I only play PvE so my feedback is from that pov. My main is a thief with full exotics. I have an 80 warrior in all yellows, a mid-level elementalist and guardian. I like doing dungeons, fractals and event chains. I find it depressing to say that I feel like my thief is the weakest of the bunch.
Survivability in PvE is just bad. Every piece of gear I have has vitality on it, more than half has toughness on it, and I sit around 15k hp and 1400 toughness. I still get floored far more often than I feel I should in group settings. I seem to be more wet and noodlie than my robe wearing teammates. Our survivability is supposed to come from stealth and blinds but it just doesn’t work that well vs. bosses, large groups of enemies, even a couple veterans. I’ve done fractals on my warrior with far worse gear and I feel measurably more durable while doing more damage. Yes, doing more damage. And doing more damage more easily and more straightforwardly.
Thief damage is very odd, there’s pretty much one direct damage ability and then a bunch of situational, weak stuff. D/D for example. In PvE, skill #1 is fine, skill #2 does terrible damage unless the mob is close to dead, #3 does very low direct dmg and a relatively mild dot, #4 was nerfed to oblivion and is terrible now in PvE, #5 is obviously the stealth initiater, which turns into Backstab, which IMO doesn’t do enough damage in PvE. Backstab critting for 2-3kish is kind of disappointing.
P/P is the same thing. #1 is just bad, it’s too slow, it’s too weak and the bleed is weak. #2 is a terrible cost vs. gain. #3 feels way too expensive for the damage it does. #4 is good in theory, but again it costs too much, doesn’t work when you need it to sometimes (on bosses or veterans) and doesn’t feel like it really does much of anything to merit it’s spot. #5 is ok, but to make use of it you are now stuck on that spot, still doing mediocre damage, applying a blind for a couple seconds.
S/P is just frustrating. The damage nerf to pistol whip in PvE made the whole set not worth using. #2 is ok but still situational.
Traps: very, very lackluster in PvE.
Venoms: Even with venom sharing in explorables/fractals, venoms are weak and unexciting.
One of the big differences I noticed between warrior and thief pve is this. On my warrior I can charge in with dual axes, hit #4, do damage and buffs me to do more dmg, hit #2, does aoe melee dmg, hit #5, does a massive amount of aoe dmg. When all these are on cooldown, I can swap out to greatsword, hit ANY of the keys again and do damage, swap back and repeat. I’m also in full plate. I am also buffing my mates with banners and/or shouts. Let’s look at thief. I’m going in D/D, open with steal and port to target, use the stolen item (which can be anything, it’s random and messy), …and then what? I can hit #2 which is terrible because it has high health, I can hit #3 but I’m built for combat and not conditions so it does very little dmg, I can hit #4 but the damage is bad, very much so against 1 target, so I hit #5 to do a backstab. 3k crit. Now what. I auto attack waiting for CnD to work again. Or I just drop initiative hitting #4, waiting for a good time to use #2. It’s clunky and the lulls in combat have bored me, and now I’ve been hit a couple times and almost dead so I roll heal backwards and switch to P/P. I don’t hit #2 because… it’s awful. I hit #5 so I can apply a blind to help out the person taking hits. I hit #3 to do some damage. I’m out of initiative. I stand there, staring at my character firing his crazy slow pistol waiting to able to hit #3 again.
It’s just clunky. It’s unrewarding. It feels, off. I know we work off initiative, not cooldowns, but when the goal is to hammer on bosses or clear groups of mobs to progress, being so limited by abilities that just don’t do that much damage is frustrating.
Almost everything about the thief needs buffed in PvE. I have a much better time solo, in event groups, and doing dungeons on any of my other characters.
I understand theives shine in PvP due to all the bursty mcstabby op crap, so fix the steal-mug-cnd-backstab thing, but for love of cheesus don’t nerf PvE any more. Revert the nerfs you already put in for PvE, rework some of the weapon abilities, do something with traps and venoms to make them worthy of use in end-game pve content, buff the baseline hp and/or armor just a tad and give us a better underwater elite.
Also, slightly off-topic, but I would love some friggin enemy casting bar of some sort. Some of these bosses don’t animate well, sometimes their model isn’t very big, sometimes they are so glowie I can’t see them at all, but getting downed by something I could have avoided if only I knew it was coming is forehead rubbingly frustrating.