Guild Wars 2

There are a lot of great ideas in there ^^.

Hello all!

I’ve been having troubles countering scrappers, reapers, and dragon hunters and am hoping to receive some advice on how you all deal with these other classes in sPvP. Between the damage/condition output, healing ability, and perma stuns, I am not sure how to get around these. I run dd/sb critical strikes, shadow arts, and daredevil with marauder runes.

Thanks all!

I like most of these ideas, although I believe Flashing Blades would be a bit too powerful; maybe set a 10s ICD. I would also like to see SE reverted. Without it being able to remove all types of conditions, thieves can be very easily locked down with spam condition builds and it forces you to use utilities such as shadowstep and withdraw to clear them. Also, the 10% increase in healing to withdraw would be nice too.

Regardless, lets keep this topic bumped so that hopefully one GM will see this and utilize the advice.

Pretty much as the title says. Shadow’s Embrace was not overpowered prior to the trait changes. This skill needs to have the ability to remove all conditions in order to allow Shadow Arts thieves to be slippery opponents. With the minimal health pool, Cloaked in Shadows/Shadow’s Embrace nerf, and Withdraw nerf, thieves are extremely squishy and too easy to catch. Reverting this skill to have the ability to remove all conditions will only add to reward skilled game play.

Thanks~

DHawk.2687:

We all love our dd thieves and i won’t let anet ruin my class, all I’m really missing is CiS and the old SE.
Good luck you all

^^ very true. If I wanted to play the most effective build, I would totally run d/p all the time. I’m pretty sure anyone who plays d/d thieves is for the play style, and not for its strength.

I agree 100% with this. I have also played D/D since beta and have been okay with all of the balance changes up until this.

SA used to be very effective prior to this patch. It was a trait line that would allow you to be very slippery during team fights, but take a significant hit to your DPS. Exactly as OP said, with the extremely low health pool thieves have, traiting SA (or acrobatics if s/d) was the only way to play thief without being a simple +1, jump in cnd + backstab, get out theif.

Now that they have made Cloaked in Shadows a GM trait, it has no competition compared to Shadows Rejuvenation. Without Cloaked in Shadows as a master trait, a thief has to make a decision between stealthing, or dodging the next attack. This becomes a problem because other players only need to land 2-4 hits on a thief in order to kill him, and you can only dodge twice before you’re all out of energy.

Which leads me into the next portion – Shadows Embrace. Without SE curing all conditions, such as immobilize or fear, a thief can be easily pinned down and killed since its only primary condition clear for mobility skills also happens to be its healing skill – Withdraw.

Thief is supposed to be a slippery class, high mobility class. They gave every class a big damage buff, but when thieves also received major nerfs to their survivability skills, what did they expect was going to happen? Make Cloaked in Shadow a master trait and revert Shadows Embrace to be able to remove any kind of condition. Thieves will be able to survive long enough to actually maintain skilled game play, with dodges and stealths.

Odyssey.2613:

Introducing kittened-Off-Odyssey’s List of Common Sense Fixes & Approaches For Thieves That Should Be A No-Brainer but Seem To Elude Even Arena Net’s Best & Brightest:
(yeah, I’m fed up with Anet)

1. Assign someone with knowledge to balance Thieves. Send the Thief guy back to the Warrior cubicle & go find someone off the street.
2. Shrink the Health Pool gap by giving Thieves more HP.
3. Fix Disabling Shot’s (SB#3) laggy backwards evade animation. Make it smooth.
4. Give back some of Shortbow’s bite.
5. Give Thieves some form of better range.
6. Reset Acrobatics & start over from scratch. You’ve messed up.
7. Abandon the Vigor obsession. Bring back Feline Grace.
8. Bring back Ricochet. Delete Ankle Shots if you must.
9. Revert Shadow’s Embrace.
10. Fix Shadow’s Rejuvenation.
11. Fix Mug+Hidden Thief combo-interaction. Seriously, you re-introduce it every patch.
12. Lower Cloaked In Shadow. It is no where worthy of a GM spot.
13. Rethink ALL Critical Strikes’ Master traits. They are lack-luster.
14. Increase Death Blossom’s evade time frame.
15. Give Withdrawl’s promised 10% healing increase.
16. Rethink Dagger Training.
17. Rethink Potent Poison.
18. Buff Trickster so Bountiful Theft has competition.
19. Cut Roll For Initiative’s recharge & gain in HALF.
20. Fix Scorpion Wire by giving it the same one the Thieves Guild assassin uses.
21. Make all Thief traps circular like Ranger’s & buff their effects in the process.
22. Quick Pockets needs to include &/or become a weapon swap reduction trait.
23. It may be time to totally rethink the Steal mechanic. Melee range boon stealing or F3-F5 weapon bundle? I would rather be rewarded by defeating my opponent with strategy & wit rather than who can surprise who first in a 5 second battle.
24. Definitely time to rethink Venoms. They are awful outside Venom Share.
25. Change Shadow Protector’s Regeneration to Protection.
26. Buff Vital Shot.
27. Rethink Body Shot.
28. Rethink Unload’s damage & utility. Perhaps drain all initiative & base increasing effectiveness on each initiative lost?

This.

And particularly the Cloaked in Shadow portion.

I’ve been playing thief since beta, and have been able to deal with the updates just fine up until this past “balance” update.