Guild Wars 2

as the topic says what do you guys think needs to be done to make thief more viable for all gamemodes please post your suggestions. it can be prettymuch anything buffs/nerfs to thief, reworks or nerfs/buffs to other classes just keep it civil.

I see 3 major issues with thieves:

- We have the damage but we can’t land it on anything besides other thieves because every other classes has so many passives + blocks, weakness, blinds, invuls, perma protection etc. I am not fan of powercreep but if things are not going to change thief needs more tools to deal with such walls (e.g. unblockables, more boon steal etc.)

- team utility is abysmal. Same reason why d/p is the set to use in pvp since it is only thing really that offers any kind of utility for team. Our utilities are also abysmally bad besides few must haves that everyone used for years – i think devs really need to look how we can be more useful for groups. In pvp it might be ok because we decap all day anyway (although team utility is why revs took over thieves) but in pve and wvw i feel like we are really really really unwanted because other classes do as much if not more dmg and bring by far more team utility (i had some “nice” discussion with my raid leader about my thief vs my ele qq).

- we supposed to be kings of mobility and that is why we are squishy but other classes are not that far behind us. Anet gave all classes so much mobility that in most cases if you go for decap your own speed will buy you maybe 1 sec before someone arrives – not to mention you are out of CD and ini while they have all their spells and dodges. I see no other way to fix it as to dramatically increase CD on mobility for other classes.

Also what the major issue is our +1 capabilities have decreased a lot with HoT compared to pre HoT. The fact many classes has got stealth and we have no means to reveal them as revenants have, they can even pre-reveal which is so powerful. Classes like druids/engis even if we manage to drop them low (druids has signet of stone then astral stealth) meanwhile engi can just sneakgyro away. The longer time we spend on +1ing the more the whole map suffers as well.

And as you said many classes has got more tanky and more mobility, lets say pre HoT a outnumber 15seconds was still “ok” obviously not optimal, now if you don’t finish a +1 in 5-10 seconds AT MAX you already wasted a +1/rotation upon that, and since so many classes (guards, warriors) with the abundance of blocks/endure pain x2 buys so much time for the others to rotate. We become so much weaker cus of it, since we cant fight a 2v2

This is spvp opinion

What do you think about moving thief from the role of decap and +1 to more of a 1v1 duelist/assassin class by like increasing thief core health and add a bit of extra damage or something but the problem with thief is that if you increase our damage too much all the squishy classes and builds will just get one-shot from stealth I honestly don’t know what the best way to solve this problem is but I think thief maybe needs a bigger rework to the whole class that may also help with the abyssmal build diversity thief has

Another thing that has been said before is that all other classes except necro has a lot of invuln/block one way to maybe solve that problem is to massively Increase the CD of all invuln/ block traits or just simply replace them with something else.

Felwal.9618:

What do you think about moving thief from the role of decap and +1 to more of a 1v1 duelist/assassin class by like increasing thief core health and add a bit of extra damage or something but the problem with thief is that if you increase our damage too much all the squishy classes and builds will just get one-shot from stealth I honestly don’t know what the best way to solve this problem is but I think thief maybe needs a bigger rework to the whole class that may also help with the abyssmal build diversity thief has

Add % multiplies that depend on armor for example, that way damage would affect squishies and tanks same way. For example backstab under condition XY ignores 30% of the armor or protection. Or backstab under condition XY is unblockable.

% and working on mechanics would allow to make it balanced. Flat damage number changes like devs love to do much (sup trickery) just create more imbalance and QQ.

Thief needs a complete rework:

- more close combat mobility (like sword playstyle used to be before powercreep)
- less to none disengage mobility

If you want to get rid of that +1 thing ANet has to make thief more viable in AOE bombs (e.g. let him evade and attack at the same time) but nerf the ability to enter and leave fights at will.

Sadly this will never happen and my former main thief will remain as a crafting bot.

Shadowstep.6049:

Felwal.9618:

What do you think about moving thief from the role of decap and +1 to more of a 1v1 duelist/assassin class by like increasing thief core health and add a bit of extra damage or something but the problem with thief is that if you increase our damage too much all the squishy classes and builds will just get one-shot from stealth I honestly don’t know what the best way to solve this problem is but I think thief maybe needs a bigger rework to the whole class that may also help with the abyssmal build diversity thief has

Add % multiplies that depend on armor for example, that way damage would affect squishies and tanks same way. For example backstab under condition XY ignores 30% of the armor or protection. Or backstab under condition XY is unblockable.

% and working on mechanics would allow to make it balanced. Flat damage number changes like devs love to do much (sup trickery) just create more imbalance and QQ.

Yeah I have seen that suggested before and adding a percentage penetration mechanic to gw2 would be a really good idea in my opinion would help a lot to keep the tank meta at bay because playing in a tank meta like s1 is just simply boring because it takes no reaction or
skill.

Can you post your ideas in the balance thread and not make new threads? It is hard to get devs to pay attention if we have 20 threads with 10 posts in each. We need one thread with a lot of ideas and discussion for them to read.

saerni.2584:

Can you post your ideas in the balance thread and not make new threads? It is hard to get devs to pay attention if we have 20 threads with 10 posts in each. We need one thread with a lot of ideas and discussion for them to read.

They never go here. We had some guy here harassing everyone with racist comments in this section – he went unpunished for really long time despite all the reports.

saerni.2584:

Can you post your ideas in the balance thread and not make new threads? It is hard to get devs to pay attention if we have 20 threads with 10 posts in each. We need one thread with a lot of ideas and discussion for them to read.

I did not find that thread that’s why I started a new one

But honestly I miss how thief was before July last year it was much better back then and I think they should bring back practiced tolerance the way it was before that was really nice making thief just a tiny bit more survivable and you could run D/D whitout going for some cheesy condi build that you feel bad for playing. reworking some trait lines like shadow arts and crit strikes would help a little.

To balance Thief, the following needs to be addressed;
1) Maximum Initiative to the weapon set total cost ratio — some weapon set have a total cost of 20+ initiatives while the maximum initiative pool is 15 with Trick trait line. Either increase the maximum initiative pool or reduce the cost of weapon skills.

2) Least number of weapon skills — compare to other professions, Thief has the least weapon skills. Looking at Elementalist, they have 20 skills per weapon set that gives them flexibility from DPS, tank, and healer. The limited weapon skills of Thief was based on the Beta design of Steal, where the Thief gains a full set of weapon skills based on the item they’ve stolen. Since this feature never made it to release, they never really address the lacking of weapon skills for Thief. In order to address this issue is to give Thief more weapon skills by giving them more weapons to choose from without the need of Elite Spec. Staff should not have been tied to Daredevil.

3) Expanding Dual-Wield mechanic — the problem with balancing skills with the Thief is the fact that some skills are shared among other weapon sets. Thus, D/D and P/P will never receive the proper balance they need to make these weapon sets viable. In order to balance this, ArenaNet needs to expand the dual-wield mechanic. So if the Thief equips D/D, this will not just replace the skill #3, instead, it will replace all 5 skills giving D/D its own weapon skills exclusive to this weapon combination. This way, balance Heartseeker or CnD will have no direct impact to D/D anymore since D/D will be using different #2 and #5 skills — and any buff that D/D will receive will not break D/P, for example. P/P requires some kind of survivability (e.g leap backwards) or stealth mechanic, but it will never get it from the current pistol skills. With 5 exclusive skills for P/P, it can receive some survival skills without over-powering D/P or S/P.

4) Revealed debuff — this should be redesign to be use as a ground targeted stealth strip. Stealth attacks (or any attacks from stealth) will not apply a Revealed debuff instead will simply reveal the Thief or any stealth characters. In conjunction, stealth duration also needs to be addressed.

5) Capping stealth duration — this should be across the board since it is not healthy to play against someone who can perma-stealth like Engineers. Thief also have abused this feature with other methods extending stealth more than the intended duration of 4sec. In order to do this, stealth should no longer be capable of stacking. Meaning stealth cannot be reapplied to a target who is currently stealth. This will put the stealth-chaining to a high skill level and will give the opposition a small window for counter-play.

There are more, but that’s it for now.

With the HoT changes thief is now neither the master of stealth, nor the mobility. Other professions can access to stealth in better ways, they have great mobility (thief still has the advantage), they have too many blocks/invuls/passives and they have bloody piles of reveal.

Acrobatics/shadow arts traitlines should be reworked in my opinion. Thief does not need an unblockable utility like warriors but it needs a better way to deal with all these blocks and stuff. Sword needs to be buffed slightly. Boonsteal needs a buff too, there are millions of boons in the game and most of them are buggers.

In my opinion thief also needs an f3 button with either stealth or blink to live up its own name.

And I really want my pistol bounce back. I miss P/P thief

Preparedness baseline. I don’t like handing out power creep, but honestly, this genuinely would solve a lot of problems.

ICD on stealth attacks removed or reduced massively. This change was unwarranted on so many levels, and didn’t even have the desired effects.

Cut blocks and invulns game-wide, including what’s been implemented on the thief with Bandit’s Defense and Instant Reflexes. There’s no reason for so much blocking to be happening.

Cut mass-AoE burst damage and the simply stupid CC access game-wide. Arc Divider has the same radius as Heartseeker’s full gap close. Rev auto-taunt is just horrible design since there’s no way to know it’s coming or even going to happen at all.

Boons need accessibility cuts or reworks. Too many professions are running too diverse sets of boons for an unlimited amount of time, and aren’t being balanced around them. A reaper with 25 might does a lot of damage, but a reaper with 25 might has been in combat for some time hitting targets that haven’t run away, and the profession is assumed and designed around likely stacking lots of might and/or vuln. It’s fairly obvious that bunker druid was not balanced around having permanent capped might/all boons.

Cooldown bumps on defensive abilities/sustain, including the Daredevil. There are too many get-out-of-jail-free cards in the game right now. Defensive abilities are extremely easy to get, and since HoT, have carried very low cooldowns.

HoT skill coefficients reduced. Related to the above, this is probably a chicken/egg problem in that defenses were either too strong so offenses got massively bumped for no reason, or offenses were too strong so defenses got massively buffed. Either way, it’s silly.

Conditions nerfed, two stats minimum needed for high condition damage. Another game-wide issue not necessarily specific to the thief, but without Daredevil, the thief has very poor cleansing options. Currently there’s too much condition pressure in the game and not enough cleanses on even cleanse-heavy classes/builds, and in most cases, these builds get free defenses, often further included in their respective condi-based trait lines.

OH dagger/dual skills reworked. Enough said, I think. We all know why – they just suck on the design-level.

Crit Strikes made more consistent/useful. There’s no incentive to run this line outside of PvE. DA/DrD offer near-identical damage bonuses with much better utility. Marauder powercreep reduced its use of consistency/purpose to even less than it was.

Incentive for not being in stealth or able to negate penalties to being revealed – our only boon right now in this case is RT, which contends with a substantial reason to take DA to begin with – Panic Strike, and the RT buff doesn’t really do much considering the thief lacks the capacity to stay in combat and take advantage of it in any situation except PvE. If the enemy can build to counter you, you should be able to build to counter them.

Honestly? Forget all the minutia of stealth durations and AOEs and whatever. Our biggest problem is that our historical capacities are simply gone. Not diminished, but gone.

Here’s the flavor text / blurb for Thief:

Thieves are expert in the shadow arts. They utilize stealth and shadowstepping to surprise and to get close to their target. They’re deadly in one-on-one combat using their agility, acrobatic fighting style, and the ability to steal to overcome their enemies. They have an affinity for setting traps and using venom. As an adventurer profession, thieves wear medium armor.

Insofar our role as a 1v1 powerhouse has diminished to the point of being laughable, but our damage is still quite formidable when spec’d for. The problem is that while yes, other classes have eclipsed Thief in utility of skills (traps, conditions, control, etc), Thief hasn’t lost them. Ours just never got better.

The reason I say “gone” is because our playing field is still somewhere around 2014 levels of power. When the “role” of Thief changed from ANet’s own description of it to +1s, decaps, etc., we lost our edge; namely the two mainstays that disappeared come Specializations:

1). Acrobatics got nerfed into the ground. Not only that, but we no longer could compensate for builds with +3,000 HP anymore.

2). Various defensive traits were removed in favor of something else, like higher Swiftness uptime, 7% Precision to Vitality, and others that allowed us to stay alive without constantly consuming Initiative or dodges.

I could even add that our own elite specialization (“prestige”?) completely de-emphasized Stealth, as did all the changes to other professions as many have rightly pointed out. So not only that, but the core theme of the profession is effectively a moot point, as is the old defensive line of Shadow Arts if you take Daredevil. You’ll only be depriving yourself of better offensive power — and that’s provided you can even keep your stealth to begin with.

Thus, the third point:

3). Stealth holds little purpose outside of PvE, and even in the jungles of Maguuma its usage isn’t all that worthwhile any longer, effectively cutting out the only other defensive trait line we had: Shadow Arts.

The result is that we’re a purely offensive class with no health, toughness, or defenses to make up for it any longer.

To put that into perspective, I’ve been running the same Berserker / Assassin gear for the past 3 years because I’m lazy and cheap. It worked great with the build I noted above (Dual daggers, Invigorating Precision, Assassin’s Reward, Assassin’s Retreat, and Pack runes for ultimate roaming and survival). Only two of those still exist and I’ve swapped to Daredevil + Staff for better durability (thank you new healing skill!).

This would be fine if I didn’t feel I now need to grind for a while to obtain all the materials I need to make at least a set of Marauder’s trinkets to bring myself back on par with what I just described, or the baseline thief before the September 2015 updates. And that’s bad.

Well… The wise choice would be to tone down EVERYONE ELSE. Literally, nerf all the other classes that needs it down to our level, and do away with most of the passive defenses that plague the game that makes most of our additional playstyles useless, then buff acrobatics and nerf DrD.

But since that would take a massive amount of work and ANET only knows how to provide powercreep, buff thief somehow.

General: Make the weak stuff a little better!

Increase shortbow damage, projectile speed, and/or poison duration from poison field. Anti-projectile abilities should make shortbow useless for cleaving, not inherently low damage.

Reduce cast time on HiS to 1/2 sec.

Replace Pistol Whip’s rooting effect with a 75% movement reduction for the duration of the attack.

Acrobatics: More fury, might, and boon duration. Less regen and vigor.

Make Swindler’s Equilibrium work with all weapon types – not just sword.

Replace vigor on Feline Grace with 2s of fury on a 3s ICD and replace Endless Stamina’s +50% effectiveness on vigor with +15% boon duration while endurance is not full.

Remove Leaping Death Blossom (D/D #3) and replace it with w/e. Replace regen on Upper Hand with might.

Make Guarded Initiation (removes slow, weakness, confusion, and vuln when attacking an enemy above 75% health) transfer those condis instead.

Shadow Arts: More stealth-oriented damage.

Add a 10% damage modifier to stealth attacks to Rendering Shade.

Daredevil: Improve condi removal. Nerf PI spamming.

Escapist’s Absolution changed from 1s ICD condi removal on successful evade to 2-3s ICD condi removal on dodge.

PI deserves a nerf for the betterment of the game, such as a 1s ICD and/or at least making it not proc on some of the more arbitrary abilities, like weapon swaps and auto-attacks that don’t have a cast time/bar.

The Thief needs following changes in my view:
(Including stuff I agree with here, that got already mentioned by others)

1) Rebalancement of the Initiative Costs for Weapon Sets, they all shouldshare the exact same Initiative Cost. All Weaponsshould have a Maximum Initiative Cost Ration of 15 Initiative and 15 Initiative should be also the baselined Maximum Initiative for Thieves, no need anymore to have to use a Trait just to increase the Initiative maximum to become viable. Some Skills have for what they do simply too high Initiative Costs, which costs the Thief also in some kind of way DPS. In Return could be the Initiative Regeneration Speed be slightly slowed down.
Put again a bit more focus on Initiative Return via Traits, Utilities& Upgrades as well.

2) Increase the baselined Weapons accessible to the Thief and replace the Daredevil with a different Elite Spe, that is designed around Long Range Combat with a Longbow – the Rogue, basically merge Daredevil into Thief, making 3 Sections of Endurance baseline for Thief, giving them baseline as part of the Gameplay under F3 Dodge Styles that can be changed anytime out of combat and givign them baseline as Weapon the Staff, and also baseline Offhand Swords.
Daredevil never really felt from begin on like an Elite Specialization, it always felt like being an improved Vanilla Thief!! because it also makes just the usage of the exact same initiative system, while other E-Specs of other classes clearly changed far more the whole gameplay of the Class. Daredevil is literally nothing else than Thief 2.0
This has to get changed by merging them with Thief and give the thief class a true Elite Spec, which really changes its whole gameplay and doesn’t feel like being just an better upgrade to the original.

3) Redesing the Dual Weapon/Offhand Skills, as this feature clearly is one big reason that stops the Thief form gettign more Build Diversity and needed Balance Changes, because always the Dual or Offhand Skills have the fault for the Thief having not more more diversity, because buffing either a Dual Skil lwould make Build X overpowered, while buffign an ioffhand woudl make Build Y overpowered and no one else would play build Z due to the buff to Y.
The class needs to get rebalanced in such a way, that all dual 1H weapon builds are equally balanced, so that no build is in specific gameplay modes far more superior over other weapon combinations, like currently that is the case with D/P, which has been already too goof for too long time compared to D/D and especially P/P due to the heavy differences in reliable access to stealth in combat with the different weapon sets

4) Remove the Revealed debuff, with more and more classes gettign long lasting hard counters that last longer than that debuff to stealth, that debuff becomes more and more obsolete!! (or at least reduce it down from 4 to 2 seconds)
In fact, Stealth in itself should be redesigned into a Boon and should be only removeable via Boon Removal effects from skills, so that Thiefs/Mesmers have also The option to increase their stealth durations through boon duration buffs and upgrades and that engie elite spec elite stesalth skill should get removed and replaced with something else, that really fits to that spec, a stealth gyro absolutely isn’t good for this game and the thief as well. long group stealth should stay their speciality, and no one elses class and interfere here in that unique thief game design territory.

5) Add much moor Boon Steal to the thief, stealing boons should be a thieve#s DAILY BUSINESS, in fact the thief should be in regard of boon removal one of the most dangerous and effective enemies to have a better working counter against all those bunker boon spam builds in this game!!

6) The thief needs to get a baselined feature of TRAP CONTROL in regard of a trait, that gets mostly used by every thief more or less, because thieves are masters of avoiding traps they should be the naturally arch enemy to all trap builds in this game by beign able to see traps and to remove them for allies to give them this way indirectly support, so that they can’t run into them and get hurt. Anyone with a brain in their head should find this to be the most logical thing for a thief to be able of to do that in games like GW2 – which is currently the only game with INVISIBLE trap builds that has NO counter to that, which makes playing agaisnt trap builds far more cancerous and annyoing, than against anythign else in this game, especialyl wen its a well played DH with its overpowered damaging traps compared to all other original game traps of the other classes.

7) Increase Stealth durations significantly, but remove Stealth Stacking. one way to do that woudl be by my suggested change of Stealth into a Boon, so that their durations can be affected by the boon duration increase effects of the game, but also the base durations of the skilsl need to be looked at as well then

Preparedness should definitely become baseline but what should it be replaced with maybe take something from acro? and give acro the old practiced tolerance because converting that 7% precision into vitality is really usefull

8.) Rebalancing of alot of way too weak/useless Utility Skills and Elite Skills.
The thief as too much useless stuff under its kitten nal of skilsl and traits, alot of them are for way too long overdue to get merged with other skilsl/traits, so that there can be new space for new skills and traits, that are in overall more useful for the build diversity of the Thief in general to fill the created gaps up

9) Redesign Shortbow Skills and make SB more useful and powerful, because its AA is com,pared to the other weapons abysmally weak and the thief needs to receive back with it via trait its 1200er range. Also the attack animations need to get changed, so that it stops in Wvw on walls, that we permanently shoot into the wall, instead onto an enemy, if we don’t stand practically on the rim of the wall where we can easilly get pulled off from to death by Necros, thieves and co which have pulling skills.
SB needs to stop to be focused only onto mobility. it needs to become also a better support weapon with that a hief should be also able to defend hisself better.
Here especially Trick Shot needs Boon Steal, every enemy that gets hits by multiple Trick Shot arrows should lose boons.

10) The Thief Class needs to receive better Group Support options, other than Stealth and Venoms only. The reason why Thieves for example find no place so well in raids ,compared to classes like Chronomancers or boon sharign revenekittens, because they can dish out good DPS, while providing at the same time also useful/needed group support that makes the group efficient enough to be successful at Raids.
Both stealth and venoms provide nothing, that makes a raid group efficient enough in combat. Venoms last therefore no long enough, their effects end way too fast due to having only 1-3 chanrges or so, which is just 1 single attack to 1 auto Atack chain and the effect ius gone….without having much of an impact. even after it has been baselined, which caused in return also nerfs to venoms (GJ sarcasm)
Solutions as unique group support could be for a Thief for exampole “Disarmament” of enemies, which leads to STAT Debuffs of enemies to reduce for some time the defense and offense powers as some kind of thief unique condition, which can directly reduce attribute values of an enemy for some time, like some kind of “Anti Power” which reduces per stack power/condition damage.
This way will receive the thief a mighty useful group support ele,ent, especialyl for raids as well ,because of that debuff makign it easier for the group to deal more DPS while receivign self also lesser damage, when such a condition woudl reduce the power/condi and toughness attribute values of an enemy. Because weakness just reduces only the chance to receive critical hits, it doesn#t affect theefficiency of enemy attacks or their defense, what I would personally expect from that condition to do as a kind of counterpart to the Might Boon, while reducing the chance to receive critical hits should be rather something for an attribute to do, if Anet would change the system finalyl to an Dual Effect Attribute System, that could be used to balance the classes better and to add new useful aspects to the cobmat system that can help the devs to balance the classes individually better due to Stats providing two effects instead of only 1, what would be especially useful to make Healign Power more impactful, when merged together with Vitality as its Dual Effect.
But thats an other non thief specific topic.

11) Tone down where needed slightly the other classes and bring their E-Specs a bit back to normality. For my taste for example gain Necros a bit too fast Life Power and can stay for too long time nearly permanently in their Shrouds. Their Shrouds should be well timed life savers, not somethign with that they can stay permanently mostly and and burst with their currently overpowered shroud skills their enemies to death, but thats just my own impression of the state of them right now.
Using skills in the shroud shoudl cost them life power as well as receivign damage, so that the shroud effects end a bit quicker…
I agree with it that thief needs a bit mor access to unblockable skills to avoid all the passive spam that makes it oftenly impossible to land neccessary hits and other protective mechanics, like mentioned shrouds. If thieves would have an ability, with that they can damage even necros in their shrouds by ignoring the defensive effect that protects the real health, that woudl be a nice counter effect that could balance at least fights agaisnt shroud spammy necro battles, unless you want to sit always shrouds out under stealth as your only viable working tactic…

12) Thieves need to become again true kings of mobility, other classes like especially the warrior need to get toned down finally in regard of this.. whenever I see warriors in HEAVY ARMORS moving around in this game faster than a lighter geared thief in mobility equipment, this makes me MAD, because its such terribly wrong and bad game design to make something like this and do so, as if warriors would be naturaly speed beasts, when in fact they should not compared to a thief, whose whole game design is based on mobility and not that of a heavy armored warrior, whose job it is not to be mobile, but to endure fights long enough and to support allies moraly in close combat – what they do with their banners/shouts i.e.
The only class that should be aver close to the mobility of a thief should be an elementalist. No other class should be near as good in mobility as like thives, than them. followed by third place the engineer/ranger sharing the 3rd place, followed by Necro and mesmer, and heavy armors beign on the last places in regard of mobility, because therefore they have the highest defense powers and best self access to defensive boons like Protection and Aegis…what the thief has all NOT, if not stolen first from them.

13) Acrobatics needs to get restored to its former self how it was, before it get destroyed so that Daredevil has a reason for its existance, especialyl the old Feline Grace needs to return, which reduced the cost of endurance for dodges in half. Even if it does only by its return for 33 or 25%, woudl be also better, than it is right now with its new worser effect.

14) The next second elite spec definetely needs to make Thieves again the true masters of stealth, by givign them unique features to stealth that no other class that can use also stealth skills provides. With my Stalker Concept I tried to show up a way, how this could be done, with basically 6 possible ways how the stealth system of that E-Spec could alterate the stealth mechanics of the thief by enhancing or changing the gameplay mechanics and adding similar gameplay elements of other classes that would fit under an shadow arts specialized e-specs, like making usage of Shadow Clones as interferences in combat to help you cause confusion in battle and add an aspect new of support to the class, or Shadow Spells with that the thief could get access to adifferent new ranged combat style thats not directly bonded to the used weapon…

15) Rebalance finally the Health and attribute System, because classes liek the thief woudl profitate from this rebalancing ,especialyl with the change of the long overdue for a redesign system of the base Health for classes.
All classes need to get their base health values finally individually balanced for esach class itself. The thief gets currently way to much punishied for sharign the same health amount a liek the Elementalist and the Guardian, while the other two have massively more skilsl and far more access to boons, than the thief, much more powerful traps, more useful utilities in overall, better elite skills, more weapon diversity and beign nearly same as mobile based on the builds gettign used in the games current balance state with all this power creep for that this health system was never designed for, does the thief need an increase in base health.

Thesy shoudl get increased from their lousy 11k Health to an appropiate at least 15k base health!!

These 15 points would make the overall state of the thief alot better, if they woudl get changed more or less.

So… what’s the short version of all that, Orpheal?

rennlc.7346:

Escapist’s Absolution changed from 1s ICD condi removal on successful evade to 2-3s ICD condi removal on dodge.

This. Witnessed this condi dd 3 spammer survived a condi bomb by a nec and at the same time tearing him apart with his own condi spam. It was just absurd.

I humbly agree that innovation is the key.

niconori.7235:

rennlc.7346:

Escapist’s Absolution changed from 1s ICD condi removal on successful evade to 2-3s ICD condi removal on dodge.

This. Witnessed this condi dd 3 spammer survived a condi bomb by a nec and at the same time tearing him apart with his own condi spam. It was just absurd.

Ha! I didn’t actually write that as a nerf to d/d evade spam but as a buff against players who will simply stop attacking a thief running EA once they’ve landed a long duration condi. My solution to d/d evade spam is to just delete Leaping Death Blossom from the game.

The logic for deleting LDB is simple. LDB is not used it tournaments and therefore, would need to be buffed for tournament viability. LDB, combined with condi evade, is extremely strong against newer players, and thus, would need to not be buffed for the sake of allowing newer players to better learn and enjoy the game. Because LDB needs to be both buffed to be tournament viability and not be buffed (or perhaps even nerfed) for the sake of newer players, it’s stuck as is and should just be replaced with a new skill that might not suffer from these conflicting problems.

rennlc.7346:

So… what’s the short version of all that, Orpheal?

Basically said these points:

• Strengthen the aspects of the Thief, that make this class unique (Mobility, Stealth, Boon Steal)
• Give the class back more build diversity and Group Support by merging Thief with Daredevil and replacing Daredavil with a true Elite-Specialization that is focused more on long range combat, because thats one of the real weak spots of this class currently in all aspects of this game
• Rework Skills & Traits in such a way, that stuff that fits together gets merged or flat out removed to get replaced with better and overall more useful new effects, under which something should belong, that adds for the Thief the new roles as Trap Controler and becomes as mentioned more effective in stealing Boons, because currently the Thief is way too weak in this aspect. Plus, the thief needs a unique debuff, that gives them a place for Raids, somethign like Disarmament to work as direct counter to Might, by reducing Stats.
  While Might increases Power/Condition Damage, Disarmanent could reduce Power/Toughness per Stack, thus you can deal more damage and receive lesser damage from disarmed enemies. Or call it different, if the term disarmed doesn’t fit, there are other options, that could fit as well like “frailty”, “vapidity/stagnation, fatigue”

Would be a different form of group support that would fit to the thief, to fight so fast for their enemies, that they suffer under fatigue to follow them

Merging thief with daredevil will definitely not happen right now it looks like Anet wants elite specs to be more powerful than the base class but think about it when we have like 3 elite specs there might be more diversity as long as they don’t kitten it up with more powercreep. But I do definitely think the base weaponsets and traitlines need looking at. Only good one is d/p

The biggest issue by far is that thieves are offensively similar to other classes, while having both bad attrition and bad utility.

I’m not a fan of compensating for bad defense with extra offense. I think some of the Thieves’ defensive tools need a serious reevaluation (i.e. Stealth), and perhaps a base health bump (I kind of think all professions should get this, as damage tends toward being too bursty in both pve and pvp.

Why shouldn merging Thief with Daredevil not happen? its an absolute possibility, because Daredevil is aside from the Staff Weapon just Thief 2.0, which uses the exact same gameplay mechanics, just has baseline 1 Endurance bar more, that should be baseline already a difference of the Thief compared to all other Vanilla Classes to make up for the difference, that Thieves are the most mobile and dodgy class of all – for that shouldn’t you require first an Elite Specialization.
The Dodge Styles are easily moved over to F3 to make them accessoible out of combat to change them quickly on demand, instead of making silly Grandmaster Traits out of them what they shouldn’t be.

For DD got Acrobatics basically complete trashed, instead it woudl be better to merge Acrobatics with the stuff they made for DD’s Traitline.
ANet basically has not given the Thief so far a real Elite Specialization, while all other Classes received one.

Elite Spes were never to be meant for to be better, than the Base Classes, thats nonsense. The concept behind them is to be optional sidegrades, not upgrades which are required to use to stay viable as a class!!
But naturally ANet totally overpowered mostly all of the first Elite Specs as a matter of marketing in hope, that way will HoT sell itself better, because honestly, would have anybody here bought HoT at all, when in the end the E-Specs would be all “worser”, than the Base Class? I guess not.

But I agree with it, that the game lacks Spec Diversity, thats why it would have been better for the whole game, if they wouldn’t have rushed (like always) things to implement and would have waited first with the introduction of Elite Specializations, once:

1) Anet would have fixed first the most important game balance aspects of the combat system (Attributes, Base Health, Boons & Conditions) &

2) they would have designed for the introduction of Elite Specializations via Add On at least 2 different Elite Spec per class to provide from begin on also an alternative for each class.

But by providing per class just only 1 with the expansion, it was from begin on clear, that the E-Specs will come over for the players like neccessary upgrades to stay viable for the Meta Game, instead of being optional sidegrades, that just increase the build diversity of the base class, which are together with the base class and its other E-Spec on an equal power level.

But until we have now the moment, until each class will have like 3+ different E Specs of build diversity alot of time will pass, because I doubt it, that ANet will add with the next expansion directly two new E specs per class now – doing essentially the work, they should have better done directly with the first expansion, so that they would have lesser work from that point on with the next expansions in the future.

Orpheal.8263:

‘merging thief and daredevil’

As long as most of Daredevil gets rolled into Thief somehow. I get that all of the ‘real’ thieves won’t be happy until thief is back to beta form where all of the ‘real’ thieves were asking for everything to be changed. I like most of the Daredevil features, lets me play like Street Fighter, which is what thief looked like in videos pre launch. I enjoy actually playing my build mostly around physical fighting but I wouldn’t have a problem if the play style at least was rolled up into core. Wont happen though but fun to imagine.

The thief needs some nerfs rolled back but mostly it needs the defensive sustain meta to take an arrow to the knee.

As for play in large and mid-scale WvW, that really isn’t where a thief should excel. What it should be is a 1v1 beast and right now that simply is not the case. It is a high risk class that currently doesn’t excel in 1v1. They have basically made it a small scale pack hunter in WvW.

Felwal.9618:

Preparedness should definitely become baseline but what should it be replaced with maybe take something from acro? and give acro the old practiced tolerance because converting that 7% precision into vitality is really usefull

The steal cooldown reduction moved from SoH would be enough. Gives a reason to run QP and not get killed by passive CC reflection on so many professions these days.

Orpheal.8263:

Why shouldn merging Thief with Daredevil not happen? its an absolute possibility, because Daredevil is aside from the Staff Weapon just Thief 2.0, which uses the exact same gameplay mechanics, just has baseline 1 Endurance bar more, that should be baseline already a difference of the Thief compared to all other Vanilla Classes to make up for the difference, that Thieves are the most mobile and dodgy class of all – for that shouldn’t you require first an Elite Specialization.
The Dodge Styles are easily moved over to F3 to make them accessoible out of combat to change them quickly on demand, instead of making silly Grandmaster Traits out of them what they shouldn’t be.

For DD got Acrobatics basically complete trashed, instead it woudl be better to merge Acrobatics with the stuff they made for DD’s Traitline.
ANet basically has not given the Thief so far a real Elite Specialization, while all other Classes received one.

Elite Spes were never to be meant for to be better, than the Base Classes, thats nonsense. The concept behind them is to be optional sidegrades, not upgrades which are required to use to stay viable as a class!!
But naturally ANet totally overpowered mostly all of the first Elite Specs as a matter of marketing in hope, that way will HoT sell itself better, because honestly, would have anybody here bought HoT at all, when in the end the E-Specs would be all “worser”, than the Base Class? I guess not.

But I agree with it, that the game lacks Spec Diversity, thats why it would have been better for the whole game, if they wouldn’t have rushed (like always) things to implement and would have waited first with the introduction of Elite Specializations, once:

1) Anet would have fixed first the most important game balance aspects of the combat system (Attributes, Base Health, Boons & Conditions) &

2) they would have designed for the introduction of Elite Specializations via Add On at least 2 different Elite Spec per class to provide from begin on also an alternative for each class.

But by providing per class just only 1 with the expansion, it was from begin on clear, that the E-Specs will come over for the players like neccessary upgrades to stay viable for the Meta Game, instead of being optional sidegrades, that just increase the build diversity of the base class, which are together with the base class and its other E-Spec on an equal power level.

But until we have now the moment, until each class will have like 3+ different E Specs of build diversity alot of time will pass, because I doubt it, that ANet will add with the next expansion directly two new E specs per class now – doing essentially the work, they should have better done directly with the first expansion, so that they would have lesser work from that point on with the next expansions in the future.

I’m not saying that it should not happen I’m just saying that Anet will most likely not merge dd with the base class to be honest they will probably never read this because they never go to the thief forums but we might aswell leave some suggestions

Straegen.2938:

The thief needs some nerfs rolled back but mostly it needs the defensive sustain meta to take an arrow to the knee.

As for play in large and mid-scale WvW, that really isn’t where a thief should excel. What it should be is a 1v1 beast and right now that simply is not the case. It is a high risk class that currently doesn’t excel in 1v1. They have basically made it a small scale pack hunter in WvW.

Yeah the sustain/condi meta we have now is one of the worst ones so far but Anet really need to introduce some way to counter tanks maybe something like armor shred or some kind of armor penetration maybe make backstabb temporarily reduce a enemy’s armor under certain conditions. Something like if you backstab someone under the effects of poison you shred 10% of their armor and if you backstab someone with vulnerability you shred an additional 15% armor. Of course the numbers need to be tweaked so they are balanced but removing some armor/toughness would help a lot it would also make thieves more desirable for pve because you can increase your teams damage. Also having it work with enemies that are vulnerable will also increase the damage of the D/D weaponset because of CnD

Well boonsteal is a counter to the bunker sustain that is so common. Personally, rending shade does a good job of that, even if the damage reduction is somewhat pointless given how commonly most classes just pop out new boons constantly.

I do think that Daredevil needs less condition removal on evade. It is a silly mechanic because in a team fight the Daredevil becomes practically immune to conditions by just evading. Changing it to “on dodge” makes it even more problematic because then the Daredevil doesn’t even need to be in a fight and evade and attack to be successful. Perma dodge thief becomes even more immune to conditions than it already is? Not a good idea for balance.

I would change the condition removal to a five second internal cooldown. Condition builds should not be forced to stop attacking to avoid having all their damage negated 100%. If you fix that then people will not stop attacking and you can clear conditions more. Against players who stop attacking, you should be taking other condition clears than just DD, so just use those. Daredevil is a lazy crutch as far as condition removal is concerned.

saerni.2584:

Well boonsteal is a counter to the bunker sustain that is so common. Personally, rending shade does a good job of that, even if the damage reduction is somewhat pointless given how commonly most classes just pop out new boons constantly.

I do think that Daredevil needs less condition removal on evade. It is a silly mechanic because in a team fight the Daredevil becomes practically immune to conditions by just evading. Changing it to “on dodge” makes it even more problematic because then the Daredevil doesn’t even need to be in a fight and evade and attack to be successful. Perma dodge thief becomes even more immune to conditions than it already is? Not a good idea for balance.

I would change the condition removal to a five second internal cooldown. Condition builds should not be forced to stop attacking to avoid having all their damage negated 100%. If you fix that then people will not stop attacking and you can clear conditions more. Against players who stop attacking, you should be taking other condition clears than just DD, so just use those. Daredevil is a lazy crutch as far as condition removal is concerned.

Well sure nerfing DD condi clear would be a okay change would help against DB spammers. But I do not really think rending shade does a great job of striping boons it’s a single boon every 3-4 at maximum the damage reduction you get is not that great either because it’s not going to do much. Maybe if SA was improved a little or if preparedness was made baseline then maybe we would see SA being used more. But the first minor in SA is pretty much useless maybe that one could be changed into something else maybe might on gaining stealth (wink wink)

It’s actually 2 boons. And the point is that it strips critical boons during an attack. Losing resistance is a huge loss for warriors for example, and protection isn’t a small loss either.

rennlc.7346:

Replace Pistol Whip’s rooting effect with a 75% movement reduction for the duration of the attack.

I’m probably odd, but I like the root on pistol whip, as it forces me to play well to land it properly. For the amount of damage it does, and the evade as well, it’s a fair skill. I’d say stuff like vault and shadow shot are more out of balance than pistol whip, but again, that’s just my opinion.

Thief in and of itself is fine I think, it’s the other classes that need defensive nerfs from all the power creep we got with HoT, which to ANet’s credit, that’s generally what they’ve been doing albeit slowly. Giving thief more damage won’t fix anything, and giving us more ways to bypass defences or more tankiness will just make us broken with the mobility and damage we already have.

saerni.2584:

I would change the condition removal to a five second internal cooldown. Condition builds should not be forced to stop attacking to avoid having all their damage negated 100%. If you fix that then people will not stop attacking and you can clear conditions more. Against players who stop attacking, you should be taking other condition clears than just DD, so just use those. Daredevil is a lazy crutch as far as condition removal is concerned.

To be honest, outside of a teamfight if the enemy doesn’t know enough about thief to stop attacking after the condi bomb, they actually deserve to have their condis cleansed imo.

If I have to learn other classes’ mechanics to be effective, I don’t see why they shouldn’t.

Of course in a 1v1, but in a team fight is often the situation involved.

Felwal.9618:

saerni.2584:

Well boonsteal is a counter to the bunker sustain that is so common. Personally, rending shade does a good job of that, even if the damage reduction is somewhat pointless given how commonly most classes just pop out new boons constantly.

I do think that Daredevil needs less condition removal on evade. It is a silly mechanic because in a team fight the Daredevil becomes practically immune to conditions by just evading. Changing it to “on dodge” makes it even more problematic because then the Daredevil doesn’t even need to be in a fight and evade and attack to be successful. Perma dodge thief becomes even more immune to conditions than it already is? Not a good idea for balance.

I would change the condition removal to a five second internal cooldown. Condition builds should not be forced to stop attacking to avoid having all their damage negated 100%. If you fix that then people will not stop attacking and you can clear conditions more. Against players who stop attacking, you should be taking other condition clears than just DD, so just use those. Daredevil is a lazy crutch as far as condition removal is concerned.

Well sure nerfing DD condi clear would be a okay change would help against DB spammers. But I do not really think rending shade does a great job of striping boons it’s a single boon every 3-4 at maximum the damage reduction you get is not that great either because it’s not going to do much. Maybe if SA was improved a little or if preparedness was made baseline then maybe we would see SA being used more. But the first minor in SA is pretty much useless maybe that one could be changed into something else maybe might on gaining stealth (wink wink)

It two boons per 4 seconds. Coupled with BT one can in theory steal 13+ boons every 20 seconds in a perfect world using these two traits. If one includes a sigil of absorption (wvw) one can also steal a boon on interrupt with resistance being the first boon taken.

In theory on a BT steal IF you have RS and hidden thief and generate an interrupt off both the SOH interrupt and the sneak attack from the weapon one can steal 7 boons at once. Very hard to pull off But prior to RS i did generate several attacks from stealth using staff that generated that double interrupr (soh followed by a knockdown interrupt).

Like so many skills the key to something like RS is not the trait on its own. it becomes ever more effective as it coupled with other sources of theft. Using all of these sources in an s/d build with its own built in theft of boons can see a whole lot of theft in a hurry.

In a PERFECT scenario if one generates that double interrupt using SOH and the daze from stealth on s/d followed by #3 iteration you get 9 boons. The odds of pulling this stunt off are pretty low but it is a lot of boons .

what needs to happen is they need to put an icd on impairing destruction, put an icd on unhindered combatant condition removal and remove/reduce the swiftness it gives (immunity to imobilize is absurd, idk who thought it would be a good idea and swiftness undermines acrobatics and in general the other gm dd traits) ~5 sec on both of them and they need to nerf d/p probably shadow shot.
Then we can talk about buffing kitten, especially the 3 unused traitlines and all other weapon sets. Thief needs more build diversity and having d/p be so dominant is not good and this is largely to the utility it gives but also because it has synergy with broken traits (again impairing destruction).
Lots of utility skills need an update as well, to make them less clunky / actually usable, but none of this maters if d/p remains the way it is now.

I think he needs a boost on his sustains because he gets too much punishment for a single mistake. Usually it goes like this

I evade
I evade
I evade
I fail to evade and I lose 2/3 of my health

So unless Anet wants this class to be balanced around asian reflexes they should do smth about teef’s sustain like boosting his health-gain-regen on evade or smth.

Zilvereen.2091:

I think he needs a boost on his sustains because he gets too much punishment for a single mistake. Usually it goes like this

I evade
I evade
I evade
I fail to evade and I lose 2/3 of my health

So unless Anet wants this class to be balanced around asian reflexes they should do smth about teef’s sustain like boosting his health-gain-regen on evade or smth.

The fun fact, since thief was forced into “asian reflexes” gameplay everyone is crying rivers about thief dodges now lol.

okay guys i just tested rending shade a bit more and its actually really good. Unlike bountiful theft rending shade can actually steal a stack of boons so under the rignt conditions you can steal 25 might from someone i tested this with a friend

Zilvereen.2091:

I think he needs a boost on his sustains because he gets too much punishment for a single mistake. Usually it goes like this

I evade
I evade
I evade
I fail to evade and I lose 2/3 of my health

So unless Anet wants this class to be balanced around asian reflexes they should do smth about teef’s sustain like boosting his health-gain-regen on evade or smth.

Do you run Daredevil? If you do, no complaining. Daredevil’s sustain is absolutely ridiculous for just how few sacrifices (if any depending on basis for comparison) are made. It’s not all reflexes. There are too many instant-cast bombs in the game to play that way. You need to keep track of your enemy’s cooldowns and predict what they’re going to do next and act accordingly.

To learn the thief it first requires learning of all the other professions’ capabilities.

Felwal.9618:

okay guys i just tested rending shade a bit more and its actually really good. Unlike bountiful theft rending shade can actually steal a stack of boons so under the rignt conditions you can steal 25 might from someone i tested this with a friend

Which is weird because other players have reported this as not being the case.

Felwal.9618:

okay guys i just tested rending shade a bit more and its actually really good. Unlike bountiful theft rending shade can actually steal a stack of boons so under the rignt conditions you can steal 25 might from someone i tested this with a friend

I am pretty sure I was not stealing full might stacks with RS. That said it possible the might stripped off by the BT rather than the RS if your experience different so I will try and verify that.

BT also only strips a single boon and not the stack.

Only Larcenous takes full stacks at a time.

DeceiverX.8361:

BT also only strips a single boon and not the stack.

Only Larcenous takes full stacks at a time.

Yes I am talking about RS. As in when I steal and look at the stacks of Might I have from that steal I never saw more then one appear. I was assuming that was the RS steal but it could well have been the BT steal.

I just do not recall ever getting full stacks of might with RS as the poster above did. It might well have happened but expired so fast i never noticed and I am getting ongoing might from the traps as well. I need to watch closer and or record some fights.

It would be nice if some of this could be made to show in the combat logs.