Guild Wars 2

Auesis.7301:

Excalibur.9748:

even tho it’s gonna be thief nerf this is good change still. ANET said we can play however we want, but zerk stat it too much in PvE. All stat combinations need to be good, that will make the game more fun since there will be more than one viable stat combination.

In a PvE context, reducing zerk stats will mean absolutely nothing. It doesn’t matter what you do to gear, organised groups are going to run the optimal gearset, whatever it may be, be it Rampager, Valkyrie or whatever post-patch, and the whining from people who get rejected from those elitist groups will continue as strong as ever. Why? Because PvE is too easy. Enemies don’t produce the kind of threat that warrant proper strategy – you just burn them down with active defenses to back you up. They hit so hard that Toughness is irrelevant, Reflects are overpowered beyond imagination and dodging is the ultimate mitigation. HP and Armor don’t even need consideration.

There needs to be a GIGANTIC overhaul to produce intelligent AI that counteracts physical stacking, Might stacking and ramps up condition threat, and doesn’t fall for cheap line-of-sight tricks. Only if enemy encounters actually become strategic can proper balance and not just “max DPS no matter what the set” be met.

Unfortunately, that would be far too much work for Anet.

Personally, I’m keeping my Berserker Ascended set no matter what. It will have to logically be the best DPS even if they reduce it a little, and that’s all that matters when PvE is this faceroll.

The translation to WvW, on other hand, IS a cause for concern. Conditions are already ridiculous over there, and reducing crit effectiveness will just amplify the problem. It’s not like Anet ever consider separating PvE and WvW anyway.

I don’t think that change to enemy AI would be as difficult as you think it is. Look at the practice bots for PvP. They dodge (even when immobilized with what seems like unlimited endurance…..) the big hits and channeled attacks. They even do a pretty decent dodge vs. CnD. Imagine instead of huge health pools and high armor in high level fractals if your enemies just dodged the groups big attacks better and didn’t stand in 100b. They’d have to fix the dodge while immobilized thing, but then your team would need competent composition like necros for weakness and hammer wars for group stuns. If they combined those with some of the queen’s champs and gauntlet fighters type of abilities (not the tower of nightmare guys…. they were boring), they could make some really fun end game content with more variables to scale such as endurance pool/regeneration.

Karolis.4261:

Maugetarr.6823:

Karolis.4261:

About Nr2… Removing leap finisher from HS would solve the OP issue and still keep the party stealth combos. Lets get real … no one intentionally heartseekers anything but smoke fields.
Edit. That would remove BP+hs combo entirelly. My brain glitch. Alltho i wouldnt mind

…but I heartseeker throw gunk, fire fields, poison fields, and water fields all the time! Poison fields are one of my favorites lately. Drop chocking gas from SB, switch to D/X and heartseeker 2-3 times for a pretty good counter to regen warriors (due to poison and weakness stacking).

Im biased here. I hate d/p and i hate hs since all this is/was the source of ongoing qq and nerfs into oblivion. Oh and i would think rly hard before wasting 9 initiative on HS when fighting a warrior.

It’s actually more than 9 ‘cause you need to put down choking gas… but it’s a tactic against heavy (and I mean HEAVY) regen wars that reduces their damage output by about 25%, their healing by 33%, their endurance regeneration, and overall puts them on the defensive. You do need to have a pretty good level of endurance just in case they follow up, but it’s sort of a pro-active defensive/offensive strategy. It’s only advised for those guys that you just cant seem to crack. It’s a pretty long lasting stack of weakness from that too.

Alternatively, you can chocking gas (poison), heartseeker through the gas (single target weakness), Blinding Powder (possible ini gain, AoE weakness + blind), backstab, and then heartseeker again if the field is still there which can sometimes flip the entire course of the fight with the weakness and pressure you just put out.

Anyway, just saying I really don’t want the leap finisher removed from HS. They would probably change the smoke field to a dark field and make the projectile hit cause stealth (like ranger LB) if they really wanted to nerf it.

Interceptor.2653:

Maugetarr.6823:

I am interested in hearing some high-level balance direction roadmap discussion since I think the changes to vigor were the opposite way they should have gone with thieves during the last patch. Hearing their future goals and thought process will be….. intriguing.

Those two things are related, honestly. Active defenses are the core of the “problem” with zerker dominance, and high Vigor access just makes that worse.

Sort of, but it’s not like we have high access to semi-active defenses other than dodging, such as aegis, protection, regen, and blocks. The other classes that are capable of easy perma-vigor do have access to those in addition to their vigor. That was my disagreement with the direction we are heading. Blind is alright, but unless they stand in your blind field (yes I know it happens and we get complaints about it) blind affects one hit and only works 10% on bosses.

Karolis.4261:

About Nr2… Removing leap finisher from HS would solve the OP issue and still keep the party stealth combos. Lets get real … no one intentionally heartseekers anything but smoke fields.
Edit. That would remove BP+hs combo entirelly. My brain glitch. Alltho i wouldnt mind

…but I heartseeker throw gunk, fire fields, poison fields, and water fields all the time! Poison fields are one of my favorites lately. Drop chocking gas from SB, switch to D/X and heartseeker 2-3 times for a pretty good counter to regen warriors (due to poison and weakness stacking).

evilapprentice.6379:

Maugetarr.6823:

evilapprentice.6379:

godofcows.2451:

how about we all just wait first and react afterwards when details have been given?

I’m worried by how many posts I had to scroll through until someone said this.

Well, it could go one of two ways:

Dev’s don’t think crit damage is up to par with conditions, thus should be buffed

Dev’s think crit damage exceeds condition based damage and should be nerfed in some form.

Speculation and discussion is at least interesting while we wait.

While I agree speculation and discussion can be interesting, that’s not what some people are doing. They’re pre-kittening about how kittened their class will be when they nerf critical damage – just making wild assumptions.

I edited after you responded, so I’ll just respond here. I think a lot of people think that a buff to crit based damage is unlikely. I’m not going to take a sky is falling attitude toward it yet until we hear some more specifics.

I am interested in hearing some high-level balance direction roadmap discussion since I think the changes to vigor were the opposite way they should have gone with thieves during the last patch. Hearing their future goals and thought process will be….. intriguing.

Edit: Lately the balance team seems to be trying to balance out the highs and lows to an easier-to-work -with average.

evilapprentice.6379:

godofcows.2451:

how about we all just wait first and react afterwards when details have been given?

I’m worried by how many posts I had to scroll through until someone said this.

Well, it could go one of two ways:

Dev’s don’t think crit damage is up to par with conditions, thus should be buffed

Dev’s think crit damage exceeds condition based damage and should be nerfed in some form.

Speculation and discussion is at least interesting while we wait.

Edit: (but which seems more likely?)

Karolis.4261:

Zero Day.2594:

Excalibur.9748:

most thieves will probably still go full zerk so it’s a thief nerf as usual

Indirectly, but not exactly specifically directed at the thief. We more than likely will suffer this coming patch though, at the very least because of the general crit-dmg nerf.

And i want to repeat myself once again now. Crit power must stay. Precision effect on crit chance must be lowered (that is if they want to reduce berserker builds domination in pve by messing around with crits). That would even make thieves and warriors dps somewhat closer since warrior wouldnt be able to crit so much and thief would still be able to crit with hidden killer trait, which now is useless in zerker pve with 100 % crit chance.

Say they capped stat based crit chance at arbitrarily 25% and changed fury to +10%, that would be a pretty significant nerf. That would significantly buff builds with hidden killer, unsuspecting foe warriors, and even necros with deathly perception. Nerfing crit chance would be a major change to the game dynamic.

Edit: I have to say, I sort of like this idea after thinking about it because it would secure thieves’ damage as the top (with HK burst), buff power necros, bring control warrior up (since they mentioned emphasizing more control in PvE and changing defiant a little bit ago), and bring power and condition builds closer together in PvE.

Karolis.4261:

Maugetarr.6823:

Impact.2780:

• Cap critical damage at +150% i.e +100% from gear/traits.
• Cap critical damage at +100% i.e +50% from gear/traits.

These seem the most likely to me. Maybe they’ll buff base hit damage to bring it close to crit hit damage (if they don’t bunkers would further dominate against power builds). They could also change the way crit damage multiplies with modifiers and it’ll become additive instead (i.e. going from 1.5*1.05*1.05*1.2*1.1*1.1=2.401 to 1.5+1.05+1.05+1.2+1.1+1.1=2.0 (This would be with a 25/30/0/0/15 build)) which would significantly close the gaps between high and low values on thieves. Again, base damage would need a buff.

Ah yes sure and do all this after introducing ascended gear and letting ppl sink tons of time in it, then making them redo it cause they speced more into crit damage then critchance. Why not to nerf crit chance then? this would surelly nerf berserker builds dominance when they cant run around with 100 % crit chance. This would allso make classes that proc burn on crit invest more into precision to reach enough of crit chance that way decreasing their sick survivability that came with dire gear.

I didn’t say that it was a good idea, I’m just suggesting that that might be what they do. They could then say “We didn’t change any of your hard earned ascended gear (under their breath) just the way it interacts with your build.”

Impact.2780:

• Cap critical damage at +150% i.e +100% from gear/traits.
• Cap critical damage at +100% i.e +50% from gear/traits.

These seem the most likely to me. Maybe they’ll buff base hit damage to bring it close to crit hit damage (if they don’t bunkers would further dominate against power builds). They could also change the way crit damage multiplies with modifiers and it’ll become additive instead (i.e. going from 1.5*1.05*1.05*1.2*1.1*1.1=2.401 to 1.5+1.05+1.05+1.2+1.1+1.1=2.0 (This would be with a 25/30/0/0/15 build)) which would significantly close the gaps between high and low values on thieves. Again, base damage would need a buff.

1. This would change more than you intend it to. Theves have some great party stealth combos. Smokescreen + blinding powder + clusterbomb + SR can get entire teams past unnecessary fights. Combo stealth is only 3 seconds anyway and not affected by Meld with Shadows.

2. They proposed this a long while ago, playtested it (I would hope), then decided to go with revealed lasting 4 seconds instead because it wouldn’t really solve the problem the way you think it would. This would increase spam. There would be no reason to pull off from a backstab if you couldn’t hit the backside. This would also hurt D/D more than D/P since they couldn’t tactically time a CnD anymore, but D/P could still chain BPS + HS (even if it didn’t stack like you propose).

3. This bugs me too, but I think it’s intended to balance stealth. That’s what makes cloaked in shadow a great utility because it partially covers an inherent weakness of the utility of stealth.

4. This really bugs me as well, and really should be reverted, but I think the logic here is that damage isn’t nearly as high in sPvP so people need a longer time to kill you. This doesn’t take into account how channeled skills follow stealth targets (including leaps and other melee skill) and the (maximum) 33% nerf to thief defenses. It also really messes you up with guild training/sparring for WvW small group and GvG.

Burnfall.9573:

First of all, good effort on your part in attempting to deceive me with false information. Seriously, good effort.

First of all, let me talk about a thing call Common Sense. Common Sense tells us that there are no way a wooden stick(daggers) can hit more damage than a metal rod(hammer, great sword, sword, axe). I end will end this part here because you intentionally refuse to understand me.

As the saying goes, “without common sense, you are brain dead”

By the way… here are some homeworks for you…

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hammer
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Axe
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Daggers

Also you are totally incorrect about Ragnarok Online, Assasin Class and Guild Wars Assassin doing more damage than Warrior Class. Again, good effort.

Please read! I said Damage not Burst; 2 different meaning.

Secondly, this is my Favorite one… thief having less Survivability than a warrior and a Guardian??? Oh my!!

Where are my Stealth Thieves? i leave this one to guys.

Third of all, I am not a Follower of Guanglai Kangyi, I am a Follow of the Truth

Let’s compare Elelmentalist and Mesmers trait lines to Thief trait lines; as we know, traits are key factors in determining weapons output damage.

Elementalist Traits

Fire Magic- 6,12
Air Magic- 7,10
Earth Magic- 6
Water Magic- 4,6
Arcana- 2, 7.

Mesmers Trairs

Domination- 1, 3, 10
Dueling- 2, 11
Illusions- 1, 3

Thief Traits

Deadly Arts- 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10
Critical Strikes- 2, 3, 5, 9, 12
Shadow Arts- 7,
Acrobatics- 2, 3
Trickery- 4, 5, 7

Where do you find Elementalist being first in high ouput damage in the trait line? They only have 9 high output damage traits in their trait lines??

Where do you find Memsers being 2nd in high output damage in the trait line? They only have 7 high output damage traits in their trait lines??

Thief have 17 high output damages traits in their trait line, why not put them at the top place?

I save this sad one for last; My Sympathy and Condolences to the Guardian

Guardian Traits-

Zeal- 4,5,7,9,11
Radiance- 10,11
Honor- 8
Virtues- 1

Once again you are incorrect.. Guardian are not in the 4th place but is tied with Elementalist in having 9 high damage trait in the trait line? What the…?. This is totally Outrageous!!

In conclusion,

I conclude the Truth

I eliminate the Untruth

The first thing I think that needs addressing is this is:

How are daggers wooden sticks? I mean….Really?

Okay, now for some actual discussion.

The thief has a lot of multiplier traits because their coefficients for individual skills are relatively low and balanced around repeated uses. For comparison purposes only (I’m not arguing warriors are OP here) let’s look at some coefficients between warriors and thieves since they are both melee range, physical, non-AI using combatants:

Eviscerate has a 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 multiplier depending on adrenaline level. It has a 0.75 second cast time, a 300 range leap, and a CD of between 8-10 seconds (rounding).

Heartseeker has a 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 multiplier for each of the opponents health ranges. It also has a 0.75 second cast time, and a leap of 450. Without successive uses or some type of specific multiplier from traits (which Axe has as well), the damage is in fact lower. You could also compare backstab ( the thief’s highest multipler of 2.4), but that has no leap and requires positional and situational conditions to be met.

Again, this isn’t an argument of OP vs. UP for warriors and thieves, it is simply a numerical comparison of damage. Thieves need those multipliers to bring their damage up to the base level of the other front line melee class.

Volrath.1473:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Sounds like withdraw + 30 in shadowarts to me. High stealthing with shadow rejuvenation?

Does not make much sence since with 30 in SA you need to be close to your enemy in orderto keep using C&D, why would a thief go for Withdraw as a healing skill when HiS stealthes, heals and heals even more with Shadow’s Rejuvenation…

Also a thief that goes deep into SA or Acro will never have insane dmg…

I spec 0/30/25/15/0 and use withdraw. With D/D the removal of movement impairing conditions and the extra evade really helps plus it procs runes of lyssa and vigorous recovery twice as often as HiS.

Satan Blaze.8237:

@maugetarr: i made a small mistake, its supposed to be side strike.
@vincent: food is from yishis, can u give me other alternatives? butternut is much too expensive.

Ah. I love side strike. When you’re running with a team that can give you fury it’s a great choice.

Travlane.5948:

Maugetarr.6823:

This is why there are a bunch of threads discussing how D/D 3 (and 4) can be changed. 15 in acro and blind on stealth will put you in a much better place defensively. If you feel that this is affecting your DPS too much, put just the 15 in acro, use withdraw and vigorous recovery. If D/D 3 didn’t lock you into the aftercast, it might be useful, but right now it’s more of a detriment to use. This is also where a lot of complaints about thief skill spamming come from since we can choose the best skill for the job and really only 1,2,&5 (and rarely 4) are useful.

true. but nobody uses 4. :P unless u mean that .01%. i cant remember the last timei used mine.

your points are dead on. idk when it changed since i rarely use it but i remember spamming it in my bleed d/d build which was about 6 months ago. something semi recent changed and now u can still spam it but its MUCH slower leaving the thief open to alot of dmg.

I’m a little embarrassed to say, but I use it to clear blinds at range right before steal comes up so the full Steal+CnD lands. It’s mainly for LB warriors who use the blinding shot so I make sure I get the whirling axe to try to reflect pin-down. Nothing better than reflecting pin-down right on top of the war.

Rarely do I use it for it’s damage or utility though….

Seems like it. ~2400 armor and ~15k health is what I usually aim for. Those are pretty survivable roaming and group play stats.

1 question though: why might on signet use instead of recharge rate for signets? It seems that those extra 6 seconds for a gap closer/stun break could make all the difference in a fight.

I haven’t tried it yet, but it seems lackluster compared to an engi or Axe/Focus power necro (which can self stack up to 25 vulnerability against a single target). I’m not sure it’s worth taking over mug which may save you with the healing.

This is why there are a bunch of threads discussing how D/D 3 (and 4) can be changed. 15 in acro and blind on stealth will put you in a much better place defensively. If you feel that this is affecting your DPS too much, put just the 15 in acro, use withdraw and vigorous recovery. If D/D 3 didn’t lock you into the aftercast, it might be useful, but right now it’s more of a detriment to use. This is also where a lot of complaints about thief skill spamming come from since we can choose the best skill for the job and really only 1,2,&5 (and rarely 4) are useful.

Travlane.5948:

Maugetarr.6823:

One thing that you can do well is finish players with the thief. Have your group call target on whatever they need disabled/distracted/dead and it becomes your job to get it done. One thing though is that there is such a thing as too much survivability on the thief. If you don’t do enough damage, you can’t push people onto the defensive mode which you then take advantage of. A lack of pressure can get you killed just as much as a lack of defense.

Thief is a great class to start with even though it lacks some of the group utility of other classes because you’ll have to learn when/what to dodge and when you do make an alt, you’ll know how to deal with thieves.

Glhf.

should clarify this. thief can finish in small scale combat only. large scale = death.

Well small scale which is groups of 15-20 or more. During large scale fights (taking Stonemist or similar) I sit back and wait for a squishy to break group. I’m on anvil rock so there are a fair number of small to mid-sized groups doing things rather than the enormous zergs of the top matchups.

Xyonon.3987:

Thx to everyone for all the answers!

I just noticed yesterday with my rl mate who plays an ele: his fire field and sb 2 spam is kinda fun I have to say thief is pretty sexy in PvE, I don’t know why there are just a few of ’em

btw: +7% crit from behind or more vita per precision? I prefer 2nd since 10 or 11.5k HP makes a huge difference o.o Also Rings? Atm got ascended Power, Precision, Vita, Crit and one (found an infused one that’s why I use it) Power Toughness and a 3rd main stat (prec or crit i beleve). Shall I really go full zerker or get myself some vita?

Eles are some of the best teammates for thieves along with bomb engis.

As a base for almost all of my thief builds, I like zerk everything (weapons/armor/trinkets) except the head/chest/pants armor which are PVT pieces. That gives a great offensive capability along with an adequate base for survival in both PvE and WvW.

Mordecai.6318:

Regardless of what anyone says, thieves are just fine in zergs. In fact, they are incredibly useful and my guild runs 2 for every guild raid we do in WvW. Why? Because we quickly eliminate free casting ele’s, necros, etc.

While I will agree they are better in small man/roaming situations, you do NOT need some apothecary regen trash to be successful in larger scale fights. You just need good positioning, awareness, and patience.

I generally agree with you, but 3 pieces of PVT armor and everything else zerk really bumps up your survivability while sacrificing minimal damage.

@OP: forgot to include this link. gw2skills.net is great for theorycrafting before you spend the gold.

Instead of BPS being OP, how about OH dagger is UP? We mentioned that Dancing Dagger wasn’t giving the proper length of cripple during the balance patch preview and instead of fixing the ability, they fixed the tooltip. D/D needs a buff to utility (not damage) on #3 and #4 to bring it on par with D/P instead of having D/P nerfed.

Edit: I’m just tired of everything we have being OP. Earlier this week it was SB. Now it’s BPS. After those get nerfed, then what? Wild strike (D/D auto chain hit 2) because it does too much damage and refills endurance slightly?

One thing that you can do well is finish players with the thief. Have your group call target on whatever they need disabled/distracted/dead and it becomes your job to get it done. One thing though is that there is such a thing as too much survivability on the thief. If you don’t do enough damage, you can’t push people onto the defensive mode which you then take advantage of. A lack of pressure can get you killed just as much as a lack of defense.

Thief is a great class to start with even though it lacks some of the group utility of other classes because you’ll have to learn when/what to dodge and when you do make an alt, you’ll know how to deal with thieves.

Glhf.

Swagger.1459:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Any thief who cares about their class will stop replying and let this thread die. It’s not happening, OP.

What you’re really saying is, “I’d prefer professions, including thief, remain stagnant so don’t contribute to a topic that tackles real balance and growth preventing issues.”.

Why not get rid of deathshroud then? It’s been there since launch. How about clones? I mean it’s just spam clones then wait and maybe shatter them. So stagnant. Until they get rid of these there’s no way they can truly address balance.

SoLeciTO.3490:

hahahaha this forum is getting worst every day hahahaha.

Nerd short bow was the last thing i thought i was going to read. . . whats next? . . .

NERF TRAPS!!

Considering there was already a thread about nerfing devourer venom, the others can’t be too far behind. Then traps are really all that’s left.

1. WvW and PvE. PvP currently lacks the customization and game modes for me to play it longer than short periods

2.Presale (headstart weekend at least… didn’t get a beta invite :’( )

3. Still for long periods of time. I do have 3 other level 80’s though and sometimes I’ll go for a few weeks stretch not touching my thief.

4. Yes (I’m currently leveling one again). The zones are more boring since it’s really the 5th+ time of leveling a class, but that’s not the thief’s fault.

5. No. The reason I have my alts is because they are more effective. In wvw I get asked to bring one of my alts if we’re doing any serious small group work (either mes or war). The thief is more fun though even if its not as good at group play. (sidenote: venoms are not “almost there”)

Arkitech.9158:

As it is Death Blossom is like a mini Whirlwind Attack on warrior greatsword. Think it would be cooler if it were a bit more like Whirlwind.

That would be so much more cool if we ducked and slid while whirling (FS style) and got to choose the direction. Make it a 200-300 range slide or something. Smooth it up like the warrior one as well (no stutter steps/self root).

Lightsbane.9012:

Maugetarr.6823:

Lightsbane.9012:

“you really think your damage will decrease simply because of cooldowns? are you serious? you’ll still do 7k backstabs. you’ll still do 12k unloads whether the cooldown is 0 or 20 seconds. i guess if the thief gets cooldowns, it won’t be the players the thief kills that need to ‘l2p’”
i’ll laugh my kitten off the day arenanet finally realizes that their two most appealing classes are incredibly broken(thief and warrior) that being said, rogue and warrior classes are always the strongest in every mmorpg to date. although being able to stealth every 3 seconds is pretty new.

PS: i can’t wait for this post to be flamed.

Actually, damage would most likely need an increase if they were given cooldowns. Right now backstab has a multiplier of 2.4 from behind. A warrior’s eviscerate has a multipliers of 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 depending on the adrenaline level. Heartseeker also only has a multipler of 2.0 at it’s highest level (under 25% health), while final thrust has a multiplier of 3.0 at under 50% health. Our utility skills would also need a buff using Headshot vs. Magic Bullet as an example. Whether you want to believe it or not, our skills are already balanced around repeated usage and would need buffs if they were balanced around CDs.

if used properly, heartseeker is fine with a ~3s cooldown. i mean you’re really arguing that both warrior and thief are broken. strange thing is, warrior does all of this with cooldowns and a ton of interruptable skills. their risk of failure is higher than a thief’s risk of failure to hit, since dodging something you can’t see can be kind of hard.

Actually, the only problem I have with warriors is they don’t quite give up enough for what they get. I’d be hard pressed to call anything OP as that’s how classes get nerfed into oblivion (looking at D/D ele). I’d rather they leave warriors where they are and adjust everything else around them. For more reference, necro’s ghastly claws have a 2.8 multiplier which can be boosted by the same trait that reduces the recharge to about 6.5 seconds. I think most people would be hard pressed to call axe necros OP.

Lightsbane.9012:

“you really think your damage will decrease simply because of cooldowns? are you serious? you’ll still do 7k backstabs. you’ll still do 12k unloads whether the cooldown is 0 or 20 seconds. i guess if the thief gets cooldowns, it won’t be the players the thief kills that need to ‘l2p’”
i’ll laugh my kitten off the day arenanet finally realizes that their two most appealing classes are incredibly broken(thief and warrior) that being said, rogue and warrior classes are always the strongest in every mmorpg to date. although being able to stealth every 3 seconds is pretty new.

PS: i can’t wait for this post to be flamed.

Actually, damage would most likely need an increase if they were given cooldowns. Right now backstab has a multiplier of 2.4 from behind. A warrior’s eviscerate has a multipliers of 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 depending on the adrenaline level. Heartseeker also only has a multipler of 2.0 at it’s highest level (under 25% health), while final thrust has a multiplier of 3.0 at under 50% health. Our utility skills would also need a buff using Headshot vs. Magic Bullet as an example. Whether you want to believe it or not, our skills are already balanced around repeated usage and would need buffs if they were balanced around CDs.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Be careful what you ask for. Necros got burning in Dhuumfire and have been regretting it ever since.

Yep, cause they keep nerfing everything else on the necro to balance it out except for the ability itself. Sort of like how untraited venoms are weak but they won’t buff them because the associated traits might make them OP at that point.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Hi there Key,

I’m one of those “No-stealth” thieves, and honestly I’d prefer being a perma stealth thief purely for the reactions they get compared to playing without stealth. People have this notion that, if a thief doesn’t use stealth, they’re a bad player and only won out of sheer luck.

Pick your poison.

^^^
Thieves will always be “noobs/easymode/cheese/permastealth abusers/OP” no matter what the build.

That’s an interesting setup. Is it something like 10/0/30/0/30? It hits a little harder than I would expect.

Alternative Scenario: ANet looks at the class and says “Oh no! We’ve nerfed build variety and most survival traits lie in SA! Let’s buff Acro so so there’s some choice in terms of building defensively!”

In all honesty, SA IV and VI will probably be given an icd/have the icd increased, regardless of the fact that decreasing the effectiveness of blind on stealth would make D/P the clearly superior choice. ANet lately (for thieves) has the tendency to nerf the good traits to bring them down to the level of meh/bad traits.

MrAmputatoes.6031:

ANet nerfed Infusion of Shadows so that long stealth times couldn’t be achieved with just bp+hs. They are fine with spending multiple skills to do so. I really don’t see the problem here.

^^^ Yep. They literally said they had no problems with thieves maintaining long periods of stealth as long as they use utilities to do so, however they’ve changed their minds before on things they said (we we’re told we were going to get more mobility half a year ago as a tradeoff for some of the nerfs)

We’ll get nerfed to the point where when people lose to us, they know they got outplayed. I thought we were close a few months ago when an engi came here complaining and we sent him back to his own forum where he created a duplicate topic and he got chewed out. Apparently not though.

Pretty much the only classes I have the patience to listen to about their problems with thieves are non-terror/dhuumfire necros, D/D eles, and some rangers.

To answer the questions so this topic isn’t entirely derailed.

1. No, I’ll adapt. If thief becomes entirely unviable I would probably take a short hiatus though.

2. As a D/D thief they would probably have to nerf backstab damage and heartseeker damage for me to throw in the towel (I mean it’s a 2.4 and 2.0 multiplier respectively. Nerfing them would put them close to some auto attack values).

3. If it’s sPvP only it’s just another reason to not go there anymore. They need to make a hardcore sPvP mode already (like fps games have) where you bring your PvE build. Like WvW without the zerging.

4. Depends on the nerf/buff trade. They keep pushing the class towards mediocrity. I mean if it was something like venoms have fewer strikes but now they’re on your f-bar, that would be fine. As long as the thief maintains its uniqueness I guess it’s fine.

5. Further nerfs to base evasion (i.e. regular dodging). The previous nerf to vigorous recovery seemed like it was to flatten out the evasion capabilities of builds like double S/D. If specific builds have too much of something, address those, but ANet seems to specialize in collateral nerfing.

That’s still on a 45 second CD, 36 if traited, plus residual venoms, condi duration buffs, plus a little warning on your buff bar. In addition it takes up a utility slot. This is a base 4 second immobilize compared to maybe throw bolas which is on half the CD. Just because you’ve invested a fair amount into a certain utility skill which could be cleansed with a single condi clear doesn’t make it cheese. You compared it to a stun, but similarly if you don’t bring a stunbreak you’re going to get stomped if you can’t avoid the hit.

To further the discussion then: how would you propose nerfing a 4 second immobilize on a 45 second CD?

Burnfall.9573:

So i bring the Truth to you

Today while in wvw, i was hit with 6, 323 Heartseeker and 16,935 Backstab by none other than thief.

Seriously,

how much more truth we the victim classes need to once and for all, put Thief class on trial for their merciless and barbaric crimes?

Last night I hit a ranger for 7.8k. Most of my backstabs hit for 5-6k. On guards and wars occasionally I hit for as little as 2-3k from the back. The problem is the build, not the thief.

There’s a couple of schools of thought on power based armor. Some swear by full zerker and others by full valk. I generally like a mix of soldier and zerk for armor with zerk everything else.

Head-Soldier
Shoulders-Zerk
Chest-Soldier
Gloves-Zerk
Pants-Soldier
Boots-Zerk

There’s a thread around here called building a better D/D thief. Those armor choices are based on stat points per % crit damage tradeoff. I like runes of the traveler, but they’re expensive. People say runes of speed are a decent substitute until you’ve got the gold. Eagle, scholar, lyssa, and wyrm are also decent depending on your preference/playstyle. Ruby/beryl orbs are acceptable if you’re hard up for cash.

There are a couple of variations on power builds, but 30 CS is almost mandatory on most of them.

30/30/0/0/10 → Bursty, low survival/sustain. Hits like a truck.

25/30/0/0/15 → Same as above. The extra initiative from trickery guarentees the 25 CS trait triggers on the initial burst.

0/30/30/10/0 → Much more survival than the above two. Good condi removal, blind on stealth, good regen in stealth.

0/30/25/15/0 → My favorite. You trade the regen in stealth for an extra dodge/better endurance management. Think of it this way, if you avoid a 2k hit with the extra dodge that’s the equivalent of 6 seconds in stealth (where pressure is off of your opponent)

10/30/0/0/30 → Trickery thief. Still hits pretty hard due to the initiative damage traits. Decent inherent utility.

10/30/0/0/30 D/D + SB. If you want to claim manmode on thief you need to not put any points in SA or Acro. This one still has some utility and a slight (slight) amount of sustain.

30/30/0/0/10 (25/30/0/0/15) signets is manmode, but it’s definitely burst or die.

I understand what you’re saying to Travelene, Tower, but it really is frustrating when venoms are now OP. If we’re going to go down the road of serious discussion though, buff the base of venoms (probably with CD time reduction) and nerf the associated traits.

@Jorun
The same could be said for D/D which has no condi removal on weapons and a gap closer that can be easily slowed or disabled. Stealth on it is entirely dependent on hitting a melee range attack. While pistol whip is largely underwhelming (for me) also, S/P contains more utility.

Diff’rent strokes.

It’s been like this since day 1 and I think it’s intended to balance out stealth. A lot of the inexperienced players say there’s no counter to stealth (directly, at least), but popping a rapid fire or similar skill that lasts almost the full duration of stealth is a fairly good counterplay strategy when the thief gets low on health.

The problem is that they don’t consider dodging thieves as engaged combatants. I’m paraphrasing slightly but the statement for nerfing the vigor traits and “buffing” AR was to encourage active engagements rather than just dodging over and over. By the same definition of active fighting they made HtC easier to get.

With thinking like that the odds of our dodges getting buffed is slim.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Thay also play Autoattack Pistol Pistol thief with no traits and no swap.

Woah woah woah! There were numerous threes thrown in there as well! Make sure you give full and fair assessments!

Oh yeah…. traps exist.

Shadow trap had its day in the sun and was pretty good for about 2 months. If the shadow pursuit rollover lasted longer I might use it again, but the window is too small for me to use it offensively.

Ambush is alright I guess.

The others need to affect everyone trying to cross them like wards/walls do before they’ll be effective.

If they would remove the semi-self root and increase the evade frames at the beginning to start exactly when the skill starts I’d probably use it a lot more. It would just be a useful utility skill in the middle of a power build.

If potent poison just affected weakness in addition to poison it would be on par with mug. It would synergize well with D/X (15+ points in DA), SB, and S/X, making it a great all around trait and increasing the defensive support capability of the thief.

Renny.6571:

I mean, I guess the whole not having weapon skill cooldowns doesn’t count as a unique class mechanic. ._.

Sort of, but those skills are balanced around multiple uses. Take, for example, heartseeker and backstab which have a 2.0 and 2.4 multiplier on them. Balancing against a warrior, eviscerate has a 2.5 multiplier at level 2 and 3.0 at level 3. Now look at utility weapon skills such as headshot. It’s 1/3 of the thief’s global resource pool for a .25 second single target daze compared to a mesmer’s magic bullet.

While people often complain about the “spammable” aspect of thief weapon skills, without the aspect of repeatability, they are in fact nothing special.

Putting the venoms on the F-bar would be a nice change since they lack the individual strength to warrant a utility slot without heavily investing in them.

In tPvP, why would you bring venomshare over a grenade condi-bunker engi? What strength can venomshare bring that an engi couldnt with shorter CDs?

Hindu.4602:

I don’t think that the problem is we have too little condition removal, I actually think Thieves’ condi removal is quite balanced considering their evasive and mobile nature. If anything is the problem, it’s the ease of getting someone to a “condi overload” in a very small timeframe with very few tells, and condition duration stats severely punish builds without low cooldown constant condition removal (Poison Grenades giving over a minute of poison, or Pin Down’s long duration bleeds bringing you to 50% health alone ringing any bells? Not even going to mention Signet of Spite…)

All of that being said, I think if the 1200 range AoE condition abilities were given more obvious animations or more capacity for counterplay I think a lot of the punishment would be warranted.

This. If the casting animations were slightly longer and more obvious for condi attacks (on par with things like HS and eviscerate) there would be far fewer calls I think for increased condi removal.

In the meantime more condi removal would be nice.