Guild Wars 2

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Likewise, if you make a post the burden is on you to make sure everyone understands.

This is patently false. There is no such thing as an argument so ironclad that it is impossible for anyone who hears it to potentially misunderstand it. This simplistic view also ignores the human tendency to deliberately misrepresent arguments that one disagrees with, but is unable to logically counter.

To have any chance of constructing an argument that could not be misinterpreted, you’d have to deliver it to a handpicked audience, e.g. a group of your friends or colleagues meeting in a closed, invite-only forum. Given that this is a public forum on the internet that is accessible by an indeterminate amount of people—some of whom barely understand English, due to the global nature of the game—it is unrealistic to expect that any given argument should (or even could) result in universal understanding.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The biggest problem about calling it all a straw man is that the real man is standing right behind you.

People making invalid arguments do not in any way diminish those making similar but valid arguments. This is why you are being accused of straw-manning in the first place.

There are two schools of thought among those who believe that the choice of dodge should be made through an additional UI element rather than a trait choice. One is that this should be doable in combat, the other is that it should not.

The one thing you and I both agree on is that switching between the dodges mid-combat is simply not feasible. To accomplish this, the dodges would have to be greatly reduced in power and utility, taking away most of what makes them compelling in the first place.

It’s clear that you strongly wish to avoid that outcome. While I don’t blame you for feeling that way, it is still no excuse for repeatedly misrepresenting the arguments of others in service of your own. I didn’t even have to go further back than the last 24 hours to find a perfectly representative example of you doing this. In fact, you didn’t even make it further than the opening portion of a very long post before committing this fallacy yet again:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Its called standardization. A lot of people don’t realize what they’re asking for with this suggestion, so I’ll have to put it into perspective. To make the dodges into the mechanic of the DD, that is asking for a whole lot.

#1: 3 grandmaster worthy traits (the best in their respective fields) being made available without being traits…
#2: to be swapped between on demand, which is much better than any individual trait was due to the loss of exclusivity..
#3: alongside of 3 new grandmaster worthy traits of which to pick from to further augment the class…

You explicitly state that decoupling the dodges would necessitate they be swappable on demand. This greatly misrepresents the argument many people are making… which again, is why you have repeatedly been accused of straw-manning.

Lavexis.5360:

if all else fail, then you do have a secondary weapon set..

If you really are suggesting we run something OTHER than Shortbow, then you’ve done a better job of tearing your argument apart than anyone else could ever hope to.

Ragion.2831:

I love playing P/P thieves that think they are Vash the stampede until they realize sliding by by ganking on unsuspecting people or killing casuals only gets them so far. Trust the forums, p/p is really bad. On thief I have to not use stealth most of the time to keep the fight moderately entertaining.

I have come across quite a lot of people that try to make it work, always the same, unload unload unload run into stealth after they nearly die then more unload. Even when i port out of range i sometimes still see the unload going. Lol.

In ranked all you need to do is carry stealth utilities then unload people that are fighting other people, then run when confronted. Sure you win but that doesnt make a very good weapon set. The better ones would toss in a dodge here and there but they are more concerned with doing damage and not canceling their unloads that they dont dodge most of the time just unload spam.

This guy gets it. The OP? Not so much.

Thank you for the heads up!

Out of curiosity, what is the rationale behind the exclusion of Sinister as an premade Ascended choice? Sinister is most people’s stat package of choice for Condition builds, and it would be helpful to test builds designed around it on the first raid encounter.

Allan Assensor.5908:

I’m very sad of these profit policy!

For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s a problem of greed as much as problematic corporate culture and structure. I’ve heard both from word of mouth and Glassdoor reviews that ArenaNet is a fun place to work at in a lot of ways, with some very cool and creative people around… the problem is how hard it seems to be to get any changes through without a lot of red tape and approval processes getting in the way.

Improvisation is fun but way too random at this point, in ways both annoying and powerful. I would like to see it changed to do something less random and more consistent, like reducing the cooldown of all your utility skills by 50% on Steal.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You have to be more specific in your suggestions. I don’t have psychic powers. I can’t know what you are thinking unless you say it. Countless people don’t have a grasp on “proper balance”, so when someone says something to the effect of “Make the dodges baseline as part of our mechanic”, then unless a further restriction is stipulated I am left to assume that they’ll be swapped around on the fly. I’ve seen this forum be filled over the past few days with complaints that are irrational and suggestions that are over the top, so unless you can sufficiently differentiate yourself from that crowd, I’m not going to assume you are different.

I have been very clear over a period of weeks—as have many other major proponents of decoupling the dodges, such as Shalien—that the proposed toggle should definitely not be usable in combat. We have repeatedly used the Revenant Legend UI as a point of comparison, as it’s a good example of how to do this sort of thing correctly: they can only switch Legends while out of combat and not in an active SPvP match.

At this point I can only assume willful ignorance on your part, as you keep bringing up the in combat point, seemingly to misrepresent the argument. This is a type of informal fallacy that as known as a Straw Man: misrepresenting your opponent’s argument so it is easy to tear apart; this frees one up to not respond to any salient points an opposing argument may have made.

I will ask you yet again: assuming the dodges maintain their current utility and power—which is something I would say we all want—what is it about one additional trait that would take the Daredevil from its current (arguably underpowered) state, to one of being overpowered? I’m eager to hear your reasoning.

Body Shot is terrible by any metric, damage included. Until they remake it, they might as well remove its damage entirely, so you can at least use it for a clutch immobilize without dropping stealth.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

It’s bugged. About half the time you press f2, nothing happens. Sometimes the taunt activates but the skill doesn’t. It’s really annoying.

Is this still the case post patch?

Nike.2631:

They’ve systematically stripped all range-increasing traits out of the game. They’re not gonna turn around and pout one back.

The point is that the vast majority of those traits had their range increase rolled into baseline upon removal. Removing the range boost from Ankle Shots without making it baseline was a kitten move, given how Pistol is already the weakest Thief weapon.

The silver lining is that they seem to be intending to do a more thorough Pistol revamp.. eventually. I sincerely hope they make the range 1050 baseline between now and then.

Dead? No. On life support? Yes.

Kolly.9872:

What about fixing withdraw so that it actually heal with a 10% increase?
What about to give to Ankle Shot that 10% dmg increase as shown in the tooltip?

I hope Karl sees this.

PopeUrban.2578:

What if body shot marked a target for 3 seconds, and during the mark additional pistol attacks stacked a debilitating (rather than damaging) condition? The rapid fire nature of both sneak attack and unload would interact well with it.

I like this idea!

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It is precisely because of these reasons that I do not want our grandmasters to become some kind of additional mechanic. If we get the option to toggle between what dodge we want on the fly, it will come with a stringent internal cooldown that will butcher the aggression and utility of those skills by half an order of magnitude.

You have made it clear that you believe the dodges should remain Grandmaster traits. While I see your line of reasoning, you seem to be working under the false assumption that the dodges not being Grandmaster traits means that they would have to be switchable in combat and on the fly. This thoroughly misrepresents the argument, as no one with an even cursory grasp of game balance is suggesting that. What the reasonable proponents of the “make the dodges baseline” argument are suggesting is that the dodges should be decoupled from the Grandmaster traits. That is all.

It would be quite overpowered indeed if Daredevil could switch between the dodges in the middle of combat. Again, no one reasonable is truly advocating for that. Can you go more into why you seem to think these two ideas are inextricably linked? You can already switch dodges while out of combat as you please, you just have to open the trait panel to do so. This is not a substantial barrier to switching them during windows of opportunity.

All that would truly be gained by such a change is the addition of new Grandmaster traits. Assuming the dodges went baseline and stayed the same in power, this would indeed be a buff, on account of gaining an additional trait choice that you didn’t have before. My bone to pick is that I don’t think having one more trait would “unbalance” the Daredevil in any meaningful way. If you believe otherwise, please elaborate further as to why.

Black Frog.9274:

Azure Prower.8701:

The short bow has a slightly higher range because of the unique way that trick shot works.

It’s listed at 900 range. Period. Define 900. If 900 isn’t a specific number, please specify how we might philosophically evaluate a tool tip of 900. Either 900 is 900, or it isn’t.

Even though the tooltip will show as red (and autocasting will fail to trigger), you can hit things with Trick Shot from around 1000 or so away. This is useful with world bosses like Megadestroyer, as well as a few gimmicky ways of doing specific Fractals.

The best thing to do would be to update the tooltip (and autocast) to its “real” range. I have a bad feeling they’d just reduce it to being a real 900 though, because reasons.

Zodryn.4216:

I just hope Karl says “Hey guys, we fixed that bug because we’re giving you 1200 range baseline! Enjoy.”

Not happening. 1050, though…

Lyger.5429:

Thanks for the update! Any word on staff animations? Even if it’s just the running/idle animations that change it would make a huge difference.

He already said sometime in the last week that those two animations in particular weren’t slated to change. I would take that to mean that you shouldn’t expect them to change until after HoT release (if at all). Disappointing, but at least it was openly communicated.

wolfpaq.7354:

• Pistol – increase range to 1200 – courtesy of Amante.8109
  Reasoning: Thieves are the only class in the game without a 1200 range weapon – and will continue to be so when HoT is released. Many of us were hoping for a rifle/sniper action with our e-spec, but that didn’t happen. I don’t think there’s a reasonable explanation for this. Several encounters in all aspects of the game are designed around 1200 ranged capability and I’m sure the new content in HoT will be no exception. Please rectify this situation by making pistols baseline 1200 range.

As much as I’d love for Thief to have a 1200 range weapon, it doesn’t seem in the cards anytime soon. My request is actually for Pistol to have 1050 range baseline, which is what it had with Ankle Shots before today. This would make it a bit less punishing than it is at 900 range right now, which is pretty rough to be honest. It also only seems fair, given how the other range traits in the game had some of their benefits rolled into baseline when they were removed.

BrunoBRS.5178:

<3 for having the same opinion. i thought i was the only thief that still remembered dancing dagger exists :P

Dancing Dagger is up there with Shadow Strike as one of my favorite Thief weapon skills. It just FEELS awesome. I would love to see it do a bit more damage though, especially against a single target. As is, you kind of need to ping-pong it between 2+ targets to get the most out of it.

Pistol offhand is fine, as are all non-Unload dual attacks with Pistol. This means the skills that need the most work are Vital Shot (Pistol #1), Body Shot (Pistol #2), and Unload.

Vital Shot is generally fine mechanically, but its numbers are off. The combination of its damage and attack speed are too low (although today’s buffs help that a tad), and the Bleed application rate simply isn’t good enough. Increasing its attack speed and upping the Bleed duration would help a lot.

Body Shot, on the other hand… oh boy, where to even begin? It’s simply awful in every possible way. The animation is so telegraphed that it is absurdly easy to dodge. The damage is so low that it might as well be non-existent (and maybe should be, so you could Body Shot people without dropping Stealth). The Vulnerability stacks are so short in duration that they’re ultimately meaningless, even more so due to how readily other professions can stack Vulnerability. While I’m not sure what a remade Body Shot would look like, it still needs a redesign without question.

That leaves Unload. While it has a lot of issues, it’s not nearly as bad as Body Shot. The biggest problem is the long channel that is easy to interrupt or avoid. The second is, of course, that it’s an Initiative hog, but this could be solved through shifting some damage off of it and onto Pistol attacks in the first two slots.

Pistol might be pretty meh right now, but it’s definitely fixable. Here’s to hoping that the added damage isn’t the only change it gets anytime soon.

D/D and P/D Condi builds are SO CLOSE to being good post-HoT. All it would take is a few small changes to put this archetype in a good place, such as lengthening the evade frames on Death Blossom and adding Torment to Dancing Dagger.

It’d be nice if Dagger Training wasn’t awful, too. Duration and procrates are way off.

Karl McLain.5604:

Animation update: All dodge animations are in the process of being iterated on. With that being said, in the next Beta weekend each custom dodge ability has had its animation replaced with what is called a ‘stub’, or a placeholder. These stubs aren’t necessarily what the final animation will look like and may not even resemble the final product remotely (Huge disclaimer: Everything’s subject to change).

See, this is the kind of communication we need more of: updates on what you’re currently working on and where you tentatively plan to go in the future, even if that may change along the way. Trust me, I get it… you have to be very careful about what you say to players as a developer, lest they take what you say as a “promise” and get angry when things don’t go exactly as they had hoped based on what you originally said.

While it’s certainly easier in the short term, silence is very damaging to player morale. Dedicated Thief players have been asking for some clear answers on what they consider to be major issues for what is cumulatively years now. The longer that silence grows without a reply, the more bitter and neglected we feel.

As passionate as we get about the Thief profession, most of us are adults with full lives and a thorough understanding of how the world works. At heart, all we’re really asking for is to be treated with the same basic respect and accountability that ArenaNet employees have so frequently displayed in communications with other sub-forums.

Posts like the one above are a good start, but not enough on their own. The Thief forum community has many accumulated questions, not all of which involve the elite specialization in particular. As much as that might take precious time away from tightening things up before the expansion release, the answers to those questions are just as (or even more) vital as those pertaining to the Daredevil.

Please capitalize on the momentum of some of your recent successes in communication and answer some of our burning questions. A few off the top of my head:

1> What are your thoughts and feelings on the idea of decoupling the Daredevil dodges from the Grandmaster traits (even if it’s at some point after HoT releases)?

2> What are your thoughts on strengthening the Enforcer Training minor so that the extra Endurance feels more powerful and synergistic than it currently does? Two major flaws with the Minor are that base Endurance regeneration doesn’t scale (i.e., Endurance refills at the same speed despite having a larger bar), and that most Endurance-restoring effects don’t restore a percentage but a flat amount, which is counter-intuitive and punishing to the idea of having a higher max Endurance.

3> What big picture Thief problems do you feel still need to be addressed, beyond issues with Pistol which you have already mentioned?

4> On the subject of Pistol, what was the reasoning behind removing the range increase from Ankle Shots without making it baseline (as so many other range increasing traits were over the last few months)? A lot of people relied on that range increase for PvE content such as Tequatl.

5> Should we just give up on Withdraw ever getting the +10% healing we were semi-promised? This is one of those things where even if it’s never coming, it’d be nice to know for sure so we could stop worrying about it.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this or any other pressing Thief issues you choose to respond to. Thank you for your time.

Karl McLain.5604:

FYI the damage increases weren’t part of a re-work of pistols or anything (something I’ve discussed in the past). We realize it still needs some work to get it to where we want, but we wanted to get it closer to being to that point with these changes. We’ll be looking at pistols more in-depth in the future.

What was your rationale for “fixing” Ankle Shots by removing the range increase without making it baseline? Does the devteam feel that 1050 range on the weakest Thief weapon set is too strong? I’m genuinely curious of the internal reasoning.

P.S. Ankle Shots still increases Vital Shot range by 150 (but not the other abilities); it also lowers Pistol damage back to pre-buff levels.

I’ll be controlling my emotions right over to a refund ticket.

You are not the patron saint of Thieves, and you do not get to tell us how we should feel.

I didn’t even expect balance changes, despite it being a “balance patch”… that’s how low my expectations were. Seems they weren’t low enough, because Thief didn’t even get any bug fixes (Ankle Shots is actually MORE bugged now), even on things that were fixed for other professions in the same patch.

Stop putting up with this second class treatment. If the end result of this patch is that most Thieves complain, then shrug and keep playing anyway, what’s the lesson to ArenaNet? That they can keep doing this exact same garbage over and over again, and the same people will lap it up time after time, just like the grouchy comicbook fan that rants on a weekly basis that Marvel and/or DC are ruining the industry… on his way to the cashier’s counter to pay for his weekly pull of $50 in comics.

I’m ticketing for a refund today, and I suggest that everyone else feeling unsatisfied do the same. If you think better treatment is coming—especially with a whole new batch of players from the F2P transition for them to swindle—you are deluding yourself.

Rain.9213:

Well it looks like Thief didn’t get all the love we were hoping for. Now before we all decide that it’s because Anet hates us, let’s at least see what happened.

any love*

I don’t even care about the lack of balance changes for Thief. It’s the lack of basic bug-fixing and polish that infuriates me. They even went as far as to fix Engineer magnet but NOT fix Scorpion Wire. Very indicative of the standard of quality (or lack thereof) that they develop Thief with.

Yes, it really is that bad. Run while you still can.

Is that serious issue that Thief is still selectable when creating a character?

Rather than reiterate what’s already said, I’ll just give a hearty +1 to the last two posts.

I see no reason that no CD weapon swap would be OP. There’s already ICDs for a vast majority of the on-swap sigils and traits, and the few outliers could obviously be adjusted.

And of course, you have Engineer as a pre-existing example of no CD weapon swapping, and it has worked out fine.

Speaking as a fan of world PvP: give up hope, it’s never coming to GW2. For better or worse, it’s something that’s thoroughly against their design philosophy for the game

I’m bracing myself for the patch inevitably missing even the bug-fixes that should have been made months ago.

Mercurias.1826:

I find it pretty astounding that every class believes it’s the class that was given the worst new spec.

Astounding and kind of hilarious.

The grass is always greener on the other side. That said, it’s a broad oversimplification to say everyone is complaining the same amount, or that the complaints are all equal in merit. It’s not a coincidence that the three elite specializations people are overwhelmingly the LEAST satisfied with are all shepherded by the same person.

ArcanistSeven.8720:

we dont want the other professions who want us to be +1 class more fuel by repeating the 2013 thief and giving them Vietnam flashbacks

Except they never stopped whining long enough for it to become a flashback. The tears started in 2013; flash forward two years and they’re still flowing without end.

That one has been known for a while. Who knows when it’ll get a fix, though…

That is one problem a lot of people brought up with the Grandmaster traits. In HoT, you’ll be unlocking things with hero points on a trait by trait basis. For newer players without a bunch stored up, this means they’ll have to slog through a bunch of grinding just to get the special dodges that are the main selling point of the spec in the first place. Yet another element of the “dodges on GM traits” design decision that is far from ideal.

More interrupt synergy and more boon stripping (to make up for a lack of boon application) would fit Thief very well. This idea just happens to hit both

The benefits the dodges offer is not the problem. The problem is that they are attached to Grandmaster traits for no discernible reason other than that was likely how they were first prototyped internally and no one bothered to change it.

The dodges are clearly meant to be the “sizzle” of the elite specialization, as evidenced by how Daredevil has been advertised so far. No other elite specialization has their selling point attached to Grandmaster traits. None.

To make matters worse, the extra dodge from the first Daredevil minor is extremely underwhelming. It doesn’t scale base endurance regeneration, and effects that claim to restore 50% to 100% of Endurance only restore a smaller, flat amount for the Daredevil.

In other words, Karl has a choice to make: either decouple the dodges from the GM traits, or make the first minor more synergistic and powerful. To do neither would be undeniable developmental neglect.

Valarius.9437:

Can anyone tell me if it’s possible to get a refund for this expansion? The more I read, the less I’m confident that my Thief will actually be any fun to play. Maybe it’s best to just wait and see what happens after launch at this point.

A number of people have already gotten refunds through sending a support ticket. Two milestones worth waiting for before deciding would be tomorrow’s balance patch, and when the BWE3 changes are announced/playable. If you don’t see meaningful improvement by then, by all means get a refund… I know I will.

Cynz.9437:

someone is having flashbacks from 2013….

People’s opinions would have to had changed since 2013 for them to be flashbacks

They haven’t fixed the matchmaking algorithm yet. Should be betterish after Tuesday.

Vyce.2014:

This made me curious. Does the sigil give 50% endurance? or does it give a flat amount? In other words, as a DD, do you get 1.5 extra dodges or just 1?

It only restores 50, so just 1.

Yep. If it were just Daredevil then sure, people could make the argument Thieves are blowing things out of proportion. That becomes a less salient argument when three elite specializations all designed by the same person just happen to be the ones receiving the most consistently negative feedback. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…

Belial.9350:

As everyone has said, thieves would be stupidly OP if they could be everywhere at once while being able to most of their matchups…

Good thing that’s what literally no one is asking for. Look around the Thief forums and you will see many people openly admitting that they’d gladly lose Shortbow #5 if it meant gaining the ability to take hits without exploding like every other profession in the game.

Belial.9350:

Lol so what. Since you went through my post history, you’ll also know that I’m aware of how OP these classes are. Doesn’t change the fact that one can fulfil the role of a thief without actually doing that much.

Let’s assume—rather charitably—that you are correct. What is your point, exactly?

That Thief being forced into an extremely narrow, tedious role few Thieves actually want to play is somehow okay because… it’s easy to perform? Why is being forced into the easy role of waterboy somehow a good thing?

There is plenty of constructive feedback nestled amongst the current negativity of this forum. The only reason nothing is being heard is that Karl simply isn’t listening.

Anyone with an understanding of the history of GW2 knows that it’s gotten a whole lot more negative than this. The Ranger forums have been just as bitter as the Thief forums have (and stayed that way even after the Druid reveal, which is more than a little silly).

Never mind the fact that Necromancer negativity was on a whole other level Thieves couldn’t hope to match, and yet, they got most of what they wanted. Curious…

Belial.9350:

Lol l2p, you don’t even have to be mechanically good at thief to sb5 around the map, hitting targets 5 times and decapping points.

You appear to play Ele AND Mesmer. Wow, I really hit the jackpot!

In all seriousness, you are right. It does not take a lot of skill to Shortbow around the map and decap points. It also isn’t very fun, nor is being unable to 1v1 anyone remotely competent. But hey, let’s go all 1984 in this kitten: Thief being nothing but a decapper and +1’er for the last three months clearly means that’s all they ever have been, or all they ever should be! Also, we have always been at war with Eurasia and 2 + 2 definitely equals 5.

God’s in his Heaven, and all’s right with the world.

Another day, another appeal to reason by a Thief main, another series of responses so predictable you could view them from orbit. Let’s play Thief marginalization bingo!

1> “Thief is in a lot of tournament teams. You can’t be pigeonholed AND weak!”
2> “Sounds like an L2P issue! Who cares if every other class is easier and more rewarding?”
3> “OMG THIEF OP! I got killed by one back in 2013, and I’m still mad about it!”

Post your own Thief bingo answers below. Bonus points if the post directly below mine is by an Ele or Mesmer main out of touch with reality!

Smollett.6270:

wanna Mace/Axe on my thief…..sweet wet dreams

I know, right? I’d settle for offhand Sword at this point… why don’t we have that again?