the spam and frustration of condition oriented builds.

Dagger/Pistol:
This weaponset trades some of offhand dagger’s damage for more utility. Right now it is a bit overturned, crowding out other options for thief. It currently has more damage and utility than any other thief set (with the exception of staff). The defensive options within the set itself are fine, but additional traits and utilities push it over the top.

Pistol/Dagger:
I honestly haven’t played P/D enough to know how to make it viable. Power, hybrid, and condi builds should be viable with the set, if possible.

Pistol/Pistol:
Again, like P/D, I haven’t played the set enough to know how to fix it, but the auto attack likely needs adjusted to make the set less reliant on Unload for damage.

Shortbow:
As a utility weapon, shortbow has never fallen out of favor. The mobility it provides is amazing, but Disabling Shot leaves something to be desired. Choking Gas isn’t nearly as potent as it used to be and doesn’t feel good to use, but I am unsure if there is a way to bring it back without it being oppressive in team fights.

Staff:
Staff fits a more evasive, bruiser playstyle. What is lacks in stealth, it should make up for in evades and AoE damage (which it currently does). However, right now Vault is a bit too much.

Sword/Dagger:
S/D is similar to staff in that it’s an evasive, bruiser playstyle, but it trades damage for stealth. Ideally, it would be the best thief weaponset to take against tanky/boon classes like ele and guardian. Unfortunately, Flanking Strike is too easy to dodge/blind/block so it ends up being pretty meh.

Sword/Pistol:
S/P actually feels like it’s in a decent spot, but it’s hard to compete with the meta builds in terms of effectiveness. Bringing down those builds should increase the relative strength of S/P significantly.

Conclusion:
I’m interested to hear what the community thinks of my thoughts. Maybe some of the suggestions are good, maybe some are bad. Maybe they’re all bad. I don’t know, but I think changes need to be made. I’m so tired of playing D/P or being objectively inferior to D/P. :|

This isn’t a balance suggestion thread, it’s a nerf wish list. None of these nerfs are remotely warranted with the current state of Thief vs other professions. Nerfing x to make y stronger is not what needs to be done, unless you also suggest appropriate nerfs to all other professions.

I’m going to take a wild guess here – you are one of those thieves that only plays power D/D, only able to c/D steal backstab for the one hit kill. You know, part of that incredibly vocal minority who complain when they can’t instagib another thief…

Wow, that’s a lot of nerfs. Do you really play thief?

Sounds like OP is salty about Thieves and needs to l2p against Thieves badly, but iirc the OP used to main Thief years ago but stopped playing and possibly maims a different class. Now. Or the OP says they Main Thief and actually doesn’t and uses that to try and ask for nerfs, Or the Op no longer actively plays and is inviting Chaos.

The nerfs to stealth access and Stealth attacks are ridiculous, Op wants to delete Shadow Arts trait line which is the most underused traitlines Thief has, and would make Thief be useless with Stealth when they are designed around Stealth at a conceptual level.

Turk.5460:

This isn’t a balance suggestion thread, it’s a nerf wish list. None of these nerfs are remotely warranted with the current state of Thief vs other professions. Nerfing x to make y stronger is not what needs to be done, unless you also suggest appropriate nerfs to all other professions.

I’m going to take a wild guess here – you are one of those thieves that only plays power D/D, only able to c/D steal backstab for the one hit kill. You know, part of that incredibly vocal minority who complain when they can’t instagib another thief…

The thief meta builds are just over tuned right now. And while they may be on par or even worse than other meta builds at the moment, that doesn’t justify the state that the class is in. And you are correct, I do believe the other classes need to be nerfed significantly as well. Thief is just what I know and can offer insight on.

lol. No. I play D/D, D/P, S/D, staff, and S/P (in order of frequency) and I would say I’m pretty good with most of them. My point is that there is absolutely no reason to play anything but D/P at the moment and the meta builds cater to players who make frequent mistakes. Play D/D, S/D, or whatever weaponset you want, but as soon as you swap to D/P, you’re suddenly so much better at the game because the weaponset is just that good.

rennlc.7346:

Wow, that’s a lot of nerfs. Do you really play thief?

I have 3000+ hours and counting.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Sounds like OP is salty about Thieves and needs to l2p against Thieves badly, but iirc the OP used to main Thief years ago but stopped playing and possibly maims a different class. Now. Or the OP says they Main Thief and actually doesn’t and uses that to try and ask for nerfs, Or the Op no longer actively plays and is inviting Chaos.

The nerfs to stealth access and Stealth attacks are ridiculous, Op wants to delete Shadow Arts trait line which is the most underused traitlines Thief has, and would make Thief be useless with Stealth when they are designed around Stealth at a conceptual level.

I main thief. I know how to play it. I know how to play against it. And I know that the meta builds are very forgiving compared to other thief builds and should be brought in line with the rest of the class so we can actually get buffs to help us compete with other classes rather than just abusing broken traits and utilities.

The changes to Shadow Arts and stealth attacks are actually 100% buffs, and incredibly strong ones at that, so you might want to read it again. The trait line is complete garbage right now. No one uses it. With those changes it might actually be viable again.

The whole post does seem like a list of nerfs, but a lot of them are inevitable and, while they might not be coming down the pipe in the next patch, they will eventually come. The idea is to bring all thief weapons to a more even playing field to establish diversity and then provide buffs where it’s appropriate rather than just relegating ourselves to ONE weaponset and calling it a day.

TakeCare.3182:

Introduction:
I’m not a game design expert
…

TakeCare.3182:

The thief meta builds are just over tuned right now. And while they may be on par or even worse than other meta builds at the moment, that doesn’t justify the state that the class is in. And you are correct, I do believe the other classes need to be nerfed significantly as well. Thief is just what I know and can offer insight on.

I will pretend you’re showing part of the over-all solution…

And with that say, it’s best you show the WHOLE solution and explain all the nerfs across all the classes – not just one.

Until then, this “balance suggestions” are pointless and can come off as someone salty pretending to be a thief main proposing “balance suggestions”.

Oh yeah…
Take Care ;D

Zero Day.2594:

TakeCare.3182:

Introduction:
I’m not a game design expert
…

TakeCare.3182:

The thief meta builds are just over tuned right now. And while they may be on par or even worse than other meta builds at the moment, that doesn’t justify the state that the class is in. And you are correct, I do believe the other classes need to be nerfed significantly as well. Thief is just what I know and can offer insight on.

I will pretend you’re showing part of the over-all solution…

And with that say, it’s best you show the WHOLE solution and explain all the nerfs across all the classes – not just one.

Until then, this “balance suggestions” are pointless and can come off as someone salty pretending to be a thief main proposing “balance suggestions”.

Oh yeah…
Take Care ;D

Why would I make suggestions for classes that I only play enough to know what they do?

And what part of this post is salty? I proposed changes and outlined where I think each weapon is in terms of balance and what direction they should go. Do you play thief? You don’t think D/P and staff are better than every other weaponset? I mean, if you play the class and you think it’s in a good place, I can only assume that you either don’t care about diversity or you rely on some of the things above to function in the game.

I mean, I guess the other solution is to leave thief the way it is and we’ll all just play the same build- or we’ll buff every other weapon until they’re all equally as forgiving?

Please.

You should have named the thread “How to destroy thief”.

I agree on few points, but majority is just silly.

Also, I’m curious about this: “Stealth attack skills now have a 4-second recharge if they successfully hit.” You do know it’s pretty much impossible to land 2 stealth attacks in 4 seconds interval?

TakeCare.3182:

Zero Day.2594:

TakeCare.3182:

Introduction:
I’m not a game design expert
…

TakeCare.3182:

The thief meta builds are just over tuned right now. And while they may be on par or even worse than other meta builds at the moment, that doesn’t justify the state that the class is in. And you are correct, I do believe the other classes need to be nerfed significantly as well. Thief is just what I know and can offer insight on.

I will pretend you’re showing part of the over-all solution…

And with that say, it’s best you show the WHOLE solution and explain all the nerfs across all the classes – not just one.

Until then, this “balance suggestions” are pointless and can come off as someone salty pretending to be a thief main proposing “balance suggestions”.

Oh yeah…
Take Care ;D

Why would I make suggestions for classes that I only play enough to know what they do?

And what part of this post is salty? I proposed changes and outlined where I think each weapon is in terms of balance and what direction they should go. Do you play thief? You don’t think D/P and staff are better than every other weaponset? I mean, if you play the class and you think it’s in a good place, I can only assume that you either don’t care about diversity or you rely on some of the things above to function in the game.

I mean, I guess the other solution is to leave thief the way it is and we’ll all just play the same build- or we’ll buff every other weapon until they’re all equally as forgiving?

Please.

“I’m not a game design expert”

“And you are correct, I do believe the other classes need to be nerfed significantly as well. Thief is just what I know and can offer insight on.”

Either, explain your whole concept of balance, across the board, for all classes, what needs to be done for each. Or don’t.

It’s great you can “balance” one classes and basically say "yeah this will work, if/when other classes also get a ‘balance’ pass " – but that kitten just doesn’t fly well here.

martin.1653:

You should have named the thread “How to destroy thief”.

I agree on few points, but majority is just silly.

Also, I’m curious about this: “Stealth attack skills now have a 4-second recharge if they successfully hit.” You do know it’s pretty much impossible to land 2 stealth attacks in 4 seconds interval?

If you look at the Shadow Arts changes I proposed, there is a new GM that removes the Revealed debuff. The new cooldown would be to prevent something dumb like Backstab + Blinding Powder + Backstab, which would be obscene. xD

Zero Day.2594:

TakeCare.3182:

Zero Day.2594:

TakeCare.3182:

Introduction:
I’m not a game design expert
…

TakeCare.3182:

The thief meta builds are just over tuned right now. And while they may be on par or even worse than other meta builds at the moment, that doesn’t justify the state that the class is in. And you are correct, I do believe the other classes need to be nerfed significantly as well. Thief is just what I know and can offer insight on.

I will pretend you’re showing part of the over-all solution…

And with that say, it’s best you show the WHOLE solution and explain all the nerfs across all the classes – not just one.

Until then, this “balance suggestions” are pointless and can come off as someone salty pretending to be a thief main proposing “balance suggestions”.

Oh yeah…
Take Care ;D

Why would I make suggestions for classes that I only play enough to know what they do?

And what part of this post is salty? I proposed changes and outlined where I think each weapon is in terms of balance and what direction they should go. Do you play thief? You don’t think D/P and staff are better than every other weaponset? I mean, if you play the class and you think it’s in a good place, I can only assume that you either don’t care about diversity or you rely on some of the things above to function in the game.

I mean, I guess the other solution is to leave thief the way it is and we’ll all just play the same build- or we’ll buff every other weapon until they’re all equally as forgiving?

Please.

“I’m not a game design expert”

“And you are correct, I do believe the other classes need to be nerfed significantly as well. Thief is just what I know and can offer insight on.”

Either, explain your whole concept of balance, across the board, for all classes, what needs to be done for each. Or don’t.

It’s great you can “balance” one classes and basically say "yeah this will work, if/when other classes also get a ‘balance’ pass " – but that kitten just doesn’t fly well here.

You don’t have to be a game designer to offer balance suggestions in the same way you don’t have to be the President or a member of Congress to know about public policy. So please save it for someone else. lol

I don’t have to explain balance across the board. Thief has problems in and of itself that need to be addressed independently of other classes. How it fares in relation to other classes isn’t relevant in this context. Thief’s entire power budget is loaded into one meta or two meta builds that suppress every other option. It’s unhealthy. I guess if you rely on the meta builds- or god forbid a ghost thief build- to survive, then these suggestions are probably terrifying. But honestly, if you can’t survive without Bandit’s Defense or kill people without spamming Headshot, then you’re probably not doing it right to begin with.

TakeCare.3182:

• Stealth attack skills no longer have a 1-second recharge if they do not successfully hit.
• Stealth attack skills now have a 4-second recharge if they successfully hit.
  Shadow Arts
• New Grandmaster trait: Deception skills remove Revealed (from the user only).

first of all i dont think there is a reason to remove that 1s ICD. before that ICD i was just spamming 1, often even in the face.. that ICD helped me to time my backstab better and use it as intended and i have absolutly no problems landing it. so the ICD just prevents spamming.

i dont like your new grandmaster trait, you wanted thief not be annoying to fight against. now with that i can backstab and stealth instant again remain in stealth as long as i see fit and backstab again – trust me ppl will call that more annoyning that its right now were they got a 3s window to kill me.

and that 4s cd, even with your trait you wont land instant 2 backstabs if the 1s icd remains, unless ur opponents reaction is very slow so he would die in backstab + quikness AA in the same time.

TakeCare.3182:

• Shadow’s Embrace: This trait has been reverted to its previous iteration which reads “Remove conditions periodically while in stealth” (prioritizes damaging conditions).

i play with this trait, its already one of our best condition removing traits, no need to buff it even further. yes i also sometimes want it to remove annoying weakness but its probably for the best, that it doesnt do that.

TakeCare.3182:

• Needle Trap: This ability now does a small amount of damage.

in that other thief thread about heartseeker, there is a good explaination, why this wont fix the intended problem but will make the trap useless for any other condition build that is not permastealthing.

• Scorpion Wire: This ability has been made more reliable on uneven terrain.

still will remain one of the worst pulls ingame then.

• Basilisk Venom: This ability is no longer unblockable.

thief already has very low access to unblockable stuff.
with that trait thief would need other ways to preassure through blocks like a way to get an unblockable buff like the nek / war or rev. or other unblockable skills, for instance distracting daggers could be unblockable, tho im not sure if they are worth taking then as we still need our defensive skills.
if you want to bring it on par with DD one, make the first DD skill unblockable. then you have to choose between sharing that CC and combining it with other skills or an execute combo, without giving up ur chance to interrupt blocks.

TakeCare.3182:

Zero Day.2594:

TakeCare.3182:

Zero Day.2594:

TakeCare.3182:

Introduction:
I’m not a game design expert
…

TakeCare.3182:

The thief meta builds are just over tuned right now. And while they may be on par or even worse than other meta builds at the moment, that doesn’t justify the state that the class is in. And you are correct, I do believe the other classes need to be nerfed significantly as well. Thief is just what I know and can offer insight on.

I will pretend you’re showing part of the over-all solution…

And with that say, it’s best you show the WHOLE solution and explain all the nerfs across all the classes – not just one.

Until then, this “balance suggestions” are pointless and can come off as someone salty pretending to be a thief main proposing “balance suggestions”.

Oh yeah…
Take Care ;D

Why would I make suggestions for classes that I only play enough to know what they do?

And what part of this post is salty? I proposed changes and outlined where I think each weapon is in terms of balance and what direction they should go. Do you play thief? You don’t think D/P and staff are better than every other weaponset? I mean, if you play the class and you think it’s in a good place, I can only assume that you either don’t care about diversity or you rely on some of the things above to function in the game.

I mean, I guess the other solution is to leave thief the way it is and we’ll all just play the same build- or we’ll buff every other weapon until they’re all equally as forgiving?

Please.

“I’m not a game design expert”

“And you are correct, I do believe the other classes need to be nerfed significantly as well. Thief is just what I know and can offer insight on.”

Either, explain your whole concept of balance, across the board, for all classes, what needs to be done for each. Or don’t.

It’s great you can “balance” one classes and basically say "yeah this will work, if/when other classes also get a ‘balance’ pass " – but that kitten just doesn’t fly well here.

You don’t have to be a game designer to offer balance suggestions in the same way you don’t have to be the President or a member of Congress to know about public policy. So please save it for someone else. lol

• I don’t have to explain balance across the board. Thief has problems in and of itself that need to be addressed independently of other classes. How it fares in relation to other classes isn’t relevant in this context. * Thief’s entire power budget is loaded into one meta or two meta builds that suppress every other option. It’s unhealthy. I guess if you rely on the meta builds- or god forbid a ghost thief build- to survive, then these suggestions are probably terrifying. But honestly, if you can’t survive without Bandit’s Defense or kill people without spamming Headshot, then you’re probably not doing it right to begin with.

Right…

But see, how it fares in relations to other classes IS relevant.

True you can look for “local” balance within the class itself, but it’s also important to look at the “global” balance across the board… Else you risk making the class too good or too bad.

Also, meta-builds, you wont be able to escape. They will always exist as people will always try to run the best and most optimal build for a given task.

But yeah, neither of us are game designers.

First, I just want to say thank you for your nice, constructive response, MUDse. This is exactly the kind of conversation I was hoping to stir! As for the specifics…

MUDse.7623:

i dont think there is a reason to remove that 1s ICD. -snip-

I do agree that spam should generally be discouraged, but I feel like the 1-second cooldown lowers the counterplay to stealth and disproportionately affects builds that aren’t D/P. For example, before the cooldown was added, one of the best ways to counter D/P permastealth was to predict where the enemy was and fish for them using Backstab and Tactical Strike. Now that’s no longer possible. Really, the only way to stop a D/P thief (with Bound) from camping stealth is to stand in or around their Black Powder, which isn’t ideal if you don’t want to lose half your health to a stray dodge or retaliatory combo. D/P doesn’t even remotely care about the stealth attack cooldown because Shadowshot allows you to get in position whenever you want.

MUDse.7623:

now with that i can backstab and stealth instant again remain in stealth as long as i see fit and backstab again -snip-

That would definitely be annoying to an extent, but you also have to consider the cost of using a utility skill to cheese stealth like that. If someone is using Shadowstep or Shadow Refuge that way, they’re going to have a bad time. The only problem would be Blinding Powder, which would be a 45-second cooldown if this were an actual patch. I guess a lucky Improvisation proc could also be problematic.

MUDse.7623:

and that 4s cd, even with your trait you wont land instant 2 backstabs -snip-

The intent of the trait is not to allow us to Backstab twice in a row without effort, but to offer some counterplay to low cooldown abilities like Detection Pulse, which essentially renders all of Shadow Arts useless.

MUDse.7623:

i play with this trait, its already one of our best condition removing traits, no need to buff it even further -snip-

The buff isn’t necessary, but I think it’d be a nice quality of life change. I never really saw why it was nerfed to begin with.

MUDse.7623:

in that other thief thread about heartseeker, there is a good explaination, why this wont fix the intended problem but will make the trap useless for any other condition build that is not permastealthing.

I would be more interested in seeing a condition build that isn’t permastealthing (that also uses Needle Trap) than I would be in reading that thread. xD Jokes aside, I see your point, but can’t think of another way to kill ghost thief.

MUDse.7623:

still will remain one of the worst pulls ingame then.

No joke! That feel when DH pull makes you fly across the map every time, but Scorpion Wire can’t pull a stationary target on flat terrain standing right in front of your face. :|

MUDse.7623:

Basilisk Venom: This ability is no longer unblockable.

Not gonna lie- this change would sting a little. But I felt like unblockable basi would be too strong with the removal of the 1-second cooldown on stealth attacks. Aegis wouldn’t mean anything anymore.

Zero Day.2594:

Right…

But see, how it fares in relations to other classes IS relevant.

True you can look for “local” balance within the class itself, but it’s also important to look at the “global” balance across the board… Else you risk making the class too good or too bad.

Also, meta-builds, you wont be able to escape. They will always exist as people will always try to run the best and most optimal build for a given task.

But yeah, neither of us are game designers.

The balance of thief in relation to other classes is relevant when discussing how to make thief competitive with other classes. This thread, however, is not about thief competing with other classes, but how thief builds compete with each other. If these changes crippled thief in the overall metagame, then we could certainly find other buffs to compensate.

I completely agree! Meta builds will always exist and they will always be better for some reason or another. I think D/P would still be the best weaponset for the class, even with these changes. But the point isn’t to delete the meta builds. It’s just to prevent them from oppressing other options that have no chance of being relevant if they can’t use tools like Impacting Disruption or Bounding Dodger. Ideally, we would make the tools exclusive to certain weaponsets less potent and then give the whole class more power so that all builds are brought up rather than just one or two. And it’s hard to capture that in a single “suggestion” patch, but we would have to see what these changes would do to thief builds to actually know where compensation buffs should originate.

As others have mentioned, it’s a bad idea to nerf thief with your given suggestions. Rather than bringing down d/p which keeps thief relevant and in pvp today, instead bringing up the other sets.

As for d/d thief, something I think that would help is removing the cripple from dancing dagger and putting it as an addition on death blossom. As for dancing dagger it would apply 1 second of slow and 3 seconds of weakness. The idea of the set would be not just burst, but debilitating your opponent – forcing them to eat attacks and this would also allow more defensiveness to d/d. I would also add a 3 second blind to cloak and dagger.

Staff, I would add a small daze to the 3 skill – part of the hit portion, and it would be nice to have poison/evade added to the 2 skill, right now outside of combining it with steal, it makes you very vulnerable for a mediocre attack. I’m not sure how to improve staff to bring it up to d/p, without having it far surpass (staff is better for team fights in my opinion) d/p, and without making it too similar to what the other sets bring.

Feral.3609:

As others have mentioned, it’s a bad idea to nerf thief with your given suggestions. Rather than bringing down d/p which keeps thief relevant and in pvp today, instead bringing up the other sets.

The concern with this is that the game has already been power creeped enough. Buffing the other sets could exacerbate the problem, but in all honesty, I would take anything ANet is willing to give. I feel like my approach is much more healthy for the game, but as others have noted, it may require more buffs later on or nerfs to other classes.

Feral.3609:

As for d/d thief, something I think that would help is removing the cripple from dancing dagger and putting it as an addition on death blossom. As for dancing dagger it would apply 1 second of slow and 3 seconds of weakness. The idea of the set would be not just burst, but debilitating your opponent – forcing them to eat attacks and this would also allow more defensiveness to d/d. I would also add a 3 second blind to cloak and dagger.

This is actually SUPER interesting to me. I don’t like the idea of adding a blink to CnD at all. I think it’s one of the best designed skills in the game as far as risk/reward and counterplay goes. That’s also why I don’t particularly like the idea of making it unblockable, which others have thrown around before. The requirement for positioning really makes CnD an expression of skill on thief, and that’s something that I think is incredibly important to maintain. However, I actually love your other suggestions. I think that niche is solid and could actually expand on D/D’s playstyle, which it really needs. I hope ANet is reading this. xP

Feral.3609:

Staff -snip-

I feel like staff is in a pretty good spot now. I do like your suggestions as they move some of its power budget away from Vault. Poison doesn’t really fit thematically, but the daze is interesting. I would just be afraid to push it over the edge. I am definitely not an expert when it comes to that weapon so it would be nice if a more experienced staff player would chime in. xD

Most of these suggestions are pretty decent, but I think the 1 second CD on stealth skills was a fair change….even though it’s only really important for preventing backstab spam.

I do think Vault needs to be addressed. I would actually prefer for the evade duration to be reduced 1/4 – giving players more opportunity to interrupt this massively damaging AoE skill whilst also making it a bit more of a high risk/high reward skill for my Thief. It would just make things more interesting for everyone involved.

I would also put a cast time on Signet of Agility as I’m generally finding that being able to regain dodges whilst dodging is a bit silly. I find it quite abusive but I don’t think this suggestion will be very popular

There are so many things on Thief that need to be brought up to date to improve build diversity and viability – such as the fact that I actually do as much damage with a simple auto-attack chain on dagger as I do when using Pistol Whip. This really shouldn’t be the case.

Simonoly.4352:

I do think Vault needs to be addressed. I would actually prefer for the evade duration to be reduced 1/4 – giving players more opportunity to interrupt this massively damaging AoE skill whilst also making it a bit more of a high risk/high reward skill for my Thief. It would just make things more interesting for everyone involved.

I think reducing the evade duration would be a good alternative to nerfing the damage. Vault is so tricky to deal with. Right now it’s very satisfying to use, but incredibly frustrating to play against. Either adjustment sounds good to me, really.

Simonoly.4352:

Signet of Agility -snip-

Yeah, I’ve thought a lot about Signet of Agility. It’s a tough one. I don’t think signets in general feel good with a cast time, but what can you do… it’s kinda overloaded at the moment. Maybe removing the condi clear would be a nice love tap. I don’t even know if I remember how to play without it. lol.

Simonoly.4352:

There are so many things on Thief that need to be brought up to date to improve build diversity and viability – such as the fact that I actually do as much damage with a simple auto-attack chain on dagger as I do when using Pistol Whip. This really shouldn’t be the case.

Amen! I literally wouldn’t be playing this game anymore if it wasn’t for thief, but it is not in a good spot right now. I feel like ANet is trying to be delicate so they don’t knock the class out of the game like they have before, but… I mean, a lot of it just doesn’t make sense, like you said. And it’s clear that they really want S/D to be a thing, especially in PvP, but it’s like… why would you take something that’s just inferior?