having just watch PoI, I noticed a few things
one is that Karl definitely reads the forums. he mentioned a recent thread, and I’m not confident he reads these, so I’m gonna throw these few things, and hope they get noted, if not fixed.
Thief Survivability:
Karl mentioned that thieves don’t have much survivability, and that the daredevil addresses this.
but what about base thief?
if we don’t go daredevil, we’re still cripplingly squishy. I noted Karl asking if the daredevil can take mulitple enemies. half the time (PvP espescially) I find thief struggles to take single enemies. daredevil does have survivability, but base thief doesn’t, and it’s be nice to see that fixed.
it’d be nice to have some survivability without taking the elite spec, and I feel like what was once a high-risk high-reward class has been kind of unbalance because all other classes complain endlessly about our high damage, without acknowledging the high risk – resulting in what is now a high-risk mediocre-reward playstyle.
Condition Builds:
Imparing Daggers looks rather nice, but it seems to be best suited to a heavy condition build. however, thief doesn’t really have a heavy condition build. reasons for this include:
- none of our weapons sets have more than 2 skills which apply damaging conditions, and never more than 3 stacks.
- while a few utility skills do give conditions – Caltrops, Spider Venom, Needle Trap – it’s very hard to use these effectively.
– no skill type has more than two skills which give damaging conditions
– most base thieves have to run defensive utilities – Shadow Refuge, Shadowstep, etc.
- much of thief’s condition applications have to be bursty:
– thief can’t survive long enough to keep up sustained condition application.
– many conditions have to come from utility skills, which have relatively long cooldowns.
– in order to get a significant amount of condition damage in the absence of burning, thief has to stack as many conditions on a target as possible, which means spamming skills like death blossom.
this leads to the condition thief’s damage being extremely vulnerable to condition cleanses, meaning the majority of their damage can be removed in an instant.
- Damage over Time:
– due to the reliance on bleeds, poisons and torments, the condition thief has to wait a while for conditions to deliver their damage (unlike burning, which is a burst-damage condition)
– however, without much real survivability, theif can’t survive long enough for these to take effect, unless stealted.
– but stealthing means that the thief cannot continue applying conditions, which is necessary in order to keep a meaningful amount of damage on the target.
- Control Conditions:
– thief has access to a wide range of non-damaging conditions, like blinds, weakness, vulnerability, immobilise and cripple.
– the availability of these leads many people to believe that thief has quite a lot of conditions.
– however, since they are non damaging conditions, they’re less useful to a condition build, and may be one of the reasons we don’t see more damaging conditions on the class.
- Condition Specialisation
– thieve’s don’t really have a given condition specialisation, our traits are spread between many of them
– venomous aura on shadow arts is necessary to make any venom builds viable
– Deadly arts has a few CD traits, but also has Potent poison (10% damage and 33% duration increase for 1 condition running against Executioner (a straight 20% increased damage on enemies under half health.), where it really can’t compete.
– as such, condition thieves have to use several specific specialisations to get a half-decent spread of condition traits, and these are often sub-par compared to direct-damage counterparts.
so, as a more concise summary:
- no real condition weapon(s)
- not enough condition slot skills
- condition application is too bursty – vulnerable to cleanses
- condition damage isn’t bursty enough
- condition thieves lack the defense to outlast their targets. their damage-to-sustain ratio is among the lowest of any build.
- no dedicated condition specialisation
as it stands, it’s nearly impossible to make a good condition thief, and it’s no surprise that we’re considered the worst class to run conditions on. throw in the daredevil which – while fun – doesn’t really lend itself to condition builds, and you’ll find it increasingly difficult to get a viable condition build on thief. which is a shame, because I always thought that a bleed/poison thief made tons of sense thematically.
tl;dr – base thief needs a fix to survivability, condi thief is pretty much non-existant, and I can’t see any way of taking DD without switching to a power/crit build…
