Guild Wars 2

Labjax.2465:

Enenion.8127:

If you want me to be honest, I would tell ANet to open their eyes and honestly make Skill and Trait balance a priority across all game modes, because right now it’s pretty clear that it is not and the game does suffer because of it.

Sorry for the long post.

I understand your frustration and I never played GW1, so I don’t know how largely that differed, but I do want to say: They are taking competitive PvP very seriously in this game.

If their system was set up to separate PvE and PvP skills completely, then they could try new skills in PvE and then consider porting them over to PvP, but I’m not sure their system has that kind of flexibility.

And if it doesn’t, then every new skill and every new trait means more balancing for the competitive PvP scene. Overpowered builds crop up or new skills get watered out of fear of imbalancing the game and end up useless/unused.

I do agree with you that the trait system could use some work and it would be awesome to see new cool skills, but I don’t think it’s as simple as it would seem, unfortunately. :/

They can split skills between PvE and PvP, it’s been done in the past and is still present with Confusion dealing more damage in PvE than in PvP. However, they’ve moved away from splitting skills between game modes with the reasoning that it would “confuse players”. That, to me, seems the wrong decision as I see a split as the only logical way to balance more than one game mode.

And honestly the entire game, including the PvP scene, could use more balancing. As I mentioned in my long post, the current rate of balance patches is too slow to allow for shifts in the meta that keep the game interesting. The game is stagnating, with people running the same builds for multiple months at a time. After the coming balance patch, people will be running the same builds, with minor changes most likely. That is not enough to keep the game fresh in the long term, and ANet needs to hear this.

If you ask me, the single worst aspect of ANet’s management of GW2 has been how they handle Skills and Traits. Skills and Traits are literally the only aspect of GW2 that affect all game modes. Regardless of what you play, you should be excited to hear about balance changes and skill changes because they affect how all players in GW2 play. It affects new and old players and it is the one thing that can breathe fresh life into a game.

In light of that I find it completely baffling how we have only gotten 9 new Skills and 40 new Traits in TWO YEARS. And most of the new skills and traits introduced are just awful and don’t even see competitive play. We get one balance patch every 6 or so months, that only focuses on PvP and makes minor changes that don’t majorly change the meta. That is simply NOT ENOUGH updates for what should be one of THE core elements of the game. I hate to bring up this comparison, but look at GW1. Two years after launch they had introduced hundreds of new skills, new runes, heck even new classes. GW2 was promised as an MMO revolution, but the one aspect of the game where ANet have truly failed to innovate its Skill and Trait Balance.

We should be getting balance patches every 3 months tops. We should have new weapons or different existing weapons unlocked on existing classes by now. We should have entire new trait lines, or at the very least new Master and Adept traits by now. But we don’t have any of that. Instead, after TWO YEARS of balance patches there are still entire skill types that feel worthless (Most Thief Traps and Tricks for instance). There are still traits that were in the game AT LAUNCH that no sane person would want to pick up (Hard to Catch anyone?). This is frankly UNACCEPTABLE.

And for the love of The Six, can we please get splits between PvE and PvP skills? GW1 had a PvE/PvP skill split and in that game PvE was set up as a tutorial for PvP. The game types are too different to be reconciled by one set of skills. It doesn’t matter that it might be “confusing to new players” or “people might not be able to test build in sPvP any more”. They’ve already made sPvP stats different from PvE stats with the introduction of Ascended gear, and the game modes are too different. You don’t spend a PvP match with 5 guys wailing on one opponent who can insta-down them and has 10 times their health, but dungeons are balanced around sPvP. You don’t spend an sPvP match in a 30v30 slugfest either, but WvW balance still hinges on sPvP.

And the most frustrating part is I can’t figure out why they won’t introduce new skills. Nowhere is it written in stone that new skills must come from an expansion pack. They could have been releasing new skills through the Living Story, by writing them into the events that have been occurring. For instance Nochtli in Dry Top could have taught us new ways to handle our existing weapons, unlocking new weapons for different classes. They could have had the centaurs in Dry top teach us how to use Whips as a new weapon type. We could have learned new traits from interactions with Braham, Marjory, etc. But we have gotten nothing of the sort.

It’s really disheartening as a fan because I want GW2 to be the best game it can be, so it saddens me to see ANet neglecting what should be the very core of their game. If you want me to be honest, I would tell ANet to open their eyes and honestly make Skill and Trait balance a priority across all game modes, because right now it’s pretty clear that it is not and the game does suffer because of it.

Sorry for the long post.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

• As you are probably aware, we are adding Golem Mastery in the same update. This provides a new, viable option for countering a golem rush.

You know what piece of siege has a low-cooldown ability that negates projectiles? Golems.

This is useless for stopping a golem rush when a group of golems can keep their projectile bubbles up 24/7.

Jocksy.3415:

Some classes have better ways than others to avoid stomps (like Ele can avoid pretty much all in heavy fights, compared to engie, that really do not have much to avoid one). I feel it would penalise some classes too much over others, though I understand the point of feeling that your defeat wasn’t vain.

It’s true that the downed state for some classes is just better than others, but that should be an argument for revamping the downed abilities for those classes rather than the system overall.

merkator.9206:

Enenion.8127:

I think rallying is fine, but stomping should be much more permanent. If you’re fighting a larger force, whether it be 2v3 or 20v30, if you can’t wipe all the enemy they can pick their guys right back up and continue as normal. Once you’re truly defeated you should have to waypoint out. This puts much more emphasis on saving someone while they are downed and can help thin out the zergs as they can be affected by attrition. By killing a few members at a time you’d eventually be able to wipe a zerg, but that’s just not possible when they can just res the 2-3 people you killed.

No offense, but that is idiotic. Next time you are in a fight where you are stomped but your side wins, think about how fun it would be to WP and take another 5 minutes to solo run back to the group of people you were fighting with.

It might not be fun for you to run back, but it’s also not fun for the people who lost the fight to know that their actions had absolutely no impact on your group. Defeat should matter during a fight and it can’t as long as players can undo all your hard work by pressing F once the battle is over.

Sure, you may kill half of a group but as long as the other half survives the battle was meaningless. The living half can bring the other half back and when you respawn you’ll be facing the entire group again, like the fight had never happened. I’d much rather have to walk back to the action knowing the enemy zerg felt those losses we gave them.

bobomb.5209:

Zero Day.2594:

[Thief ]

• Hard to Catch [Trait] – Bad design.
• Back Fighting [Trait] – ?

Could you possibly explain why Hard to Catch is bad design? And do you know what back fighting is? I assume that you don’t since you used a question mark for it’s explanation as to why it’s worthless.

Hard to Catch has a slew of design issues that need to be addressed.

For one, it is a random teleport. Odds are you’ll be teleported into more danger than you were in before. It can teleport you into AoE, out of Shadow Refuge, in the exact same spot you were before, etc. When you die in only a few hits you can’t afford this level of randomness.

Secondly, it triggers through Stability. Meaning even if you are not cced you still teleport randomly. This can cause you to miss stomps you would otherwise have pulled off and actually buffs enemy CC as it would not have affected you otherwise.

Third, it does nothing against the actual CC effect. If you’re hit by a 3 second stun you’ll still be stunned for 3 seconds, you’ll just move away to some random location where someone can still easily hit you. I’d rather bring an actual stun breaker that can remove the stun for me.

Fourth, it has no way to indicate it’s internal cooldown. If I have a trait that can control my positioning, I need to know exactly when it is up in order to use it to my advantage. If I need to guess if it’s going to work or not the split second before I get stunned I’m just going to bring a regular stun breaker.

I think rallying is fine, but stomping should be much more permanent. If you’re fighting a larger force, whether it be 2v3 or 20v30, if you can’t wipe all the enemy they can pick their guys right back up and continue as normal. Once you’re truly defeated you should have to waypoint out. This puts much more emphasis on saving someone while they are downed and can help thin out the zergs as they can be affected by attrition. By killing a few members at a time you’d eventually be able to wipe a zerg, but that’s just not possible when they can just res the 2-3 people you killed.

Can we get the noted for Thief up as well? They are currently missing.

Arrow.4619:

Zero Day.2594:

Enenion.8127:

That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Hard to Catch triggers on CC and Tow Line is a form of self-CCs. Now try it with Stability, which will cancel the effect of Tow Line but still trigger Hard to Catch because you targeted yourself with CC.

The fact that you can trigger an anti-stun trait yourself just goes to show exactly how bad they are.

Try with stability he says….

LOL

Well of course it will work perfectly with stability! What a brilliant idea! Now which skill was it that gave thieves stability . . . oh yeah . . . Dagger Storm! Err . . . .

You’re missing the point. With Stability Tow Line does not work AT ALL. Tow Line is a pull, which is cancelled out by Stability. That’s right, buffing yourself makes the weapon skill not work. That’s how awful a skill Tow Line is.

But the cherry on top is that Hard to Catch will still trigger, even through Stability. Hard to Catch doesn’t care whether or not you were actually pulled only that something tried to pull you. So it is entirely possible to put Hard to Catch on cooldown by yourself when you are in no danger whatsoever. And both of these skills/traits have had the same functionality since launch.

That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Hard to Catch triggers on CC and Tow Line is a form of self-CCs. Now try it with Stability, which will cancel the effect of Tow Line but still trigger Hard to Catch because you targeted yourself with CC.

The fact that you can trigger an anti-stun trait yourself just goes to show exactly how bad they are.

Each day we don’t get a reply to this thread makes me more concerned. Even a simple, “We realize this is a problem with our intended change and are looking into a solution” would be nice at this point.

I run 10/0/10/20/30 and do quite well roaming in WvW. Damage isn’t the greatest. You won’t 1 hit anyone unless they are pure glass, but you can still get a reasonable burst. If you can get someone down low enough that they use their heal and interrupt it with Sleight of Hand (most heals are well telegraphed) that usually throws them off balance and you can burst down their remaining HP before they know what’s up. It can also work decently in a group setting since you get so many dodges, but condition bombs will wreck you because Acrobatics doesn’t have a lot of reliable condition removal.

Ichishi.9613:

Sorry, but I think using 5+2 to get into stealth is much harder than pressing a single button at right time.

Having to pay attention to your surroundings and actually watch your opponent is harder than pressing 5+2 without a care in the world for what anyone else is doing, even if less buttons are involved.

Impact.2780:

Again, it would significantly nerf a deceptive style of play.

Giving the ability to back stab… the proposed change would still have it grant stealth…
Initiative return on stealth… again, the proposed change would still have it grant stealth…
Traited condition removal on stealth… again, the proposed change would still have it grant stealth… And in any event, all classes have access to reliable condition removal (i.e doesn’t only remove specified conditions, not activated automatically at a certain health threshold, not the only such source with a long cool down). Condition removal by stealth already stops the thief from attacking for (n-1)*3secs where n is the number of conditions that need to be removed.

The point of the change isn’t to remove Stealth from D/P. Stealth is an integral part of the thief class and D/P especially, which relies on Backstab for damage, so removing stealth is out of the question. The change aims to make it a bit harder for the thief to get Stealth in the first place, since there are a couple more counters to a projectile than to someone attacking the air inside a field. A deceptive style of play is still very much possible even with the proposed requirement to hit something.

sinject.4607:

if you’re telling me that d/p thieves should not be able to access their only survival mechanic with a semi-reliable method (still interruptible, pull-able, knockback-able, and you can stand in the field to prevent stealth stacking) then you really just have no argument to make.

and the reality is there is no fair argument to make against d/p stealth.

it’s not broken. and it’s as simple as that.

there’s a reason why thief isn’t a s-tier (too stronk-tier) profession in spvp like warriors, necros, engies, or even rangers are.

The only reason thief isn’t s-tier for spvp is because you can’t contest a point while stealthed.

You make it sound like hitting an enemy with a ranged skill is such a hard thing to do. We’re not talking about charging a a Kill Shot here. Good thieves can already land the majority of their C&Ds, a ranged skill should be even easier to hit with. It just requires a little more skill than pressing 5 then 2 regardless of surroundings or what enemies are doing.

I feel like they added the self-cc effect to tow line so that it couldn’t be spammed, but in doing so they made the skill useless because by the time your self-cc has worn off the enemy has already swum out of range again. They need to at least make it CC both parties to make it even vaguely useful.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I see this all the time as a thief in WvW, from enemy thieves I’m fighting. It really is annoying, and really the only way I could see to fix it would be to either change the field itself, thus nullifying stealth off the D/P set itself, or make it so it doesn’t set down a field on you, but on the opponent’s position when the attack connects (which would be preferred, since either way the enemy will be blinded).

Read the suggestion. The proposal is to change the Smoke Field to a Dark Field (no more Stealth through Hearseeker) BUT to add Stealth as an effect of the projectile. That means the set can still Stealth if the projectile hits, but now there is more an enemy can do to stop the thief from stealthing, because if the projectile misses (due to Blind/Block/Evade) the thief does not get Stealth. This change also buffs P/P and S/P since they couldn’t get Stealth through the Heartseeker Combo.

Impact.2780:

As for the ease of entering stealth… That sounds like just another case of “make it harder because it’s a thief”. I’ve seen mesmers stealth more than thieves, and theirs is longer duration at the press of a single button. Guardians gaining permanent protection with an auto attack – very easy in a team fight? Able to be a resilient berserker by having every utility skill healing for 2k+? Warrior’s dodge 2-3k with a minor trait while Mug can’t crit and is an adept trait on a 21-32 second cool down? Other classes completely negating damage at the press of a button, and chaining that invulnerability? Blocking? But thief should not be able to use 9 initiative (75% of their global skill cool down) to stealth for 3 seconds at any time they choose, provided they have that 9 initiative to spend? Let’s not go there.

When stealth can give you so many things, like extra initiative, curing conditions, the ability to backstab, etc, above it’s already huge benefit of dropping target there needs to be more options for enemies to deal with Stealth. It should not be that easy to enter Stealth on a whim. Certain defensive options for other classes are overpowered, but that’s a different matter. This change may make it slightly harder for a D/P thief to enter stealth, but it compensates by reducing the initiative cost of the stealth down to 6 since you’re only using one skill to stealth and it buffs P/P and S/P.

sinject.4607:

d/p stealth has long been the excuse of terrible player after terrible player for why they get rolled by d/p thieves but the reality is counter-play is there and it doesn’t take much to do it. there’s no validity to anyone whining about it because all it means is that they aren’t taking the time to learn this counter-play.

additionally, this change would only make d/p insanely worse and barely help (if at all) s/p and p/p out. s/p already does well without stealth, as sword mainhand sets tend to do, but p/p is just a useless weaponset for wvw/pvp and this wont change that.

The counter play that currently exists is not sufficient. Black Powder lasts 4 seconds, in order to stop a thief from stealthing you need to have at least a 3 second stun ready to go during the 1/2 second before the thief triggers Heartseeker. Plus you need to cleanse the blind from the shot itself. Having to use 2 or more skills in 1/2 a second to negate one enemy action is not good enough when even if you succeed the thief can repeat the combo as soon as the stun ends. The combo is so easy to pull off, in most situations it’s pointless to even try to stop the stealth. Even in a fight between two D/P thieves they won’t try to stop the other from stealthing because it takes more initiative to use Headshot 3 times than it does to stealth after they do.

hihey.1075:

List of things that counter D/P thieves in a 1v1:
-Hammer Warriors
-Other D/P thieves, and S/P is a good match too
-Bomb-Nade Engineers
-D/D Eles
-Meditation Guardians

Black Powder lasts 4 seconds. In order to stop a thief from stealthing you need to hit the thief with a 3 second stun (3 Headshots, which cost more initiative than the stealth combo itself) in the 0.5 second between when Black Powder ends and Heartseeker begins. To top it off you need to cleanse the Blind first or your stun will miss anyway. So yes, it is possible to stop a thief from using Hearseeker after Black Powder but it requires you to use 2 skills and close the possible gap between you in the space of half a second. This is ridiculously skewed in favor of the thief, since even if you stop the Hearseeker he will have enough initiative to do the combo again in a few seconds, while your stun will be on cooldown.

Given all the benefits that Stealth can give thieves, access to Backstab, condition removal, extra initiative, great health regeneration, etc, it should not be this easy to access stealth without using a Utility skill. There should be extra conditions tied to stealth on weapon skills, and having to hit an enemy to get it has multiple precendents already.

Impact.2780:

This change would also force thieves to burn a stealth granting utility skill – which have 50-60 secs cool down – in order to sneak up on an target. That being said, I think blinding powder has a way too long cool down anyway.

You’d still be able to get stealth in exactly the same way using Smoke Screen, which is on a 30s cooldown (less if traited). The only reason thieves don’t use that is precisely because D/P does that for them with less cooldown. D/P makes getting stealth ridiculously easy and it needs more conditions attached to it.

skyz.7321:

Ini cost would have to be increased, as well as having a cast time relative to the powder+HS combo.

He also suggested increasing the cast time to make it similar to the cast time for C&D. There is no need to increase the initiative cost though because they are increasing the chance of the thief not stealthing.

naphack.9346:

the difference between then and now is, that now the thief has to spend 3 more initiative to gain stealth.

I would take that any day for the possibility of more counterplay. Black Powder → Heartseeker is way too easy to pull off for the reward it gives. It’s only counter at the moment is for the enemy to have a 3 second stun ready to use in the 0.5 seconds between the two skills, and that is after using a skill to clear the blind from the shot itself. And even if you manage to land that the thief can just do it again a few seconds later. This change would make it much more fun to fight against a D/P thief as it gives a realistic opportunity for the enemy to prevent the thief from stealthing in the first place. At the same time, if there are more ways to stop the thief from entering stealth the thief deserves a few extra initiative points for the added risk.

naphack.9346:

So, how does a minion master/ranger/whatev stop the thief from stealthing?
It’s hard enough to keep a thief from using cloak and dagger on pets right now. A ranged CnD without cooldown just asks to be exploited.
A CnD thief always has to get back into melee range, so you can predict his positioning. The only drawback of the bp thief would be having to stay within 900 range of any ai controlled entity to re-stealth safely.
Also against multiple players: Do you seriously suggest a whole group of people performing a simultaneous dodge, because some smoke field happened to appear on the ground?
Personally, I don’t see much problem with D/P right now. There should be some more skills, which apply revealed, tho, because to me, last refuge is far more deadly than any cc or damage source, an opponent possesses. Admittedly, my thief lives on the edge, which is partly responsible for last refuge getting into my way so often.
If D/P really is such a big issue, I’d agree with the proposition to make players unable to hit opponents with HS and still getting stealth, although, it would ruin some of my usual dungeon rotations.

A minion master, ranger, or mesmer would have the exact same options to stop a D/P thief from stealthing than they do now, interrupt them while the skill is going off, plus any form of Blind/Block/Reflect would cause the shot to miss and therefore not stealth the thief. This change increases the options others have to prevent the stealth and increases the thief’s burden to time the skill correctly for the stealth.

The fact that the skill has no cooldown is irrelevant as it cannot be spammed to maintain permanent stealth. If you use it while in stealth the damage of the shot will reveal you, so you won’t get any benefit from the stealth the shot would give you.

The change is not meant to change the overall playstyle of D/P but to increase the effectiveness of P/P and S/P, both of which could use better access to stealth. D/P would be pretty much unchanged by this proposal, only there would be more counterplay added to stop the thief from stealthing in the first place.

Ichishi.9613:

leave black powder alone already. It is already fine (albeit was once nerfed with increased cost)
The is NO perma stealth that involves solely black powder and heartseeker ever since the nerf.
NOONE and i will repeat myself NOONE will bother redesigning a skill that works, is usable and does not involve any of the mentioned “opness”. Except people on forums

Black Powder is only fine if you combine it with dagger for the stealth combo. Without that it’s just a blind field that is so small you can actually hit someone inside it in melee without being blinded by it. In PvP, when not in D/P, Blinding Powder serves one purpose only and that is securing a stomp against Rangers/Warriors/Guardians/Necros. That is not my definition of fine.

This change aims to make Blinding Powder a useful skill in both P/P and S/P and it does that by giving the sets access to stealth. This would give P/P the boost to survivability it requires to become a competitive set and boost the control options for S/P by giving it access to Tactical Strike. Furthermore this change also keeps the playtyle of D/P intact as it leaves the thief an option to stealth for those backstabs. It’s a great change IMO.

Cygnus.6903:

I don’t like this idea, because it seems OP to me.

A ranged skill with no cooldown that can provide you stealth? It’s like Cloak and Dagger without the problem of needing to be close to your target. Stealth needs to have strong setbacks, like C&D has.

I feel this is close to a solution, and definitely agree P/P needs help.

While it is a ranged skill that gives stealth, you can’t use it to stack stealth. If you use it again before the stealth expires you’ll deal direct damage and be revealed instead of stealthed. I suppose if you timed it just right you could shoot the shot just as stealth expired so the projectile would hit after stealth ends and you’d be stealthed again but even in that case the field is dropped first so the enemy knows the shot is coming.

I would really really like clarification from the devs about this. Celestial armor is the most time-consuming set to get. If you’re going to get less crit damage it may just not be worth taking over a combination of 2 other crit-damage focused sets like Cavalier and Valkyrie. or Cavalier and Berserkers.

Watching the livestream today it was mentioned that Crit Damage is being replaced with a new stat called Ferocity. Ferocity will work as a fixed number rather than a percentage, which will allow them to normalize the Crit Damage done by various pieces of gear. Further, it was mentioned that the given amount of Ferocity will be equivalent to the other stats of the weapon (the example given was +90 Power, +67 Precision, + 67 Ferocity). This second point is the key to the discussion because it means Celestial gear scaling with the new system is terrible.

Take for example an Ascended Dagger and say for instance they decide to make 15 Ferocity equivalent to 1% Crit Damage.

• If you take Zojja’s Razor (Berserker stats) you get +67 Ferocity. This gives you 4% Crit Damage, with 7 remaining.
• If you take Wupwup’s Razor (Celestial stats) you get +42 Ferocity. This gives you 2% Crit Damage, with 12 remaining.
• This is an overall nerf since before the change both Berserker and Celestial weapons gave 5% Crit damage, but Celestial Crit Damage dropped by much more than Berserker.

No matter what coefficient they chose for the conversion between Ferocity and Crit Damage, Celestial gear will get less Crit damage because it’s stats are spread more evenly. However, people took Celestial gear precisely because the Crit Damage scaling was so good. Is it ok to lower the Crit Damage across the board for Celestial gear, given that it takes so much longer to make than other stat gear already? Are there plans to offer a gear change to those who have crafted Celestial Gear already?

The only other thing I could think of was that the possibility of making gear where Ferocity was the primary stat. If that is done to Celestial Gear and it ends up having more Ferocity than other stats it would remain in roughly the same place as it is now when compared to Berserker stats. What do you guys think?

I actually really like this idea for a couple of reasons. It gives stealth access to sets that are not D/P and the utility of lifesteal combos would help P/P as well since each shot from the pistol stealth attack is a guaranteed combo finisher.

The best part of this change would be that even if you chain stealth on a stationary enemy it can’t be permanent because if the shot deals damage while the previous stealth is going on you’ll be revealed instead.

Would you still make the Dark field apply Blind on contact?

The major problem with traps I think is that they have a chance of being dead weight on your bar. If you place the trap and the enemy avoids it, that skill is doing nothing for you and you just wasted a utility slot that could have been filled with Shadowstep, Infiltrator’s Signet or any other ability that is useful 100% of the time.

The active ability of traps needs to be good enough to justify the risk of it not activating at all, but in most cases it is not. Ambush trap is probably the only trap with a unique enough effect to justify bringing it, the other traps just aren’t worth it.

The alternative is to do what they did with Shadow Trap. Give all traps a skill that can be activated regardless of whether or not the trap is triggered. That way traps will always be useful, regardless of whether your opponent triggers them or not. The triggered ability should still be more powerful than the non-triggered one so that you want an enemy to trigger the trap but it’s not so disastrous when he or she does not.

Aza.2105:

So as you can see, characters in pvp are just as tanky as their pve counter parts. In fact its not much different. But there is a gigantic disparity between the max crit damage achieved in pve and pvp.

There’s also food in PvE which boosts the disparity even more. Some types of food are just ridiculously powerful. I mean +40% condition duration? You’d never see something like that in sPvP and it’s one of the major reasons condition builds are so strong in WvW.

Spicyhash.7605:

My main problem with initiative is that there are so many traits that either increase the regeneration or just straight up give you initiative. With these traits

Quick pockets, quick recovery, kleptomaniac, preparedness, initial strike, infiltrators signet, hastened replenishment, infusion of shadow, patience, opportunist, and signet use all recover/grant/hasten regeneration of initiative. The worst part is that a lot of these can be used together with each other. These traits directly reduce the artificial cooldown that initiative is supposed to provide, making it so backstabs can be chained within at the LEAST 3 seconds of each other. I think revealed time and this initiative thing are the biggest problems with thief right now.

Changing Initiative recharge isn’t going to change a thief being able to do Backstabs consecutively, the Initiative pool is high enough to allow for that on it’s own. If you start with 12 Initiative, C&D is 6, Backstab is free but gives you 3 seconds of revealed. Even with the base recharge of 1 Initiative per second after 2 C&Ds you’ve regained enough for a 3rd one, giving you 3 possible back-to-back Backstabs. The D/P combo costs 9 so you need at least one trait to do it twice in a row with no downtime, the one that increases your cap to 15 would do the trick. Most people don’t survive past number 2, but even if they did one utility or heal skill can keep the spree going. Initiative recharge is not what’s allowing thieves to use Backstab multiple times in a row.

I think the problem with Thief’s stealth is that even if you hit them while they are stealthed there is no feedback that you did. Even if you hit a stealthed thief, you don’t know you did unless you are using certain very specific skill types. That is what makes fighting a stealthed enemy so boring if you ask me. Even if you guess the enemy’s location perfectly there is no indication you are guessing correctly until they pop out of stealth because they are downed and can’t stealth again. If you look at something like the TF2 spy, they are completely invisible as well but if you shoot one you’ll still see blood and have a general idea where the spy is.

I think hitting a stealthed thief with any skill that deals direct damage should let you see the damage numbers for the skill that hit. This is not revealing the thief, as it would be unfair to allow enemies to deny a thief the chance to use his/her stealth skills so easily, just showing numbers to give an enemy a general idea of the thief’s location.

You already have certain skill types that show where a stealthed enemy is, Traps, Marks and Chain Attacks, I’m saying extend that to more skills that deal direct damage. This should help dispel the idea that thieves take no damage while in stealth and make heavy AoE more of a counter to stealth as you at least have a general idea of where the thief is while they are in stealth. You’d still be unable to directly target the thief, and the thief would still be able to use their stealth skills on you but it would make fighting someone in stealth a lot more fun IMO.

Altering the length of Revealed is unfair to the Thief class since they rely on stealth for special skills. Altering the revealed duration would mean having to rebalance all Stealth skills as you are effectively increasing their cooldown.

I think they should make it clearer when you hit a stealthed target. There are currently already a couple of ways of knowing if an ability hit a stealthed target, Traps and Marks for instance go off and any Chain skill proceeds to the next step. I think they should apply that and show the white damage number whenever you hit a stealthed enemy with any direct damage skill. Not revealing them, just showing damage so you have a vague idea of where the thief is even if you can’t target them. This doesn’t remove the entire benefit of stealth as a defensive mechanic since the enemy only has a vague idea of where the thief is if they get damage numbers and still can’t target the thief directly.

You know, I’d settle for just a clear indication that it was going to happen. I really wish you could see the cooldown and activation thresholds of these passive traits when you slot them so you can more effectively plan around them. This doesn’t only apply to LR, but also to Panic Strikes, Slowed Pulse, Pain Response, etc. Any trait with an internal cooldown should have a way of displaying it’s cooldown.

Can we please talk about how Steal will lock itself if you go underwater with some land based skill in it (Healing Seed being a prime example)? You can’t even discard the item underwater, the whole skill is locked until you get out of the water and use the item.

I don’t know of any other profession that can’t use their class mechanic underwater. If a mesmer became unable to use Shatters underwater if they went into the water with some clones there’d be complaining left and right. Yet this has been an issue for more than a year already.

Please make it so that if you enter water with an unusable stolen skill it either becomes discarded automatically or it gets a suitable water-based alternative instead of locking the whole thing down.

Venoms suffer from 2 major problems in the current meta and while your suggestion is good it doesn’t really address the major issues with Venoms and it is a fairly complicated solution.

Problem number 1: Venoms require too much investment to be useful
This is a point that you’ve touched on but haven’t really delved into. Essentially, in order to bring Venoms up to par with other thief builds you need to run at least Quick Venoms, and Leeching Venoms. Without those traits most Venom skills are extremely sub par. With Venomour Aura on top of that Venoms become strong, but this is after an investment of 50 out of 70 trait points, 60 if you go for the Grandmaster in Deadly Arts. No other build requires a commitment of 60 trait points to bring it up to par with other options, but that’s only half the problem.

Venoms also take up Utility slots, which are normally used to give the thief survivability options. Since thieves have the lowest base health and second lowest base armor Thief survivality comes either from traits or Utility skills, but Venoms require both to be effective. You need the traits to make the Venoms worth it and then you need the Utility slots for the Venoms to make the traits worth the investment. The more you spec into Venoms the less you are able to survive.

Problem 1 Solution: move functionality from traits to the base skill
In my view the only way to solve this problem is to remove some of the traits buffing Venoms and add their effect to the base effect of Venom skills. In particular, Quick Venoms should be eliminated and the recharge for all Venoms should be lowered down to 35s (1s less than with Quick Venoms). In addition, at least one Venom needs to be made a stun breaker. In PvP you need you need a stun breaker to survive and a 35 second stun breaker is hardly OP as we already have one with a 30s CD.

Problem 2: Venom skill design is counter to their niche
This is a problem you were attempting to solve but I think your solution is overly complex. The current design of Venoms makes them only useful for bursts because the charges always come out in chunks. However, If I was going to go for a bursty build I’d stack crit damage and go for a backstab focused build and it would require much less investment in terms of traits and Utility skills to be effective. Venoms have plenty of room to give extra sustained pressure during a fight but the skill design is directly counter to that. The key example here is Spider Venom. Used in a burst it gives one stack of a long lasting Poison that can be easily removed by the enemy with one skill. Used over time it can provide constant pressure from Poison to an enemy through multiple removals in a build that otherwise may not have access to those conditions, like a Sword build.

Problem 2 Solution: give thieves more control over Venom charges
To solve this, thieves need more control over when the venom charges proc. My favorite suggestion was to make Venoms work like Mesmer Mantras. Using the skill gives you a number of charges, then using the skill again expends one charge to give you one proc of the Venom. This gives the thief complete control over when the charges come and allows him to properly space them out during a fight OR use them all at once for burst. It makes burst an option rather than the only strategy so it makes Venoms much more interesting and harder to predict. Since it doesn’t change the paradigm under which Venoms currently work, one skill gives you X charges of the Venom and then the charges proc the effect of the Venom, it is a simpler solution than the one you offered.

TLDR: Venoms need to stand up better without their traits and we need more control over when Venom charges proc.

Hard to Catch is an awful trait that can actually increase the effectiveness of enemy CC. A knockdown with Hard to Catch essentially becomes a Launch as not only will you be on the ground but you’ll also be moved back from the enemy. It can and does kill you by moving you out of Shadow Refuge when you are stunned or dazed, which normally wouldn’t matter. It can also result in failed stomps that would have otherwise succeeded as you will be teleported out of stomp range (“to safety”) even if you have stability. I’m just glad it’s a Major trait so I can ignore it completely until they decide to actually make it useful. If it was a Minor trait like Last Refuge I’d avoid speccing into Acrobatics just to avoid it.

Assassin’s Reward is just not good enough to be a Grandmaster tier trait. Even in it’s “buffed” state it will heal you for less than Shadow Rejuvenation, the Grandmaster in Shadow Arts. If we’re going to have two grandmaster traits that both deal with healing, they need to be either on par with each other or Assassin’s Reward needs a secondary effect to distinguish itself. What that secondary effect should be is debatable, but personally I would make it group-support oriented. Thieves currently lack many support options other than Venomshare, which is another grandmaster trait, so a redesign here could potentially do wonders for Thief build diversity.

Larcenous Strike is an interesting skill because it allows thieves to be more effective against boon-heavy builds. However, currently I don’t think it’s fitting it’s niche adequately. Stealing only one boon at a time does very little against the builds that have lots of boons and can consistently refresh those boons. However, stealing 2 boons consistently is too powerful given that the skill can be used repeatedly. I feel a middle ground needs to be reached so that Larcenous Strike can fulfill it’s intended goal.

I suggest Larcenous Strike steal 2 boons if it hits an enemy from the side/behind, and only 1 boon otherwise. This would allow a skilled thief to have more of an edge against boon-heavy builds while guaranteeing that spamming the skill won’t be as effective as stealing 2 boons consistently. This change rewards good positioning on the thief’s side and overall increases the skill cap for the weaponset. It also offers good synergy with the 1st half of the skill, Flanking Strike.

By far my biggest trouble with traps is that they have a chance of not working at all. You can place the trap sure, but if the enemy doesn’t walk through it or dodges the trap is wasted and you’re stuck with a useless utility skill. If the effect of the trap was powerful enough to warrant the risk of it not working at all maybe I’d use them but, apart from Ambush which has a unique effect only shared by Thieves Guild, none of active effects for the traps are worth the risk.

That’s why I was excited when they reworked Shadow Trap, because they made it useful no matter what happened. If the enemy didn’t trigger it you could still use it as a return and it wasn’t just dead weight on your bar. The same logic needs to be applied to the other traps as well. Give them a “non-triggered” state so you can use them if they are not triggered and buff the triggered state so you want them to be triggered. Until then, Traps will not have a place in any of my builds. Why should I use a skill that only has a chance of doing what it’s supposed to when Shadowstep or Infiltrator’s Signet work 100% of the time?

Travlane.5948:

how about this.

PAIN RESPONSE:
Cooldown: 5s
Effect: Remove poison/bleed/burn if you are struck and under 25% hp.

problem solved. a slightly beefed up version of an engi trait.

That’s not a solution if it removes it when you’re almost dead already. At that point even 5 seconds of conditions reapplied after the clear would kill you. Not to mention that Pain Response does nothing against Torment, which is also very popular in condition builds.

Pain Response is triggered when you take a hit while under 75%, regardless of whether or not it cures conditions. So if someone puts you to 74% or less and then stacks conditions on you Pain Response won’t remove anything because it’ll be on cooldown.

Hard to Catch should be renamed to any of the following:

Hard to Use

• Being randomly teleported to a random location is incredibly disorienting, especially when you have no clear indication of when the trait is active at all.

Hard to Understand

• If the trait is supposed to move you out of harms way, then why is there a chance it won’t move you at all? If the trait is supposed to help us mitigate CCs, why does it not break CCs? If the trait is supposed to be helpful, why does it move you even when you have Stability (essentially negating it)?

Hard to Justify

• If thieves needed a stunbreak on a 30 second cooldown they’d go for Infiltrator’s Signet. That also gives you more initiative, is actively controlled by you, has a visible cooldown, won’t trigger even when you have stability and actually breaks stun.

Hard to Stomach

• I appreciate Infiltrator’s Return may have allowed for a bit too much CC mitigation, but this is a terrible replacement for it. It’s worse in almost every possible way. It doesn’t remove conditions, it has a much longer cooldown, it’s controlled by the enemy, it has no way to show when it is active, and it has a chance of not working at all (moving you to the same spot).
• If they were planning on introducing a nerf that greatly changes the playstyle of the Sword, they should have at least offered a viable alternative. If they didn’t have time to update the skill before the patch they should have at least told the community Hard to Catch will be changed in an upcoming patch, or better yet held off on the nerf until Hard to Catch was an actually useful alternative.

Some more:

I want them to make it so that steal isn’t disabled if you enter water with certain skills. It should at the very least discard the item if you can’t use it underwater so you can Steal again.

I want Tow Line to not stun me when I use it.

I want Disabling Shot to have less than a 1 second cast time as there is no point using it otherwise.

Any of those would be a nice gift.

I want them to remove the cast time on Infiltrator’s Return and find another way to prevent it from being spammed (see Highlie’s post as an example).

I want them to increase the number of boons stolen by Larcenous Strike to 2 if you hit the enemy from behind.

I want them to either lower the cooldown on Lotus Poison or increase the duration of the Weakness.

I want thief traits like Dagger Training, Combined Training, Pistol Mastery, Power Shots, and Flanking Strikes to be made more interesting than a simple 5-10% damage boost.

I want them to add more conditions to traps so they actually let you do something even if they aren’t triggered. This would make them more viable in a setting like PvP where your enemies aren’t as smart as a sack of bricks.

I want them to rework Potent Poison because increasing the duration of a condition that already stacks in duration and can be tossed out like candy is pointless.

I want them to make Last Refuge into a Major trait and swap it out for either Infusion of Shadow or Cloaked in Shadows.

I want them to change Last Refuge to trigger on your next attack so that it can’t trigger while you are about to hit someone, which would reveal and kill you and happens more often than you’d think.

I want them to change Assassin’s Reward to have an additional component so that becomes worthy of being a Grandmaster trait. Make it heal allies as well as you or something.

I want them to make Pain Response only go on cooldown if it removes a condition, so it can’t be rendered useless by direct damage.

I want to be able to see the cooldown left on traits like Pain Response, Last Refuge, Panic Strikes, Furious Retaliation, etc and when they are active.

I want them to rework Hard to Catch to make Steal a stunbreaker. It’s a shadowstep on a minimum 21 second cooldown, which is close to the cooldown of Infiltrator’s Signet when traited, it would work as a stunbreaker.

I want them to take the Venom traits (Quick Venoms, Leeching Venoms, Residual Venoms, and Venomous Aura) and find a way to merge them or move the functionality to the Venoms themselves so thieves don’t have to use up 4 trait slots and 60 trait points to make Venoms viable.

I want them to rework Venoms so they don’t always come out in a burst of your next X attacks. I want to be able to space out my Venom procs so they can’t all be removed at once by one condition removal.

I want them to reduce the healing from Skelk Venom but also make it transfer conditions from the thief to the target so it has some offensive capabilities.

I want them to give a secondary effect to Quick Recovery to bring it on par with Infiltrator’s Signet.

But none of that will ever happen, because all thieves will get for Christmas is coal.

I think the IR change was the worst way to handle the situation and hardly seems like “shaving” the build at all. There are tons of better ways that have been suggested to handle this.

They could have doubled the cost of using IR when disabled for instance. This would increase the build’s vulnerability to cc-heavy specs and make the skill less spammable without breaking the playstyle.

Another possibility that was mentioned was they could have shortened the distance of the return. This would make it easier to hit a stunned thief even after he uses the return skill. Also not a gamebreaking change.

They could have made the skill conditional based upon the thief’s remaining initiative, maybe make it so you can only use the skill while stunned if your initiative is above 50%. This would again prevent spamming and increase the build’s vulnerability to cc specs while increasing counter play.

They could have made the return deplete some endurance if used while stunned. This way even if the thief uses the skill while stunned to escape you are damaging his ability to survive, since acrobatics based builds rely heavily on dodging to stay alive.

If the devs’ intent was to not remove functionality from the skill, any of those options would have been better. This change, combined with the nerf to vigor, the only other thing keeping Sword builds viable, and offering no real replacement (Hard to Catch doesn’t count) is like shaving with machete.

This trait is so bad it actually buffs your enemy’s downed skills. If you’re fighting a Ranger, Necro, Engineer, or Warrior and they land their downed skill you will not only be disabled, but also moves you further away, delaying the stomp even more. It also makes their interrupt go through stability, where it wouldn’t have before. And this used to be a Grandmaster trait a few days ago.

I really dislike the change to Infiltrator’s Return. It really breaks the flow of combat and Acrobatics builds have not really been compensated for the change. Hard to Catch is not a worthy substitute as it is worse in almost every conceivable way. A teleport in a random direction, at a time you cannot control, on a 30 second cooldown, that does not even break stun is not good enough for a Master level trait. Not when you have other master level traits that are literally build-defining (Leeching Venoms). I appreciate that Infiltrator’s Return may have allowed Sword thieves to be overly strong against control specs, but this is not a reasonable solution to the problem.

I tried it just now and it’s awful. It really breaks the flow of combat and removes the one thing which was keeping sword a viable weapon set. I really don’t see the reason to bring a sword in WvW now when you could be doing equal damage but have better escapes with D/P. This is a real shame since S/D has been my favorite weapon set since beta. I’m really considering shelfing my thief and and making a mesmer, since they can have a similar playstyle but now actually do it better.

It’s great seeing the extent to which our suggestions have affected the patch notes. It really shows how much the devs value player feedback.

In a recent update Larcenous Strike was changed to steal only 1 boon where previously it stole 2. I feel this makes the skill’s utility too weak when compared to other possible thief builds. With the other coming changes to sword, it may push sword out of the thief meta.

In light of this, and the fact that stealing two boons all the time was too powerful I suggest making Larcenous Strike steal two boons, but only if it hits the target from behind. If the skill hits the target from the front or sides it would still steal one boon.

This would raise the skill cap for the weapon, and reward the thief’s positioning more. If the skill only steals one it encourages spamming the skill to remove the boons you want, whereas stealing more boons from behind would reward careful use of the skill and discourage spamming. This slight boost would also help alleviate the other changes to sword that may be coming on December 10th. I think this would be a happy middle ground between stealing two boons every time and stealing only one boon every time.

Hey Jon, can you comment on the possibility of changing Hard to Catch before dropping it down a tier?

Right now it’s just not a trait worth using, even in Master Tier. The fact that you can’t predict when it triggers means it is more likely to get you into trouble than out of it. A key example would be the trait triggering while you are in Shadow Refuge, moving you out of it and revealing you while before you may have just been knocked down or stunned. Another key example would be it moving you away from a downed target you are trying to stomp causing you to fail the stomp, even if you negated their disable with stability.

There’s also the fact that it doesn’t get rid of the disable used on you. If you’re stunned for 3 seconds, you’re going to be stunned for 3 seconds with or without the trait and will have to use a stun breaker regardless. The swiftness doesn’t help compensate for that either since you lose swiftness duration while you’re disabled as well. In it’s current state it is just not worth taking and moving it to Master tier isn’t going to change that.

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a summary of what I have seen discussed on the thief changes and some more clarity into what our initial thoughts were and where we stand currently.

Thank you for the update Jon. Can you also share with us the team’s thoughts on the changes to Quick Recovery, Hard to Catch, and Assassin’s Reward?

Quick Recovery
I personally believe that with the proposed change Quick Recovery would become too weak for a master tier trait. At a gain of .1 initiative per second it would be on par with Infiltrator’s Signet, if the signet only had the passive ability. Are there any plans to add a secondary effect to the trait to compensate for the decreased initiative gain?

Hard to Catch
I appreciate you want more thieves to use this but I don’t think simply moving the trait to master tier will accomplish that. There are many troublesome elements with this trait that prevent people from adopting it. The chief of which is that, while it does move you out of harms way when disabled it never actually does anything about the disable. If you are stunned for 3 seconds, yes you will be moved but you’ll still have to use a stunbreaker to escape. The swiftness given by the trait is also lackluster as you will lose some of it during the duration you are stunned anyway.

There is also the problem of agency. That is to say the player does not have full control of when this trait triggers, which can put the thief into worse situations. For instance, if you were stomping an enemy warrior the warrior’s hammer knockdown would not only knock you down but it would also teleport you away from him, which is an undesirable outcome. Are there any plans for resolving the issues the trait already has before moving it to Master Tier?

Assassin’s Reward
I like this trait a lot because it promotes active use of initiative, so it is a good thing that it is getting some recognition. However, I think the move to Grandmaster Tier opens up more opportunities than a simple raising of the healing scaling for the trait. Not many thieves spec into Healing Power so I feel the buff will largely go unnoticed if that is the only change. Are any other changes being considered to bring the trait up to Grandmaster standards?

One of the things that thieves lack are support builds, so I was going to suggest making a portion of this skill’s healing also heal nearby allies. This would give thieves another option for support, similar to Venomshare which is also a Grandmaster Tier trait. Otherwise, lowering the boost to healing scaling but increasing the scaling with initiative use would be better received. Increasing the initiative scaling by 10% and the healing by 25% would probably result in a better boost overall.

Thanks again for taking your time to answer our questions and read our feedback.

Volrath.1473:

Huge buff?! i beg to differ… it is a undeniable nerf, if the init regen traits are getting NERFED by 50% and the natural regen “buffed” by 25% meaning thieves will gain 4 init in 4 sec instead of the current 3 init every 4 sec wile loosing 50% of the regen from traits… I am very bad in math but looking at the numbers HOW can you say it is a BUFF?!

If you look at the actual numbers, over 10 seconds a thief before this change would gain 7.5 initiative, while a thief after this change would gain 10. With Quick Recovery you would gain 9.5 every 10 seconds, you would now earn 11. This is an overall buff to thief initiative sustain, which is to say over the long run thieves will regenerate more initiative than before. This comes at a loss of initiative regen burst, which would be the high cooldown traits that regen initiative like Kleptomaniac and Signet Use. Overall this is a buff.