Guild Wars 2

Stuck on stronghold!

Have to see thief performance for myself (I don’t expect much though), but in general raids will be a good (or, if i were Anet probably stressful) way of showing any actual shortcomings in class design. Or the revenant opposite while we’re at it.

So in a way raiding might like putting a finger in our fleshwound. It’ll hurt at first, we’ll scream and yell, but eventually Dr. Anet will come to stitch us up. – Or stitch our mouth shut xD

RedSpectrum.1975:

Of course I’m embarrassed as to why I didn’t see the outcome before it happened. With the addition of Daredevil-of which I do have a lot of fun with- they are more and more pushing the thief from the type of fighter it was envisioned as, a stealthy high hitting duelist. It’s now an in-your-face duelist that relies on evasions to survive which, while useful, your opponent can still bait them and attack accordingly and due to power and defense creeps on other classes, they will hit you harder while you hit them softer, and we cannot normally trade hits. The original fighting style of the thief, the stealth fighter, has been secondarily nerfed since other styles from other classes have become stronger. Stealth was by far out best option for damage avoidance simply since we couldn’t be seen. Now that’s barely viable, DP thieves only stealth just to get out a backstab, not for its utility. Even when I DP in PvP, I use more Shadow Shots than Backstabs since I’ve seen it hit for 7k before. Might as well change the name from thief to martial artist at this point unless the next elite spec emphasizes, utilizes, and weaponizes stealth in ways only a thief can manage.

While personally I was never a big fan of stealth but a big fan of the swashbuckling type the Daredevil seems to be, I can only agree with you. Core Thief and Stealth with it has serious issues. Hell, even the nonstealth stuff has quite some issues, as acro proves.

DD is a bit strange as the really game changing stuff are the 3 different dodges, not the +50 Endurance. With that being said, I think DD is actually fine, but the base class is lacking. Like RedSpectrum I’m having a blast with my staff DD, but other classes feel stronger, their traits more sophisticated.
I do believe that thief traits still have quite some way to go until they’re well designed (mainly acrobatics & critical strikes), and the same goes for a sizable number of our utility skills.

I’m using marauder gear as my get go, for the simple reason of events often times scaling up. It’s a quality of life thing mostly, since our ranged weapons are killing me.
With that being said i also have some toughness gear in my backpack for the same reasons and berserker stuff for times of pure damage.
It all comes down to circumstances and how to approach them.
There are times when damage is more important and you have to step up your game, and times where that little bit of extra survivability is less stressful, sometimes even beneficial. Analize the situation you’re in and gear/play accordingly. Nothing & no-one forces you to stick to one single set of gear.

I usually play with dash, not bound and still Vault is enough. Use 1 Autoattack after Vault to dish out a bit of additional dmg.
Died horribly the first few times i’ve met them. Since understanding how they work (they run at you & attack, run/stand still and attack again etc.) they’re no big deal.

I SHOULD have gotten it about a week ago, or so. A bit earlier even. But as it happens, my Thief has 100% map completion so… patience is a virtue.

Still not fixed? Wow. =/

While TD has the worst Meta Event and is pretty terrible to navigate through, I found Auric Bassin to be shiny but boring, just like its events. All very much the same, and the ‘Bossfights’ in the city’ center aren’t any better.
VB is a cleverly designed map that works with any number of players. Even a group of 10 can achieve something on the map, though not everything. I love its event design.
DS is a huge grind with a pretty fun Boss fight at the end. I have the feeling that its grindy nature will anger me in the coming days and weeks, but for now i enjoy it & the huge amount of XP it gives.
So my vote is Auric Bassin.

Me, too. Seems I can’t do anything about it. Waiting for a fix!

I think the Itzel sell them. Them or the Nuhoch. You just need to get the respective language mastery.

I didn’t get a recipe with the scarf but was able to buy said recipe from the laurel vendor once i had the DD unlocked completely.

Soon as in really, really soon!
I was like “yeah, they’ll fix that in time”, until someone said that the silverwastes maps where bugged in the same way and nothing changed for months.
I hope that guy was misinformed… .

I like most of the content, and wouldn’t call it unfairly difficult, though content is more troublesome for some classes then for others, but kitten i hate those frogs.

I got the feathers out of a wyvern bag. They seem to be a relatively common drop. Nothing out of the ordinary. The Coin you get from any pirate mob in central tyria.

I mainly played as a Staff + X DD with DD/Acro/Trickery.
First of all… Acro is simply bad. And by bad I mean VERY BAD. The natural synergies offer nothing except that you basically lose a trait line.

That being said, on to the actual DD feedback.
Overall it felt much better than the last BW.
Out of the 3 Dodges Dash is even really, really good.
As a whole, though. DD is still missing something. I like the feel, but at the same time it feels off. But thief seems to have some problems in general, when it comes to the new content. Being able to dodge a lot is nice. But since it’s dodge or die, there seems to be no middleground. I was able to compensate for that by equipping a mix of berserker & soldier gear, but while that made me durable enough to actually damage the more dangerous opponents out there without getting gibbed, it also made my damage kind of lackluster when compared to for example the scrapper (which is btw. quite fun to play).

It seems that staff is still searching for its place to be honest.

Auto-attack feels better, despite the awfull third animation – but I see that as a WIP.
Weakening Charge has potential, but with its forced Movement I forsee many problems whent it comes to Content that needs actual positioning & exact movement. It should either be seen and balanced as a pure gap closer, or be stationary for proper weakness application. It might be enough to make it stop at your target, just like Heartseeker.
Debilitating Arc is kind of odd as it just does what the spec does anyway. It dodges stuff. And as the staff is pure DD, there is no way that less dodge builds utilise it. Still it’s not a bad skill by any means and does good damage. Personally though, I would have made it a block instead to add something new instead of something that’s already there. A good alternative might be to make it remove one damaging condition. See traits for explanation.
Dust Strike - Kind of the odd one out. I like its idea, blinding a bunch of weaker opponents, but have to say that it’s still rather clumsy and needs a wider cone. I have the gut feeling though that it needs a one target interupt/knock down added on top of the blind or something like that, to be really useful.
Vault It may sound strange, but despite kind of working, I feel that Vault is the one ability that just doesn’t fit the overall defensive nature of the staff. While the other skills might still be underwhelming, Vault feels out of place. It leaves you very vulnerable, even on short distance but at the same time is too expensive as a pure positioning tool (and has underwhelming range for that). It’s damage is good, and I could see it fitting for another weapon set, but tbh not for the staff. I’d suggest a ini 5, 5 target aoe with a 360 radius that evades during the time you whirl your staff and be done with it.

Physical skills.

Channeled Vigor - Good Idea, but not quite there jet. With the lowered channeltimes though, I feel it will have its place.
Distracting Daggers - Still too cumbersome. Haven’t tried them in PvP though, so there might be a place where they are actually useful.
Bandit’s Defense - Sadly nerfed, still strong. Not being able to stunbreak after a launch or something like that (as it is with RfI) hurts the ability, though. Still my favorite out of the physicals.
Fist Flurry - I like the idea to add raw damage to something like the staff, but am not a fan of Fist Flurry’s cumbersome usage. Don’t know what could be done. As of right now it’s just a pain to use.
Impairing Daggers - Didn’t try for a condi spec but have no complaints here. Straight forward skill that does what it should.

Traits.
I won’t go over the traits as they mostly seem ok on their own – but relatively weak compared with let’s say scrapper traits.
One thing that has to change through is Escapist’s Absolution.
Dare Devil (or thief in general) is already low on Condi-Cleanse anyway. And while the trait is fine (and actually rather weak given that you HAVE to evade, not just dodge), it being a master trait just like Staff Master will result in the latter being the inferior choice. Some weapon sets having traits while others don’t is problematic anyway (as it by definition makes them either better then the ones without traits OR brings them on par in which case you basically lose a trait), but it’s especially painful for our new weapon set. I suggest making the condi-cleanse baseline, or adding some condi cleanse to staff 3. See above.

I guess it’s time for a guild named “Get rid of Scarlet Briar ffs!” or something like that.

Acutally that’s a pretty good idea. We should really do that.

To me P/P has 3 problems.
- Auto attack damage too low.
- No built in defense.
- Too narrow with traits (partially due to being somewhat hybridish).

With that in mind i think that the acrobatics line would actually be a preferable set of traits for P/P, but it can’t really be used due to general trait placement.

Suggestions:
- Remove bleeding from Vital Shot, up its physical damage and quicken the time between shots. OR just quicken animation and ad vulnerability on hit.
- Add bleeding on vital shot as an adept or master trait in trickery to compensate P/D.
- Put riccochet in the critical strike line as a master trait & switch some traits around so that it fits.

These changes both take burden off of Unload & opens up builds based on 30 crit strike traits. Ofc it would be “yet another” 30 crit basis, but… honestly that’s how physical damage thieves are built anyway.

With it you could go for 10/30/0/30/0 heavy acro build, still opt for 0/30/0/20/20 or go for 10/30/0/0/30 heavily focusing on steal etc.

From that point on we could also see if P/P needs more buffs.

Yes that’s what I’m talking about. Of course I know that not everyone would probably be happy with such changes – but in the same way probably not everyone is happy with how our weaponskills are combined.
My question though goes more into the direction of game design – was it ever a question, and if so why was is scrapped? Or, if not, might it be a good idea for balancing lets say P/P & P/D which suffer from sharing #1 & #2.
Also could the added diversity create more interesting sets (thieves actually want to use every weapon skill every now and then, because they’re all designed as a group and don’t mess with other sets anymore (can’t buff Vital shot because of P/D – sry P/P!).

Just some rnd examples no “omg OP” or “that exact skill I don’t like”, please. These are just examples to show what I’m thinking of, and I’m making them up just as I write this:

- S/P – let’s say stays as it is, but its attack from stealth gets changed to something more damaging (reason: no easy access to stealth & already 2 dazes).
- S/D – gets a Larcenous strike on #2 with a short leap, “Riposte” on #3 dagger block → sword stab, gets flanking strike (as it is now) on #4 & keeps CnD on #5
- P/P – auto attack doesn’t do bleeding anymore but adds vulnerability (its attack from stealth gets the same treatment – vulnerability instead of bleeding), #2 becomes headshot (which S/P still has on #4), Unload stays (buffed or not, doesn’t matter here), #4 becomes crippling shot a single target cripple (or, should P/P have access to some AoE a cone attack that cripples) & #5 “blackpowder evade” – AoE blind and short evade back. Most of its damage comes from unload still.
- P/D – #1 stays as it is (again, mechanic wise), #2 becomes headshot, rest stays the same too, maybe some slight change to CnD.
- D/D – Loses backstab but gets shadowslash (or whatever you want to call it) which adds 3 bleeding stacks if done from behind – direct damage as backstab front. #2 heartseeker becomes bloodseeker (does more damage to bleeding targets instead of low targets), #3, #4, #5 stay as they are.
- D/P – #1, #2, #3 & #4 stay the same (including backstab), black powder becomes an aoe blind that stealthes (6 initiative cost skill ofc), auto attack damage would probably need to get buffed a bit.
- SB stays the way it is.

These are examples I pulled ouf of my… head just now. Don’t strangle me, they’re just for showing diversity. Not everything might be needed (or even just well thought out).

Dear Dev Team, during the creation of the thief class, have you ever considered making every skill (except auto-attack maybe) unique for every weaponset? And if not, can you imagine doing so?

I first thought of it, when the new flanking strike/larcenous strike mechanic was implemented – my first thought was (and I actually do like it better than the previous flanking strike): Darn, they need more keys!
Given the small number of different weapons (6 counting mainhand & offhand separately) and set combinations (7) AND the difficulty of balancing the initiative system (mainhand skills do have an impact on offhand skills and vice versa by sharing the same resource) I have the feeling that individual skills (or even just individual skill costs/damage modifieres) might benefit the class as a whole and open up the possibility to balance black sheeps like P/P better.
But mostly I’m interested if this, more holistic but also much more complicated approach was ever being discussed?

Silver.4798:

No point in me mentioning this now since evidently Arkitech has already left the building (despite loving all the other classes so re-rolling a guard for example is out of the question, as is trying a different thief build).

Many people actually took the time to think this out critically, if anyone’s interested. To cite one off of memory:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-Rotation-Adaptations

There are a few good youtube videos also adjusting their autoattack chain to try to compensate.

It was a nerf, no doubt. It doesn’t “break” the entire class though, comeon that’s just your frustration getting the best of you

The rotation changes mentioned there are… debateable at best and won’t change the awkward feel of this change. /D just lost most of its fluid playstyle which is a serious bummer in PvE at least.

Of course you can stay here, but as a capable mesmer you shouldn’t have any problems killing a thief (with the sole exception being P/D – maybe).
If you have you’re either built too defensivly or doing something wrong.

Anyway… the stealth change made PvE terribly awkward… really terrible playstyle wise.
And I’m not even talking about our hampered damage (that if anything was too low already for the supposed kings and queens of single target dps) but about the clumsyness that came for free with revealed “interrupting” auto attack chains.
Simply put – awfull playstyle change!

P.S. as many stated already, the stealth abuse didn’t really change – at all. Just does less damage -.- .

Wait… what? How are thieves more durable than Mesmers in melee?
Mesmer is definately in the upper half of the “best PvE classes around”.
I’d say top three, with warrior & guardian.
Now, Mesmers do have problems (low number of specs for example) but within that spec(s) the class is “insanely” strong, and maybe the only class that fares equally well in PvE as it does in PvP (unlike warriors or thieves for example).

I’m on a – as far as I can tell – working EU overflow.
Alehandra is the Name and I’m alone. Soloing Karka Veterans isn’t fun.