Guild Wars 2

Here is a novel idea… how about using the suggestions you get from players instead of just making it seem like you want to hear them

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

It is an incredible buff to this profession and should not be treated lightly. To counter this imagine we took a few weapons and took away the cooldown portion of their trait. They would still be 5% better but other weapons would be 25% better.

Among the changes that is basically what it amounts to, with the exception of one change which I’ll talk about next.

Opportunist
This trait was wildly overpowered. I there was a 15 point minor for any other profession that basically read: "Reduce cooldown of all weapon skills by 33%, it would basically be impossible to run that profession without putting 15 points into that line. Because of this every thief build that is effective uses this line, which improves crit and crit damage. This pigeonholes this profession in a way that makes it frustrating for players and developers. This trait has to be closer to an 8% increase if we expect people to consider not taking 15 point in critical strikes.

By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to. There are a lot of good traits that simply will never see play until we make this change.

Hopefully this explains, in more detail, what we hope to accomplish here.

TLDR; Thieves with 15+ in critical strikes and no other initiative traits will be slightly less efficient. All other thieves will be equally or more efficient.

Jon

Thieves with 15 in crit strikes will be slightly less effective… which means “you bad thief you take trait to get init so you can actually do something with your inferior skills that we have nerfed into ground… so here take this nerf so bad thief don’t do that no more”… or to put it in not so sarcastic terms… thief, stop trying to overcome our destruction of the thief class.

All other thieves will be equally efficient.. in other words… if you don’t take 15 in crit strikes you will be just as you are now so ha ha.

So whats next for the min/max of init? Take away the init regen on roll for initiative? Take away the 3 extra init in the trickster line? Oh, I know, take away or reduce the init gain from stealth? I mean seriously… you have nerfed our boon ability, nerfed our condi removal, nerfed our damage, nerfed nerfed nerfed… and now the mobility and init regen… give us a break already or just delete the profession because if you don’t, the players will delete it for you.

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:
One of the issues we are working on for thieves this patch is the dependence on the traits which boost initiative. We did this by shaving a significant amount of initiative gain from these traits while simultaneously boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%. We have also somewhat reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves by reducing vigor up time and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword. This prevents these thieves from evading too much and too easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.). Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait. This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again. The change to Infusion of Shadow is meant to stop players from gaining initiative by applying stealth while already in stealth. This should keep thieves from being able to recharge all of their power while idling in a very long stealth. We felt that using a lot of different abilities to maintain stealth is ok, but re-using the same ability over and over for almost permanent stealth was just bad for the game, especially when gaining large amounts of initiative.

• Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
• Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
• Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.
• Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
• Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
• Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
• Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.
• Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.
• Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.
• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.
• Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.
  .

Is April Fools Day early this year? Seriously… have you even looked at what you wrote as being the goal of this “update”… you want to reduce the effectiveness of a thief’s ability to evade? Wasn’t it just last month or so that you guys said “hey we want thieves to be the most mobile and evasive class…” So, I guess that went out the window…. so now, thieves will have less dodge, get hit more, die more often… good call.

I wonder how many of the people calling for a stealth nerf have actually listened to what they are saying? On the one hand, they are calling stealth OP because supposedly, a thief is nigh unstoppable because of stealth and can kill with a single flick of a bugger after going into stealth… and then in the same breath they claim its OP because the thief can use it to run away if the other person they are fighting is too strong for them to beat up…. UMMM which is it all… are thieves unstoppable perma-stealth gods or can we be beat and have to rely on our stealth to get us out of sticky situations?? Last I checked, gods and mega super awesome OP demi-omnipotent megaliths dont need to run away… in fact, shouldnt it be the other classes that have to run because of the OPness of thieves due to stealth

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Getting hit for nearly 16,000 damage in a blink of an eye is simply unacceptable.

NOTHING in the game is as strong as Thief stealth and only Thief will say otherwise.

100% critical chance from stealth…really!?

Lets not forget they remove conditions, regain health, regain initiative and move faster in stealth as well…

the longest stealth a thief has is 11 seconds with Shadow Refuge… and thats only if they trait for the extra second, stay standing in an obvious circle that is there for the world to see, do not attack. Then there is the 3 second revealed debuff keeping them from going into stealth again. Other than SR, the most a thief can stay stealthed for is 4 seconds.

stealth is the ONLY means a thief has to remove conditions. We can not activate a passive trait that randomly removes them and puts them on our pets, we cannot use a ability that removes every single condition with a single ability. Thieves do not have access to abilities that turn conditions into boons and then place the conditions they did have on opponents ala Necro. saying stealth is OP because it can remove a condition is nuts… think about what other classes have for condition removal before making that lame claim ok.

Regain health: Yes, a thief can trait for regen while in stealth. Again I ask what kind of regen other classes have? A ranger can trait for a natural regen for himself and his pet… and he dont have to stop attacking to get the benefit like a thief does. Necros? Guardians? Warriors? all of the other classes have some form of regen that can be traited that does not involve stopping your offense in order to gain the benefits. A thief has to stop offense in order to gain a regen which, btw, is pretty low in comparison to other classes.

Regain Initiative: Sure, stealth if traited can regain initiative faster than normal. Initiative is a thiefs cool down. When a thief is out of init, they are out of attack… the most init a thief can have is 15… most of the attacks a thief does, other than auto attack take 3-6 initiative. Init regens normally at 1 initiative every 10 seconds. So a thief must manage their initiative wisely. Any other class simply waits for cool downs. So you are telling me that other classes can not trait for lowered cool downs? Of course they can… and whats more, they dont have to stop their attack to gain the benefit.

Move Faster in Stealth: Yes, there is a trait that allows a thief to move faster in stealth… but that isnt that they move faster than they do out of stealth…it buffs their speed while in stealth which is cut to a portion of the speed they move outside of stealth. In other words, it isnt moving them faster than normal while in stealth, its moving them faster than they would normally in stealth with the speed debuff they get for being in stealth.

Hitting for 16k damage? Really? lets do the math shall we? Back Stab, which has the highest dmg coefficient for thieves (2.4 from behind)… so lets take a thief with 3500 power (which is not easy to obtain)… so, the damage equation is something like this (Power*Weapon Dmg)/Armor of target)dmg coefficient of attack… so lets say this 3500 power thief is up against a 2000 armor target and uses an ascended dagger with max dmg range of 1030. (35001030)/2000= 1802*2.4=4324… now lets say the thief also has a Crit dmg rating of say 150%… that means their crit dmg is doing 300% more dmg than normal. so 4324*3= 12972 damage. Now, with some might or vulnerability added in, this could get to 16k. Now lets look at the reality of it. 1) if a thief has that high of a power rating, they are lacking in everything else… including crit dmg rating 2) the thief needs to use a GM spot for the 100% crit chance meaning 30 points in crit strikes.
So what would it take to get both 3500 power and 150% crit dmg. 1) 30 points in DA and CS 2) go full zerker with Ruby Orbs and runes that increased crit dmg… even so, with a skill calc i was only able to get to 120% crit dmg and no where near 3500 power. So basically in order to get this kind of damage is a near impossibility and highly unlikely. Secondly, it would require the perfect storm of situations to happen… the thief would need to go stealth, need to have the random dmg range on his weapon hit the top of the range, hit with a Backstab, and be attacking another glass cannon.

Sure, a thief can hit you for huge damage. However, look at the patches in the past… thief dmg nerfed, thief utilities nerfed, and on and on. in the upcoming october patch, thieves are the only ones getting a nerf (LS is losing 1 boon strip)… so please, dont come crying about OP of thief when you really have no idea what you are talking about.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Ruggan.4102:

All this BS about stealth needing a counter… there are counters to stealth… you just need to actually learn to use them.

The problem with thieves and stealth is…well, I’ll let these quotes do the talking for me.

“You can’t hit what you can’t see.” ~Walter Johnson
“You cannot dodge what you cannot see!” ~Gen

But to add to this, we need some REAL hard counters to stealth, something to get it off somebody. I really hope Sic ‘Em is changed to a pet damage increase for all its attacks for a certain amount of time, with the Reveal being an AoE around the pet of 900 range. If we can start seeing at least one skill that does that on at least half of the classes, you won’t see as much complaining from players about the ‘invincible’ thief.

Its funny you say the “Invincible” thief… I play thief and I can tell you right now, they are not invincible. Now, lets look at your quotes:
You can’t hit what you can’t see: True, but you can counter the thief before he goes into invis mode… or you can knock him out of the circle before it takes effect… or you can AOE the area around you and do some serious damage… or you could dodge and roll because you know that he is going for a BS or running away….
You cant dodge what you cant see… umm sure you can. You just have to do a little thing called thinking. If a thief goes invis in front of ya… chances are, he is looking to get behind ya… so yea dodge.

I love all the complaining that there are no hard counters to stealth. Should we put a skill on a warrior shout that dissolves clones and phantasms before they can be shattered? Or perhaps give an effect that keeps an ele from switching elements? No, you guys would say well those are something we can see and stop ect. Yea you can stop them by INTERUPTS and DODGING!

First and foremost, its all about your play style. I know that sounds like the easy way out, but its true.
With that said, there are some things to consider:
1) Power/Crit builds: Power builds are meant to dish out major damage through the use of stealth for BS. The issue I have found is, if you build to make your power/crit high enough to make a big difference, you lose out on survivability… you become the glass cannon for lack of a better term. This is alright if you are good at evades and knowing when and how to use stealth. Problem is, ANet seems dead set on adding anti-stealth mechanics any way they can, stealth in PvP and WvW may become a thing of the past.
2) Condi Builds: I currently play a condition build thief with 1300+ condition damage and about 85% condition duration (death blossom bleeds last 19.5 seconds for me). These builds are great because you can build for decent toughness and vitality so you have survivability… the problem comes in striking a balance between your power and attack ratings vs your condition damage and duration. Again, you need to be an evasive thief to pull these builds off. Keep in mind, the two main damage dealing conditions for thief are poisons and bleeds and poisons are, IMHO meek. Also, with the current slew of passive condition removal out there… it seems that all a toon needs to do is sneeze to remove 3 conditions anymore… these builds become somewhat less effective. Also, if the rumor about bleed and poison stack nerfs are true, then bleeds and poisons will only stack to 5 stacks not the 25 they currently do. That, for a condition thief is a major hit in damage output.

So what it all comes down to is building to suit your play style and thinking about the pros and cons of each type of build. Good Luck.

Icarus Pherae.4680:

ensoriki.5789:

It’s an interesting change but I’ll repeat a thought I had.
If Stealth-denial is coming and may be added to more skills going forward there should ideally be an addition of traits or a replacement of traits in the Shadow arts line for some more non-stealth traits.
Kind of shoddy to have a line built on Stealth and alienating the stat benefits if in the long run stealth is shut down more often.

I won’t jump onto the “sky is falling” train just yet, but one thing I think could balance this some would be to make revealed a condition that can be cleansed.

Major issue with making revealed a condition…. MOST OF THIEVES CONDI REMOVAL IS IN STEALTH!!!!!!

I am with you on this one. I use a condi thief in PvE but it would never ever be viable in PvP. And of course, some of the buffs other profs have will increase the condition removal… all the while, our access to boons is getting nerfed (LS will only remove 1 boon now instead of 2… bet the ini cost stays the same).

As for venomous aura… sure they increased the aoe a slight bit… they still havent fixed the actual issues with venoms to make them useful. Every other class that has a “share” build has an AOE on it that far exeeds the 450 they want to bring Ven Aura up to (most are 600) and have better things to share (boons, banners, shouts)… sure, if you are in a group of 5 people with ven aura, you can, technically, give a mob 5 stacks of say skale venom. Whoopie considering how weak venoms are anyhow. Now, lets give the entire group retaliation or protection or might or name your boon… which is more beneficial to the group? Yea the boons.
I for one am tired of thief getting hit with a nerf bat every single kitten patch…. and I do mean every single one… just because players scream OP OP omg i got beat by a thief he must be OP…

Charak.9761:

Some of these may not make it in for that release

Just remember this, some people take the words of a dev as final say.

I’m glad that tab targetting is finally getting a fix, was tired of tab targetting through a bunch of spirits to get to a ranger.

It’s about time there’s an anti-stealth mechanic in the game (similar to hunter flare). You’ll see alot of QQ from thieves, but this is necessary. I’ll keep a ranger near me now in pvp.

The one thing though Fix Guardian shield this weapon feels entriely lackluster is is mostly only used for the knockback for point control or thieves stealth in spvp.

Yea, its about time they added a counter to that god mode skill stealth… i mean seriously:
1) Ground Targeted AOEs did nothing against a stealthed thief… except have them take damage as they tried to approach for a melee attack and get whatever conditions were associated with the AOE as well.
2) Knockback, Stun, Daze, Knockdown… yea these did nothing to interupt the casting of things like Shadow Refuge or reveal the thief after knocking the thief out of the SR field.
3) Revealed Debuff… yup, nothing says perma stealth god mode like having a 3-4 second time frame where you cant use stealth at all.
4) Anti-Stealth Traps… yea, these are expensive but what other specific piece of WvW gear is specifically made to target a single class? NONE!
5) PVE mobs dont lose aggro with stealth anymore. Oh wait that goes for WvW mobs too.. so for those who keep QQ that thieves use ambient creatures to perma stealth… how about look where the creature that was just attacked is looking and strike there? Chances are, since the mob keeps aggro, it cant attack but it knows where the thief is.

All this BS about stealth needing a counter… there are counters to stealth… you just need to actually learn to use them.

ensoriki.5789:

I figure Thief staying power out of stealth will be increasing in a general sense, as they phase stealth out.

We havent seen that trend thus far and stealth has seen the start of a phase out… from increased revealed timers to the next patch where rangers will get a reveal debuff on Sic Em to traps in WvW designed specifically to uncover a thief…. and what has thief seen in compensation? Lower damage on most of our abilities, nerfs to some of our most important skills (can we say Bask Venom?), loss of crit ability to mug (granted a life steal was added… but it is so tiny as to make no real use).
No, I do not think you will see significant increases in a thieves ability to survive a fight… i think you will see Thief phase out as stealth goes the way of the dinosaurs.

So what I am getting from the responses here is… no no no Retaliation works perfectly and umm if you nerf it you destroy the class somehow… funny, those same people are the ones who QQ’d and got these nerfs for thief:
1) Mug is too OP… result: Mug is changed into a low tier attack and heal, loses its ability to critical… what was once an opener and gap closer is no longer
2) Stealth OMG its too powerful, a thief is invulnerable… Result: Stealth gains a 4 second cool down, damage on stealth attacks are reduced dramatically, stealth no longer gets rid of agro from NPC’s which of course makes the down state of a thief virtually useless… yes Anet reverted the 4 second cool down thingy
3) Swiftness is sooo OP… result: Swiftness across the board loses 50% of its effectiveness.
4) Cluster Bomb does too much damage…result: Cluster Bomb’s range is decreased making the thief the only class without a 1200 range weapon set thus making it vulnerable to long range attacks from every other class as the thief attempts to close in.
5) Back Stab can insta kill my warrior or (insert class here)… Result: Back Stab damage is decreased along with damage from cloak and dagger and other stealth based attacks..
6) Not fair,,, Bask venom makes me use 2 utilities to get rid of the stun/immobile condition.. Result: One of the thief elite skills is reduced to a normal tier skill.
7) Dancing Dagger is OP… Result: Damage is nerfed downward

These are just a few samples of the nerfs done to thieves in the name of criers and whiners. Now, a thief makes a valid argument against an ability that has proven to be a deathnell to the thief because of the very nature of a thief’s attacks (rapid and repeated attacks) and what do people do… they start attacking the thief and say well just learn to play. Of course one of em admits to a 90% win ratio when using retaliation in PvP and WvW…. go figure.

Allie Murdock.8152:

We can’t prevent players from leaving, but we do look at their feedback. We do the best we can to make as many people happy as we can as often as we can. What we won’t do is get in every “I’m quitting this game” thread and beg players to stay. I will say that in my experience, constructive feedback doesn’t usually start with “!@#$ this game, I’m quitting.”

Yes, we are human. We also have processes here and can’t just knee-jerk implement if one player decides to take a break or leave completely.

That said, I will reiterate that we do look at that feedback, and we don’t (strangely enough) want players to leave.

You have a process and cant knee-jerk implement something? Really? Sorry but 95% of the nerfs done to the thief class have been knee jerk reactions to the spammers and QQ of people crying thief is OP thief is OP… so I cant believe that statement.

sorrow.2364:

I’ll take this.

Everyone can eat that food, so it doesn’t make thief’s endurance regain special. Why do you mention buffs that everyone has access to as something special for the thief?
You don’t use your heal on recharge, you use it when you need to heal, so you don’t get vigor every 15 seconds.

Feline Grace does.
If you have trouble keeping up vigor, try Bountiful Theft.

Yeah, like those, 4 extra seconds relatively carefree dishing out damage. You don’t deal damage while stealthed, or dodging. Damage mitigation that doesn’t require you to stop attacking is better then damage mitigation that forces you to stop attacking. Thief has only has access to the latter and none of the first.

Do you really think that 4s on a 60s cooldown of carefree damage makes that much of a difference?

Its 4 seconds of damage mitigation while continuing to attack… while a dodge is 1 dodge 1 attack and no attacking… so yes, it does make that much of a difference.
Lets do the math… lets say your dps and the thief dps is matched at say 100 dmg per second. And lets say you are fighting each other. You start attacking the thief, he dodges. If he is quick on the keyboard, he dodges about 90% of your attacks… so he still takes 10% of it. You, however, because the thief has dodged the entire time, have taken nothing. After taking 10% of your dmg, the thief decides to attack instead of dodge… so you hit your 4second dmg mitigation. Now, thief does no dmg but takes 100% of your attacks. Thief uses a heal… you still have taken no dmg…. thief has now used a bunch of end, a heal, and is probably still down on HP if only a little. Thief comes in to attack.. you dont have your 4s mitigation up… but you have full HP and a heal still in reserve. But you decide to dodge an attack because by now, you have about 15 seconds left on your dmg mititgation thingy. so you dodge, thief is back to full hp from regen and full endurance due to vigor. You come in for your attacks. Thief dodges until end is out… now he is a sitting duck, dead in seconds… you barely took any damage at all and all of this is because you can still do dmg while taking little to none. So yea, 4 seconds is a big deal in fights that last only a few seconds anyhow.

Molch.2078:

frans, have I insulted you? You sound angry. If so, I appologize, that was never my intention.

The OP claimed, that a thief has nothing but damage. I argued, that AoE blind and stealth can be usefull in various situations. You cannot deny that.

The OP claimed, that thiefs die a lot in dungeons. I gave a few examples, how you can avoid damage. I play my full zerker thief in arah and I die as rarely as I die with any other class. Furthermore, I see no reason to give you any proof whatsoever. You don’t believe me? Fine. Why should I care?

What’s your point anyway? That a theif sucks in dungeons? Well, I play every class but engeneer and I can say for sure, that the thief is one of the stronger classes for dungeons. If you think a thief is bad, go reroll ranger or necro, then we talk again.

LOL thats all I can say… i love your line “if you think a thief is bad roll a ranger or a necro” See, my main is a thief… I leveled him from 1-80 in combat, done dungeons with him, and some pvp as well. I have a good number of hours on him…. and still get creamed in dungeons. So, I started a Ranger… I leveled him through crafting, no combat. I bought his gear as suggested on some forum somewhere…. then I took him into a dungeon, with the same group of people I take my thief with… guess what… my ranger has never ever died in any dungeon.

I can go on and on…. I take thief to Sun whatever coast thingy with the giant spitting crab thingies… he dies near constantly. Take my ranger there, and Im taking on vets like they are trash mobs.

Ranger: Better range, better dmg (because of pet), better heals, same amount of dodge capability, better utility skills, better synergy than thief. And lets not forget the fact that I have never had to change the build of my ranger while the thief, due to nerfs, has had to change build every single patch.

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s silly to expect a game that’s focused on PvP, where the primary driving factor behind PvP is strictly DPS, to actively nerf DPS output of various classes. Especially classes (warriors) that aren’t doing well at said PvP currently.

How about we take a novel approach and make the Thief about more than DPS? Why can’t the Thief have a poison that, when allies strike the target with poison, they gain fury? Why can’t share poison be a level 5 trait and poisons be changed to actually provide something useful? I mean we have the whole poison mechanic for this class that no one ever uses because poisons flat out suck. And not only do they suck, but they’d have to be horrendously overpowered to ever be considered over things like Shadowstep, shadow refuge, blinding powder, etc.

Personally, I think asking for more damage from the Thief is just opening up other issues because we’d have to sacrifice to gain it. Right now the largest complaint against this class is stealth uptime. I could see them nerfing our stealth uptime in favor of added damage (which I’m cool with). The easist method to add damage would be to change our stealth skills (backstab, etc.) to work from the back even when out of stealth but have an internal cooldown.

For example, when striking from the back, your third attack will be a backstab instead on a 4 second cooldown (long enough so you’d only do it every other rotation) that deals 150% damage (instead of 200% from stealth).

But yea, I don’t see them nerfing any class’ damage. I don’t see them increasing our damage without equal nerfs in other areas (most likely stealth). The better solution would be to just add utility for this class so it not only has value to PvE groups, but the current WvW meta as well.

You dont see them nerfing any class’ dmg? Have you paid attention to the nerfs thieves have already gotten? Every single patch has nerfed some aspect of a thief damage output…

Cassiel.9431:

have you read te patch notes?? here they are a few
Lotus Strike: Increased the poison duration from 2 seconds to 4 seconds.
Destroy Shadow Trap: This ability now teleports the thief back to the trap location when it is destroyed. Added range skill facts. This skill now breaks stuns. Using this skill puts Shadow Trap on recharge.
Shadow Pursuit: This ability now grants fury and 10 stacks of might for 5 seconds along with stealth when used to teleport to the enemy who triggered Shadow Trap. This ability now breaks stuns. Using this skill puts Shadow Trap on recharge.
Body Shot: Reduced the aftercast by .4 seconds. Decreased the vulnerability duration to 3 seconds. Increased to 10 stacks for vulnerability.
Pistol Whip: Decreased the time between the stun and the sword flurry.
Scorpion Wire: Decreased the aftercast by .2 seconds. Reduced the cooldown to 20 seconds.
Signet of Malice: Increased the base heal by 33% of the passive ability.
Steal: Reduced the recharge to 35 seconds.
The Ripper: Increased the bleed duration from 5 seconds to 7 seconds.
Deadly Strike:. Increased the damage from 1 to 1.2.
Skale Venom: Replaced weakness with torment.
Dancing Dagger: Reduced the initiative cost to 3.

Pain Response: Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 30 seconds.
Hard to Catch: Reduced the cooldown from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.

Corrosive Traps: This trait now grants 5 stacks of vulnerability for 8 seconds (up from 5 seconds).
Sundering Strikes: Vulnerability caused by this trait has been increased from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
Panic Strike: Reduced the cooldown from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.

Last Refuge: Reduced the cooldown of this trait from 90 seconds to 60 seconds.

so first read the patch note, try to understand them and them talk

The question is… did you read them?

•Shadow Trap: Increased the recharge to 45 seconds.
•Death Blossom: This trait now costs 4 initiative.
•Body Shot: Decreased the vulnerability (It put vulnerability on the target not the thief… so umm this is a nerf not a buff)
•Cluster Bomb: Decreased the range set from 1200 to 900.
•Larcenous Strike: Increased the initiative cost to 2.
•Nine Tailed Strike: Increased the initiative cost from 3 to 5.
•Shadow Assault: Increased the initiative cost from 5 to 7
•Shadow Return (Infiltrator Strike Toggle): This skill is no longer a stun breaker.

Now, yes, there were some buffs done to thief… all of them minor in comparison to the increased initiative cost on abilities that are sort okittenda possibly integral to the build they are representing and they are extremely minor in comparison to a 300 range decrease on our only viable aoe ranged attack for WvW siege. Compare it with the other 10000000 nerfs thieves have taken since the inception and well, these buffs suck.

Umm yea… lets see Necro… umm I don’t know, how about some CC, condition damage, and umm yea, ask the devs to nerf thief to take another 200% damage from necro abilities… they seem to listen to every other nerf suggestion out there when it comes to thief.

Malkavian.3751:

June 25, 2013

• Body Shot: Decreased the vulnerability duration to 3 seconds.
• Cluster Bomb: Decreased the range set from 1200 to 900
• Larcenous Strike: Increased the initiative cost to 2.
• Nine Tailed Strike: Increased the initiative cost from 3 to 5.
• Shadow Assault: Increased the initiative cost from 5 to 7.
• Shadow Return (Infiltrator Strike Toggle): This skill is no longer a stun breaker.
• Withdraw: The travel distance underwater has been cut in half to match the land distance.
• Lotus Poison: Can only apply once every 20 seconds per target.

Does anyone see a pattern here? Has anyone noticed that it is taking more and more init to do the things that actually make thief somewhat viable… not that thief is truly viable in most situations… So is it not safe to say that the devs are forcing thieves to take the increased init line? How does that really promote diversity in build?

Grounder.7381:

the question by the Op is..
How to counter get out of jail free button?
the answer..?
no one answered it.. or.. there actually no counter whatsoever..

Or the obvious answer… there is no such thing as a get out of jail free card for a thief.

Ralathar.7236:

Perfect example of how jacked facing a thief is right now. I’m fighting a thief as a turret engie (Ya I know, but it’s fun :P). Hit him a few times and place my turrets as he enters for the kill. Pop my turret abilities and he gets perma-blinded, has like 10 seconds of burning, has 6+ stacks of bleed, Rocket Turret lands the first knockdown, I time the supply crate for the second stun, rocket turret knocks down a third time. All knockdowns in a row without him being able to act after eating the first one.

At this point the thief still has all the burning, bleeding, and now poison on him, is at 5% hp, and is stunned on his back while immobilized. Shadow Return, Hide in Shadows, runs away at half health with no conditions on him already out of combat.
.
.
.
So lets add this up, shadow return removes 3 conditions, teleports you back to where you started from up to 1,200 away, and breaks stun instantly. Hide in Shadows removes all damaging conditions, so any conditions that hurt would be gone and the thief is far away stealthed and running away.

I really don’t know what more I could have done. I condition stacked, immobilized, stunned, and generally wrecked his face but he gets a get out of jail free card. I mean ya I wrecked his face because he was blatantly terrible (rocket turret knockdown is MASSIVELY telegraphed), but he still doesn’t even have to die for being terrible.

Let me see if I am getting this right… you had him down to 5% before he could even close in on you… am I reading that right? And, you never state that he did any damage to you… all you are complaining about is his ability to escape from a situation that, had he stayed, would have killed him…. umm do you see how foolish that is. The thief you described use his abilities to escape… you didn’t suffer any loss, he didn’t suffer any loss. I am sorry your assault was completely based on stationary tactics while the thief used mobility. BTW, the game is designed for mobility in combat not for the old Everquest style of just hitting an auto attack and standing there.

So, the thief was down to 5% health in your scenario. Given an average of about 12k full health for a thief… He was down to 600 health before shadow-stepping away and going stealth. So, lets see… you didn’t think to do anything to counter his shadow step or apply damage while he was starting it? You didn’t switch to a ranged weapon set and blast him… assuming you are 80 and using exotic weapons… for a lot more than the 600 health he had remaining? No, instead, again according to your scenario, you stood by a stationary assault and let mobility rule you. The same outcome would have happened against a Mesmer, elementalist, ranger, guardian, warrior, necromancer, or other engineer who used your tactics against you… they would use their mobility and you would stand there looking dumbfounded. But yea, its all because the thief is impossible to fight… I don’t think so.

Arganthium.5638:

Ruggan.4102:

After all, the people who play them are tired of having to relearn the class every single month as you go on tinkering and nerfing their skills to nothing.

Adapt or die, kiddo. Adapt or die.

Yeap that’s been the mantra of thief haters every month…. and like I said… thieves are tired of having to relearn their class Every Single Month…

In the last few forum posts I have noticed a continued and growing trend from those who wish to nerf thief further. This trend is to ask the devs to remove thief entirely from the game. I say… yes Devs, please remove this class from the game. After all, the people who play them are tired of having to relearn the class every single month as you go on tinkering and nerfing their skills to nothing. They are tired of constantly hearing how one or other of their skills is OP in comparison to other professions and the whole L2P mantra. They are tired of hearing how, at some point, somewhere down the line, thief will get buffs to mobility and survivability and base damage and then never seeing it happen… all the while, the thief becomes less and less effective in any and all game settings. Thief players are tired of hearing the crying that goes on by other players that thieves can perma stealth… and, even though the devs should know this is not true… the devs continually nerf thieves or add mechanics to the game designed at destroying a defensive and yes offensive mechanic for which 90% of a thief’s traits are built around.

Devs, there is no shame in saying you messed up. There is no shame in saying, you know thieves… we just didn’t think this out properly… but hey, we are going to pull the class for now, go back and rework and rethink stuff… and when we introduce it again as a brand new class… it will be a fun class with the ability to stand on its own, have a niche in PvE dungeons as well as PvP and WvW… it will shine like the other classes and be on par with them. See, devs… we thief players would understand that. This slow bleeding death is only going to lose GW2 players. Players are people, Devs… sure the game is free to play, but you still have to rely on new people buying the game in order to keep the company afloat. If people are not happy with the game… as soon as a new thing comes along, they will leave in droves. Along with that… they will not recommend the game to other people. Thief players are no different. If you let their preferred profession die a slow and painful death, they will not forget it. If you let their preferred profession die a quick death with a rebirth into something better planed and thought out… they will hail you.
In conclusion… yes remove the thief from the game… just make sure you can promise to reprise the profession within a reasonable time and make the rebirth worth playing… if you can not do this… then you might as well just say to the thief community “we are sorry but deal with it….” and watch the player base drop off in droves.

I for one am tired of seeing all the hate generated toward thieves. I have had my posts removed by Devs and moderators because they are “antagonizing or hurtful in some way”… Then I look around the thief forums and see that any person complaining about how OP thieves are say some of the same things about thief players that I say about the complainers… their threads are not removed, or at least some of them are not. But that isn’t my complaint… on the contrary. I actually do want to see the thief hate stop. So, here are my suggestions:

1) ANET, remove thief entirely from the game. Keep, however, the stealth mechanic of the other classes in tact. In fact, don’t change stealth for the other classes one bit…. after all, the mechanic seems, if one is to believe the forums, to be only OP for the thief. This may be because the thief has access to so much stealth.
2) ANET, buff up elementalists, necromancers, warriors, rangers, engineers, guardians, and warriors to god-like status so that the players playing these classes have an auto-win button that supposedly thieves have enjoyed from the get go. This is basically retribution for past wrongs to these classes.
3) After all this is done, rename the game…. Everquest or City of Heroes sound like good names… after all, the above aforementioned changes are the same ones that doomed those games.

Wiser with Age.3714:

The Thief forums are generally negative because people feel like that have been consistently singled out. Why? A significant part of the general MMO player base has real emotional issues when it comes to encountering stealth mechanics in a PvP situation. These players don’t like dying to a steatlh build, regardless of the MMO. This causes them to loudly complain until they can get the game changed until it’s not longer possible for them to die to stealth tactics.

While my own main character Thief is a non-stealth build for PvE / WvW, it seems like a large majority of the people on these forums are based around stealth builds. With every tweak or nerf to stealth mechanics, a majority of Thief players get hurt. Then when this continues to happen again and again, it starts to make people angry. As if this isn’t bad enough, PvE Thief players also notice that a Warrior’s PvE potential isn’t being nerfed. At this point, Thief players start to get bitter.

At this point, I’ve got x2 Thieves, x2 Warriors, and x2 Engineers. I’ve seen nerfs and buffs across many levels. Some classes have more of a well deserved right to complain, while others don’t understand about just how good they have things. Amongst all of these Thief players seem the most bitter and it’s really easy to figure out why. Anti-stealth players are permanently messing with this class. The same goes for anti-burst players. Until this class gets the promised “mobility” buffs to replace what people are losing, I’d expect a noticably portion of this forum to be an angry and frustrated place.

To a point, I agree. However, the main reason Thief players are so kittened off is this: Every single time there is a patch, ANET introduces another nerf or game mechanic specifically targeted toward the thief player. All the while, all the anti-thief rehetoric that made ANET nerf the thief in the first place continues on, stronger than ever… and in different areas. So, no matter how much ANET nerfs the thief, the non-thief base will never be satisfied… so thief continues to get nerfed and eventually, becomes completely unplayable. Sorry, but thieves are tired of having to rework builds and buy new equipment and weapons every time some non-thief player sneezes OP out their blow-hole. SO yea, we get a bit frustrated and a bit angered.

VaaCrow.3076:

I don’t compare myself on this, i compare myself on utility, no defence? blinds, seriously, if you keep your opponent perma blind (not hard) they cant hit you with attack or cc, Stealth > trait for heal/condie removal and you’re golden! there is nothing we lack. it needs to be balanced better, E.g
hit in stealth = reveals me but doesn’t give reveald buff meaning i have to spend initaitive to restealth, thus losing my ability to attack as i will be ini dry due to restealthing, just a little change like this would improve the game play of thief 1000x over.
(sorry about my typing i only have one hand atm as the other is sprained so i typo alot.l)

Blinds—- umm blinds last for 1 attack for the most part. Secondly, AOE can hit you, so if you are in melee range and you blind them… only the idiot wont do something as trivial as say… caltrops or some other AOE field. Also, ranger pets will still attack you, clones will still attack you, all those nice conditions put on you by a necro before you got to melee range will still hit ya… or a guardian if being “perma” blinded might just throw up retaliation and let you kill yourself.

Stealth—— This mechanic has been hit the hardest by the nerf bat. Extended reveal times on stealth, traps that keep you from using stealth for 30 seconds… which btw means you don’t get the regen or condition removal if you happen to get hit by a trap… which btw can happen if you are in range of an ally who hits the trap. So nope, sorry not OP at all. Oh yea, keep in mind… thief isn’t the only class with access to stealth but is the only one people scream about when calling for the nerf bat.

There are certain things in your post that trigger the this is BS response for me. 1) you don’t have a clear understanding of how the reveal mechanic works and 2) you make outrageous claims that overstate the abilities that you are talking about. In addition, you have no clear understanding of the nerfs that thief has taken since the very first patch… nerfs to damage, utility, skills, weapon sets and the list goes on. The fact that you say you “main a thief and have over 1k hours” but still do not understand the basic thief concepts and seem to think that thief is a 1 button for the win class makes me very suspicious as to your true motives. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say you are a hate the thief band-wagoner who created the post just in hopes that a dev will see it and go…. “oooh good idea, lets nerf thief more…” as they have done in the past.

Deamhan.9538:

Nah, it’s pretty transparent that they want the EZ stealth mode and they don’t want to do what they have repeatedly told others to do. Adapt and L2p. What goes around, comes around and it is good to see it coming back around to them.

Yea. too bad it has been the thief over EVERY patch since day one that has had to adapt…. every change to the thief has been MAJOR with NO compensation at all.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Shroud isn’t even remotely good, and I’ve lasted without it for a much longer time than that. Infact on many of my builds, I don’t even use it.

Taking away Mesmer clones is completely different, as that would be like taking away your weapon skills as a Thief which is not what they are talking about.

Meditation Guardians, hahahahahahaha, dead.

I generally stand in Fire/Air/Earth attunements for much longer than 30 seconds, but I suppose that’s because I’m a Staff Ele, not a face rolling D/D Ele. Of course I could make that argument about Thieves too, I play an S/D Thief, not a Heartseeker monkey thief.

Stealth is OP in every game it is implemented in, and more often than not, it is taken out post-release. Anyone remember teh GW1? WoW? Lawl.

Umm no, taking away clones would be like taking away a trait line… just like the thief revealed for 30 seconds… weapon skills are entirely different… but well…

Linguistically Inept.6583:

swinsk.6410:

What class do you play? Why don’t we invent a trap for rangers that doesn’t allow them to evade for 30s?

dont thieves have nearly constant evasion if built right?

Yea, you can build a thief for constant evasion… well semi-constant… of course you sacrifice damage and other things for it… but to be serious… ok, so what you are saying here is simply this… build a thief so you can enter combat but all you will ever do unless you want to die is evade…. ooooh that sounds like sooooo much fun.

Zikory.6871:

I’ll say this. The trap has only been out for 3 days! This is not enough time to fully understand the trap. People know and understand the basic use of the trap but people haven’t found out how to abuse them yet.

Last night I got 10 thief kills with 10 traps. I would take a Sentry then place the trap at his feet. If a thief is the first to come its guaranteed to work every time.

TBH the trap is kitten. But I’m not going to complain about it because its been a blast trolling thieves.

And yet it was enough time for people to troll on and on about the new infiltrators strike ability and how OP it is on thieves… heck, people were trolling on about that one within a few hours of that patch.

EpiChlo.4072:

I have been seeing complaints to how bad we are being nerfed, that we should be “deleted”, so on and so forth. I have a few things to respond to.

1. We are useless without stealth, will die easy, can’t do anything, ect.
Please learn to adapt. There are many builds that work without stealth(my first thought is D/D Condition or Unicorn Build) You can play any of these AND do great damage. It’s just differen’t.
And if you still want to play backstab or some other build be prepared for revealed and learn to play around it. We have many ways to move fast. Shadow Step, SB 5, Heartseekers ect. Use other forms of damage that don’t require stealth. Even backstab builds can use heartseeker and do a good amount of damage. Or help a group with basilisk venom.

2. You wont be running into them every 5 feet. Most solo players wont drop them and if they do it’s super obvious. The animation is slower than other traps, takes longer than any stealth besides shadow refuge and if someone shadow refuges you can use your stealth trap(you have them too) and counter their wasted shadow refuge.

3. Worthless in a zerg.
Well this is partially true. But if you are a squishy thief were you ever much use in a zerg? If you just run with them stealthed you aren’t helping them fight. You can’t push cause you insta die. But let’s say you get hit by a stealth trap, oh no one person in the zerg can’t do anything. Except stun people, and do large critting heartseekers.

TL:DR
Don’t complain because you can’t adapt or don’t want to become skillful enough to play while revealed.

Why is it that any time thief is hit with a nerf its always the same thing… learn to adapt or learn to play. Then in the same breath, these same people complain about stealth and not being able to beat a thief with THIER Preferred build. But do they need to learn to play or adapt? No, in that case its stealth is over powered or this skill of a thief does too much damage and on and on. I am tired of being told to adapt and change my thief to accommodate what everyone else wants. Every month its a new change and less variety of play with the thief and every month everyone says… oh just adapt to the changes. To heck with adapting every kitten month… I for one am tired of having to buy new gear, change my traits around, and totally learn a new style every bloody month because some people complain and get their way.

Now, as for your points:
1) Stealth is not just for BackStab or damage output. In fact, there are multiple traits that rely on stealth to work… such as health regen, init regen, condition removal, critical damage, and the list goes on. So, yes, 30 seconds of not being able to use ANY of those abilities traited for is a MAJOR hit. Can the thief be played without stealth… sure it can… but it would only be as effective as a thief who spent NO points in their trait lines because not being able to use stealth for 30 Seconds means we don’t get the benefits of those traits directly tied to stealth for those 30 seconds.
2) You forget something here. If an ally activates one, the thief if within 1200 radius is affected. So no, you may not be running into them every 5 feet but in a zerg with multiple allies, it will affect the thief greatly and not much of any other class even if Mesmers and the like seem to think it affects them more.
3) So by your logic… since the thief was no good in a zerg anyhow, then this is something we should just sit idle by and let happen? And where do you get we are useless in a zerg anyway? Wasn’t the main complaint about thieves such that they could take on entire zergs via perma-stealth and never get killed? What happened to that argument… oh that’s right, the argument never held water and now you cant fall back on it so now thief was always useless in zerg.

Personally, this one nerf was not the nerf that killed the thief for me… it was the last of a long line of nerfs that finally dealt a death blow to the class. Sorry, after having damage nerfed to hell, skills nerfed to below kitten bottoms, and every other conceivable nerf out there with only a single real buff… and that was to one weapon… yea, I am done until Anet decides exactly what they want the thief class to look like and until all the crying whining kittens decide exactly how easy they want a fight against a thief to be.

DanH.5879:

ski.4927:

Two things I want to touch on really quick.

As a WvW roamer, regardless of what class I play, I will always (YES ALWAYS) have a giant stack of these in my bag and I will use one EVERY time I come across a thief that is not leveld-up. Every time. Period. The cost is negated by the fact that I have an excess of the currencies required and nothing to spend them on.

The 2nd thing I wanted to touch on is a question I had about these traps. So, as a thief, I trigger one and my class mechanic is taken away for 30 seconds. Oh boy. That sounds painful!

-So, when a Ranger triggers one, his pet goes away for 30 seconds, right?
-So, when a Mesmer triggers one, his ability to summon clones and phantasms goes away for 30 seconds, right?
-So, when a Warrior triggers one, his burst skills go away for 30 seconds, right?
-So, when an Elementalist triggers one, his attunement swapping goes away for 30 seconds, right?

You get the drift…..

i think they wanted to kill the wvw thieves with these traps, maybe they succeeded ?

Yes, Yes they did…

Sunflowers.1729:

The nerf affects Mesmers more than Thieves. Do you think anyone is going to put down a trap just to catch one single Thief? Waste 15 badges for a chance to get 2 badges? Makes no sense.

Conversely, stealth already didn’t do anything in zergs. With all the spells being thrown around nobody cares if you are in stealth or not. Go ahead, press stealth in a large zerg fight. it doesn’t do anything (and you should be shooting from a distance anyway).

Stealth didn’t make any difference in zerg fights so the lack of stealth doesn’t make any difference now.

In 1 week everyone will realize that nothing has changed except veil/portal bombs are much harder to pull off. These traps are expensive enough that they will only be used on large numbers of people, and so it is much more of a nerf to the utility of Mesmers.

So yes, you should reroll a Mesmer. Then be like “ohh so that’s what the nerf was for”.

Edit:
And before the same old argument of “we have more stealth skills than mesmers” pops up, realize that is a completely pointless argument. But eventually, someone is gonna mention it and be like “see we suck”. So read this:

-Traps are expensive and not worth it to use on small numbers of people
-They can only be effectively used for a chokepoint (if anyone tries to circle a supply camp with them, be my guest. It will take more supply than the camp itself has)
-Nobody is going to use them on Thieves because it is a complete and utter waste of supply. It doesn’t matter how many badges or how much karma you have. Your server has a limited amount of supply.
-They are only good for
1) Stopping veil bombs
2) Stopping an invisible Mesmer from portaling the entire zerg in.

It doesn’t have anything to do with how many stealth skills this class has because nobody is going to use it on one Thief. Do people build arrow carts in fields to counter random roamers? Didn’t think so. Arrow carts (like these traps) are only used at strategic locations and not everywhere people feel like fighting.

Stop with all the complaints already – if anything, Mesmers should be left wondering why Anet keeps nerfing their utility.

TLDR:
-Nobody is going to use it on random roaming Thieves
-It will only be used in zerg fights and at choke points.
-Stealth doesn’t even do anything in large fights – before the patch did you see Thieves run straight into the enemy zerg while stealthed?
-Stop complaining about this already. Mesmers had a 50% confusion nerf and now this, and you don’t see them complaining as much.

And if they do use it on a random Thief, they just wasted 10 supply and 15 badges for one kill. So when you step on that trap, you’ve denied them 1/3 of an arrow cart.

Lets look at your points:
1) Stealth did nothing in zergs… and yet it was because of stealth in zergs that most people complained about perma-stealth… which, btw was due to culling not the actual skill.
2) So according to you, because the traps are expensive, no one will use them on a single target… and yet in the same breath, they will use them on mesmers to stop them from veil portaling zergs in… The difference here is, the traps would not be used on a single person, even if a thief… you see, if an ally sets them off, the thief loses stealth for 30 seconds. this means no Back Stab, no Cloak and Dagger, no Refuge, no hide in shadows, loss of init regen due to traits, loss of healing in stealth due to traits, loss of crits due to traits in stealth, in short… a loss of NUMEROUS trait and weapon skills which set the class down below its performance ability… not the loss of a SINGLE ability.

mbridg.4069:

New 80 thief and was a surprised how little my health pool is as a thief. So I’m trying to squeeze a little more health out of my gear. I can get 600 more health for a trade of 70 Condition Damage. Was wondering if it would really make a difference either way. I currently have 13.6K health and 840 Condition Damage. Any ideas? I’m doing this by swapping around the Temple Exotics. Thanks in advance for any help.

Keep the condition damage…. 600 health is going to do nothing for you in the 3 seconds it takes for every other class to kill you or whine if you kill them… not that condition damage does much either against all the bunker builds out there. My suggestion, retire your thief and play something else. It seems that Anet is slowly dissolving thief anyhow.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Nyctimus.4109:

The “I have a thief” argument is null and void when I can have a bunker build and laugh all the way to the bank vs spike builds.

But I do run a spike build, because it is fun. I can escape sometimes, but when I screw up, it’s a definite death sentence.

Ahah… “All the way to the bank”. Tell me, which bunker build of yours is gonna catch a thief? With the possible exception of elementalist. See, the difference is that as a Thief, I can choose who to engage and when, and stand a good chance of downing them. And if I don’t, I can always turn around and kitten off… Even on my stealth build without stealth. 180º > Shadowstep (or shadow return in case I used it to go in) > Shortbow > Infiltrator’s arrow and swiftness ad nauseam. That’s even before I throw down some stealth, assuming I was revealed. Goodluck catching me.

If I’m on my sword build it’s even easier. (Shadow return, if I have one down) > Withdraw > Roll for Initiative > 180º > Shortbow > Infiltrator’s arrow and Swiftness away with nearly infinite initiative. See ya. But to be honest it’s not like this particular build cares about losing stealth at all…

But I do love how people overreact. As if these traps cost one copper, and every single pixel of every WvW map will be covered by them. You’ll find them once in a while. At which point you take the kittening hint and move away till they wear out or others leave, so you can trigger them when no one can use them. Or you bait people away from them. In general, you think for a second instead of just charging head in without a thought or care in the world.

Good god, thieves in WvW got so used to having so many braindead “get out of jail free cards” that they panic when one of them is made situationally less reliable… Oh I’m so sorry, you only have the highest spike damage, evasion and mobility in the game. My heart bleeds for you.

guess you really should listen to what devs say about spike dmg, evasion, and mobility… you might learn that no, in fact, the thief is not number 1 in any of these.

Sebrent.3625:

Please go point out the flawed information I’m “spewing”.

I play Ranger and Mesmer, as stated many times on various forums. Both don’t have problems with a majority of Thieves. I’m not an exception here. Most thieves are rubbish and don’t even understand half the potential of the class.

It’s only thieves with the skill level of players like Xeviel (Anvil Rock knows him as "that blue-haired thief … check forum for posts griping about him) that present a threat as they know how OP the class can be and will tell you as such. He even thinks revealed would be fine going back to 4 seconds, but you don’t see me asking for that. Heck the only things I ask are that
(1) Thief mechanics adhere to the same mechanics as other classes that support “skilled play”
(2) Thief players stop griping and acting like their class is “so weak”.

Know of any other class that can constantly stealth?
Steal boons constantly while also doing high damage with the same ability?
Disengage from a fight with any class?
Have a hard counter that can’t actually catch/kill them unless they are too stubborn to disengage from the fight?

Nope? Okay then.

1) Constantly Stealth? Well a thief cant constantly stealth but has a good amount of it. In the same vein, however, it isn’t an Invulnerability is it? And we know a certain class that has that and can keep it up for a good long time…
2) Steal Boons? Well this was just a recent addition to the thief so lets talk more about reversing conditions and stealing boons. These abilities have been part of a certain class for a looooong time and wow no one complained about them.
3) Disengage? EVERY CLASS CAN DISENGAGE FROM A FIGHT… you make it sound like stealth or dodge or whatever automatically ends agro in PvP or WvW… it doesn’t. Neither does RTL, or running… the fight is disengaged when the opponent cant catch ya. Now, since a stealthed thief can still be CC’d, hit with AOE dmg, take dmg from conditions, be affected by conditions… well I guess stealth isn’t as good a disengage as say some of the Ele or Necro abilities.
4) Have a hard counter that can kill a person too stuborn to disengage? Well I don’t know any thief ability that does that… maybe caltrops but then again, every class has a trap or something like it… As for a hard ability that kills the attacker… How about Retaliation?

Yea OIIIIIO, the problem with that is: Every single time Anet has announced something that has a direct impact on Thieves, the change has been even more dramatic and devastating to the thief class than originally stated… so, like Jeff Goldblum said in the Fly… Be afraid… be very afraid.

There have been 20+ major patches since the game released and each of those patches, save the last, took thief from playable to not so much. The thief has had damage nerfed, skills nerfed, their mechanics nerfed, weapon sets nerfed, and their overall viability and diversity nerfed in the process. Is it any wonder that the thief community has become skeptical of Developers who claim to be looking into ways of improving the thief? Is it any wonder that thieves are becoming scarce in the higher eschelon of PvP and WvW?

In the last patch, the thief gained a boon to one ability on one weapon… the ability to steal 2 boons from an opponent. This ability comes with a degree of difficulty, as all good abilities should, in the execution. The thief needs to 1) use an attack which telegraphs itself by rotating in the same direction around a target every time and 2) then land the chained ability in hopes that the opponent does not move after such an obvious animation… it also requires the opponent to have boons up in the first place. Its a great concept and one that thieves were happy to see… however, the impact was not as positive as the negatives the thief has received in the past. It was a single weapon and did nothing to help out other builds that had been nerfed to dust in the past.

Still, with all the nerfs, other classes still cry about how over powered a thief is. They complain that a thief can go into stealth and remain there indefinitely making them indestructible… they complain that the thief can 1 or 2 shot them to death, using numbers that are unreal to illustrate the fact… they complain that thieves that use stealth are cheesy and unskilled… they complain that heart-seeker is overpowered and an automatic death skill… and now, they complain about the ability to remove 2 boons from an opponent. Of course these same people never complain about a Guardian being able to keep retaliation up forever and a day, or a warrior’s ability to continually fear their opponents, or an elementalist who, with one build, is suited for every situation in WvW or PvP… nor do they complain about Necro’s and their ability to reflect conditions or use conditions to strengthen themselves or to put on stacks on stacks of conditions with little effort. Instead, they get onto the thief forum and complain how OP thieves are all the while never actually seeing if they could adapt their play style to effectively deal with the inherent weaknesses of the thief class… weaknesses only amplified by the numerous nerfs and constant changes to the class.

The point here is obvious… players do not like the thief class and no incarnation of it will ever make them happy. No matter what any Dev does to nerf or buff the thief class, those who do not main thieves will continue to find something that makes them OP… case in point, it took only a few hours after the May patch before people were swarming the thief forums complaining about how OP it was. Now that tells me… the complainers didn’t have time to adapt to the situation therefore they were complaining only because they refuse to learn to adapt… as they have constantly told thieves to do… adapt or die.

So, what is the solution…. Its simple really… Get rid of the thief class. Wait, you say, how will this help those who play thieves? Well, its simple. By getting rid of the thief class, the Devs set up a precedent for players to use when they begin complaining about other classes they feel are OP just because they cannot adapt to them. Eventually, GW2 will become a game of one class, one build, one set of gear, one set of accessories, and one set of Runes/Sigils… when that happens, the game will become Star Wars Galaxies and will go by the way of the Do-Do Bird… extinct. Granted, this may take some time… after all EQ is still going even though the game is basically a wasteland of players who know how to press an auto attack button while fixing their favorite nachos.

The thing of it is, players who play thieves will eventually become so bored and frustrated with the constant changes that they will drop thief entirely in favor of another class or stop playing altogether. There will be the die hard thieves who stick it out… but they will be far and few. So why not just do the thief community a favor and end the class? Save Anet the embarrassment of having a class available but hardly played because of what THEY did to the class rather than any real choice of players.

I find this a funny topic for thieves… How can someone post a build when the Devs keep nerfing one or more aspects of the thief every month lol

Tulisin.6945:

Ruggan.4102:

stealth is the … by which a thief gains mobility… Infiltrators strike ect.

IS doesn’t require stealth and is a poor example of “gaining mobility through stealth”. The fact is that mobility and stealth are usually separate defensive mechanisms barring something like Fleet Shadow (which no one uses). Stealth isn’t an innate thief mechanic, not something required to be mobile or survivable. Stealth is a neat mechanic, and one that should continue to be supported, but too many people see it as a pillar that supports the entire profession instead of just one of many combat options you can specialize in (like traps or venoms).

Never said it was an innate thief mechanic. Simply put forth the fact that stealth is a means of defense and combat for a thief… not only is it the main mechanism by which a thief gains DAMAGE it is also a defensive tool making it a two sided skill.

bhagwad.4281:

Many thieves don’t “get” why people hate stealth. Hope this thought experiment will illustrate why.

Thought experiment: Remove stealth and change it to invulnerability instead. Who will complain?

1. Thieves often claim that they have no defense and so they require stealth to survive. So giving them invulnerability for the same duration will solve all their complaints right? Everything remains as before. Invulnerability is lost on dealing damage and provides a water tight defense

Question for thieves: Would you be willing to swap stealth for invulnerability?
Same question for non thieves: Would you prefer to fight an invulnerable thief rather than a stealthed thief:

Prediction: Thieves would prefer stealth over invulnerability. Non thieves would prefer to fight invulnerable thieves rather than stealthed vulnerable ones.

You are comparing apples to oranges. Invulnerability is simply a condition that makes it so you take no damage at all while it is in effect. Stealth does not do that… point of fact is, stealth is the mechanism by which most of a thief’s high end damage is done such as Back-Stab. It is also a mechanism by which a thief gains mobility… Infiltrators strike ect. If you were to give Invulnerability the same limitations such as ends on attack… then you are simply creating a means of escape for the thief rather than a combat/defensive ability. Say invulnerability lasted 3 seconds or until a thief attacks… in order to remain invulnerable, the thief needs to give up ALL attack mechanisms and gains no bonus from doing so… with stealth, the thief loses stealth on attack but there is the chance that the stealth will increase their damage output. You may think, ok then what is the real difference. Take retaliation… when a guardian puts up this boon, a smart attacker will stop attacking. The guardian gains a form of damage mitigation. However, the ability still has the potential to be a damage dealer because if the guardian is attacked, the attacker takes damage. So you see, it is two sided: combat/defense. On invulnerability… some classes that have it have things like reflection as the secondary portion of it or inflict chill ect… so it to, for those classes is combat/defensive. If you make invulnerability for a thief with the same limitations as stealth has currently… then it becomes pure defense and destroys the damage output of the thief… in short the thief becomes better at running away….

Deamhan.9538:

So what you’re saying is that because thieves have a hard time against one other profession that that profession, which has a difficult time against all the other professions, is even more OP than thieves….

Boy you were just tied to that track and that stupid train just kept runnin’ over ya didn’t it? Just runnin’ over you.

What he is saying, if you actually bothered to understand the context of his message is: It is not a class that is OP just because it has a fighting chance, or even more than a fighting chance against another class… it becomes OP when the other class is not built around dealing with they build of the attacker. For example: The United States has one of the most powerful armies in the world and one of the most technologically advanced. So, to a country like Vietnam, the United States Army seems OP… in reality, however, the United States Army got its kitten smacked by the Viet-Con… why? Because even though the Viet-Con were a less threatening army, they learned to counter the attacks of the United States Army and exploit weaknesses in the Army itself. This, in turn, made the fight more even and it was discovered that neither Army was better than the other… it all came down to tactics.

So, the post makes it clear that before crying about a class being OP… attempt to learn new tactics with your class to overcome the strengths of that so called OP class and learn to exploit the weaknesses of that so called OP class…. that is simple enough, right?

Phenn.5167:

What I find so funny is that the Devs stated (in the April SotG) that they thought the BASE DAMAGE of thief attacks was too low, necessitating heavy investment into certain traitlines in order to get competitive damage.

…errrr, the base damage is low because the Devs themselves nerfed it into the the ground. I truly don’t understand the logic here.

What I find funny is, the Devs admitted that thief base dmg was sub-par and claimed they were looking into boosting the base dmg…. in every patch, thief dmg has been reduced… INCLUDING THIS ONE!… no not base dmg in this patch, but the inability for Mug to crit does, in fact, reduce the output of dmg a thief can do. And you are right, if they are so concerned about the base dmg a thief does as being poor in comparison to other classes… then why did they nerf the base dmg in the first place?

ZenonSeth.5739:

Ruggan.4102:

[snip]
With the changes you suggest, I would hope the thief would then have a Hit Point Base higher than a necro (which it is currently tied with)
[snip]

Necromancers actually have the highest hp, along with Warriors. (base 18k at 80)
Rangers, Engineers and Mesmers have the medium HP. (base 15k at 80)
Thief shares its lowest HP with Elementalist and Guardian (base 10k at 80)

The thing is, Guardians wear heavy with a ton of defensive/heals, and Eles are far more mobile and ranged, as well as having access to some tanking skills. Thus in terms of survivability, Thief falls on the bottom.

My guess as to how ANet wants us to play Thief:
Do quick bursts of damage, then avoid/evade/stealth from enemy and then burst again.

It’s great in theory, but it fails miserably in PvE where the burst is mediocre at best, and where taking on large mobs is common (yet extremely hard with any stealth builds)

In PvP/WvW, where doing damage to one target is significantly more important, the Thief can do allright, if played exactly as ANet wants it to be.

I see very little other viable options for a Thief build – no amount of points invested in Defense and Vitality would make the thief significantly more survivable – and even if they do, without a glass cannon build, the Thief’s damage output in those builds is laughable.

That was a typo I did actually mean to type ele not necro.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

By the way, Phor, it’s the job of other classes to call for nerfs on other classes. Defend your own class and ask for your own buffs. I’m not going to sit here crying for your class to be buffed in PvE when it clearly needs to be nerfed in PvP and WvW. Fight your own battles bro, I don’t ask you to sit there posting in Necro forum asking for badly needed buffs on Necro.

Thieves and Mesmers are always in denial about their classes being OP. (Despite Mesmer being significantly more balanced than Ele or Thief.)

Its amazing… every post you have ever made in this forum has called for one nerf or another to the thief… and, even after receiving what you were calling for, you then cry out and call for more. You have never stated a convincing argument as to why, never shown any proof as to what makes a thief OP, never even made a convincing statement in your defense as far as I can tell. However, you come to the thief forums, cry about the thief being OP… and in the same breath admit that as long as it doesn’t affect your class, you could care less if thief is nerfed into dust… This to me says but one thing… it says that you are simply trolling the forum and joining onto the band wagon of others who either lost a fight to a thief or were somehow disgraced after a thief or another class showed you that what you thought was godly was actually crap (namely that you thought you were godly until a thief showed you otherwise).

Please, unless you plan to contribute to the conversation in an intelligent manner and with some respect… refrain from comment so that the average IQ level in the room may raise significantly.

bhagwad.4281:

Dasorine.1964:

bhagwad.4281:

swinsk.6410:

That video does not show anything about balance.

It’s a skilled player vs. a bunch of bads mostly. The players he downs and stomps are usually bads even if there is a decent player around.

I guarantee you if you take the most skilled GW2 player in the world and pit them against the worst players who don’t even know what their skill bars do, they would still die to 4-5 of them on any profession other than the thief.

Show me another video of the same type utilizing another profession downing a group of five people. I’d like to see it.

You may not like it, but no one is that good. At the most one person can solo two or maybe three others. If they can reliably take on more than that, then there’s something seriously wrong with balance.

More people should always win provided the others are not just standing around doing nothing. There are limits to how far “skill” should take you.

Choose a random class, put in gw2 wvw solo you tube it = there you go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuLki4fP648

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeD5yRL2i3Q

They aren’t proof of anything other than WvW is filled with uplevels and a good player can beat bad players

Nope:

First video: Guardian never solos more than 2 people. In fact, at one point there are five people and the video display says “Death inevitable”!

Because everyone knows that no one no matter how good can ever solo 4 people at the same time. I’m afraid this video merely proves my point. No profession other than the thief is arrogant enough to assume that they’re better than 5 people combined.

They’re not. It’s the class mechanic that allows it to happen.

Second video: Engineer at no point solos 4-5 people.

I’m sorry but nothing compared to the thief video shown here. No profession no matter how well played should ever be able to take down 4-5 people solo even against complete noobs.

Heroes don’t exist.

Well, you are good to point out 2 of the 5 videos lol…. I do notice you don’t mention the Warrior one… you know where the warrior is doing 12-20k dmg with a strike by pressing the 1 key. I only point this out because thief haters are always complaining about the thief spamming 3 and doing 10k with a BS… never once do they mention these 12k hits by other classes…

Zenith.7301:

Ruggan.4102:

What about Dagger Storm? It is the only and I do mean ONLY stability granting ability on a thief… and it is an ELITE. Other classes get not one, not two, but multiple abilities to do this and not a lick of them require the elite slot. But lets look at ranger… the elite skill gives 20 seconds of stability… shared anguish transfers those conditions such as stun ect to your pet every 90 seconds, lets not mention the 6 ways to sunday that a ranger can grant himself and his pet protection. Oh, and most of those protection and stability things are traits not slot skills and they are in trait lines that a good deal of rangers use anyhow… such as skirmishing, beastmaster, and wilderness survival. So no, not even a contest.

Condition removal is bundled with stealth, correct. As for use frequently… well I guess you didn’t hear that they decreased the amount it can be used by increasing the reveal debuff timer. And yes, you actually do have to go into stealth for the condi removal to work… so if you hit Hide in Shadows for a heal and you have the revealed debuff… you do not cure those conditions. Oh yea that goes for cloak and dagger, blinding powder, ect ect. Any other class who has a debuff on an ability so they cant use that ability even when the CD timer is over (keep in mind, most of a thief’s stealth abilities are slot skills such as hide in shadows, blinding powder and not weapon skills… though we do have a few of those).

As for the ability to reset more effectively than most other classes (BTW, I would argue that Mesmers and Ele’s actually have better abilities to reset a fight… can we say invulnerability?)… well sure a thief should. After all, we are a medium armor melee class with the hit point base of a necro… which means, even on my ranger who has 356 less vitality than my thief (equal level), my thief trails his hit point pool by 1815 hit points so there is an actual difference in base hit points of over 5k… which is rather significant. Now, I know ele’s and necros and mesmers have low hit point pools… but then again, they have pets and aoe and ranges and channels and heals and invulnerabilities, and confusion and the list goes on and on.

Now that you got caught being dishonest about stability, you changed the subject to protection.

I just named you several classes who don’t have any stability other than their elite. It’s not just the thief.

As for ranger “protection”, the only protection you get comes from either speccing into wilderness survival, where you get 2 secs prot WHILE you dodge, making it actually at best a 1 second benefit of protection that is often wasted, and the other source of prot comes from nature magic, which is not taken because it competes for the trait for 33% longer regen boon duration. The prot trait on NM requires you be hit for over 10% of your health already, and has an internal cooldown.

And quite frankly, if you’re going to be so desperate as to bring stun switch traits in, why not mention the thief’s automatic shadowstep upon cc or his smoke powder upon hitting lower health traits? Oh, right, because it’s inconvenient for you.

But, hey, let’s make a switch. I’ll trade you a ranger for a thief, any day. I’m sure most pve groups will as well, as would wvw groups since the ranger’s pet is pretty much dead all the time in wvw, which means they operate under a permanent 30-40% damage handicap. When your damage gets cut by a third on most game types and has trouble keeping up with opponents because its ai sucks and its attack animations root it in place, then you get to complain.

Actually, what you did was point out the stability that other classes have that are non elite. See when you say that X class has no non-elite stability except A-B-C… then you actually are pointing to abilities that are non-elite that do indeed grant stability… so umm yea. As for getting caught and switching to protection… actually I mentioned protection in the same post so I have no clue what you mean by that.

As for damage being cut in 1/3… apperantly you have not actually taken a look at the patch history for thieves and their abilities since just about every single weapon skill and ability HAS been reduced by at least 33%. As for Rangers, in a single patch their spirits were increased, their damage was increased, and their overall survivability was increased… that was just one patch mind you.

Aveneo.2068:

Personally, I believe they should rework the thief so their class mechanic to include stealth. Never understood why their class mechanic revolved solely around ‘steals a skill’ (which doesn’t make any sense).

As such I would suggest removing all stealth aspects from weapon/utility.

Then give the Thief a new F1-F3. Keep ‘Steal’ on F1 but add an F2-F3 that would change depending on the slotted weapons. For instance C&D being on F3 if an offhand dagger is equipped.

Natually new skills and utilities would need to be introduced to fill the gaps. But I don’t see a problem there.

At present time there are just too many variations on stealth with too great a focus on it through traits while having less variation on the rest. Even the traits seem to reflect ANet’s lack of creativity when they created the class ‘when in doubt, add (stuff to) stealth’. Imagine all those useless trait lines where you wished you had a trait for a certain build but you don’t because it’s all revolving around adding more and more pitifully small benefits to stealth. As far as I know there are like 12 traits that all revolve around stealth. I don’t recall any other class having such a heavy (forced) investment in something that apparently isn’t even considered their actual class-mechanic.

As such I think it would be more beneficial to rework stealth into an actual class-mechanic for the F-keys which might lend itself better to creative counterplay scenarios.

But then we have the ‘we need stealth to survive’ mentality; when in reality you don’t. Those people just got lured into a false sense of security (just as those that think stealth = invulnerable). With increased mobility (and proposed changes by ANet to improve on that even more); you’re looking at a true assassin who can get in under cover of stealth for a period of time and get out before people realize he was there (in theory). Applying stealth every time a Thief sneezes is just a crutch that people lean on because old habit has come to accept that disability in my humble opinion.

What you say makes perfect sense. As the thief is designed, however, a stealth build IS needed in order to survive. With the changes you suggest, I would hope the thief would then have a Hit Point Base higher than a necro (which it is currently tied with), a damage base on par at least with Ranger (who with pet can deal considerable more dmg than a thief who isn’t full glass cannon)… and I can say that because every single patch has reduced the thief damage output by 33% or greater on at least 1 ability.