The problem is all of are skills aren’t balanced in a way that caters using all our weapons skills in a rotation to maintain pressure and dps. Too many of our weapon skills are situational rather then fire and forget like the other professions.
For instance, running P/P on my engie, I can spam my skills fairly mindlessly and achieve great effects. As opposed to my S/P thief, the only skill I’ll use for damage is Pistol Whip; 2, 4 and 5 are all too low damage to consider using for anything besides their utility role.
Can we get a Mystic Forge recipe to change Transmutation Stones to Transmutation Crystals? Anyone with map completion probably has way more stones then they know what to do with.
You get transmutation stones(usable on gear up to lvl 79) from map completion chests. If you’re 80 and need transmutation crystals, you shouldn’t have any trouble farming a few gold to trade for gems.
This. I’ve got more of the basic transmute stone then I know what to do with, and I’ve never bought them. I’m currently using them to give my alts end game skins
Just gonna throw this out there. Thieves tried using other weapon skills. Then Anet nerfed Dancing Dagger and Cloak and Dagger hard.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go Infiltrator’s Strike, Head Shot and Blackpowder someone to death.
Oh, and another idea for a stealth reveal mechanic would be to make light fields reveal opponents. Has counterplay because enemy could always run around the field, but if you had good game sense and placed the light field effectively you could reveal whole teams. Light fields are available to a good spread of classes, about half of them, and the guardian has plentiful light fields which addresses the guardian stealth gank in particular.
Could also make it so it doesn’t reveal opponents completely but maybe just they become visible while in the light field (returning to stealth when they leave it).
this is a really cool idea however i wonder if this wouldn’t make guards ubiquitous again for high-level play.
on a somewhat-related subject i have never understood why you can stack SR with blast finishers and BP and whatever else you have in your pockets but you cannot stack veil or mass invis. doesn’t make much sense to me.
I know the Veil reason is Viel has no AoE limit.
i am not sure what this means i figure you’re referring to the cap on the number of players who can benefit from a combo field?
Yeah. Veil can stealth an infinite number of players, while smoke blast caps at 5. It’s the same reason Temporal Curtain doesn’t stack swiftness.
Helping you out. Btw I am a thief and engis(good ones) are even worse than guards to 1v1.
Thief damage is high. Too high.
Didn’t you face fresh air S/D eles? or actually shatter mesmers? They’ll take you down whitout even going stealth. And necros can burst equally high these days. To say that thieves burst is op isn’t only false, it’s outdated.
Thieves burst is OP because they can do it over and over with no danger of dying due to stealth abuse. Other classes need to commit if their combo is countered they are in the fight win or lose. Stealth mesmers can get away also but their reset time to abuse stealth is much longer then thieves they also do not have the movement skills.
This is exactly the issue. Thieves don’t have the vulnerability other classes have by being seen before they launch into their combo. And(as I’ve noticed), if they feel like they aren’t going to win the fight after 5 seconds, they will just stealth and run away.
The stealth traps in WvW aren’t the answer to this problem. They’re not used at all and stealth for WvW should really be reviewed.
Um. Sorry to burst your bubble but CnD and BS are not all that goes into their burst. Thieves often pop several utilities to boost their damage before a burst.
Oh, and another idea for a stealth reveal mechanic would be to make light fields reveal opponents. Has counterplay because enemy could always run around the field, but if you had good game sense and placed the light field effectively you could reveal whole teams. Light fields are available to a good spread of classes, about half of them, and the guardian has plentiful light fields which addresses the guardian stealth gank in particular.
Could also make it so it doesn’t reveal opponents completely but maybe just they become visible while in the light field (returning to stealth when they leave it).
this is a really cool idea however i wonder if this wouldn’t make guards ubiquitous again for high-level play.
on a somewhat-related subject i have never understood why you can stack SR with blast finishers and BP and whatever else you have in your pockets but you cannot stack veil or mass invis. doesn’t make much sense to me.
17k is a number I’ve heard attached to 100nades, but I’ve yet rarely heard with BS (like once against someone without armour rare).
Say again? This backstab was done to my warrior with 1500 toughness. I had full health, no conditions like vunerability, or anything. I was just standing outside of my keep watching a few people in the distance. I died in just two hits (C&D and BS).
Thieves, how can I “L2P” if I can’t see almost 20K in damage coming?
Sorry, but 1500 toughness is kinda low. (Like none of my 80’s are that low.) What where you running?
Thieves have got nothing but the nerf-bat from day one. If you’re running full zerker, or a full glass cannon build, you’re gonna get jumped by any burst build, not just thieves. Stealth is all a thief has, and if you toss a daze, knockback, blind, for anything of that nature, they can’t chain stealth. Perhaps instead of blowing up the forums with “this and that is OP” you try looking at how you’re playing, and what you have to counter each play-style.
“boohoo, my backstab crits got nerfed from 17k down to 12k” “im an engineer, my burst build got DELETED, just.. flat out gone, it doesnt exist anymore”
You know nothing of nerfs. Thieves are one of the least nerfed professions, and the most buffed professions.
Yeah, cause your burst allowed you to spam immobilize until your opponent was out of evades and stunbreaks then go in for the free kill. 17k is a number I’ve heard attached to 100nades, but I’ve yet rarely heard with BS (like once against someone without armour rare). 12k is closer to where it is now, and that high is very lucky, cause most of the time it’s around 8k. “Least nerfed, most buffed” is an out right fallacy. Go re-read the patch notes.
Engies don’t have it as rough as we sometimes make it out to be. We can be as tanky and mobile as an Ele, we can nearly as effective with conditions as Necro. In most cases with Engie, if you want to build it, you can achieve it, at least as far as support, condi, control, mobility, and bunking are concerned.
they need to change them so they’re deployed instantaneously rather than taking 4 seconds to set up. there should also be no animation when deploying it. just a sneaky thing you drop and then it gets activated.
If you’re using it to fight Thieves one on one you’re misusing it.
People suggesting that if we do not like jumping puzzles, then we should just not do them, are missing the fundamental issue at stake, achievement points. Arena.net should take away the points, then those who like them can do them, those who don’t, won’t get penalised for having less dexterity.
Anyway, I realise they are not going away even if many don’t like them. I suggest a compromise: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Jumping-Puzzle-improvement-so-more-enjoyable/first#post2456230
You’re looking at Achievement Points backwards. You aren’t entitled to achievement points. You are awarded them when you earn them. To my knowledge, there’s not even a max AP score. Every day you can earn more achievement points doing your daily.
Problem is they’re fixing things that aren’t broken.
For Necro, they weren’t working because 0 disengage.
The fix? Just double their damage.
Thief?
Oh, we see S/D is a viable yet rarely played set so we took a third of your daze duration away. We also added 1 more second till you could stealth again, drastically affecting your daze upkeep even further. Also we cut your dagger offhand damage by 50% and 33% respectively. Oh and about half a year ago we broke Runes of the Mesmer and Sigil of Paralyzation for Tactical Strike and haven’t fixed it.
A couple months later…
dev1:“Hmm I wonder why S/D isn’t played anymore”
dev2:“Well it sure isn’t dancing dagger and cloak and dagger. I mean look at how many people take D/D over D/P and the advantages it brings.”
dev1:“My god, you’re right! Let’s just superbuff their #3 ability! We’ll make it their primary utility, defense, as well as dps!”
dev2:“That was sarcasm…” facepalm
dev1:“Too late! Done!”
Ugh. Story of my life in GW2. I loved the control role of the set, now we’ve got people acting like S/D was always about 3 like some less bursty D/D.
the single most annyoing thing with thieves is not the stealth during combat, it’s the stupid stealth stomping. Because somehow, doesn’t matter if you are a ranger with a wolf using fear, or a guardian using the Downed #2, or a necro using life drain. Nothing affects them at all, and i tried with on a mesmer, stealthing before stomp… you are completely unaffected by anything. This might be a bug, or intended, but it makes it impossible to make a mistake against a thief, while a thief can screw up a hundred times and still live to tell the tale
Actually that’s blind at work. There’s a trait that allows them to blind when they stealth. Or it could be Blinding Powder or Black Powder. Blind Stomps are very powerful as opposed to basic stealth stomps.
venoms should get moved away as utility skilsl and should get improved for a thief as class specific gameeplay mechanism beign used via F2
Press once F2 and a little skill bar windo should pop up, where you have to quickly decide, which venom you want to use from all of your learned possible venoms.
Once you click on one venom, the venom will be used and the venom window will automatically disappear again and F2 begins its recharge time.
That way would thiefs get space for 4 more useful new useful new utility skilsl and 1 alot better mroe useful new elite skill.
Thiefs should receive as new skill type “Stigmas” to replace venoms that got moved to the functionality of pressing F2 to use venoms then.
Venoms are a mandatory basic mechanic of all kinds of thiefs and that should be also considered for thiefs in GW2!
I agree on this. Venoms as a thief mechanic would be better for thieves. This has been suggested before as well.
What if you want multiple? I currently run Devourer, Basi and Skale or Drake.
A wild thief appears
thief attacks you with >>sword attack<<
you loose
I suggested to the maximum option, as Incendiary Powder / Dhuumfire.
On spvp forum already calculated that the only auto attack engineer can do 6k damage. One shot = 6k over 5-6 sec.
We should move away from the damage conditions I think. What Sword Thief is going to be running condi when the set has no inherent DoTs? (Also as stated, confusion and daze at the same time is just counter intuitive.)
Well, that’s true and all, but what about after the daze? Considering it might last longer than 5 seconds, it’d be worth it since a daze can last 1/2 a second or at most, 3s.
Or we can do something else, like Vulnerability, sort of like a Mesmer.
Still, got you thinking, eh?
Vulnerablity would be preferable since the daze is S/x’s time to shine.
I completely disagree. Thieves aren’t what get in the way of pug roaming, it’s the lack of ability that other professions have to slip out when suddenly outnumbered. Thieves haven’t pushed out the other professions from solo roaming, they are just the only class really good at it which is why you see more of them.
If thief stealthing suddenly got neutered, then guess what, you’d see even less solo roaming outside of the classes that are already alright at it (ele/mesmer and some ranger/warrior/engie builds), and it would just water down WvW and make it less interesting.
I do agree with you that mobility is #1 in importance for roaming, but you named 5 other classes that have the required mobility to do it if thief wasn’t so head-and shoulders better. Only guard/necro lack the speed, and their toughness/brawler arrangment is sub-optimal for roaming.
That said, I think you would see a lot more classes out-and-about (engie w/ rocket boots/speedy kits, mes w/ runes of centaur, x/d ele, warrior gs-s/x, ranger gs, any thief arrangement) if this aspect were more balanced. It would also encourage those 1v1 and other small-scale fights that are easy to learn through observation (sight).
I actually tried that engie build and it’s pretty fun imo. Got up to some crazy hijinx at bay. It makes me wonder, maybe we see so many thieves soloing because they’re subpar in zergs, rather then seeing so few other classes roaming because their subpar at it. In any case, the changes to Jump Shot, Slick Shoes and Rocket Boots have added some new toys to Engie’s roaming kit, so we may see more of them.
i cant believe how easy Anet nerf Ele: RTL due the amount of people asking for a ele nerf, but they dont even wanna touch Black Powder + Heartseeker combo.
Stealth should be a Once: enter combat -out combat mechanic and no a permanent benefits over the opponent. You cannot fight what you can see, and this gentlement is a clean advantage and imbalance mechanic.
They nerfed Ele because they were good at everything, and dominating TPvP. Thief nerfs have been hard to justify because they’ve never been the strongest in any mode. Only thing they’re currently strong at is roaming, which is a role created by the players. Aside from intel and minor disruptions, they have very little effect on how well their server performs over the week. Especially when compared to Guardian, Mesmer and Ele who’s presents can be make or break in a large battle.
As for your nerf ideas. They aren’t very good. They’d break the non-burst sets and pretty much force all thieves to go with a GC alpha strike build which would be only useful in WvW roaming, half as useful in TPvP and useless in PvE.
And the simple fix – make it impossible for combo fields to be activated by a single finisher more than once. But that would hurt all other professions too, like mass healing, speed and retaliation, so I guess there’s no way anyone would see that as a possible solution.
An even simpler one that wouldn’t hurt everyone is make it so Smoke Leap doesn’t stack stealth. I’d still like to see, all stealth ends in revealed too.
They could make it so stealth in general doesn’t stack, which I highly support. This means that you can’t chain Blinding Powder, Hide in Shadows and Shadow Refuge. Having revealed apply each time the Thief leave stealth, wether he attack or not, would really force thieves to think twice before stealthing. This would heighten the skill level, and it’s also something I’ve supported for a long time.
As a control thief, I could live with that myself. I’d be happy if in return our Support and Control roles saw some love. Maybe make Venoms behave like mantras. Make traps into something useful.
And the simple fix – make it impossible for combo fields to be activated by a single finisher more than once. But that would hurt all other professions too, like mass healing, speed and retaliation, so I guess there’s no way anyone would see that as a possible solution.
An even simpler one that wouldn’t hurt everyone is make it so Smoke Leap doesn’t stack stealth. I’d still like to see, all stealth ends in revealed too.
On a side note, Retal already kind of does do that. See Guardian Hammer.
the cost i negligible … and no, you don’t have to put it down and wait for a thief to come … it’s a counter to d/p build, can be placed in combat using stability or after having bursted the thief.
It is a viable counter to a build that rely too much on stealth.
You don’t want to use it? It’s your choice but it doesn’t imply stealth disruptor doesn’t exist or it doesn’t work.
The very existence of those traps are proof of how OP thief is. It’s proof that other classes have no inherent way of countering stealth. You NEED to buy a trap and waste karma and supplies and badges in order to actually counter it. There is no way to remove stealth from a thief without those traps. And you see nothing wrong with that? With the fact it’s the only class that you need to buy an item to actively counter its class mechanics. Why not just give other classes a skill that causes reveal? thief wouldn’t need to be changed or and other classes have an actual counter to it.
Wait, it’s not the only way to deal with stealth …. you can always L2P.
It’s just the easy way.
It’s funny how whenever anyone brings up a valid point about how Op thieves are the same response is always L2P. Thieves can steal boons off of classes tat spam boons as a means of countering them. THERE IS NO WAY FOR OTHER CLASSES TO REMOVE STEALTH! that was my whole point in saying that. No other class has any active counters for stealth. That is a fact that you can’t deny.
They can’t justify a skill that removes stealth, because there’s only one set out of the four that can consistantly stealth for more then 4 seconds. They should have done what they said they were gonna do and make all stealth end in revealed, and make it so leaps can’t stack stealth.
I think the people in this thread are having two separate discussions.
1) NPCs should be tougher.
I disagree with this, because it discourages small groups and solo players even more than it is currently.
2) NPCs should scale with the amount of people.
This I agree with. A lord should scale up if there are 40 people compared to if there were only 10. Not only would this make it more reasonable without guards dying instantly, it would discourage the mega zergs people always complain about. Not to mention that this is how bosses work in other aspects of the game.
The problem I see with this is it’d make it too much in the defender’s favour, because they could use a mega-zerg to defend without penalty. They should make it controlled by the amount of defenders present, less defenders, stronger lord; more defenders, weaker lord.
Even together this suggestion breaks S/D control and P/D condi, they’ll lose they’re offense and defense in one fell swoop, setting them down lower than S/P and P/P. Completely ineffective in PvP and PvE.
Do you read what I wrote?
EVERY Thief Weapon get a higher dmg, not only Dagger, but the dmg bonus of Backstab will reduce to +50%, so that BS isnt much stronger, but all other weaponskills has a better efficacy.
Nothing of that would have a negative effect on the dmg or weapons.
BTW: S/D has nothing to do with Control. S/D is an evade and movement weaponset, for Control use S/P.
I’ve played S/D since beta, and before Larcenous Strike, S/D was always about dazing repeatedly with tactical strike. Adding power isn’t going to make up for S/D’s loss of that, nor will it make up for P/D’s loss of condition. They both make their distiction from their x/P counterparts by their access to stealth via CnD.
What they should to is make it so PvE content is less hospitable to zerkers. Add a load of small hard to dodge attacks that pressure builds with no sustain. That and rework control and defiant. Make it so defiant doesn’t invalidate control.
Rather then having the bosses how we have them now, where they are damage sponges with powerful but easy to dodge attacks, they should make bosses pepper the field with many smaller attacks between the big attacks to make Support needed, and make them staggerable, perhaps giving them power moves that’d insta-wipe a zerker party, but are interuptable with control.
Except that doesn’t really work in practice now does it?
You have to be exceptionally bad to be threatened by Pistol Whip or Hundred Blades.
Hundred Blades very true, Pistol Whip not so much. You won’t see a good Thief about to pistol whip you and will be forced to burn a stun breaker plus a immobilization cleanse. Meanwhile, Pistol Whip is spam-able and has a auto CC attached. Warriors have to work for their Hundred Blades combo unlike the other option you gave.
Yet PW is considered useless, it’s stun doesn’t save it, it’s damage is less then auto attack and that immobilize means they’ve blown a 40 (32) second cooldown to deliver subpar damage that they likely won’t even have landed fully. Long story short, the skill needs a buff.
PvP combat in GW2 is very mobile. It’s very easy to move around, and evade damage. This makes selfrooting melee skills borderline useless in PvP combat. I propose we make it so all melee skills be made able to allow the caster to move while channeling the skills. This’d make a lot of skills more useable in PvP. If any skill becomes too strong, they can be nerfed accordingly.
Skills that root you are made stronger to compensate, the idea being to CC your opponent to earn being able to use them.
Except that doesn’t really work in practice now does it?
You have to be exceptionally bad to be threatened by Pistol Whip or Hundred Blades.
PvP combat in GW2 is very mobile. It’s very easy to move around, and evade damage. This makes selfrooting melee skills borderline useless in PvP combat. I propose we make it so all melee skills be made able to allow the caster to move while channeling the skills. This’d make a lot of skills more useable in PvP. If any skill becomes too strong, they can be nerfed accordingly.
If you’ve used Venoms on a thief, it should be no surprise to you that the charge system on venoms is rather counter intuitive, forcing you to use them all at once, and a good amount of them not even stacking.
What I’m suggesting is making venoms behave like mantras, letting you spend the charges as needed. Maybe making it so you can set up multiple charges at once if needed.
It’s high time sword got some traits dedicated to it. Here’s a few ideas I’ve had, feel free to share your own.
Sharpened Blade: Deal 8% more damage while wielding a sword.
Tempered Steel: The Stun hit on Pistol Whip and the Daze hit on Tactical Strike will knockdown if they crit. (15 second cooldown)
Bountiful Theft (ammended): Stealing grants you and all nearby allies vigor for 15 seconds. Up to two boons are also ripped from your target. Boons ripped by Steal or Flanking Strike are shared with allies.
EZ mode class- allows bad players to feel like they can compete.
Put the same player on a warrior/guardian, and see how good they are in open field without stealth. TERRIBLE.
Nice troll comparing Thief to Guardian (aka the most carried class in the game) give a Guardian a hammer and a staff and they will not die. I’m almost always the last man standing on my guard, because all I have to do when my low is hit staff 4 and I’m good as new. How’s that? I don’t even need stealth to reset the fight.
Mhmm if he was a troll then why didn’t you respond to his warrior comment? Oh wait..he’s right..
Oh really now? Wanna open that can of worms do ya? Okay I’ll bite.
Even though Warriors are bottom in TPvP, they’ve overall still got it better than theives, trumping even the Guardian in PvE, and being overall more useful in WvW. Name one role besides Solo roaming in WvW where thieves are actually wanted?
GW2 is a game for teamplay, and thief is always near the bottom in any team situation. In fact, if you took solo roaming from thieves, they would be the bar none worst class in the game.
In any case, he invalidated his point by stating the number one most requested class across all modes isn’t easy mode. The class I’ve actually heard brag that they can afk fights. The class that’s welcome in almost every party in every mode. A class that I’ve played and never felt challenged in the slightest on. I mean seriously, of Guardians found a good roaming build, that’d be it, there’d be absolutely no reason to role any class other then a Guardian.
This is the problem, this is why their stealth abilities need to be drastically toned down while given more diverse builds that are actually useful. Thieves are basically pigeon-holed into this build, which in fact is the most OP build in the game across all classes, bar none. Do they really have a choice if they want to be somewhat effective in WvW? Not really. I’ve seen thieves try to operate in both team fights and zergs with minimal stealth and they are beyond terrible.
Anet’s fault for building them that way. They essentially need to be completely rebuilt from the ground up, much like the Ranger.
Rebuilt from the ground up might be the easiest way. The biggest balance problem with stealth imo is they went and made different weapon sets rely on stealth in different ways. D/D and D/P only needing one stealth to be effective, and S/D and P/D needing to use their stealth attack as much as possible.
Any adjustment that increases revealed time ruins non-burst stealth builds. The non-burst stealth builds ideally stealth and immediately use their stealth skill, and need to do so as often as possible to be effective. So this nerf won’t balance thieves, it’d just force them all to be D/x backstabbers.
You mean like 85% in the last 10 months?
A burst should be more than only use two buttons, I wont said that a thief dont should have a burst. But my suggestion based on the thought to increase the dmg of all thiefs weapon without make Backstab to strong. The revealed time between two BS should increase, without to reduce dmg, therefore the much higher base dmg (Dagger base dmg could increase by circa 50% per chainskill).
TL:DR for a better grasp
BaseDmg of BS = BDBS
Current:
BDBS: 1k points (e.g.)
In the back: BDBS*2 = 2k points
My Suggestion after the increase of the base dmg e.g. by 35%:
BDBS: 1,35k points
In the back: BDBS*1,5 = 2025 points
This wouldn’t make BS much stronger but improve the other daggerskills and would give them a better balance between the skills and the fact that daggers could only hit one person.
PS: Pls dont read and comment only one of my suggestions, they belong together.
Even together this suggestion breaks S/D control and P/D condi, they’ll lose they’re offense and defense in one fell swoop, setting them down lower than S/P and P/P. Completely ineffective in PvP and PvE.
i play thief and i say nerf in some way. they are very OP in many aspects of the game.
Let me guess Stealth +BS.
This two thinks are a little OP, yes BUT all other traitslines and weaponskills are so UP, incl. their low base hp, that every thief without stealth and BS, would has no chance against the other classes.
On the other side the dmg that a thief do on one target, with dagger and pistols are slight higher, than others do with their ae weapons. At two enemies are the other classes much stronger (2-3 times). That means that the thief must normaly do the double dmg than ae weapons on one target, but this would be to strong for spvp/semiWvW.
PS: Before some tell me that im trolling and try to protect the thief, show me an example for the “OPness” of the thief, which has nothing to do with fullberserker thief with Stealth +BS they fight against fullberserker geared players in WvW. This are the only examples that I saw in the last 6 months.
Before I forget it, my suggestions for the thief:
Increase both Stealth and Revealed base time on 5+ sec
Increase base HP to the base of rangers, engineers etc.
and /or Increase base dmg of the weapons by min +25%
Reduce BS dmg to +25% – +50%
Give the thief the mobility he got deserved e.g. a trait that give him perma +25% movement speed, the warrior has one but why not the class who should be normally very agile? <-Remove the stealthrequirement from “Fleet Shadow”.
— General —
Remove the +critdmg gear ability from the game. That would make fights fairer and funnier and (in WvW) not to onehit fights.
Fix the Daggerstorm + Signet of Might issues. DS reflect, dont block shoots, otherwise change the discription.
Any adjustment that increases revealed time ruins non-burst stealth builds. The non-burst stealth builds ideally stealth and immediately use their stealth skill, and need to do so as often as possible to be effective. So this nerf won’t balance thieves, it’d just force them all to be D/x backstabbers.
Stealth – This is the biggest one for me and I talked about this a long time ago in the SOTG and it’s just gotten more and more out of control. If you have two sources of long stealths in your teams line up your options at any point in the game and especially at the beginning are limitless.
There HAS to be a limit on how much stealth you can get. 6-7 seconds sounds reasonable to me but even then with two sources of stealth that is 12-14 seconds which will still give you tons of options and advantages over the other team. Stealth is a REALLY tough one to balance. As it is now people are walking around the map all leisure like for 30 seconds just talking amongst themselves like “Well I dunno who do you wanna 1 shot? We’ll 1 shot jimmy, no… bob! Well actually lets not even attack this node, onward to the enemy close point! Okay we are all here? Roger Roger. 3 2 4.. I can’t count… go! success! that other team can’t counter our amazing strat lol!”
Another solution is to give stealth some sort of counter.
I agree with this in its entirety. There needs to be some kind of heavy diminishing returns on chained stealths. Some sort of stacking reveal debuff would be good – every time you restealth within 10(?) seconds of your last stealth that stealth last 33% less, stacks until 100% so you are forced to not stealth for 10 seconds. Its a rough idea, but something that should be looked at.
Now, before every thief gets out their keyboards and start to send me death threats let me say this. The thief class needs to be moved away from stealth abusing and given alternate forms of utility and survivability. Most of the recent changes have been good, even the broken shadow trap was a good start at giving thieves more utility as they get nerfed. Stealth is hard to balance in nearly every game, and GW2 has one of the strongest stealths yet (doesn’t break on damage, is a true stealth, can’t see outline ala Sc2, instant stealth, doesn’t fade to stealth). I think changing stealth to anything I listed above (particularly a fade to stealth and non-perfect stealth so you can see someone standing next to you in it to dodge burst) would be a great start. On top of that, missing a backstab shouldn’t keep you stealthed and a heart seaker that hits SOULDN’T stealth you when using out of a smoke field… they just did damage to you kitten .
Shadow refuge is elite status good. This post is getting longer that I expected so I won’t go into a lot of details but the duration it last should be less, the CD should be longer, and it shouldn’t give nearly as long of an AoE stealth… or make it an elite (the better option IMO) to make thieves chose between utility and offense (basilisk venom).
Sorry this got a big longer than I expected so I will wrap it up with 1 last thought.
Many of this builds have counters and builds that work well at countering how they play. The problem is that these counters are not strong enough to be viable when put up against other builds. The only things I feel need to be nerfed are necromancers and stealth mechanics – other things are manageable with continued buffs to weaker builds. To list some off: offensive guardians, warriors, mantra mesmers, non-stealth thief builds, engis (make elixer C a break stun for the love of god); I could go on and on.
Sorry for the long posts. Ill add more after some more talk happens
I’m against this because it ruins S/D Control completely. S/D Control and P/D Condi thrive off spamming thier stealth skill as often as possible, so any nerf to the frequency they can stealth at ruins their viability at their role, along with nerfing their survivability.
(Also, Shadow Refuge would be way more useful as an elite. Moving SR to the elite slot would leave thieves free to carry an extra utility.)
EZ mode class- allows bad players to feel like they can compete.
Put the same player on a warrior/guardian, and see how good they are in open field without stealth. TERRIBLE.
Nice troll comparing Thief to Guardian (aka the most carried class in the game) give a Guardian a hammer and a staff and they will not die. I’m almost always the last man standing on my guard, because all I have to do when my low is hit staff 4 and I’m good as new. How’s that? I don’t even need stealth to reset the fight.
Mhmm if he was a troll then why didn’t you respond to his warrior comment? Oh wait..he’s right..
Oh really now? Wanna open that can of worms do ya? Okay I’ll bite.
Even though Warriors are bottom in TPvP, they’ve overall still got it better than theives, trumping even the Guardian in PvE, and being overall more useful in WvW. Name one role besides Solo roaming in WvW where thieves are actually wanted?
GW2 is a game for teamplay, and thief is always near the bottom in any team situation.
In fact, if you took solo roaming from thieves, they would be the bar none worst class in the game.
In any case, he invalidated his point by stating the number one most requested class across all modes isn’t easy mode. The class I’ve actually heard brag that they can afk fights. The class that’s welcome in almost every party in every mode. A class that I’ve played and never felt challenged in the slightest on. I mean seriously, of Guardians found a good roaming build, that’d be it, there’d be absolutely no reason to role any class other then a Guardian.
EZ mode class- allows bad players to feel like they can compete.
Put the same player on a warrior/guardian, and see how good they are in open field without stealth. TERRIBLE.
Nice troll comparing Thief to Guardian (aka the most carried class in the game) give a Guardian a hammer and a staff and they will not die. I’m almost always the last man standing on my guard, because all I have to do when my low is hit staff 4 and I’m good as new. How’s that? I don’t even need stealth to reset the fight.
I never played WoW. To be honest that sounds like it’d be great for elitists… why deny them this ability? Perhaps you can explain the downside for me.
Seriously though, people already ask you to ping your gear for PUG CoF runs. Or they can avoid PUGs altogether and just do guild runs… won’t that be great for the community?!
The Downside is when they added inspect to WoW, elitism became the standard and the groups that would take anyone became a rarity. It’s the same with a lot of games with Inspect. Give people the tools to be elitist and they’ll be elitist. Elitism is in GW2, but it’s not standard, and if we don’t want it to become the standard, we shouldn’t encourage it.
From what I understand about WoW, (almost?) nobody has max gear, because those items are ridiculously hard to acquire. So there’s a huge spectrum of stat levels, and only a few players who’ve logged well over 10K hours can confidently say that nobody is going to look down on their equipment. In GW2 on the other hand, what most elitists are asking for is full berserker’s with ruby orbs. You can get that in a couple of weeks of buying the game.
So basically, the people I want to avoid are those who don’t even make an effort to acquire optimal gear. In WoW, on the other hand there’s constant gear progression, so everyone is in a sort of ranking system where they all have different stats… THAT is what breeds problematic judgmental elitism. Here it’s just serious players versus casuals.
Some of us can cough up the gold for a Zerker set quickly yes, but a sizable portion of the population considers 2 gold an achievement. It’s nice you want to run what someone said is “optimized”, but “Zerker heavies or gtfo” should not be the norm. It breeds a very toxic community where stats are valued over skill, and the price of entry is high. A good example is my experince with Fractals, I want to get my Fractal level up and gather relics so I can get infusions for my ascendeds, the problem being, few people ever want to do low level fractals, which leaves me effectively stranded at low level. If that happens to all dungeons, then dungeons will become the same where only veteran players will do them and prospective new players will just shy away.
(In Wow I’ve heard many a time, when they introduce a new dungeon, you’d better grind the heck out if it to get the best new gear or you’ll be stuck in a limbo where groups won’t accept you into the dungeon run, because you don’t have the gear, but the gear they want you to have is only attainable in that dungeon)
I never played WoW. To be honest that sounds like it’d be great for elitists… why deny them this ability? Perhaps you can explain the downside for me.
Seriously though, people already ask you to ping your gear for PUG CoF runs. Or they can avoid PUGs altogether and just do guild runs… won’t that be great for the community?!
The Downside is when they added inspect to WoW, elitism became the standard and the groups that would take anyone became a rarity. It’s the same with a lot of games with Inspect. Give people the tools to be elitist and they’ll be elitist. Elitism is in GW2, but it’s not standard, and if we don’t want it to become the standard, we shouldn’t encourage it.
Well, in regards to the most boring class to fight, in my opinion it would have to be
Thief.
Reason:
When fighting a thief, or being attacked by one, one of two things usually happen;
You die in 3 seconds flat;
You get the upper hand, they run away and reset.
You cannot chase a thief, you cannot run from a thief, they hold all the cards, in a one on one you are at their beck and call, if they want to stay and fight to win or lose they can chose to, if they want to get away they can do that too, you have no choice or course of action, you can only flow with the battle and hope he does some thing really stupid.
There is nothing in this game more annoying and boring than you being attack by a thief, perfectly counter his attack, get him to 20% health, he then evade super sprints stealth’s resets and comes back to own you because you have none of your cooldowns up, and no means to counter their insane speed or mobility and stealth.
You can run from a thief, however you need to achieve one of these points:
1. Most common one, only if you are a norn, any class is ok. Use your race elite skills – bear form or snow leopard, use their charge…..or leopard stealth. You will find there is nothing can chase you once you use that charge skill. Remember to press charge skill for a long time, dont release.
2. You are an ele. Use your Fiery Great Sword elite skill. Ok now use RTL first, then use FGS, press 3, and once correct your face press 4, repeat. And you have Lightning Flash as well:) Only if a initiative regen + 15 full initiative thief MAY have a chance to chase you. However the majority thieves wont have 15 initiative trait in WvW. Meanwhile FGS has 60s up time.
I’d like to add a Sword/Warhorn Warrior can really hightail it too if needed, they can be a pain to catch up to even with a shortbow. I’ve also found my Engie rather slippery, even without speedy kits.
I doubt it. They can’t make a full armour set of universal skins because a lot of PvP is dependent of identifying what your opponent is, and a major clue is armour.
This was a nice read. I find your opinion very interesting. In my opinion ‘thievery’ should be more about patience than annoying gameplay. People who think no rework is needed should realzie 70% thieves play the exact same skills (yeah it’s a rough estimation from my experience).
At the end of the day, what is the use for a class that brings more anger than fun in a videogame ?
Sidenote : no need to answer me, I won’t come in this thread anytime soon, I am just showing support to OP because too many people just show dismissal in this thread.
i completely agree that thievery should be about patience than annoying gameplay. survey the area, select your mark, wait for your opportunity, make the most of it when it presents itself, clear out of the immediate area to avoid being caught, move to your next surveillance point to restart the process until either you’ve killed everyone one by one or have been caught and killed yourself. succeed through making intelligent decisions or pay the consequences of making poor ones.
As nice as this sounds, the only place that really has any hope of warranting this kind of play is Solo Roaming in WvW, where your targets will be Dolyaks and other soloists. Stealth gameplay needs the entire game to be built around it to have purpose. GW2 isn’t built around stealth gameplay, aside from 1% of the PvE content, which isn’t surprising. Making a multiplayer game stealth based is enough of a pipe dream as it is. Making an MMO of it is pretty much impossible, because you’re trying to make players into aspects of a puzzle.
This is probably why stealth is the way it is in this game. If thief was designed the way you envision it, it’d be hands down the most useless class in this game, having to spend time planning out how to tackle content that every other class would just plow through. Every class needs to be able to participate in large scale fights.
Sorry but I can’t support this. It heavily favours the burst sets, but throws S/D Control under the bus.
if you have suggestions on how to improve s/d, i would be very open to hearing them. s/x should be the control set, so anything that would improve it to be so would be welcome.
It’s tricky. S/D thrived on frequent access to Tactical Strike, which puts on one the opposite end of the spectrum to D/x builds. It’s focus was to try to daze as often as possible, like a more defensive, mobile version of S/P. What they may have to do is turn tactical strike into a much stronger CC skill then it already is. Like make it the CC equivalent of backstab. Anything else would be giving a greater benefit to one of the sets it shares skills with.
What could be done is making Stealth Skills determine the amount of revealed. Say make BS do 10 sec and Tactical Strike do 3 sec, and have 10 as the base for natural ending and non-stealth skills.
