Guild Wars 2

Celestial amulet is fine in my opinion. Of course you get more stats from it, since you don’t specialize on anything.
Celestial builds are mainly too strong due to Problem 2 (fire/air/might). I completely agree with you on this one.
This also leads to Problem 3 (2/0/0/6/6 thieves). Imo you really exaggerate on this one, but i get your point.

Since problem 1 and 3 are directly caused by problem 2, it would be best to find a solution for it.

The problem basically is very simple. Too much damage on builds which should’t be able to deal that much damage.

I can’t say it often enough, the 2 0 0 6 6 build itself is fine, trading survivability/utility for raw damage.

It’s a survival/utility spec, the problem with it is that it currently does too much damage, mainly due to fire/air sigils and might stacking.
Making fire and air sigils share a cooldown would be the first step, not only would this fix some thief related issues, but also on other professions.
Might stacking is still too strong. 45% might duration on an offensive rune is simply too much. Might stacking also leads to fire/air sigils doing more damage.

As usual those topics always lead to hate campaigns against thieves (i’ve read every single aspect of this one build being too strong, everybody has it’s own opinion on wich part is the “OP” one) yet nobody notices nobody ran this build prior to the last balance patch. (Well, of course some did, me included, the build was good but had its downside: less damage.) Thieves didn’t get buffs, runes and sigils got changed and messed things up.

As some people also brought up, thief is not the only profession wich is arguably too strong at the moment due to specific runes/sigils. Fix them and you will fix not only thief, but also other classes, mainly warrior and ele.

I really looked forward to see a greater variety of runes/sigils being used (thus more build diversity) but there are still (again) a few completely outperforming the others. Please adress those issues rather than balancing classes around “meta” runes. Profession balance should not be that dependent on equipment. It only leads to less diversity.

For WvW it most likely is defense against guards (if you get hit by a guard). It shouldn’t proc when you get hit by a player though.

The 2/0/0/6/6 build with strength rune has 2 sources of vigor, feline grace, boon duration and might duration… so basically everything PoI can profit from.

Now imagine somebody playing 2/6/0/6/0 with rune of the pack (just an example). Is PoI really too strong with this setup?

Nerfing a trait because of a very specific build will make the trait absolutely worthless for other builds.

Finally a well thought-out proposal to the stealth mechanic. We need more posts like this
+1 from me

So… a class mechanic traited with more than half of your traitpoints is now compared to a single utility skill?
Don’t know what to say, really.

The 2/0/0/6/6 build trades damage for utility or survivability compared to 2/6/0/6/0 or 2/6/0/0/6 respectively and is perfectly fine.
The only reason why thief is so strong at the moment is the combination of fire/air sigils and the new rune of strength, which now makes up for the damage loss. Additionally, since most offensive power specs use rune of strength, the boonsteal of this spec is more useful now.

This however is not a thief specific problem. Nerfing a class just because of a certain combination of rune/sigils is extremely short-sighted. The problem remains, yet the class is nerfed and eventually forced into that rune/sigils even more.

Stealth and reveal is perfectly fine how it is (asides from trolling in WvW). If thieves get revealed each time a stealth attack misses, this will happen:

spvp: Dagger mainhand will be extremely weak. A thief stealths? Put up aegis/gear shield/arcane shield/whatever and wait. Simply wait. Either the thief attacks and gets revealed (while no damage from backstab is taken) or you have a free 3 seconds to capture the point while the thief just wasted 9 initiative (or a utility) to stealth.

WvW: Thief is stealthed, gets blinded or sees the enemy blocking… well, attacking would be stupid. So what will the thief do? Right, he waits for stealth to expire and simply stealth again. And again. Since thieves in wvw usually take 30 in shadow arts, there will be even more “perma-stealth” and more people crying about this unfair stealth mechanic.

Regarding shotbow #3:

Yes, it’s a little stupid. Simply increasing the initiative cost istn’t the best solution. It would not only punish the “evade spam” but also “proper” use of it, i.e. a quick evade to a hard hitting attack while creating a little distance.

Personally i really would like to see a sequence skill, just like FS/LS. It would prevent spamming the skill over and over while still being equally effective if only used once.

Regarding shortbow auto:

It is also perfectly fine as it is. As somebody else already mentioned: it would be the same if a thief asks for an engi nerf, because engis counter thieves.
Counters are fine. You can’t balance 8 classes without some builds/weapons/whatever countering others.
Shortbow auto isn’t a garanteed win against any mesmer, it isn’t a hard counter like automated response is to condition builds.

phaeris.7604:

The issue is. they go stealth, and there’s no counter play. I can blow cooldowns/dodges trying to avoid the incoming damage, but they just stealth again if they don’t get the attack resetting the fight in their favour and your manouveres achieved nothing.

To people who say ‘You can predict where they are in stealth!’. Don’t, I mained a thief for a year, and if you’re any good on one your oponent has no idea where you are.

Counter play is to prevent the thief from stealthing. It is only difficult against D/P thieves, which use 9 initiative to stealth, which is a lot.

Of course you can predict a thief’s movement, and of course it’s not a guaranteed win. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. A thief doesn’t have infinite teleports.

A troll thief in wvw with 30 SA…. well, thats a different story. But the reason some thieves i know (including me) go 30 SA is simply because of how broken condition bunkers are. Without condiremoval and regen in stealth you wouldn’t stand a chance.

Edit: reagarding risk/reward:
Thieves will always be the class which can disengage easily. It is how the class is designed and will most likely not change.
However that doesn’t mean playing a thief means no risk. Every time you go into melee range to backstab someone you are in danger, especially in team fights.

Having multiple escape options doesn’t equal low risk when fighting.

Pistol whip is not OP.

It’s the same story like it always is… a build gets popular for some reason, people don’t know how to couter it – people rage.
Some advice, if somebody is interested:

The skill has an obvious animation, so it can be avoided easily. Even if combined with steal or infiltrator’s signet. If the thief is at ~900 range and uses pistol whip (or CnD or whatever) he’ll port in. Btw, if you are running straight to the thief and he uses this combo, it will fail if the timing wasn’t good. Pistol whip will stun you, but the damage part won’t hit you because you are not in range any more.

Timing is also crucial when playing against a S/P thief, same as S/D.
Pistol whip roots, and at the end of the animation the thief is vulnerable, but still rooted. Play a S/P thief for a couple of soloQ/hotjoin matches and you will get a feeling for when to attack. At this point you have to use a key attack, preferably a CC skill. Or a quick damage spike like backstab.

For bunker builds: retaliation is your best friend.

“High damage, stun and evasion in one skill” sounds very nice on paper, however there is counter play.
The skill/weapon set is strong, but not overpowered.

Personally i would like to see the skill being splitted in 2 parts, making it more difficult/rewarding/complicated to use and preventing the infamous “3 spam” by having a higher total initiative cost.

Tei.1704:

Paulo.8459:

A counterexample: (D/D set)
You use: heartseeker->death blossom->dancing dagger->cloak and dagger.
That’s 3+4+3+5=15 initiative. (Base pool is 12)
That means you cannot even use all your skills in a row like other professions.

You simply cannot calculate cooldowns for ressource based skills.
Saying something like “6 initiative is like half of your weapon skills on cooldown” it’s just to compare it a little bit, and maybe make it clear to people who don’t play thief.
12 initiative used means all your weapon skills are locked, or to compare it to other professions, all skills are on cooldown.

Actually, you can use all those d/d skills in a row. Initiative regenerates constantly; initiative is coming back every second while you are using skills. It takes more than 3 seconds to activate all those skills, so you have more than enough initiative to use all your skills in a row.

I like how you snipped my quote. It actually was:

A counterexample: (D/D set)
You use: heartseeker->death blossom->dancing dagger->cloak and dagger.
That’s 3+4+3+5=15 initiative. (Base pool is 12)
That means you cannot even use all your skills in a row like other professions.
Weapon swap to shortbow
Clusterbomb->disabling shot->choking gas->infiltrators arrow.
3+4+4+6=17 initiative. (Remember, you are still left with -3)

Note that weapon swap. But what do ya know, somebody attacking a class conveniently forgets some details about how it works.
Of course initiative regenerates over time, i didn’t want to make it too complicated, so I missed that point.
Skill 2-5 on D/D take a total of 2 seconds to cast. Still 1 initiative missing.

Tei.1704:

What do ya know, somebody defending their class conveniently forgets some details about how it works.

As do people crying about a class. I didn’t make this on purpose, thanks for your addition. My other points however are still valid. For example this one:

Paulo.8459:

Initiative has advantages and disadvantages.
Every advantage (wich many people on the forums like to point out) has its corresponding disadvantage. Initiative allows to use the same attack 2 times in a row? Yes, but then you limited your use of the other ones.

Referring to this:

Yeah, initiative can’t be accurately compared to cooldowns because cooldowns aren’t in the player’s control. Cooldowns force you to save important skills with long cooldowns for the right situation. Using a defensive cooldown can leave you without that skill for 20 or 30 seconds.

Advantage: initiative is under player’s control. (Well… you can control it.)
Disadvantage: initiative is under player’s control. (You have to make decisions during a fight and you might mess it up.)

Advantage: You can potentially use an important skill multiple times, without waiting 30 seconds.
Disadvantage: You may lock this important skill even by using another attack.

Tei.1704:

Assuming zero initiative, a thief can use a stealth, evade or mobility skill again in a third or a fifth of that time. Again, that assumes zero initiative and no regen trait, a worst case scenario.

Assuming other classes have everything on cooldown, they can also use utility skills. Or simply switch to another weapon. Like I already said.
Assuming zero initiative regenerating traits = assuming zero cooldown reduction traits.

Another point: thieves don’t have weaponskills comparable to a 30-45 seconds cooldown. Imagine a meteor shower or reaper’s mark? How many initiative would they cost? Way too much. Such skills don’t belong to thief weapons.
Again, this can be advantage and disadvantage.

Tei.1704:

I’m not complaining; I beat the vast majority of thieves I encounter. I’m just saying initiative is a profession mechanic. It wasn’t given to thieves to be fair and equivalent with other professions. Initiative is simply better than cooldowns. Nobody except other deluded thieves buys this “woe is the thief and his initiative” bit.

Initiative is not simply better. I said it multiple times, every advantage has its corresponding disadvantage.
Even if it was a little better, it is no where near OP as many people claim it to be. All they see is “that teef using HS 3 times in a row!! Skillless spam OP! NURF!11”

Thanks for calling me a deluded thief, this doesn’t make your argument more valid.
I play every professions and personally I find cooldowns to be much easier to use.
This is my personal opinion, others might feel otherwise. I wouldn’t call them deluded.

RyuDragnier.9476:

You two are implying we thieves even have to use all of the skills in a row, or that we can even have a problem with positioning. There are really only 1-3 skills we use on any given weapon set, and almost never after each other. For other classes, their attacks have a cooldown, and cannot be spammed, so they end up having to use everything. While initiative is a type of cooldown, it’s very easy to bypass and all our attacks can be spammed.

No, thieves should not spam their skills in a row. Like I said, it was just an example to make a comparision.
I would not say that other classes have to use everything, but they are able to use everything. On some classes/specs you can literally do 12345, swap, 12345, swap…. that is what I call “mindless spamming”. You can simply use the attack, without the risk that you just locked another attack wich you really needed.

Initiative has advantages and disadvantages.
Every advantage (wich many people on the forums like to point out) has its corresponding disadvantage. Initiative allows to use the same attack 2 times in a row? Yes, but then you limited your use of the other ones.

Initiative is a great mechanic imo. The weaponsets just don’t always fit, like you already pointed out. S/D for example will almost never make use of CnD. Dancing dagger is quite underwhelming. Death blossom won’t be used on a power build, while it’s the only attack being used on a conition build.
That’s the reason why I like D/P. Not because of the easy access to stealth, but simply because every skill has its use. I really don’t care for that so called “perma stealth”, the weaponset just fells so … “complete”.

RyuDragnier.9476:

There really is no comparing constantly spammable moves to nonspammable moves that have high cooldowns.

Not sure if you meant me, but that’s just what I said:

You simply cannot calculate cooldowns for ressource based skills.
Saying something like “6 initiative is like half of your weapon skills on cooldown” it’s just to compare it a little bit, and maybe make it clear to people who don’t play thief.
12 initiative used means all your weapon skills are locked, or to compare it to other professions, all skills are on cooldown.

Meaning you can only compare it to a certain degree – without any comparision it couldn’t be balanced in any way.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Also, since stealth = impossible to see in this game, positioning is near impossible not to get right, especially since Steal is a particularly good gap closer…and that people seem to freak out when somebody goes stealth.

Not seeing an enemy doesn’t mean not being able to predict his moves. If a thief uses a 35 second cooldown skill to land a backstab, I think this is fine.
I almost only get backstabbed if an enemy thief uses his shadowsteps while in stealth, otherwise he got the jump on me.
Fighting a thief requires tactical play, knowledge of the class and practice/experience. I fought those famous WvWers which stop moving when you go stealth. I fought players on which I got exactly 0 backstabs off during a fight. I fought thieves which were never able to land a backstab on me, I fought thieves which backstabbed me to death.
This may be just my personal opinion, but I really like these kinds of fights. Unfortunately, many people don’t, and unfortunately the thief class encourages trollish behaviour i.e. a thief stealthing to escape, engaging again and never dying… hence stealth claimed to be OP. Or claimed to be “no risk”. Asides from trolling, stealth is not OP in any way.

People are approaching in a bad way, simply with the intention to nerf stealth (while having no interest in learning on how to improve their gameplay) instead of thinking about a way to change stealth without nerfing or buffing it directly. A redesign of some traits for example would be a good start.

Instead, threads pop up all the time with ridiculous proposals like the “reveal on block/evaded/invunerable” change.

pmnt.4067:

Thieves, please. Don’t whine about weapon cooldowns. Ever.

If you ever cared to calculate the effective cooldowns of your weapon skills or
calculated which ridiculous forms of cooldown reduction in form of initiative
gain you have, ontop of a chill immunity for weapon cooldowns, you’ll never
complain about your “cooldowns” again.

6 initiative = 8 seconds cooldown. wow. What a contraint for a #5 skill.
2 initiative every 10 seconds = 20% cooldown reduction. Here are the calculations from 7 months ago. The skills/traits are not up to date, the numbers still are.

If you try to “calculate” cooldowns for thief weapon skills, please do it correcly.
Your example is based on using only one skill besides the autoattack.

A counterexample: (D/D set)
You use: heartseeker->death blossom->dancing dagger->cloak and dagger.
That’s 3+4+3+5=15 initiative. (Base pool is 12)
That means you cannot even use all your skills in a row like other professions.
Weapon swap to shortbow
Clusterbomb->disabling shot->choking gas->infiltrators arrow.
3+4+4+6=17 initiative. (Remember, you are still left with -3)

Now take into account that all 8 skills don’t recharge simultaneously like on other professions. Assuming you wait 6 seconds to use cloak and dagger again, all your other skills are completely locked again.

You simply cannot calculate cooldowns for ressource based skills.
Saying something like “6 initiative is like half of your weapon skills on cooldown” it’s just to compare it a little bit, and maybe make it clear to people who don’t play thief.
12 initiative used means all your weapon skills are locked, or to compare it to other professions, all skills are on cooldown.

By the way, 1 initiative regenerates in 1 second. The math you linked is outdated. Base initiative regeneration was buffed, while initiative regenerating traits were nerfed.

So… please, dear non-thief, don’t cry about initiative. Ever.

Back to topic:
I’ll repost it from one of the other “nerf thieves” thread:

And again the complaints are about the d/p weaponset. Going stealth is very difficult to counter (but possible). It’s just badly designed.
Asides from this set and the blinding powder utility (wich is perfectly fine due to its cooldown), your statement that stealth is “absolutely impossible to prevent or counter” is just wrong.
The thief stealths either trough BP+HS (wich i mentioned above) or through CnD. The latter is countered by dodge, blind, block, invulnerability and out of range. Counter the CnD and cou counter stealth by preventing it completely.

Even if the thief is already stealthed, there is counterplay. No direct/hard counters, but counterplay.

Thief weaponskills have a global resource/cooldown.
CnD costs 6 initiative, wich is 50% of the initiative pool.
That’s what Aberrant meant with “half skills go on cooldown”.

Thoth Divine.8642:

Title says it all. Stealth is a great mechanic in this game, but the fact that it is absolutely impossible to prevent or counter is ridiculous. Thieves rely on this skill a great lot which is fine, but in my opinion it’s a broken and cheesy mechanic. I think Thieves would be in a much better place if they didn’t rely so much on it and were compensated in other ways to make up for this.

Thoughts?

Of all the “nerf thieves” threads the last days this is by far the worst suggestion.

And again the complaints are about the d/p weaponset. Going stealth is very difficult to counter (but possible). It’s just badly designed.
Asides from this set and the blinding powder utility (wich is perfectly fine due to its cooldown), your statement that stealth is “absolutely impossible to prevent or counter” is just wrong.
The thief stealths either trough BP+HS (wich i mentioned above) or through CnD. The latter is countered by dodge, blind, block, invulnerability and out of range. Counter the CnD and cou counter stealth by preventing it completely.

Even if the thief is already stealthed, there is counterplay. No direct/hard counters, but counterplay.

Maybe the servers you fight against are full with squishy people…
I rarely crit over 6k, and if so mostly on upleveled.

How does sword profit from 5 seconds vulerability? It doesnt have huge spike damage like backstab. Sword is sustained damage, daggers can concentrate their damage in a short window of time.

I don’t know where you get your numbers from, but in full ascended berserker gear and 30 in critical strikes, my average backstabs are ~4k.

D/D signet build is a one trick pony, i really don’t care for it. You see nice numbers once, and that was it.

If you see a thief CnD, simply dodge, even if the thief is <900 away. It requires a little practice, but it is possible if you pay attention. Mug+CnD+backstab is often coupled with basilisk venom to make it even more obvious.

Weather the frontloaded damage is fine or not may be a matter of opinion. I think it is fine.
Also you should consider that mug is not only used in a backstab build. Sword builds will have almost no benefit from that short vulnerability, and even if used in a backstab build, you’d be required to use mug only in combination with backstab, otherwise it may be wasted.

Kontrolle.3514:

Aegael.6938:

If thieves cry that stealth is their only defense since they don’t have protection, then give them protection in return for reworking stealth. What a useless argument.

Its even more useless because thieves have the best mobility, teleporting skills, evades, evadeskills, blindspells and even stunbreakers without CD. Coupled with The shortest CD on elites which are abused like no tomorrov with lyssa runes.

Stealth is a gamekiller since release. Im the last one off app. 20 people that started together with gw2. Most of them left because of the broken stealth madness.

Warriors have high armor, direct damage immunity, condition immunity, loads of stability, plenty of blocks, very high regeneration, very high mobility, high burst damage, high condition damage, very much condi removal, very much hard cc.

…. just not in one build.
Listing what a class has access to doesn’t mean it’s all in one build.

Btw, i’d like to see that stunbreak without cooldown.
I’d also like to have infinite initiative so that your argument of “no cooldowns” is actually true.

Back to topic:
I understand this is very annoying. But please don’t propose any changes if you don’t play a thief. They are very bad, the reasons were already named by other people.

scabrous.7835:

Stacking stealth with DP has never been trully OP, but a l2p issue. However with nerfing in mind, you could limit comb field on Black Powder to 1.5-2 seconds (current 4) while keeping blinding pulses duration as they’re now. This way DP will work as it does now and will put no one but stealth stacking thieves at disadvantage.

This would be a very nice idea imo.
Basic functionallity of black powder remains, while you have to stealth very early (makes it more predictable and easier to counter) and stealth stacking would be able up to 2 times maybe (wich is fine imo).

Where is the point of nerfing the burst potential of a burst set?
Mug damage was already nerfed and CnD has had its damage reduced by 33% in sPvP.

S/D stealth builds (yes, they exist) will also be nerfed by this change, although the damage on the set really isn’t that high.

Why do so many people want to nerf damage in exchange for survivability? Do you really want more bunker stuff in this game?
Btw, why should S/D stealth builds have less crit chance than D/D? Both usually take 30 in critical strikes, so they have exactly the same amount of precision.

Edit: concerning dire P/D thieves… they are already near impossible to kill. This change would cause even more rage towards thieves.

BFMV.3198:

I’m Against all stealth threads because its just whining people that need to learn to play and stop moaning about stealth. I have disagreed with every single nerf idea or change to stealth.

I do however agree with you on this. Seems like a really good idea and would like to see this implemented.

I was about to write exactly this xD

I’m very impressed by some people’s ability to discuss constructively

Forzani.2584:

Paulo.8459:

Thieves are annoying to most players. Most players get upset when killed by a thief.

……Most players get upset when killed by a thief….

Most players get upset when fighting a Thief, win or lose. It’s annoying to the nth degree having to deal with stealth throughout the fight and having to re-target over and over while making sure you don’t target a mob instead.

One thing you can’t deny, right or wrong, thieves are absolutely hated in WvW. When one pops, people will go out of there way to try and kill him unlike any other class. With that much vitriol towards one class it should surprise me that Anet doesn’t try to fix it. Although it does seem to me some of the decisions Anet does make are pure troll in nature so who knows.

That’s exactly my point. People hate thieves and they rage even more if killed by one.
Most of the thief haters don’t care for balance. They simply want to see the thief class nerfed, based on their emotions.

To me thieves are one of the more interesting classes to fight against. Warriors for example are just plain boring. I hate fighting them. Their high armor/health/healing, in case of WvW often blocks and immunities are just so… simple. This isn’t fun to me.
But that’s just my personal opinion. I would never scream for a nerf just because personally I don’t like a class or the playstyle.

Regarding “trolling”: Yes, the thief has the highest potential to “troll” people. People get even more upset when a thief disengages, stealths, heals up and returns.
This is indeed an issue. But it’s more the player being an kitten than the class itself.
Again, instead of thinking about a way on how to fix this properly, people who don’t know anything about the thief mechanics think they are able to judge the class and propose the weirdest things.

Thieves are not overpowered. They are annoying to some players and they require the opponent to play more tactically rather than just casting skills to a target.
As I said, there might be some issues, but 90% of the players don’t care for a solution both parts may profit from. They are just controlled by their emotions.

I could add some points to that list but… well…

Thieves are annoying to most players. Most players get upset when killed by a thief.
I’m already waiting for the next nerf because some WvWers cried about “permastealth 10k backstab no counterplay etc etc” while some spvpers cried about “permaevade too much mobility too much damage etc etc” and some others cried “thief has no cooldown” (my favourite part)

I often read “people wont stop until a thief is a free kill/lootbag.”
Unfortunately, there is some truth behind it. You can’t even argue with 9 out of 10 complaining people, because all they want is the thief being nerfed, because there is something they don’t like.
There are almost no people asking for advice on how to improve their gameplay. Better ask for a nerf, that doesn’t hurt your ego.
Let’s hope the devs do their job well, although I fear that they will be too impressed by the amount of thief QQ the last days, but well…
We’ll see it in 2 months.

You said that stealth means no risk, because you can disengage easily.
Now you are saying that every attack should apply revealed.
Now tell me, when exactly are you backstabbing people while running away? That doesn’t really make sence.

As was already mentioned quite often: this is a video game. You can’t use real life logic.
I’d really like to see you playing a backstab thief with this proposed changes…

The ability to disengage is a whole new topic.

You put yourself at risk if you try to backstab someone, that’s what the discussion is about.

stale.9785:

Laughing at all the people claiming that using stealth is at all high risk.

Laughing at all the people who never played a thief but think they can judge everything from their limited point of view.

evilapprentice.6379:

hihey.1075:

No. Good players already know how to counter stealth. If you can’t, then either you’re not equipped for it, or you’re not a good player.
Cheers.

This.

This.

Imagine you have 2 stacks of bleeding from a power specced opponent, 1 stack of vulnerability and maybe 4 seconds poison.
Would you like to waste 6 initiative on this?

Yeah, i completely agree with you, i didn’t want to say that i’m against a buff but that it will most likely not happen.

I think it would be problematic if infiltrator’s return costs 6 initiative. I think i would almost never use it again because this one skill alone drains 50% of my initiative, even if i don’t have conditions on me.

By the way, people are still crying about sword thieves being OP in the class balance subforum, i don’t think we’ll ever see any buffs.

Reesha.7901:

Paulo.8459:

After LS ini cost nerf, boon steal nerf, infiltrator’s return nerf and vigor nerf I think S/D is perfectly fine now.

People just don’t want to realize that you can’t spam 12345 to win against an evasion spec.
People don’t ask for advice but instead come to the forum and claim something to be OP.
I’ve almost never seen a thread asking for advice on how to beat a certain spec. That’s really sad imo…

I have a hard time believing Phantaram or his team just “spam” skills. :P

That was just an exaggeration to make clear what i was trying to say.

Berserker is fine. The encounters which promote pure berserker specs are not.

Even if berserker was nerfed to be only 20% more damage than soldier’s, people would still take berserker over anything else.

After LS ini cost nerf, boon steal nerf, infiltrator’s return nerf and vigor nerf I think S/D is perfectly fine now.

People just don’t want to realize that you can’t spam 12345 to win against an evasion spec.
People don’t ask for advice but instead come to the forum and claim something to be OP.
I’ve almost never seen a thread asking for advice on how to beat a certain spec. That’s really sad imo…

Yeah, you can poison the enemy, but it doesn’t inflict direct damage. So you don’t “hit” the enemy directly, thats why this skill also doesn’t break stealth.

But that was just a thought, theoretically it could be affected by this change as well as infiltrator’s arrow, which can blind enemys. I think both ways make sence.

There have already been some suggestions on how to improve this lackluster trait, and I have another one

The base healing is quite underwhelming, but instead of just increasing it, it could be increased under specific conditions.

My idea was to increase the total amount healed by 50% if the attack actually hits a target sucessfully.
This would reward thieves actively engaged in a fight while it heals less if skills are used to escape or while in stealth in order to heal up. It would also create kind of counterplay by avoiding high initiative skills (which should be done anyway)
The only skills wich would be unaffected by this change are choking gas, infiltrator’s return and infiltrator’s arrow.

What do you think about this?

Swagg.9236:

Paulo.8459:

So countering with dodges is unwise, but using a block is not? I don’t get this.
According to your logic, blocking it would also be unwise since the thief could still use steal/infiltrators signet.

The reason why [Infiltrator’s Strike] and [Shadow Shot] are so broken is that they are free direct-to-target gap-closers. Gap-closers in general are borderline desperation moves. There’s typically something at play when using a leap to get closer to a player. That enemy player can CC you, mid-flight, you could be blinded, you could use the leap improperly and land somewhere unexpected, you could also die mid-leap if you were in dire enough straits.

There’s nothing at risk with [Infiltrator’s Strike], [Shadow Shot], [Steal] or [Infiltrator’s Signet]. You just get a free “Haha, I’m in your face now,” at the press of a button. You can technically block the strike from [Infiltrator’s Strike], but the guy is still right next to you anyway so he wins that, and the latter 3 you just can’t block at all. Moreover, none of those skills really have true after-cast periods, if any at all. In practice when attempting to defend against any of these movement skills, players have to either dodge wildly to somehow avoid [Infiltrator’s Strike], waste possibly multiple dodges on [Shadow Shot] because it has no cool-down, or just eat damage because there is literally no counter-play around [Steal] or [Infiltrator’s Signet]. This is why they are overpowered.

Paulo.8459:

Btw: teef skills have no cooldown! xD

They don’t. That’s really why they’re so powerful. Thieves need a complete makeover in order to make them both fair and effective, but since ANet will never do that, the only other options are responsible nerfs that tend toward a cool-down paradigm.

Well…. Arganthium has told you how to counter the “free movement”…. dodge the obvious bullet. You said it is unwise.
If you dodge the bullet, the thief won’t teleport to you. Why do you really need to block it? Why is a block different from a dodge roll? Both are defensive mechanisms wich prevent you from being hit by an attack. Dodge the unblockable skills, block the blockable skills. The only unblockable skills are shadow shot and larcenous strike. Both are well telegraphed.

You just explained why shadowsteps are so powerful and i completely agree with you.
Thats part of the thief’s design. Thats what a thief is good at. A thief is weak. He has to be mobile, stealthy or evasive.
Shadowsteps are quite unpredictable, so the enemy has to react very quickly.
Shadowsteps are in fact a well-implemented kind of unpredictability. A badly implemented example would be fresh air ele burst. (Not crying about eles here, it’s just an example)

Do you really think that thief skills are too powerful because they have no cooldown?
That are the words from someone who never touched thief.
Managing a resource for ALL of your weaponskills is actually much more difficult than working with cooldowns.

Well, lets make a hypothetical scenario…
You are fighting a thief.
Thief uses shadow shot (4ini), you dodge the bullet, because you remember, it is wise to do so, because the thief will not teleport.
Now the thief uses shadow shot again. Because OP he has no cooldown. You don’t dodge it, because you don’t want to waste all of your endurance. That’s ok.
Now the thief is in your face. He spent 8 initiative. 8 out of 12. Ok, lets assume 1 initiative already regenerated.
Thief has 5 initiative left. That istn’t even enough for a black powder. The thief would have to autoattack you.
As i said, a thief is very weak. You don’t want to sit in your enemy’s face autoattacking. Not managing your initiative properly results in death. But as i said, non-thieves will never understand this. I don’t want to list the pros and cons of initiative, that’s another topic. It’s perfectly balanced as it is.

Just like i said… make a thief, play tpvp and tell me again that thief has to be nerfed.
Thief is probably the most nerfed class in gw2. Have fun playing it.

As i said, nobody should think they can jugde a class, without playing it extensively. It’s just QQ based on personal experience and frustration. QQing is always the easy way.
Thief is fine as it is right now. There is no cheese any more. Thief is hard to play in comparison to the other classes. Thieves are punished for their mistakes. The only thing thieves are good at is escaping. A part of the reason why everybody is QQing.

People just shouldn’t post their suggestions on how to “balance” the game if they didn’t play all classes extensively.

Swagg.9236:

Arganthium.5638:

The counterplay is very simple- just evade the shot. It’s extremely obvious, particularly with its coloring.

It has no cool-down. Fighting [Shadow Shot] with dodges is unwise since the Thief could still have [Steal] or maybe even [Infiltrator’s Signet] since that signet pretty meta.

So countering with dodges is unwise, but using a block is not? I don’t get this.
According to your logic, blocking it would also be unwise since the thief could still use steal/infiltrators signet.

Btw: teef skills have no cooldown! xD

I really don’t get why people think they can balance classes without even playing them.
I’d like the OP to make a thief and play some tpvp against competent players, not only wvw heroes with zerg builds.

But hey, thieves have an absolutely overpowered skill (shadow shot) wich is basically a free meteor shower!
And everyting without cooldown!!11
Hell, pistol whip is 150% evasion uptime and you can spam it all day long, there is no cooldown!
Who needs more than 10k base health? Pfft, thats for noobs who can’t hit their 3 key fast enough to spam invulnerability!
Who needs high armor? Defensive boons? Blocks? Whatever? Thieves have unpredictable and very high damage (the damage is even higher than meteor shower!) and everthing without cooldown! It’s not fair that every other class drops like a fly if somebody sneezes at them.

Stealth and stealth attacks are SO OP because every time i enter stealth my enemys freeze and are unable to move, so unless i suddenly have to sneeze 3 times in a row, i always land a very nice backstab.
(tactical strike so op btw)

Did i mention that thieves can spam their attacks because they have no cooldown? :O

Obviously somebody here got killed by some mean wvw thieves.

It’s called “withdraw”.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Its really not a L2P issue at all, some of it is, granted but it’s all about resetting fights with such little sacrificing going on. Look, a thief is never going to kill me, but when i get any thief below 30%, they just run.

and you can’t stop them from running …….. Ill blow all my snares trying to land stuff on the thief, but when i get him low, my snares are all on cd because i used them to deal my damage by keeping him still.

I call that a loss. And the thief wins every fight by choosing not to lose to you.

Now THAT is bull-kitten.

Edit- Its not bull-kitten that they can run away, its bs that thieves and wars are somehow the only class that are allowed to do so…. I never complained about thieves pre-rtl nerf, only after. So, i wont ever complain about thieves again if rtl got reverted.(but we know never will). The double standards in this game are beyond sickening.

So basically you’re just angry that your ele has been nerfed and now you go to the thief forum and cry because we still have mobility?

So… if rtl will be reverted, you won’t think it’s unfair that ele, thief and warrior are the only classes that can run away so easily?

As long as you get what you want, you are happy and don’t care for anything else?

Btw, calm down and let thieves run. You won. Do you really need this stomp to be satisfied?

As you mentioned “a thief is never going to kill you”, so don’t you think thieves are actually underpowered?
I’d rather be able to actually kill something than just being able to run away ôO

Cynz.9437:

Yes, thieves have good moblity and stealth… but that is it. They literary don’t have anything else. If you don’t believe me, roll a thief, go do some soloq/tpvp so you can experience lv 80 combat, pray that you don’t uninstall after match or two.

This.

Personally i never run from a 1vs1. If i’m losing, i’m still fighting until i die.
If suddenly i get outnumbered of course i run. Why should i stay and fight? Are you satisfied if you stomp someone because you won 3vs1?

If a warrior runs from me in a 1vs1 and I know i’m not going to catch him, i just /laugh and take the next camp or whatever.

So… the OP basically is complaining about the thief’s escapability.
If a thief can’t escape, he’s not a thief…. this class is designed around being mobile and hard to catch.
Other classes with certain builds can escape as easily as a thief can.

So can sword/x+GS rangers, mobility warriors, stealth mesmers, engineers in general, GS+sword/focus guardians, and x/d eles. Go complain on their forums about how they can break combat.

As already mentioned.

Aaroneous.6190:

The issue here is that thieves simply have too many “I wanna go home mommy” buttons . They are not punished for their mistakes.

“Thieves are not punished for their mistakes.”
So…. i fight a warrior, dancing around him, stunning him in the right moments, blinding him, using positioning and shadowsteps strategically, while he’s just standing there pressing 12345.
I make 1 little mistake because im not paying attention or have a little lag, whatever… Bam. 40% of my HP gone in a single blow.

Not complaining about warriors here, it was just an example. The thief is one of the classes wich are punished the most for their mistakes. The thief’s defensive is all active.
If a thief escapes, you see the fleeing thief and think he’s not punished (because he’s still alive).
In fact, if he would not be punished, he would not flee.
If he flees, you won. I understand this is unsatisfying, but are the wxp and a little loot worth your anger? He’s running like a little girl, just laugh at him
(Unless he runs from an outnumbered fight :P)

Btw, thieves have exactly 1 “I wanna go home mommy” button, wich is shadowstep. The skill is perfectly fine IMO, it’s on a 50sec cooldown. A mesmer has a 900/1200 range teleport (traited), an ele has a 900 teleport. Both on lower cooldowns.
Yes, shadowstep is not only a single teleport, but if you use the second teleport from shadowstep, you are right in the face of your enemys again…. not the optimal conditions to get away :p
If it’s not about running away, shadowstep is a great skill wich rewards good positioning.

Husky.8413:

Thief post again sorry!
I main thief. If you are going to make changes to the weapon skills themselves, such as the sword, and just end up completely destroying the reason why people use them (to stay out of danger and keep their mobility up), will you compensate for things like legendary weapons? They take soooooo long to make, and require so much resource and time. If a change like the thief sword is made, I don’t think I’ll use the sword anymore, in that case, rendering my legendary pretty much useless. Will there be a chance to opt to transform the legendary into a different one? The sword isn’t broken, and its the one redeeming trait that allows many players in PVE to survive close encounters in dungeons and not end up being “That” thief that downs all the time and ends up making people not want thieves in the party.

I was also wondering about that.
When vigor wil be halfed and sword nerfed again, i’ll probably never touch my bolt again. I’m already playing D/D in WvW atm, just to get the feeling of not using sword. After the patch i’d rather have an incinerator, but well…. i’m 99% sure anet won’t allow a legendary weapon exchange/unbound.

Maugetarr.6823:

We will still have too many evades. The reasoning behind nerfing vigor literally said (paraphrasing) “thief is dodging too much.” This change won’t affect that.

And it’s very sad imo. Thief was meant to be the most evasive class if built for it.
If the patch won’t be changed, guardians, mesmers and eles will be able to dodge more than the thief, even with feline grace.

I just don’t get this logic. Guardian, a very tanky class will be able to get more vigor than thief, a very squishy class. Seems legit, doesn’kitten

If they feel the “spamable” weapon evades are over the top, then why don’t they change them?
As it seems, the vigor nerf is because of the S/D thief dodging too much, but there are other weaponsets, too.

I thought that only the scaling with healing power will be increased by 35%, but i might be wrong.

Even if both the scaling and the base heal get buffed, it won’t be very good imo. With the new 1 initiative/second it basically will heal for 93 per second.
Quite underwhelming, if you consider regeneration healing for 130/second.
In addition to that, it only benefits the thief itself, not the team.

evilapprentice.6379:

Init regen change was great, I agree. I’ve argued for it on the boards 2 or 3 times, in fact.

Leaving init based traits where they were, only kittentier? That’s my issue. Some of the now worthless looking init traits (Opportunist, Quick recovery, Klepto) should have been changed to better define their trait lines, instead of being left in place – it’s only conjecture, but they all look borderline worthless.

At least with Quick recovery I can just not take it, but any CS or Trickery trait line is stuck with this placeholder crap.

This.
The reworked traits just will be more sub-par traits. Not only they are halfed in efficiency but looking at the higher base-regeneration they will be even more unneccessary.

I’m also happy about the infusion of shadows nerf.
For the rest… well…
Infiltrator’s strike nerf along with vigor uptime halfed… sword thieves will have a hard time :/
Additionally i sometimes think that people forget that there is a weaponset called sword/pistol, wich also suffers from the changes. Changes wich obviously are meant to make sword/dagger less effective.

First of all: The idea to create more transparency and to make the players understand what the thought behind the changes is, is great! I’ve been waiting for this for a long time

My thoughts on the thief changes:
- the general change to initiative gain is good imo.
- i’m happy that pistol whip gets some love. We will see if it will be enough to make the set viable again
- hard to catch is still a very bad trait, since it gets you in trouble/messes up your positioning more often than it saves you.
- assasin’s reward still won’t be worth taking
- nerfing shadow return is understandable, since it was a “no-brainer” and the thief could get out of trouble too easily
- but simultaneously nerfing endurance gain through halving vigor uptime is very, very bad. Normally a thief doesn’t take vigorous recovery and bountiful theft at the same time. After the change the thief would be able to dodge less than most other classes with acces to permanent vigor uptime, although the thief is considered to be the most evasive class in the game.

My proposal: either nerf shadow return or vigor uptime, but not both. “Shaving” means to tone down something step by step. Halving vigor uptime seems a bit drastic to me, especially along with the other changes wich affect the sword thief.

selan.8354:

well i think anet has to make a decision here though. either give the thief a lot of evades and nerf stealth or leave the permastealth in the game and remove the massive evades. imagine a thief with less stealth without the eveades….they would be very lost and very squishy. id rather have their stealth toned down than their evades.

A stealthy thief doesn’t evade very much.
A evasive thief doesnt’t stealsh very much
A thief built for evasion AND stealth doesn’t kill anything and doesn’t contribute to the team at all.

hooma.9642:

useless quote unless u show where he talks about a build. he just says the possible tools for survibility a thief has and can build or use. so yeah if s/d cant spam evade anymore u maybe need your brain to figure out how the get more surv. the same problems that every other class has.

This thread is about flanking strike/larcenous strike being overpowered, right?
There is no reason discussing about other specs, since the topic isn’t about other specs.

Your other argument also isn’t well thought-out. The key to survivability using the S/D set is evasion.

It’s like taking away deathshroud from the necro and then say: “well, now you dont have multiple health pools. Use your brain to figure out how to survive.”
It’s like taking away the control effects from the warrior’s hammer and then say: “well, now you can’t stunlock any more. Use you brain to figure out how to survive.”

Having multiple ways to get survivability doesn’t mean that every way is viable on every weaponset. It also doesn’t mean that you have all ways available at the same time.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Ashanor.5319:

It’s fine. Watch the animatons.

#1)It’s got a 0.5 second cast time.

1. Watching the animations on an Asura thief…. yeah, not happening.

If you have 200ms of lag that means you have 300ms to react.
That’s pushing the limit of what the average person can visually react to.
Assuming the lag is proportional up and downstream, it takes 100ms for your reaction to register at the server. That leaves you 200ms of time to register an actionable reaction. That’s pushing the limit of what most humans can visually react to.

- Asura is the problem, not thief.
- lag is the problem, not thief.

Thedenofsin.7340:

evilapprentice.6379:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

Boon stealing, lots of blinds, lots of stealth, lots of teleports, condition removal every time you shadowstep, every 3 seconds in stealth, low cooldown on heals, regen while stealthed, abundant access to vigor.

Thieves have tons of survivability. This ability is just broken.

Boon stealing? Yes.
Lots of blinds? No.
Lots of stealth? No.
Lots of teleports? Yes.
Condition removal on shadow step? No, actually on shadow return. Removes 1 condition for a total of 5 initiative.
Condition removal while stealthed? No.
Low cooldown on heals? Yes, but the heal with low cooldown heals for less.
Regeneration while stealthed? No.
Abundant access to vigor? Normally around 66% uptime, not counting eventually stolen vigor.

I really don’t know why everyone who never played thief thinks that a thief has everything in one build. 10 different teleports, perma stealth, perma evade, perma regeneration while stealthed, perma this, perma that…
And not to forget: the skills have NO COOLDOWN!!!111 (because initiative isn’t a resource wich must be managed)

We are talking about the S/D set right now. A S/D thief relies on evades and teleports, like mentioned. He doesn’t have all the other things you mentioned.

Like i said, it could be improved.
Btw i use it, and i think it’s already quite useful in this condi meta.