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Posted by: bliss.4305

bliss.4305

Hi everyone o/

With HoT, the “meta” for all game modes have changed. While this is all great, the majority of the Thief community believe its been for the worse.
While I think “Daredevil” has spiced things up, it feels like in all game modes the class suffers and could use a slight push to make it more in line with the rest of the bunch.
Now, unless they balance the 3 game modes (WvW/PvE/PvP) seperately, the only way I see this happening is through a change of our resource system; the initiative.

Most classes are balanced around consuming their weapon/kit/attunement skills. And its arranged conveniently so that once you cycle through 1 set and move on to the other, the previous weapon recharges at least half of those weapon skills.
Thieves, however, have 2 weapon sets that share the same resource pool. Yes, we don’t have cooldown on skills, but most of our key abilities are on such high initiative cost that once we consume our initiative, we have a lot of downtime to fill in with our “auto-attacks”.

Although it looks like a solid system, I believe due to the slow regeneration and very limited ways to regain initiative, we hit a brick wall, as auto attack damage isn’t nearly fast or effective enough to compensate for that downtime. To compensate this I have 2 different suggestions:

1) Weapon auto attacks recharge initiative.

I strongly believe, simply adding initiative regain on our weapon auto attacks while keeping the regular initiative regeneration would definitely be a positive step for the Thief class in general. Obviously, the numbers should be adjusted according to the weapon set… fast and single attacks like Shortbow or Pistol main hand will recharge 1 initiative, while Dagger and Sword will recharge a bulk of initiative (lets say 2 or 3 respectively) on their 3rd skill chain.

-PvE would get a HUGE boost, as you’d actively reduce the downtime of initiative with the filler auto attacks. Scripted monsters have very few evade/block mechanics and its very easy to get the chains off to reliably help this happen.

-PvP wouldn’t be affected in a broken way at all, since many players actively avoid getting hit from thieves and the amount of auto attacks you’ll chain back to back would mean you’d risk exposing yourself to more attacks… a.k.a. high risk, high reward

-WvW would be affected more or less in the same way as PvP, thus would be fine.

2) Weapon swap regenerates ALL initiative in combat. (EXCEPT duplicate weapon sets).

OK… Before you go WTFASDSDASDWDQWEKKDAJLHL… Think about it for just one second. You will get full initiative bar for your new weapon set, eliminating the uselessness of weapon swap on low initiative: Opens up more exciting gameplay and weapon set combinations, for ALL game modes:

-PvE would benefit from a lot of weapon set combinations and this would also eliminate the downtime of initiative system. We’d have more consistent DPS with each weapon swap, putting our damage output on par with other classes.

-PvP would definitely be harder to balance with this proposal, but as it appears to many people (including the top-tier PvP players) we’re falling back on this game mode greatly, when classes such as Dragon Hunter, Revenant, Reaper, Chronomancer (basically almost all classes) have more use to the team than just high mobility +1 and decaps.

-WvW would be affected more or less in the same way as PvP, thus would be fine.

Now out of these 2 ideas, I won’t lie, 2nd one is going to be much harder to balance out for PvP purposes… but given the “state of the class” we hear every single day since the decline of this class, I’d say it may just be the thing to put us on par with the power creep. Meanwhile, 1st suggestion is a lot more tamer and smooth to implement and we’d see instant improvement that might just make it.

TL;DR: Initiative system creates a lot of downtime and doesn’t synergize well with weapon swap. We need supplementary mechanics to compensate this. Look at point 1 and 2.

edited for formatting

Looking forward to your comments. Thank you.

(edited by bliss.4305)

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Posted by: Jana.6831

Jana.6831

How about weaponswap regenerates 6 initative? So you could at least use one skill of your choice.
In the end there’s so much wrong with thief/the game that initiative regain wouldn’t change that much – but I’m in – at least 6 would be nice.

I just thought about balance and had a discussion with a friend earlier about that anet has to change the powercreep and what would happen with raids if they do – he said “just separate wvw, pve and pvp” I don’t think this is the best idea actually as OP classes are bad in either game mode – but maybe that would be a good start. Well, then I thought about how this would work the fastest – by recruiting top pve player (speedrunner), pvp player and wvw player. Problem with that is that my thief feels so broken that everything is OP to me – I can’t tell what’s lag, bug or really an OP class mechanic. So I feel as if I can’t really say anything about what thief needs right now.

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Posted by: assassin.7895

assassin.7895

initiative is not the problem.

thief is too weak to condis,
suspectible to blind and weakness,
has bad weapon skills,
gets countered by scrapper,chrono, rev, dh, tempest and is outsustained by reaper, druid

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Posted by: RedSpectrum.1975

RedSpectrum.1975

initiative is not the problem.

thief is too weak to condis,
suspectible to blind and weakness,
has bad weapon skills,
gets countered by scrapper,chrono, rev, dh, tempest and is outsustained by reaper, druid

In other words, thief all around sucks is what you’re saying

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Posted by: Jugglemonkey.8741

Jugglemonkey.8741

How about weaponswap regenerates 6 initative? So you could at least use one skill of your choice.
In the end there’s so much wrong with thief/the game that initiative regain wouldn’t change that much – but I’m in – at least 6 would be nice.

I just thought about balance and had a discussion with a friend earlier about that anet has to change the powercreep and what would happen with raids if they do – he said “just separate wvw, pve and pvp” I don’t think this is the best idea actually as OP classes are bad in either game mode – but maybe that would be a good start. Well, then I thought about how this would work the fastest – by recruiting top pve player (speedrunner), pvp player and wvw player. Problem with that is that my thief feels so broken that everything is OP to me – I can’t tell what’s lag, bug or really an OP class mechanic. So I feel as if I can’t really say anything about what thief needs right now.

I was about to suggest 6 ini, that seems about right tbh.

Although, i’m with other posters in this thread, thief lacks options against multiple classes now simply because all our eggs are in one basket: evades.

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Posted by: Ario.8964

Ario.8964

In my opinion, thief would need a bit more than just synergy with weapon swap but it is definitely an amazing start. On top of the 6 ini gained on wep swap it’d be great if we got preparedness as a baseline for the class seeing as how it’s practically mandatory for every build on the face of tyria. After that while we are on the subject of changes to make thief possible to balance, I know it’s a scary thought but… remove stealth from EVERY class and item in the game except the thief. I know many people would throw a fit about it but just think for a sec about it, if we do this then we can balance stealth as a thief tool. No more worrying about a trapper abusing it if we make a damage reduction baseline or a blind pulse baseline, and no need to worry about another PU Mesmer crisis. Next stop to bring thief up to par and fix some of the stuff in the game is remove the ability to evade or be invuln while doing damage at the same time (skills like vault and flanking strike would stay the same as the damage happens after the evade and the skill is therefore cc-able). After those changes then you will see thief already start to be more relevant. as major bursts from other classes can then be hindered by basi venom and steal (when traited which imo should also be baseline but hey who listens to me :P)

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Posted by: Jugglemonkey.8741

Jugglemonkey.8741

In my opinion, thief would need a bit more than just synergy with weapon swap but it is definitely an amazing start. On top of the 6 ini gained on wep swap it’d be great if we got preparedness as a baseline for the class seeing as how it’s practically mandatory for every build on the face of tyria. After that while we are on the subject of changes to make thief possible to balance, I know it’s a scary thought but… remove stealth from EVERY class and item in the game except the thief. I know many people would throw a fit about it but just think for a sec about it, if we do this then we can balance stealth as a thief tool. No more worrying about a trapper abusing it if we make a damage reduction baseline or a blind pulse baseline, and no need to worry about another PU Mesmer crisis. Next stop to bring thief up to par and fix some of the stuff in the game is remove the ability to evade or be invuln while doing damage at the same time (skills like vault and flanking strike would stay the same as the damage happens after the evade and the skill is therefore cc-able). After those changes then you will see thief already start to be more relevant. as major bursts from other classes can then be hindered by basi venom and steal (when traited which imo should also be baseline but hey who listens to me :P)

I’m with you on the preparedness as baseline. Definitely a good idea.

Kinda with you on the removal of stealth from other classes. I’d rather see a separate kind of stealth for other classes in the form of a different buff altogether, as it totally makes sense to me for a mesmer to be able to stealth. Then again, it would give us a role that nobody else could do, which is a step in the right direction since currently we don’t have a niche beyond running fast and evades. Divided on this one.

Not with you on the removal of evades while dealing damage i’m afraid, but i’m a S/P thief so that’s only natural lol. I’m enjoying playing a stealthless tanky build with shadowstep and CC, and it just wouldn’t work without pistol whip the way it is if only because of the amount of AoE flying around. I’d rather see more options for thieves to play tank/support roles through buffs/changes to thief, rather than removing skills from everyone.

The way I see it, Anet wants thief to be a DPS class. I’m totally fine with that, but i’m not sure why we then don’t have damage to compete with ele and engi even in full glass. Either we need damage increases to fit the DPS role, or we need more versatility to make tank/support roles more viable so we can DPS whilst bringing something else to the table as well. For example, have you seen the boons rev can put out to a party? That’s how proper team support whilst remaining a DPS build looks.

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Posted by: Serious Thought.5394

Serious Thought.5394

Everyone knows Preparedness needs baseline. But its k, Illusionary Persona was a far more necessary trait?

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Posted by: Cynz.9437

Cynz.9437

after doing some raids and pvp with rev, ini is NOT issue and this change won’t do anything for thieves

what thieves need is dmg boost and way to get through defensives (prot/invuls etc.)

also they REAAALLLLYYY need massive buff to team support capability (be it boon share, heal etc.) otherwise there is no point to bring them anywhere

i am running atm on rev doing 12k AAs alone while sharing might with everyone, blasting fields is history~

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Posted by: Redfeather.6401

Redfeather.6401

Feels like thief profession mechanics are pretty weak until traited.
I don’t think the thief should be wasting their traits trying to get flanking damage bonus, stealth on steal, and anything that is treated like ‘flavour’ thief stuff. I think stuff like that needs to be innate.
Then traits can be added in those vacuums to augment where thieves generally fall behind compared to other traited professions.

Just my feeling so far.

(edited by Redfeather.6401)

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Posted by: rennlc.7346

rennlc.7346

initiative is not the problem.

thief is too weak to condis,
suspectible to blind and weakness,
has bad weapon skills,
gets countered by scrapper,chrono, rev, dh, tempest and is outsustained by reaper, druid

Initiative actually is a bit of a problem for PvP. By having such a limited amount of it, it puts the developers in a position where they must make Thief ability damage high enough that using a limited number of effective attacks will still be effective. However, it also forces them to limit our burst damage to prevent Thieves from being able to near instantly kill players like we have in the past. By sticking with the same limited amount of initiative, the game has been developed in a way that makes Thieves good against some other highly offensive builds and very poor against most of the more defensive builds. Increasing our initiative return could make Thief way too strong if certain abilities are left as they are, like Vault. However, it would also allow them to make Thief combat more dynamic and sustainable. Thief needs this kind of change if they want to bring us up to the level of most of the newer elites and they don’t want to buff us in a way that will lead to one-shotting other offensive builds like straight damage % increases would.

(edited by rennlc.7346)

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Posted by: Jana.6831

Jana.6831

after doing some raids and pvp with rev, ini is NOT issue and this change won’t do anything for thieves

what thieves need is dmg boost and way to get through defensives (prot/invuls etc.)

also they REAAALLLLYYY need massive buff to team support capability (be it boon share, heal etc.) otherwise there is no point to bring them anywhere

i am running atm on rev doing 12k AAs alone while sharing might with everyone, blasting fields is history~

Initative is a problem – I said it in another thread (in case someone wonders he’s heard that before) :

I watched an old video of a D/D thief recently, he was running 26600 = 12 initative.
And after a while I wondered why he really only used CnD and BS (and rarely Dancing Dagger) – because he couldn’t affort anything else.
But the initative is what brought us the problems we have: We can “spam BS”, so we were made glassier and glassier and were more and more forced to be “endless stealthed”. And then they brought revealed traits/skills as a counter and gave other classes better stealth- that is the part I don’t get.
If they now gave us a longer reveal so we couldn’t spam stealth + BS we would basically have a cooldown system – which we kind of already have when forcefully revealed.

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Posted by: Kolly.9872

Kolly.9872

after doing some raids and pvp with rev, ini is NOT issue and this change won’t do anything for thieves

what thieves need is dmg boost and way to get through defensives (prot/invuls etc.)

also they REAAALLLLYYY need massive buff to team support capability (be it boon share, heal etc.) otherwise there is no point to bring them anywhere

i am running atm on rev doing 12k AAs alone while sharing might with everyone, blasting fields is history~

Initative is a problem – I said it in another thread (in case someone wonders he’s heard that before) :

I watched an old video of a D/D thief recently, he was running 26600 = 12 initative.
And after a while I wondered why he really only used CnD and BS (and rarely Dancing Dagger) – because he couldn’t affort anything else.
But the initative is what brought us the problems we have: We can “spam BS”, so we were made glassier and glassier and were more and more forced to be “endless stealthed”. And then they brought revealed traits/skills as a counter and gave other classes better stealth- that is the part I don’t get.
If they now gave us a longer reveal so we couldn’t spam stealth + BS we would basically have a cooldown system – which we kind of already have when forcefully revealed.

1) give thief the same base health of mesmers and engis
2) 15 or even 20 ini baseline and weapon swap gives back half of the missing initiative
3) Ways to remove revealed or remove all skills that applies it or since always more classes but thieves can apply it, just remove the self applied reveal.

Thief might not be as strong as last year
but they’re a lot stronger
than they will be next year!

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Posted by: Jana.6831

Jana.6831

1) give thief the same base health of mesmers and engis
2) 15 or even 20 ini baseline and weapon swap gives back half of the missing initiative
3) Ways to remove revealed or remove all skills that applies it or since always more classes but thieves can apply it, just remove the self applied reveal.

You didn’t get what I meant – with more initative = more BS and stealth spam = thieves have to be glassier so that others can shut them down = thieves are forced to use stealth = revealed skills – that is the problem.
So in the end what people wished thieves would do was 12 initiative; 6 for stealth, 6 for BS.

With a cooldown system though thief wouldn’t be thief.

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Posted by: Ario.8964

Ario.8964

Honestly though “Spamming BS” isn’t really that big a thing now. Most spammers will die within a few seconds unless the person they are fighting is just awful. The base initiative increase wouldn’t really give them any buff as they would still die in 2 seconds and wouldn’t have time to use that extra initiative. But you do have a point in the whole shut down idea that has been put forward. Though at this point the class is shut down by a piece of grass if it has an elite specialization so even if they add more initiative there doesn’t really need to be an increase in our glass factor because well… we are already full glass.

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Posted by: Jana.6831

Jana.6831

Honestly though “Spamming BS” isn’t really that big a thing now. Most spammers will die within a few seconds unless the person they are fighting is just awful. The base initiative increase wouldn’t really give them any buff as they would still die in 2 seconds and wouldn’t have time to use that extra initiative. But you do have a point in the whole shut down idea that has been put forward. Though at this point the class is shut down by a piece of grass if it has an elite specialization so even if they add more initiative there doesn’t really need to be an increase in our glass factor because well… we are already full glass.

If they buff backstab then a thief would one shot another thief but no other class – so it would be kind of canibalism – that is my point of view. I want the overall damage to be toned down and BS to be the highest single damage in game again – and with ~9k against a zerker/valk thief that’s already really high.
I explained how all of the problems thief has added to the state the class is in right now. Initative is a problem. You can currently buff thief all you want doesn’t change that 5 of the other classes are invulnerable 90% of the fight (exaggerated).

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Posted by: Keyang.3729

Keyang.3729

block x 99, invuln x 55

When a thief tells you to L2P they mean …

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Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

after doing some raids and pvp with rev, ini is NOT issue and this change won’t do anything for thieves

what thieves need is dmg boost and way to get through defensives (prot/invuls etc.)

also they REAAALLLLYYY need massive buff to team support capability (be it boon share, heal etc.) otherwise there is no point to bring them anywhere

i am running atm on rev doing 12k AAs alone while sharing might with everyone, blasting fields is history~

Initative is a problem – I said it in another thread (in case someone wonders he’s heard that before) :

I watched an old video of a D/D thief recently, he was running 26600 = 12 initative.
And after a while I wondered why he really only used CnD and BS (and rarely Dancing Dagger) – because he couldn’t affort anything else.
But the initative is what brought us the problems we have: We can “spam BS”, so we were made glassier and glassier and were more and more forced to be “endless stealthed”. And then they brought revealed traits/skills as a counter and gave other classes better stealth- that is the part I don’t get.
If they now gave us a longer reveal so we couldn’t spam stealth + BS we would basically have a cooldown system – which we kind of already have when forcefully revealed.

The irony is that backstab isn’t the powerful aspect of stealth; the defense when in SA and repositioning are what make the whole notion of stealth and subsequently attacking from stealth strong.

This is why I disagree with the notions of both that it is wholly an initiative or stat problem; the problem is with the underlying design of our trait spread and how we interact with our skills. There are absolutely merits to both arguments, and some of the ideas are definitely causing problems. Just throwing more numbers at the problems won’t ever solve balance concerns, though.

Just giving the thief lower initiative costs or more initiative doesn’t solve the defensive problems of the class; to get “decent” defensive options, two defensive lines need to be taken. For competitive damage, two offensive. I’m not saying the thief should be able to stack everything it could want in one build, no; the issues lie more in that to be on the stat-level of most other professions, two trait lines are needed for any given one way to compete per one trait line of theirs.

What each trait line needs to do is offer a spread of abilities that can appeal to every build. I’m not saying it’s easy to make these changes, but these are the tweaks that need to happen. There needs to be more overlap between the trait lines, as many others offer from other classes, but with each just offering a bit of flair and some playstyle differentiation. Trickery offers this kind of diverse toolset to the thief; even with preparedness baseline, this trait line would still be awesome due to the diversity and overlap it brings; it synergizes naturally with every build because it offers something to every build, from boons from CS and acrobatics to condition cleanses from SA to disablement from DA, with the flair of stealing boons and bolstering initiative. A lot of the traits that could open up doors in other trait lines are also just weak, or simply don’t fit very well.

Initiative needs some examination, but I wouldn’t argue it needs more. More initiative just promotes spammy play by using the same objectively strong skill over and over. There’s no need for more Heartseeker Heroes or Shadow Shot Saviors. Nor is there justification for more vault spam, evasion Condi death blossom spam, infill arrow spam, etc. There are a lot of skills that are pretty much never useful, or at least to their initiative costs, so working those numbers out or even reworking/exchanging skills from one weapon to another might be in order.

If thieves are to get more initiative innately and potentially better skills, I see no reason not to add another mechanic to initiative: skill use costs extra initiative per consecutive use. This way, things like Body Shot and Dancing Dagger can get substantial buffs like they need, and a lot of skills can be tweaked upwards. It promotes being tricky, adaptive, and unpredictable like the class is supposed to, and punishes people who abuse the mechanic by building solely into the most overpowered skill at the time and doing absolutely nothing but using that skill, even when others are situationally more useful. No hard cool down enables that double-heartseeker finish, or whatever may be necessary at the time, so long as initiative is managed well.

Yea, low-hanging fruit fixes are to make thieves more durable and get more initiative, but these do nothing to calm the fuel for the complaints which have gotten us nerfed so many times in the past; either the stats end up as too much and we overbear another class or dominate a build, or we end up still-too-weak and need more tweaking. Doing all that tweaking will leave the game’s balance integrity worse off and the class design still suffering in the long term though, and end up requiring just as much if not more work to maintain properly.

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Posted by: Ario.8964

Ario.8964

So by reworking the interaction between thief skills and initiative (possibly initiative cost increases by 1-2 each consecutive time a skill is used within a 5 sec period) to prevent spam and giving large-ish buffs to some skills we could possibly give a huge buff to proper gameplay and punish spammers heavily. Does that justify damage increases to skills though? Cause Jana put it perfectly, unless we get defensive buffs then all we will be doing is hurting ourselves more by putting more damage out there for us to deal with.

For trait lines are you saying that there should be more synergy between them or a rework to what is currently present in them? What is the main problem in the lines themselves? Is it just they lack the buffs necessary to be singularly efficient or is it a lack of synergy between all the lines (excluding trickery)? Cause I found most of the synergy between lines was good but if there’s something I’m missing please point it out.

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Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

Not necessarily more damage, no. I used skills like Body Shot and Dancing Dagger as examples, because those skills are relatively underwhelming not because of damage but because of what they offer in general. Body Shot applying a longer immobilize, Dancing Dagger a higher projectile speed and longer range, etc. Infiltrator’s return could go back to an instant cast… these are the kind of upward-tweaking ideas the class can really benefit from. As I said earlier, increasing damage/stat values is not the right approach at all.

I’m suggesting for traits that there should be more overlap; you pick Trickery or a few traits in CS for fury If you want it. There are damage modifiers all over the place. But there’s no offense in SA or Acrobatics like there used to be, and no condition cleansing anywhere else. As I said, for thieves to maintain their offensive potency, they need two trait lines for it. But this sacrifices defense. For defensive/sustaining capabilities, they also need two trait lines. These options are distinct and separate as it is in regards to the trait lines themselves and offer no flexibility. A necro can cleanse conditions in multiple trait lines. It can get extra durability in a variety of ways, as well as gain damage in a variety of ways. A guardian can spec DPS in multiple trait lines through a variety of trait options and/or cleanse conditions in a variety of trait selections. A ranger can stack might from plethora of traits and techniques, or stack bonus damage, or play tankier through various options. The thief has no capacity for diversity when assigning traits; you either pick cleanses from SE, or you don’t have any/many. Either you pick DA or you don’t get much disablement. Either you pick CS or you don’t build for crits.

SA providing trait options for getting bonuses upon being revealed or CS offering a condition cleanse option over just straight damage, or DA offering endurance regeneration after interrupting a foe or something… These are arbitrary and off-the-cuff examples of diversifying the trait lines to create more overlapping for flexibility within the class, no buffs necessarily needed to numbers, just improved availability of doing different things.

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Posted by: Ario.8964

Ario.8964

Only stat buffs I’d advocate would be bringing thief guard and ele up to the same level as engi and Mesmer. Outside of that I’d leave base stats as is if I had my way.

Oh ok, so we are looking to have some overlap in lines functionality. Daredevil does a pretty good job of that as it provides damage and defensive options within the lines. If we saw that behavior in the other lines plus a few changes like instant sword 2 return the effects could be enormous for the class.

What kinds of traits would you propose implementing into the class though? Would it be more like mug where you can sustain by using offensive skills, would it be extra effects gained from things like crits (engineer’s bunker down trait), or would you be trying to find some passives to implement onto the class to make it innately better at skirmishing than it is now?

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