Guild Wars 2

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

insaneshadow.1654:

I want to know why other Charr (NPCs) don’t run on all fours. Seriously, that’s been bugging me more than it should.

All NPC’s run with their weapons out (even if they don’t have one). That’s why they run so slow…

That’s not correct.
When my charr is in combat and i put away the weapon, she runs exactly like charr npcs do all the time. So they run as if they were always in combat, but they aren’t.
And i agree with LadyRhonwyn – it bugs me too, a bit more than it’s supposed to

Meta is about boon spam
Thieves have a way to steal boons
>nerf thieves

Well, it should be more like:
Meta is about boon spam
Thieves have a way to steal boons
>nerf the boon spam meta

^
Hope my little analysis makes sense, can’t be bother with a long wall of text.

Warrior got nerf, they stare at Thief. Mesmer got nerf, they stare at Thief. When Thief got nerf, it is for the sake of the game.

An Ode to Daggerstorm.

There’s something insanely awesome about daggerstorm because it’s directly opposite of everything else the thief ever does. Normally we’re attempting to avoid notice, doing these little hit and run tactics, lurking on the fringe of fights, dancing cautiously with our opponents. Then comes daggerstorm.

Daggerstorm is like opening a window in a dark room, instantly your thief goes from a skirmisher selectively picking at single targets to a whirling engine of destruction with a big flashy effect that says “LOOK AT ME I WILL KILL ALL THE THINGS!” as if, for a brief moment, he forgot everything he knows about the world and just said “kitten it, I’ll just flip out now”

Sure other classes have flashy “mode switch” elites like tornado or juggernaut or that awesome cloud thing that necro do that I can’t remember the name of, but they aways feel like bigger versions of what the class already does to me. Daggerstorm is different because it looks at its class and says “you know what? screw all that, I’m gonna spin in circles and attack everything at once because I’m daggerstorm. Say something about it”

Pile on mad king runes and signet of malice, and daggerstorm becomes even more awesome, summoning a flock of white birds at his brief moment of invincible glory like the living embodiment of every John Woo movie (do it with a P/P build and wear a trenchcoat for maximum cinematic effect)

For eight seconds I am invincible. I am immortal. I am something greater than I was. For eight seconds I am free. For eight seconds I kiss the face of the divine. And then it’s over. The skill ends or my boons are stripped and I am once again that fragile scrapper, evading or being mercilessly beaten to death. You allowed me to taste a glory for that short time dagger storm.

I love you.

1) Ranger (many great things)
2) Engineer (great focus on builds other than condi, loved it mostly)
3) Mesmer (major QoL on some phantasms, condi buff for idk what reason)
4) Warrior (stronger attention on new GM traits, well deserved nerf to adrenaline)
5) guardian (nice things, that meditation renewed focus and stability on tomes epic)
6) Elementalist (didn’t really see a whole lot, but some nice control on elementals and nice glyph buff)
7) Necromancer (awesome approach to lich form, nice DS change. Not much else.)
8) Thief (buffs but in the wrong areas, questionable nerfs but nothing really bad.)

messiah.1908:

the main problem of the thief which anet cant seem to handle is the stealth
true community may qq on it but an average player by now knows how to deal with it

You deal with stealth by guessing/predicting, mainly, and a bit of luck. That’s not a good game mechanic given that it can’t really be overcome with skill. Sure, it’s great for those classes(almost necessary), but it’s still an incredibly overpowered mechanic taken on it’s own merits(can enter in combat, basically undetectable, full movement). I’ll just call it a design flaw and arenanet would be way too proud to ever remove it from the game, so it’s here to stay and be coped with.

The problem with thief arises when you combine stealth with other things like mobility, evasion, shadowstep, blind, potent burst damage. It’s really the full array of thief class features and how well they come together that makes the class pretty formidable.

I also don’t buy into the idea that thieves are done the moment they take a hit or two. They’re one of those most forgiving classes when it comes to disengaging, so they can easily back away, stealth, what have you and get to safety without dying.

I think the solution to balancing thief is what they’re doing currently—just make small changes and gauge how viable thief remains in the meta game. Drastic overhauls would be unwarranted and might be too severe, cause new problems to crop up.

it’s not power creep if those things were previously underpowered. it’s bringing up to par. in theory, this means other professions will have more builds to play with, not “strong things will be stronger”. there’s a big difference.

that said, i’m starting to lose faith in the balance team’s handling of the thief profession. even the buffs they gave us felt incredibly misguided. D/D still has conflicting skills; dancing dagger is still a waste of slot; venoms are still being held ransom by venomous aura (and by proxy, every other venom trait is crap, and lets not even talk about untraited venoms); P/P will remain a mess of a weapon set centered on pressing 3 until the enemy kills you; traps still hilariously bad.

the venom aura change is the one that hurts the most, because it shows a clear misunderstanding of what venoms are for in the first place. venoms aren’t for condi damage. venoms don’t even deal condi damage, except for a single one. and it doesn’t solve the problem that the only way to use venoms in this game is to spec 12 points into venoms, get healing power gear, and then be your party’s venom dispenser, with no stealth, no damage, no stun breaks, nothing. which in turn is an overall decrease in party effectiveness because this game punishes niche builds in favor of more hybridized builds (i.e. i can support you, but i can hold my own and contribute to the damage), which in turn means venoms are still crap.

it just kittenes me off, because i know it’ll be another 6 months before any chance of the profession seeing any actual change or improvement.

/rant

1. Balance – This is the biggest issue. It takes the balance team forever to make changes (seriously, what do they do all day that is takes 5-6 months to release balance updates). eSports have much more frequent changes. The issue with GW2 is that oftentimes something is broken and people get frustrated some stop playing PvP. The balance team is the weak point here.
2. Game modes – Conquest is fun to play, but boring to watch. They need a new game mode and put the focus on that.

Opportunity cost
One of the biggest issues with GW2 right now is definitely the lack of downsides to skills. There’s no punishment in terms of lost energy or even negative triggers when a skill whiffs aside from the cast time and cooldown.

Accordingly, every skill is theoretically high impact, with the skills that require too much effort to land for their cast time like Warrior Whirling Axe or Ranger Whirling Defense or Ele Churning Earth seeing less play outside of more organised teams that can set them up. Even then, there are skills and setups that outcompete them; that offer higher return for less risk and so these cooldowns are thus ignored.

Thus, GW2 combat is a maelstrom of individually low impact skills leading to an opponent going down, maybe, let’s hope for crits oh wait he’s popped a heal.

Then there are the traits, that are almost univerally positive without any downside besides internal cooldowns. Thus, the traits that offer the greatest utility for the least opportunity cost, such as War Cleansing Ire, Ele Evasive Arcana, Gurd Inspired Virtue, Rang’s Companion’s Defense or Engi Incendiary Powder – are taken to the exclusion to many other traits, as their situational nature or lower power level makes them inferior.

Anet has definitely hobbled themselves in balance terms by sticking to nerfing trait efficacy or internal cooldowns or by moving tiers. Simply making traits more situational – as you mentioned as with Gurd’s Inner Fire – then allowing players to “break” these traits by letting them trigger the negative effects by themselves – definitely raises the skill floor and opens up the balance team’s avenues of attack.

The fact that an entire class was built around this concept of self-buffing, then removing those buffs for another effects – the Dervish – attests to the levels of risk-reward achievable with such a balance mindset. Later skills like Crystal Wave or Reap Conditions or Foul Feast – these are skills that play with conditions beyond simple application and self/ally removal and instead have specific triggers or support elements to them that are altruistic – something that is extremely under-leveraged in GW2 and as such every person is unto themselves, which erodes team play.

As for Necro’s Corruption Skills in GW2; they are a pale imitation of what GW1’s Corruptions were. Blood Is Power involved actual HP sacrifice, not a mere 1k worth of Bleeding out of 18k base vitality in a Condi build – and it was fully altruistic. The Mind Wrack/Aneurysm Mesmer combo gave foes Energy back – yet made them take damage for all that was gained. The caveats that powerful profession skills had in GW1 were great, and accordingly their power level could be all the greater. In GW2, almost every aspect of every meta build aims to minimise any caveat or opportunity cost, offering easy damage, easy defense and easy setup to land.

What caveats that do exist in Profession skills are easily outcompeted by others – some, even within the profession itself. This kind of internal imbalance has ramifications for not only the skill ceiling achievable but also the choices players make in creating builds.

As an example, take Ele Fire Dagger 5 – Fire Grab. 1.7 Coefficient going up to 2.8 if target is on fire, on a blisteringly fast 45 second cooldown. Compare it to Warrior’s Axe F1 – Eviscerate. 1.45 Coefficient at 10 Adrenaline going up to 2.18 at 30 Adrenaline; on a desultory 10 second cooldown. One of these skills is easier to land, is less conditional, and has less opportunity cost. I’ll let you guess which one.

In case the “but you can’t compare across professions!” card is played, let’s go over why Scepter Focus burst Ele is increasingly favoured over Scepter Dagger burst ele.

The reason is Phoenix. Quarter cast, 0.7 coefficient on flight, 1.7 coefficient on Blast, plus another 0.7 coefficient if Phoenix manages to hit twice when going through the target. Total coefficient, 2.4 to 3.1. Longer range, Blast Finisher, removes a Condition, and grants Vigour on return; on half the cooldown of Fire Grab. No caveats, no conditionals, no worries. The advent of Fresh Air magnified this internal imbalance something fierce, as now Ele could also have access to Air Magic 15/3 Lightning Strike, Scepter Air 2 Lightning Bolt, and the least-awful autoattack of Scepter, Arc Lightning more frequently.

There’s a clear internal imbalance here where one skill clearly supersedes the other in terms of opportunity cost vs damage output.

The death of synergy
Self-reliance in GW2 far, far outcompetes altruism. There’s no Foul Feast into Plague Sending . Every profession builds to be an island unto themselves, which erodes the Support role and de-emphasises team play.

What teamplay there is in PVE revolves around blasting Fire Fields for max might, someone stacking Vulnerability, and everyone DPSing when a party member goes down to tag for rallies. If that is the only extent of demand for Damage, Control and Support in GW2 then clearly something has gone wrong

In PVP, teamfights in GW2 boil down to targets being called, a CC/damage train happening, the target going down/escaping, and resses or cleave being dropped. High preponderance of AOE and ports minimise positional plays, whilst simplistic and cramped map design lead to team splits being the most viable play in Conquest and thus further diluting the spectator experience of a real, ebbing and flowing teamfight.
There are less team plays as there are individual plays – what teamplay there is being focused into AOE pressure and Condi cleave. Whilst the action and flow of GW2 combat is great, the need for co-ordination is virtually zero outside of rotating to be in the right place at the right time to win fights.

There’s no clutch Enigma Black Hole into Invoker Meteor at mid lane that wins a fight and takes 2 towers as it is in DOTA, or the Thresh Death Sentence + Lantern that drags the jungler over into the Baron Steal as in League of Legends, or even the Blood Spike of a Blood Magic Necro GW1 team. Instead one observes the occasional Sanctuary to res a downed team member, or the Thief diving the Mesmer with ports and downing the Mesmer with Air/Fire procs. If that is the maximum depth of play possible – plays that require little to no team execution, then the skill ceiling for GW2 will forever be depressingly low and accordingly, its competitive scene forever hobbled in growth potential.

Its really simple.
If you join a game, you have an option to play or spectate.
You dont have a choice of what team you will be on, you dont have a choice to join a team if you enter spectate. You cannot rejoin a server until the match is over.
Something more radical: autobalance 4v5’s so that the losing side has more people.

Let’s see how spammy these classes are.
For a P/D, you can only spam in quick succession 2, 3, 4 and NOT 5 (Heart seeker , shadow shot, head shot).
Every other profession? They can spam 2,3,4,5 in quick succession.

Long term? Let’s see.

Average initiative cost for an attack is 4 initiative (it’s actually 4.4 initiative, but let’s round it down cause we don’t want thieves to seem underpowered). We regenerate 1 initiative per second. So starting with everything on cool down, that is .25 attacks (not auto attack) per second. 0.227 attacks per second if we use 4.4 initiative. Let’s take greatsword warrior for example cause we all hate warriors too.
Burst, 10 seconds. HB, 8 second. Whirlwind attack, 10 second. Bladetrail, 15 second. Rush, 20 second. That is .44 attacks per second (.342 attacks per second if you didn’t know you had an F1 skill that does something). If you guys weapon swap, oh my goodness, it’s as if someone just entered a cheat code.

Just as warriors can trait for lower CDs, so can thieves regain initiative. How do thieves regain more initiative? Steal. That’s 2 extra initiative every 25-35 seconds. Barely anything.

Every single profession can spam skills faster than thieves can (unless it’s heart seeker or dancing dagger, but that is it), just not the same skill over and over.

Some of you guys are like, shadow shot OP! I dodge the first one, and then he shoots me again, and I’m out of endurance. Ok, the thief just used 8 initiative out of 12. If they are going trickery, that just means they are doing less damage. Are you guys really going to be auto attacked to death?

The only thing thieves are better at than every single other profession is their ability to use an attack more than once. What other professions do better is their ability to spam their attacks faster than a thief can.

I just showed you how a profession can basically use their attacks about 1.75 times more often without even swapping weapons. Even a warrior with a hammer can spam skills faster than a thief can. Look up weapon skills for each profession, tell me which one can’t attack more than once every 4 seconds.

I’m not saying that other professions are OP, I just want to show you guys that in my opinion, it is a good tradeoff, using half as many skills as any other professions can, but being able to spam a skill multiple time.

If you guys think there’s something wrong with what I wrote, or there are anything else you think make thieves too OP, reply, and I’ll either agree with you, or try to prove how it isn’t OP.

On topic: If a thief can’t catch someone, and if a thief can no longer burst anyone in 3 seconds, and a thief is squishy, and a thief can’t support anyone unless they go that kittenty venom share, what is a thief supposed to be good at? Are they supposed to be good at trolling? Giving out legendaries from their dead bodies? I’m pretty sure that a thief carrying a Banner of Strength everywhere so people will always get the aura is better than venom share.

Thieves pros: good dps, good mobility, stealth. Consistent Might, vigor, fury, bleed, poison, vulnerability, immobilize (1 second, lol). If you want to talk about S/D, replace good dps with being able to steal other people’s boons.

Thieves cons: No team support, low hp, low armor. No other conditions or boons. Subpar condition removal. Don’t underestimate how squishy thieves are – no blocks, no invulns, no access to protection, Lowest base HP, no practical access to stability. Poor sustain, Zero bunker ability.

[Human]
-Avatar Of Melandru: Change cleansing leaves to a held channel skill to remove 1 condition from each ally (up to 5) every .5 seconds for up to 5 seconds and drastically lower aftercast. Grant regeneration from roar of the forest for the same duration (5 seconds). Increase width of healing spring to 360 units. (weaker form of tome of courage, but still a threat to interrupt).

-Hounds of Balthazar: Increase health to ~15,802 (tier 2 profession health). Increase damage of fiery leap to ~2,200-3,400 and add functionality “gain might for each foe hit (3 stacks for 8 seconds)”. Increase bite attack speed by ~33%. (little more reliable but with such a long cooldown only a scare skill).

[Charr]
-Battle Roar: Lower cooldown to 30 seconds. Increase might stacks to 3. (still not a shout, lower boon duration, longer cooldown than “for great justice!”).

-Artillery Barrage: Increase damage per strike to ~657 (80% more). Increase cast range to 1,000. Increase number of strikes to 20. No cooldown change. (basically a meteor shower with an incredibly high cooldown).

-Warband Support: Increase health of melee to ~15,802 (tier 2 profession health). Increase damage of ranged by ~15%. Added functionality based on warband legion; blood has fury on battle roar (7 seconds) and ranged shots pierce, ash has daggers for melee dealing more damage while flanking and ranged mine grants stealth to allies in the blast radius (3 seconds), iron battle roar removes 1 condition and ranged aimed shot deals 20% more damage.

-Charrzooka: Reduce cooldown to 150 seconds.

[Sylvari]
-Seed turret: Increase attack speed to once every 3 seconds.

-Healing seed: Creates a water field for 10 seconds once killed (not if it expires).

-Druid spirit: Grant -20% condition duration towards itself, added functionality “increase toughness by ~35 every time it applies regeneration”.

-Sylvan Hound: Change attack to a small leap slash that applies poison and cripple for 2 seconds. Added functionality “gain health when a condition is applied”. ~320 healing with a 1 second ICD.

[Norn]

-Call owl: change effect to attack 5 times, applying 1 bleed stack for 8 seconds per attack. Executes 5 attacks over ~2.25 seconds.

-Become the Bear: Allow movement with AA. Heavy swipe causes knockdown instead of knockback (1 second KD). Add 20% damage to knocked down foes with maul. Lower cooldown to 200 seconds.

-Become the Raven: Lower cripple duration of aa to 1 second, allow movement with AA. Allow movement while casting shriek. Increase number of attacks for rending talons to 6 and increase bleeding duration to 8 seconds. Lower cooldown to 200 seconds.

-Become the Wolf: Allow movement with AA. Increase number of attacks in blood frenzy to 6 (same channel duration) and gain quickness for 2 seconds if you hit a foe that was knocked down (only applies once). Leap breaks immobilize now. Lower cooldown to 200 seconds.

-Become the Snow Leopard: Remove cast time of growl while changing it to a radius effect of 240 units (shorter). Pounce now has +50% critical damage if you were affected by prowl however casting it immediately removes prowl’s effect. Cooldown remains at 240 seconds.

Rasalhague.8270:

Thief cooldowns should be doubled and initiative removed.

Aka, All weapon skills = auto attacks

crochip.2389:

I think it is a good change in general. Perma blind shouldn’t exist in any game mode.

If a thief can hit you with melee, you can hit a thief with melee without touching the BP circle.

BP isn’t even big enough to “hide” from melee in – no matter where you stand in it, a melee character can move to a point where they can still hit you without standing in the circle.

Apparently, not standing in a tiny circle is too much skill to expect of anyone.

Since the skill blinds half as much as it used to, it should see a init reduction (though not by half, obviously).

I wouldnt say weakest, but they are for me definetely in the same state like Rangers, that they need definetsl some bigger redesigns to their whole core system to just make more fun to be played, to become less reliant on 1 mechanic. like rangers are heavily reliant on their pets, its stealth for thieves and thieves don’t use the utilities, which should be their real strategetic core mechanic – venoms and not steal.
Venoms would be a perfect option to improve the thief in what it all lacks mostly, support gameplay and strategetic diversity in combat becomming much lesser predictable, like they are currently by just moving the venom utilitiy and heal skill to F1-4.

like ANet shoudl also rework all the pet command utility skills of the ranger into the F1-4 skilsl of the ranger to significantly improve thsoe 2 classes in their gameplay mechanisms.

The second biggest problem of the thief compared to the other classes is, thieves got with each balancign update always nerfed, theres no patch, that really buffed them for once significantly in anything or improved as said their horrible gameplay mechanisms that let the class lack for group support and better strategetic gameplay in overall with the help of venoms.

The steal skilsl of the thief need all to be improved, most are total weak/useless.
There are only a few skills, that can be useful, when used at the right time/situation, like the glob of ectoplasm for an all boon buff, the invincibility bottle for 3 seconds of gettign no damage or the chill attack, that can be a good livesaver against elementalists with that you can significantly outplay them if used at the right moment. Or the attack that deals several random conditions and the whiling axe is one of the better skills.

But all other stuff is most of the time useless, like that claw that deals 1 ridiculous stack of bleeding, the club/mace dealign too less damage and so on of thiose thigns that deal once damage and a few conditions that are weak..
The thief could definetely need here better stolen skill options and a thief shouldn#t also always steal the same thing from a class.

Stolen skills shouldnt be to only 1 stolen skill per class. Each class should offer multiple different options to receive as stolen skill, including also options with that the thief should steal skills from the classes self.

Example stealing from an elementalists should result also in receiving as stolen skill one of their elemental weapon skills, like Frost Bow, Lava Axe, Lightning Hammer, Earth Shield ect. to use those elemental conjured weapons as stolen skill.
Would be far better, and interestign, than to steal always only that chill attack from elementalists….

BobbyT.7192:

Panic Strike: Reduced immobilize from 5 seconds to 2.5 second, reduced CD from 30 to 20 seconds.

A sensible change. Wow, wasn’t expecting that. Too bad there isn’t a viable spec that has 30 points in DA.

Invigorating Precision: Increase healing % based on damage from 5 to 8%

Still laughable garbage no one will take, especially not at GM level. a 10k backstab (not an easy feat in PvP) would heal you for a mighty 800 health…which will vanish if a stiff breeze rolls by because a 10k backstab would make you total glass. See the problem here Anet?

Ricochet: Now also increases range to 1050, along with a few bug fixes to make it hit more reliably.

Still crap.

Assassin’s Equilibrium: Increase stability from 1 to 1.5 seconds

Still crap.

Venomous Aura, Allies will now use the thief’s condi damage and healing when applying the venoms.

Hey, lets continue to ignore the fact that venom’s are awful specifically because of this trait. There’s no way to design a venom that is worth using on its own without being ridiculously OP when combined with this trait – venoms will be a joke until that dichotomy is addressed.

Dagger 1 Combo will now hit max 2 targets, Posion will stack, but not the endurance gain.

At least it isn’t a nerf – effectiveness will need to be tested

Pistol 5 Black Powder: will now pulse every 2 seconds for 4 seconds instead of 1 second for 4, and the aoe blind has been reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds per pulse.

Because standing outside of a small circle is too hard *>:[ *

P/P Unload: cast time as been reduced from 1 3/4 seconds to 1 1/2, also applies to your summon thieves as well.

Awesome!
…As long as we ignore the fact that PP is a weapon set where the 2 non-utility skills don’t deal the same damage type – VS is entirely condition based with pitiful power/crit scaling, and Unload does absolutely nothing for condition specs. Oh, we have to also ignore how the weaponset has absolutely no access to the thief’s primary defenses (Evades, mobility, stealth), and BP was just nerfed (Remember, small circles are impossible to stand outside of) so it’s already pitiful defense access is even worse now. And it’s been that way since launch. So yeah, tl;dr – awesome change, if we ignore the fact that P/P is still the most poorly designed weaponset in the game and in an unusable state.

Short-bow 4 Choking gas: now delivers a strike when it lands.

Because shadow refuge followed by Choking Gas spam was a problem, I guess?

S/D Flanking strike: initiative cost increase from 3 to 4, and now requires to hit before it can combo into Larcenous Strike,

S/D Larcenous Strike: Initiative cost reduced from 2 to 1

Kind of kills the un-blockable on LS, but not really a huge deal in comparison to how bad some of the other nerfs/“buffs” are. How about getting LS back up to 2 boons stolen on hit, since it now relies on a spinning dance move to land first and considering how its worthless as a boon bunker counter at 1 boon stolen.

Batten down the hatches for for the “Thieves just keep FS-ing!” QQ storm in a week tho.

tl;dr – mostly nerfs and laughable garbage buffs to laughable garbage skills – SOP.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Hotjoin is going to be chaotic no matter what we do since people are free to leave at any time. For people who are wanting a more structured experience, why not play solo or team arena? I’m not asking this to sidestep your concerns, but rather to find out why there is a desire to force structure upon hotjoin when there is already a more structured game mode. This would help us determine if hotjoin actually needs some restructuring, or if there is a better place these types of players can go.

Because hotjoin gives rankpoints. Some people think rankpoints = high level pvp.
Delete the points from hotjoin and soloq will go to the next level with more players.

I think we can sum up all of this by “Please our class need some love now…”

XPGAMER.7324:

Just askin for opinions from players that pvp alot, and whether or not they think that a uniformal 3 second reveal time would be a good change. I’m not sure the reason for the difference, but if any of you know it, please feel free to point it out. Thanks for reading<3

Once upon a time, before the Thief’s “MAAAAASSIVE” buff, revealed was set for 3 seconds across the board by the time the game was released.

Then there’s the PvP outcry that stealth is too hard to counter and given with the human natural reflex respond time, 3 seconds revealed only gives a 1 second window for counter play. Thus the revealed was changed to 4 seconds across the board, but that was too harsh. Soon after the change, PvE and WvW players complained that 4 seconds is too long of a “cooldown” between stealth that it ruins certain rotations and breaks some DPS builds (imagine adding 1 second on your D/D rotation when fighting a boss). ArenaNet responded by rolling back the changes in PvE and WvW and keeping the change in PvP.

Then the “MAAAAASSIVE” buff ruined it all afterwards…

IMO shadow shot is fine, its the stealth spam that’s an issue allowing to many screw ups and letting you reset on demand. I don’t know any thief using d/p in wvw that doesn’t have a heavy investment into their initiative, so they always keep it on hand to escape if need be or reposition. It comes down to chain stealth where it becomes a time out which isn’t fun or fair game play. I believe it should come down to a nerf in the way combo finishers work off of combo fields.

1. Allow meld in shadows to effect combo skills (leap or blast on smoke field in this case)
2. Change the mechanic of combo finishers/fields to apply a lesser effect each time if used on the same field. For example: BPS→Leap(4 sec)→Leap(3 sec)→Leap(1 sec). So the DR doubles each time until its basically non existent. Between the time it took to turn around and leap, the old set up granted about ~7 seconds of stealth? (correct me if I’m wrong). This new set up would only get about ~5 seconds.

For those using 2/6/0/0/6 with dp they didn’t sit in stealth for very long anyways. They actually used it just to reposition and land a BS immediately so it doesn’t effect them. For those using x/x/6/x/x with dp they would have a better start but they would need to fuel a new BPS rapidly to fund their stealth up time which would mean a heavier investment into their initiative which means they just get weaker and weaker somewhere else. Even if they decide to carry smoke bomb and drop it on the smoke field, that field still applies DR towards them (although the skill itself would still grant 3-4 seconds depending on traits).

The main Issue with the Thief is stealth. Stealth in general in this game is a horribly designed mechanic and very badly balanced. Issue with any stealth is that there is atm. exactly 1 player skill to counter it that’s “Sic’em” from the ranger and even that one is highly conditional as I believe the pet needs to hit you before the reveal is applied.

Now why is stealth bad. It is very simple. It has high defense and offensive power with no draw back. Unlike other mechanics ( say a leap or a channel) using stealth doesn’t force you to be offensive or defensive. You have no scenario of where using stealth is bad. Especially for the Mesmer( with PU) and Thief you only get benefits. Putting pressure on the enemy to find you forcing him to take action with out taking any yourself ( beyond going to stealth but let’s not pretend like that is high skill cap).

So basically it is never a bad move to use stealth beyond wasting a cooldown but that can happen with literally any skill. This is also the first point why the Thief is such a big offender is being annoying to stealth. The draw back of CD falls short. If you are some what smart you can manage your initiative. Meaning you can use stealth as much as you want and have no cost for failing to use it.

Another point is that there is virtually no counter play. If anyone is gone argue AoE is a soft counter. Please get out of here. AoE dmg on enemies is a from a pressure. Putting an enemy under pressure makes it more likely that and unskilled player makes an mistake. So it literally is a soft counter to every class. Like mention before there is currently 1 skill in the kitten nal of all 8 classes that gives reveal and while they are looking to give the engi one as well ( which could mean all get one) it still is gone be very very annoying to deal with as you might get forced to run with a semi useful skill just to be able to reveal them. It is a nice start but it probably will not solve the problem.

Ultimately the stealth mechanic needs to change. Be it either that using it will give you the reveal debuff regardless of attacking or not. Dmg cancels stealth or more realistically shortens it’s duration. There needs to be something done as it is a very badly made system in the game causing fun only to the user and huge amounts of distress and annoyance to everyone else. To draw an analogy imagine the death shroud of the necro would not require stuff to die but instead would be fulled by using certain skills and combo finishers. An infinite health necro who could spamm a leap through a what ever field to stay topped of in Death shroud would be just that.

@ Carpboy
Dude, Anet thought thief was fine after they moved Hard To Catch to master tier while slightly buffing Assassin’s Reward and switching it with H2C. They thought thief was fine after they made a heal out of a utility set that completely sucks outside one build.

They realized that thief was nowhere near “fine” when their Dec. 10th nerf and the actions they took therein caused an exodus from the profession. And this was due to a combination of growing distaste caused by nerfs performed bi-/monthly, a comment where an anet staff member blatently tried fooling the thief community that the Dec 10th Nerf was a “MASSSIVE buff” and then didn’t do anything after 18 pages of discussion with one of those pages filled by probably the most successful crappy troll on the internet.

I would love to find that specific post, however it and every post/comment that made fun of it is entirely non-existent. I can only assume that they were quietly removed.

But afterwords, they gave us traits that they took directly off of the thief forums. Although it was enough to bring some old thieves back, it wasn’t enough for the community to forgive Anet for the crap that was pulled. And so we really havn’t seen anything from them since because the profession itself is at the point where touching it will incite a god’s wrath.

That’s why I keep calling for our own personal dev. The only people who know the profession are the players who nolife on it and the only people who can change it are the developers. If thief had their own personal developer who truly loved it and nolifed on it as much as we do, then thieves can communicate their problems to the developer and the developer can translate them to the team. Like a translator that helps you talk to people in foreign countries.

With our own developer, we could discuss plans that will ultimately make the thief more fun to play on and against. So instead of vet thieves going out into the forums and telling every scrub that they suck and should /uninstall in the nicest way possible, the thieves could relay problems to the developer and the developer could tell the players that he/she is planning on addressing X problem with the community and come to a reasonable agreement with them.

[/tears]

@ Azawrath & AlCojester

Thank you for your support. That is the first bit of appreciation I have ever gotten the past 1.5+ years.