Guild Wars 2

This isn’t a QQ about the recent patch; most of the changes I was either happy or mostly neutral about. However, I want to point out there are still some elements of the class that are objectively off, and I have no idea why they haven’t been addressed yet. In no particular order, here they are:

1. Last Refuge cooldown reduction was pointless. The major problem with this trait is that it attempts to utilize Stealth in a defensive manner when that’s not really how Stealth works. It doesn’t even drop aggro anymore! So, all that really happens is that you get the revealed debuff at inopportune times. It’s a liability more than it’s a boon, and you don’t even have the choice of not taking it if you want to spec in Shadow Arts. It’s a neat idea, but at the very least it needs to be a 10-pointer that you can choose not to have if you’re, you know, good.

2. Speaking of that, Stealth needs to drop or at least reduce aggro. I have not once heard a single justification for this change that made even the tiniest amount of sense. Thieves are melee oriented and extremely squishy with no real forms of attrition or aggro deflection; they need away to escape dangerous situations in PvE.

3. The Downed State remains wretched in solo PvE, much worse than any other class I’ve played, and thieves are supposed to be slippery. What is the point of Smoke Bomb, exactly? Again, it’s the same problem as above – Stealth doesn’t really work as a defensive tool, it’s designed as an offensive one due to PvP. You need to find a way to make it work both ways. It could work more like Shadow Refuge, or it should drop aggro and give you enough time to escape the LoS of your enemies. The sneak attack on the #1 should also get buffed so that you get more offensive benefit from using it.

4. MH Pistol is still bad. The Ricochet buff was badly needed and helps, but the biggest problem, especially with P/P, is the weakness of Vital Shot causing excessive resource dependency for DPS and consequently ruining the utility of the set. At the very least, Vital Shot needs a .1-.2 sec aftercast reduction, which I’m surprised and disheartened it didn’t get in this patch. Sneak Attack should have had a bleed duration increase like the Ripper did. The Pistol matery trait should be brought back to 5% so it matches similar traits. That was a poor fix.

5. Venoms seem to be balanced around Venom Share, and are therefore way too weak without it. Venoms need to be buffed substantially, then Venom Share needs to be reworked to decrease their potency when shared across multiple people.

6. Support in general is lacking. One thing in particular I feel is bizarrely missing is something like a Party MF boost trait or utility. Thief support should include more than Venom sharing and the occasional SR.

Those are the biggest issues I can think of, but I’m sure there are smaller ones littered throughout that really should be addressed as well.

pretty much covers the roughest points.

forgot a few key ones i think are important:

distance on cluster bomb

stun break on shadow return

withdraw/RFI underwater distance (key to staying alive)

Travlane.5948:

pretty much covers the roughest points.

forgot a few key ones i think are important:

distance on cluster bomb

stun break on shadow return

withdraw/RFI underwater distance (key to staying alive)

Also, I have mixed feelings about the PW “buff” that occurred last patch. It seems like a buff on the surface because the skill executes faster, but actually the delay was there for a reason- you stun the enemy for a second, then blur out afterwards so that their attacks miss you.

Now, the stun and evasion overlap considerably, which is weird and kind of pointless. I really sometimes feel like they have no idea what the hell they’re doing.

eh. PW is still garbage. PVE is kinda useable. not enough dmg tho really. i mean yeah you can hit 8k but you can hit 8k in 1/8th of the time with d/d so whats the point? PW is garbage. the increase is barely noticeable too.

An aggro drop on stealth would allow players to drag monsters onto other players and then stealth to lose aggro. This could be used for griefing but perhaps it caused other problems in PvP.

@stooperdale. that would be a cool aspect. wouldnt be OP ….i mean vvvvvvvvvery few places you can aggro more than a couple at a time and they dont hit that hard/fast anyway. even if it did work u would face them too if u lost stealth within range. very dodgeable and bringing monsters to an enemy is actually helping them so i wouldnt recomend it at all lol. its an easy rally for them or basically lets them take a beating on ground while dealing dmg to your HP total then getting revived upon monster kill and getting +25% hp or 33% whatever it is. wouldnt recomend it :P

“The Pistol matery trait should be brought back to 5% so it matches similar traits. That was a poor fix.”

LOL, in the mean time, Guardian got 250 Healing Power and Mesmer got 200 Condition Damage for free. And we got nothing.

They “fixed” stealth instantly breaking aggro for a few reasons:

• It was exploited in a way that it was extremely easy to skip enemies in dungeons (or generally places where you were not meant to skip all the enemies). You can still do it, you just need 5-8s of stealth to actually reset enemies.
• It caused a lot of unintentional resets, especially at dungeon bosses – for example bosses reseting and healing to full when a thief Shadow Refuges downed party members – that happened to me once at the old Lava fractal’s endboss.

The downed state 3 really needs a look at for PvE.

I have a lvl 80 of every class and the Thief ranks 1st place on the “hopelessness when downed” ladder… Same tier as Engy and Necro, but at least their downed skills can CC enemies and help allies fight better.

I personally think 3rd should, in addition to Stealth, summon an NPC Thief for about 10 seconds to take some of the aggro away and help DPS for rally.

Stooperdale.3560:

An aggro drop on stealth would allow players to drag monsters onto other players and then stealth to lose aggro. This could be used for griefing but perhaps it caused other problems in PvP.

That’s already kind of doable, but really not that much of a threat in WvW combat. The real reason for the change was there were instances where mobs would switch into out-of-combat mode and get super regen resetting the fight. This was particularly annoying when it happened in boss fights like Giganticus Lupicus in Arah. Lupi would lose target in the thief and forget the rest of the party. Unfortunately, this change they did make needs a lot of fine tuning, they made Downed 3 useless in PvE for instance.