With the changes to both the ranger and engineer class already revealed for the next patch I thought it would be an interesting topic of discussion to talk about the hopes and fears for thieves in the upcoming patch. So what are you hoping to find in the patch and what are you hoping you don’t find in the next patch?
Hopes:
I hope that more condition removal and survivability is worked into the acrobatics tree, and reworking of lot of the crappy traits such as Hard to Live. Also a venom and trap buff!
Fear:
Nerfing shadow arts without balancing out with buffs in other traitlines.
Azawrath the Silent – Thief
Primi Agminis Legio [PAL]
Yaks Bend
Bring back old Shortbow #3 animation.
Remove the delay between Steal and Mug/Sleight of Hand.
These are more fixes, and if ANet was serious they would have been already corrected.
Alas, this is not the case.
Powerpuff Girls [PPG]
Trixxi Is Cute – Purple Fhaz: your daily roamer
Rework venoms
Rework our healing power scaling (healing power = less damage, I think that alone is a sacrafise that should be rewarding for heals)
Buff p/p power
Give more support options
Fix bugs
Remove Last refuge (I’ll take no minor trait tyvm)
Remove traps (next to useless on a train to nowhere)
Fix disabling shot (sb 3)
Rework invigorating precision (5% isn’t noticeable without training dummy targets).
Remove the ability to perma stealth (boring to watch and deal with, fight goes nowhere).
Oh and realize Hard to catch is aweful and rework it.
“I’m waiting for the staff to get off their lunch
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
I hope that…when i go into stealth, people who targeted me with a chaneling skill stop following me with their attack… yeah i find this terrible..really…
Bring back old Shortbow #3 animation.
Remove the delay between Steal and Mug/Sleight of Hand.
Yes! Bring back the shortbow animation. What do you mean by the delay in steal with Mug and sleight of hand. I don’t use the trickery line and I don’t see a delay with Mug. What I have noticed is this teleport bug with steal that makes me off target. :/
I hope that…when i go into stealth, people who targeted me with a chaneling skill stop following me with their attack… yeah i find this terrible..really…
Agreed. This is going to be a even bigger issue with the longbow buff on rangers…
Anyone have any fears of what might happen to thief?
Azawrath the Silent – Thief
Primi Agminis Legio [PAL]
Yaks Bend
@Azawrath
I’ll provide an example :
Before the patch, I was able to interrupt a Heartseeker through a Black Powder by using Steal(traited with SoH) on the thief.
Now this had become more difficult, as sometimes you still Steal from them (because you get the stolen item), but you don’t interrupt anything, because the trait activates slightly AFTER you Steal – this way, the Daze and the Damage are dealt when the enemy has already completed the animation and is already in stealth.
Another example is with a Guardian. Sometimes, I am at low HP, I Steal from them to heal (thanks to Mug), but when I teleport to them I die because the Symbol they laid on the ground hit me BEFORE Mug procced.
Last example, the Hidden Thief trait. This trait gives stealth upon a successful Steal. However, if you trait Mug, you won’t get anything – even worse, you’ll get Revealed, as Mug procs AFTER the Steal. Basically, what happens is: you Steal>You get stealthed>Mug procs and you get Revealed.
Not to mention all the times Steal gets obstructed or “out of range” and still goes in full cool down.
Powerpuff Girls [PPG]
Trixxi Is Cute – Purple Fhaz: your daily roamer
Rework stealth (with that a rework of SA and HP Pool)
Rework acrobatic
Rework BT
Rework/Buff Venoms
Rework Traps
Mug can crit in PvE again.
Rework Underwaterskills
Wishes:
Change Smoke Screen from line to field
Switch Last Refuge with Smoke Screen
Rework of Flanking Strike
I really want steal working correctly again. It’s just a buzz killer to see your character port to the mob then port back, putting steal on cooldown.
I also think a lot of traits should just be replaced because they’re rarely used and are just boring. Hard to Catch should definitely be reworked like just giving the thief a few seconds of evasion frames instead of teleporting them, usually in worse spots. I rarely see players using traits that increase initiative generation.
I would argue that venoms aren’t 100% useless when not traited because some are quite bursty. What sucks about them is the long cooldown. But I’ve found the immobolize venom very useful with a glass cannon s/p build, swapping between basilisk and the other venom’s cooldown to keep players stuck in a full pistol whip, sometimes with a haste proc.
Condition builds can also make use of the vulnerability+torment venom to keep their high bleed stacks from being cleansed.
I do think utility venoms should be reworked, but I don’t think they’re terrible. They’re just really niche. Perhaps lower the cooldown but have venomshare raise the cooldown back to 45 seconds. Another suggestion is to make them unblockable.
Wishes:
revealed to 3sec in pvp
Old cnd damage
Rework death blossom
Faster dancing dagger with more dmg, longer cripple, no bounces, Maybe less ini
Rework Hard to catch
Rework assassins reward
Slightly nerf feline Grace endurance gain and make a Master or gm trait that removes a condition on dodge with a cooldown
Dodge while unload with higher ini cost
More dmg on pistol AA
Rework last refuge
Remove or Rework patience
Remove or rework Infusion of shadow
Remove blind shot from blackpowder
I’d just be happy to see the shadowstep bugs be dealt with, as it’s happened to me with the shadowstep utility as well as with steal (green reticule, get ‘out of range’ message but it still puts the return point down and wastes a cooldown). Makes surviving with minimal stealth rather challenging when you can’t rely on your ports. If you could do something about P/P as well that would be a bonus, I’d love to have a use for that set.
I’m still one of the few thieves that likes hard to catch apparently. I didn’t realise how good it was until I fought a thief who used it, every time I chained steal with infiltrators to hold him down the daze would make him port, same with basilisk, it was infuriating. In groups it’s a liability, but 1v1 it’s amazing. I still wouldn’t use it on a stealth build though.
As for fears? I fear that ANet will make us even more dependant on stealth for condi clean etc, and that more and more classes will get ways of directly countering it. I’m all for counterplay to stealth, I just don’t like how it’s the best option we have so people are almost expected to run it.
Critical Kit, Thief.
Don’t follow me, unless you enjoy being chased by angry men with sticks. Power BuildCondi Build
Rework our healing power scaling (healing power = less damage, I think that alone is a sacrafise that should be rewarding for heals)
Could you explain this? I don’t understand what you mean.
Most of our healing power coefficients are incredibly low. This is even for big heals or low up time heals(shadow refuge, leeching venoms, HiS). Basically if you go heavy into healing power you are missing out on either damage or another defensive stat. So you would think your heals get a noticeable bump for all that investment but that’s not the case for thief. Its a poor stat for thief which is upsetting and I’d hope they address it for the skills/traits that have no use in healing power.
I don’t expect mega heals like a guardian or ele but if I’m investing into a defensive stat I’d expect some pay off. Considering how squishy we naturally are the few hundred health bump isn’t worth using over the few thousand extra damage or hundreds extra DoT.
“I’m waiting for the staff to get off their lunch
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
No more Sword nerfs, maybe make larcenous cost less initiative, better condi removal outside stealth (unlikely), reworked venoms, and making some traits to actually be viable in their trait line .
Scrubio
Plays completely opposite professions to his main Teef.
1. Slight buff to Backstab.
2. Increase in Stealth durations.
You are such a troll
/emote PeeksUpFromBehindDesk
That’s debatable, but in this case, I was being serious. I won’t give my reasons to why I’d like to see those two, or ways to balance it, because I’ll just get attacked by unscrupulous individuals.
OhMiGoSh FIX STEAL!! i’ve had 5 steals fail (rubber band, does nothing goes into full cooldown, mug trait reveal…. shadowsteps near the target but not close enough for cnd to land…) in a row today… this is… insane….
and…
Death Blossom
1. Increase animation speed by 25%
2. Evade frames on keypress! evade length stays the same
3. Decrease dmg (both power & condi) by 25%
4. lower ini cost by 1 (25% less)
same dmg to ini as before! evade more reliable… make it feasible for power builds to use it as an evade!! T^T
other than that…. OhMiGoSh FIX STEAL!!
Yak’s Bend – Hello Kitty and Friends (aFK)
Lv 80 Thief – Emi Smacks / Lv 80 Ele – Emi Casts / Lv 80 Necro – Emi Nox
1. Fix steal, as others have said
2. increase the damage bonus from pistol mastery to 20%
3. Decrease the cast time on unload
4. options for condi removal outside of SA (pain response is unreliable, doesn’t count)
5. remove traps or atleast cut the cooldowns by half, cooldowns are stupidly long right now considering the effects are almost useless
6. slightly increased radius on blackpowder smoke field
7. reduce the base cooldown of RFI, reduce the initiative gain to compensate
8. dancing dagger no longer bounces, instead it applies poison and a longer cripple
9. reduce the base cooldown of all venoms
10. IF NOTHING ELSE, PLEASE REMOVE LAST REFUGE, THAT TRAIT ANNOYS ME TO NO END
I hope that…when i go into stealth, people who targeted me with a chaneling skill stop following me with their attack… yeah i find this terrible..really…
Wait after the ranger buffs on lb you thought those channeling attack hurt b4 well you gonna be in for a surprise.
Shikamaru X Thief, Warrior, Mesmer, Engi(FT leader)
Highest ranked reached 28 soloq
Isle of Janthir
humm I think they will fix a few skill facts and nerf S/D in some way.
Since no one uses the horrible trait that gives 200 power wile reveled, they will give all classes (exept thief) a skill to apply long reveled reveleds (6sec) to see if they can make that bad excuse of a trait look appealing LoL.
