Guild Wars 2

Jumper.9482:

Heartseeker – Increased aftercast by 30%.

Cloak and Dagger – Increased cast time by 10%. Decreased aftercast by 33%. Increased damage to the original amount up from 66% to match WvW and PvE.

Do you even know the frame data for these moves (do share)? Tinkering with numeric variables is one thing, completely re-tooling existing animations to make moves more sluggish and therefore less enjoyable to use… would be madness.

And take your proposals for Larcenous Strike – the game is already chugging badly in high-intensity moments, do we really need to add another two If/Then methods into the mix with every single LS?

You may have put seriously heavy hours into this game – but that’s a mere fraction of the time coders and animators spend to learn their craft, let alone hone it in development. Could you even write a simple algorithm for your LS ‘adjustment’?

- What on earth do you have against Scorpion Wire? 45 seconds CD?! That ish better not just work every time (ha!), but it might as well tunnel through walls too. Nobody would ever slot this.

- I’m not against reduced CD on Roll for Initiative, but any such change should be accompanied by a proportional reduction in the Initiative gained (40 seconds – 4 initiative).

- Stop trying to murder Trickery, just stop it. And leave Feline Grace alone too, “Ah – they have something good and useful – fetch the nerf-bat”. Worst list ever

Docherty.8372:

Do you even know the frame data for these moves (do share)? Tinkering with numeric variables is one thing, completely re-tooling existing animations to make moves more sluggish and therefore less enjoyable to use… would be madness.

No, this is simply the right estimated direction that these skills should move. D/D is borderline useless at higher levels of play because of how incredibly long the backstab takes after stealthing. I for one can count on 1 hand the amount of backstabs I’ve been hit with before /D was nerfed and everyone switched to D/P. On the flip side, even though bp+hs takes around a second to stealth and is a huge tell, backstabs are made extremely easier due to nearly 0 time between the heartseeker and backstab. Focus should be put more on actively preventing the Thief from entering stealth (eg. interrupting or dodging CnD) rather than trying to randomly guess and dodge the backstab—try to view the actual backstab as a second opportunity to avoid the backstab. The first being allowing the thief to enter stealth in the first place.

And take your proposals for Larcenous Strike – the game is already chugging badly in high-intensity moments, do we really need to add another two If/Then methods into the mix with every single LS?

You may have put seriously heavy hours into this game – but that’s a mere fraction of the time coders and animators spend to learn their craft, let alone hone it in development. Could you even write a simple algorithm for your LS ‘adjustment’?

I don’t claim to know much or anything about game coding and I’m sure Evan works very hard and is doing a great job. That’s why I made sure to only use suggestions that utilized mechanics already present in other parts of the game.

- What on earth do you have against Scorpion Wire? 45 seconds CD?! That ish better not just work every time (ha!), but it might as well tunnel through walls too. Nobody would ever slot this.

You don’t seem to understand the value of a boonsteal interrupt with priority on stability/aegis. I would even be hesitant to even give it 45 seconds, as I can see every thief running it on every build.

- I’m not against reduced CD on Roll for Initiative, but any such change should be accompanied by a proportional reduction in the Initiative gained (40 seconds – 4 initiative).

Perhaps. Though I still couldn’t imagine people taking this over Shadowstep. Over infiltrator’s maybe but especially not any build running signet cooldowns. Also given the fact this stunbreaks you backwards makes it far less appealing on melee builds than InfSig. Basically the only potential issue I see here would be P/P picking this up and running with it.

- Stop trying to murder Trickery, just stop it. And leave Feline Grace alone too, “Ah – they have something good and useful – fetch the nerf-bat”. Worst list ever

Again, I think you fail to see the value in having a boonsteal-interrupt. Especially one that takes both stability and aegis every time, has 0 cast, and on only a 21 second cooldown. The endurance gains from Acrobat (Specifically used with S/D) is the main cause of what makes this build anti-fun and ridiculed as “skill-less” in the first place. ANET made a mistake not nerfing this rather than other aspects of the S/D build (eg. boonsteal and inf return) to bring up the skill floor to a respectable level, rather than keeping it on the level of warrior.

Thief is fine right now, i don’t like some change you have think to it jumper.

I’m probably the only one here who doesn’t like the suggested change to death blossom … giving it more immediate damage while nerfing the bleed damage to compensate. It could honestly do with a slight damage buff WITHOUT touching the bleeds, they’re hard enough to REALLY make useful as it is anyway, lets not make it a completely worthless choice for what few reliable to semi reliable condi options there are for thief.

Also putting this inb4 “condi thief is not meta, that’s not good for tpvp, blahblahblah”

If that’s really what might come out of trying to defend condi options for thief then someone laughing / trolling saying d/d sucks for condi would really only be supporting what I’m saying. kitten’s barely viable as it is, don’t push to make it worse in that aspect please, there’s a very solid pve stability behind d/d’s deathblossom which carries that strength over to spvp and wvw as well, and really … all I can honestly suggest … without ruining these strengths (omg an actual buff)

• Increase Death Blossom’s immediate damage between 5-15% – any more would be IMBA compared to SB #2-2 damage. Because where Cluster Bomb has lower bleed duration, it does more immediate damage (which honestly … that’s really a good option for thieves to have on a ranged weapon … and I think it is undervalued). DB likely does less because it’s an evasive attack but applies long bleeds though it’s awkward / difficult to use effectively. This, in my opinion, would balance out if …

• Evade frames were buffed to 1/2 a second so that it’s consistent with Evasive Shot and Flanking Strike. Sure Evasive shot isn’t much of an arguing point but if you combined evasion & damage on a weapon you can kite with (shortbow), that would be spammable OP. But compared to Flanking Strike which chains into Larcenous Strike, both of which are good damage and then utility with reliable evade from FS, Death Blossom naturally falls off due to very low front load damage & unreliability in evasion to boot. What good is “evading” if you’re being CC’d out of it / dealing less / no damage more often than is good for the weaponset? On top of the fact you have to generally stack bleeds with consecutive DB’s which just gives more room for RNG unreliability.

I know people USUALLY think of condi thief as bad … but I would like to vouch that if you want to make certain utilities like caltrops & dodge caltrops as well as other trait buffs for your team actually useful & deal decent damage as condi thief it requires a hell of a lot of finesse and some of these suggested changes I’ve read in jump.doc would simply gut / destroy what I’ve found to be a pretty reliable playstyle as condi built around SB & D/D without giving it anything to really recompense for … it just pushes thieves (from my perspective) even more into a glass cannon or bust scenario and considering how hard it is to effectively play condi with what’s available already … I’d likely just quit with a change like that, it would ruin everything it has entirely.

TL;DR
Condi thief options need love not negligence /end rant.

Jumper.9482:

Pistol Whip – Increased damage by 15%. Increased initiative cost by 1 to 6 from 5. This ability now dazes for half duration when hitting from the front and stuns when hitting from the side or behind the foe.

Pistol Whip already got a rather massive 3/4s cast time before the stun. It’s hardly a good “interrupt” or meant as one. The stun duration is supposed to be 1/2s which is rather short. Transforming it into a half duration daze is hardly worth mentioning.

If I wanted to improve Pistol Whip risk:reward ratio I’d say, increase the cast time to 1s (or even 1.5s !) and stun duration to 3/4s. Maybe reduce the range on the stun part. Basically, making it more telegraphed but more punishing if it lands. The problem is, not the skill itself, but the rest. The problem is we got instant cast shadowsteps that mean no matter how difficult to setup you make the skill, you just have to press the right key at the right time to make it land. And worse is, one of those keys is F1 so you don’t even have to get an utility for it.

If it weren’t a special rule, I’d solve that making Pistol Whip the only skill that gets interrupts if you shadowstep during cast/channeling.

Can really see what you’re trying to do. Hope somebody with some kind of voice actually takes this in to consideration.

If high level players are actually used, it’s potentially a great way to fast track the development of the game. Obviously not full proof, but I think it’s a million miles better than the current state of PvP balancing,

Props Jumper!

Jesiah.2457:

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Page 3.

Although I’m not actively suggesting buffs specifically aimed at Condiblossom, it is a novelty build I would eventually like to see made playable in years to come, only after Thief has more than its current 1 (D/P Trick) build.
After all, excluding the BWEs, it was the first build I played that got me into Thief in the first place.

But, just off the top of my head, maybe ANET could throw in something like

New Trait. Deadly Arts (Master): Malicious Daggers – 50% chance to inflict torment with critical strikes from dagger attacks. 2 stacks for 3 seconds. 5 second ICD.

Actually, thinking it over that sounds pretty good. Also, not sure why I didn’t include this:
All “Inflict X on hit or critical strike” traits/sigils/effects from all professions now instead give a visible buff that applies the effect on the player’s next attack. This is lost upon being blocked/evaded/etc.

Rolyate.6753:

If high level players are actually used, it’s potentially a great way to fast track the development of the game. Obviously not full proof, but I think it’s a million miles better than the current state of PvP balancing,

Props Jumper!

Even with the Countless suggestions made (pun intended) over the last year, I have yet to see any feedback take any effect unfortunately.
Even when Necromancers were first overbuffed to the point they killed anyone in one fear, certain devs (you know who you are) openly kept telling us “nah, its fine, l2p” to many of us [players like xeph, teldo, ostrich, caed, etc], even when we had necro-main players like symbolic speak out against that madness. That was probably the worst month of GW2 history. The equivalent to the first time Riot released a champion (Xin Zhao) without any player input due to the Test Realm being down that month. (PS: Xin Zhao used to 3-shot anyone once he hit level 2 and solo teams of 5 with ease)

Teef = Female dog in Dutch.

Jumper.9482:

But, just off the top of my head, maybe ANET could throw in something like

New Trait. Deadly Arts (Master): Malicious Daggers – 50% chance to inflict torment with critical strikes from dagger attacks. 2 stacks for 3 seconds. 5 second ICD.

I like it. It might also lead to some more rabid P/D builds vs the generic carrion or dire.

The problem though, is that there still needs to be a new grandmaster trait. Right now, I can’t think of any reason to go 30 points into DA on any weaponset with the possible exception of a venomshare.

Jumper.9482:

Jesiah.2457:

snip

Page 3.

Although I’m not actively suggesting buffs specifically aimed at Condiblossom, it is a novelty build I would eventually like to see made playable in years to come, only after Thief has more than its current 1 (D/P Trick) build.
After all, excluding the BWEs, it was the first build I played that got me into Thief in the first place.

“Only after”

“novelty”

Despite the fact that you like to say that DB got you in to theives, you are treating a balance thread like a pre-tourney stat comparison. You don’t see them as real builds, and they should get attention after some more “real builds” are bumped up. That’s not a healthy way to look at balance.

Again, this isn’t build diversity. This is shortsighted meta-reactive balancing. Deathblossom bleed builds are no more or less novelty than D/P. Both have a single primary trick which the weaponset wasn’t designed around on purpose, but has been put to use by a creative player base. Both are supported by ancillary skills of varying utility.

The difference is that D/P actually has good traits and the way stats/cooldowns are handled in this game makes it mechanically better. If white damage were lower, or there weren’t quite as many condition removal skills you’d be singing a different tune. It isn’t a superior build by design, just by coincidence.

This is a larger issue than just thief builds, but across the game. There are a lot of “designed builds” and just as many “discovered builds” and it’s in anet’s best interest to work toward parity for all of the above in order to provide players of all classes with the best possible suite of options.

In practical discussion about what to run for the next match, terms like “novelty” and “tier” are appropriate. You’re working with the tools available for a specific goal.

When you’re talking about how to create parity so that the toolbox is bigger, these terms should be thrown out the window.

I would give a slight cd to each skill so you can no longer spam skills such as heartseeker, flanking strike or disabling shot one after another. Give slight buffs to certain utilities so that there will be more diversity.