Guild Wars 2

This reminds me of the time when EU/low tier players were crying about heartseeker/quickness spam while in NA we were (literally) laughing at it.

Though, S/P has never been terrible. A little background: IIRC, there was a point after Steal got nerfed before quickness and trick changes where I played S/P. I was able to win the majority of duels with Caed (the most important part of thief—how well you do against the enemy thief/glass). But when it came to put it into practice, hitting 3x targets with retal (which was like 75% of the time) would kill yourself. So pretty much you were forced to strictly avoid aoe’ing with PW whenever possible unless you had a deathwish. I died 3-5x more often than D/P (I usually died 0-1x/game with D/P) with ~23k+ retaliation dmg at the top every single time.
But, from my understanding, retaliation was nerfed since then only dealing iirc ~33% on 3x retal instead of ~120% hp.
Another contributing factor was the damage of Thief dropped drastically with the Trickery changes. The game is a LOT slower-paced now as opposed to d/x being “all-in”. S/P tends to thrive in these drawn-out fights, resulting in it becoming relatively stronger despite the quickness nerf.

One of the main things though, is the playstyle difference between NA and EU. I used to joke to Caed about how he played too “European” and died 4-5x more often than he should. EU tends to very rarely use their shortbow from my observation, and NA tended to use shortbow the majority of the time, supporting our team and only going in with melee when the opportunity was presented. (An example being how Caed and most other players had trouble against Mesmers while I had no issues by playing defensively with my shortbow)
This was one of the main issues I had when transitioning to the newly buffed S/D. I used shortbow way too much and didn’t have the stealth and burst support from d/p to back it up. Tightening up my animation cancels and dodge frames, it became a non-issue as I completely dropped the shortbow all-together (mainly due to the Sword#2/swap cancel out of combat trick for EXTREME map control on top of energy sigils and quick pockets) and started playing hyper aggressive.
It’s my opinion that this trend still carries on today and since the majority of EU/low tier players tend to rarely leave melee range playing far more aggressive, S/P becomes the more effective set whereas D/P is designed to be more burst/opportunity based mainly utilizing the shortbow.

That’s my theory, at least.

Rolyate.6753:

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

Props Jumper!

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

Xeph.4513:

Burst Damage, halting strike on Mesmer hasn’t seen a reduction; I find that at the moment it does far too much damage, along with Thief and Ele burst; because lets face it once other classes get nerfed, the former kings will rise to the top again, but if their damage is also brought down inline, I believe that people are going to try and diversify their class compositions.

Jump back to the nerf of Mug (4-5k dmg loss due to executioner). Noone played thief until Larcenous Strike gave thieves a viable build. Caed, for example, played arcane s/f ele (pre-freshair). Not even 25DA does half the amount of burst as ele can do. It can match a mesmer maybe, but with extremely low utility. After that, a buff/rework was made to the Trickery traitline which brought back a very different D/P thief.

tl;dr: D/P Trickery has mediocre burst. With an extremely strong 21s instant boonsteal/interrupt that carries it to top tier just below warriors and necros. If anything, its a one-trick pony completely opposite from scepter ele, with the trick being Steal.

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

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

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

Jesiah.2457:

snip

Page 3.

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

Docherty.8372:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, thinking in terms of using Pistol Whip for damage, I guess I can see how an immobilize could be problematic.

I was thinking of it more in terms of using it as an interrupt with a free ~5k damage and evade attached, completely overshadowing Headshot.

But now that I think on it, a daze would still allow for the enemy to move out of the PW, basically turning the skill into a headshot but with 2 more initiative cost and a self-stun while at the same time putting more emphasis on positional play which can be somewhat hard to do without stealth, basically increasing the risk:reward ratio immensely.

I just wish the S/P kit weren’t so redundant… It really is my least favorite designed of the thief weapon sets. Well close call between that and the current P/P.

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

The D/D deathblossom spec was one of the first specs I played. It was one of my favorites. Caed played it for a bit as well.
If you remember back to early last year, switching amulets weapons and utilities was nerfed because I would switch midgame to solo the lord with Deathblossom on Foefire.

With that being said, you must realize that converting 25% of the bleed to direct damage would only buff condition builds due to the heavy amount of condition cleanse in the game; or rather due to the extreme lack of condition diversity Thief brings. You’re almost never going to get the full duration off. At the very least, it would relatively increase the effectiveness of +bleed duration runes and sigils resulting in even more damage/options.
And I think 1 more initiative with the initiative changes is more than made up for the change of making it ignore aftercasts, enabling you to use it much more reliably as an evade, right? I mean otherwise it would be so overpowered you could dodge nearly everything. Oh, and with the proposed Trickster change, you would even get confusion and a use out of Dancing Dagger with this build to even further cover your bleeds. Overall I see this as much a buff to condition as to power D/D.

And about the utility aspect, the only amount of damage that I can see that would ever outweigh the amount of utility that D/P brings in comparison would be enough damage to 1-shot someone from full health. I don’t think anyone wants that, so I’m proposing bringing the utility of D/D up to less than half that (if even) of D/P with the benefit of slightly higher dps options, rather than having the worst of both worlds as is its current state.

Mostly aimed at pvp, but for those of you who do not pvp, you may still find these suggestions interesting/important to you.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Jump-s-Ultimate-PvP-Teef-Wishlist-Jump-Doc/

And don’t forget to vote on the strawpoll. With enough support maybe we can get ANET to take notice of some of these issues plaguing the Thief class and actually promote build diversity for a change (lol Dec.10th).

Amaterasu.6280:

Trick Shot

I don’t mind that nerf. It seems to me the design of Shortbow is supposed to reward you the closer you are. eg; Cluster Bomb

Dahkeus.8243:

I’m primarily talking about map travel since it’s faster and more efficient than short bow skipping, but if you could still move during the after-cast, it may not be so bad.

Oh, there’s a funny story about that. ANET nerfed two similar methods I had made public involving cancelling heartseeker and infiltrator’s strike out of combat for mobility. I take it these aren’t intended to be used as alternatives to Infiltrator’s Arrow.

I’m quite surprised at the lack of support for Headshot.
Even as its primary use, to interrupt heal skills, with its duration cut in half you’re likely better off just heartseekering for 1 initiative less dealing 6k damage (assuming your target is sub-25%) rather than stopping his 6k heal and giving him another opportunity to do so in a few more seconds.
And that’s also not to mention its other uses as an alternative to Shadowshot.

On the flip side, it horribly sucked to be disconnected mid or at the end of a winning match and reconnect only to lose rating/glory/chest for it.

Master of Timespace.2548:

And that’s a bad thing? Might as well “fix” guardian pets because they don’t perform as well as ranger ones in team fights, so that we will then have both spirit guardians and rangers!

As I said, I’m not comparing them [Thieves Guild vs other classes’ similar elites].
Thieves Guild (Read: When compared to other Thief elites such as Basi Venom or even using Daggerstorm and cancelling it for 8 seconds of stability—as its only current use is) is completely outmatched.

Ok, so there will be alot of controversy over this so I should probably add an asterisk or something.

Dodge rolls just don’t feel right to me right now. Even back when watching players like Teldo, when a player hits full endurance he just dodges. Doesn’t matter if its to avoid autoattack damage.

This change would add another layer of depth to the game. For example, I’m fighting a scepter burst Ele. In his mind he’s thinking “I’ll wait till he does a bad dodge roll to use my burst”. In my mind I could be thinking “I’ll just not random dodge making him hold off on using his burst”. And of course there would still be the factor of you ‘risking’ a dodge trying to predict the elementalist’s burst.

PS: I’m pretty sure every other game with a dodge mechanic locks you down at the end to punish bad dodges.

Runes of the Ogre – Increased Rock Dog’s health by 33% and moved from (4) to (6) effect. Reduced damage of (6) effect to 2% from 4% and moved to (4) effect.
-Gives the runeset less focus on damage and more on the benefits Rock Dog brings such as using it to avoid projectiles. Focusing on enunciating the uniqueness of the set.

One of the biggest reasons D/D is behind D/P already is because there is so much counter play to it.

Which is why I’m suggesting to bring the backstabbing strengths of both D/P and D/D closer together. Blackpowder Heartseeker is a huge tell. But the backstab still hits because thieves precast it from out of range/sight and the time between the heartseek and backstab are far too little, thus the need for increased aftercast. With D/D, you basically have two .25s opportunities to avoid the backstab. If you precast CnD, I’d like it to closer resemble D/P, putting more emphasis on players avoiding the actual CnD.

As much as I like the idea of this for combat, where it would discourage HS spam, this would be a huge nerf to mobility, which is one of the keystones of the class.

It’s only used for mobility on D/D because of the lack of gap-closing abilities (aka. how bad dancing dagger sucks). My suggestion for Dancing Dagger would help with that. Also you would still be able to move during the aftercast and currently it’s around less than 0.1 second I believe.

I like the idea of the first part of this skill, but with the numbers you’ve provided, it would outpace the dps of D/D in PvE by miles.

The dps would be limited by the chain skill greatly, which is why it is there (to discourage spam use). It would probably be a nerf for pve honestly. Testing would have to be done.

Fair point on Thieves’ guild. I don’t like it either, but Engineers have Supply Drop and Elementalists have summon elemental for example. I’m not comparing them, but at the moment Thieves’ guild is useless in a teamfight and not taken by anyone for good reason.

Ogre, obviously. Used in pretty much any glass cannon build.

Whereas Lyssa on the other hand is only used in one Thief build which is no longer meta, and Warriors that take Signet over Banner (not many I think).
That’s not to say however the 6 bonus is extremely biased towards these builds and should be balanced out.

Added a poll here.
http://strawpoll.me/978841/

What about “Unblockaablllleeeee” (Fabulous voice)
(After killing Hman while he shield blocks with Larcenous Strike)

Updated Larcenous suggestion to something slightly more fair:

Larcenous Strike – If target has 4 or more boons, this skill steals 2 boons.. Decreased damage by 10%. Increased cost from 2 to 4 initiative. This ability now restores 2 initiative upon hitting a target.

tronjeremy.5820:

A skilled player with the sword will still be able to strip 2 boons consistently which is too much and I agreed with the change to one boon stripped. But I do like the idea of losing ini for missing.

A 1-boon steal encourages spam use of the skill to get past the (very many) filler boons most classes put up.

Dodging Larcenous is like rock:paper:scissors. It’s much more of a mind-game thing baiting out your opponent and changing your patterns.
Implying someone could land 100% of LSs 100% of the time is just plain ridiculous lol.
It’s an extremely rare occurrence to pull this off against a good player.

tronjeremy.5820:

Jumper.9482:

Larcenous Strike – Increased boonsteal from 1 to 2. Decreased damage by 10%. Increased cost from 2 to 4 initiative. This ability now restores 2 initiative upon hitting a target.

I agree with much that you have suggested. Some great ideas! Thanks for the share.

I do however believe it is still gives sword dagger a bit too much power. The Lace strike doesn’t really matter in damage as much as the utility it has, and to give 2 ini back on success? Pretty powerful stuff.

The scorpion wire and other additions are great. I like the idea of some adding passive bonus. I will say ambush trab is already pretty balanced. Etc etc. Ill keep looking at these suggeestions thanks for posting.

It’s not as much “rewarding 2 ini on succes” rather than ‘you lose 2 ini extra on miss’, forcing less spam and more careful use out of it.

Added new general change-

Dodge roll – Added a special ~0.10s aftercast which takes priority over all aftercast-ignoring skills such as dodge rolls. This encourages players to dodge reactively rather than proactively/randomly.
(Otherwise being punished for it by players that take advantage of it.)

This change would REALLY separate the good from the bad especially thieves.

Teckos.1305:

Jumper.9482:

As well as 1 mesmer player in particular who timed his bursts extremely well (instead of giving up at the first sign of difficulty and rerolling like some others).

Say the name of the lord so the plebs shall tremble in fear.

Nnight. Hasn’t really played competitively with teams and I’m not even sure if he plays anymore. But he’s the only mesmer I looked at as not just another free kill.

Chicago Jack.5647:

it is commonly known that shadowshot outpreforms heartseeker in every way possible.

Roy.7405:

So that both EU and NA players can have a relatively close connection to the servers, thus reducing network lag. It is unlikely that the two will be combined until the time it takes for data to cross the Atlantic Ocean (or to go from California to Eastern Europe) becomes negligible and consistent..

Maybe in 50 years, the US will have fully switched to google fiber by then and not be the 2nd slowest country right behind Australia. Maybe then it’d be possible.

Woah man that’s too massive a change.
I’d be able to see a Necromancer Doom a mile away!
Or an elementalist switching to Air burst or using Arcanes!

Slightly increased my suggestion for Hidden Sin. As well as a buff/rework for Shadow Rejuv to discourage camping stealth as well.

Hidden Assassin – Now gives 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds when entering stealth. No longer re-applies itself during stealth (from previously stacking 10 or more times).

Shadow’s Rejuvenation – This trait now instead instantly restores health upon entering stealth rather than over time. Base: ~750hp.
Alternatively: Renamed to “Leeching Shadows” – Stealth attacks now heal the user for a (similar) base amount.

Amir.1570:

—

The matchup between S/D and D/P was only in D/P’s favor when played at levels of mediocrity and the reverse at the highest levels of play.
This was supported both by my personal experiences with Caed and the time I made Acandis and Blinx duel using both specs.
And I don’t know how you’re getting “D/P is the only counter” when even before the constant nerfing I openly had trouble against Teldo (and other non-hgh engi’s) from the passive burn application covered too well to cleanse and scepter elementalists due to their instantcast bursts ignoring the evasion frames. As well as 1 mesmer player in particular who timed his bursts extremely well (instead of giving up at the first sign of difficulty and rerolling like some others). And also a 50/50 matchup vs spirit rangers due to the inability to dodge anything meaningful as it is all passive damage.

I don’t know how you’re coming up with this stuff, but please stop you’re making yourself look bad.

Amir.1570:

Jumper.9482:

A lot of people seem to be against cutting the S/D Thief’s endurance gains by 50%…
Or is it maybe the cutting of Trickery’s steal reacharge gains by 40%?

Or maybe its the MASSIVE UNREASONABLE 10% BUFF that is being proposed for a massively underpowered and underused weapon set (D/D).

Yeah, that must be it.

It was mostly because you defended S/D when it was brain-dead trash (Infinite stun break on top of million dodges, C’mon you can’t have everything) when Caed disagreed and said otherwise and even called it an easy mode build when you said it took skill.

TL;DR You defended cheese, Caed disapproved it. That definitely hurt your reputation.

Slander.

I have always been against the use of Infiltrator’s Return as a Stun-Break, rather instead, as a skillful reactive tool to avoid hits with a bonus of 1 condi removal at the cost of high initiative (assuming your opponent doesn’t counterplay this with dragging the fight to your shadow return mark) which was taken away with the dec10th patch.

I also specifically remember always being against the amount of endurance generated. Especially from Energy Sigils.

I was also in 110% support when they upped the cost of Larcenous Strike, and, like my suggestion implies, have been pushing for a far greater risk factor to using it.

tl;dr: Even when playing to near-perfection, the effectiveness of the spec only went up by maybe 10%. I am, and always have been disgusted with this and have pushed for change.

Mesmer’s doesn’t prioritize both aegis and stability.

Regardless, think about the pros versus cons when speccing into Trickery. I’ll go over the most important.
From the original 25DA build, you lose maybe an average of 10-15% damage?
Acrobatics is only really strong when paired with the Sword/ due to the extreme aftercasts and the ability to dodge during them basically nullifying the aftercasts.
Shadow Arts is kind of a joke, a traitline designed around you afk’ing out of combat (in stealth) while your teammates are dying.

Trading that little for incredibly strong utility and cooldown reduction on your Steal.

Update:
Scorpion Wire (Thanks to ensoriki)- Improved heatseeking to 100%. Now steals 1 boon (Applied before pull, same priority list as Bountiful Theft). Increased cooldown from 20 to 45 seconds.

I think this would be a fair and interesting implementation, balanced around the cooldown and fact you may only steal either stability or aegis rather than both like Sleight of Bountiful Theft.

For necros in particular, their mark casts are differentiated by the color and hand motion of the cast.

This is extremely hard to see even on humans. Let alone at 1200 range.

Hype.8032:

However, before dec 10th it was widely viewed as underpowered and not worth using.

Actually it has been on-par with the S/D Acrobat since the Trickery changes were first introduced.
At the moment one on each team is practically required in group play for that incredibly overpowered/gamechanging 21s cooldown aegis+stab intterruption.

A lot of people seem to be against cutting the S/D Thief’s endurance gains by 50%…
Or is it maybe the cutting of Trickery’s steal reacharge gains by 40%?

Or maybe its the MASSIVE UNREASONABLE 10% BUFF that is being proposed for a massively underpowered and underused weapon set (D/D).

Yeah, that must be it.

ensoriki.5789:

This seriously comes into light when you look at S/P and P/P and hell ignore their duals. Black powder isn’t defensively suitably for that purpose given its cost. Not that it’s a weak skill by any stretch of the imagination but there is an explicit reason only 1 out of 3 sets sees more frequent use of it, and it’s not because of dual skills lol.

I actually used black powder alot on my perplexity P/P build.
Interrupt 1-3 skills then try to blind/dodge the rest so I could get some damage in via confusion.
(It’s also a decent replacement for evasion and stealths when throwing in range and the 20% on auto/100% projectile blind on headshot)

I just think if it were made that PW didn’t interrupt from the front, for example,
It would be nice to have to go “Oh, I can’t just press 3 anymore, I have to interrupt his eviscerate with a headshot or dodge or powder it instead”.

Look at D/P. You have to constantly be on your toes and thinking, do I need to blind the next hit? interrupt it? or would it be best to lay down a powder and get a heartseeker stab off? Ok I have him 3k hp. Should I risk a heartseeker? I think he’s about to use Earthquake so I’d be better off closing the gap with Shadow Shot to blind it.

An infinite amount more depth than S/P or P/P atm.
That last example was a duel I watched between Zoose and Caed, btw. Zoose was 3k hp and Caed closed the gap and went in with a heartseeker. Zoose saw this coming and pre-casted Earthquake and it stopped Caed’s heartseeker. One 8k Phoenix and it was gg. A shadowshot there would have won that.
And I have plenty more examples like that.

Atm S/P is just ‘pistolwhip everything except in very extreme circumstances’. Same with P/P and unload.

Back many months (pre-haste nerf) when I dueled S/P against Caed, I would simply predict alot of his backstabs, turning around and catching him in a PistolWhip stun. If not, accidentally evading his backstab.

For warriors I’d just rather interrupt his eviscerate/shieldbash/etc with a Pistol Whip, evading anyone else who was hitting me that may have not been in powder range.

Oxygen.5918:

Pwhip does less damage than autoattacking, can’t be used on the move and doesn’t provide cripple and weakness, though. The tradeoff, I thought, was always the microstun and the sweet sweet evades. Would you… accept an invitation to my stream for a few minutes just to check out my pwhip/ s/p plays? I think I’ve got it pretty well.

Pretty sure its the same dps.
I’ve played my share of S/P. Most of the time when I did, I always thought… “When am I ever going to use black powder rather than just PistolWhip evading this?” or “When will I ever use Headshot other than extremely rare cases when somehow I get out of range of my target?”.

What’s the logic behind this/these change/s?

It’s just S/P that has little room for it to be used. I was attempting to combat this (also applies to headshot) in my list via increasing the cost and damage (and positioning to incentivize the use of headshot) of Pistol Whip, making headshot and bpowder more attractive choices for moments when utility outweighed damage.

Basically, to take some utility away from S/P via initiative cost while making PistolWhip more of a “burst/use wisely” skill rather than “use this constantly in place of autoattacks”, incentivizing more use out of Headshot and Black Powder.
The positional requirement for example makes headshot far more reliable and valuable in this kit as an interrupt.

I wouldn’t discount the 15-20 might blasting, aoe crowd control, and the ability to force dodges with churning earth.
But you are right, both thief and ele have pros and cons to their burst builds and shouldn’t be compared to eachother in terms of raw damage, or at all rather. The main comparison I was getting at was the comparison of D/D DA vs D/P Trick giving up a HUGE amount of utility for little damage, similar to the current state of fresh air ele.

Highlie.7641:

I don’t think the mechanics of Gw2 would allow that version of dancing dagger.
If this skill Crits on the first strike, it will continue to crit for the 2nd,3rd and 4th hit.
chances are the stun would continue on too.

No, the engine would be able to do this. It is present in the Mesmer’s pistol stun/daze/blind (first, second, third bounce).

hooma.9642:

the best joke ever. alone that statement shows that you have no idea what balancing means. i hope its just a joke. or do we really need 8 suggestions from biased “pros” like u to balance the game? must be a really enjoyable game u try to create.. so why not call in your friends for other “pro” suggestions?

i start to wonder if other classes are not relevant, why u need them to justify some suggestions?

Now I know you’re trolling. Riot devs use this reasoning all the time. “It doesn’t matter if Tryndamere can hit 500 damage a hit at level 6. That doesn’t mean everyone else has to. Tryndamere’s damage is balanced for Tryndamere.” I see you as the type of person who would compain “Corki’s R is weaker than Ezreal’s Q! Fix it!”. Even though Ezreal is balanced for Ezreal and Corki is balanced for corki.

hooma.9642:

—snip—

First of all, the proposed list of changes attempt to balance the Thief class within itself from only someone with thousands of hours playing the class competitively would. Show me one other person who has 2,000 hours playing competitively on at least 2 different classes each. Other classes are not relevant for this discussion other than knowing that S/D Acro and D/P Trickery are far too strong currently.

2. By that logic, since Skull crack stuns for 3 seconds, it should do 30 damage. Or Earthshaker should have its damage reduced 3000%.

3. 10% less damage and an extra 2 initiative upon miss is a huge nerf and quite necessary to reward classes like Mesmers who manage to properly counterplay and evade Larcenous.

4. S/P is a “spam pistolwhip” build. As stated before, these changes focus on reducing the spamability of PW while also putting more value on Headshot as an interrupt since using PW from the front would no longer do so.

5. Caed was more biased than myself when I ran it by him. Acandis helped with the nerfing too.

6. I have played fresh air ele. And most other burst classes for that matter. Even stumbling around my keyboard I was still able to be far more effective than a D/D thief would be.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO3KkEy9MQI

7. I suggest you carefully re-read the change to Dancing Dagger more closely and realize adding a ministun (READ: On the first target hit) from behind would not only put it on-par with offhand pistol, but also help chase down fleeing foes—something that dagger/pistol is good at without even trying while blinding and dealing far more damage at less initiative (Shadow Shot). I also addressed the potential issue of spamming DD by drastically increasing its initiative cost and aftercast (may potentially require more than +50% aftercast). On top of that, it would still be an inferior tool than D/P has in ShadowShot because of the projectile speed which would allow one to either dodge or turn briefly to counter the ministun.

Added a ‘goals’ summary at the top for people barging in assuming this is calling for buffs to S/D Acro and D/P Trick without reading.

Also;
Disabling Shot – Added a ~0.10 second aftercast to add counterplay and discourage endless chaining of this skill for evasion purposes.

Trickery Traitline – Decreased steal recharge gain from traitpoints spent by 33%.
will make all thief take Sleight of Hand with 30 trickery, if not CD of steal not be reduce enought to be intresting. In this way other grand master will never be taken. (actualy its not too but …)

The Trickery traitline is massively overpowered imho. A 21 second stab/aegis ignoring interrupt makes thieves mandatory in organized play right now. You’d be lucky to even get your target down again more often than 20 seconds.

Belgarion.1975:

Infiltrator’s Return – Increased initiative cost from 2 to 3. Cast time reduced to 0.10 seconds from 0.25 seconds. This ability now ignores aftercasts and cancels skills in queue.

i don’t understand why increased cost… Adding cast time is enought balancing no ? cancels skill queue, you can make it with hotkey.

Right now, Infiltrator’s has a cast time of 1-1.25 seconds when factoring in the massive sword aftercasts. The only thing I could use that for is to dodge a Killshot… And maybe die to the other guy who is autoattacking me while casting in the meantime. On the flipside, I always found dodging with Infiltrator’s Return with 2 initiative to vastly outweigh dodging with endurance or flanking strike since I also cured a condition. This would even it out a bit more.

Death Blossom – This skill now ignores aftercasts and cancels other skills in queue. Increased initiative cost by 2 to 6 from 4. Increased damage by 25%. Reduced bleed duration by a similar amount.
50 % cost up to gain 25 % damage and lost condition duration ? not rly woth it. Adding finisher leap on skill is good idea but not enought to justify +50 % init cost

Okay, so Dagger doesn’t have as much of a problem with horrendous aftercasts its true. But, this is about making Dblossom a consistant dodge. The evade frames are so tiny, that it has to be timed perfectly in reaction to your opponent’kitten. It also has counterplay to it due to the fact the evade frames don’t happen until halfway through the skill and you become locked down afterwards. Then again, if played well enough you wouldn’t need endurance at all if it costed that little initiative, would you?

ramorambo.6701:

wouldn’t all that damage be too much overkill? do we want another oneshot era?

I don’t think a ~10% damage boost, ~15 considering CnD being reverted, would result in d/d thieves suddenly doing severely more burst than a fresh air ele or sd engi.

Personally, even if Sleight of Bountiful Theft went on a 45 second cooldown and DA specs did 50% more dps, I’d still probably stick with Trickery if it were a high-stakes tourny. I don’t think people realize how much the Thief profession is being carried by S/D Acro and D/P Tricks.

Belgarion.1975:

snip

When consulting with Caed, I was told those damage numbers probably wouldn’t even be enough to make traps/wire worth consider losing a precious stunbreak. But, point taken; changed the numbers to resemble an auto attack.

I feel D/D should be the ‘pure dps’ go-to while sacrificing utility. Yes, reverting the nerf to CnD and introducing a decent 20 DA trait would result in tons of damage,
- CnD : 5066
- Steal : 1097
- BS : 6092
11k with no aegis or protection. That’s a fair amount considering an elementalist can do the same thing, if not more, with less telegraphs and still offer more support to their team, right?
And what can D/P Trickery do? 25% less damage but with a game-changing steal every 21 seconds that interrupts stability/aegis stomps and resses and a plethora of blinds and other interrupts? I for one would still choose trickery. But those who prefer pure damage wouldn’t be at such a huge disadvantage anymore now would they?

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

snip

Where do these people keep coming from?
I think you replied to the wrong thread, bro.