Guild Wars 2

It’s a pretty big guild right now that’s establishing itself incredibly well. I’d seriously recommend just switching servers to Ehmry Bay so you can join them.
Even the people I have in my own thieves guild right now spend all their time representing them instead XD

John Lucier.5486:

Eduardo.4675:

I bet my money on backstab comkittenf+shortbow nerf, some traits are gonna be reworked (bettered, i believe), gunslinger (p/p) will be buffed, i hope sword gets some love (looking at you flanking strike), prolly some degree of nerfing to the death blossom bleeding (i hope so,its so lame it gives me chills),i expect some more defense OUTSIDE of stealth (protection, stability),and,obviously,i expect a huge QQ 5 minutes after the patch goes live, with ppl complaining the nerf wasnt near enough…
Im smiling already!!

I stopped reading at the Death Blossom part, if you think it is overpowered and not underpowered, you never played DB condition. 3 stacks of bleeding for 5 init? Unfortunately, check. Evade that lasts less then 1/3 the animation, unfortunately, check. Every class having multiple ways to cleanse all stacks with 1 button, check.

You forgot the half-second delay between the time you press the button and when the character actually jumps and starts the evading, making it almost impossible to evade a hit reactively with it.

Wha… Are you all serious? I’ve played underwater on nearly every class, and the Thief is definitely very high up there in regard to effectiveness. You have a couple useless or redundant abilities with each weapon, but the rest are insane and completely compensate; I’ve never had issues. Whether it’s condition damage, direct damage, ranged, melee, AoE. The spear even prevents you from ever dying with the defensive tools. Ever.
And considering also that you effectively have no elite and have to use almost nothing but signets in your utility slots, but I’ve still been able to perform so amazingly well at all times, under any circumstances, really says something.

On top of that, the useless/redundant skills thing is a problem with EVERY thief weapon right now, on land or water.

An elite venom that inflicted confusion would be pretty good, I think.

Yes, I’m pretty sure there’s a relatively small cap on the number of people that can be affected by the aura (roughly 5, as was said).
And no, Basilisk Venom does not stack. Not even with the extra application trait as far as I know.

Geogaddie.8193:

I was thinking (I know dangerous right) What if we had stealth as a toggled skill with an initiative drain over time. Choosing the right amount of degeneration would be key to balancing this, but to stop stealth spam put a 3 second cool-down on the skill in place of the revealed de-buff. This would make thief’s think more tactically about running or committing to a fight rather than just being able to reset a fight by using shadow refuge. This will never happen of-course just because the amount of changes we would need with utilities and traits. But i thought it was an interesting idea and would like to read your opinions on it. Thanks

There’s nothing at all wrong with how stealth works now; it’s already infinitely better than in any other games.
The only issue is the rendering bug and annoying little kids that figured out forum access.

STRanger.5120:

Devildoc.6721:

The boost is going to be in autoattacks, autoattacking on thief will be the best way to do dps on thief, like it already is for sword, and already is for pistol/dagger.

Anet stated that they don´t want it this way, hence they´ve done it for the S/P weapon set. I´m kinda confused about this

When was that said? P/D has been forced into auto-attacking for damage from the very beginning. Not even because of underpowered attacks like S/P, but simply because it was never really given other attacks. They just aren’t there, which is more than just an oversight or balancing mistake.

Stiv.1820:

Yep, people don’t understand, you have to kite a P/D thief and drag the fight away from random WvW mobs if that’s where you are. I’ve never played a ranger but keep your pet away or unsummon, whatever you can do. It’s only hurting you. When they do get close, dodge or immune or otherwise make C&D miss. It has an identifiable animation.

…I think the main issue here is that he was playing a Ranger specifically. They can’t stow their pet (it comes out the moment they take damage), and the pets can’t dodge CnD.

I don’t know that they can make it work. I also don’t know why they made it in the first place; not only is the whole idea inherently flawed, but Basilisks don’t even use venom! The ones you see in the game turn you to stone with a big magic eye laser.

Yeah, off-hand dagger, Shadow Protector, Shadow’s Embrace, Shadow’s Rejuvenation and Meld with Shadows as well as stacked healing power makes for one hell of a tough thief.

Undermine.1678:

When a thief attacks a player from stealth, give that victim and only that player a perception buff that last for 60 seconds. This perception buff allows the victim to see through stealth, and although the thief may cloak and those around the thief can no longer see the thief, the victim with perception may continue to do so until the buff expires.

Breaking True Line of Sight may also cancel the buff.

And any time you hit a Mesmer, all of their clones disappear and they can’t summon any more for a full minute.
….
/Sarcasm

BabelFish.7234:

I don’t knowif it’s a glitch of something but I’ve never actually seen the ravens when I use DS before, during or after the ability channels. Maybe they’re all just dying too fast…

They don’t die; they’re exactly like the hawks called by Rangers when they use that horn skill, but tweaked to look like ravens instead.

Enenion.8127:

“I am so glad our traps are deployed in a straight line instead of the standard circular AoE.”

But… I am glad they deploy in a line.

Wait, by “perma-stealth”, are you talking about the person just… using CnD, waiting it out, then using CnD again immediately after? Just that, and not much else?
I can see how that might be annoying, but… it’s not like they’re winning any fights.
And where does Backstab fit into that, since using it gives you Revealed.

sorrow.2364:

There are plenty of sPvP/tPvP footages of thieves dealing 18k+ damage with their backstab combo.
You guys are actually justifying this posting WvWvW videos showing high numbers against up-leveled players with hell amount of buffs saying “Hey! Look! That warrior dealt the same damage I make with my backstab combo! Thieves are fine! Warrior need nerfs!”.

LOL

Correction; that Warrior was actually dealing significantly more than a Thief can.
And it was at 1500 range from on top of walls.
And it hit multiple targets…
I’m pretty sure in at least one part of that video, he 1-shot three separate people with a single shot.

I’ve changed the site host to Enjin, since it’s infinitely better than GuildLaunch. Yet another idea I got from The Assassin Clan, after checking out their site XD
Anyone is now allowed to participate in Thief discussion on the site, as long as they are registered and don’t participate in trolling or down-talking the class.
I’ll be working on adding links to the site of any Thief-related resources I can find, such as quality guides.

Wait, so is the guild name not finalized? The guild actually exists right now, but the OP says that the name is still being decided.

Alex.7914:

Sentinel VX.1392:

Why you only have 60 trait points spent?

If you want to deal high damage while still have some defensive stats, try knight gear. It has power+precision+toughness, but it will dumb down your crit damage.

The problem with that is then I will not have enough Vitality to survive conditions from Shortbow Rangers and Necromancers.

If you try to do everything at once, which clearly you are, you’ll have problems. You need to know when you should accept a particular weakness in your character, or even use skills or traits to offset it. Stealth, dodging, Blindness and Crippled go a very long way toward improving your ability to survive even without stacking defensive stats.
And you do have plenty of Blindness to inflict with those weapon choices.

I’m not sure what the rest of that means. Or what TAC is :P
But if you want to join I recommend applying through the site.

As long as -anyone- can post here, there’ll never be a great deal of constructive discussion about the Thief. Even if somehow all the whining about thieves suddenly died down, there would still be no reasonable way to keep this constructive and beneficial by allowing only people who both have a Thief character and favor it to post here.

On that note, I’ve created a new thieves-only social guild focused upon helping all members become better thieves and progressing general knowledge of the Thief class, with its own site in which to discuss thieves and how best to play one. Anything from builds, to tricks utilizing various game/skill mechanics, to simple questions and answers or theorycrafting.
Anyone can view the site, and anyone can post as long as they’re registered on the site, but the site is moderated by thieves and complaints against the class or general kittenery results in heavy moderation, even bans.

Since everyone in the guild plays a Thief, in-game guild discussion should always be able to readily provide answers to questions one may have about playing a Thief as well.

Anyone interested in joining, participating in Thief discussion, or just viewing the wealth of Thief-related knowledge should visit the site, found here;
http://blackwolfbrotherhood.enjin.com/home

I recommend applying through the site if you wish to join the guild.
The guild is on the Blackgate server. But considering that the main benefit of the guild is the communication, actually being on the same server is far from necessary.

I’d also like to thank Knyx for the idea of a Thieves-only guild.

The Blackwolf Brotherhood is a social Thieves-only guild. The focus of which is to provide members with an environment to share advice, ideas and support in order to acquire greater mastery and understanding of the Thief class.
Being mostly a social guild it is very laid back and casual with no strict obligations for members, though there is a lesser WvWvW focus and I intend to eventually hold occasional groups for that. Participation in such groups will be completely optional.
Whether you’re new and looking to learn your class better, have a vast knowledge of the class to share with others, or even if you just like the idea of playing with other Thieves and see anything learned as a side bonus, any Thief players are welcome.

We have our own site and forums, which house a wealth of Thief-related information.
The forums are also a place to discuss and theorycraft the Thief to further the information available there, and also to answer any questions one may have about the class.
http://blackwolfbrotherhood.enjin.com

The all-Thief nature of the guild also provides the perfect environment to get a quick answer to any questions you may have about the class through the guild chat while playing.

As a guild with a focus on improving the understanding of the Thief class held by all members, you will have to register on the site, as it is a powerful tool for this end.
Beyond that, the only requirement for entry is that you have a Thief character which you favor over any others you may have.
Representing the guild on a non-Thief character is discouraged. Remember that in Guild Wars 2, you can be a member of multiple guilds.

The guild is located on Blackgate, but you will be able to access all the main features of the guild regardless of the world you play on, including most notably the guild chat and forums.

Rayya.2591:

Dear moderator,
after you deleted my topic,

Hi everyone,
Threads like this do not contribute to the forum with constructive discussion, so please refrain from opening them. This thread is closed.
Thanks for your understanding

i would kindly ask you , if it is posible to have an normal profesion forums, because every time i come in forum to look for an advice or discution, i see complaining topics regarding glass cannon take damage from glass cannon. So kindly ask you to merge all topics regarding how OP is thief , because i find hard any other subject except “calling for nerfs” or ’don’t nerf" on first 2 pages of thief profesion.
Thank you very much,
regards,

I have to agree. I’ve been reporting the troll “nerf thieves” topics that keep coming up, but moderators aren’t doing anything about them.

This is actually a pretty genius idea… since people can join multiple guilds in this game, there’s very little reason for someone NOT to have their thief character in a thieves only guild.

Krathalos.3461:

Immobilize also completely wrecks Dagger Storm.

Except that most immobilizes are ranged, and lead to the target immobilizing their self.

Personally I think both Daggerstorm and Thieves Guild are fine (though the thieves of Thieves Guild look real bizarre with the bright yellow armor). But Basilisk Venom is a problem. The shortsighted design of it almost assures that it will either be terribly overpowered or terribly weak based upon the numbers, and will only ever see use in very niche builds.

That’s perfect, thanks.

If anyone knew where I could find that load screen myself to screenshot it, that would help just as well.

I forgot, Caltrops is pretty much mandatory to survive against a group of enemies as well, unless you use P/D very specifically and can spam Dancing Dagger.

The best option I’ve found is to focus on condition damage while kiting to avoid hits, and use the crap out of stealth to give you some breathing room while the bleeds/poison tick away.
This works with D/D, P/D, P/P, and SB.

The rendering bug is a logical explanation as to why some thieves seem to spend so much time in stealth. But what I don’t understand is the whole constant healing to full in stealth thing. I’ve seen it too.
The healing while stealthed trait doesn’t explain it, since I’ve used that trait and the healing is very minimal. They do it far more frequently than Hide in Shadows or Shadow Refuge would allow (if they even healed any where near that amount, which they don’t). And on top of that, I would certainly notice the gigantic “Shadow Refuge is HERE!” symbol.
They don’t have to attack during it, so the healing signet or heal from initiative trait don’t explain it.

A while ago I was in a sPvP match on my Ranger and there was a particular Thief on the other team that was almost literally impossible to kill, no matter how many people went after him, because any time he would get low on health he would just pop into stealth for like 6 or so seconds and come back out at full health. He would be out for less than half a minute fighting before doing it again; literally any time he got low.

Having a Thief myself, I was tempted to report him for hacking. That’s how bad it was. He was definitely Shadow Arts specced, because he abused the crap out of stealth constantly even when not using the long stealth full-heal.
Hell, sometimes he would stealth and I wouldn’t find him ‘till like 15+ seconds later, though I assume he was using Line of Sight rather than actually staying stealthed the whole time, because it’s just such a ridiculous amount of time. Keep in mind though that I would eventually see him popping back out of stealth somewhere in the distance, and never actually caught him hiding behind something.

There’s a certain load screen somewhere in human territory that looks like this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/d5/Chasing_the_Culprits.jpg/400px-Chasing_the_Culprits.jpg
I’d like to find a full screen version of this image. The problem is I can’t remember where you find it in game so I can’t screenshot it, and I’m having a hell of a time finding it online.
Would anyone happen to have a good link to a full screen version of this image?

Falcon.8509:

Fritz.5026:

100b is an awful attack to use as an example, lol. it has a 3.5 second animation time where you are completely rooted in place.

i dont care what weapon you use, if you just stand there and let someone hit you for 3.5 seconds you are going to take a lot of damage.

its certainly worlds apart from an instant attack, like say backstab.

I’ve seen some pretty nasty warriors melt a thief in about 5 seconds tops if they hit their combo right. I hope people realize that if you misjudge something on a thief, you die, other classes you have a few shots. That’s why they do good damage. Higher skill cap.

Oh, it can get much worse.
A couple times I was fighting a particular GC Warrior in sPvP on my Engineer, with roughly 1100 Toughness and 1500 Vitality, and by using the Bull Rush > Frenzy > Hundred Blades combo (while he likely had Fury on as well) he downed me in a little over a second. Same person did it two or three times to me throughout the match.

Note carefully, that this was in sPvP.

@MrBig
I really like that particular idea. It seems perfectly solid, and I can’t personally find issue with it.
Makes me sad that we don’t have it, and the pessimist in me says we never will, ‘cause it’s easier to just leave it lame and boring.
I would say though that the leap back should be from a second activation, in case you want to stay in close range.

@OP
I like that idea, and it’s very similar to what I had in mind as well, though I don’t think Steal itself should ever get replaced. Just maybe stop taking more items when all 3 slots are full.
The problem though is the long recharge, and that it encourages you to spend an annoying amount of time between fights stocking up on items.
It might be good then to find a way to drastically reduce the recharge of Steal itself (which would require a lot of changes to traits, as well as the ability itself), and add individual recharges to each item slot.
Another option… might be to give the Thief a Steal skill and a Shadowstep skill separately, have two slots for items collected, and possibly replace Steal with a third item once you have it. Or not, no big deal. Two items simultaneously is still awesome.

I haven’t noticed the dodge failing, but I have noticed the half second delay you mention. Most of the time I fail to dodge an attack anyway because by the time the animation actually even starts the attack has already hit me.

dank.3680:

NightyNight.1823:

You know you’re right..I looked more into it and you can’t break out of Basilisk Venom .But for your information Basilisk Venom doesn’t daze.It turns you into stone for a second and half.And you Shouldn’t be able to break free.Its a freakin elite skill .
Also , while dazed you’re free to move, even tho you can’t use your skills.
And no thief can kill you in a second and half.You have plenty of time to react and negate the rest of the burst (if you didn’t do it in the first place),evade and heal .Those hits is all they have.If they miss that burst they have nothing left but for you to kill them.If you can’t manage that well you’re just not good enough.Or what you just can’t keep up whit the speed?Thats just you buddy.Screaming for nerfs is just pathetic.

But I realy don’t mind Thieves getting looked at.Nerfing one area while buffing the other.Sure if it has too..for all of ya slowww people.:)I realy liked the other nerf on Assassin’s signet.Bring us more of those.

I suggest you watch the video and pay attention to the rangers skillbar. As soon as the thief hits him all the rangers skills go on CD most for 1.5 seconds some for 3, meaning he cannot possibly use any skills to escape (or break stun). By the time he has his skills available again, he is down to about 2.5k hp. He is ALSO immobilized so cannot move either. This guy is literally helpless in that situation.

I’m not saying it couldn’t have been avoided with a different build or utility setup.. Also like I said before it damage is fine imo.. I would just like to see more skill involved in the execution of the combo. (as a thief player because I like a challenge rather then a faceroll win, which is why neither my mesmer or thief use any build you will find on these forums and are built more towards fighting in outnumbered situations).

He HAS no stun breaker on his bar. When you get stunned, any skill that can’t be used during a stun is shown on cooldown. Stun breakers and such are not. He couldn’t use anything because the moron was running around with three traps.

lethlora.1320:

while we’re at it let thieves use greatswords.

in fact greatsword should be a standard issue weapon

That would actually be awesome. Strange, unlikely, and I have no idea how exactly it would work, but it would be very awesome.

The point of the knockback is for an extra defensive measure. Take Hundred Blades for example. You can stop a warrior flat the moment they start the combo by blocking it then knocking them on their but before they can hit you with the rest of it.

I’m also all for the giant two-handed chainsaw kit idea. Maybe have it apply a lot of bleeding?

Manta.7962:

I use both blinding powder and shadow refuge, as well as master of deception trait (-20% recharge time for deceptions). Blinding powder’s strength lies in the fact that can be used at any time, even when disabled. It’s not about the blind, more the insta-stealth when stuff goes wrong.

How does an instant stealth while disabled really help? You still can’t move, and they can still hit you perfectly fine. All they have to do is have enough of a brain to keep attacking just as they were and the stealth will do absolutely nothing. The Blind might stop a single attack, but a single Blind is terrible in most cases as well since they can just auto it off. Regardless, a single hit stopped doesn’t warrant that kind of recharge.

Assuming you’re not talking about being disabled, any number of other stealth abilities work just as well.

Siva Mira.3546:

Blinding Powder: Gives it either a small smoke field or reduce the CD to 50sec. Everybody know Shadow Refuge is better.

That would still be terrible. I don’t think Blinding Powder would be a reasonable option unless you reduced the recharge to 20-25 seconds. All it does is grant a single stack of blindness and stealth you.
Smokescreen by comparison has half the cooldown, blocks projectiles, blinds anyone that steps through it, can be combo’d off of by both yourself and others for additional effects, and can stealth you easily with a dagger main-hand. And Smokescreen is just mediocre.
You can actually stealth yourself TWICE over the duration if you do it right.

Panacea.4927:

I see the root of all evil at the Initsystem. You cant give thiefs alot of strong/usefull stuff like other classes have, as a thief can spam these skills.
At the same time you dont need 2-3 different damage abilities, as a thief can just spam one of them due to the init system. The only reason why you need different damage skills are different builds.

The Initsystem also breaks all reason to use weaponswaps as the init is shared between both of them. The only reason to switch is a change of your tactic.

In my opinion, the whole init system needs a revamp and maybe needs to be merged with a cooldownsystem. That way you can add more diversity into the weaponskills of a thief, add more weaponsets aswell and even make some of their abilities stronger as a semi-cooldown system runs in a much better controlled enviroment as a pure init system.

I thought about giving everythign a cooldown, but to use the skill while it is on cooldown you use init. For every init spend you lose some dmg.
That way you still can use init situationable and when it is necessary you can spam some skills fast, which leaves you in the end pretty weak… but you finished your job.

I dont see any other way to unkitten the thief with the current init system as you need to keep most skills rather weak due to the spamability of them.

I don’t think the problem is necessarily the Initiative itself, but rather how most of the weapon skills were designed with it. The skills don’t encourage you well enough to use all of them.
Take D/D for example, which as I’ve said has 3 different raw-damage attacks all competing with each other. Worse yet, they’re not all useful to the same builds. So at any given moment you have one or even two skills that are useless to you, wasting space.
Ideally, you should have only one raw damage attack that has a measure of depth so it isn’t terrible to use frequently, and the others should have strong utilitarian or tactical advantages, like Choking Gas for the Shortbow.

Going into more detail, here are the problems as I see them:
Heart Seeker is just a quick and straight forward attack that isn’t fun to spam, and is built around being used only on low health targets anyway. First of all this should have a higher cost and damage so you’re encouraged to use it less frequently as a real finisher. Problem here is that your opponent is not often low on health so your options throughout most of any fight are more limited due to a slot being dedicated only finishing off a low opponent.
This ability should probably not work this way, and be changed into more of a primary attack as well as made a bit more interesting. This would help D/P as well, which is desperately lacking any primary attack.
Death Blossom has the unique advantage of allowing you to evade attacks extremely well due to the combination of the evasion and moving behind your target. It also has the niche role as AoE damage for the set. It is annoying that you’re encouraged to spam the crap out of it when fighting multiple targets, but discouraging the frequency of use in such scenarios would be a bit complicated. The high initiative cost also makes it too prohibitive to use as a defensive tool as you should.
Unfortunately, off the top of my head I just can’t figure out how to fix this one.
Cloak and Dagger has solid utility and is basically fine as is, but the problem is that the stealth attack that follows it competes as a main attack because Cloak and Dagger allows you to stealth with such frequency.
One option might be to increase the length of the Revealed debuff so you have to mix in other attacks in between uses, and maybe shave a point off the cost in return so you can do so more effectively? That would also make it easier to use for the pure utility of going invisible for uses other than just backstabbing.
Finally, I don’t see enough consistency in what type of build the weapon set is aimed at; the auto and Death Blossom benefit heavily from condition damage while Death Blossom benefits very little from direct damage, and Heart Seeker and Backstab benefit heavily from direct damage but not at all from condition damage. No matter which way you build you’ll have attacks that are very sub-par. They need to choose one or the other and stick with it; either condition damage or direct damage.

You forgot about the auto attack, which also applies condition damage.
And if Daggers really are the only effective direct damage weapon, then think about that for a moment. And think about the fact that the Thief rune boosts condition damage, and that many of the utilities apply conditions.
By far, Backstab is the odd one out in that case where as you’re trying to claim the opposite and that it would be easier NOT to make that change.
I can understand if you personally do not want condition damage to be the overarching focus of the daggers, but that’s a personal opinion with no basis in what would be for the greater good of the class as a whole.
And there is the sword main hand for direct damage. It may suck now, but if changes were made to daggers then there’s no logical reason the sword could not be brought up to par.

Also, it’s kind of a side point, but your argument about real world knives and why they don’t fit as “condition damage” when translated into the game is bizarre. Knives kill people through blood loss. Exclusively.
Hell, the only logical way any such weapon would not kill a person through loss of blood is if either their head were cut off or they suffered massive organ trauma, neither of which could be reasonably managed by a knife. Getting killed by a knife is always a slow death, too. Because they leave only shallow wounds that bleed out slowly. Contrary to what you see in movies, even if someone were stabbed in the neck it would take some time to bleed out.

Tulisin.6945:

Webley

I think Executioner needs to get nerfed to 10%

Executioner is filling the “10 % increased damage when requirements are met” slot that most of the trait trees have. It has 20 % because the increase damage only applies 50 % of the time. 10 % increase 50 % of the time would make it underpowered compared to its peer traits. 15 % might be more reasonable.

Actually, many of the requirements held by those other traits only allow them to apply maybe half the time. For example I’m quite sure there’s one that gives 10% more damage while Endurance is full, so you lose it for a full 10 seconds every time you dodge.
The permanent +%damage traits are all 5%, and work with specific weapons.
How Executioner got by as 20% is beyond me, but I think most of the Backstab builds take Hidden Killer instead anyway, so I doubt that’s the problem here.

Meant to say Body Shot was bad in the OP, not Vital Shot. That was terribly misleading.

Actually, I personally like the idea of replacing a portion of the damage with bleeds. Currently it may be used by crit/power builds rather than condition, but it would make the set as a whole more consistent because of how Death Blossom works. It would be, overall, more of a condition based set, and rather than using either Death Blossom or Cloak and Dagger depending upon build, you would rely upon CnD for the raw single target damage, and Death Blossom would be for AoE, dodging, or just for rapid spiking after CnD while the revealed debuff is preventing another CnD.
I’ve always hated having one of my attacks border on useless depending on my build, and this change would not only make both attacks useful to the same builds, but it would fix the issue of Backstab instagibbing certain people when you cheese the hell out of it.

Just look at Hundred Blades, it channels for 3 seconds and an half and roots you on the ground to deal a bit more of the Backstab damage. Eviscerate, also, has to be charged for at least 10 seconds (if you are hitting very fast), has a cooldown of 10 seconds and hits for less damage than backstab.
They are also close ranged, just to say.

Technically it doesn’t come up a great deal in PvP, but you’re forgetting that Hundred Blades is also an AoE attack.
In regards to Eviscerate, Backstab by comparison has an effective recharge of about 6 seconds, requires you to manage to get behind the person which is harder than you might think, and also reduces your ability to use other attacks in between due to the shared resource.
You say they’re close ranged, but so is Backstab. Shadowstep is from an entirely different ability, and if you want to include that in the equation then you also need to consider that it has a 45 second cooldown, and the Greatsword Warrior has the charge with an even longer range and shorter cooldown to offset the instantaneous activation.

Arius.7031:

- There will be a brand new “type of dungeon” that will be very large and offer new rewards “nobody has ever seen before” (I think those are exact quotes, if not they’re close). This dungeon gets “perpetually harder” the farther you get into it. It has many levels. There are rewards deep into the dungeon.
- A beta version of a new PvP that will be added permanently if people like it.
- They’re working on ways to improve dungeon rewards.
- There will be a new island opened up, that’s fairly small with tons of “fun stuff” to do.
- There will be a weekend long (I think it was a week) event. It will have a storyline
- They plan on trying to doing more holiday events, some bigger than Halloween and some perhaps even lasting months.

Oh snap.
That sounds like some sort of “Survival” dungeon, where you just keep clearing levels and moving further and further down, until it gets too hard for you or you wipe or something, constantly trying to see how far down you can make it.

@Vile

I agree with what you say about P/D. The set does work, as does Cloak and Dagger within the set. The problem though is that it relies almost entirely upon Cloak and Dagger for damage outside of the auto-attack, which is difficult to use with a lot of frequency mostly due to the range.
The problem is not necessarily Cloak and Dagger itself, but rather that Body Shot is horrible and Shadow Strike doesn’t provide that gap of ranged resource damage either. And neither is Shadow Strike terrible; it’s just that with Dancing Dagger providing a similar function already it could be something more useful to round out the set.
Now, I do think P/D is fine as a ranged/melee hybrid, and Shadow Strike pairs well with Cloak and Dagger to let you run in, stealth, and teleport away when you’re done. As the only way to do things it makes the set a little clumsy though.
I think the easiest way to fix it would simply be to make Body Shot into something useful. It can’t be made into a raw damage attack I don’t think, because that would be redundant with P/P having Unload as well, and Shadow Strike can’t be raw ranged damage because I can’t imagine how a combination pistol/dagger attack could be a sensible ranged ability. So the easiest way is to just keep it mostly as-is and make Body Shot into some sort of worthwhile utility type attack. Especially since that would also correct the effectiveness of P/P.

My problem with Venoms isn’t that they’re used with Deadly Arts, but rather that you need so many traits to make them real effective. Whether or not they’re fun I suppose is subjective, but I feel they’re far too simple. They don’t have nearly enough of a tactical element to them.

The problem with Scorpion Wire is that the 30 second cooldown does not seem warranted. If it were more like 20 seconds it would still be far from overpowered, and would allow more reliable access to it for various situations, like say interrupting an ability or catching someone who’s fleeing.
Smoke Bomb is far worse though with that same problem. There is just no way that thing deserves a full minute recharge. I mean try comparing it to something like Hide in Shadows which has half the recharge, or Shadow Refuge which has the same recharge but is infinitely better in basically every way.

Of things that need improvements, pistols and traps definitely top the list. I also think our downed state needs to be looked at, it manages to be a bit too good in PvP while being wretched in PvE.

The problem is that it has no damage. You can escape people effectively in PvP which is all you really need there, but in PvE what you want is the ability to down an enemy so you can rally, and Thieves have no damage in the downed state. I think the best option would be to replace the cripple on the main attack with bleeding.
That would tone down their ability to escape in PvP a little which is a real complaint, and it would give you the ability to actually down something to rally.
Another option would be to make it single target, and give it a combination of a short duration cripple and bleed. I might prefer that, but I’m not sure of how balanced it may be.