Guild Wars 2

The range for all SB skills for a thief is 900 except for Cluster Bomb (skill 2) which is 1200 range. No, there isn’t a trait to increase the range of the shortbow.

Doomdesire.9365:

Pics or it didn’t happen. I’ve never even heard of a legit 18K+ backstab with the recent assassins signet change

I think he meant kill shot as in the warrior rifle burst skill.

Doomdesire.9365:

ArchNemesis.4897:

EasymodeX.4062:

Krathalos.3461:

Except thief doesn’t have an interruption that can reach 1500 range on any build possible. The warrior could have also been behind him, thus making an interruption impossible while immobilized.

The Warrior was at 900 range.

A thief can’t do anything in .3 seconds.

A Thief can deal 30k damage in 0.3 seconds.

Maybe against an upscaled player with no armor or a rabbit.

I’m just going to assume this is either trolling or a joke.

If it’s honestly as easy as you say it is to do “30k damage in .3 seconds”, show us.

I’d love to see you post a vid of the damage after showing us that the person you did it to has no armor or traits(Spvp) / is upscaled with no armor or traits(WvW)

Because otherwise, you know you’re exaggerating and making a complete fool of yourself.

If this is an attempt to troll, you should work on that. It’s fairly obvious

2/10 – simply for making me reply.

30K dmg in .3 seconds is not possible, at least via thief. Stop kidding yourself buddy.

Technically not true, as backstab only takes 0.25 seconds. You will still be able to hit for 30k in 0.3 seconds when versing a bunny or a racoon.

DesertRose.2031:

And you really believe Thief’s Shortbow needs a buff?!? It’s properly the best weapon in the game and I wouldn’t wonder if it will be nerfed in one of the next patches.

And you’ll probably be one of the first people to start calling for SB nerfs. You really want to see thieves smooshed into nothingness don’t you?

Doomdesire.9365:

I’m actually for steal interrupting casting. That is the only think I would find about backstab that truly needs a nerf.

That’s what some of us have been pitching since the advent of the first backstab nerf thread, but no one seems to listen, they just want the raw damage output of the thief to be reduced so they can roflstomp us.

Dacromir.6207:

Daecollo.9578:

When you list ideas for traits, they always have to be exaggerated.

No, they don’t.

Daecollo.9578:

These are only just ideas, they can be balanced, 50% damage reduction could be 10 or 15% after changes, Whenever you add or take an idea, you always make it very high or powerful.

These traits were presented as serious, balanced ideas, and certain people in this thread have been defending them as such. In addition, with some things the only thing that changed was the scale. For example, the only change you made to the healing on initiative from 70 to 200. This means that you weren’t presenting a rough idea of a new trait without worrying about scale, you actually thought it would be a good idea to raise the healing that high (hint: it isn’t).

Anyways, thread finished. The traits as presented are blatantly, ludicrously overpowered.

In the future, it would be better to present a few changes at a time, and back it up with reasoning. This thread had so many proposed changes that there’s no way we could adequately discuss them all. I didn’t even scratch the surface with my objections (for instance, why do you hate thief healers?). If you present a couple reasonable changes and explain why, you might actually get constructive discussion.

This is a discussion thread and it really makes me lose hope for some of the thief community when all you do is come into an “idea” thread and say its OP, then move on without contributing anything of substance. Well, if you think its so OP, why don’t you offer some ideas that you think would be balanced. That’s the whole point of discussion, if you don’t come up with an ideas or improvements that will make it more balanced, why post at all?

sorrow.2364:

kineticdamage.6279:

So, history of Rogue archetypes repeats itself …

Seems like we won’t see any MMO dev who will assume the “cannon” part of glass-cannon, after all. It will at least take 1 more hit than against an medium/light armour users.

(because yeah, actually if I don’t spec full Toughness/Healing with my Thief, I just die in 3 hits)

Like every other profession!
It’s not only thieves who die really fast if they don’t invest in toughness or defensive skills, but thieves have also another advantage: Stealth.

Just take, for instance, the Elementalist. If you don’t put any point in Earth Magic or Water Magic, you are going to die in a couple of hits anyway. Necromancer are in the same situation, same for Warrior, Guardians, Rangers and Engineers.

But Thieves have stealth and high mobility to leave a fight you are going to lose or to get better positioning.

The point is that BS build damage right now is too high also for a glass cannon.

Well, saying a warrior will die a couple of hits if they don’t have any traits in toughness/vit is stretching it.

savage.3469:

bodyshot is stupid, it says it has same cast time as vital shot, but its rate of fire is 30% slower

yes i did some minor tests with this skill

yes, we all agree that p/p needs a complete rework so that the skills synergise better with each other, auto atk inflicts bleed for condition dmg but unload is burst dmg. what were thinking.

Calle.8746:

There will always be bugs. Bugs – balance, non is more important to fix then the other.

I agree that there will always be bugs, but in reality bugs are more important than balance because its the bugs that cause the imbalance, if the devs paid more attention to bugs before trying to balance anything, I’m sure they would find that many of the balance issues will smooth themselves out, 2 birds with 1 stone.

Volrath.1473:

Oxygen.5918:

http://i.imgur.com/ROgm3.png

Screenshot sent by a friend when we were duelling. I was the perpetrator. Could’ve been about 6k higher if I had specced into executionner (which I had hidden killer).

yeah man! i can photoshop too

Nah, he didn’t shop, his friend was just untraited and naked with 10-25 stacks of vulnerability. I bet he, himself also had about 5-10 stacks of might as well.

Never.6014:

Sons.5493:

Haste should be deleted from the game.

I really think this is one of the best things they could do to balance the game. At the very least make it a 33% increase, not 100%.

They should either remove or rebalance quickness, not just haste

@Freigan
Visually, you only use the off-hand pistol when using skill 3,4 and 5.

With regards to spec with traits, its really up for personal preference, if you want to kill things faster, maybe you can get power/ crit on your gear. Right now, your spec is focused more on the surviviability than burst dmg. Whilst it might take you longer to kill mobs, you may find that you survive longer because of your traits. I personally built for more balance, so my build is 10/30/20/0/10, now that i look at it, its really spread out, but it works for me.

As for p/p being viable for WvW, in a team fight, you may be contributing something but overall, shortbow is better at dealing with multiple targets.

sorrow.2364:

FrozenLuv.6017:

Its a powerful skill, as long as the pathing doesn’t get you killed by taking you completely out of position against your will. They should really fix that.

Path doesn’t get you killed
I can use that skill also as a gap closer and it works really good. Pathing is fine.

But sometimes its just too unpredictable for it to hit twice on anything that isn’t standing still. The either the pathing or the tracking for the skill needs to be improved.

Harmadda.5971:

Edelweiss.9815:

It IS a render issue. Being good or bad has nothing to do with appearing 2 seconds after the stealth has ended.

It’s funny how it’s never the mechanics of the game.
It’s always just ‘bad players’ to those exploiting them.

Dying in 2-3 seconds without a chance to react…how does a ‘good player’ counter that?

The nerf is coming one way or another.
I think it certainly should.

Yes, a nerf IS on the way, and thats where Anet has to pay attention and not rush it this time. The sin sig nerf was good, great in fact imo, but the pistol whip nerf was not thought out very well. Right now, the 15% dmg reduction has caused it to be unviable as anything other than an interrupt and people are still pubstomping with it by using haste. PW wasn’t the problem, Quickness was the problem. And that’s what most proper thieves (not the fotm ones) are defending, we are trying to help you guys find ways to get around difficulties or point you guys to the proper root of the problem, but time and time again we have been ignored and people that cry for nerfs still only look at the surface. Dig deeper and you’ll find your answer.

@Edelweiss
Stealth doesn’t need to be nerfed because its not stealth thats the problem, the problem is with the rendering/culling issues that is a major setback of the game engine. But then again, whatts the say you’ll listen this time, seeing as time and time again, you have ignored this fact.

sorrow.2364:

SFtheWolf.5179:

Your form of argument is begging the question. You’re basically saying “my premise is correct therefore my premise is correct”. Repeating your opinion that backstab is overpowered doesn’t add any weight to your case.

Also people keep assuming I build Pistol Whip or Backstab and that’s why I have something invested in this. I don’t. I just hate seeing mob rule and appeals to popular opinion winning the day. It makes me concerned for the future.

As for Pistol Whip’s ongoing viability, all I can say is I bring one stun break and every single Pistol Whip thief I fight in PvP completely falls apart. Maybe I just haven’t fought a good one yet.

You know this reminds me of the constant complaints about the Spy in TF2. Despite being just about the worst class in the game now, people are still enraged by its mere existence. Casuals (a factual statement, regardless of if it’s derogatory) refused to modify their gameplay to take into account the basic counters required to prevent one from instakilling you. In response, Valve has made it so that you can consistently hear one uncloaking behind you (and I’m not talking about the Dead Ringer).

As a result, it’s extremely rare for anyone worth their salt to be killed by a spy any more, ever. If you have headphones on and do the occasional 180 visual check, you simply will not be ambushed by one.

It’s a perfect example of the casual demographic’s demands ruining a class that takes a deliberate action or two to counter. It happens in nearly every game that has one, and I don’t want to see it happen again here.

I believe if Backstab gets outright nerfed, it will be a decisive step in that direction.

Your concern about the future is completely unfounded.
First, ArenaNet isn’t a newborn software house, neither they have no experience at all with balancing.
They have proved many times that they don’t balance around what people say in the forums, they just balance about what they think it is right. If a whole community say “hey, PW is overpowered” they don’t nerf it without thinking, they usually test the skill to figure out if it is really overpowered, test possible modified skill and finally makes the right choice in their opinion.
If you had played Guild Wars, you’ll figure out that they made really great work balancing a game which is way, way harder to balance when compared to Guild Wars 2. Right now every profession has its place, both in PvP and in PvE and there is no outstanding profession at all. Assassins, in Guild Wars, was what we can consider as the Thief precursors. They were nerfed several times, of course, but they also recived buffs when it was needed.
Also Thieves have received buffs in the BWE, probably buffs were too much and now they needs to be toned down a bit, but I don’t see the reason to worry about the future of the profession, seriously.

If now Pistol Whip as a counter, it is fine. High burst builds have to be easily countered. If they were not easy to counter (like backstab is now), they would be overpowered.
The more damage you deal with a skill, the easier it should be countered.

Even though i do believe that Anet made the right choice nerfing PW, they hit the wrong part of the combo and that really antagonised the community against them. The dmg wasn’t that part that was making it OP, it was the fact that u can pull off around 2 during the duration of haste. Wot they should’ve done is either reduce the stun duration or rebalance quickness. Right now, you can only really use PW as an interrupt because the sword autoattack out dps’s it, which is fine, but for 5 initiative, you would expect a bit more than just a stun and some mediocre dmg.

sorrow.2364:

Mrbig.8019:

No.

FS is not good at all in PvP.
Alotugh the damage is fine, the point is that this game has AUTO-FACING, so that your enemy will follow your animation and hit you in that nice frame where the attack doesn’t evade ( second hit).

Oh, sorry, it’s not a frame, it’s FREAKING second long animation.

Most other professions’ autoattack hit faster than the evade animation time, so that they’ll follow your toon while evading ( PvP is not like PvE, where enemies hit slow and are predictable, so that you can easily avoid the strike and their auto-facing won’t be triggered).

I’ve tried it with a friend of mine, and it seems that only ranged auto-attacks ( since they’ve quite long casting times) and warriors’ hammer are slow enough to allow FS to not trigger auto-facing ( effectively putting you behindot to the side): in other situations, just keeping on autoattacking is enough to make this skil totally useless if not for the damage ( that you’ll get back in the 1 second-wide second hit animation, since you’re a thief and you’re squishy by default).

This skill is completely garbage, and people defending it are not experienced enough, or didn’t do enough testing.

The skill isn’t completely garbage.
I want to know if you guys have really tried it out seriously.
Above all, it comes in combination with Sword+Dagger, a build which can provide easy dazechains, nice mobility and annoyment to the enemy.
Second, it not only strips a boon and has low initiative cost, but it also gives you an evade.

That skill is incredibly powerful against any bunker which relies on boons. Just try it out against guardian and you’ll see how they die fast with their boons stripped each time you use flanking strike.
Plus, the damage output is good. It deals about 2k+3k of damage, which is a total of 5k. More then enough when you consider the extra effects it gives and the low initiative cost.

Not every build is made up to be glass-cannon instant-kill, S/D is one of this build.

Its a powerful skill, as long as the pathing doesn’t get you killed by taking you completely out of position against your will. They should really fix that.

Chakuna.6325:

You can Backstab whenever you dont the revealed debuff,

I’m pretty sure it also requires you to have a the “stealth” buff because i run around most of the time without the revealed debuff and i can’t backstab, or am i doing it wrong?

On topic: The general idea that they should create a buff promotes prolonged battles is great but having that buff be placed using a skill that doesn’t synergise with a prolonged battle isn’t the way it should be done. Maybe have that buff be target specific, i.e. the longer you keep damaging that target, the higher damage you will do to that target, and the buff gets wipe if u lose the target in anyway e.g. stealth or changing target.

Rozbuska.5263:

I am sick about that “its easily counterable”. How kitten you want counter something you didnt see? I am ok with dmg because its that what stealth classes must have. Real problem are that milion stealths. I dont want hear the “its only few seconds” because its not true. When you try with 15 ppl try 10 minutes kill permastealthed thief on point in WvW is something wrong.

Its been said once, its been said twice, its been said 102810943478315 times. The so-called “permastealth” that everyone is claiming thieves to have is a (wait for it, you’ll never guess the answer) Rendering Bug. Its something wrong with the game engine so its wrong on so many levels to blame that on the profession.

another proposal:
Reduce Anet’s Whine Radar vision range by 50%, that way they won’t pick up on some of the whines.
Or
Buff Anet’s Whine Filter, that way they might be able to filter out most of the illegitimate claims and false accusations.

ThirtyOne.3976:

I think people are blowing this whole potential backstab nerf way out of proportion for what is a pretty gimmicky skill in the first place.

First off, ANet said they were looking to bring down the raw spike DPS potential of some builds while compensating others, so if you really love Thief that much, you should start looking into other builds ( Yes, there really are other skills other than Heart Seeker and Back Stab! ) rather than moaning because a skill half of you apparently don’t use is being slightly lowered.

Second, saying that ANet are pandering to noobs/bads/casuals or whatever your favorite derogatory term is, is just stupid. Remember in the BWE’s when everyone was complaining about the Hundred Blades Warriors, how did ANet react; they didn’t, exactly the same when loads of people were complaining about the Mesmer survivability and utility, they lowered the damage and recharge of Phantasm attacks. Or what about the Guardian and their damage potential? Largely unchanged. ANet assess the situation on skills, abilities or whatnot themselves, if they feel a change is needed, then obviously something has to be done about it because it’s not acting as intended or players are using it in unintended ways.

Finally, Anet are trying to work to increase their longevity of their game, you really think heavily nerfing a class is their priority? If so, you are sadly mistaken, especially when that class is a fundamental part of almost every MMORPG.

Extra: SFtheWolf – I couldn’t agree more about people would rather complain than adapt, and that is exactly whats happening here, on both sides of the fence.

Its not great to use warrior as an example of how whines will not lead to nerfs, because Anet have made it clear time and time again that warriors are their favourite class and “is in a good place”. An example of how whining HAS lead to a nerf is the 15% dmg reduction to pistol whip.

@ Alistair
I got was put onto the sidelines for defending the class and trolling trolls, i know that feel.

You can make tons of noise to create chaos or mayhem in a large battle, or you can be sitting somewhere calm and peaceful like the Shiverpeak Mountains, and you can let off that crisp, resounding bang as you take out mobs one by one while sipping from your flask or just chatting to your friends.
Either way the Thief Rifle is the weapon for you

Also because its WvW, the thieves may not actually be stealthed but just don’t render properly. The proper way to do it is to chain off all your stealth skills before you get the revealed debuff.

@Katsumoto
i think we should leave the distortion to the mesmers and make it give 2 stacks of 5 second confusion instead

Yea, Residual Venom is a great trait when you actually judge your situation before atking, if you be patient to use your atks, u can increase the amount of time the condition is on the target significantly. Remember patience my friend.
However, venom share range increase is good, right now its too little to be efficient with it.

imo, the corrupted dagger looks better because it actually looks like a dagger, the destroyer dagger looks lik a piece of rock

Kaleygh.1524:

FrozenLuv.6017:

@Kaleygh
Last i checked, positioning for backstab required work as long as the target doesn’t start acting like a mob and stands there scratching his head when he can’t see the thief but obviously took dmg.

The difficulty level must be insanely high. I can only imagine the stress and the tension you guys must endure.
/sarcasm off

Oh, actually its pretty easy right now because people either don’t dodge or dodge too late. Or in some cases stand still in semi-afk mode. Thank you for your concern though, much appreciated.

@Kaleygh
Last i checked, positioning for backstab required work as long as the target doesn’t start acting like a mob and stands there scratching his head when he can’t see the thief but obviously took dmg.

and we will all be forced to use p/p or p/d or s/d after that, and they will get nerfed. Then all thieves would start to only use environmental weapons

What is see here is typical of all the qq threads that are on this forum. It usually follows this form:
1: a person gets killed by a thief and they go onto the thief forum to whine about it, sometimes waving around their death breakdown like its some sort of justification
2: numerous people reply telling him to either add more information to his post.
3: op posts some numbers without evidence or ignores the constructive comments
4: people proceed to give him advice on how to improve at the game and how to counter this and that
5: op puts on a blindfold and earplugs and starts shouting “Thieves are OP” at any and all people who don’t support him

Not only have I seen this as the beginning of threads, i have seen this within threads as well.

YumCHA.8706:

This thread is clearly a troll. The fact that the moderators stated they’re going to do something about these issues due to the unforeseen results that had happened, clearly states something is wrong with the thief class. By wrong I mean Overpowered.

Hate all you want but this is the truth.

If someone expressing his opinion about something is a troll, then aren’t we all just trolls floating around in the miasma of trollfulness that is the internet. And saying something is the truth doesn’t make it the truth.

Hate all you want but this is the truth.

i can’t see this thread, is it just me or does anyone else have this bug?

i think the raw damage of whine needs to be dropped maybe 20-30%. Also its setup is so easy, i can use it to kill whole groups of people with my eyes closed and just a mouse, don’t even need a keyboard.

bwillb.2165:

FrozenLuv.6017:

Xom.9264:

You never see the thief but for a second or two

That’s a rendering issue, nothing to do with thieves

Xom.9264:

steal +3 seconds of fear GG.

This is misleading, thieves can only apply fear throw the Skull Fear steal skill, which can only be stolen from necros, therefore cannot be done on any other class

Please, do a little research before sprouting kitten

Well it can technically be used against other classes, but does definitely require a necro to steal from. And necros aren’t exactly common… 4 out of 5 steals will be whirlwind.

Yea, but that would require you to pop the fear, then the bs combo which is very inefficient since… hmmm does make the positioning easier though, since they would have their back towards you, hmmm, interesting….

Xom.9264:

You never see the thief but for a second or two

That’s a rendering issue, nothing to do with thieves

Xom.9264:

steal +3 seconds of fear GG.

This is misleading, thieves can only apply fear throw the Skull Fear steal skill, which can only be stolen from necros, therefore cannot be done on any other class

Please, do a little research before sprouting kitten

Zsymon.8457:

Maybe no nerfs are necessary at all, like I said in the other thread, maybe the rendering bug should be fixed before the profession gets nerfed, and see if it is still necessary then. If there is a bug that makes a profession too strong, then I think it makes more sense to fix the bug before nerfing the profession.

Though causing mug/steal to interrupt casting skills, might solve some problems too. That gives players a lot more time to react once mug hits, due to CnD’s long cast time. That way a player just has to dodge away or use a defensive or control skill to stop the whole combo from ever happening.

Maybe make it so when you have mug traited, steal interrupts casting skills. As far as I can tell, that would solve the whole problem.

Its pointless trying to smash this fact into their thick skulls. They’ve already proven beyond a doubt that they don’t want the game to be balanced. They’re just interested in thieves being smooshed into the ground. Otherwise they would’ve agreed with any of the 1000s of reasonable fixes that are floating around instead of pushing them aside. Even if they fix the rendering issue, bads will be bads and they will NEVER stop whining.

OMG, not another one of these, OP do u even use the search function on this forum. Wait let me rephrase that as the thread is still on the front page. Do you even read? there already a thread concerning backstab, making multiple threads doesn’t improve your argument, it just clutters our forum.

TheZeus.8617:

If you feel that burst theifs do not need a nerf then you are a bad thief and will not be able to handle the patch on the 15th… Burst Steal+bs thief is kitten OP atm.. And i play one.

you must be new here, if u read the rest of the thread, you would know that your argument is “been there, done that” and that its been shot down.

bwillb.2165:

Silk.2813:

The fact that this is being defended is sad.

The fact that this is being attacked is sad.

Instant +1 for you

edit: not just for some counter evidence but also posting your stats at the side as well
this screenshot contains more info that any other screenshot in the this thread.

Silk.2813:

The screen shot was taken today my friend, you can claim it doesn’t happen all you want.
The fact that you say it is rigged shows the level of delusion we are dealing with.

Ok, now we have the date, how about some stats now, or r you gonna keep us all in suspense.

Distaste.4801:

FrozenLuv.6017:

Hey look, A wild screenshot appeared with absolutely no detail except for the death breakdown. With nothing about your build, their build and the overall circumstances of your death, your argument is meaningless. Its like me turning up to a court case and my only evidence against someone is my own word.

No his argument is rock solid. 13k in a single hit from stealth. Let’s look at worst case scenario and it’s a glass cannon with the lowest health, that’s an INSTANT KILL. How are you justifying that? Even a glass cannon should live through a bunch of hits. In this case the poster is a necromancer, that’s 18k base HP. Assuming the thief has stealth on steal his 2 hit combo with steal doing 7.7k and backstab doing 13.1k for a total of 20.8k damage. That’s 2 shotting the highest base HP glass cannon classes. The only argument you can even remotely make is whether it’s fair that glass cannon classes die in 1-2 hits. If you win that argument then of course all other classes/builds need buffed to match that balancing level. I’d love to see your face when you hit necro marks on the ground that instant kill you, but lets hope ArenaNet doesn’t go that route.

I am a thief and this stuff needs fixed before it ruins the class. 7.7k steal is OP, 13.1k backstabs from stealth are OP, 6.6k C&D is OP. There is NO justification, glass cannon or otherwise, for that kind of damage. That goes for all classes with super high burst. People want fights where they can actually react, use skills, and put up a fight; currently that is not happening because of classes like the thief that drop nearly any build in a few seconds. There is no skill in 1-2 hitting and that makes PvP unfun and boring.

If you think theres no skill in 1-2 hitting then don’t play this build, its simple as that. This is one instance of backstab hitting for 13k. Also is the screenshot before or after the sin sig nerf, because with the new sin sig, its impossible to hit for 13k bs in sPVP. Many people in this thread have states over and over and over again that thieves can’t hit for that high anymore, but no one listens, just nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf. These numbers r obviously either pre-patch or rigged. stop taking sides before thinking about it logically and knowing the full story.

@DreamOfACure:
I tried selling this idea over at the range forums before i rolled a thief. They argued that “lorewise, rangers are meant to be one with nature, and therefore guns are not suitable” or “wot can a rifle do that another weapon can’t do better”. So they’re not buying it.
But i can see that this idea may work for the thief which has degenerated into an “assassin” anyway because that’s the play style that most people prefer/ have been forced into. We need a 1200 range weapon, every other class has one, but there isn’t one for thieves.
To address your other point, most of us agree it’s best to not include venoms in the sniper rifle skill set.

Well, i can answer two of your questions with answers that at least i think are correct.
1: a glass cannon is usually a character with extremely high damage but low everything else, so low hp and low armour.
2: stealth doesn’t scale to boon duration because it’s technically not a boon. The only way to get longer stealth is 1: get the 15 point shadow arts trait which gives 1 more second of stealth or 2: exploit the current rendering bugs in WvW to get perma stealth (obviously, you can’t do this in pve)

Hey look, A wild screenshot appeared with absolutely no detail except for the death breakdown. With nothing about your build, their build and the overall circumstances of your death, your argument is meaningless. Its like me turning up to a court case and my only evidence against someone is my own word.

I love this new trait setup, it makes a lot more sense than the current one but i do hav some suggestions.
I don’t think splitting up Thrill of the Crime is a good idea because it makes it less efficient.
And wot happened to Hidden Killer, i like my 100% crit chance from stealth, make it a tier 3 trait in shadow arts or something
Also for Uncatchable (trickery III), i think its fine the way it is, dropping caltrops is visually more pleasing than just crippling and bleeding foes around you.

There are also some sniper turrets in the Plains of Ashford but those hav 2k range and ridiculously high dmg, so a bit overpowered for any class to be able to deploy 1

Ichishi.9613:

Okay here is my little part of thoughts that address some of the issues:
Do note that this is proposed as one whole change, and is only a part of a bigger rework I am still figuring out:

Hidden Killer moved to Shadow Arts last tier
This will either remove guaranteed critical from backstab of glass cannon thieves or will force them to spec out of power / crit power line to obtain. Also will give buff to Shadow arts tree that will make much more sense.

Shadow’s Rejunevation moved to Shadow arts tier 2
This will tone down stealth sitting a tiny bit by forcing those that try to sit in stealth to either go for the third tier or choose only one Heal/Initiative regen in stealth.

Power Shots moved to Deadly arts tier 1
As shortbow being a straight utility with only one damaging attack, moving this trait to power tree start will make this one more viable and much more synergized with the trait trees.

Mug moved to Deadly arts tier 2
Again, moving this to tier 2 will make it mutually exclusive with dagger damage increase, further toning down glass cannon backstab burst

Impovisation redesigned and moved to Deadly arts tier 3
This ability provides at best 60% chance to do something good once every 45 seconds.
The randomness at this level will not be tolerated, and this is a good first candidate for a redesign and filling a tier 3 deadly arts slot. I have ideas of what could go here but none of them are formidable yet.

Panic Strikes moved to Critical strikes tier 2
The power of this trait does not match its standing in tier 3 and has zero synergy with that trait tree. Given deadly arts focus on venoms, devourer venom will be much more of use than this trait for the purposes of that trait line. Moving this to Critical strikes makes this easier to obtain for those who rely on crit more and provides outstanding synergy with trait line tier 1 Fury on 50% and tier 3 20% damage on enemies below 50% health.

Critical Haste cooldown decreased and moved to critical strikes tier 3
The power of quickness demands this to be taken higher and to be mutually exclusive with the damage-boosting abilities. As a trade-off, up time is increased to be more reliable for a tier 3 talent.

I will address more issues later, hope this much will at least be partially considered
Edit: few typos and feel free to provide feedback and/or suggestion, will be much appreciated

Finally got around to commenting on this
I support the idea of moving hidden killer to shadow arts, i have no idea wot its doing in critical strikes.
As for Mug, i don’t think it being moved will do much because if some goes full glass cannon i.e. 30/30/x, they would have access to it anyway. On the other hand, people like me who only build more survivability won’t have access to it without investing more into Deadly Arts which will take away from other traits.
And while i agree that quickness is broken and should be addressed, the chance for it to proc is low enough and the cool down long enough for it to be a tier 2 trait. Once again it scales to the crit chance that the player has but even if u have a 100% chance to crit, u only gain quickness 10% of the time, and consistent 100% crit chance is near impossible anyway or is it?…..

bwillb.2165:

crewthief.8649:

Ichishi.9613:

i am feeling exactly what Narkosys.5173 said. I know it is pointless most of the time to bring in argument and defend something, but if I don’t do that I will have to blame myself is something bad really happens (assa signet was rebalanced as per suggetions, but pistol whip was nerfed to the ground with qq)

So, you believe that the nerf threads are entirely wrong and EVERYONE else is just out to get you? Some sort of conspiracy against GW2 Thieves, is it? That’s a very believeable theory. Quite possible too. That theory isn’t ridiculous or anything.

This is a horrible fallacy. Not everyone in game is on the forums. Not everyone who is on the forums participates in thief nerf threads. There is a core group of maybe 15-20 players who daily spam nonsense about thieves, trying to get them nerfed. A few new faces will tag along every now and then, but it’s usually the same 15 or so names that keep popping up. 15 people out of the… what… 3 million that play the game? The other 2,999,9985 people seem to be playing just fine without feeling the need to solicit thief nerfs every kitten day.
Funny thing is several of those 15 are warriors and mesmers, the classes that are greater than or equal to the thief in power. It’s almost like they’re upset that thieves can escape their wrath while no other class can.

After a while i was able to predict who started the thread just from the name. Its become too obvious. But i guess it does take years to grow up so they probably won’t be leaving anytime soon. Those people are just like the political figures in real life when they gain too much power. At the first sign that they are losing control, they will do things such as spreading false information and lies to try and regain control. But we, thieves are putting up too much of a fight, thats why they believe they must stamp us into the ground with a higher power (anet) then actually trying to best us themselves.

Yea, after thinking about it, my #4 doesn’t really make sense, i think i would change it to an interrupt but pistol has that covered. Maybe a bleed.