Guild Wars 2

That people think Condition builds are strong right now is more a symptom, not the cause. Actual Condition builds are fairly weak at the moment, other than Condition Mesmer having an ok spot as a gimmick solo queue build.

Truthfully, a lot of the problems people are having with conditions right now are from damaging, durable builds that spit out conditions INCIDENTALLY. D/D Ele is a big offender in this department.

Charting average TTK among weapons in serious, competitive FPS has been productive in many cases, so I don’t see why you couldn’t do the same along profession or build lines in this game. It would have be impossible in GW1 due to the skill variety, granted, but GW2 is a considerably more… constrained game on a design level.

And make no mistake, the TTK with competitive SPvP builds is kind of absurd right now.

Well, there’s scales of changes they can make. For Thieves to truly be whole again, the profession needs some deep work for sure. That said, I’d rather they implement some smaller scale fixes in the meantime—like more core durability from higher base HP— rather than continuing to do absolutely nothing. They could stand to be more communicative, too.

Sometimes I think they’re afraid to buff or even talk to us in small ways, lest 1> we perceive it to not be enough and 2> the rest of the community flips out with their usual “omg anet y u buff alredy op teef” nonsense. Still…

We Thieves like to complain a lot, but it’s really because of PvP. PvE wise, things are a lot more forgiving and we have more freedom to bring our full suite of tools to the table. It can be easy to forget that after getting blown up for the millionth time in SPvP, though…

It’s easier to make shallow number buffs/nerfs than it is deep mechanical changes, especially on a tight timetable (as MMO expansions always are). Unfortunately, Thief needs some deep mechanical changes, so we’ll probably be stuck in this state for a while.

If they do want to throw out some numbers, though, I’ll take a few thousand more base HP so I don’t just instantly explode the moment dodges and Shadowstep are down in SPvP. Thanks ANet

I really miss RotC and underwater combat in SPvP. Throw my vote in for at least readding it to unranked or custom.

Acrobatics has mediocre, underbudgeted trait in it; water is wet. More at 11.

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golfclap

I think taking the current Revealed Training trait and adding Protection and/or Resistance to it is a good idea. However…

Kevin.5980:

Revealed training changes ‘revealed’ to a condition instead.

This is a brilliant idea. I hope someone at ANet is listening

Sir Vincent III.1286:

They should really start by fixing our current skills (i.e. animation, pre-cast delay, after-cast delay, rooting, non-intteruptable skills, etc.) before tweaking anymore traits.

The two are so interrelated, though. Certain potentially useful skills are hindered by poor trait choices or vice versa. Really, we need a thorough look-see overall, but I’d take a revamp of traits OR skills at this point.

ZDragon.3046:

The dodge itself is not the main part of the professions mechanic. STEALING IS by far the main profession mechanic for thief, now if they gave you the option of losing the ability to steal for those three dodge stances by all means go for it. Since you want a New profession mechanic, Dodging and evading is only part of daredevil not thief overall thus you should see things like stance swapping buttons in combat.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at the implementation of Daredevil. Only one trait modifies Steal (a minor that doesn’t even work as advertised), and nothing else refers to it at all. On the other hand, the first minor unlocks a third dodge and the GM trait unlocks a replacement for your normal dodge. For better or worse, they obviously decided on dodges being the main mechanical focus of Daredevil.

Furthermore, there’s no real argument against the dodge replacers being more readily swappable. Whether it’s in combat with an endurance cost or (more plausibly) out of combat with a drop down box like Revenants get with their legend, it needs to be decoupled from traits. There is no excuse for Daredevil not having a GM trait like every other elite specialization.

Smollett.6270:

Thank God i didn’t waste my time and cash on Bolt…S/D thief dead in HoT

Actually, it’s the only spec confirmed to be useful with DD so far (other than some gimmicky Condi builds), so maybe you should have wasted that time and cash

I think most of the legendaries look bad—including Bolt—so that makes it easy for me.

To the people saying Thief: not really, unless you want to be an opportunist that swoops in to burst down someone at 50% health who has abilities on CD. Still, not really a role other professions can’t also perform (and without the many problems Thief has).

Anyway, for general 1v1 purposes I would recommend Ele (D/D), Mesmer, possibly Guardian. Good luck.

A lot of people on this board seem to be suffering from PTTD (Post Traumatic Thief Disorder). This common ailment—contracted years prior when they were still new to the game and having trouble fighting thieves—has followed them for years, causing massive amounts of unwanted stress and anxiety every time they see a nameplate with a little dagger and key or someone wearing the color black.

Relief is possible, but only through arduous and costly measures such as “standing on the point doing nothing” or “mashing a few buttons from 1200 away”. Unfortunately, relief is temporary—as the Thief will respawn and run back to the point to die again, endlessly retriggering the trauma—so I’m afraid the illness is terminal. My condolences.

DD is 95% reused animations used inappropriately, so yeah, hard to feel any heart there. I know HoT is a month and a half away, but DD still deserves some pizazz.

They really should just remove Celestial, see what happens, and go from there.

Let’s face it… 130% of the budget of a normal amulet spread across all stats means only one of two binary results: either it sucks for a build or it single-handedly makes it. Remove Celestial—it’s not healthy for the game.

Oh, and bring back Jewels in SPvP while you’re at it. More choices wouldn’t hurt

Eval.2371:

As for theif, if you should be running signet of agility the moment you suspect condi builds. Shadow step clears 3 conditions. Tricks if traited for cleanse conditions. Sword 2 has condi clear. Then there is shadows embrace. Thief has a lot of tools to get rid of conid. Your more than likely only using SE.

While that is a summary of the total condition cleanses available to the Thief, it is a little disingenuous to lay it out that way. Traiting for Trick cleanse is hard to justify due to the VITAL nature of Bountiful Theft’s boon strip on Steal. Likewise, Shadow’s Embrace is hard to fit in when a competing choice significantly lowers the cooldown of Shadowstep and Shadow Refuge, the two most implacable abilities on your bar.

The sad fact of the matter is that Thief continues to suffer from the lowest core durability in the game, and that affects the usability of certain skills and traits. People often think that Thief is durable because it has a decent amount of evades. The problem is that evades are damage mitigation, not raw durability, so when your evades run out you still explode like a ripe pinata. Until this is addressed, few things with Thief will change.

It remains interesting how the only people who say Thief’s matchups against other classes are fine are those who don’t play one. Things look that nice from the outside, eh?

Serious Thought.5394:

For versatility. For being allowed to play the game differently. I feel like, at times, I am playing Pokemon. With a Magikarp. I can press Splash, Tackle, or Flail. Unfortunately, that’s all I have. I don’t have anything but 6 Magikarp, like some terrible dream. Meanwhile all other professions seem to have an entire team of Electric-Types.

I laughed at this, because it’s painfully true. An excellent post worth reading overall!

Condi Thief has been getting progressively more useful in PvE as new content such as Silverwastes has been released. Since the expansion areas are designed with similar goals in mind, Condi Thief will probably continue being useful in PvE… if played certain ways.

For what it’s worth, I think Impaling Lotus (has a fix on the way) and Impairing Daggers add a lot to Condi Thief. Bandit’s Defense isn’t too shabby, either… it flows nicely into P/D #3 in my opinion.

I sure hope the recipes for Runes of Tormenting and Perplexity are added to those mastery-linked rare goods vendors, though…

The solution is simple… take the hidden +150 Pistol range on the Ankle Shots trait, give it to the Thief baseline—like was already done with every other range increasing trait in the game—and then put something akin to Ricochet in its spot on Ankle Shots.

Viola: P/P sucks a LITTLE less while not affecting game balance in any meaningful way. Thieves are happy and everyone wins!

To be fair, USING the heal gives endurance, and it heals for a solid amount even if not at full endurance. It has multiple uses and is a little better than it initially appears. You have a point about it being an awkward fit for current thief themes and mechanics, though. It almost seems designed for an ideal version of the Thief profession that DOESN’T have the core deficiencies in durability the real one does

I forgot about the heal. It’s surprisingly decent and a lot more usable than initially suspected. The biggest problem with it is that it’s hard to fit in over stuff like Withdraw except in mostly conceptual builds. If the Thief had more overall tools and options, the Physical heal would definitely find a place. As things are now, though… we’ll see.

Bandit’s Defense and Impairing Daggers are solid and only need minor tweaks at best. The other Physicals have meaningful issues.

Now would be a good time for Karl to chime in and say what some of the planned changes are, even if they’re not final. Right now, all we know is that the delay on dodges is being looked at. Other than that, we know nothing about the status of these issues:

-Recycled animations all over the place, and not even ones that fit
-Staff is clunky, underwhelming, and needs meaningful mechanical changes
-Badly placed traits; majors that should be minors (Escapist’s Absolution)
-Endurance Thief minor only restores 25-30 Endurance, not 50 as advertised
-DD gives up a whole tier of traits for its mechanic when every other spec’s is baked in
-Dodge replacers count as skills, are punishable by interrupts and confusion
-Dodge replacers eat Endurance without firing if you do them too quickly in succession
-Distracting Daggers has delays that make it useless, unlike the mantras it was inspired by
-Timing issues with Impact Strike and its questionable usefulness in PvP

Kadin.2356:

The condi removal potential on this ability is already very high compared to most other class’ options in that department. The only reason that even this much is justifiable is due to our low HP pool. I’d love for this to do more but I doubt it would pass any kind of balance check.

Thief is among the worst in the game at removing harmful conditions. Not only is Escapist’s Absolution not overpowered, but you have to trait to get what should ultimately be a minor. It’s fine as is — if anything, it isn’t enough. One trait does not suddenly fix a dearth of core durability.

They could (and should) do a whole lot more in terms of making common buffs and traits more visually identifiable, especially as the game isn’t moddable.

While the Thief can disengage at almost any point of their choosing, it’s not much consolation when they’re 1v1able by pretty much everyone. Run or die against most competent players.

Dahkeus.8243:

Well, you could learn to rotate to +1 fights instead of trying to play PvP like it’s some wild west shootout. =P

I mean, learning how to rotate to give fights the +1 advantage at the right time is what give thieves the advantage. They can +1 fights at the right time more than any other class.

Mesmers have a lot of mobility, but their personal mobility doesn’t match their team mobility (portal). So, they can give a port to win a clutch point very often, but they can’t rotate between points by themselves as much since their Z-axis ports are on cooldowns.

And honestly…people here love to talk up a lot of hypotheticals, but the proof is in the pudding. Ask Abjured what the state of thief is. They seem to be doing pretty well winning WTS with a thief, lol.

Yes, Thief is really effective in that one role (mobile decapper and opportunist +1’er). And yet, as always, the assumption is that if someone is complaining about Thief, they must be bad at that role, and/or want Thief to be overpowered in 1v1 combat.

It’s nice that Thieves have a near-guaranteed spot in high level SPvP teams, it really is, but it’s through one narrowly defined build/playstyle that a lot of people simply don’t find enjoyable. It’s also worth considering that not everyone is a high level Thief playing in premade tournaments. Some of us just want to be able to enjoy our profession in solo queue SPvP, which seems like a fair thing to ask.

Quadox.7834:

I agree, there is no tank/bruiser thief. Doesn’t mean thief is unviable in other roles, which people seem to believe. This is something to look at.

Actually, it kinda does, as that’s the entire point people like me are making. Thief doesn’t have the versatility to be viable in SPvP as anything but one VERY rigidly defined playstyle that a lot of people simply don’t find enjoyable (especially in solo queue).

Condi Thief? Not realistic atm, due both to issues with Thief applying damaging conditions, and the wonky state of condition cleanse in SPvP in general.

Bruiser Thief? Completely non-viable, because Thief lacks the durability that other low max HP professions like Ele and Guardian have (blocks, stability, percentage damage reduction, etc). As Thief, this means you can either run a glass cannon stat package and have a chance of doing something, or run something else and do no damage ON TOP of still getting blown up just as fast.

I just want some other options beyond glass cannon D/P + Shortbow decapper Thief. Just about EVERY other profession (save maybe Ranger) has this versatility… are people still so traumatized by 2013 Thief that they’d deny it to us too?

Quadox.7834:

“A player that always needs a backup class to even down an opponent is a drain on the team”
Incorrect. Mesmer doesn’t 1v1 in tourneys. Thief doesn’t 1v1 in tourneys. Both still amazing. In soloq, still not a burden if you +1 and rotate.

Stealth helps survival and is better than pure sustain for burst classes. See PU mes > insp.

“I shouldn’t have to see a player on a point and have to go get someone to help me contest it.”

If you don’t like that, don’t play meta thief. Play some other builds. If there is no other build, this thread should be about buffing thief alternatives (pistol and whatnot). Not to be confused with buffing the current meta build.

Nonsense like this means Thieves spend more time in these threads defending themselves from responses to points no Thief actually made, than getting to the root of the problem!

No one is asking for the Thief meta build to be buffed. NO ONE. We are TIRED of D/P, TIRED TO DEATH. Having ONE weapon and trait build be viable is NOT FUN.

There are many of us—myself included—who have spent countless hours testing other builds in SPvP. None of them are viable. The Thief simply has too many accumulated weaknesses from years of reactive nerfs and lacking dev attention. In particular, the trait revamp in June really left Thieves behind the curve, but so few people play them (and everyone else seems to hate them so much) that no one actually noticed.

Condi build? Not playable, Thieves can’t output enough damaging conditions.
Durable or Bunker build? Not playable, Thieves are majorly lacking in survivability… if you run a non-Zerk/Marauder amulet, your damage evaporates and you still get killed near-instantly anyway.

So, your options? Zerk/Marauder and D/P + Shortbow. S/D + Shortbow also KINDA works, but a lot less well. Everything else is functionally unplayable in real SPvP.

Thieves don’t want more power or damage, we want more durability and OPTIONS. The same ones every other profession in the game has. Thief has the same max HP as Ele and Guardian and infinitely less of the durability through skills and traits.

From what I can tell, 99% of these discussions boil down to people who are salty that they used to get blown up by Thieves now mindlessly defending the status quo of neutered Thief as “balanced” or “working as intended”.

And even with all those nerfs, it’s the year 2015 and people are STILL trotting out the same old tired complaints about Thief from 2012. It seems some people won’t be happy unless the Thief profession is removed from the game…

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I don’t want POWER, just some meaningful attention. Between the post trait-revamp state of Thief and how unpolished DD was in BWE2, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Thief design is a bullet point on a long list of perfunctory things to take care of, i.e. a chore. Where is the PASSION in how the Thief is handled?

That assumes thinking on the part of devs. Make no mistake, the current situation is from a prolonged state of NOT thinking, if anything. But hey, they got deadlines to meet, and Thief is one of the less popular professions, so…

I would give up Shortbow #5 in a second if it meant Thief getting improvements in durability, support, and overall versatility. I imagine most people would do the same, albeit maybe not before seeing what we were getting in exchange, as the last three years have essentially been nothing but nerfs for Thieves balance-wise.

There are some builds that, while not overpowered, are supremely frustrating to newer players. These builds—such as Condi Mesmer—might not be a problem on balanced team compositions where people know how to deal with them (and have options to do so), but when 2-3 members of the enemy team are playing them against your randomly matched pickup team, it can still be problematic. Another argument in favor of setting a one per team profession limit for solo queue, in my opinion.

Burning is quite overtuned right now (and for that matter, Bleeding/Poison undertuned). The only people I’ve seen who currently disagree are—shocker of shockers—those currently abusing it.

Also, a friendly reminder: not EVERY profession gets absurd condition cleanse.

I find it interesting that the only people claiming Thief is fine are people who don’t happen to play the profession… and how any complaint from people who do, no matter how principled or nuanced, apparently boils down to “those darn Thieves want to be overpowered; I better shout loud words until they go away!”. Are people really so traumatized from the earlier days of the game that they can’t look around and see the CURRENT state of things?

The reasonable among us just want the same options nearly every other profession in the game has, namely the ability to SOMETIMES 1v1 if built for it (and for that matter, the ability to run more than one extremely narrow build). It’d also be nice to be included in game-wide shifts in development philosophy, such as when every profession’s range increasing traits were made baseline BUT Thief’s… but that’s another topic.

That Thief still even has a spot on tournament teams says a lot about how incredibly useful Shortbow #5 is. Seriously, that’s the only thing keeping Thief around. Every team needs a waterboy, but you’ll have to excuse me if that’s not what I signed up for. Venomshare—if it were viable—would be a real support build. Sneaking around behind everyone’s back to decap points and then running like a two year old caught up after their bedtime when anyone shows is not.

Everything about Daredevil feels like an internal first pass that never should have seen the light of day: recycled placeholder animations that feel inappropriate, badly placed traits (and having the GM slot taken up by our “new mechanic”), physical skills costing initiative, long and clunky startup/aftercast delays making it impossible for dodges and staff animations to flow with the rest of our kit…

Between the unaddressed core issues with Thief and the unpolished nature of a lot of what was seen of Daredevil so far, I’m not feeling especially optimistic right now. At the least, they need to refine everything we’ve seen so far and make it smooth as hell. The current state of Daredevil is simply not acceptable.

TexZero.7910:

Daredevil isn’t about overuse of stealth. the fact that people feel its required is the problem. You can easily run a build not reliant on stealth and still do just fine.

Unless you’re talking about PvE… no, just no. People feel stealth is “required” because Thief has the lowest durability in PvP by a mile. Without at least a little stealth to reposition, you—the squishy Thief—will be the first target in any larger teamfight. That’s unless you’re SB #5’ing around the map and decapping, in which case… you’re not really surviving in COMBAT without stealth, are you?

Whether the new stuff can change that up remains to be seen. A lot of it was too unpolished or buggy to test properly right now (clunky dodges that count as skills and can apply confusion, utility skills that cost initiative, etc.) So not sure where you’re getting evidence of this bold new playstyle we’re all somehow missing. Does it involve the Staff? Please say it involves the Staff, I haven’t had a good laugh in a while

I had a lot of fun with Bandit’s Defense and Impairing Daggers, both of which feel like they fit right into current builds. Between ID and the Lotus dodge, a condition spec ALMOST feels viable…

“Do Thieves have a role in SPvP?” is not a question anyone is really asking. Due to their single target burst and mobility, Thieves have had a place in the meta for a long time. No one is disputing this, and yet… nearly every time a dedicated Thief expresses their frustration with their profession, the Thief’s presence in the meta is thrown in their face, as if it should invalidate any possible complaint.

Believe it or not, many of us are unhappy with our Thieves for reasons other than wanting to be a “super-stealth uber-gank lone-wolf Rambo type that kills everyone 1v1”. Personally, I’d like to have some build and playstyle options outside of one narrowly defined prescribed role. Having a place in the meta does not make it fun to have only two remotely viable builds to choose from.

I think a lot of people don’t realize how much changed with the trait revamp in June. Thief lost several vital initiative and evasive traits, while overall trait quality and damage went up for most other professions. People like to pretend that the Thief’s current state is some kind of gradual meta shift or intended design direction, but the truth is that Thief got the least attention and the least improvement from the trait revamp. If some of these issues were resolved, things might be different.

But hey, it’s easier to cry “nerf thieves” even as they’re already on their back foot and barely propped up by Shortbow #5. Try playing one for a while in SPvP if you don’t already… your opinions might gradually change

We aren’t getting stances, just one of three currently buggy/untuned dodges. We are getting a new skill LIKE a mantra (Distracting Daggers), but it lacks anything that is actually good about a mantra.

You may find your fun diminishing if you ever step foot in PvP, especially Conquest.

Unless some truly monumental changes to our HoT stuff are planned, Shortbow isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Yeah, some of the cries for nerfs are a bit strange. At first I thought it was people who don’t play Thief, but now I think some people are so used to nerfs and a lack of developer attention that they’re trying to preemptively get their own stuff nerfed so they won’t be disappointed again.

Or… we could just ask for things to function as they should?

At the least, Thieves should be able to account for being Revealed. I still think there should be a new trait (or modification to an old one like Revealed Training in DA) that gives you Protection for the duration of Revealed or something similar.

Recycling animations is one thing, the sorry state of Daredevil animations in this beta is another. Due to the realities of game development, it’s expected that animations will be reused here and there… but they shouldn’t jut out or feel so out of place like many of the Daredevil animations do.

Animations are secondary to gameplay, yes, but when everything about your profession feels rushed and thrown together at the last minute—including your animations—it can lead one to feel like their profession of choice isn’t getting the attention it deserves. THAT is a very meaningful problem.

Most/all of the Physical skills eat initiative (Fist Flurry takes one on each hit, etc.) Presumably this is a holdover from an old design where the utilities cost initiative. Pretty sloppy that it made live to be honest, but it should be gone next BWE.

Except all of those things are fairly insignificant on their own (oh no, 8s of a single stack of bleed!!). A Thief in stealth using all of their dodges to put these conditions on would essentially be wasting all of their stealth to tickle the opponent. The Lotus dodge is good because you can weave it in mid-combat with other condition application, not because of the sheer ridiculousness of 1 stack of bleed+torment and a short cripple on its own.

At any rate, the dodges suffer from a lot of QoL and usability issues right now, and Lotus is no exception. Ideally, none of them should reveal you from stealth, as this functions as a downgrade to core Thief skills (many of which already struggle to be useful).

They haven’t even rolled in the extra 150 range to Pistols yet. This is keeping in mind that every single other range increasing trait in the GAME was made baseline… except for Ankle Shots (which doesn’t even list the range increase), because reasons.

So yeah, not holding my breath on Ricochet coming back, when they won’t even spend 10 minutes including Thieves in a game wide trait design change.

Christonya.3856:

- Channeled vigor.

I am still trying to wrap my mind around this skill. So the acrobatic fighter, designed to dodge and avoid all damage, is suppose to stop.. and channel? This skill I feel needs a complete redesign.

You can move while using it and it restores somewhere around half of your endurance bar during usage. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot more usable than people were expecting.

Words are wind

Fix it, please

Escapist’s Absolution should really be a minor. Someone pegged it previously when they said it doesn’t feel OP as much as a needed (and barely sufficient) improvement in quality of life with the oodles of conditions out there in both PvP and the new PvE content. Much like the GM dodges, this doesn’t feel like a very good “choice”.