This is a post regarding Thief and PvE! (Player versus Environment)!
In one of the blogs or posts ArenaNet has made they said that they the professions that needed the most love where: Necromancer, Mesmer and Thief.
However where is the love for Thief? I play alot of sPvP because i’m not really a PvE’er but also because I find the Thief very difficult to give a role in group or solo play aside from X/P Black Powder spam.
Here’s my thoughts about it, when you compare iniative and the skills of the Thief versus other professions cooldown skills it’s obvious that Thief needs some sweet luvving.
When you are in PvE you will encounter several mobs at a time, thus you need AoE for those mobs which we can with the following weapons: D/D (Death blossom, Dancing Dagger) S/P (Auto Attack and Pistol Whip) Shortbow (Trick Shot, Cluster Bomb and Choking Gas) X/P for Black Powder.
Now that we know what what weapons use AoE skills we need to examine what these skills do at what cost? Here’s the problem with the skills: when we use iniative to activate for example Pistol Whip, we use up 5 initiative which is by default half of your resource to do other stuff. When we compare this to for example a similar attack Blurred Frenzy from the Mesmer line that takes 10 seconds to recharge so essentially you can use a free Pistol Whip every 10 seconds but for Thieves you use one Pistol Whip to do damage but you will lose 5 iniative to do other stuff like Infiltrators Strike to get out of an AoE that could kill you. Something a Mesmer or any other class with normal cooldowns do not suffer from, they could use all of their abilities because they would not be limited by a resource but with a cooldown which they can save for later when the situation calls for it, if a Thief wants to do damage he will need to activate 2x Pistol Whip for 10 iniative, this will cause the Thief to hang with his pants down his well.. you know
So you now have 0 iniative so you will need to autoattack to damage and wait 3 seconds to get out of the enemy AoE which by then has already hit you, with a Thief in sPvP this is not a problem because 1. Normal cooldowns need to be managed in a fight 2. Initiative becomes a great mechanic for picking which ability when.
I hope everyone understands what im trying to say with this example, it’s that in PvE the trade off for using skills for the cost of their respective initiative is too low. We have mediocre AoE at best, little diversity in combo fields and even combo field starters in comparison to other professions, to top it all off if a Thief wants to do AoE you will have to spam that one skill that does AoE because other skills in that weapon set have little to no AoE which in return also costs iniative. (Exception of great AoE skills: Shadow Refuge, Daggerstorm, Cluster Bomb: Blast and ofcourse Caltrops!)
On a smaller note regarding utility skills is that I personally love most skills such as Caltrops, Shadow Refuge and Scorpion Wire, but when it comes to Skale Venom and Traps in general I cannot say anything positive about them. Maybe here someone has found a succesfull use of those utilities but so far I haven’t encountered any purpose of those skills in both sPvP and PvE. If you have found a use for those skills please share!
My conclusion and personal view is that the Thief does not need number buffs but changes in skill behavior and think of a solution of initiative in PvE so it’s more viable for solo and group play. Currently key to succes in PvE for Thief is Black Powder (observed from posts on Guru and Reddit where Black Powder is wildly suggested). I think Thief is awesome and a very flashy profession and unique in every way and it’s for 1v1, but thats a situation you hardly encounter in PvE. I also believe that Thief is fine in many aspects but the one thing that is unfixed is that due to iniative one skill in a weaponset will be superior to others automatically making it the skill of choice for many Thieves which is in my opinion a waste of creativity (because it doesnt matter how awesome the other skill is by design it will be inferior to others in comparison). Again in PvP you usually use most if not all weapon skills in different situations. (Except for Heartseeker Thieves 2-2-2-2-2 kekeke)
Please also note that this is not a wtf theif sux n33d buff post im hoping for a constructive posts and thoughts so that the Thief profession receives the love and change it deserves and that was promised, I love the Thief in PvP and I want to love it in PvE too!
Steal my heart with a glimpse of your smile at the profession ArenaNet!
(edited by bettadenu.5483)