Guild Wars 2

Other issues with thief (and not only him) is number of totally useless traits.
Those are ’+’5% damage with specific weapon as master traits
Improvisations (’+’10% damage with kits – still in game since stolen weapons are no longer bundles. That means ignored since beta.)
All on downed/in downed state traits.
Patience +1 initiative per 10 sec while in stealth. How does this promote active engagement?
Shadow protection – just lower duration, put there condition “when you enter stealth” same as Infusion of shadows and remove the fact that it cannot be applied when you already have regeneration.
Assassin reward – increase base heal amount if this is supposed to be grandmaster trait
Hard to catch – remove the random teleport – make it stunbreak + endurance refill or something useful and fix the issues with self inflicted daze while underwater using spear number 4.
Quick recovery is very weak after last update. either combine it with something(Fleet of foot?) or boost by adding some other effect to it (not +1 initiative).

Trickery line is nice example with good traits that are not useless and player has a choice.

Also solve/remove Last Refuge.

Utility skills
The problematic ones are venoms, traps and some tricks. Venoms were already discussed.
Traps are weak on long cooldown. compared to ranger traps they are joke. You want to buff ranger traps to be combofield, yet they have:
lower CD,
last after being triggered,
they have bigger area effect, easily affects more targets (I know that thief’s traps can also but it is much harder to do so),
can be thrown,
are not completely negated with one dodge.
Thief traps have above issues and also two of them remove thief from stealth when triggered while mesmer’s clones can freely attack while mesmer is in stealth.

Tricks
The problematic ones are Scorpion wire and Roll for initiative. Scorpion wire is very weak with targeting. It has terrain problems and tracking problems. Making projectile go faster + making it more heatseeking would make this skill more usable. Some PvE mobs has better working pulls than this.
Roll for initiative is nice skill but it suffers from one problem (same as shadow step). When you encounter some obstacle skill (line of warding, ring of warding, static field,…) you will get stopped and CCed which completely ruins effect of stunbreaker. Same goes for shadow step. You are in the middle of static field and you use it to get out then you will get stunned after teleport. Either do the stunbreaker at the end location too or apply short (1-2s) stability to this skill.

Thief presented with only one change and yet it is one of the classes that needs the most changes. Shadow arts traitline is causing most of the problems, because:
a) It forces thief to rely on stealth too much. It is not fun to play it or play against it. It is not good in PvE nor in sPvP. In WvW it is good only for roaming and there it is close to unfair advantage. Stealth by itself is “fine”, added effects on itself are fine, but combined they are too strong (Similar case is warrior. Nothing on it’s own is OP but things put together are.)
b)Venom share. Venoms on their own are weak, near useless outside of very specific situations (compared to other abilities or abilities of other classes) and with Venom share they are over the top in small scale. In big fights in WvW they are again useless due to their way of application. What makes Venom share so powerful?
Spider Venom 6 applications per player – no there is not a problem (maximum stacking on one target is 5 anyway)
Ice drake venom – 3 applications of 1s chill – no this is hardly a problem
Skelk Venom – 4 charges of low heal – no this is not a problem
Devourer Venom – 2 charges of 2 sec immobilize – This is a problem in smallscale but not thief’s problem but immobilize stacking in general. With increased duration it can get to 4 sec per charge, that’s 8 sec per player. It is strong? Can be. If there is no other condition it is matter of condition removal, but here comes the problem. With current condition spam you are helpless if something this powerful is covered by other conditions.
Skale Venom – probably one venom that is strong with venom share but not completely broken
Basilisk Venom – strong with good coordination which is imo ok, because with bad coordination it will be weak.

Solutions:
Partial solution to venoms could be lowering immobilize stacking to 2, reducing maximum + condition duration to something like +50% and reducing CD of Venoms or completely changing how they work. For example similar to signets. Application of every x attacks as passive(only for thief), when activated they gave charges to thief (and allies if traited for venom share), but the amount of charges would be like half of the current charges.

Other solution (or it could be combined) could be moving venom related traits to one traitline (probably deadly arts) and putting so players must do choices. More charges or venom share? Lower cooldowns or lifesteal? Lifesteal + sharing or Lower cooldowns and more charges?

because: a)weapon swap (you can even count underwater skills, but yeah underwater combat…) b)reduced initiative regeneration = increased “cooldown” on all skills not only on those used.

They don’t have it implemented afaik, but 66% reduction on initiative regeneration is more powerful than 66% slower cooldowns. On the other hand chill is already really strong against thieves.
This change could lead to more “balanced” game but fighting thief with some chill would be piece of cake. Their movement is their only defense outside of stealth so it would either mean more stealth → more annoying, less tpvp viable or just overall less viable class.

It took me some time to realize why they are doing it. Healing signet nerf 8%, Power builds nerf 10% in damage…
Yeah you really nerfed warrior sustain

Seems like devs listen to nerf proposals…

You just confirmed what I said. It is strong in roaming and for focusing single target with numerical advantage. And elementalist or engineer can blast water field in similar matter.

You will blast combo fields with almost any class and some of them have their own water fields as well (not only as stolen item from ranger). Strong AoE is also available for a lot of classes, often stronger or with some added utility (CC or also blast).
Venom sharing is one trick pony. In large scale it is useless due to application on different targets with cleave and AoE. It is great for focusing single target when you have numerical advantage. Still you can do same job even without venom share. And shadow refuge in zerg fight is big sign “Attack here” for any competent player. Yet ok, you have banners, glyphs, signets and spirits for revives too, doing same or better job.

You just gave examples of good things not exceptional. I never said thief is bad in everything. I said he doesn’t excel anywhere outside of roaming. It can be decent in many areas but there will be better classes in that area and for many situations the better class will be the same.

MonMalthias.4763:

Pretty sure the discussion’s moved on from the point about soft counters for Stealth openers, but hey, whatever. Blocks, dodges, PbAOE, blah blah blah. It’s been said; the matchup just isn’t fun. I challenge you to say that the Stealth mechanic is well developed across all classes right now.

I also don’t like the general attitude that (I’m presuming here) Thieves that play with Stealth, or PU Mesmer, or whatever other build uses Stealth as a major component that player frustrations are simply an L2P issue.

Let me ask you this:
Why is it that Thief has received a nerf, direct or indirect, practically every patch?

Here, I’ll make it easy.
Because players whine.

Why do they whine?
Because Stealth isn’t fun on the receiving end and the mechanic is underdeveloped outside of Thief.

I will say this. As an Engineer, my favourite moment in WvW was running Power Rifle (not SD) with 3 kits and running into a “permastealth” Thief. My favourite part of the duel was seeing him drop his Black Powder. Immediately I overcharged shot him out of his Heartseeker Leap Finisher, and bursted him down.

I didn’t even stomp him out. So playing around with Soft Counters with Stealth can be fun. But I’ve equally had frustrating duels starting 10k health down, regain the upper hand, and had the Thief Stealth away. That’s just about the most anti-fun mechanic there is and whilst I accept it as part of the game mechanics at the moment; more should be done with and against Stealth for all classes.

People whine because let’s face it majority of players are bad. They whine about everything no matter if it is OP or just annoying.
Why is Thief being nerfed every patch? Why not Warrior? Or any other class? They need scapegoat and Warrior is their favorite class. Most of the developers on stream play Warrior and Warrior is one of the classes with largest playerbase of bad players. I am not saying there are only bad Warriors, but it is archetype that is just extremely popular – more people = more bad people. They don’t want to make one of the largest playerbases unhappy.

On stealth question, no it is not fun mechanic. Can thief survive without it? Yes he can same as Warrior with base HP lowered on Thief level and without any immunities like endure pain, berserker stance, shield blocks etc.
You may ask why did I pick on warrior. That is because in most cases he can disengage as easily as thief and he doesn’t need stealth to do it. He also has “invulnerabilities” like stealth, yet he won’t get nerf.

And other point of view in what does thief excel except of roaming?

(Yes, I am thief player. I would gladly remove stealth if compensated accordingly. And with free profession change I would probably switch. I wouldn’t reroll because of time and money spent on this character.)

Ancient Ranger.3276:

Maesk.8753:

Aza.2105:

The moment Anet introduces a predator for stealth is the moment the thief population will be culled.

Maybe because that would actually destroy the class. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but a large majority of thieves sustain/utility comes from stealth. By reducing the thieves ability to stealth, you’re also reducing their access to almost everything.

As for a ‘counter’, I personally think that’s a little unfair, no? Currently there are no other classes which have their defining class feature countered by a single skill (sic’em). Can I get a skill that destroys all clones/pets in an AOE around me?

Can you not kill a rangers pet? Or kill a mesmers clones? Yes you can so it might not be in a single skill AoE(though it might be provided you have enough dps) you can still counter their mechanic. along with sick ‘em you can still stealth after they have used the skill. Just as ranger can swap pets and mesmers can produce more clones. So no single skill that apply revealed will not break your profession. Every profession can have its mechanic countered. Warriors via *everyone’s* dodge button. Elementalist(my profession) via chill or knockdown, along with guardian and necros I believe. And not to sure if engineers can have their’s interrupted. So currently thief mechanic can only be counter by rangers sick ’em or that ridiculously non-intelligent non-usefull trap in WvW. As for me i believe if i hit a thief in stealth he should become revealed because comon sense says if I hit something that is invisible I know it is there along with physics. Unless this game defies physics then i guess anything goes.

So you can’t dodge cloak and dagger? or interupt heartseeker through blackpowder? Push him out of shadow refuge or drop enormous damage there? Yeah they have blinding powder, warrior have berserker stance/ endure pain also. Conclusion stealth has many counters, you either don’t know them or ignore them -> problem is not stealth but you sir.

JonPeters.5630:

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.

Jon

Are you kidding me? Does healing signet on elementalist or thief have some added effect on active part? Do you even play other classes than warrior, because it seems you have no idea what traits or skills do on anything else what is not mainstream (Warrior for most part).

fadeaway.2807:

Biggest tip for new players I could possibly give : never buy anything from the gem store, you will be disappointed.

fixed, because Anet has no problem to change things you already bought.

Race makeover kit and class makeover kit.

After removing endure pain, berserker stance and blocks from warriors and similar stuff from other classes. Oh wait it is warrior complaining…

So you can be ported away with Hard to Catch or perhaps it is for rare instances when you have stability like with Lyssa runes so you just waste your initiative. Please don’t tell me you expected that balance team would use brain when designing and testing skills/traits.

Looks like Scarlet stole patch preview. I guess she will steal whole Wintersday too.

I am totally unsatisfied with season 1 and stuff which came with it, but to be honest I have expected this to happen. Anet either doesn’t have single clue about competitive gaming or they simply don’t care. Allowing transfer before league start to make more server stacking and making it buy2win, screwing server’s WvW players with achievement hunters or the pure fact of making competitive something which is supposed to be imbalanced (as they said themselves) makes me wonder whether they care about they game as they have proclaimed so many times before game launched or they care only about copies sold and money.
“There is something rotten in the company of Arenanet.”

monthly puzzle jumper doesn’t work either

5 silvers,
5 badges of honor,
jug of karma,
flame ram blueprint,
2 blue items
+ finisher for first places

(I hope for punching bag in form of D.C.)

No, we have enough of AI spammers don’t need to buff them indirectly.

JonPeters.5630:

JonPeters.5630:

JonPeters.5630:

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

20 seconds is quite high “cooldown” compared to skills of other classes.

“360 milliseconds is certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones.” I know there is “almost” but skull crack with current 250 milliseconds cast time is fight changing skill because 3s stun is almost always difference between life and death. And how many similar skills are still in game? You are changing skull crack to 500 ms that leaves us 140 ms to react. 40 ms for network delay (really low delay) leaves us with 100 ms to react. Unfortunately average human reaction time is more than 150 ms… (one source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time but there are many others)

So how useful is that? And I am not even considering skill delay which is now so common or issues when this skill won’t move you at all.

I wrote this idea about rework of Hard to catch already in patch preview:
Now it will stubreak you and refill your endurance (instead of teleport and swiftness). It is still “Hard to catch” but now it is quite useful even if it was just short CC.

Idea for Thief’s Hard to catch rework: Instead of random teleport and swiftness make it stun breaker and refill your endurance.

It is still “Hard to catch” but now it is actually useful.

I strongly disagree with vigor changes.
“We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor, and this is one of the areas we needed to tone down the up time of the engineer’s Vigor.”
So you remove 50% of vigor from classes that depends on dodge as their defensive mechanic, for some (thief) it is only viable defensive mechanic, but yet you keep almost 100% vigor uptime on two most defensive classes (Warrior and Guardian). Traited warhorn gives up to 13s vigor with 16s CD. And guardian has 5 trait in Honor with 5s of vigor on crit with 5s CD.
Are you trolling us or you have really no clue about what you are doing? Ranger and Engi has some protection and regeneration available so they will be hit hard but still playable (perhaps not as tanks/offtanks) but thief? You keep him nerfing but his survivibility sucked already.
Where is yours “We want every class be able to fullfill each role” so where is tanking thief? or support thief? And don’t bring venomshare it is so bad. You sacrifice 2 traitlines but you lack all defensive capabilities.

“Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait”

Hard to Catch is terrible trait, why would anyone want to use it? Random teleport which can even kill you in master trait? Just rework this trait, same as other boring traits in all traitlines. Good idea for rework could be something like – recharge your stunbreaker skill, CD 60s.
And for balance look at other classes. For example VII – Power shots in Shadow arts – increase damage of Shortbow and Harpoon gun by 5% vs. Warrior’s IX Slashing Power in Strength – Increase damage of Spear and Greatsword by 10%. I know it is ranged vs melee weapon but it is percentage increase not flat increase so basic damage of ranged vs melee should be balanced already.

Change to quick recovery is imo ok when you look at initiative boost on the other hand it is not worth of master trait now. Some secondary effect or 1 initiative /8s would be nice.

I also hope that this initiative gain will be worth it because there are some serious nerfs in this patch. Nerfs to already weakest or second weakest class, yet you can still buff some strong one like warrior (yeah you nerfed one build but other strong builds are getting even stronger).

PS: Why does it look like that you ran out of ideas how to improve class after elementalist?

thief: remove stealth and make evades basic defensive mechanic and balance for it. →Less QQ about stealth, more useful in sPvP, more useful overall → Win Win

Almost every server has it’s own website and forum. Try asking there

How is the queue guys?

1) Bug fixes
2) Balance
3) Rewards & Progression

Game is out for over a year and thief didn’t get any significant change. Year ago was shadowstep temporarily disabled underwater because of some problems in WvW. No fix on that. Why? Probably even Anet knows that underwater combat is fail. Only thing worse is underwater combat balance. Some classes have less than half skills available (thief is one of them) under water so how do you want to balance them. It is not even justified like “you can’t use ground targeting under water”. Mesmer for example can, thief or guardian cannot.
Normal weapons are not in good state either. Dagger offhand num 4 (Dancing dagger) has nice range of 900 but you cant hit target further away than melee range. Double dagger skill 3 leaping deathblosom… Why do we have heavy condition based skill on power based weapon set? What brilliant mind came up with this idea? Pistol is almost the same case. Condition autoattack, “awesome” bodyshot with low damage and quite high price for what it does and unload (power based).
Larcenous strike cost should have been reduced with this nerf (which was bad idea imho, now it is like mesmer’s autoattack).
Improve utilities so we can use some other than what we use from start of the game. Venoms are weak without venomshare and with it they are just fine but then thief lacks other important things.
I wonder who came up with 1,5s cast on stun breaker /facepalm (destroy shadow trap) either remove cast time or remove stun breaker and reduce cooldown.
Traits are in bad shape too. So many of them has boring +X% damage or stuff like that. Like half of them is so bad that you will never take them(and some of them are even harmful for you). Oh and why the hidden nerf to shadow embrace? 10S ICD? Really?
I could write so many things but You wouldn’t read it anyway, like Thief feedback thread some time ago. So many good ideas inside, but you just chose to ignore them.

You really lack some developer playing thief in balance team, you have lack of insight in his play. I am not asking or demanding buffs but fixes and sense about functionality of skills. Like why does shadowstep require line of sight (also addition as some hidden patchnote)?
One last thing stop writing stupid stuff into patch notes about thief changes when you don’t change anything. It looks like you just write some stuff to show you did something while you did nothing.

Preacher.9018:

I laugth and continue to laugth at attempting to bring “SPVP” to wvw – which basically GvG is. Its on same level of stupidity as people making “duelling areas” in Age of Conan and complaining when someone comes and kills them – thats open pvp for you. And similarly, you are not in position to complaint if anyone interfers with your GvG since by all means – you are legally abusing the gameplay mode (while i agree though, at current point: harm from it is mostly unexistent. This however was quite different before and a reason why such rules exist)

You mean sPvP things like Orbs and Orbs buffs which are exactly same as sPvP? Or do you mean PvD which is exactly best way how to play sPvP – avoid enemy? Or do you mean keeps with tons of arrowcarts – like point defender in sPvP? Problem is that in GW2 isn’t really PvP because you are more rewarded for other things (killing NPC, avoiding enemy to flip objectives without fight) and same thing is in sPvP.
1point/sec/objective or 5points/kill. If you are unable to kill and finish enemy in 5 seconds you are loosing points so why even bother? When tanky player meets tanky player they won’t be able to kill each other unless one of them sacrifice part of his tankiness for more damage. When he does this he becomes more vulnerable so enemy tanky player will do almost same damage as he does because he is not so tanky anymore. But that is off-topic.
The point is you want to punish people for doing PvP in PvP area instead of PvD.

Spira.4578:

I gave my previous job as an example And I didn’t say everyone is treated like that. Only the kind of ppl that think more or less like you.

“I payed my car, so i can park it anywhere i want”

Ban GvG and gw might be free of people like you, which would be cool tbh
I enjoy playing pve, pvp and wvw :P I did majority in pve and still have fun in it – especially with my guild.

Anyway, you people want to convince everyone that anet is bad because it doesn’t let you play your game as you want – and once again, you’re insulting and being negative toward anyone who doesn’t agree with you.

sad.

or ban people like you and make world better place. Oh and btw: you are lecturing people about behavior and insulting. You should really look at your posts because you are doing the same. And one more thing in your opinion one player can play the game how he wants but 40 people can not? If those 20 guys were just roaming around WvW in groups of 5 people getting steamrolled with zone zerg and not achieving anything then it is ok. When they would just fight other groups of 5 people it is ok. When they all fight on one place with 20v20 it is not ok?
What is your opinion on “How to play WvW” then? Running in zone blob of 100 people spamming 1 and fighting empty keeps? Killing one guy with 50 and then spam /laugh at his corpse because you beat him with your superior skill? Or something else? And then please explain us why is your opinoin more valid than any other one.

“We’re also looking at shaving the efficiency of Flanking Strike slightly, so that it now only removes 1 boon instead of 2.”

Bad idea. Boon spamming classes will lose of their hard counters. The other thing is that Sword dagger weaponset will be useless again. Dancing dagger is so slow that it can’t be used effectively, tactical strike is not very useful due to quite short duration if you compare it with warrior’s CC and Infiltrator’s strike/shadow return is no longer stun breaker and it is bugy as hell. So it will be worse than before. Instead of making more builds viable you are just destroying one of them.

BTW: When do you plan to return Shadowstep and Engi’s Rocket boots to underwater skills? You temporarily disabled them like year ago and you still can’t fix it?

stats – no
points on stomp – don’t care

One amulet → double click to choose whatever combination you want. Choose main attribute and the others. For example you have something like 5 points on amulet: 2 to Power, 1 precision, 1 critical damage, 1 vitality = berserker amulet.

yes
Message Body length must at least be 15.

NO
Message Body length must at least be 15.

RedX.3160:

every
thief is the same 10/30/30/0/0 build or playing some kind of build that revolves around mug and shadow’s rejuvination with burst damage… it’s really depressing to see because i’m trying to avoid the whole glass cannon 1 shot backstab double dagger build.

So you play 0/30/30/10/0 and after changing 10 traits it isn’t glass cannon build anymore? I don’t know how you play DP but it is usually used in similar way as DD, but yeah you are right there is a lack of viable builds for thief in tPvP. It is basically play glass or go home (in hot join you can play almost everything).

And how many damaging conditions (burning, bleeding, poison, confusion) can you remove underwater? You have two options afaik hide in shadows and signet…

I hope there will be less new bugs than fixes. I would like to see some balance changes to make more builds viable but i guess it will be the opposite.
I know I am pessimist but after last patch I would prefer to have low expectations.

These are things that need some fixing:
Venoms – They are almost useless without all traits affecting them and with them they are just fine, nothing special. The best solution is imho rework to something like signets – you get one venom strike every X seconds or on every X attack and you can activate the venom for the same effect it has now.

Traps – Ambush trap is ok but the rest of them is trash. They only affect one target and when enemy cross the trap from narrow side it sometimes doesn’t activate but just disappear. Reducing cooldown on some of these traps (Ambush is ok) or making them affect more then one target would make them much more usable.

Scorpion Wire – Range 1200 doesn’t fix anything when it works like 3 times from 10. Random obstructed on flat terrain or knockdown instead of pull makes it highly unreliable. The slow projectile speed is also bad but i guess it is there to make it avoidable.

Sword + Dagger – It was high control medium damage set now it is medium control low damage set. Tactical strike does lower damage than crippling strike. Flanking strike is highly unreliable skill, better tracking would make it much more useful. There is no good way how to do damage except for autoattack after nerfing dancing dagger (that was good move, but the cost should be lowered too) and cloak & dagger. Buffing Tactile strike a little bit more and fixing Flanking strike could make this set useful again.

Pistol Whip – Please increase the damage for PvE only.

Pistol + Pistol – This set should be improved to do more damage or more control, right now it is weak in both departments.

WvW stealth capping – This should go away.

No condition removal for burning/poison/bleeding, no stun breaker. You want to be point holder but you loose half of the “capture bar” by initiating your combo and then you have to stay in small circle to avoid loosing it completely. You will loose the rest of the point after 2 more sneak attacks with your pistol.
Sure, I can be wrong about the loosing part in stealth, but if any other point holder comes to your point he will atleast neutralize it with almost no effort.