Guild Wars 2

I still think the best thing to do would be to allow guilds to build guild housing. A basic castle or tower or something. These guild structures are instanced so only guild members can get in them and see them. From the outside they would just look like a generic zone or something.

Then if a guild wants to go to war with another guild, the system will load an empty instance with one guild’s keep on one side and the other guild’s keep on the other in a ‘2 forts’ style fashion. The idea would be for the guilds to fight it out and capture some relic/flag etc from the enemy castle etc etc.

Winners would get ‘currency’ to just improve the cosmetics of the keeps. This way everyone’s keep is roughly the same size and shape but guilds that do well can add fancy things to it to make it feel unique.

Hit esc.

But how are you accidently hitting F? Are you trying to res someone when you wanted to do something else? The ressing is highest on the list in a stack so you’ll need to manually click to override it.

Perhaps something as simple as rebinding it to F12 or something would work for you?

So we went from thieves being overpowered to being pretty meh but able to run away. I’m sorry, but stealth is a powerful mechanic. The class as a whole compensates for the great power in stealth by having no real damage mitigation. Just like the thief gives up stability in favor of mobility.

There are only 2 legitimate complaints people can raise with the thief class.

1.) Initiative regen isn’t properly balanced.
2.) Movement skills for all classes can be used when incapacitated.

For 1, if you actually played a thief, you’d know that any changes to initiative regen would need to be offset with enormous boosts in other areas because the class simply doesn’t have the tools to stand toe to toe with others for long and its burst potential outside of stealth is limited.

For 2, it’s a global problem and if you’re going to change it for the thief you’re going to have to change it for everyone.

But seriously, the thief is a strong roamer, but hardly better than Guardians, Mesmers, Elementalists, and Rangers offensively. Defensively the only complaint is the ability to run away. Which the class apparently bought by being useless in groups as opposed to the other classes.

What’s funny is the Thief can hardly be considered the strongest roaming class in this game. Elementalists and Mesmers are still far superior roamers and they’re far more versatile too. Even Rangers with their bunker/regen builds do a better job at everything a thief can do.

No, the thing that garners so much complaint is stealth. It gets the same complaints in every MMO it’s ever been a part of and it’s often done by people who don’t bother to actually try the class to see how stealth works.

That all said, and coming from a thief ‘main’, I would have to say GW2 has the absolute worst implementation of the thief/rogue/assassin type class I’ve ever seen in any MMO. I’d argue the complaints are somewhat warranted, but a bit ignorant in their target. Personally, I see initiative regen as the only legitimate issue with this class, but I’m also not stupid enough to think you can start messing with it and expect the class to remain playable.

When all is said and done, the people complaining about the class are those who have never played it, insist on running around in less toughness than the thieves they’re fighting against, and are often quite awful players to boot.

Leveling is much slower as a thief than it is with the Warrior or Guardian. It’s less rewarding from a PvE perspective too so if your goal is PvE, I wouldn’t suggest the class. Similarly, if your plan is zerg combat in WvW, not the greatest class you could go with as the thief is probably the lowest ranked class for large group combat.

Now if you plan to run small groups then the thief is fine, but be warned that WvW no longer really supports roaming as more times than not you’re going to run into an enemy zerg regardless of the server you play on.

It’s a rewarding class and not faceroll like many others, but it’s far from the strongest in anything but small group roaming.

Why would shadow refuge be disallowed when other classes can kite to regen health just as effectively? While a thief has a fair number of tools to close the gap, what would a Warrior vs. Elementalist duel allow? No frost line, or cantrips? What about a Warrior vs Guardian duel? No boons?

It’s a tool to be used as you see fit and if you’re dueling you should plan accordingly to counter it. Knockbacks, AE’s, passive regen of your own, etc.

Even if shared, they aren’t powerful effects that can’t be achieved a dozen different ways.

All poisons should deal the same damage and provide cripple base. They could then do something more depending on the one you use. This way they would at least be marginally valuable to a condition based thief as a damage source if nothing else.

Still though, they’d have to be insanely powerful to ever be more useful than the defensive skills many thieves consider to be obligatory just to compete.

D/P is only powerful because initiative regen allows it to maintain perma stealth and lose no DPS from hidden killer+backstab+heartseeker.

The initiative regen needs to be balanced across the board. Maybe have a single trait to increase the cap and that’s it. It all regens at the same rate regardless of build. That way if you use a more utility oriented weapon set like D/P over D/D you would actually show a real DPS loss for doing it.

Once initiative regen is fixed then we can worry about compensating the class for it as only people who haven’t played the class would think nerfing stealth won’t have enormous ramifications on the class as a whole.

This game would probably be the biggest bomb since WHO if it went subscription based. There’s enough content in this game to keep even the more casual among us busy for about a week.

I somewhat agree with you that server population is an issue, but it’s not as cut and dry like you’re claiming. Yes, they should cut the bottom servers and merge them as right now ET and FC simply don’t have the player base to compete with the next higher one on the chain. It has been this way for 6 months.

The problem is coverage. I’ve seen FC smoke all of the competition that comes across it until midnight rolls around and people go to bed and that’s when the enemy takes all 4 BL’s and pretend their top dog when they couldn’t manage to fight their way out of a wet paper bag during ‘prime time’.

The coverage issue needs to be resolved some way to keep the game balanced. But even if it were, this game is going to continue to bleed players when absolutely nothing changes. WvW was boring after a month for me. My whole guild has up and quit and only 3 of us are left (we joined another guild on the server).

Balance is one thing, but the game itself is just boring. Something needs to change to breath new life into it because just fixing balance issues or adding some novelty skill crap isn’t going to be enough to keep the game going for another 6 months.

The problem with venoms in general is they’re skills. They would have to be obscenely good to ever be worth more than shadow refuge, shadowstep, blinding powder or roll for initiative.

The only one people consider using is basilisk and that has less to do with how good it is and more to do with the fact thieves guild and dagger storm are very narrow in their use.

Even if the new patch notes are true, I can’t imagine anyone would bother using the new condition attached to the venom.

The proper solution to the class would be to limit access to stealth. Not to change stealth. Stealth has existed in pretty much every MMO in existence and not every one of them has had direct ways to counter it.

The problem I see with the overwhelming majority of people in this thread is you simply don’t play a thief. From the comments I’m convinced most of you haven’t even bothered trying to make a level 1 thief and playing some sPvP with it. If you did, you’d realize just how fragile stealth and the class is and you’d be suggesting more viable solutions to the problem. If you played the thief you’d probably also have a better grasp on just what was overpowered.

In my opinion, the only problem with the thief class right now is its access to initiative regen skills and traits. If the initiative regen was more level across the board it would be easier to balance. With high initiative regen they’re able to enter stealth more often, which then leads to more burst and regen/condi removal, which leads to more survivability.

On the flip side, the class would be 100% useless if stealth was changed in any fashion without dramatic improvements elsewhere. You wouldn’t understand this unless you actually played the class.

You need a gear treadmill in any MMO or players simply won’t come back. GW2 is doing it properly as the gear treadmill is mostly aesthetic and doesn’t give dramatic increases in ability with each tier of gear.

Now that the daily and monthly can be completed entirely in WvW, I don’t see the problem. Laurels are slow, sure. But you also have access to guild commendations to help you get the gear faster if you want. You could run fractals for the rings if you want.

Gear isn’t going to be handed to you. If you could gear all your players in a week, you wouldn’t keep playing the game. It’s working better in GW2 then it does in most games.

25/30/0/0/15
10/30/30
0/30/30/10
0/0/20/30/20

Those are your typical builds.

Why aren’t Mesmer clones destroyed when they go in for the stomp?
Why can several classes turn on damage reducers/immunities when stomping?
Why can necros use forms when stomping?

Because they can…

The thief class doesn’t have the tools to stand out in the open and stomp someone. No stability, no boons, no health, and no regen. Wouldn’t get the stomp in anything but a 1v1 without it.

lordkrall.7241:

Meglobob.8620:

Have you or are you considering laurels as a reward for the winning server?

I think +1 laurel for everyone on a winning server would be a incentive, without damaging the economy at all. Those are time gated rewards so a lot of players would like additional laurels just to kit there alts out…

The issue with that is that Laurels are primarily a PvE currency, which would mean people that wouldn’t even bother with doing WvW would get more useful rewards and those that actually won the match.

Laurels have the same value regardless now. As I said in my original post, chances are they’ll introduce ascended armor and weapons soon so why not attach those to the vendors too? This way PvE players can get them through dungeons or laurels. PvP players can get them through Laurels only, but they’ll get Laurels at a higher rate (I proposed a weekly reward so anyone who gains a PvP rank and is above the rank of 10 during the week would count toward the reward. Winning server would get 10 laurels each player who got the rank and is above 10. 2nd would get 6, 3rd would get 4.)

In sPvP what do thieves have? 14k hp, 30% crit chance and 50% crit damage?

In WvW they have 18k hp, 50% crit chance with 100% crit damage and still maintain 2500 armor.

Still, they don’t provide much real value to WvW and with roaming getting harder and harder to do, their role is questionable at best.

What they should do is introduce a barracks upgrade for structures. Once built, they will garrison a veteran guard every 10mins until they reach the cap for the barracks (10 or so). Once a gate or wall is destroyed, they all spawn at the lord and can walk their way to the courtyard.

Now that the backstory is explained…

Why not allow the outmanned debuff dramatically increase NPC health and damage?

Just reward laurels since they now have value in WvW.

With ascended armor and weapons hopefully not too far off in the future, laurel awarded ascended armor could compete with PvE awarded ascended armor and weapons.

Winning server gets 10 for anyone who gained a WvW rank above level 10.
2nd gets 6 for anyone who gained a WvW rank above level 10.
3rd gets 4 for anyone who gained a WvW rank above level 10.

Then we could add some more interested things to the Laurel system too. Things like more guild styled items so being in a guild actually offered some level of pride at the very least (since we all know guilds and even parties in this game are 100% useless). If player/guild housing ever gets introduced we could buy guild merrits with laurels so the guild could buy stuff to upgrade. etc etc.

Will server mergers ever be legitimately considered? I realize you’d have to take out 3 servers to keep things balanced, but it’s woefully obvious that both Fergusson’s Crossing and Eredon Terrace simply don’t have the numbers to be viable on their own.

Practice makes perfect.

In the video I mentioned (at work now so I can’t find it on youtube) they do it almost seamlessly. I also have my mouse senstivity near max so I can manage just turning.

Travlane, if the skills worked like the bow skills for rangers and thieves it would work perfectly for your scenario as it doesn’t matter which direction you’re facing, when you use the skill you move away from the target.

The issue I have, and I think what the above posters are worried about being overpowered, is when you use withdraw to close the gap between people to engage them and this is what you can see happen in the video I mentioned.

Yea, you’d expect stealth to break the channel like it does in other games. Really would be nice if Stealth provided endure pain for just 1 second to take care of this. While it’s easy to evade out of it with normal stealth, things like shadow refuge make it difficult to dodge roll to avoid the damage. Perhaps even if just shadow refuge offered this.

I don’t really feel they need to be directional to the point where we can roll forward or backward. However, they both should be designed to work more like disabling/quick shot where if you have a target selected, you will always roll away from them.

In one of the thief videos that circulated around here a thief was making good use of withdraw with the aboutface keybind though. Was probably Yishis’ but not certain which.

Blix.8021:

Mattargul.9235:

You can craft ascended BPs at MF

you need items from fractals to make ascended back pieces

yup, you’re right. completely forgot you needed the one fragment thingy.

Oh well, guess you’ll just be 3% worse than the competition

Not a thief.
If you want to do more than drop a healing field, not a ranger.

Anything else you can’t go wrong really.

The back piece you can craft and judging from the last patch it’s clear they want you to do your daily in WvW to get laurels for the other stuff. I wouldn’t mind knowing what the % drop from chests the rings are though. I’ve unlocked about 10 boxes with no rings and the few people I play with claim to not have gotten one yet.

Shemsu.8721:

Atherakhia.4086:

Shemsu.8721:

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s not a nerf, it’s a bug fix. It wasn’t meant to change elevation and avoid obstacles.

Now that said, I would argue that all of the shortbow’s skills should be 1200 so the effective range of 5 in particular wasn’t awful.

Can you link the dev post that says teleports arent meant to change elevation or avoid obstacles? (portal says hi)

And every other skill other than Mesmer portal says hi back…

So either portal is bugged, or all other ports are. Still not seeing a dev post saying teleport should be restricted against elevation and obstacles

Mesmer Portal is mechanically different. the others aren’t. I’m sure they all use the same exact snippet of code.

Shemsu.8721:

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s not a nerf, it’s a bug fix. It wasn’t meant to change elevation and avoid obstacles.

Now that said, I would argue that all of the shortbow’s skills should be 1200 so the effective range of 5 in particular wasn’t awful.

Can you link the dev post that says teleports arent meant to change elevation or avoid obstacles? (portal says hi)

And every other skill other than Mesmer portal says hi back…

It’s not a nerf, it’s a bug fix. It wasn’t meant to change elevation and avoid obstacles.

Now that said, I would argue that all of the shortbow’s skills should be 1200 so the effective range of 5 in particular wasn’t awful.

It’s like this for other skills. If they change it for backstab they’ll change the mechanic for everyone.

Haven’t you guys ever used a skill and it ‘misses’ so the cooldown isn’t fully activated it’s only set to 4 seconds and/or doesn’t use resources?

Deathspike.1870:

You noticed quite late, it has been this way for a while now (patch prior to latest).

You noticed it quite late, it has been this way since I’ve started playing 4 months ago.

Traps for the thief are in even worse shape than they are for rangers. The problem is that the class as a whole simply can’t live without things like shadow refuge, shadowstep, blinding powder, etc. Even the movement signet I would consider mandatory since I’m lazy and don’t like getting perma swiftness other ways.

So even if the traps were overpowered, I’m not sure they’d ever be good enough to outshine the other skills. At least for the ranger, their bunker build does no damage, has insane regen, and has near maxed condition damage so getting flame trap for them isn’t a hard choice.

So without massive improvements to either the class (so we don’t need certain skills) or traps (so they can actually compete with those other skills) they’re useless in WvW. As for PvE, Ambush as others have said is fun. Rest are garbage.

Staff – 1200 yard range weapon.

1. - Shadowbolt: Shoot a lance of frost at the target. Loose a second lance of frost at the target. Fire a third, more powerful lance at the target and chilling them for 2 seconds. From stealth, Chilling Shadows: Lance of frost that explodes on contact chilling the selected target for 6 seconds but dealing no damage. Deals 2x damage to up to 5 targets around the selected target. Very fast attack speed but low damage

1. - Venom Bolt: Throw a slow moving bolt at the target that deals moderate damage and drops a poison field on the ground. Deals 2x damage if the target is chilled and 3x damage if the target is dazed.

1. - Shadow Mantle: Wear a mantle of shadows blinding anyone who strikes you (internal cooldown). Any time you’re struck gain might.

1. - Steal Breath: Channel a beam into your target hitting them plus up to 2 additional targets. All targets are dazed while the skill is channeled and they take damage. High damage. Unable to move while channeling.

1. - Shadow Touch: Swap places with your target. Target can only move toward you up to 600 yards. You may move toward them up to 900 yards. If used within 300 yards, deals high damage, if used within 600 yards deals low damage, if used 600-1200 yards, deals no damage.

Just boredome setting in at work while I watch these stupid training videos…

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

Shemsu.8721:

Fenrir.5493:

This is not the way to solve the problem, to solve this problem there are things that are needed:

-Thieves cant enter stealth while in combat unless using special utility skills with high CD

-Abilities that let you enter stealth while in combat, like cloak and dagger should let you enter stealth without the need to hit anyone

-Stealth has a longer CD

-All kind of damage and blocks should reveal the thief

-Reduce draastically the burst damage of abilities like backstab, its not balaced to practically OHKO someone from stealth, its OP.

And this will balance the things, and now the thieves are fixed.

You do realize that warriors axe autoattack does MORE damage than backstab right?? Every class has a number of skills that do more damage than thieves, doesnt require stealth, doesn’t require position behind enemy. You need to be more informed how things work before making suggestions as silly as this

Your argument is void till said skills are placed on an 4 sec CD.

Backstab is on a 4 second cooldown….

Excalibur.9748:

Teamkiller.4315:

Excalibur.9748:

Honestly, I’d rather steal better skills.

As of right now the only ones I sorta like are

1) Ele’s chill
2) Necro’s fear
3) Warrior’s whirling axe (though hate it sometimes cuz you can’t cancel it once started)
4) Thief’s invisibility
5) Mesmer’s all-buff

For the other 3, I have no idea what they are and what they really do…

6) Guardian 4 second daze
7) Engineer inflict random condition
8) Ranger regeneration/condition cure tree

Those 3 are pretty bad though. I don’t really use them.

The only bad one is the engineer, and that’s mostly because confusion got nerfed. All of the others are quite powerful. I’d argue the Warrior one is probably the absolute worst one available.

But yea, I wish the healing mechanic was attached to steal instead of mug. I also wish it would always take a boon and the trait just increases the number taken.

Now if I wanted to redesign the whole F1 thing in general, I’d have given the Thief class stances I think where offensive stance would increase crit damage, precise stance would increase crit chance, and precision would increase toughness.

Fenrir.5493:

This is not the way to solve the problem, to solve this problem there are things that are needed:

-Thieves cant enter stealth while in combat unless using special utility skills with high CD

-Abilities that let you enter stealth while in combat, like cloak and dagger should let you enter stealth without the need to hit anyone

-Stealth has a longer CD

-All kind of damage and blocks should reveal the thief

-Reduce draastically the burst damage of abilities like backstab, its not balaced to practically OHKO someone from stealth, its OP.

And this will balance the things, and now the thieves are fixed.

You just removed all of the Thief’s burst and defense and didn’t give them any survivability in return. While I somewhat agree with your approach (there’s nothing wrong with thief burst for example), you need to actually play the class to know how the removal/adjustment of stealth will affect it.

While I feel changing the initiative regen will do much of what you’re asking, I’m not foolish enough to think that the thief would be playable after those adjustments and would need drastic improvements. But I know this because I play the class…

The problem with traps isn’t just that they suck, but that they’d never be viable because other utility like shadow refuge, shadowstep, and even signet of shadows far outweigh their usefulness. I think this is why people often suggest things that are just so over the top.

Venoms: They all need to be instant cast. They all need to provide the same poison DOT, and they should all provide cripple to the target. Now this would mean spider and drake could be improved. I say merge the 2. Instead of a poison DOT it provides a poison attack that deals the full damage upfront and provides chill instead of cripple.

Why can’t Thieves have access to a trap to shut down a piece of siege equipment for example? Attach that effect to tripwire. Why can’t Thieves have a ‘termite’ trap that causes siege weapons to take 50% additional damage for 20 seconds? Attach that to needle trap.

Preacher.9018:

Dagger storm is fine. Perfect combination of nice damage, missile reflect and short cooldown. Sure, might be not that great in tPvP, but actually pretty good in PvE and in many WvW situations. Combine it with combo field, and its superb.

No need to change this one. If anything, i find Basilisk Venom to be absolute trash, since its elite specifically designed for one type of thief build.

Venoms in general are crap.

They should all be instant cast, should all do a high damage poison dot, and should probably all criple the target. The chill poison could then be changed to a direct damage + poison or something.

But yes, in general all venoms suck.

Was there a point to this thread? Are we supposed to be coming up with ideas to make the thief more ‘thiefy’? Or are we just trying to justify the class’ burst and stealth? ANet has made it perfectly clear that the Thief class is meant to the burstiest of the bursty and stealth gets complaints regardless of the game you’re playing. Assassin or Thief (Shadowbane had both which was quite unique) means very little in most games.

Now if we wanted to brain storm ideas to make the thief more fun?

Why not allow them to scale castle walls or maybe debuff walls and doors to take more damage for a few seconds to reflect the Thief sabotaging something? Overpowered? Well think of ways to make it balanced! For example, the thief can scale an enemy wall but within 30seconds they will be ported back out of the enemy structure at the front portal. This way the thief could get in and maybe take out an arrow cart or 2.

Similarly, why not give the thief a sabotage trap where once triggered all siege equipment within 1200 yards is ‘stunned’ for 30 seconds. Would compliment the above.

Why in the world would you change stealth in this manner?

The thief is hardly the ‘facerolliest’ of classes. I will agree that stealth is overpowered, but for an entirely different reason: too much up time. The best way to ‘balance’ stealth is to limit the amount of time a Thief can use it. Most games that offer a rogue/thief/assassin class limit stealth so it’s immensly powerful for starting a fight (perma stealth to get in location, high burst when you are revealed, high burst on demand) also limit the class so once you’re out of stealth, you had better win.

I see the problem with this class revolving almost entirely around how the initiative system works. If we were limited to 10 initiative, and that initiative could only regen at one every second instead of having upwards of 15 skills and abilities to improve this amount, the class would be much more even-leveled and real efforts to balance it could be made.

If you change the initiative regen you nerf the thief’s survivability, burst, regen, and condition removal. You could then improve these areas accordingly depending on where the class should be.

The only change I’d like to see with dagger storm is for it to change the thief into a type of obstacle so all ranged attacks that would pass through the thief would also be reflected and not just the projectiles that would target the thief. This way it would have value in zerg on zerg combat.

Now as far as defending yourself while spinning… why are you using it when you’re being meleed? While I’m cool with it granting stability and endure pain for X seconds, I’m more concerned with the class’ overall lack of real utility than I am with using a skill as a dps tool.

A class I miss most in my MMO past is the Mage Assassin. I would like to see the Thief get a staff or scepter. Since this class lacks the 1200 range weapon option, it could fill this niche.

They need to get around to adding guild vs guild and guild housing.

Guilds should have an instance with their guild structure in it and as they get more and more influence and rewards their structure gets bigger and bigger.

Guilds could then ‘war’ other guilds and an instance would be created with one guild’s structure on one side and the enemy’s structure on the other. Players would then have to break into the enemy’s castle and steal their banner.

Guilds would then have a ‘guild hall’ in their castls where their members could see all the other guild’s banners they’ve stolen.

Simply adding more depth to the WvW system would solve a lot of the zerging problems.

For example, redesign the map so it’s Y shaped and each lane represents a different server. Make it so structures have 2 states… contested and controlled. Contested means the enemy is in there and the lord is down but it isn’t theirs yet. Controlled means the lord is up and belongs to the enemy. In order for you to controll an enemy structure outside of your lane, none of the structures in your lane can be contested.

This alone forces zergs to break up and defend their home turf. It allows defenders a chance to circumvent the zerg by attacking something else. If the zerg leaves what they’re attacking to reclaim their stuff as a large unit, the defenders can rebuild.

Actual Siege weapons that we equip. They do very little/no damage to players, but do higher damage to walls and gates. This way players can attack doors and walls more effectively but it comes at a price because you run the risk of the enemy catching you with your siege weapon on instead of your normal weapons. Would then remove the ability for players to hurt gates without siege weapons on.

More NPCs. It would be nice if each structure had a barracks and you could use this barracks to add elite guards to your attacking forces to help push the numbers more in your favor. Imagine a keep is being sieged and you’re outnumbered trying to defend. You could call guards from the barracks to assist in repelling attackers. You could then attach NPC buffs to the actual ‘Outnumbered’ buff so they’d be more even more effective.

Basically a barracks would be an upgrade and once built it will generate a guard every 10mins up to a specific cap. A commander could then order the guards out of the barracks and they’ll assist you in pushing the enemy back. Could even have an emergency call where the barracks will be automatically filled to the cap but won’t generate new guards for 30mins.

But stuff like that could be fun. Imagine a landing pad where you could order bombers and fighters. Neither would be controllable by players, but players could board them. Bombers would fly over structures. Fighters would fly to a specific point on the map and fly back to the landing pad it came from. Players could then drop bombs on structures or have the fighters strafe enemy zergs.

Why run Pistol over D/D with shortbow? I’ve used a similar build, but I usually run d/d as it applies bleeds quicker and using caltrops is more streamlined. I imagine full Carrion as well?

Master of Timespace.2548:

Best burst? No, S/D Ele does more burst dmg than dagger mainhand. And thats not even when built glass cannon.

Scepter ele? HAHAHAHH, well maybe if your target is scarecrow XDD

Scepter has insane burst so I wouldn’t discount it.
Dragon’s tooth does close to backstab damage.
Fire grab does more than backstab.
Phoenix does about half a backstab.
Fire Ring does about half a backstab.

randomfightfan.4091:

Atherakhia.4086:

randomfightfan.4091:

Atherakhia.4086:

No, the problem with the thief class is a direct result of the initiative system and the skills/traits that increase the initiative cap and its regen and this is the area that needs to be fixed. Nothing else.

Remove the skills and traits that increase the initiative cap or grant free initiative for stealthing/criting/etc. so all specs of the thief class are the same at their base. Then build the class up.

And in order to balance around that, all cool downs from all other classes are tripled. That would be the effect of a nerf like that.

Uh no…

You build the thief class up. You give it more health like the Ranger or you give it access to tools to help it remain viable outside of stealth. Things like protection, stability, etc. We already know ANet is considering boosting the Thief’s auto attack damage to help with the sustained fight.

So how would giving protection and stability balance the thief when you have made it so they can use at max 3 abilities before being completely out of initiative for a long time and no way to get it back? It would be the same as a warrior using hundred blades and whilrwind then only being able to use 1 ability total every 5-10 seconds. Any other class gets to use 4 abilities, swap weapons, 4 abilities, swap, use w/e is off cd, swap, etc. How do you not understand that gutting thief initiative would mean a thief would be fighting with 3 skills vs the 8 skills of all other classes. It’s obvious you’ve never played thief.

As a thief player, I don’t want my thief to be tanky, boring class that has no more mobility than a hammer guardian. Thief is meant to be a high risk class. Giving them a major sustain buff takes away the risk, taking away the initiative gain means you can either get into the group fast but not be able to use any abilities, or not use any abilities getting into the group, or while you’re in the group, so you can use them to get out. Just leave the class balancing to the professionals please.

I’m not a designer, let someone else come up with the details, but I’ve already given some ideas.

Introduce a third mechanic on stealth skills. Take backstab for example. Autoattack from the front. Attacks from the back deal 150% damage. Attacks from the back from stealth deal 200% damage.

Could also give more tied abilities like the vale dancer in DAoC. Backstab followed by a dancing dagger causes your next X auto attacks have a +XX% chance to crit. But if you follow dancer dagger with a whirling blade, it provides 6 bleeds instead of 3.

Or you just do the incredibly easy. Heartseaker does XX damage at 50% and XXX damage at 25%

Make it so the warrior is the upfront in your face basher where the thief is the finesse/acrobatic dancer.

But yes, I play a thief. It’s my ‘main’ if that means anything in this game. The point behind initiative is supposed to be to provide pressure. A lot of the skills aren’t good and certainly aren’t worth their cost. If Initiative is balanced, maybe these skills would be the ones to start with (dancing dagger for example).

Hype.8032:

I can tell you’ve thought about this but I can’t agree that making the thief more like the other professions is the right move. Does protection fit with an agile low health high damage class? I don’t think it does and neither does Anet judging by how they built it.

Perfect balance isn’t what we want.. slight imbalances keep the meta changing and keep it fun to play. I love stealth but I would accept changes to the class if they continue to lessen its viability. However, adding stability and protection sure as hell isn’t the right way to do it.

Protection is a damage debuff and while it could represent thicker armor, why can’t it also represent that the thief has the upperhand in combat and has his opponent offbalance so his swings aren’t as fast or strong.

Aegis could reflect a person raising their shield or large weapon to guard against an attack, but why can’t it also represent the thief riposting an attack to create an opening?

But yea, simply giving the class ranger level health would be sufficient (they have about 4k more hp) for the longevity aspect of the class to bring sustained damage to bear. Still need to resolve the lack of burst issue (for example, introduce a third strike for the autos. One for auto, a second positional, and a third from stealth. Backstab for example would do 150% damage from the back if not from stealth. As an example only).

And yes, perfect balance is what we should strive for. The way you get an engaging meta is how does 3 rocks fight off 2 scissors and a paper. Or by making sure not all rocks are polished marbles, but some are fashioned into arrow heads or some such nonsense.

Ralathar.7236:

People that say thieves are useless in the current meta of WvW out themselves as terrible WvW players. Thieves are likely the single most influential class in WvW because thieves and thieves alone can shut down supply in a map with little to no risk.

Maybe 12 thieves is enough to completely control supply in an entire map. You pair up into teams of 2-3 and each take a camp. A good thief can easily solo a camp but 2 makes it a lot faster with more room for error and better chances for escape if things go south.

You then go out of the camp and keep an eye on it from a good position, kill groups attempting to retake comprised of up to 4-6 members. Maybe even upgrade camps. If more than you can handle you let them take and kill any yaks leaving and retake.

Without supply the enemy cannot attack effectively. Without supply all towers and keeps will fall eventually. 100 supply pillaged occasionally from camps is not enough and quick thinking thieves can zero supply right before enemies arrive with an upgrade, then LOL away.

No other class can pull this off near as well as thief. Not even close. But this style of player is generally boring so most people just end up killing randoms is high reward little risk situations all day long.

That’s not true at all. Rangers and Mesmers have absolutely no trouble taking camps single handedly. They also aren’t useless in any aspect of WvW or sPvP as they make excellent roamers and zergers.

Scouting also isn’t something the thief class excells in alone as Rangers are just as quick running around the map thanks to the insanely short cooldown on swoop. They also escape exceptionally well when attacked. And they have a real bunker spec.