Guild Wars 2

Shadow Shot originally could be reflected, and it would teleport the target when hit to you and you would get blinded.

As it is now, the blinding projectile and teleport cannot be reflected or blocked (this is what unblockable means – it also bypasses reflects), guaranteeing the teleport of the thief to its target and blinding it unless otherwise negated.

Straegen.2938:

For me any GM trait that requires setup better have a big payoff. 2 boons just isn’t a big payoff to me. Now if the boons were truly stolen as in copied in duration and stacks, that would peak my interest. As it is now we get one stack and base duration regardless of what is stolen. Nabbing a typical warriors might stacks would be a huge game changer.

I wasn’t sure if it stole whole stacks like LS did. If it’s the case, then yea, it’s not worth doing, since most builds run many stacks of almost all boons, and the damage loss for maybe getting their prot and swiftness is about cancelled out.

If you want to play optimally and not end up rage-quitting fairly frequently out of how blatantly underpowered the weak kits on the thief are, there’s pretty much no diversity on the thief. Meta build or condi, and that’s about it, with a little wiggle room in weapons at best. Traits are pretty much locked in as they are with a small degree of change. OH dagger is godawful, especially post-HoT, unless going for some kind of offtank S/D Acro/Tr/Daredevil evade build, although this will not serve any real purpose aside from maybe trolling, since it probably won’t have the damage to kill anything.

If you do not play daredevil, don’t even bother with the profession. Frankly, the thief by far and large is Daredevil aside from a few gimmicky build options typically aligned with condi play. Otherwise you’re playing the weakest core profession against the astronomical power creep of the expansion. As an ex-core thief who has since changed professions out of hating the Daredevil and subsequent further nerfs to the core spec, if you play core, just reroll; it’s not worth the effort and frustration.

In PvE: Your role is DPS and maybe some break bar assistance given BV. That’s it. And it’s no longer optimal selfish DPS so eles are usually preferred since everyone runs around pretending they’re going to be setting the next speed-clear record in their pug runs. The support venom build was removed from the game,

In WvW: Small-scale/ganks only unless you really prove your worth on the profession, and in med-sized groups, you could go full healing power resbot “ninja nurse”, but it’s not really going to change a battle that much at that scale (again, works for small-scale WvW), but it can be done. The thief serves next to zero purpose in mass-scale since it lacks support and innate durability of other professions which is necessary in large groups since the amount of cleave and AoE CC will outright kill you otherwise. It does well at small-scale, but like the above, its options are very limited.

In sPvP: Your role is to run around the map and decap points your enemies control that aren’t being defended, and then make a fight outnumbered in your teams favor if there are no other undefended capped points (never go in to even up numbers or fight outnumbered, you will still lose as your contribution won’t be meaningful enough in most cases). For the most part, the thief is the poorest 1v1 spec in sPvP since sPvP stats are low and all its damage comes from scaling its stats, which since they are low, are still low when multiplied by a damage modifier; boons give more damage.

Based on the last statement, the thief probably isn’t for you :P

Staff is comparable to shortbow’s mobility while in-combat since it doesn’t need to swap, but most notably, it’s only comparable when on a flat surface.

For this reason it works well in Arenas and WvW but not so well in sPvP given the need to teleport vertically. For this I think the staff and shortbow are incomparable, since they achieve totally different things and perform well in their respective mobilities in specific environments. It’s equivocal to comparing HS spam and IArrow, which is also roughly the same in terms of distance covered per time. For that, HS spam is more comparable to Vault, and costs more initiative, does less damage, does not evade, and does not cleave.

The initiative cost for its damage is too low. BP + HS -> Backstab can be interrupted similarly, Unload suffers from a similar channel, FS->LS if used sequentially is extremely easy to punish, and CnD has objectively longer punish frames while providing less damage, no gap close, and no evade.

If moved to 6, it’d be barely recognizable except in instances where it gets spammed. The skill currently allows three consecutive casts all in a row without traiting for Trickery. With Trickery, it enables almost four. At +1 init there ends up a little more downtime such that non-trickery builds cannot spam a superior-damage version of backstab with no revealed penalty, evasion, mobility, cleave, and less cast time at less initiative than all other possibilities.

That, or its damage needs to drop. There’s no reason for it to be hitting harder than backstab with the further capacity to hit substantially harder than backstab at peak via Staff Master (the wiki’s coefficient is wrong; it’s actually 2.52).

I wouldn’t have much of an issue with it if I couldn’t hit for 30k damage per vault at 5 initiative on no cooldown and lower cast times than what D/X (particularly D/D) can do. It might not be tremendously easy to play well (and even this is arguable depending on trait configuration and perceptions of Daredevil and primary kit played by the user (it’s way easier than D/D coming from my perspective, for example)), but I sincerely do think the ability is overtuned for its cost.

I can see it in a dueling environment/WvW being a bit too low-damage, (though ID should compensate for mug and more), but I do wonder about its applicability in sPvP since it’d steal 5 boons on engage and enable a 19% reduction in damage given a use of Dash, which is quite substantial when wanting to apply continuous pressure via AA, Headshot, and Shadow Shot.

Too much persistent evasion with Daredevil, although with skilled play it’s roughly the same as it is now, but Daredevil itself already raised the skill floor so much… I don’t want to think of noobs who barely know the profession just evading literally everything while stealing boons and being incapable of being locked down even when out-played due to the spammability of Daredevil’s free escapes.

If Daredevil didn’t exist: sure for balance reasons I guess (though I love me the unblockable nuke that LS is).

FS -> LS casting delays are very long, though it is an impactful skill and the ability does last a while, so it doesn’t need to be used immediately.

The kit would be much better off given an actually-useful pair of skills on OH dagger, though. I don’t think FS/LS is much of an issue, frankly.

babazhook.6805:

Straegen.2938:

babazhook.6805:

That said I really do not see an issue with the ICD on stealth attacks nor with Aegis/blocks dodges and the like. We deal with these in any case as thieves It does require more well thought out attacks but I do not see this as a problem.

Going stealth is typically an expensive proposition for a thief and misses for whatever reason on a stealth attack are costly. Priming RS with BV or using it with a stealth Steal and Bountiful make it better. However on its own that ICD will often see the trait go to waste against a good player that knows to block, dodge, etc a couple seconds after a thief goes stealth.

Hitting from stealth became far more skill and luck based with that ICD and this trait relies on that. Just makes it a had sell for me. Course I find SA to under perform compared to other trait lines these days but that is of course a personal opinion.

To play this efficiently you have to accept there will be misses and in fact bait the enemy to expend those dodges and blocks so that your RS becomes more effective. We do this already with power builds that do not use stealth and as theives we see many of those attacks blocked or evaded. There no real difference here as far as that goes outside what needed to enter stealth.

Again I have been using this mostly on a p/d condition build traited SA. Assume for the moment he takes Shadows rejuv instead. There no difference in the outcome of an attack. The enemy player is not going to increase his blocks or dodges just because I might be running RS. Futher to that you are going to enter stealth and attack far more often then he will be able to dodge or block you or no thief build would ever be able to kill an enemy player.

I assure you there no need to get Basi in this build. You are in and out of stealth so often a significant number of those attacks will succeed.

Many thieves still use steal and BT even though it can be avoided. RS is more effective then BT at boon removal.

I think the big benefit that P/D has going for it is that because Sneak Attack is multi-hit, so random one-off negation effects or very short term immunities/remainder effects of immunities/blocks are less prone to causing a failed source of damage and a trait not doing anything.

Frankly, I’m surprised not to see builds like D/P SA/Tr/DrD running around. This would enable benefits of BT and a pretty consistent RS from OOC stealth/re-accessible stealth and HT for re-tries on a failure/negated attack, and would let Daredevil take ID and use SE for cleansing. If anything, I think this build would bring more value to +1 than DA.

It’s still not something which can justify the ICD on stealth attacks and changes to BV, however. D/D and S/D are just screwed in this sense.

Admittedly, being instant cast was a little over the top. Although a neat approach to this might be simply allowing it to be instant-cast but increasing the cost of IR by 2 when stunned.

For Flanking/Larcenous initiative swaps, I will say this unfortunately can’t happen, and its split to make Flanking the expensive ability is definitely intentional. Flanking doesn’t turn until Larcenous unless the attack hits. It has a fairly small hitbox, so if cast without a target, it’d be very easy to chain near-permanent evasion, especially on Acrobatics + Daredevil, which would regenerate one of those initiative points with every evade and allow for more general-evasion, too.

The real problem with S/D is OH dagger. CnD is an under-performing ability game-wide at the moment, Dancing Dagger is never going to be any good until reworked entirely since it’s impossible to balance and make useful at the same time, and Tac Strike, while good, doesn’t justify using and likely wasting initiative on CnD which could be better-spent on evades and unblockable attacks.

900 range iStrike is definitely curious, especially since they removed the jump-cast iReturn cancellation which made the weapon be able to apply much more pressure; I’d have to play test it I think, as I can definitely see there being a valid argument about sword having too much disengage pressure.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I’ve read all the back and forth in this thread (only the relevant ones) and it seems that the idea of ICD is not a good thing for Thief overall.

The intended use of stealth is to have a maximum duration of 4s and I don’t believe that stacking stealth for a longer duration was ever the intention. Now building off this presumed intention, any additional stealth stack should have no other effect if the duration time already reached the maximum of 4 seconds. As a compensation, any excess stacks of stealth is converted to some kind of buff, e.g. Resistance, Protection, Stability, etc. This way, you can still leap multiple times into a smoke field to get some additional buff instead of extending stealth.

As for Revealed, it should never have been a duration debuff. Revealed should simply remove the stealth buff, that’s all. All the skills that apply Revealed needs to be redesigned to “Reveal target area for X duration” — so if a Thief in stealth moved to this area, their stealth buff is removed. Revealed Training can then be redesigned to counter this by giving the Thief Reveal immunity for X seconds; “You cannot be revealed for 2s when walking on a Revealed area”.

So as for the OP’s suggestion, I don’t think we need anymore ICD.

Without Revealed, we’d be back in the land of people spamming CnD without actually knowing how to play the class, and doing just fine.

RT would negate all purpose of any revealing effect as well.

Revealed isn’t overpowered so much as some essential aspects of the thief need to be decoupled from stealth itself. If we saw less of a dependency, revealed wouldn’t be so punishing except against bad players that can’t deal with being squishy and not having a get-out-of-jail-free card.

@Azukas, OP mains D/P, lol.

@Staff > D/P arguers: It isn’t. It’s too telegraphed in high level play for the most part, and D/P can very well counter staff given smart play using headshot while maintaining distance and interrupting vault, and the staff AA chain does nothing about SS’s blind or damage. Staff is still an excellent weapon and has tremendous benefits when on flat surfaces in something like a 2v2 due to its projectile deflects and cleave/burst, but I insist most of the best of the best will still claim D/P is the superior kit for most purposes.

@Everying freaking out: I literally proved a 1s ICD would do absolutely nothing if you played it well. Not that I’m in support of the change since taking a closer look, but I think the issues are bigger than D/P itself.

Probably a PvE player ktraining WvW now who just realized how bad the loot is.

Sorry OP, if you’re on BG playing a necro, you really can’t do any better, all things considered.

Jeknar.6184:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Just wanna point out that most server take part in the buying of guilds. Its not specific to BG or JQ.

FC bought [Sold] (Pun not intended). Even lower tiers buy guilds.

Serious talk tho: It’s like I said in the other post. People are here all crying about servers buying guilds but it’s not like these servers send gold and the guild is forced to move. People can make the choice of not accepting the gold and not move. However, these people decide to sell themselves of their own will. The problem here isn’t servers offering gold to guilds move, but the guilds accepting gold to move to certain servers.

Yup.

These guilds wouldn’t get offers to begin with if they weren’t fair-weathers that enjoyed stomping, anyways.

RodOfDeath.5247:

William Bradley Knight.2609:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Lol what exactly do you find skillful about his play?
Drop 2 traps on a semi afk player, run away to stack stealth, rinse and repeat until they die, edit out all the footage where it doesn’t work.

The only thing I’ll give him props on is running sylvari so he can use the elite to counter reveal.

It’s not that I find his play skillful, but more that there are a lot of really bad players in WvW. Of course he is doing this in T1, but still…look at how those players reacted to him. Or rather how they did not react.

Was thinking that as well. Most of them just stood there doing nothing competent. I’ve played this build a bit and it’s pretty effective for the most part. If you mess up you can get annihilated at times, but for the most part it is fun to troll with.

In my experience, competent players will know quickly how to fight this build, t1 zerglings will never have a chance as the video shows. Hence why the lower tiers are more fun IMO, better fights.

Everyone knows that the legitimate claims to Mag having a particularly good small-scale playerbase generally speaking ended years ago, especially now that they’re bandwagoned by wannabes attracted to the glory of high KDR from other just as cancerous builds in massive gank groups that quite frankly carry the players.

In essence, Mag is kept up by its reputation alone and its playerbase being rewarded for trolling based on the mechanics of WvW.

There are some great players still in Mag, but like any T1 server, they’re in the minority.
And the respectable ones are fewer-found :P

bjchase.3074:

tym.3791:

Im on YB, and I HATE t1. HATE it so bad, I wanna transfer, but dont wanna pay the fee, so I simply dont WvW much any more. Yea YB does Ktrain, have to, facing the mag, or bg blobs in the times I play, we are just getting steam rolled. I hate one sided fights, I hate being on the winning and loosing side of em. Its no fun. So we hit bl and ktrain, really not much else to do.

I was on YB since launch. I took a few months off of playing before HoT (YB was T3/4 at that time). When I came back for HoT YB was T1. Ugh. I joined a guild (KRTA) without knowing what server it was on (I was doing mainly PvE so it didn’t matter). I liked the people in KRTA and with YB in T1 I went to Mags (which was T3 at the time). Now I’m back in T1. Ugh. But, being in an awesome guild with great people to talk with and who can field a decent size group for WvW makes being in T1 more than tolerable. The skill lag when it is 50+ vs 50+ vs 50+ is still really annoying though. Ugh.

This is why I went to T2 and wanted to stay in T2. T1 is crap filled with maximum overblob/gankers and way too many bandwagon players, be them drivers or passengers.

X T D.6458:

Well, just gonna throw this out there, that JQ is a full server, has so far placed last in 30 skirmishes and is now losing to SBI

TC-137
JQ-102
SBI-103

grabs white air popped popcorn

Like I said pages ago; their quality is not there, and TC’s SEA’s is.

Hilarious, though; Mal moaning about full servers and stacking when that’s literally all he does. Hope it stays locked to maybe help stop this bandwagon/mass-transfer BS mentality.

And don’t say just because I’m on TC which got stacked on that I can’t talk. I was in the camp who didn’t want any of it to begin with, and was very content with the close, quality fights and matchups we were having in T2 at the time.

True. Frankly the duration cap hasn’t crossed my mind in a very long time :P
This exposes an issue with the 1s ideology, though.

Even normal D/P isn’t affected given this behavior on a 1s ICD – because the ICD would start after the .75s on HS, anyways.

It still leaves SA easily close to being capped with only two casts or easily capped with 3 while core D/P needs 3 but is otherwise unaffected, assuming a margin of error of .25s on the mis-timing the ICD timer slightly (nobody’s truly perfect) and for aftercast delays on HS.

Edit: Had to replace plus signs with & since the forums underlined everything >.>

Normal D/P:
T0: BP
T0.50: HS; Stealth(3s) – no margin for error on first cast with BP/no ICD.
T1.25 – T2.25: Stealth(3s -> 2s) / ICD / Mid-ICD HS;
T2.25 (&0.25): Stealth(2s -> 1.75s) & Stealth(3s)
T2.50 – T3.5: Wait; Stealth(1.75s -> .75s) & Stealth (3s) / Mid-ICD HS;
T3.5(&0.25) – T4.25: Stealth(.75s -> Expired) + Stealth (3s -> 2.75s) + Stealth(3s) = Capped & .75s on 3 casts

SA:
T0: T0: BP
T0.5: HS
T1.25 – T2.25: Stealth(4s -> 3s) / ICD
T2.25 – T3.25: Stealth(3s -> 2s) / HS
T3.25(&0.25) – T4.25: HS; Stealth (2s -> 1s) + Stealth (4s) = Capped at 5.0s on 2 casts

This indicates even on a 2s ICD, nothing would change except removing the ability for non-SA builds to keep stealth up in this way (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), but does not impact SA-based builds.

Thus, to actually make an effective change, OOC stealth would need to be eliminated entirely/relegated to just SR/BliP or long-cooldown abilities/specific ones like MI /Veil (something I see as favorable for the whole game) or made close to a one-time deal on D/P (I.E, BP costs 10 initiative, HS increased to 4 initiative and returns 1 on target hit when not gaining stealth or something), which is pretty unreasonable and probably not happening, since this doesn’t fix the case with Daredevil using Bound, either.

stale.9785:

To be fair, there has only been ONE change made purely for the needs of PvE in the entire history of GW2, and that was the FGS nerf.

Every single other balance pass has been based on PvP or WvW.

Take your entitlement elsewhere, OP.

30% AA damage increase to the thief was purely for PvE.
As was the BF change for mesmer this last patch.
And Nerf to BV way back when since it ignored Defiance.
And the trait rework to war letting PS act as a support skill.
And the changes to health on ranger pets.

There are many more. These are the ones that I can just recall off the top of my head, coming from someone who doesn’t PvE.

You do not get to call WvW players entitled lmfao.
Poor loot, no unlocks, few achieves, cost-prohibitive gameplay, unfixed bugs, ignored suggestions, blatant neglect, no new features for four years, blatantly obvious failing of the community when launching HoT from the guild perspective, terrible class/profession gear balance (no removal of blatantly overpowered gear like dire/tb/perplexity/durability for the sole reason being PvE which got removed in sPvP), and PvP-targeted balance tweaks not affecting WvW… yea, WvW is so entitled, lol.

And real talk, the impact on PvE was negligible. Revenants/groups are overreacting, sorry. Theorycraft has been done that I’ve witnessed still proving a revenant is plenty useful/viable and provides near-identical or unparalleled support to other builds for the most part.

Basically, something super overpowered/absolutely mandated in PvE got nerfed (indirectly nerfing say, the thief, and indirectly buffing other professions, by the way), and everyone’s freaking out over nothing because they haven’t actually looked at the math.

Honestly, the impact of this change was rather insignificant for WvW as a whole, all things considered. They need to go further and massively nerf boon and CC accessibility.

LionChain.7694:

@OP: Keep destroying your class? lmao…wtf r u talking about?! XD Who cares if you get revealed? Do you not have like a bajillion teleports and dodges to kite away until the few seconds of reveal go away?! lmao R u telling me that ur such a bad thief that if u got revealed, u’ll just insta-die right away?! bahahahahhahaha

Granted while I disagreed with the OP, do you have any idea who they are?

Pretty sure they’d straight destroy you in a fight, Mr. “DH needs a buff”.

This is a change I can totally get behind in concept, though I think they would need to revisit Blinding Powder, since the blash finisher + Black Powder is what’s really responsible for the potency behind its use.

Removing the ICD from stealth attacks and placing one on stealth acquisition would be a pretty major start to say the least. I’m not sure if 1s would really change anything for the most part, though. Given SA, you still end up with the same problem as currently, and it really doesn’t change much all things considered.

In all seriousness in order to fix the problem as a whole, it’d probably have to go to 1.5/2s with changes made to SR’s pulse rate/durations/field duration to account for this adjustment.

Frankly, I think the bigger fish to fry for more diversity on the thief come down to nerfs to Shadow Shot (you saw what happened when I equipped D/P last time we fought, and that wasn’t even activating the signets) and reworks to OH dagger (particularly when looking at D/D as a whole).

Edit: Proven below, I’ve debunked the idea as being meaningful. Reading my initial post again, I’d like to mention/clarify that I speak only on the context of power builds and that nerfs and changes to D/P would be contingent on reworks to the profession as a whole to improve it game-wide. I do not want to nerf the thief, but increase its pool of viable builds while keeping those builds fair and fun to fight both as and against.

apharma.3741:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Korgov.7645:

Hanza.6872:

An interesting discussion. However, to be talking about the same thing the discussion should be split into two factors. (Disclaimer, I’m a thief main, but trying to stay objective)

1. Stealth Stacking.
In my opinion there is currently too much of this. Both thief and mesmer can stay in stealth for prolonged periods of time. However, many of their builds need stealth to stay alive.. Not easy to fix.. However, people often don’t slot reveals, because that would hurt their build against other opponents. Pick your poison I’d say.

Mesmers don’t have much use for long duration stealth. Glass cannon base mesmer may need some seconds to recharge the mantras and wait for Mind Wrack/Prestige cooldown. Other mesmer builds just lose damage if hovering in stealth.

What thief build (other than this ghost) absolutely needs stealth stacking in combat?

PU Mesmers require long duration Stealth since it effectively shortens all their Torch CDs which means more Condis and faster access to stealth so their condis can do all the work. No otherThief build uses stealth stacking unless escaping people or hiding from Zergs.

Not entirely true, it does reduce torch cool downs the longer you’re in stealth however torch itself is generally a bad offhand used mostly for its stealth. The conditions it applies, the way they get applied are pretty poor and the phantasm has one of the longest cool downs for mesmer for no reason at all when you consider it’s so bad it can’t hit dolyaks a lot.

Many mesmers spoke out against the trait that enabled this, the pledge, saying they wanted it changing as it promoted a bad play style of stealth camping. While some love their overpowered stuff stealth stacking on mesmer is as much a problem as on thief.

Whatever solution is come up with thief would need a large number of traits to go from “while in stealth” to “when entering stealth” and mesmers would need to see a sizable increase to their ability to pressure or avoid being hit between bursts with many weapon skills needing a full rework.

I’m not even saying the build (D/P) or stealth (mostly for D/P) don’t need nerfs/changes. I’m just saying that generalizing the thief community to those who defend these kinds of things is kind of rude, particularly when the subject is pertinent to something that the profession is so deeply entrenched in. Kinda like when non-mesmers ask for nerfs or changes to shatters, even if there can be argued reasons to change and tweak shatters to enable the mesmer more consistent use throughout the game (the discussion on subjects like innate weapon DPS/Shatter burst balance and clone/AI dependency issues, for example).

Unfortunately the sad truth is most of what is left of the thief community are those types of people who vehemently defend these kinds of builds thinking they’re fine. Though this seems to be the case with most professions as most people not aiming for maximum faceroll left with HoT.

Omega Zoa.3859:

DeceiverX.8361:

For the thief… launch. Easy.

Quickness still at 100% cast speed and not a boon, PW dealing another 20% damage, with no precast animation, no Revealed debuff, no ICD on stealth attacks, CnD dealing 20% more damage, Mug critting, Assassin’s Signet applying a 50% damage modifier, Critical Strikes trait line actually being useful, permanent 14 might and stealth from SA alone, infinite stealth on D/P alone, multiple trait lines with crazy strong adept traits, Basilisk Venom couldn’t be stunbroken and ignored stability, permanent blind/multi-pulses on Black Powder, Dagger Storm dealing way more damage, Dancing Dagger’s damage up by ~75% with an extra bounce, shortbow range at 1200, shortbow AA having more damage, shortbow AA ignoring stealth and teleports on bounces, HiS cleansed all the DoT conditions, Infiltrator’s Strike costed less initiative and didn’t have a second part – just an instant evade, and most significantly, no silly powercreep yet in the core game.

I probably missed a few more big ones since then, but those were just the major ones that came to mind.

I remember fighting thieves at launch….rage would be putting it mildly.

While half of these could honestly be brought back as an “elite spec” and all the white-knights would say it’s great design and totally balanced, it definitely was overtuned.

That said, most of the rage probably came from the culling bug/problem where stealthed players after leaving stealth wouldn’t be visible until way afterwards.

The sad truth about linking is that they didn’t do it the required way in order to make it successful. My effective fix proposal to WvW involved the linking tech, but mandated that in order to work, server communities would need to remain. You should not feel like you’re fighting for another community’s success, and things like server-exclusive chat and server names of allied players (or some kind of indicator) should have been preserved.

I can’t stomach the profession balance very much at this point. ANet isn’t even trying to push for fun and unique gameplay concepts. A lot of it is just rather stupid.

As far as gems go, absolutely. I cut myself off last November with HoT. I will not fund the gem store until the game gets the attention it needs to be worth said purchases.

I’d rather see them make Sneak Gyro have the same effect, honestly.

This is a case of answering power creep with power creep as a comparison or trying to mesh incompatible mechanics. SR’s supposed to have counterplay either by dropping bombs on it or CC’ing the thief out of the ring; it says “I’m here but you can’t see or target me” and is a great get-out-of-jail-free card if used properly and timed when your target doesn’t have an answer, since it also heals. The Daredevil does not sit in one place and isn’t meant to, and while utilities should mesh, recognizing differences in style and intent as great as this one suggest they should be kept exclusive, particularly in the sense that you’d have incredible evasion and reset potential also being able to utilize a very powerful long-lasting stealth effect.

For the thief… launch. Easy.

Quickness still at 100% cast speed and not a boon, PW dealing another 20% damage, with no precast animation, no Revealed debuff, no ICD on stealth attacks, CnD dealing 20% more damage, Mug critting, Assassin’s Signet applying a 50% damage modifier, Critical Strikes trait line actually being useful, permanent 14 might and stealth from SA alone, infinite stealth on D/P alone, multiple trait lines with crazy strong adept traits, Basilisk Venom couldn’t be stunbroken and ignored stability, permanent blind/multi-pulses on Black Powder, Dagger Storm dealing way more damage, Dancing Dagger’s damage up by ~75% with an extra bounce, shortbow range at 1200, shortbow AA having more damage, shortbow AA ignoring stealth and teleports on bounces, HiS cleansed all the DoT conditions, Infiltrator’s Strike costed less initiative and didn’t have a second part – just an instant evade, and most significantly, no silly powercreep yet in the core game.

I probably missed a few more big ones since then, but those were just the major ones that came to mind.

Offair.2563:

apharma.3741:

No guys, you have it all wrong, thief is a high skill floor ultra high skill ceiling class. What you see here isn’t a thief it’s…er…well you don’t see it.

Stealth is perfectly balanced and has plenty of counterplay, never mind that someone that hasn’t been lobotomised can still stack stealth by doing it away from people. Just stand in the red circles!

Thief has the lowest DPS and burst and everything with lowest survivability so it needs stealth.

Just cleanse and run away, it only kills bad players.

All this and more when “thief mains” see the thread.

That’s pretty much what teef mainers come and tell ya when you have valid concerns about broken kitten.

That’s pretty unfair considering the number of times the existence of permanent stealth uptime has been requested to be removed by the thief community at the expense of other improvements, and depending on the format, the validity of such arguments like damage and defense varies astronomically, and most suggestions to nerf the thief’s access to stealth made by others are typically heavy-handed, put nicely (like suggestions on removing the leap from HS altogether), so people get defensive, considering ANet’s track record with the profession and making totally unjustified changes to it (stealth attack ICD’s, condi buffs, support nerfs, daredevil buffs, core trait nerfs, etc.).

As I said above, I don’t think anyone with a reasonable understanding of the game admits that this build is fun or fair to play against. I don’t really think stealth itself needs a rework, rather I think the thief weapon skills do. OH pistol is invaluable while OH dagger is horrible, and the decision of the OH weapon changes the dual skill which often changes a whole build/style of play.

gnotshr.9136:

I’m not here to argue whether or not the build needs a nerf or toning down. This is a response to answer the OP’s question about what he should do; my response is to run. Unless you have absurdist burst, negation, and cleansing, you’re not killing this build. Builds like rifle engi and power reaper have effectively no way to beat this build if it’s played by someone who doesn’t need to be much better than being AFK. It’s a brutal, unfair and blatantly stupid hard counter, but welcome to the wonderful world of post-HoT GW2; it’s like this on most professions and builds.

The one problem with this is, the OP isn’t asking how to counter a D/D condi thief.

Well that’s awkward. I just made the assumption and thought the video was of his build so I didn’t watch it :s

It’s still tough with the resets on 3, though good timing on evades can negate the CnD (whoops) and it’s equally important to try and chain-CC it via the rifle or do so immediately after it opens the gap with Shadow Strike. It’s a pretty weak build from a distance as its damage comes from being close up.

Xenesis.6389:

Wow.. amazing, the fact you did it to maguuma makes it even more lolworthy.

Stealth design is broken, always has been broken, always will be broken in this game, that’s all that needs to be said. Thanks for putting those up, I await the usual thief responses.

I don’t think anyone with a remote sense of understanding of fun and balanced gameplay design promotes this build.

It maybe not be OP, but it is stupid – stealth stacking as a whole is on any class for any reason.

#NerfStealthBuffThief

emkelly.2371:

DeceiverX.8361:

Condi thief playing D/D should not be using CnD much. It’s wasting initiative if it’s trying to stealth for extended periods of time without D/P.

Playing berserker will not kill a condi Daredevil either, unless they’re horrible. There is not enough burst in this game currently to counterburst a dire daredevil played even somewhat competently. And that’s coming from me.

• Wait for death blossom
• Burst damage at end of death blossom
• Sorry DecieverX I run DD condi Thief and know exactly how every class can kill it.
• you are correct about CnD though. It’s a waste of resources

I did, too, for about a hundred hours to verify how stupid the build is, and I don’t think I can recount a fight I’ve lost when playing it halfway decently (and even I play viper’s/carrion). Yea, you don’t just mash 3 as hard as you can to beat skilled players (though it works great on non-power builds and the “average” guy running around), but if you’re not trolling around in full viper’s and aren’t just straight up horrible at stunbreaking or queuing abilities, the build literally cannot be bursted 100-0 by anything. You have to misplay to die when playing it on rabid, TB, or dire.

I’m not here to argue whether or not the build needs a nerf or toning down. This is a response to answer the OP’s question about what he should do; my response is to run. Unless you have absurdist burst, negation, and cleansing, you’re not killing this build. Builds like rifle engi and power reaper have effectively no way to beat this build if it’s played by someone who doesn’t need to be much better than being AFK. It’s a brutal, unfair and blatantly stupid hard counter, but welcome to the wonderful world of post-HoT GW2; it’s like this on most professions and builds.

As far as the mobility commets go, I don’t really know how this can be argued when running Dash, Shadowstep, and shortbow. My condi thief is a much better finisher than my power one since the latter depends on the nerfed state of sword, and the condi one does so much damage via shortbow.

ANet has made it very clear any new weapon additions to the game are not happening in the foreseeable future. Claws seem a bit too exotic for the GW lore (similarly to scythes and sickles, kusari-gama, etc. that people keep asking for), and the scope of work to integrate all those new weapon types and skins into the game would be huge. Realistically, I don’t think ANet is up for that. It’s a very niche weapon. I see two medium-armor professions and maybe a light running around raking people with claws. I think your suggestion, particularly given its emphasis on magical effects, would make more sense just recommending a focus. Many of the recent skins have a katar/claw-like appearance to them that could easily justify a melee-weapon use.

Frankly, I don’t even think ANet will release another dual-wieldable weapon for the thief. That requires more skill changes than they’d probably like to do or try to balance given the fact they know so little about the profession, and changes to weapon skills exacerbate this.

I’m not criticizing the quality of the suggestion, mind you. I’m just stating I don’t think the proposal is realistic in its very nature.

Still, I’m not sure if I follow the mechanical changes. These abilities have no cooldowns (but you say they do?), but how long do they last for? Initiative stops regenerating when using them, so you justify their use by providing them better innate power than what the normal thief has access to (this is my biggest concern since PvP will be trivialized into doing nothing more than using a control), and the claw’s weapon skills themselves all have weapon skills attached to them while not using the initiative system? I see no reason to run anything other than claws since if initiative stops regenerating, using initiative-based skills on control costs would be worthless unless only ever used for a burst engage, which kind of defeats the entire purpose of the design behind the elite, since then it’ll only get used for power-creeped gimmick play.

Speed and teleports don’t seem to be adjusted which account for most of the mobility on the thief. Shadow Shot, Infil Arrow, ISignet and IS/IR are all still available skills which would offset any mobility penalties, and all of them currently act in-game as very fast sprints; that’s what lets IS/IR/IArrow/Steal/ISignet/SS get interrupted on static fields and the likes. There’s seemingly no downside.

Your initial post states that when pickpocketed, players cannot swap weapons “as long as this effect is active.” You specified no inclination of what a duration might be on the effect, and I only presume it’s permanent since it’s modifies all skills and abilities and has penalties while stopping initiative regeneration. You’re also suggesting the player gets stunned and prevents being able to use abilities such as stunbreaks; that’s quite literally the old Basilisk Venom, duration and everything, which on a 60s cooldown was considered an effect (Stone) too overpowered for the entire game, and was changed to a normal stun.

Camo’s 33% damage reduction + RoS’s 20% damage reduction + RS’s 10% damage reduction + protection on durability runes would enable a 67% reduction in damage; that’d put a stealthed thief’s EHP taking advantage of RS to over 33k innately, and one running say a marauder/valkyrie mix to an EHP of between 45k and 63k without WvW health bonuses. That’s still assuming power damage gear; one in D/P condi for example would have an EHP against power of close to 100k. That’s an absolutely ridiculous amount of health for a stealthed target.
And as mentioned, the mobility change doesn’t really mean much considering the number of accessible teleports available to the thief, and SA’s 50% movespeed bonus in stealth would directly and totally offset the penalties to movespeed, while also being completely punishing to anyone not in SA, and again, this would also push stealth gained from one cast of BP + HS to 8s, which would enable permanent stealth with relative ease and very easy procs on RS.

Your proposal has a lot of just blatantly crazy and over-the-top OP abilities tied into it, and doesn’t really provide enough detail to either prove otherwise or give a better as to why the ideas are logically sounds ones aside from the “this would be so rad” factor.

For one it’s overstated, and the other bit is that’s entirely caused because of the astronomical and absurd powercreep from Daredevil. The fact that Daredevil even exists kind of proves my point that ANet doesn’t know what they’re doing, and that’s coming from someone who used to main thief.

Fixing forum bug.

Ging.6485:

They already killed Rev’s raid viability because of WvW.

This has already been proven as mathematically false. People seriously overreacted because something blatantly OP got nerfed into being reasonable.

Hell, if it exposes the rest of the power creep from HoT and gets it nerfed, win-win for everyone.

killahmayne.9518:

Jeknar.6184:

killahmayne.9518:

Mag is a bit disorganized in terms of roaming, alot of solo roaming instead of banding together in groups of 3,

Mag not running in groups.

lul

being serious, a lot of the times I just see a bunch of pugs rolling in groups of two and by themselves. even if they were it really isn’t much different in any other server. Maybe I just play sporadically at different times and tend to avoid places that Mag zergs heavily at.

They don’t really omniblob, no. But lacking group play? Oh boy… that’s very far from most peoples’ experience.

Be happy you play when you do, is all I can say.

You must in fact use a finisher for anything that has to do with spikes.

Maybe report it as a bug and perchance ANet will fix it.

There is no explanation. Have you paid attention to the thief at all? ANet at one point during a stream said they didn’t know what they were doing with the profession because none of their employees play/played it.

Changes are made arbitrarily based on anecdotal or metric data from a very few selected formats and purposes (I.E. how often they’re used in raids/fractals).

Sorry to say, you’re stuck with it as it is.

5/7 Rito pls.

Condi thief playing D/D should not be using CnD much. It’s wasting initiative if it’s trying to stealth for extended periods of time without D/P.

Playing berserker will not kill a condi Daredevil either, unless they’re horrible. There is not enough burst in this game currently to counterburst a dire daredevil played even somewhat competently. And that’s coming from me.

While the design ideology seems neat, I feel like this might actually end up better off as an engineer concept more than a thief one. The whole mixing-pot chemistry thing seems more suited to the class based around that philosophy more than the thief.

I would like to see a bit more specifics as to what you’d envision, OP. How does the rifle and pistol play into this, and more importantly, how do the rest of the available weapons perform in conjunction?

A common mistake I see coming from people suggesting elites is a bit too much coupling with the spec weapon or an existing one. Ideally there should be soundness to using all previous weapons as well.

Ignoring the fact that this won’t happen because ANet will not implement a new weapon type for a single specialization.

And then exacerbated by more weapon skills and mechanics changes through the spellslinger etc.

It seems like a lot of unnecessary mechanical changes.

So claw skills all have cooldowns, and the forms act as shrouds to gain bonuses but stop initiative regeneration? How strong would these skills need to be to justify their cooldowns? Do these not have initiative costs and thus gain the full benefits of the controls at all times? Seems totally overpowered. And Pickpocketing seems totally broken if each attack stuns for two seconds, claws or not, initiative or not, considering the AA chains right now on the thief are already primary damage sources. Actually, a lot of them look really broken for the playstyles they cover (100% stealth increase in particular) I can only imagine the fun of that with an SA build letting D/P stealth infinitely on only one use of BP, or SR yielding almost 50% uptime on its own.

Seems like a lot of work for something that’s not mechanically sound/convoluted and what appears to be very overpowered.

Fixing the forum bug.

5/7 nice job, OP.

A revenant provides just as much diving potential and isolated target killing but with much better group utility, and sticking around to spike players using Impact Strike every 30-40s does not warrant their use in blobs. Lava font power ele is just as good for securing kills while having the benefit of providing a ton of AoE/backline hate damage and zoning, plus boons and heals.

When it comes to finishing downed players in mass-scale, my meatgrinder power reaper does a MUCH better job than any thief I know (including my own), and can steal over 50 boons on engage + bomb for 20-30k AoE unblockable damage, with next to identical mobility to the thief once the zergs collide and people start dying since every kill assist via cleave resets Death’s Charge.

On the individual level I’d probably give it to FA overall (about month ago; maybe it was their pairing, too, idk). Fairly humble server in my experience and provided a lot of very tough skirmishes without an excess of cheese. Granted, I guess it depends on what you mean on by roaming and havoc.

Mag doesn’t have good players for the most part, especially now with the brandwagoning. BG is massively overrated. TC is extremely hit-or-miss depending on time of day and just some individual players (you’ll see random pug groups from TC wipe groups 3x their size, but other pug groups of 5-6 consistently die to solo, no-name players). When against Mag, I’ve never not been ganked by less than 5 people, all running FoTM cheese, when running alone. There are some truly exceptional players there, but I’ve personally never seen them, and that number isn’t indicative of the server’s overall capacity,. Further, it’s relatively identical across the game for every server. There are exceptional players on every server. Some are just more active and/or more vocal than others.

The 15-man spawncamping permastealth squad of PU mesmers, immediately capping confusion on pugs and small groups of 2-4 is kind of what they do and how they do it. Yea, you don’t need to carry their pugs, but their pugs pretty much consist of gank squads that won’t touch a fair fight with a ten foot pole. High KDR, seemingly good performance, but just because they seem to be always around spawn and killing people there doesn’t really indicate the the players are good or the havoc actually productive.

Honestly, I’d just say don’t bother even looking, because the small-scale scene aside from cheese ganking is pretty much entirely dead. HoT killed off most of the esteemed small-scale players/guilds immediately with the guild hall stuff, expensive costs to re-gear with powercreeped new stat options, desert BL being anti-small-group, and broken elite specs. Most of what’s left is just the trolls and gankers who got beat hard before, who need to chest-thump by crushing weaker groups to feel good about themselves. And it’s not a Mag thing or any specific community; it’s pretty applicable to every server that has pride in small-scale and havoc these days; the dregs are getting their chance at fame under the delusion that they’re all exceptional players or somesuch nonsense.

Coldtart.4785:

DeceiverX.8361:

Seeing power necro beat condi mesmer/thief, D/D power thief beat a berserker or DH, and ele beat a druid are examples where there’s simply no arguing that the latter players all got massively out-played despite having huge innate advantages. Assuming they’re average players, this indicates that the former ones are strictly skilled.

I’ve actually found whenever I’ve won or just barely lost a fight despite a massive build disadvantage that it really had nothing to do with my skill, but that the other guy was playing strictly incorrectly. Even if there was some kind of skill involved on my part I only had the opportunity because the enemy just used the wrong move.

A classic example: dodging thief steals. There was once a thief that I encountered 3 different times in a session and all 3 times he tried to steal to me with basilisk venom on only to get dodged. Steal is instant, so I had to read his intentions to be able to narrow down when he would do it to a 0.75 second window, but at the end of the day opening with a basi’d steal is just playing the game wrong. He should’ve waited for a chance to interrupt my heal instead since there’s no way that could’ve gone badly for him.

Wat.

First, that has absolutely nothing to do with builds. If you dodge a BV’d steal, great for you; every profession and every build can do it. You’re literally arguing right now that you dodged a mesmer’s Mantra of Pain and therefore they misplayed their build. That makes absolutely no sense at all.

Second, opening with BV on steal or on a teleport is widely considered to be one of the best possible ways to engage on thief, especially when not on D/P where you rarely have the capacity to safely cast it once engaged without resetting hard (and if you plan to, pre-cast OOC wait on the timer/cooldown and do it halfway through the fight at ~20s like normal people).

I have absolutely no idea how this indicates any amount of misplay on your opponent’s behalf when you even stated early on that you dodged by playing well enough to avoid being hit by an instantaneous no-cast stun.

Unless you started the dodge and then he stole after seeing you dodge (I.E. he was just plain bad), there’s really no way to call anyone out for that.

Ragion.2831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Lost me at 5 since skill timers are an option and have been as long as I remember.

Someone mentioned this earlier i ignored it cuz i thought it was a mistake.

Turn on skill timers, use your weapon skills with cooldowns then swap weapons. Can you see the timer on the skills you just used? No? There you go.

I imagine Grouch or Gaile woud have seen this thread by now and i think Gaile is in programming

Plz tell who ever is supposed to do the interface to drop the slot sizes for weapons and utility skills and then fit in a space for trait passives, sigils and rune cooldowns represented by symbols. Add in a slightly transparent progress bar at the bottom of each skill slot that shows the cooldown for skills you swapped from that share the same slot. Then figure something out for transformation skill cooldowns like celestial form and shroud. I dunno what you are gonna do about eles tho

I dont think any mmorpg created makes you guess when your skills are off cooldown. Definitely not any done in the last 15 years.

So you want to be able to see skill cooldowns that are currently unavailable, anyways?
A chunk of the skill in PvP is knowing when and when not to swap weapons. A majority of the skill in PvP is keeping track of time. The best PvP players always know how much time is left on a majority of both their abilities and their opponents’. With practice, your own become second nature. If you swap too early, that’s entirely on you. Play an FPS game and go complain about how you don’t know how much ammo is left in your gun/the reload status on it after swapping to another. You’re going to be told to keep track and learn to play. You’re told what the cooldowns are. The second weapon is an entirely separate entity, and you need to treat it as such while respecting how you rotate and swap. Honestly, this complaint is just silly. It sounds like you never got the hang of the game, frankly. If you wanted to complain about cooldowns, it should be about the number of passive procs on ICD’s and how those aren’t visible, not that weapon skills which you as the player are responsible for keeping track of aren’t.

And Gaile isn’t with programming at all, lol. She’s lead of communications. Basically game PR. Aside from writing reports on how the players are perceiving the game state, she’s about as far away from development – particularly programming – as it gets.

Liam McColgan.7689:

Yes, mesmer.

The mesmer i fell in love with 3 years ago, and subsequently made my main for pvp, and wvw died when season 1 started.

It used to take a lot of skill running around as zerker mesmer, co-ordination bursts, knowing how to use every bit of the map to your advantage so you dont get 2 shot, and fighting thieves took alot of skill and class know-how.

Now (even more so in s1-3) you just run around on a point, spamming shatters, invuns, evades etc. There is so much room for kittening up, basically.

Signet of illusions now means you dont have to think, or care about how you use your shatters, it’s just a case of spam them, unload condis, use signet, rinse and repeat.

It’s boring, killed what i loved about the class (nuke or be nuked attitude) and whats worse, its now prevalent in wvw. Every kittening roamer is condi, and they think they are special because no on can 1v1 them without perma resistance.

I don’t even feel a sense of self accomplishment anymore when i win 1v1s or run into a point and condi bomb.

Shame on you Anet, for killing the class and most importantly, the PLAYING STYLE i loved for so long.

Precisely how I feel about D/D power thief. If you’re not on D/P Daredevil or condi, you’re at the bottom of the bottom.

Lost me at 5 since skill timers are an option and have been as long as I remember.

I think it’s pretty simple to define cheese: either the build has very few playstyle counters available to it while countering most other builds on the build-level;
or,
the amount of skill required to play a given build with reasonable success is much lower than other builds, often through mechanics which have little interaction with the opponent.

Cheese and skill are not mutually exclusive. That said, there’s often few ways to distinguish a good player on a cheesy build from a not-as-skilled one.

In many respects, cheesy builds are often optimal as in the hands of good players there’s little or nothing you can do about them; they offer few or no playstyle counters as the cheesy builds are broken on their build level, and for the most part when against the few that do exist, they’ll be able to out-play their opponents because they have less to focus on except for what their enemy is doing (or conversely only need to focus on themselves) and care not for what the enemy is doing).

You can tell a skilled player from an unskilled one dependent on how strong the build they’re using is for the most part, and whether or not they’re making plays that make sense to the situation rather than their specific rotation to score a win. Seeing power necro beat condi mesmer/thief, D/D power thief beat a berserker or DH, and ele beat a druid are examples where there’s simply no arguing that the latter players all got massively out-played despite having huge innate advantages. Assuming they’re average players, this indicates that the former ones are strictly skilled.

morrolan.9608:

Princess.7584:

morrolan.9608:

Princess.7584:

morrolan.9608:

JQs SEA is not overstacked any more, at least not relative to T1 servers.

Which T1 servers do you speak of. YB? TC? Mags? Who else has the size to compete?

BG, TC, Mag definitely.

There was a reason I did not add BG, is locked, thats speaks for itself. But if you think that Mags and TC have the numbers to fight map queues, then you do not play SEA or you have trouble seeing the green names around you.

Looking at the scores this week TC and JQ have traded places in sea all week with maybe TC being just in front in terms of skirmishes won.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Today JQ owned 85% of all of WvW. This is a normal thing no matter the match up and even more so considering both MAG and BG have lost SEA to the EU servers.

https://puu.sh/rOOs5/f99440a482.png

This is JQs ticks during this match up. TC does not have enough SEA to compete with JQs SEA. Today they near full capped WvW in Tier 2.

Like I said above thats just 1 day. However I do understand that means everyone that played yesterday in SEA time counts as part of JQ’s population for the server status because certainly they would have played enough. I do think that means the algorithm needs adjusting in terms of smoothing out extreme variations in players logging in and I sure hope its taken into account for server links.

JQ’s SEA coverage is absolutely massive. Actually, we’ve been with the Outnumbered buff in NA prime against JQ, too. During SEA, the server rivals BG NA prime, and still rivals YB-prime numbers during NA.

JQ’s SEA coverage quality of player just isn’t good is the issue. I ran with an OCX guild one day this past week and joined after ten minutes. Our group of fifteen was consistently wiping JQ’s 50-man. It single-handedly improved our entire servers’ KDR by a several percentage points in one night in the middle of the week.

It’s not a population issue. Fact is your eggs are all in one basket and the basket isn’t one which will carry the eggs.

Lotus Bane.9387:

Does the Trickery trait line help the group at all?

Not really, no.

The boons you can provide will be corrupted quickly, anyways, and at best you’re looking to 50% uptime.

The thief does not contribute to support conducive to optimizing group performance in any way whatsoever. Since WvW zerging is all about maximizing support and stacking defenses, the profession as a whole contributes next to nothing in large, organized group play since it’s also inherently squishy and poor at taking hits.

You either need to play tremendously well on a burst build and hit their backline at just the right time to prevent taking tons of hate by other backliners who haven’t casted their abilities yet while also avoiding getting stomped by the frontline in the attempt to move in, or play some kind of ninja-nurse medic in an organized mid-scale group of ~15. Massive ZvZ there’s very little place. Forget about the rare possibility of sniping commanders and high-priority targets – those days went away with HoT buffing defenses so much and repeated subsequent nerfs to the thief’s capacity to burst well and get away since then, direct or indirect.

For sPvP you’re still going to want the shortbow for decaps depending on the map. Yes, Dash + Vault offers similar land speed, but Vault does not allow for much vertical mobility at all.