Guild Wars 2

A rifle is needed, we need a 1200 range weapon and cluster bomb is not good enough as the rate we can shot is pretty low on keeps defense.

P/D set is fine, Flankng strike needs a total rework while keeping the same idea, pehaps change the vade to shadowstep behind. Right now it misses 75% of the time.

As others have said, the weakest areas of thieves are as follows:

Specialisations:
Poisons – too cleansable and blockable, they can be wasted by an enemy dodging or dropping line of sight, they take up valuable utility slots, they must be deeply traited to be any good yet can be instantly nullified, half the venoms are severely lacking in usefulness.

Traps – only single target focussed and the trigger area is too small so can be easily avoided. Shadow Trap and Ambush Trap have their uses, mainly because they don’t need to deal damage and merely have to trigger to work, but the others are worse than ineffective.

Weapon Sets:
Body Shot will only be used by a person pressing the wrong key. Changing to cc or condition may give it a niche.
Pistol/Pistol has no much-needed manuverability
Flanking Strike is unreliable as others have said.

Underwater combat needs major balancing in many areas. For example too many traits not working, not enough ways to deal condition damage, not enough ways to enter stealth..etc

Ashanor.5319:

*Unload should stack bleeds for each shot. It would be a significant buff to Thief condition builds but not entirely overpowered because players have loads of condition removals.

No thank you. This would completely destroy my burst damage Unload build which is already weaker than many other builds.

How on earth would that destroy your burst damage unload thief? If anything wouldn’t it buff it? Considering it would stack a ton of bleeds as well as do a small burst of damage?

Condition Thief is fine for the most part.

I ran a condition thief for a long time, it’s anything but fine…even in PvE its terrible.

Bleeds need higher stacks or have personal stacks and it maybe needs to be tougher to drop full stacks in PvP.

I love condition damage but I feel less than effective in some situations. Solo it is great, 5 man group content it can be great or can be 50% (or less) effective if you have another bleeder in the group, ‘raid’ Dragons and world events it’s terrible.. PvP can wipe it off easily and you just wasted all of your resources to very little effect. I decided to move to a backstab build for at least dependable damage output but this may go away depending on how the ‘adjustment’ is handled.

P/P needs something. I would be more than happy with a better talent that gave it a 2 to 3 target bounce or a damage increase to Unload. Make Ricochet a T1 trait with improved % to bounce as not to lock P/P into a certain build. Also, this loadout feels like it does one thing and one thing only, single target ranged damage. I actually kind of like that feel but if this is the only thing it does it needs to do it better. Bit more range, bit more damage and allow Unload to pierce to its target.

Poisons are not very appealing, they could use a rework. Faster cooldown or something.

Improve on Stealth, it has been buggy lately

TY for listening to the community Dev’s

Blood~

Here are some specifics-

S/D – Great set, only think wrong with it is Flanking Strike’s pathing being completely unreliable. I don’t even think making it a shadowstep is necessary, just fix the pathing.

D/D – No complaints, it’s nearly perfect. I wouldn’t complain too loudly if Dancing Dagger was slightly nerfed to not be so ridiculously good against multiple targets close together.

SB – Great, but I would support a “marksman” trait that improved its range by a modest amount.

P/P – Some overhauls are needed here, it is below average in damage and severely lacking in mobility, control, and utility, and the 900 range is too measly to compensate for both of those problems. Stealth field on Black power would be fantastic. #2 should apply both cripple and vulnerability. #1 and #3 could stand a slight damage boost.

Other – I agree with the above poster that downed #1 should apply bleed and not cripple. As he said, this would make the downed state less good in PvP and make it better in PvE, which it desperately needs.

Thieves really need at least one more weapon option, either for MH or OH. I feel like single-wielding should be viable for at least the Thief if not all professions. This would entail either making a new non-weapon OH item that isn’t visible (like a glove or something) or just giving a stat boost for single wielding and giving every class off-hand light skills for #4 and #5.

Another little (very situational) tweak I’d like to see is for environmental items that you find lying around in various places…tufts of hair, feathers, elixirs, etc. These items can be picked up and used by anyone — including us — but replaces the currently equiped weapon(s) until used so often they aren’t getting used when it would be situationally the best time to do so. That’s fine for classes that don’t use this sort of thing on a regular basis, but virtually all such items are our common steal items so as thieves we’re used to them.

So the tweak I’d like to see is if a thief picks up an environmental item that is identical (or functionally identical) to one of our stolen items it is placed in our F1 steal slot. Obviously if we pick up a weapon conjured by an elementalist, or a shovel, or whatever, it should still replace our weapon set.

Taking that one step further, I’d even like to be able to see something like a tuft of hair, elixir, feather, etc and be able to “collect” it and put it in my backpack for future use. I could then — when out of combat only — open my backpack and equip it to my F1 slot prior to a fight. Similarly, I’d like to be able to take an item currently sitting in my F1 slot (unused) and stow it away in my backpack for another time (again, something allowable only out of combat to avoid abuse). It just seems like a very “thiefy” thing to do…spot something that is strongly associated with our professional mechanic and squirrel it away for a time when it would be really handy.

Since this appears to be a thread devs have noticed, I’ll add a few that I’d like to see.

I mentioned making traps less situational above. I want to feel like they are exactly the tool I need, but I usually determine something else could do the job better.

Body Shot is great in WvW for applying Vuln, otherwise it’s meh. Give it a blunderbuss-like AoE that’s stronger close up.

Shadowstep needs to be able to cross gaps. It, and spells like it, are too unreliable now. It should work like Jump Shot, which can go anywhere as long as you don’t need to climb.

Flanking Strike could use a 360degree AoE, perhaps.

Reduce Backstab’s damage, but let it apply stacks of Vuln to make up the difference in extra damage from the next few attacks, spreading out the burst a little.

For variety, let us use offhand swords with abilities that focus on counterattacks.

A trait to increase Pistol and/or Shortbow range would be nice. Hey, rifle would be really cool, too, but I feel it might be too redundant.

The cooldowns on venoms are way too long for me to want to use them. I feel like they should be something I’m pressing frequently to ebb and flow the fight. Even slightly weaker venoms on 10ish second cooldowns would feel good because you could carefully time when you want to use them. They shouldn’t feel like you need to save them for exactly the right moment like you would a 30 second CD heal. Shared venoms could we weaker for allies if it’s a balance issue.

Basilisk Venom is an odd one. It seems too weak comparatively for me to want to use it over the other two elites, but making it any stronger would almost make it an IWIN button. Perhaps have it gradually wear off. Stone for one second followed by immobilize for two seconds, followed by weakness for three seconds.

The skill queueing is still annoying sometimes.

Please give us a knockback of some kind, somewhere. Maybe make Scorpion Wire a pull-push chain, or Judo throw. You could add it to a weapon skill, but that might make it too spammable.

The weakness of Pistol+Pistol has been covered in good detail here and I hope that feedback gets taken seriously. Its such a cool aesthetic for a weapon set but in practice its just not that good. I’ll add one additional piece to that feedback which is that P+P has not even a single skill that can damage more than one target. Clearly Shortbow is designed as the AoE ranged weapon, but Pistol should be able to do at least a small amount of AoE even if it is not at the level of Shortbow.

Einlanzer.1627:

P/P – Some overhauls are needed here, it is below average in damage and severely lacking in mobility, control, and utility, and the 900 range is too measly to compensate for both of those problems. Stealth field on Black power would be fantastic. #2 should apply both cripple and vulnerability. #1 and #3 could stand a slight damage boost.

Other – I agree with the above poster that downed #1 should apply bleed and not cripple. As he said, this would make the downed state less good in PvP and make it better in PvE, which it desperately needs.

Thieves really need at least one more weapon option, either for MH or OH. I feel like single-wielding should be viable for at least the Thief if not all professions. This would entail either making a new non-weapon OH item that isn’t visible (like a glove or something) or just giving a stat boost for single wielding and giving every class off-hand light skills for #4 and #5.

Lots here that I agree with.

Downed state: I feel in PvE that the best use of my downed state is to teleport away as best I can (camera angle can make this difficult) and spam the self heal to rally. The notion of our #1 downed skill crippling does the exact opposite of what we want while down! I don’t want to force things to stay close to me, I want them away so I can heal! Getting stacks of bleed on our #1 skill would make it more viable to hang in and fight to attempt to rally.

Weapon Options: I think that we’re a bit limited in build variety because of our limited weapon combinations and would love to see more variety introduced to the thief. I know some people question a Shield for thieves, but a buckler was a common tool for the lightly armored swashbuckling rapier types (and hey, aren’t we all looking a bit Piratical in our medium armor?) Also, I think a torch for some good old fashioned Arson would be viable while still being very in tune with a thief (even though the notion of a thief with a light source seems off counter to the whole stealth idea.) Finally, as many have said (and I will keep saying) we need a Rifle… really do!

Traps: I would love to see some traps that are DoTs. Give us some good pulses of damage and a reason to cripple things and keep them in an area. We have caltrops and dancing dagger to spread AoE cripple…. make it worth it to keep many things close in.

I had one other thought while driving in to work today…. someone had mentioned Signet of Agility not consistantly removing more than 1 condition…. I would like to see a rework on the activated ability to give a +Crit% for the next X attacks. Give it a recharge = to 3x the duration of the buff and I don’t think it would be too rough. I know it’s a little burst / spike, but putting more consistant access to critical strikes allows you to increase pressure without increasing the base damage on skills…. just a thought.

I 100% agree that pistols need little buff because now are little underpowered.

Shortbow – I feel this needs a little more umph! – not too much, I don’t want it to be fotm. One specific, I feel choking gas is great as a solo skill, but in groups isn’t useful, especially given it makes a combo field. Any veteran or greater mob seems to be under a constant full duration poison stack, so what good is one more set of poison attacks? I love cluster bomb, but I feel the arcing trajectory is off, or perhaps inconsistent? The high arc is great for castle walls (attack or defense in WvW), but hinders the usefulness on the open battle field.

Pistol Whip – needs a new purpose after the nerf. I don’t want it to be OP like before, but right now Headshot + sword auto-attack feels just as effective, if not more. You use 1 less initiative, you regain initiative (with auto-attack) and you remain mobile instead of rooted.

Flanking Strike – the main issue with this skill, imo, is the same with Serpent’s Strike on the ranger. The forced movement around your target really limits the skill. In tight area situations it can fail. In narrow ledge/bridge situations you have to be very careful or you’ll fling yourself off. And if the target moves a bit you often miss.

And, okay this is total graphics fluff, but I feel totally silly using dagger storm. The frozen form – on-tippy-toes with arms spread and locked while spinning around is, well, ridiculous. Maybe an animation dev can work on a more active, kung-fu-ish leapy type deal. Again, total fluff.

There are several utility skills that, in my opinion, are difficult to find a good context for use. Some of these could use some love.

Spider Venom – this seems like it is most valuable as a source of poison charges for Leeching Venoms and is not very appealing for the skill itself. This has alot to do with how Poison stacks (duration) and how relatively common Poison conditions are, leading to situations where the duration stacking from this Venom doesn’t do anything useful. It would be nice if this Venom had an additional effect (such as a small upfront damage or short duration cripple).

Skale Venom – vulnerability duration is too short. 5 seconds does not provide a long enough window to take advantage of the increased DPS from vulnerability.

Ice Drake Venom – chill duration is too short. this competes with Devourer Venom and usually just looks worse. 4 seconds of immobilized is alot better than 3 seconds of Chilled.

Traps, in general – Traps should trigger in a small area rather than a single target, as they become close to useless when being attacked by 2 attackers. Traps should also not be removed with no effect when someone dodges through their trigger area. They should not fire off when dodged through, but should also not be consumed with zero effect. An untriggered trap should remain active even when dodged through. It should only disappear when it triggers.

Shadow Trap – maybe I need to learn to play, but this trap seems to be INCREDIBLY hard to put to good use. I haven’t seen any Thieves make effective use of this skill. Its basically an ignored skill.

Smoke Screen – seems under utilized. Its a bit awkward and doesn’t seem to last long enough. Its just a projectile blocker but most ranged attacks are not actually projectiles., its not really effective at providing cover for the Thief or his team. In practice this seems to mildly frustrate rangers and do almost nothing else of consequence to any other class.

Some traits are severely underpowered. I’m not going to mention the Traits that are just mildly awkward, or narrow in scope. Every class has those and its not a big deal. I’m going to focus only on the traits that are so bad as to be unusable under any circumstances.

Improvisation (Deadly Arts, VII) – the random nature of this trait makes it effectively a blank. Nobody is willing to blow a trait slot on something that might simply fail to do anything. Why not change this to have a similar functionality (stealing reduces cooldown of utility skills) without being uncontrollable?

Ankle Shots (Critical Strikes, VII) – This trait is randomly triggered and unreliable but the effect it applies is a control effect. These two things are at odds. Its ok if bonus damage is randomly triggered, but control effects really need to be on demand. This trait needs all kinds of reworking. Pistol should have a means of crippling on demand based on the 1-3 (mainhand) skills and this trait should be redesigned in general.

Slowed Pulse (Shadow Arts, II) – why doesn’t this clear the bleeding? its on an internal cooldown. its not like it would make you immune to bleeding. just a little help. As it is now it is dysfunctional in that it is a survivability trait that doesn’t really help you survive.

Hard to Catch (Acrobatics, XI) – being unable to control where you will get Shadowstepped to makes this basically unusable. The idea is to evade enemies, but this trait can accidentally teleport you right towards another enemy. That leads to this trait often being self-defeating. Clearing disable conditions and granting swiftness is really nice though, but shackling it with a random chance to get screwed ruins this trait.

Ricochet (Trickery, X) – 5% chance to trigger is absurdly low. this skill does almost nothing.

Skills:
Vital Shot: Needs some raw damage boost up to stay on level with Trick Shot.

Body Shot: As all of our #2 skills, Body Shot need to be unique too. Gives it 3 stages of power like HeartSeeker
-When hit from the front:
+185dmg(Note: it is the same damage on Trick Shot and the one we have now doing 168dmg)
+5 Vulnerability for 6sec
+Gains 10 Endurance
-When hit from the side:
+185dmg
+7 Vulnerability for 6sec
+Gains 15 Endurance
+Cripple for 4sec
-When hit from the back:
+185dmg
+10 Vulnerability for 6sec
+Gains 20 Endurance
+Chilled for 4sec

Unload: It does a decent Damage if it hit your target with 8 bullets but what if it doesn’t? Needs some raw damage boost up.

Head Shot: The Damage need to be at least compare able to Vital Shot and as someone suggested, makes it 100% Crit.

Black Powder: Makes it give 2sec of Stealth on the last pulse.

Flanking Strike: We know and you know that this is not working as intend so please fix it or rework it as some great suggestions here.

Dancing Dagger: It is simple to hit an unmoving target at max range but it is impossible to hit a moving target at max range due to the fact of terrible travelling projectile. Please improve it.

Backstab: I don’t play BS Thief nor I want to see it bit the dust either. I think increasing the activating to 3/4 from 1/4 would greatly solved most of the problem. Because it gives us more time to react to “deadly stun and die in less than 1/4sec after being stunned”.

Traits:
Dagger Training: Dagger damage is increased by 5% and +50Vitality

Power Shots: Shortbow and harpoon gun damage is increased by 5% and condition duration increase by 5%.

Pistol Mastery: +5% damage with pistols and increase pistol range to 1000 from 900

Ankle Shots + Ricochet: Combines these 2 together and make it Bounce on Crit instead of Cripple.

Sword Training: New trait, Sword damage is increased by 5% and 10% movespeed, stackable but capped at 33%

Utilities:
Blinding Powder: Gives it either a small smoke field or reduce the CD to 50sec. Everybody know Shadow Refuge is better.

Haste/Frenzy/Quickening Zephyr: These type of skills really need some tweak.
-Changes Quickness to 66% from 100%
-Increases duration to 5sec from 4sec
-Decrease CD to 50sec from 60sec
-Improve drawback effect: Haste would only lost Endurance, Frenzy takes 50% more damage from 2sec at the start, and Quickening Zephyr would lost 5% of your current HP per sec for 2sec at the start of the skill.

in my humble opinion, cond removal should be Nerfed on all classes.
if i am exlusive bleed build thief (death blossom), and go against a guardian that has 2 skills with cond removal, then it is game over: either we fight and i die, or i run.

is this OK from your side ??? (cond removal should remove max 5 stacks of 1 type in my opinion)

BabelFish.7234:

Ashanor.5319:

*Unload should stack bleeds for each shot. It would be a significant buff to Thief condition builds but not entirely overpowered because players have loads of condition removals.

No thank you. This would completely destroy my burst damage Unload build which is already weaker than many other builds.

How on earth would that destroy your burst damage unload thief? If anything wouldn’t it buff it? Considering it would stack a ton of bleeds as well as do a small burst of damage?

Unless they were short duration, high damage bleeds (4-5 seconds), then no, it would not buff burst. Having to wait 10+ seconds for your bleeds to finish ticking is not bursty at all.

Not to mention we already way too many condition based kits as it is. P/P does not need to be one as well. Especially since they haven’t said anything about removing the bleed cap yet.

Siva Mira.3546:

Skills:
Ankle Shots + Ricochet: Combines these 2 together and make it Bounce on Crit instead of Cripple.

Man, I love this idea.

DanH.5879:

is this OK from your side ??? (cond removal should remove max 5 stacks of 1 type in my opinion)

However condition thief kills Lord alone.
So the removal of all stacks is normal.

I like to see using only 1 one handed weapon and that’s it viable. It is a interesting concept for maybe give thieves the abilities to have 5 abilities with a single one handed weapon and give some bonuses (in traits) for only wielding a single weapon to balance it out stats wise with the dual wielding builds. I know for sure that if that were implemented i would love to use only a single sword. for example maybe have the last two abilities have something to do with using your free hand to improve your main weapon that changes based on what the main hand weapon is like pistol main-hand could have a charged aim ability similar to the wars rifle ability where you use both hands on the pistol to aim on target to deal extra damage and for the sword have a defensive ability that allowed you to parry with your hand and counter attack with your main-hand etc it could add a lot more variety of play styles

For me I would like to see death blossom, just pure damage, but remove the conditions and put that on unload.

Flanking strike needs attention and our traps.

Pistol Main Hand:

Vital Shot: Slightly more damage
Body Shot: Complete rework
Stealth Skill: Good

Pistol Off Hand:

Headshot: More damage or more utility (maybe add some confusion on top of the daze), personally i’d love a bit of conufsion.
Black Powder: Good skill.

Pistol Dual skills:

Shadow strike: I’m honestly ok with it, maybe more damage/bleed stacks/poison.
Unload: Need something but i couldn’t say what. (I dislike p/p as a whole since the set makes no sense at all, no synergy, nothing, garbage set imo).

Sword Main Hand:

Auto Chain: Good.
Infiltrator Strike: Good skill.
Stelth Skill: Good.

Sword Dual Skills:

Pistol Whip: Damage is fine imo (if you take in account you evade and stun), either need to be faster or useable while moving. Haste/Devourer venom are far to much mandatory for this skill to be effective.
Flanking Strike: Dan Hibiki of GW2, complete rework.

Dagger Main Hand:

Auto Chain: Good.
Heartseeker: Good, people crying over this seriously have a l2p issue.
Stealth skill: Far to strong, need a damage nerf and maybe add several bleed stack as a compensation (could also make condition based build happier)

Dagger Off Hand:

Crippling Dagger: Good
C&D: Reduce the damage output slightly.

Dagger Dual Skills:

Shadow Shot: Remove the self root, a gap closer is supposed to be used to chase, this skill just don’t cut it right now.
Death Blossom: Faster animation (less evade potential), more damage maybe.

GodBow:

Godly weapon.

Spear Gun:
Ink Shot: Faster
Piercing shot: More damage
Stealth Skill: More damage + bleed stacks.

Spear:

Throw Line: Remove the self root (this applies to several other classes aswell)
Shadow assault: Faster animation (less evade time, less ini regen between each casts)

Utility skills:

Blinding powder: Less CD, maybe even stunbreaker, no reason to take it over SR since release, it’s even worse now with sr losing the only drawback it had in comparison.

SR: Nerf, revert the recent change.

Signet of shadow: Terrible active, terrible passive which was obviously implemented in order to give the class perma “swiftness” and mobility in a lazy way. Revert to 10% and give us back our immobilize. Change traits in order to give more reliable swiftness.

Caltrops: Reduce either the radius or duration or both, godly skill.

Haste: Change it to “Your next attack goes 1.5 time faster and you move 200% faster for X seconds, lose half of your endurance, stunbreaker”. REMOVE QUICKNESS FROM THE GAME ONCE AND FOR ALL (this imply rework on other classes)

Traps in general: Need buffs/changes.

Elites:

Thief guild: They follow me underwater, let them use a spear and a speargun please, maybe nerf them a bit damage wise.
Basilisk Venom: 1.5s stun on 45s cd with 1s cast time, Elite skill. Need i say more? The least you can do is making it instant cast. Otherwise only worth being used with venom share build (wait no, thief guild) and backstab build (nerf incoming).

Traits:

Mug: Damage nerf
Potent poison: increase the duration of the conditions, probably need to change the tier of the trait as a result.
Sundering Strike: Warrior does the same but don’t give a kitten about inner cd and apply the same condition for 7s instead of 5s on top of it, what? Buff or rework.
Improvisation: Random = terrible, complete rework.

Critical Haste: Remove quickness. Rework this trait.

Power Shots: Either add more range to the shortbow on top of it, or up the % damage gain from this trait. Or rework it.

Assassin’s Retreat: Meh… Look! a good trait to rework to add some deserved swiftness while reverting shadow signet.

Ricochet: 5% chance, seriously… the trait could be good on paper but the chance are so low it might aswell not be there. Buff this to 20-30% or something.
Sleight of hand: Buff to 1.5/2s daze or add “Steal is now unblockable”).

Imperator totius Sylvari.9164:

For me I would like to see death blossom, just pure damage, but remove the conditions and put that on unload.

Flanking strike needs attention and our traps.

I see this suggestion a lot, and I have to adamantly disagree. For the sake of both balance and diversity, most weapon sets should have a combination of burst and condition damage. Thieves are already more restricted than other classes in viable options, I absolutely don’t want to be forced to use pistols because I have a condition-focused build or daggers because I have a power-focused build.

Not only that but the bleed on Death Blossom is the only thing that gives Daggers much AoE viability and therefore makes them good in PvE, without out it swords would be altogether superior.

Siva Mira.3546:

Blinding Powder: Gives it either a small smoke field or reduce the CD to 50sec. Everybody know Shadow Refuge is better.

That would still be terrible. I don’t think Blinding Powder would be a reasonable option unless you reduced the recharge to 20-25 seconds. All it does is grant a single stack of blindness and stealth you.
Smokescreen by comparison has half the cooldown, blocks projectiles, blinds anyone that steps through it, can be combo’d off of by both yourself and others for additional effects, and can stealth you easily with a dagger main-hand. And Smokescreen is just mediocre.
You can actually stealth yourself TWICE over the duration if you do it right.

I’d like to see basilisk venom completely reworked, perhaps make it a venom that, when applied, causes condition removal to fail for it’s duration

I use both blinding powder and shadow refuge, as well as master of deception trait (-20% recharge time for deceptions). Blinding powder’s strength lies in the fact that can be used at any time, even when disabled. It’s not about the blind, more the insta-stealth when stuff goes wrong.

Copy pasta from my suggestions thread that never got a response:

Let’s have a quick look at those main-hand no-offhand skills;

Repeater: Same cost as unload, 3 fewer shots, overall inferior in every way.
Twisting fangs: See above, a poor man’s Death Blossom.
Stab: Using initiative to do what your autoattack does anyway.

In the game’s current state, the fact that these three skills are objectively bad is of little consequence, after all, why would you ever not take an offhand when the slot’s available? So, in order for this suggestion to go anywhere there needs to be two changes made:

A) Make these skills actually good and distinct from their dual skill counterparts
B) Make these skills live in slot 3 at all times, and move dual skills to F2 (Function keys being reserved for profession skills after all).

I propose doing this to widen what the thief is able to do with the small weapon selection thieves have to work with. What I’m open to suggestion with however, is what to make these empty offhand skills actually do. Cheaper cost is one idea, but that’s really boring, I have some ideas:

Repeater: Slower firing attack that makes you stand still, but with longer range than normal.
Twisting fangs: Attack that inflicts both weakness and bleeding (Inspired by “Axe Twist” from GW1)
Stab: Add vulnerability to the attack

Obviously, these are just ideas as to what to do with them and can easily be changed. What think you?

To expand/clarify on my comments about short bow:

auto-attack – could use just a touch more damage. Or make the +5% SB damage trait more accessible. Actually, in general I dislike how the +X% damage on weapons traits (in any class) is tied to getting a specific set of attribute bonuses. This really needs (obvious a larger, all profession rework) a trait slot not attached to any of the attribute boosting lines (or available in all of them).

Choking Gas – this works well as a solo player, or possibly with just a few players. Great to put poison on a few trash mobs if fighting several. But due to the mechanics of poison, it just doesn’t scale. Once you fight a veteran or stronger mob that lasts more than 30-60 seconds, poison becomes very redundant if there’s several players around. In big boss fights, the duration stack of poison drops by a pixel or two on the timer before its refreshed. This, of course, is more an issue with the poison condition than anything else. Perhaps (like the other poisons thieves use) the choking gas can have an actually effect other than just inflicting the poison dot.

Cluster Bomb – overall, a great ability, and one that can take some practice to get the air denotations to be right for various situations. But I find the high arc of the shot to scale inconsistently with distance. Obviousy GW2 is not a reality simulator, but remember that the optimal distance angle is just 45 degrees. More practically, I’m wondering if maybe there could be a hold-release mechanic for this shot. Longer hold = greater angle/arc. I’m not talking about seige weapon long holds, but maybe a up to a second or two. Again, just for angle, not distance (a normal tap would just shoot flatter than currently).

You know what I would like to see on Basalisk Venom? Keep the stone effect as is, but add stacks of Poison / Bleed / Cripple to go with it. More the effect of being chomp / mauled by a basalisk, but it would be nice to stack some conditions that would get garunteed pulses while the poor victim was stunned. I dunno… kind of the uber “our elite venom does more than 1 thing to you at once” to make it worth forgoing Dagger Storm or Thieves Guild on the elite spot. Right now, it just doesn’t feel like it does enough outside of a few niche builds that make it worth investin in.

A lot of good suggestions here and a lot of bad ones too.

The good:
Body Shot – totally needs to be buffed or reworked it is a useless ability

Black Powder – It would be really nice if this ability worked just like Blinding Powder does (I mean come on it technically is the same thing)

Head Shot – I love the idea of it being a 100% crit chance ability, it does very little damage so it being 100% crit wont effect damage a whole lot but give it that much needed umph, as it stands though Head Shot is by and far the best interrupt in the game with 900 range and is instant, you can stop someone from healing or stop 2-3 people from trying to finish a downed player if you have the reaction time.

Shortbow Range – Please please please give us a 1200 range option as a Master Trait

Choking Gas – This really needs to be the same range as Cluster Bomb

Pistol Whip – This ability was nerfed way too hard, it now does the same amount of damage as the sword auto-attack just with a long cast time short stun, either buff the stun a bit more so that the entire duration of the sword slashes can land or up the overall damage back to where it was, the issue with this ability as it is with 100Blades is Quickness not the skill itself.

Poisons – They are terrible and seriously need to be looked at, all of them. Basilisk Venom is the biggest joke of a Elite skill in this game, the only reason anyone ever gets it is cause IT IS THE ONLY ELITE WE CAN USE UNDER WATER (this is another concern).

Traps – I agree please address these, they are useless nearly 99% of the game.

And now the Bad ideas:
Cluster Bomb – Dont mess with it, it’s fine, this skill has incredible utility and is very very effective when used properly.

Backstab – Dont mess with it, it’s fine. The positional requirement for this ability makes it kitten hard to land on skilled players, the people that just stand there and take it are the ones complaining. This should be the hardest hitting Thief ability in the game rightfully.

Dancing Dagger – Dont mess with it, it’s fine. If people are stacking near eachother that is their fault and if Ranger’s are complaining about it bouncing between them and their pets then maybe they shouldn’t be standing next to their pet in sPvP all the time, micro manage people. This ability is the only way a Thief can do any sort of damage outside of melee when using Dagger/Dagger it is far too easy to get kited into oblivion and be forced to spam Heart Seeker to close the gap, at least Dancing Dagger can be useful for something.

Unload – I agree with a few that this skill is fine, don’t mess with it if you have problems with it you are not using it right.

Post too long having to double post >.>

Continued from above (post length limit)

My Ideas:
Underwater Elite Skill – Seriously ArenaNet please for the love of Lyssia, we NEED something other than Basilisk Venom underwater, this Elite already does little and underwater it is even less useful, most if the time it doesn’t even do anything at all! I do not understand why Thieves Guild cannot be used underwater, just give the NPC’s Harpoon Guns and Spears accordingly, also Dagger Storm…why on Tyria can we not use this underwater, Elementalists get their Tornado Elite underwater in the form of Whirlpool, do the same for Dagger Storm.

Sword Mainhand Shadowstep – Would it be possible to add in a way to cancel the Shadow Return aspect of this ability at will? Is the mandatory wait time for Shadow Return a balance factor so that we can’t just use the Shadowstep part over and over? I would gladly take a increase in Initiative cost to this skill if we could cancel the return and be able to recast the Shadowstep part. You can make it that when we cancel the return we do not get the debuff removal or you can even balance it by making it cost initiative to cancel shadow return before it runs out.

Choking Gas – For how little damage this does and how much it costs to use, the poison field seriously needs to last a little longer than it does now. It lasts so short of a time that we can barely even get off a Cluster Bomb into it before it goes away. Even just 1 second longer of a duration would do wonders for this skill. Alternatively we would take 1200 range as fair compensation.

Shadow Refuge – It is VERY annoying that if you leave the Refuge area before it’s dispersal you are immediately removed from Stealth however if you stay in it till it ends then you maintain the Stealth gained. This has to be a bug as the Stealth duration you gain in the field should STAY on you when you leave the field before the field ends.

Superior Rune of the Adventurer – What was the point of nerfing the endurance gain on heal from 100% to 50%? I know it is a minor thing but seriously why? This rune set is already underused as it is and the 6 set bonus was at least half-decent before but now it is laughable.

Basilisk Venom – The grand daddy of useless and underpowered skills. If this was a normal utility with a 20 second cooldown I still wouldn’t use it in it’s current state. There needs to be some serious thought put into the future of this skill as it is by and far the most worthless piece of elite in the game. If the the effect applied properly and lasted for a good bit longer MAYBE it would be passable as a normal utility poison. Thief badly needs a better option for an Elite here.

Thief Class Ability – Steal is fine and is actually a useful and great skill when traited with the Swiftness,Power,Crit Change buffs, or the Stealth for 2 seconds trait. What is not fine is that the Thief in general can’t utilize all it’s playstyles with Steal. Every other class can with their class ability. However Steal does nothing for a Shortbow/Pistol x2 Thief who REALLY doesn’t want to be in melee range like ever. We very badly need a F2 skill that can share the cooldown with Steal but be something useful and Thief defining. My personal idea for an F2 would be some manner of stealth or maybe pick-pocket, a ranged steal that doesn’t shadow-step, this would be VERY useful for Thieves in the many situations where getting into melee range is either impossible or a very bad idea.

Anyway out of all of this I hope ANet takes the time to consider and read over the many issues, bugs, and desperate improvements the Thief class needs. Specially the issues with Basilisk Venom (and consequently our lack of underwater Elite options) and Steal needing some kinda ranged option or secondary F2 skill that can be used in it’s place.

Puru.4217:

Sword Main Hand:

Auto Chain: Faster or more damage.

Sword auto is already the highest-damage auto thieves possess, depending on your condition damage. It also hits up to 3 targets and causes two powerful control conditions. It does more DPS than Pistol Whip, which you said was at a good point for DPS.

The complaints against suggestions to add more condition damage and debuffs onto weapon abilities have been quite moot so far.

Burst thief is not the only build and shouldn’t be the only viable set.
DB is the thiefs best option for group vs group AOE for condition thieves, and for applying stacks to multiple mobs as well. The rest of the attacks on dagger except the lackluster poison on chain #1 are pretty much 100% designed for burst builds.. I say they should at least add more high duration conditions to d/d weapon abilities like the following:

Every hit in the #1 chain does a condition, direct damage unchanged.

The only ability I would change the direct damage on in D/D is Death Blossom. I say remove it or make it do very minimal damage, at the same time either lower the init cost by 2, or increase the bleed stacks it applies on each target hit by 2. I never see burst thieves using it anyway, and the only reason theyd ever need it is MAYBE the evade which would still remain

Condition thieves don’t have any other viable AOE/gvg condition weapon set. Cluster bombs bleeds are still lackluster and short duration, other then that is poison which is one of the most if not the most underpowered condition atm.
If you want to try and make the argument “Well d/d is meant to be the burst damage set”, anyone can make a counter argument of equal weight that “If it was meant to be burst set then why is our only viable Bleed AOE there” Plus, what also makes the first argument moot is they don’t have to touch the burst damage of it to add things like bleeding and poison to more attacks because your build will always be sacrificing one or the other.

I also don’t see any reason why we can’t do burning condition on some attacks. Doesn’t have to be d/d but still, you can’t compare to real life situations because it is a game in a fantasy setting. There is magic, spells, magical stealth, teleporting. If you really needed some kind of loreish staple to make it work in your head you can just say Thief taps into the Shadow arts and can create shadow flames. whatever

Manta.7962:

I use both blinding powder and shadow refuge, as well as master of deception trait (-20% recharge time for deceptions). Blinding powder’s strength lies in the fact that can be used at any time, even when disabled. It’s not about the blind, more the insta-stealth when stuff goes wrong.

How does an instant stealth while disabled really help? You still can’t move, and they can still hit you perfectly fine. All they have to do is have enough of a brain to keep attacking just as they were and the stealth will do absolutely nothing. The Blind might stop a single attack, but a single Blind is terrible in most cases as well since they can just auto it off. Regardless, a single hit stopped doesn’t warrant that kind of recharge.

Assuming you’re not talking about being disabled, any number of other stealth abilities work just as well.

Teerwik.1650:

poison which is one of the most if not the most underpowered condition atm.

Poison is pretty awesome once you understand that its main role is really to prevent leaving combat (via long-term stacking it with duration) and nerfing enemy heals. The damage is a nice little bonus, but poison is an effect you apply for an attrition battle, not something you’re trying to kill someone with. I’d rather apply a poison than 3 stacks of bleeding to a group of enemies any day.

Tulisin.6945:

Teerwik.1650:

poison which is one of the most if not the most underpowered condition atm.

Poison is pretty awesome once you understand that its main role is really to prevent leaving combat (via long-term stacking it with duration) and nerfing enemy heals. The damage is a nice little bonus, but poison is an effect you apply for an attrition battle, not something you’re trying to kill someone with. I’d rather apply a poison than 3 stacks of bleeding to a group of enemies any day.

Im going to disagree because most of our poison is short duration and even fully runes+traited for max duration its still not lasting all that long to “prevent leaving combat”. I would consider cripple a condition for “preventing leaving combat”. The healing debuff is also not all that great either, You only really see the effect on bunker builds, thats about it, and even then easily cleansed.

I agree with a lot of the suggestions for mainhand pistol. Notably, I’d like to see #2 changed into some sort of AoE, spreading gunfire around a certain area like a semi-auto. Unload could use a slight speed boost and/or damage increase. I feel though that if the attack was sped up and the cost dropped, then the damage could be fine as is.

My main set is S/D.

1) Attack speed could be increased. I’d also like to see one of the conditions that are applied on the third hit, applied on the second.

2) I don’t have problems with the range, because I think it’s 600+range of thrust attack (130) for a 730 range. I would love it if I had some say over returning or not. I tend to take myself out of a fight to often, and the option to return takes to long to clear. At least could it end if you’re not in combat anymore?

3) In PVE I have no problems landing the second hit, but the pathing is weird at best. Sometimes I’ll go all the way around my target before hitting them. You’re also easy to hit when you’re doing your double stab. I suggested it during beta, but I think the first hit should come <b>before</b> the evade very fast, then after the evade the second blow. Pathing is an issue and shadow steps seem like the best way to do it but if that is the way to go, I’d miss the feeling of movement that FS grants. It may just be aesthetics, but I’d like to see something cool with a skill, like splitting into a couple shadows, moving on either side of the target and coalescing behind the target for the second strike.

My other issue with FS may be more with the AI. Npc’s more often than not are already turning around as you flank, making it almost pointless as a defensive attack, especially with all those traits that give bonus’ to hitting from behind.

I also strongly believe we need more weapon options. I’m still for off hand sword and rifle for a 1200 range weapon

Would desperately like to see Dagger Storm or Thieves Guild used undwater.

I’d like it if they looked at Blinding Powder.

It’s an awesome utility skill, but it has a 60 second cooldown making it feel “meh”. Shadow Refuge is also a 60 second cooldown but it also stealths and heals an area. Making it a superior option.

Lower the cooldown to 30 (or 45) seconds I think would be justified for the ability.

I would like to see stealth looked at. I’m tried of getting hit by channeled abilities when I go stealth.

Neros, Mesmers, and Rangers all alike have ranged channeled abilities that will continue to cast even if the target has stealthed. Any thoughts on this?

Tulisin.6945:

Puru.4217:

Sword Main Hand:

Auto Chain: Faster or more damage.

Sword auto is already the highest-damage auto thieves possess, depending on your condition damage. It also hits up to 3 targets and causes two powerful control conditions. It does more DPS than Pistol Whip, which you said was at a good point for DPS.

I agree, i actually forgot to remove that suggestion as i did with the dagger auto attack damage increase (which has been changed to “good”).

I’ll fix this in my post

I would like to see some buffs to traps, venoms and the shortbow. I really like the shortbow as a weapon however I feel that the damage is really low and hard to pull of vs any decent opponent mostly because it takes forever for the #2 skill to land. While it’s pretty decent in AoE, it kind of sucks in single target so perhaps we could have the abilities altered so they do a little more damage to the first target they hit and something extra to the people around. Perhaps the first hit of the auto attack does more damage to the first target and less to the rest. That #2 skill attaches the bomb to your target and does a bit of damage to him upon detonation and a little to the people around, etc… Maybe through buffing the venoms and the traps, you could mix those with the shortbow to increases its potency.

These are just some ideas, I’m not sure what the perfect solution would be. One thing’s for sure, these could use some love. Lets try and make that shortbow a little more than just a tool for traveling and the venoms and traps a little more worth using.

Increase scorpion wire range to 1200 to get annoying ranged classes off of walls or off choke points in the jumping puzzles, so thiefs can fight them. Also please add 1 pistol ability with 1200 range, maybe headshot or bodyshot (unload would be too good at 1200 range). Other then that I am having fun with my d/d p/p thief.

I dunno, I think shortbow is kind of the poster-child for the perfect weapon. Easy to learn, hard to master, good damage and amazing utility. Useful in and out of combat, and synergizes with nearly everything. TBH its only major weakness is 1v1, and even then point-blank cluster bomb spam is great burst damage depending on build. I’d say 1v1 weakness is a fair tradeoff for everything else SB offers. If all thief weapons were as deep and viable as shortbow, they’d be in heaven.

The point about condition removal is well made. The only really robust option thieves have is to spec heavily into Shadow Arts and chain stealth, which does a good job against conditions but also forces the play pattern into troll stealth thief.

The lack of condition removal really forces the ‘burst and get out’ play style, since you can’t stand against sustained condition pressure at all. If burst is getting hit hard, the class needs a good condition removal to have a chance to sustain.

I agree with dropping the cooldown on Blinding Powder, it’s a weak skill on a 60s recharge. A 40-45s recharge would be a good starting point – see Decoy for comparison. It is valuable as an instant cast stealth that can be used while disabled, and that stacks really easily with other stealth skills.

Shifting more damage to condition damage is not a popular position, I understand, but would be healthy for the class long term. More condition damage gives the thief better pressure abilities, and would allow A.Net to keep the damage on abilities high without them breaking nearly as hard to full crit damage plus assassin’s signet stacking.

I don’t think condition damage belongs on Backstab by any means, but they should definitely explore places to buff by adding or converting damage to bleeds.

Thieves have quite a bit of viable condition removal. Traited (or even untraited) Signet of Agility offers consistent condition removal in addition to its other nice effects. Both Infiltrator’s Strike and Shadow Step serve as all-purpose condition removal, and then there is a rash of other condition removal abilities that only apply to specifically damage or specifically non-damage conditions. Not the most condition removal of any profession, but I think people are looking at other profession’s anti-condition specialized builds and trying to compare them to the average thief.

I think that the biggest problem that the thief currently has is that it the initiative system means that players can spam their most damaging move over and over. This means that if their initiative skills deal decent sustained damage they have OP burst and if they have tame burst they have mediocre sustained damage. One fix for this is to give incentives for holding initiative or disincentives for spending it too quickly. A few examples of possible fixes could be:

1) Let our damage skills (eg. pistol whip, LDB, cluster bomb) do more damage when we have higher initiative, much in the same way that heartseeker deals more damage to enemies with lower health. This is my favourite idea as it promotes less one button spam without making auto attack our only dps option like it is for S/P now.

2) Give a ‘fatigued’ debuff if we use too much initiative too quickly that reduces our damage or slows our endurance/initiative regen. (Would like to see a general damage buff to compensate for the loss of burst.)

3) Give initiate a passive damage boosting property like in many of our traits. I’d prefer suggestion 1 still as this may force us into auto attack spam.

As for our weapons:

D/D: A solid weapon but the SS->C&D->BS combo probably needs to be looked at.

D/P: needs a little love in PvE. The lack of any offensive AoE means that it is difficult to justify as a main weapon there (all weapons should be justifiable). Head shot is also not fantastic there, as the relatively high initiative loss is normally not worth a single interrupt there, especially when for a little more initiative you can get multiple AoE blinds.

P/P: See D/P above for the head shot and AoE comment. Also, body shot is pretty worthless.

P/D: Some luckluster skills as above.

S/P: This is probably the weapon that could use the above initiative changes the most. All current strategies with this weapon revolve around spamming one button. An incentive to manage resources or a powerful situational ability (I’m looking at you head shot. Possibly high damage on interrupt?) could make this weapon much more fun.

S/D: Flanking strike is too buggy for me to bother with this set much. Otherwise it would be a good weapon.

SB: This weapon makes thieves playable for me. So many of our sets lack ether utility or AoE that this is a mandatory secondary weapon for me. I’ve heard rumours of nerfs for it, which I sincerely hope comes with great increases to our utility in other ways as I can’t see the class being competent as anything but single target dps otherwise (or non-boss control with S/P). As for the actual weapon skills; cluster bombs can be difficult to use properly with Australian lag and 1200 range would be greatly appreciated on the auto attack.

For P/P – I’d like to remove the daze from Head Shot and add it to Body Shot (remove the vuln. from bodyshot) and add 4 seconds of confusion to Head Shot.
Add a 9th shot to Unload that cripples the target for 3 seconds.
Add burning for 1 second per pulse to Black Powder.

For P/D – I’d like to remove the dagger strike from Shadow Strike and instead leave a small AoE poison.

For D/P – I’d like to remove the blind from Shadow Shot and add a 0.25 second daze as well as a short duration confusion.

For D/D – I’d like to remove the vuln. from Cloak and Dagger and add a poison instead (lowering direct damage of CnD too).

For S/D – I’d like to see Flanking Strike changed to a double 250 range leap rather than a “flanking strike”… also a rename.
Lower Infiltrator’s Strike initiative cost to 1 so that it’s inline with other 2nd slot costs, also lower the duration of immobilize by 1/2 seconds and increase its damage.
Move the weakness from Crippling Strike to Slice.

For S/P – I’d like to see Pistol Whip have the stun and self root removed and a 2 second cripple added, along with it’s cast time increased by 1/4 of a second and a damage increase.

For SB – I’d like to see 1200 range on Choking Gas and Infiltrators Arrow, the removal of blind from Infiltrators Arrow and 5 stacks of Bleed from the small explosion from Cluster Bomb.

For Steal – I’d like to see its cooldown lowered by 15 seconds (from base) as well as a base damage equal to 75% of mugs damage, with a 1% damage increase per point in trickery.
Remove direct damage from Mug (trait) and replace it with two stacks of confusion that last 10 seconds.

Maybe we can have dual 1hand sword as an option?
It’s weird when we can dual pistol, dual dagger and main hand sword, why not even off-hand

Zato.3054:

Maybe we can have dual 1hand sword as an option?
It’s weird when we can dual pistol, dual dagger and main hand sword, why not even off-hand

It’d be nice, but if it were to happen I’d hope they would then give the weapons a focus like; Pistols = conditions, Swords = Damage, Dagger = 50/50

I would love dual swords.

@Teloran: I’m against any changes that encourage standing around and autoattacking. I’d be for rewarding mixing skills and punishing using the same skill over and over, but anything where you’re rewarded for standing there and autoattacking is a bad change. Autoattacking is just unenjoyable, unengaging play, and I think when most people chose thief, they liked the idea of using skills based on what they needed at the moment rather than what was off cooldown, not for a class that spends 90% of its time autoattacking.

That’s why I’d prefer the first of my suggestions. It wouldn’t reduce the number of special attacks used in a fight, it would just give incentives to space them out while adding a risk/reward aspect to some otherwise spammed skills. Hammering 3 until you run out of initiative is essentially no different then just auto attacking in terms of fun, and it still means that you are left auto attacking while your initiative regenerates. This way players have a choice between quick burst or better sustained and the ability to use defensive or support abilities at all times.

I’m participially keen to see this on Pistol Whip as it would mean that it could be buffed to a point that it is actually a dps increase over the swords auto attack, while the diminishing returns for spamming would mean that its burst can be kept low enough so that its not OP in PvP.