Showing Posts For Sparkz.1983:
I think that this rework focuses too much on weapon skills and not enough on traits where the real problem is imo. A few weapon skills need tweaks, but not the sweeping changes you’re proposing.
The problem with thief is that they have no way of playing anything other than dps, thats why the nerfs effects us so much. Thief has pretty much always played as a kill them in 5 seconds get out or die class. Now we cant kill in 5 secs we are getting swatted.
examples
pre nerfs
s/p – combat style -The Hokey Cokey: Infiltrators in bp pw infiltrators out rinse and repeat.
s/d – combat style – The Hokey Cokey with less Cokey: Infiltrator cloak and dagger cancel into steal to give damage and poison auto attack chain infiltrators out rinse and repeat.
d/d – combat style – Crouching Wow rouge: Hide in shadows stupidly high backstab crit heartseeker cloak and dagger rinse repeat
d/p – combat style – Crouching o kitten stealth ran out: bp heartseeker stupidly high backstab crit cloak and dagger heartseeker rinse repeat
p/p – combat style – Bleed for me: Hide in shadow sneak attack with ricochet everyone bleeds and dies run away shooting stealth up again rinse repeat
p/d – combat style – Look mommy I’m pressing buttons: cloak and dagger cancel with steal sneak attack shadow strike cloak and dagger rinse repeat
Thats why I proposed the weapon skill changes, this way thiefs can be viable pretty much regardless of the traits. Not forced to do this I’m gonna crit you so hard game but to actally be able to play as a tanky thief or a support thief. Atm all you can be as a thief is pure dps, that doesn’t fit with the over all game of gw2 thats why thieves are facing a hard time imo.
Thats why other classes feel damage nerfs less, because their weapon skills allow them to play a variety of different styles not just nuker.
(edited by Sparkz.1983)
thief is going through a transition atm so it can be quite unforgiving, then again it always has been unforgiving. If you want to play a thief imo you need to be moving in and out sword dagger isn’t that messed up it depends on your play style.
its all on how you want to play it sneaky stealth high crit or dodging and shadowsteping.
I didn’t really change much tbh I just added some features what was it that I proposed btw that was over the top ? I only ask because that was what I was aiming for, a form of thief which makes being in stealth as viable as out of stealth
That’s fair enough Zaerah, what do you think would be a better fix for the current state of thief ?
Mefiq my point was that thieves shouldn’t just be damage we aren’t assasins we are thieves. The reason I said give thieves a butt load of cc was for two reasons.
1. was the survivability if you a playing smart and playing well which is what alot of thieves do then you are going to be locking you target down, if a thief in the thick of it and getting blasted he/she doing something wrong it’s a thief not a warrior. Thats the reason I rolled thief in the first place, having to play smart and outwit my target.
2. The thief proffesion currently doesn’t work with the style of gw2 imo, this game is about freedom of play style thats why there isn’t a holy trinity in this game. At the minute thieves can only dps thats a problem they shouldn’t be working off of high numbers alone look at all the other proffesions and you will see that they use their mech to play any type they want dps healer tanks utility etc.
I’m not trying to say im right maybe im wrong and thieves should just get the talent changes and be happy but imo the issue with thieves is more indemic.
Thanks kocoff its nice to see im not alone in that thought.
Introduction
Thief was broken pre nerf.
This is my first post on the forum however I have played thief since day one and something I have noticed over time is that thief was rubbish from the get go.
The Problem
Thieves lack a viable mechanic. Look at mesmers for example, on a base level they use there clones for everything their class is built around it. Thieves have steal but the skills that you steal are not incredible, I understand that they are very useful and situational and that good thief players can get great effect from them. However the recharge time is incredibly high for that to be the class mechanic.
Every complaint made about the nerfs received by thieves, shows the issue of a lack of mechanic, as soon as you remove our high dps thieves fall apart. The issue isn’t a lack of damage, it’s that thieves can only viably do just damage.
Possible Solution
The solution is simple give thieves a mechanic. Now a mechanic doesn’t have to be a skill, a mechanic can simply be a system of combat.
It is my belief that thieves should use more disabling moves more knock downs, dazes etc. CC is the way a thieves combat system should play out. This way thieves have greater potential in combat, for example you could be a glass cannon single target stun lock thief, or an aoe debuff support specialist, or a complete lock down bunker whose damage output is low. However can daze, blind and confuse targets to stop the thief from taking damage.
Skill changes
Steal – Effect Changes: Disarms target for 2.5 seconds, applies a smoke field at the target,reduce cooldown of steal to 15 seconds
Trait Changes: Do not change slight of hand, the interrupt is great and the extra second of disarm would give survivability to the thief. Reduce damage of mug to 500 reduce damage of serpent touch to 1,653.
Sword
1 Slash – Effect Changes: Now applies 2 stacks of bleed.
2 Infiltrators Strike – Effect Changes: Applies a 3 second knockdown to target, knocked down will grant a 2 second stability after the knockdown to prevent permanent knockdown. reduce damage to 200 reduce cost to 2 initiative.
3.1 Pistol Whip – Effect Changes: Increase stun to last as long as the attack animations, after the attack target suffers from 3 stacks of confusion and cripple, damage reduced to 9*1000.
3.2Flanking Strike – Effect Changes: Applies 3 stacks of bleed initiative cost to 2
Larcenous Strike – Effect Changes Applies dazes target for 1.3 seconds, steals two boons, initiative cost increased to 3.
4. Dancing Dagger – Works perfectly
5. Cloak and Dagger – Effect Changes: Applies blind
Dagger
1. Backstab – Effect Changes: Front attack now applies bleed Back attack now applies confusion
2. New move Barbed lunge (replaces Heartseeker) – Effect: Lunge forward granting evasion and leave a tripwire behind that applies knockdown and bleed and cripple the trip-line will stay active for 4 seconds even if triggered allowing for thieves to trip an entire group of targets, cost 4 initiative.
3.1 Death Blossom – Effect Changes: disarms targets, increase evasion time to match animation. Reduce cost to 3 initiative.
3.2 Shadow Shot – Effect Changes: 2 second Daze.
4. As before mentioned
5. As before mentioned
Pistol
1. No change
2. Body Shot – Effect Changes : Remove immobilize added 2.5 second knockdown
3.1 Unload – Effect Changes : hits up to 3 targets added a 1.5 second immobilize.
3.2 Shadow Strike – Effect Changes : Added a 2 second daze and a 4 second cripple.
4. Headshot – Effect Changes: Also adds confusion for 3 seconds.
5. Black Powder – Effect Changes: Increase area to 150 increase blind to 3 seconds, reduce initiative cost to 5.
Heal Changes
Replace skelk venom with:
Idle Hands – Effect: Shadow step to your target stealing their healing skill and using it on yourself. Target will be unable to use their healing skill for the next 4 seconds if targets healing skill is on cooldown the cooldown timer will freeze for 4 seconds.
Stolen Items changes
Warrior – Item changes to a hammer knockdown up to 3 targets combo finisher blast.
Elementalist – Item changes depends on the attunment of the elementalist steal the number 4 ability.
Mesmers – Stays the same.
Engineer – Cattle prod Stuns target for 2 seconds
Guardian – Item changes to aura of retaliation grants thief retaliation for 4 seconds
Ranger – stays the same
Thief – Blinding Powder same as the ability blinding powder
Elite changes
New elite skill
Copy Cat – Effect Shadow step to the target copying its elite skill pressing Copy Cat again will use the stolen skill, Copy Cat will still recharge while the thief holds the stolen skill. Recharge 40 seconds.
Summary
Obviously everything here is merely my opinion and I look forward to hearing what people think about thieves in general.