Guild Wars 2

Lil Background: Mained thief since 3-day headstart involved in tpvp also since then, Avid WvW roamer, don’t pve because stacking is boring.
So because I have played thief for almost 3 years now this is the first time I have ever felt cheated in terms of balance. As a thief I have a low health pool, sure it’s low but prior to the most recent trait patch and vigor nerf, I had access to dodge rolls if I wanted to be survivable. Now that vigor is 50% endurance regen and we no longer have feline grace but instead our vigor is 50% increased which 50% of 50% is 25 so if I go into acro line I get 75% endurance regen on vigor this isnt even what the old vigor value was prior to its nerf. Sure I can play signet of agility for 2 extra dodges every 30 seconds, but then I have to give up a break stun which against your new mesmer trait. YEAH the one that gives them instant cast stuns on one of the shortest cooldowns. Experienced this in a tpvp match against 3 mesmers, normally a thieves treat to fight so many mesmers, Wrong they stunlocked me so hard with one skill and once I was out of my 2 stun breaks they would finish me off (shadowstep,infiltrator signet) with the lack of dodge rolls it was nearly impossible to escape 9 stuns from their mantras combined but also they had moa form and their signet of domination I believe which is a 3 second stun in itself. Mesmers also stealth the same if not more than a thief does currently I haven’t looked into what allows them to stealth more often now but it is very noticeable. I am not sure thieves need buffing but I am positive mesmer, necro, guardian all need another look taken at them as they all can at this very moment do a thief’s job better and safer.
Thief also has some of the worst condition removal their only reliable condition removal is Shadow Arts cleanse 1 condi every 3 seconds in stealth which generally means I have to sit in stealth a long time(15 seconds for 5 conditions [Burn,Poison,Bleed,Confusion,Torment]) I dont even cleanse chill cripple immobilize anymore. I have to run withdraw or roll for initiative for those clears. Oh and the clear 1 condition on use of a trick that trait made me laugh for a solid minute when you come to realize no one uses tricks on thieves and it is only 1 condition (Ranger clears 2 on use of a survival skill which they actually use). Sure I can play thief and just back cap on conquest but if I can’ sustain in a teamfight as long as another class who does the same burst damage if not more than myself what is the point of playing it? Currently I have gone to warrior full zerk GS Ax/Sh who at the moment due to the buffs to rush and leap skills can out run my thief, out dps my thief, out tank my thief all at the same time. Thief either needs an overhaul to their survivability and mobility aspects or other classes need to be tuned back down to bring thief back into decent gameplay.

Bountiful theft has always been like that.

HtFde.3856:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

HtFde.3856:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Hello, I’m a Thief and I hate Stealth — Not because it’s OP, but because it is a bother.

1) To require to stealth just to backstab someone is a stupid mechanic. It’s not like your target’s back simply disappears when you’re not in stealth. It should be that when I position myself at the back or at flank, the backstab bonus should trigger — automatically. In addition, all sneak attacks should have this same no-stealth-required mechanic.

2) Stealth ruins DPS for SA builds. To get the maximum benefit from SA, the Thief must stay in stealth for the duration while in the mean time not contributing to the team. Often times, stealth is used in combat for the reason posted at #1. It’s a bother and no one really uses SA for this very reason and if the Thief would want to maintain a high DPS they have to stay away from SA. Shadow Arts shouldn’t have to revolve around stealth, it should instead improve shadowstep skills.

3) Revealed is a bother and it is because of stealth. Not only that reveal denies stealth but it also cuts the effectiveness of many skills that Thief uses for survival. For instance, Hide in Shadows. This skill suppose to heal and protect the Thief. However when revealed, its effectiveness diminishes only because stealth cannot protect the Thief from receiving further damage. It would be more effective if the skill shadowsteps us away just like Heart of Shadow from GW1 instead of stealth. It would serve the same purpose.

I have been complaining about stealth for a long time and I am not a supporter of this mechanic. I do accept however that this is a defense mechanism, albeit a horrible one, but there are times that developer have to reiterate and reboot a profession.

Oh my … another spin doctor. While there is some truth to what you say you neatly leave out:

(a) Extra damage when you do a flank attack (if traited so)
(b) Extra damage when revealed (if traited so)

So there’s nice compensation for being revealed or to just execute one autoattack chain from the side/back .

What’s your point? The extra damage doesn’t eliminate how annoying and bothersome stealth is. Stealth is an unnecessary requirement to gain access to certain ability like Backstab.

Yet another ignorant who thinks that Flanking Strikes and Revealed Training are great traits. sigh

Not great but it’s a nice sugar for when the thief misses …

I could play devil’s advocate and interpret your post as “OK, I want backstab without stealth” but I kinda read it more like “Thief class should be reworked” and that’s a point a I could agree with

Stealth exists in a couple of games but usually it’s more balanced than in GW 2 where they packed just too many goodies that are available at the same time. I much prefer approaches where you can perma stealth but have to “survive” detection checks and where stealth is broken once you engage and cannot be regained until you’re out of combat.

Of course … this would mean a thief would have to be viable when out of stealth for the rest of the fight – a situation that is currently not happening in GW 2.

There are many existing builds that doesn’t require stealth. My issue is that ArenaNet is gating half of our skills behind stealth and other trash traits (i.e. Improvisation).

It would have been better if many SA traits activates on Shadowsteps instead of stealth. A lot of weapon skill #1 would have been viable if for example Sword #1 becomes Tactical Strike after using shadowstep. This way, it removes the reliance on stealth.

Shadow’s Rejuvenation can be remake to trigger a Regen Buff after using shadowstep — ans Resilience of Shadow can easily be a Protection Buff after shadowstep. It’s really annoying that we have to build around stealth to have access to these survival traits. Other non-stealth build could definitely use these.

Those who thinks that stealth is OP have no idea how limiting and annoying it is. Build diversity is lacking because of these stupid design decisions.

I have to disagree. Stealth is way OP with certain builds. There is 1 reason why.

Losing target.

The stealthed player can keep target and apply damage at will. The non-stealthed player must first acquire the target and then perform an attack. The problem here being that the time to restealth along with lag causes the stealther to essentially be untouchable.

Solutions are many. My suggestion is to make both thief stealth and stealth block longer. This means more escape opportunity and more time out of stealth. Pluses and minuses, but at least the enemy has had a chance to hit you.

The word “Thiefs” makes me cringe.

Stealth isn’t OP.
Thief isn’t OP.

6 Points in Shadow Arts is just ridiculously strong but border-line necessary because the rest of the class is relatively bad.

Nub logic:
Top players are God Tier.
Top players use Thief.
Therefore Thief is God Tier.

Swarm nub logic:
If many complain about a profession it means it’s broken/OP.
Many complain about thief.
Therefore thief is broken/OP.

Oh and my favorite:
Teef OP because STEALTHZORS.
When they mention stealth, they automatically win. Everything they say will boil down to how stealth is OP. And it’s OP because it’s stealth. And stealth is OP because it’s stealth. Like how can’t people get that?

What are you trying to accomplish yolo? :/
You know kitten well that they won’t change their minds. And even if they do, a day or a week later someone else will come along and call teef OP or cheese. Such is the way of things… Those that come around a second or third time, are probably just waiting for a “fix”/patch. Those that don’t come back after they vented their anger, are more than likely getting better and in a month or two they won’t even remember what they vented about – or they’re suffering silently while playing.

• Thief is best profession in all game modes.

Not even close. This is an overexaggerated lie. If this claim was true, whole teams comprised of thieves would be commonplace. The meta would be thief. The only thing players would want to play is thief.

But that doesn’t happen. Professional teams will only have a max of 1 thief since more drops the team’s effectiveness. Most PUGs will kick thieves. Thieves have no use in WvW except for small scale stealth bot and roaming (and rallybait). Even then, they still get outshined from time to time. The only time this doesn’t count is when the thief is very skilled and knowledgable of fight mechanics. Even then, they still die.

That is the standard bad players hold thief players up to regardless if that vision is unrealistic. The truth is ~10% of the playerbase is at that skill level. Statistically, 90% of thieves are not tournament material just like 90% of the playerbases from other professions. And therefore, they are not going to be the Gods that smited the players who decided to AFK outside their keep.

Judge popularity and effectiveness by results, not by preference.

• Thief is great/best support.

This is relative. If by support you mean offensive support, then yes. The thief being built for single target damage can take out the backline and they can stealth small havoc groups to take out w/e through a little bit of coordination. However, if you consider venoms as a means of support, thieves all over will point and laugh at you.

Venoms are only worth it if you take full venoms and venomshare. But then that support requires good coordination from your group to get the best results. The thief will also have to make up for the lack of stun breaks and condition clears with positioning and better timing. Not worth risking yourself for support that can easily be negated by blocks.

And that’s basically it. Great support, eh?

• There are tanky thief builds.

But have they killed anything? The reason why you never see a thief take anything other than DPS stats is because there is nothing to compliment the defensive stats. Vitality goes with healing and condition clear since more HP requires better healing to maintain it and keep conditions in check. Things like Protection and retaliation compliment toughness because it further reduces physical damage.

But as stated, thieves do not have enough access to defensive boons and decent healing and defensive traits to warrant stacking vitality and toughness instead of Condition Damage or Power. Not only that, most of the healing traits and abilities suck due to low healing coefficients, Assassin’s Reward for example with a coefficient of .05.

Thief is about evasion, not tanking damage.

• Thief is a melee class and should not have long range capabilities.

There is no such thing as a “melee class” just like there is no such thing as a “ranged class”. Each profession is capable of both in their own way, even if they are not that great at it. It is highly arrogant to assume that because thief is meant to be the quintessential rouge of GW2 that they are supposed to park their kitten on dual daggers and deal with it (like how ranger is a supposed “ranged class”).

Sure. In the meantime:
- Warrior can park their kitten on GS and axes. (because melee)
- Ele can park their kitten on staff. (because caster)
- Mesmer can park their kitten on dual swords. (because duelist lol)
- Necro stuff staff aswell. (because magic lel)
- Engi with their…. whatever they have kits.
- Guardian with their sword and shield. (because tank)
- And ranger can stay on their bearbows. (ohwait)

Let’s just cut down a profession’s options because stereotypes. That’s a great way to keep diversity to a minimum. But this isn’t WoW and this isn’t GW1. Ranger is already broken, braindead class to play because people kept pushing for better ranged combat. Keep that in mind when you decide to classify professions.

TL;DR Part 2

Well that’s all I can pull off the top of my head for now. Before I finish I just want to give you something to ponder.

Imagine the forums as a mode of PvP.
Your stance is your profession.
Your knowledge is your build.
As you go about this mode of PvP, understand that you get more points the more valid, informational and constructive your posts are.
Your k/d ratio is your win/loss ratio when engaging in arguments.
And upon losing an argument where all you did was make excuses and use fallacies up the wazoo, imagine the player who rekt you whispers you and say,
“Git gud or gtho skrubcake. lel”

Just get your facts straight before you post anything okay?

It really is immature what these players do as understandable as it may be. I brought up this issue in a previous topic that also addresses this behavior in a way and how to fix it.

However, with this thread being more specific to the hate against thief, its solution is going to be wholly different. First to address misunderstandings (yay point of the thread \o/).

• Thief is overpowered because of its ability to spam stealth, spike for 10k+ damage and reset at will.

That’s only a couple builds m8. You can’t call an entire profession broken or OP because of a couple of builds. D/x which is the only thing capable of doing all 3 at once. There are 5 other weapon combinations and only 2 are able to stealth without the aid of utilities but all of them do not have the spike damage of d/x. So this blanket generalization of an argument is cherry picking and doesn’t support the original claim at all.

If I were to apply that sort of logic/stupidity to other professions: Warrior, Ele and Engi are OP because they can mightstack and hit for massive damage. Necro is OP because they have a 2nd HP bar in conjunction with the top tier Health Pool and cover players in conditions like cheap icing on a walmart cake. Mesmers are OP because your always outnumbered and the confusion spam makes doing anything about it punishing. Rangers are OP because they can snipe you dead better than anyone else (okay they are not THAT OP. lol reflects). Guards are OP because alot of them won’t die and other times their DPS matches warrior.

• All of this evasion spam, stealth spam and resetting needs to be removed or toned down.

Aaaaaand what is going to replace it? These are the defensive options available to thief. Nerfing them makes them more susceptible to damage since thief does not have access to defensive boons other than regen. Condition clearing is restricted to stealth, shadow return and sword #2 and none of them provide that much condition clear for their costs.

Contrary to popular belief, the thief does not have the defensive options to validate more nerfs to it’s design. It is detrimental to the health of the profession as a whole and goes against its lore and design philosophy to outright remove it all because players want revenge and a free kill.

Sorry, but if someone want to kill them, they need to git gud instead of cri evrytiem. Backstab, stealth spam, evasion spam and it’s ability to reset is here to stay and unless they have a suggestion to change how thieves defends themselves, it is best to just not post at all.

• Thief is cheese mode. (the whole thing)

Every profession has their bit of “cheese” to it, Thief included. However, just because a majority (or all, depending on your skill level) of the players you face are using “cheese” doesn’t mean it is actually “cheese” or they are using “cheese”. It could be that you just aren’t that great. :I

Never leave out possibilities because it threatens your credibility or ego. That’s just petty.

It is better to use that “cheese” instead of trying to get it destroyed. And this is always a good thing because it shows if the problem stems from the build or the player who is using it. Usually, if a person jumps on the build and it performs better than the previous one either the build is confirmed more powerful or the player was on the wrong profession the whole time. If the player still dies on the supposed “cheese”, it means they suck.

And that my friends is the real reason why scrubs don’t play “cheese”.

I don’t see how players are so adamant to prove thief is a God-Tier profession. It might force a player to commit to a fight or (god forbid) think about their opponent’s next move. But everything (and I mean from both sides) considered thief is by no means God-Tier.

Strangely enough, I’ve seen most of the complaints come from the top end of the viability spectrum for the past month now and I can only assume that this is because those players have become complacent within their profession on top of other things i’ll explain in a bit.

This game’s combat is based off of number spam like every other MMO combat. More, higher numbers beats out everything which is why Zerker is the meta for PvE. Given equal skill, if a player can cover their opponents in more conditions than the other player can clear them, they win. If a player spams more CC than the other player can break, they win. If a player can deal out more DPS than the other player can heal/mitigate/avoid, they win.

The only thing that offsets this it the player’s own skill and knowledge of other professions and, in cases of players of equal skill level, the professions themselves.

That is why I can assume that those players I specified earlier are complacent with their professions. They are so used to their professions’ capabilities that when a unique profession comes along and tears them a new one, they come here and and either complain about or go to war with the profession.

And it is easy to spot them, especially for a player with real thief experience. It all boils down to the base of their arguments. Those base arguments basically stating that thief is overpowered because of a single skill and all of their defensive mechanics.

Now if that doesn’t scream terribad then I don’t know what does.

But then again, stealth in of itself is powerful. It adds unpredictability to combat which makes it more difficult to those who can’t improvise information to develop their tactics. BUT THEN AGAIN, there are only so many things you can do while in stealth. And with such a small window to decide what to do next, it essentially turns into drunk chess.

But that’s just it. Instead of improving themselves, they come here and complain because it is easy and does less harm to their reputation. And it is even easier since the community knows that getting thief nerfed further is more likely to happen than nothing at all.

TL;DR Part 1 WARNING: Tough love ahead!

These players will most likely not admit they got killed, but a good majority of the time its the case and they usually have no knowledge, other than dying to backstab.

The truth is, they played PvP. While they played, they let their brain downcore and their situational awareness slip. They got killed by a thief’s backstab while they were rolling their face on the keyboard to pump out rotation after rotation.

After getting reminded that they are not as great as they thought they were, they come to the forums to argue that they, a “player of average or greater skill level”, got 3-shotted by a thief that bypassed their magic proximity alarm, duct taped themselves to their back and hit them for a 5-digit number using a skill that looks so easy to use.

Once someone opposes their claims its time to bring out the ad Populum, white knight accusation, denial and Claiming Experience cards.

Don’t get too excited we will probably get another useless venom or something on a really long cd that sucks except in unique situations…

I want Kodan and Tengu…

:)

Normally I’d say don’t flat compare 1 profession to another but there is some truth to this. Take ele and guardian, the 2 professions that share the lowest health tier with thief. Guardian has heavy armor and strong healing/condition cleansing. Ele has again strong healing and condition cleansing and also mobility (atleast more than guardian by a lot). Even though they have a low health pool to start with, they can work with it pretty well given their traits and skills.

Despite the 7.5k difference in the base health pools between tier 1 and 3 health, thief is suffering the most because they rely heavily on complete avoidance rather than soaking it up and recovering. For example, how many thieves would choose toughness over vitality in their build? Thief is rather squishy by nature, no matter how they build however the base health pool only makes up a small part of this problem.

Don’t pick on thief’s stealth, some other class can stealth too, like rangers and engi, some ranger can even stealth longer than a thief, just read the ranger section.

Stealth is no better than some other defense skills like shield, mirror images or some bunker, just few sec of defense, does thief has shield, mirrors ? no, like any other class, it’s just part of the special skill, every class has one in this game, by using this excuse to nerf thief is totally bias.

Rangers can silently burst you 1500 away, with no casting time, no warning, that’s kind of “stealth”, don’t you think so? That’s why in wow and LOL, they put marks on the target before a long range burst to warn the target, so they can react, not in this game.

I agree with the second post here, thief is unplayable in pvp now, low hp, low defense, low damage, stealth is not thief’s exclusive skill, thief is nerfed to the ground. The best damage burst from this class sometimes is probably equal to an auto attack or less comparing to other class is a joke.

Who cares?
Someone in some other thread has already stated how Balance looks like.

5 nerfs for thief
1 power up for other classes

And they still struggle vs thief.
Now look.
Omfg Thief dodge roll.
Sure, remove it and give it Protection Boon.
Soon they’ll complain about it too but whatever.

I bet 80% of those whiners did roll a thief to feel OP.
But reality did faceroll them with mud on every corner they went.
So they went back/made other class which is tanky.
And look now. They fail vs the same class that they did quit due to easy roflstomp.
So now they ask for some stupid nerfs, because oh hey, they cba to learn how to fight thief class, and even if they wanted to play it, they cba to learn to play it.

Anet really should stop carrying lazy scrubs who only keep whining and whining.

You left one game, tried something new and didn’t like it.

Now you are back to the game you were not satisfied to begin with and praise it?

Sometimes I have a hard time to understand people…

Most ppl want their favorite class buffed and every other class nerfed.

What if Bull’s Charge was a “Teleport?”

Then warriors would be calling for targets when roaming between points and it’d be on every warrior bar, and greatswords would probably be meta, and warriors would potentially replace thieves.

GW2 went with a different approach that pretty much alienates people that simply want to follow the arrow. Each zone tells an overall story and every dynamic event is a part of a larger story. The problem however is that you really have to look for it because you’re not playing through the story, you’re living it. It’s all happening in real time, so you really need to explore, follow NPCs, inspect your surroundings and listen carefully to figure it out. Sometimes you really need to go out of your way to piece together references made by an NPCs idle chatter.

The story is what you make of it. It’s your life. Start living.

Unlike 99% of MMOs, the endgame of GW2 isn’t about what you do after level cap. The endgame is the journey itself, the living world – your character’s life.

This is a classic example of mislead nerfs. You want to nerf d/p stealth spam by indirectly nerfing s/p and p/p rather than addressing the stealth mechanic.

Thieves in the eyes of every other class will always be seen as broken(stealth off walls anyone?) or overpowered simply because Anet designed it entirely on stealth, and not as a tool to just enter or exit combat like most other games do. So much so that they’ve had to design stealth revealers to help with the problem.

If the class was designed with more focused on stealing and evading as their main combat abilities than stealth, I’m sure there wouldn’t be as much complaining. The life of a gw2 thief will always be under the call for nerfs for that mistake in design.

Shockwave.1230:

Thief is fine design-wise, it’s the hardest profession to play at a high level, and there’s always a profession like that. It’s high risk, high reward. If you’re struggling with thief it’s because you’re not managing risk. Watch these thieves if you think the profession is not effective.

Sizer: http://www.twitch.tv/sizer2654/profile/past_broadcasts
Caed: http://www.twitch.tv/narcarsis/profile/past_broadcasts

I will have to disagree with you here. First off, I wouldn’t classify thief as a high risk/reward profession. It is more like a high risk/low reward profession simply because the thief is only good for roaming and a niche or two in small scale battles. It is only when a highly experienced player gets on one that the thief becomes more effective at other game types and even then they are lackluster compared to other professions of the same skill.

Secondly the problem lies within build diversity, not effectiveness. The design philosophy might be sound but it’s construction is far from fine or even tolerable. For example, venoms are horrible by themselves but Venomous Aura (plus other traits) makes up for their crappy utilization. Or Shadowstep being the best stunbreaking utility in the game at the cost of the thief’s other stunbreaks being lackluster or worse. It is this kind of construction that makes thief a poor profession to play with and against.

Thief might be effective but only within a small scope of skills and builds. And even then, you have to be good to get to that level of effectiveness.

It is because of these factors that a complete overhaul is needed.

Skeletor.9360:

I find that most people hate thieves for one and only one reason. A thgeves ability to chain stealths and teleports around the map with no end in sight. This is incredibly frustrating for everyone. Even other thieves.

Given the above I would suggest that the stealth ability force players to either be a specific distance away from an enemy or simply make stealth exit always apply a 3 second cooldown.

I would get rid of all stealth revealing abilities because now its on every stealth exit.

I would get rid of the teleporting abilities all together.

I would fix the trait lines such that power/condi actually had some power related non-selectable traits…take a look they are: serpents touch, lotus posion and expose weakness. 2 of the 3 are condi. They need to do 2 things each one power side one condi side.

The critical strikes line actually deals with critical buff but no ferocity stuff. Again should be both things.

The shadow arts line goes away completely.

Acrobatics goes away too.

Also delete trickary.

Replace the three above lines with:

==
Melee specialization

Disarms, parry, stuns, expose weakness
==
Range specialization

Dust cloud, dodging increase shortbow range, snares
==
Traps

To save a bunch of coding I would re-use some of the casting classes abilities AOE abilities.

Then to replace the teleports etc simply by giving a sprint ability.

Just some ideas of what could be done…

And of course they are terribad etc….if that is all you are going to reply with save it.

I’m sorry, but I cannot disagree with you more.

While I will admit that the stealth and mobility that thieves have can be frustrating to encounter at times, you also have to understand that these things are inherently tied to the thief kit. It’s what sets them apart and allows them to still be viable, despite the current environment they are forced to play in. The teleporting and stealth that you were mentioning? EVERY thief needs these things to stay alive. They are our primary (and I’d even go as far as to say only) source of damage mitigation. You are basically suggesting that Anet nerf the only things that allow us to still be good at all into near nonexistence. You might as well just get rid of the class in that case, since you’d essentially be turning thieves into a squishier, less powerful warrior class with a gimmicky cloak ability. Btw, the teleporting thing? That’s not even strictly a thief ability. Sure we have the most access to those skills, but mesmers and elementalists can teleport too.

What’s more, I am completely against ANY form of nerf to the thief class at this point. We don’t need a nerf. If anything, we could use a slight buff, given the current state of the game. Since day one, people have been b****ing about thieves. “Thieves are OP because of…” or " OMG! THIEVES OP! ARENANET! FIX IT!" And Anet has responded to these complaints with repeated nerfs to the class. At first, some were reasonable (the “Revealed” status for example). But it’s now gotten to the point where we are barely able to hold our own against the other classes, most of which are somehow not deserving of direct nerfs like we were. The thief is not and has never been an easy class to play. We have neither the raw power nor the defensive capabilities of your standard warrior, even when they’re running zerkers. We don’t have the sustained condition damage that necromancers and engineers have, and the addition of more condition removal abilities in an attempt to balance those two classes have only succeeded in making condi-thieves even more mediocre in comparison. Our saving grace is our great burst damage potential. The fact that we can get in, take a target down and get out faster than anyone else. The fact that while we may be significantly squishier than most classes, we have STEALTH and MOBILITY to help us avoid damage altogether.

The last thing we need is yet another nerf…

On the bright side… if everyone left, I would be the best thief in the world!

I’m going to try out revealed training + p/p for absolutely no reason.

My biggest complaint about the Thief class is and always has been that Stealth is not well implemented. In some situations it’s overpowered to the point that it makes Thieves seem like an overpowered class, but most of the time its defensive utility is very poor and completely fails to justify why Thieves have such horrible attrition.

Artaz.3819:

It was broken OP before …

In PvE you could use black powder spam and facetank/autoattack melee mobs of elite or below (or ranged mobs standing right next to them).

In stomping, it was a guaranteed stomp as long as you weren’t range interrupted.

It’s not like ANet took out stealth stomps though (which are arguably worse from a balance perspective).

Black powder is no where near OP.

The problem doesn’t come from pve (which is irrelevant) or stomping (which is more irrelevant the less there are people present). It comes from the blinds the player suffers from trying to facetank thieves in their own field.

This is why I never build melee only, being kited is almost guaranteed. The other player will bring you into their AoE and stay there until you die. And the only person to blame is yourself for not being prepared.

The BP change feels unnecessary.

Anyone who knew anything knew you could still melee the thief from outside the circle , no matter where the thief stood – only bads stood in the circle and kept whiffing.

Yes, it hardcountered 3 out of 8 downstates – thieves do not get access to stability however (which hardcounters 5 out of 8 downstates), and it cost half a standard init bar, so it didn’t feel overwhelming IMO.

Previously, BP could be used strategically as more than just stealth access – now all it’s good for is stealth access. Considering the nerf, the skill should have gained something to compensate – lower Init cost, bigger radius, better damage on the skill, but no, it was simply renders Nigh useless for actually blinding a player.

Alot of the complaints in the last day stemmed from an introduced steal bug which caused it to miss when used with a skill that moved you (HS, LS) – it rendered alot of builds useless, as most builds have 35-50% of their traits dedicated to steal.