Guild Wars 2

Jana.6831:

Cynz.9437:

Are you seriously implying d/p is fat kid with chocolate bar? Really, focus your hate crusade again other classes and for d/d and not against fellow thieves. Nerfing d/p won’t change anything for your beloved d/d it will just force everyone into staff or simply make very few thieves that left to completely quit this class/game.

If you actually think devs would suddenly get an urge to buff d/d because of d/p nerf you really don’t know them well.

Take s/d as an example in its glory day. It got nerfed couple times, you think it helped acro line or sp? No. We all know what happend afterwards.

I also love how you forget about p/d that was probably main reason why SA and any stealth builds got nerfed on first place. WvW dp wasn’t killing anyone, pvp dp was and still is very team dependent. Frankly, weapon sets don’t matter, devs literary have no clue what they are doing most of the time (i had very interesting convo with some top player that has skype contact to devs).

I do not understand you, i do not understand why would you join “nerf thief” train when we are least desired profession in all game modes (arguably second least desired after wars in pvp).

I kind of expected you to understand this thread – but you don’t.
Ok.
D/P is the faceroll mode thief – the easiest way to play thief. Nothing ins SA was nerfed from when I started to June this year. P/Ds rise was after the Ferocity Patch 4/15th 2014 – so I don’t think anything was nerfed because of that set as it wasn’t as popular as D/P long before that.
D/P is holding all other vanilla thief builds (minus probably S/D after January 26th) back.

And believe me in wvw the only thieves who were still around were D/P after S/D was nerfed into the ground (ocassionally a P/D thief but that was rare). Solo roamers. But they also were popular in focus groups, yes.
I hope some day you’ll get my point.

D/P isn’t holding the other sets back, X/D is holding the other sets back.

First lets look at what D/P has:
Dagger autos for poison and endurance
Heartseeker for finishing
Shadowshot for blind, damage, and gap closing
Headshot for interrupts
BPS for blind and stealth

Staff, the second best in the running has:
Decent autos with reflect and vuln
Whirling charge with decent spike + weakness when combined with steal
A decent evasion and immobilize cure
AoE blind
Aoe spike damage

S/D is in the mediocre territory with:
Decent autos with the last strike being hard to land
A gap closer/opener with an immobilize and condi cleanse
An evasion and mediocre boon steal
A mediocre dancing dagger
A mediocre CnD
Sword main and dual attaks can make up for the shortcomings or dagger OH. The set was severely weakened when acro was nerfed because the line also helped supplement the weak offhand dagger. It didn’t come back so much in popularity with daredevil because staff and D/D worked better with the line offering both stealth and evasive styles of play without suffering from X/D’s drawbacks.

D/D is in a bad spot because the autoattack and heartseeker can’t make up for the lack of utility and damage of dagger offhand. The set doesn’t synergize well with itself. It’s not D/P that’s hurting it or keeping it from excelling, but rather the weak offhand dagger skills. Offhand dagger needs to be given utility to make up for this.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Cynz.9437:

Jana.6831:

Cynz.9437:

Let’s nerf best designed weapon set for the sake of weaker one? Because thieves clearly need more nerfs? Are you trying to force EVERYONE into staff?
Ask for d/d buffs, suggest rework. There is way to make that set more interesting w/o butchering other sets or make them too strong.

So, you have got 5 children and all of them need to be ideal weight – some are underweight and the one who needs to lose weight has got a chocolate bar, but all have to get the same food (on top of that).
You can either nerf one and then buff all or you can only have one that shines while all other are subpar – that’s my reasoning for this thread.

ETA: By saying: “No, lets not nerf our only viable set!” we remain having only one viable set as the others have to get their stuff from traits to which D/P also has got access to. Thief is pretty much dead anyway and I guess everybody knows, so why not kill it completely and start new?

Are you seriously implying d/p is fat kid with chocolate bar? Really, focus your hate crusade again other classes and for d/d and not against fellow thieves. Nerfing d/p won’t change anything for your beloved d/d it will just force everyone into staff or simply make very few thieves that left to completely quit this class/game.

If you actually think devs would suddenly get an urge to buff d/d because of d/p nerf you really don’t know them well.

Take s/d as an example in its glory day. It got nerfed couple times, you think it helped acro line or sp? No. We all know what happend afterwards.

Yeah it was a bad analogy for her. A better analogy is that D/P is this big tree overshadowing the D/D sapling longing for sunlight. In order for the D/D sampling to grow, D/P needs to have its branches trimmed here and there to allow some sunshine for the D/D sapling. This doesn’t mean to cut down the D/P tree by its trunk or cut off all its branches and leaves, but to simply trim (nerf) it so it share the sunlight with other samplings it overshadowing.

EDIT: too much typos

Rush has an answer for your analogy.

Lyrics

Preparedness should be baseline. Move bountiful theft into its spot, but make it not share the boons with teammates. Make a major trait shares the stack/duration with teammates when you steal a boon (so skills like larcenous strike become team buffs). Remove the -20% from sleight of hand and make steal 24-25 seconds CD to lessen the disparity between traited and untraited steal.

Shovel Face.4512:

I got my wish. Thief is getting invulnerability, damage increase and even unblockable attacks. What a day it is to main a thief. We’re back!!

After the patch drops you have to yell “witness me” before stealing into combat.

DeceiverX.8361:

Maugetarr.6823:

DeceiverX.8361:

Staff damage being upped (why?),

Staff damage is largely concentrated into vault which is fairly easily avoided. The autos lack the utility of the other melee weapon sets like poison, endurance regen, weakness, and cripple, while overall the set lacks interrupts and stealth. We’ll see if they’ve upped the utility of the set as well or just the damage.

D/P improved via BV changes over all other weapons (why?),

Because BV has been a pretty weak elite for a long time and the new elite pointed that out (1-2 seconds stun with an obvious tell with a 1 second cast time on a 40 second CD)

[P]assive procs on evasion builds in Acro for full-on invuln (why?).

Every class needs a passive? I don’t know on this one.

I feel like half of the changes were really good, and the other half are just incoherent. We’ll probably see the good changes undone and the bad ones further emphasized.

Overall I’m happy with the changes. I’m not attacking your questions, I’m just giving my perspective on why some of the changes have been made.

Staff damage is already the best the thief has, and all they stated was that they were going to up its damage. Nothing about utility purposes. Honestly, the staff has so much damage right now that more utility would just make the weapon unanimously dominant at everything. And it already comes close.

Ok, here’s the thing, if the wiki values are right, staff autos run at 1.17 mult/sec, sword at 1.15, and dagger at 1.12ish.
For reference, warrior’s axe auto runs at 1.38, ele’s lightning dagger auto at 1.32, and necro dagger at 1.33. The rough damage increase mention of 30% for sword puts it at 1.495 mult/second. Keeping them at the same ratios requires staff to be somewhere at 1.52 and daggers at 1.46. If staff isn’t increased, it would quickly fall behind in both sustained damage and utility.

Passive procs makes me upset in general. Not only does the game have too many overall, but we’re supposed to be a class that doesn’t really use them. We’ve never had them outside of LR (which people hated). Acrobatics is meant to be the evasion-based line, and static invulns are really upsetting.

Further, if they remove a lot of defensive amulets, I could potentially see the thief becoming the next bunker with something like D/D Sentinel in durability runes running Acro + Trickery + DD due to the massive evasion D/D offers right now with buffed death blossom. Many chained evades on D/D + endurance regen on dagger auto + Daredevil’s spammable dodges and big heals, good condition cleansing (1x per second like Diamond Skin ele, except all the time), permanent vigor, and tons of initiative regeneration, full block on Bandit’s defense, and then a 2s invuln when things get bad would potentially make the class overly-difficult to kill without outnumbering it.

While this may happen, without access to protection, I doubt it would be that extreme, although I do dislike passive procs as well.

DeceiverX.8361:

Staff damage being upped (why?),

Staff damage is largely concentrated into vault which is fairly easily avoided. The autos lack the utility of the other melee weapon sets like poison, endurance regen, weakness, and cripple, while overall the set lacks interrupts and stealth. We’ll see if they’ve upped the utility of the set as well or just the damage.

D/P improved via BV changes over all other weapons (why?),

Because BV has been a pretty weak elite for a long time and the new elite pointed that out (1-2 seconds stun with an obvious tell with a 1 second cast time on a 40 second CD)

[P]assive procs on evasion builds in Acro for full-on invuln (why?).

Every class needs a passive? I don’t know on this one.

I feel like half of the changes were really good, and the other half are just incoherent. We’ll probably see the good changes undone and the bad ones further emphasized.

Overall I’m happy with the changes. I’m not attacking your questions, I’m just giving my perspective on why some of the changes have been made.

Bandit’s defense is a rollover.

Withdraw is finally getting its 10%

Basilisk Venom attacks are unblockable.

Reduction in sword aftercasts so hopefully it doesn’t interfere with Flanking strike as much (+more weakness and cripple application).

Wow, decently impressed. Can’t wait to see some of the other changes.

Edit: A lot of these were forum suggestions, so pretty happy there as well. (crosses fingers for preparedness baseline)

The only thing that probably could be toned down in D/P is shadowshot’s damage.

D/D just needs help.

Deathblossom needs to have the same directional targeting that warrior’s GS #3 (whirlwind attack) has. I wouldn’t remove the bleeds till we get a true condition weapon mainhand (axe?).

Dancing Dagger needs a projectile speed increase (33%), have a 1.0 multiplier, and not bounce or cripple. When it hits it marks the target and gives you a rollover skill that’s instant cast and 2 initiative. The rollover shadowsteps you to the marked target, cripples it for 3 seconds, and removes a condition (no damage). This would let it be used in conjunction with CnD.

Cloak and Dagger needs to blind and be 5 initiative.

I think the above changes help D/D with positioning and gap closing without making the set OP or needing to nerf D/P.

Quoting myself from a different pistol fix thread:

1) Raise the multiplier of the #1 skill to 0.75 and have it apply 6 seconds of vuln. That means the auto-sustained damage comes out to 0.915mult/sec and results in a constant 7 vuln.
2) Make #2 apply 2 stacks of poison (6 sec) since its both a damage and utility condi. That will let P/D still be viable and synergize with the DA poison trait (this rounds out P/D to applying vuln, poison, bleeding, and torment consistently). Possibly adding boon destruction in addition may also make it useful.
3) Change #3 to a 4 shot backwards evasion (300 units with a matrix style roll) with a 2.0 multipler (0.5 per shot). That lets you stay at range, giving you the evasion the set needs, maintains burst, and limits spam due to the incresed distance. Note that a large chunk of damage from the set has been moved to the autos so you’re not losing anything, but instead gaining situationally useful utility like the rest of our successful sets. The evasion should be 0.5 seconds with a total skill time of 0.75 seconds to allow for counterplay.

James Quall.6029:

Zodryn.4216:

I’m choosing to remain cautiously optimistic. At least they didn’t mention anything that needs to be “toned down” for us. Karl, I believe in you!

I don’t mean this as a dig at you specifically and I’m glad you can feel optimistic here and I hope it pays off. I just think we’re in a really dark place when thieves are the least sought after profession for any area of the game who also have the worst elite spec, but we’re still like “Well they didn’t mention wanting to make us even worse, so this is good news!”

Well, if acro gets rethemed and becomes as cohesive as Daredevil, the line could end up pretty decent. If we have 2 lines dedicated to evasion, it would be sort of weird. Retheming it to “Infiltration Arts” or the like would give them a broad umbrella of shadowstep modifiers and boon hate.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Shovel Face.4512:

2.) I’ve NEVER used the Acrobatics line anyway.

To me, that’s the reason why it’s getting a rework.

Going down the list of traits;
- Fleet of Shadow – useless, need something new. Just delete this trait.
- Pain Response – useless. It would be better if it triggers a 3s Regen and removes a condition on hit without ICD.
- Feline Grace – should go back to refunding endurance. Even if it requires an evade would be better than this as long as it doesn’t have an ICD.
- Guarded Initiation – useless, need something new.
- Swindler’s Equilibrium – useless. Thief can get a better CDR from Trick without the stupid sword evade requirement and ICD.
- Hard to Catch – lower ICD. 25s would be perfect.
- Upper Hand – remove ICD. The dodge regen is enough of a CD. Increase initiative gain to 2.

So yeah, the trait line needs a lot of work.

Pretty much agree with your points, but here’s my take on what should be done.

FG just should be moved to Daredevil. That whole line is built around dodging, and feline grace is really the only thing left in Acro that’s built around dodging (well, upper hand and swindler’s equilibrium exist too I guess….). Just rework acro into something that’s more in line with stealing boons, chasing, and overall destroying sustain and it might round out core thief better. Keeping the same theme on acro would result in 2 lines attempting to achieve the same goals if they got it working. Scrapping the line and adding a minor tweak to daredevil would be a much easier process I think.

AegisFLCL.7623:

Khenzy.9348:

Did I just read they are planning on buffing Thieves AA damage? Really? What the hell?

If they touch any initiative based skill remember that it becomes spammable, that’s there only choice without creating a huge imbalance for a damage buff. The problem with any of that being we do not need the damage, we need survivability and massive updates to utility skills. Don’t understand why they think thieves need an AA buff…

Probably cause the burst damage is in an alright place. Buffing it would probably result in everyone complaining about the instant burst kills from thief as was complained about at release. Also, improving burst skills wouldn’t change much when an autoproc negates it all. Improving the sustained damage (autos) though while leaving the situational utility on the 2-5 skills is probably the better way to go. In that way, if a proc eats the burst or a bunker renders it a 4k crit, a glass thief would still probably be a threat and push the person off the point. Hopefully this involves fixing the skill lag/aftercasts on the sword autos, and fixing OH dagger. If the damage output of the mainhand is decent, the rest of the weaponset can be tuned for utility (hopefully) making it slightly easier to balance and avoiding the spam you were talking about.

As for sustain, we’re probably not going to get it in terms of the base of the class. Utilities need to be fixed, but it seems we’re still going to fulfill the role of glass cannon. People understand how to counterplay thieves now, but we’re just going to be a threat while they’re counterplaying us now based on what they’ve said here.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Did you moan for 2.5 years when thief was required in every team and could carry solo queue more than any other class by far?

Nah you didnt. As such, I support the karma of thief being bad.

Actually lots of thieves moaned for 2+ years about being forced into the single role that kept them in the meta while being told that the core class couldn’t be improved because they were too mobile by the rest of the community.

babazhook.6805:

I can stack 25 stacks of might on my scrapper without even thinking about it. It just happens. Everytime I look I got over 20 stacks.

It the same with my reaper. Even easier then the scrapper.

I think what has to happen is as another suggested. Allow the thief even more boon stealing where they get full durations and stacks. This might make the Reaper/scrapper and others think twice about stacking all those boons as they will be stacking them for the thief to take.

Move Feline Grace to the Daredevil master minor (after merging the health gain into the condi removal trait) and then just rework the Acrobatics line to boonhate/boonsteal and shadowstep modifiers.

Michael.9517:

DeceiverX.8361:

Depending on the camera and targeting settings, skills can be used without a target, thus a smart enemy can directly counter the effects of stealth if they know where the thief will likely be.

… you mean just spam stuff and win? RIP Thief

I mean we’ve only been saying that to people since 3 day headstart…… i guess it finally sunk in instead of “thief has no counterplay.”

evilapprentice.6379:

A good write up, but a couple points of contention (IMO of course)

Bandits defense – Currently, the kick is a liability. Any experienced player is going to come at you with stability up and punish you during the kick animation. This is worse in team fights where any experienced team knows to FF you while you’re kicking since all of your defenses are active, you’re locked into a useless animation, and you’ll melt in half a second. The kick needs to become a rollover-on-block that allows you to choose when (and if) to use the kick.

Weakening charge – make the range 170 and 360 degrees, and this skill all of sudden becomes pretty decent – when used at the right range, you’ll be able to go through your target and still land all 3 hits.

Escapists absolution – I Still don’t believe this trait is worth a major slot. Giving your opponent control over when you can use this trait (you have to evade an attack) makes it a liability, unable to ever be truly counted on as your primary condition cleanse and relegating it to a “support cleansing” role. It should be merged with Driven Fortitude and another major trait designed in its place.

Agree with this. Move feline grace to the master minor slot and re-design acro from the ground up after combining the traits. Reverse the order of Palm Strike and Fist Flurry as well.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I don’t play ranked — too much hassle — but I’ve played unranked several times and there are times with one other Thief…no flames and we even won.

I think you only get flamed if you choose a Thief and you don’t know how to play the profession.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I’ve had matches where we lost an I got blamed, and matches where someone said “you know thief is the weakest class right now” before we’d even started playing. Just gotta ignore it.

AsurasRCute.4136:

Maugetarr: Sure, I knew which types of fights you were thinking of; but then we have the eternal problem of ‘Why should I have to sacrifice my build, playstyle and fun for content that you prefer and I don’t particularly like? And vice versa, naturally?’

This is why I never envy Devs; honestly I can’t see any way out of this without some game mode skill separation. The only compromise I can see here is that we keep P/P as a core set for the open world stuff, pretty much as is but substantially buffed in some ways.

Since your suggestion mainly concerns the more elite type of content, it would maybe better fit a new Elite Specialisation? Carbine, rifle etc? Your proposal certainly feels more like archetypal (in games/media) carbine fighting than the archetypal (in games/media) dual-wield pistol hoser… that we pretty much have but with a few glaring things missing.

Cheers for the good chat anyway, whatever the actual balance result turns out to be.

That’s fine. I don’t mind agreeing to disagree on this one. It’s what I’d like to see done with pistols or rifle really. It would be great to have a competitive DPS ranged set in the core class, but honestly if they went with rifle, I wish they’d go more of an assault rifle style with low(ish) damage at 1200 getting stronger when getting closer to your target (think lifeblast). That would give us range but be balanced around higher risk higher reward play. 3 shot burst auto attacks would be neat.

Well, I tend to think in terms of extended fights so stuff more like fractal bosses rather than open world mobs. However, if you want to think about it from more of a shot to shot basis, we can do that. The current channel time is listed as 1.5 seconds (I believe it’s about 1.75 with aftercast, but we’ll use 1.5 for sake of ease). Shot to shot of autos is 0.82 and my suggested length of the new unload is 0.75 seconds putting unload and 1 auto at the same length as the current unload. I believe the currently listed multiplier of 2.4 was before they updated the damage from the autos and Unload, so the current values are ~0.5 and ~3.0 respectively. Since my suggestion is to put unload at a 2.0 multiplier and it will have an overall multiplier of 2.75 in the same time frame as the 3.0 multiplier currently occurs. The tradeoff is that the sustained damage is much better making the set more useful in situations like where 2 unloads are insufficient to down an enemy (world bosses, PvP, etc.). Additionally, after stacking the vuln from the autos resulting in a stack of 7, the value of the new unload and sigle auto comes out to 2.94 reducing the difference in the current and new values.

Overall, the idea is to free up the set so it doesn’t become such an initiative sink to sustain damage, but still is capable of burst when needes. Moving damage from unload to the autos and then giving unload some utility instead accomplishes that.

AsurasRCute.4136:

I don’t agree with suggestions that reduce the number of hits in Unload. I found that the best (and most characterful and fun) approach is to drop each enemy extremely fast with (ideally, for the vast majority of mobs) a single Unload each. [And in low level areas, dropping two or three enemies with just one Unload, if you line the shot up right… who needs Piercing?!]

This requires lots of hits to work properly, since it involves lots of ‘on crit, 50% chance to…’ procs, and priming the target with early hits and then benefiting from those priming effects with later hits – all in the one Unload (ie minimal unit time and minimal Initiative cost). I’ll give a detailed breakdown at the bottom of the post.

This approach also allows a bonus to survivability, as it opens up one of the few spaces where you can add some survivability gear without tanking your damage output, and can actually increase it.

Sure, for power builds, full Zerk gives pretty close to the optimal ratio of Pow, Prec and Fer. But if you have lots of ‘on crit, % chance of…’ potential damage in your build, then your damage output can increase by adding Prec, even at the expense of some Pow and Fer. Your damage can increase by switching some Zerk pieces to Mara, which gives you some Vit in the bargain.

For all of the above to work as reliably as it needs to (given how squishy we are, with no AoE), it simply requires as many hits as possible in the shortest amount of time; the eight we already have with Unload seeming to be exactly the right number IME.

Just for anyone who’s interested, my (especially opening) Unload needs to do all this, to reliably do what I want it to do:-

1 Take enemy to <90% health to get Fury and then +250 Fer.

2 Then crit, with a subsequent hit, to extend Fury’s duration.

3 Proc Sigil of Air (50% chance on crit).

4 Proc Sigil of Fire (50% chance on crit).

5 Apply a Condition (either 50% or 60% chance on crit, depending upon whether I’m using Sundering Strikes or Ankle Shots).

6 Then, with subsequent hits, benefiting from #5 by getting +10% increased damage (Exposed Weakness; and another +10% against that target if using Ankle Shots).

7 Take the target to <50% health.

8 Then, with subsequent hits, benefit from #7 by getting +20% increased damage.

Eight hits seems to be able to do all that very reliably. Four wouldn’t have a prayer.

Well, the current effective CD to Unload is 5 seconds due to the initiative recharge and an effective channel time of 1.75 seconds including the aftercast iirc. So in 5 seconds you can fit 8 hits plus 4 autos for an effective 12 shots at an effective 4.92 multiplier total (.98 mult/sec). With changing it to a 4 shot 0.75 second channel you can effectively fit 9 shots in that timeframe at resulting in a 5.25 multiplier (1.05 mult/sec) meaning its a 7% DPS boost before we get into sigil/trait procs for this 5 second period.

Let’s assume all zerk gear and no precision on the runes, resulting in a 50% crit chance without fury. This means each sigil has a 25% chance to proc per hit. In this 5 second period the 9 shots results in a 0.5% chance of not proccing either and an 85% chance to proc both. If we assume that it takes 3 shots to proc fury initially in this timeframe that mean 6 shots have a 35% chance to proc the sigils. This results in a 0.1% chance of proccing neither and a 92% chance of proccing both.

Ankle shots has a 30% chance of triggering without fury and a 42% chance with fury per shot. This results in 1.3% chance of not proccing in the 9 shots (assuming the 3rd shot triggers fury). Overall this results in a 90.7% chance of proccing Ankle Shots and both sigils.

Meanwhile, the new vuln on auto guarantees an extra 5% damage. The main strength of these changes thoughis that even without using unload in this 5 second period you could fit in 6 autos. With a 0.75 multiplier, and including the building vuln per shot starting from 0 you get an average of 0.92 mult/sec which is just under the current unload plus autoattack in the same time period for no initiative. This allows you to save initiative for the situationally useful skills on the rest of the set while providing strong ranged pressure. Overall I think that’s fair because the set gives up mobility from shortbow and is only 900 range compared to everyone elses 1200 ranged pressure.

I’m still going to stick with my suggestion for P/P 1,2, &3.

1) Raise the multiplier of the #1 skill to 0.75 and have it apply 6 seconds of vuln. That means the auto-sustained damage comes out to 0.915mult/sec and results in a constant 7 vuln.

2) Make #2 apply 2 stacks of poison (6 sec) since its both a damage and utility condi. That will let P/D still be viable and synergize with the DA poison trait (this rounds out P/D to applying vuln, poison, bleeding, and torment consistently). Possibly adding boon destruction in addition may also make it useful.

3) Change #3 to a 4 shot backwards evasion (300 units with a matrix style roll) with a 2.0 multipler (0.5 per shot). That lets you stay at range, giving you the evasion the set needs, maintains burst, and limits spam due to the incresed distance. Note that a large chunck of damage from the set has been moved to the autos so you’re not losing anything, but instead gaining situationally useful utility like the rest of our successful sets. The evasion should be 0.5 seconds with a total skill time of 0.75 seconds to allow for counterplay.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Not so much forced but-

“Thank you, Karl.”

For not submitting to the power creep allure and thereby saving thief from what might be a tsunami of nerfs to the new meta.

Gotta agree with this. Yeah, we’re not as strong as everyone else right now, but that’s because of the power creep more than anything. Aside from tweaks needed to individual traits and skills, SA could use a small reorganization and acro needs an overhaul/retheming. That’s pretty much it. Others just need to be brought back down to their base class levels as their specializations outclass their own other lines. Acro could use the same focus that Daredevil was given to bring it back up. I still think FG could just be rolled into Enforcer Training or Escapist’s Absolution to round out the line so acro can be built from the ground up again; maybe it can be made into a shadowstep/boonhate line (Infiltration Arts?).

Anyway, agree with the sentiment.

Gecko.1962:

The thing that irritates me the most is that people CONSTANTLY cry about having me on their team. Whether I’m pulling 100 points or 300 points, they will find a reason. I line up my burst correctly, I can 1v1 almost all classes pretty effectively, and I do my job as a Thief to the best of my ability. I don’t deserve to be treated like garbage..

They’ll always need someone (else) to blame for a loss.

xXBurningEmberXx.6085:

Maugetarr.6823:

The skill is actually already pretty good.

However, Bandit’s Defense needs to channel for 2 seconds and have a rollover knockdown available for 5 seconds if it successfully blocks something.

Fist Flurry/Palmstrike need to have their order reversed. Have the Palmstrike stun and deal its current damage, and put the Pulmonary Impact on the final strike of Fist Flurry. In that way it would be like a Pistol whip without the evade and root but with a longer stun on a CD.

I don’t think you understand how daredevil works… it’s not a brawler class that recklessly throws attacks, the attacks are based on martial arts. No martial artist is going to throw a palm hand before a fist flurry.

Exactly, you wouldn’t recklessly throw out attacks, which is why stunning them before a series of blows makes sense.

Edit: The original palmstrike counted as an offhand attack setting you up for a dual attack. It started the combo, not finished it.

Shinuro.9086:

with this build, condi preasure is difficult, no ???

So vs necro or rev mallyx, you switch staff master by escapti’s absolution ?

I have test this build in the past but with the meta very tanky, druid, mesmer, elem and many conditions, it’s not easy^^.

I usually never swap out staff mastery. Condi pressure can be difficult, but I find that I’m often going to get burst by condis or keep clearing the same one over and over as it’s reapplied, so I treat them like normal damage but try not to heal with poison on me. I’ve only fought a few condi revs, but never really a 1 on 1 situation. If they’re distracted, I wait for them to dodge something else from a teammate then hit them at the end of the roll with WC + Steal. I try not to hit them when they get stunned cause it usually results in stealing into the Shiro stunbreak.

Tanky isn’t really a problem because you’re pretty tanky in this and can still have good burst so you can stay on target. That said, it might take forever to down someone, but that seems to be true of virtually any class right now. I can’t tell you exactly the builds I’ve fought, but the lowest crit I’ve seen vault hit was on scrappers for 4.5K and the highest is somewhere just above 13k (mostly necros); 6k-9k is the most common range.

swinsk.6410:

Opposing team looked like that had some glass cannons with 10k vaults lol…

I’ve moved on for the moment to other games due to anet having their heads up their kitten s I regards to balance…

They could have been, but 13k on this build is my high.

Well, since people have been pretty down on thief lately, I thought I would share a build I’ve been having success with. I’m not very high in ranked now since I haven’t had the time to play continuously, but it’s still been largely fun. Took some input from the previous thread.

With Runes of the Daredevil, you can build tanky and still hit pretty hard, especially with the power from the Soldier Amulet.

Build

Video

Opposing team was full premade.

4/6 lines that the thief has right now are in alright shape. Shadow Arts and Acro are in not so good of shape right now, and those are what would be considered more defensive lines. Thief is still fun to play, but I would highly recommend avoiding those lines until they are fixed. There are simply fights you’ll need to run away from on thief, typically against condi heavy builds. When starting out, you should avoid balanced fights as you’re more there to tip the scales in your team’s favor as a +1. That said, once you’ve become extremely comfortable with a thief and learned what to avoid and when to step in, you can be very useful. The thief is a patient class right now. Don’t go charging into teamfights, but rather pick off the low and out of position people skirting the outside.

Just because it’s not quite up to par doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play it if it’s fun for you, just realize it’s going to be a steep learning curve and frustrating for you and your teammates for a while, so I would wholeheartedly agree that you should learn in unranked for now.

The skill is actually already pretty good.

However, Bandit’s Defense needs to channel for 2 seconds and have a rollover knockdown available for 5 seconds if it successfully blocks something.

Fist Flurry/Palmstrike need to have their order reversed. Have the Palmstrike stun and deal its current damage, and put the Pulmonary Impact on the final strike of Fist Flurry. In that way it would be like a Pistol whip without the evade and root but with a longer stun on a CD.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’ve been having success with:

Valkyrie

Acrobatics/Trickery/Daredevil

Bound dodge/Staff master / Physical reduction

Pain Response / Hard to catch / Dont stop

Thrill of the crime/ (Bountiful Theft or Trickster)/ Sleight of hand

Sword / Pistol + Staff, (Both sets running Sigil of Intelligence, Sigil of Fire)

And rune of the daredevil.

All damage is sword auto, Stealing mid-bound to land bound damage, and staff 5.

Roll for ini, Shadowstep and Agility sigil for utilities, Basi for Elite.

Staffs hit heavy, common dps condis get cleared by trait and sword #2, and stealth is on demand with pistol offhand.

Plus you end up with stacking swiftness the longer you fight, so its easy to run away if you have shadowstep up.

Ironically it’s bad against dagger mainhand thieves because blind spam whiffs your burst by 50%, so working on that.

It lets me beat the hell out of revenants and condi engies though.

Glad to see someone else making use of Runes of the Daredevil.

I’ve been having success with this build. Average vault lands for 6.5k-8.5k with highs up to 13k (for some reason I hit this against necros). DH is still the hardest fight for 1v1, but doable. Everything else is alright. I might not wreck everything, but I don’t feel like I’m at a severe disadvantage.

Forum bug………….

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Lettuce.2945:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I don’t think an undodgeable attack should crit, so no for pulmonary.

I am 60/40 in favor of not having mug crit because that’s almost an instant attack too, and with that being able to proc crit sigils, thieves would go right back to instagib from stealth and everyone would cry about us again.

Maybe if the mug has its damage buffed flatly or altered crit rate for a couple seconds on success, It would be okay.

Undodgeable? You literally have to be interrupted doing something for it to proc. Maybe stop auto-ing the air? Just an idea. eyeroll

channel skills are interruptible by mug when traited to daze. you’d literally be force-feeding people unavoidable damage by accident much of the time during rotation.

Damage that can crit and pop sigils.

While I’m sure this would be outstanding on people spamming invuls to get dps spiked mid invuln that’s top-quality crybait.

babazhook.6805:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I don’t think an undodgeable attack should crit, so no for pulmonary.

I am 60/40 in favor of not having mug crit because that’s almost an instant attack too, and with that being able to proc crit sigils, thieves would go right back to instagib from stealth and everyone would cry about us again.

Maybe if the mug has its damage buffed flatly or altered crit rate for a couple seconds on success, It would be okay.

Heres a thought. Turn Mug into a pure lifesteal , that is if one heals for 2600 one hits for 2600 and allow the skill to be modified by the heal or power attribute or combination of the same .

I’m okay with this, if there was consideration given to mugging someone damage immune.

I would also be ok with it as a lifesteal. That way it would be independent of power.

Serious Thought.5394:

No but the skillfact says it is so. And I am very for mug critting or at least doing more damage as well as my idea for the new steal trait for Crit Strikes- mainly because Crit is the only line without a benefit for steal.

Probably for the same reason that rollover skills don’t add endurance. Crit strikes could use some help, but another steal trait isn’t the way to go. I’d like to see some stuff like destroying boons on crits with an ICD or stealing endurance on crits with an ICD. In fact the whole top tier could use some D/D style reworks with some crit modifiers that are offensive, defensive, and utilitarian.

Edit: I.E: moving HK down a tier and having a trait that steals a boon and 10 endurance on an 8 sec ICD. That would result in health gain on crit, utility on crit, or extra damage while critting. Also the GM minor should be changed too. Maybe a quickness buff that triggers off of fury? The one there is too situational and completely overshadowed by the DA GM minor.

Serious Thought.5394:

People focusing on PI and not Mug. Anyone notice that PI is bugged and does not restore endurance despite the Brawler’s Tenacity trait and it clearly stating “Physical”? No. Ok, I’ma move on.

I don’t think PI is a physical utility. It’s a triggered trait. If mug didn’t also heal, we might be talking more about it, but it’s decently balanced.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Stand The Wall.6987:

No, they really dont. Giving a high burst class more damage isnt going to solve any problems only create new ones. If you reply in QQ form and say that other classes get high burst then you dont have any understanding of balance.

You don’t need an understanding of balance to know that there are multiple high sustain classes in this game that are just as capable of dealing as much, if not more damage, than the thief profession. Hell, most have more DPS than thief can pump out. No amount of “agree with me or you’re an idiot” shielding is going to change that.

One thing though is that with high multiplier, only non-crit damage, it encourages you to put more points in non-crit stats. Daredevil has a theme that’s flat damage increases which promotes less crit oriented builds. Combined with rune of the Daredevil, you can get guaranteed crits on certain attacks with high power builds using Valkyrie’s or soldier’s amulet that forego the use of precision in stats. Pulmonary impact pairs well with that theme.

Hitsuke.5304:

Love this… Pre-HoT I never used to see anyone complain about Backstab, yet now we have a skill that actually competes with it for damage (Even though Vault still hits with less oomph) you’re all on here whining.

Does Backstab still hit like a truck? Yes
Is it still exceptionally hard to avoid? Yes
Does it chain well with other skills? Yes

Frankly, some of the suggestions on show here are absolutely idiotic. Especially the ones on offer from alchemyst… I’d have to ask if he’s on hard drugs. 4k DBs? Heartseeker 15% dmg boost? Put the pipe down, seriously.

C&D gaining a blind effect is fine and is something I advocate, but that would be it.

To be fair, vault hits for slightly more, however I agree with your sentiment. Vault is highly telegraphed, can be walked out of, can be interrupted, and costs initiative per attempt. Also vault is balanced around the rest of the weapon set. Looking at backstab and the fact that it requires stealth, we’ll assume 6 initiative in a daredevil build with BPS + Bound. Backstab is 0.4 mult/ini while vault is 0.5 mult/ini. Backstab can be attempted multiple times without spending more initiative. Heartseeker is 0.5 mult/ini at 50% and under. It could be said that whirling charge is 0.7 mult/ini, but requires landing all 3 hits to achieve that. Vault is decently balanced around the rest of staff. D/P has the ability to chase better, and D/D…. well….. we all know D/D needs help (but not backstab).

I’d like to see staff not nerfed down to S/D or D/D levels.

I’ve gotten up to 5.5k in PvP without it critting. From general play it feels like the multiplier is somewhere between 2.25-2.5. If it crit it would be like firing a backstab. It’s already great for high power, low crit builds. Giving it the ability to crit would mean lowering multiplier, limiting its usefulness in different builds.

No thanks.

Edit: Testing the trait out in a soldier build. This was pretty much the second game with it and the first time playing D/P in over 6 months so the gameplay is sloppy, but it hits plenty hard already.

Jana.6831:

Nocta.5274:

Sylvari has the most athletic look without being a cliche human, and it has some really nice customization options. ( really hard to make two identical sylvari if you try not to )

True that, but to me their running (male) is as if I’m running behind a pencil pusher

Haha, this is why I ended up deleting my first thief after a few hundred hours. The run animation and dialog drove me crazy. Female sylvari are way more fluid. Had I realized that at the time I wouldn’t have deleted it.

Male? Charr.

Norn female are great.

Cynz.9437:

“thief is worthless right now”
“thief is extremely bad”

doesn’t matter how much i actually rez ppl, +1, decap/cap etc. lol

only way to play thief in pvp atm is to disable chat

Thankfully I haven’t gotten a lot of this at this point except for 1 game where I DC’d right after accepting and came back in within the first 10 points. The reaction was “oh, and they’re a thief!” We lost that game but my score was in line with the rest of my team. I had a next game with one of the same people (solo q mind you) and we won handily with me at top score due to decapping, skirmishing, and finishing.

Thief can still work, but it has to work with a decent team that can actually hold points. We’re not going to carry anything. At best we magnify the strengths and weaknesses of the rest of the team.

As for the OP’s question, I’ve actually enjoyed my league play so far.

I feel like I’ve seen it proc, but I don’t remember it in the log either. Seems like video might have it show up, but I’ve been on someone else’s computer lately without access to shadowplay to take a look.

Well, I’m going to say go halfway with changing your build, but not so much that you lose your playstyle.

As a thief main, I’m in the same boat as Serious Thought. I wasn’t playing P/D power, but when everyone else was playing D/P DA/SA/Tr, i was still playing DA/CS/Tr S/D, certainly not the top of the meta. While I switched out my S/D for a Staff, I was able to keep my playstyle and make some more interesting changes with some of the new runes.

I guess I’m parroting Serious Thought here, but nail down what you really love about your playstyle and build around that from the ground up. Your build might be different in the end, but it will suit you.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Zodryn.4216:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If they finally nerfed shadowstep stomping then good. I support it 100%. Keep it that way.

Why? Makes no sense. It is a 50 sec CD and one of our only safe stomps. Even if you decide to use the SB 5 trick, it still requires at least a 20 sec CD (steal) to work. Balanced the way it was IMO.

What makes no sense is that something like this undermines the downed state, makes the whole downed skills useless, and takes away the risk of trying to stomp someone due to a long casting time.

All theses are in place to counter or delay a stomp, yet it’s being bypassed by shadowstep stompping.

The only acceptable “safe” stomp is faking it to bait the counter before actually stompping.

Better get rid of stab, blind, distortion, stealth, invuln, and impact strike then.

That won’t make sense nor reasonable because they are working as intended.

Shadowstep stompping is obviously not their intention, which they have expressed in the past when they nerfed Sword #2.

I think 3 years is a nice period to classify something as ‘working as intended.’

Thief has many issues that are 3yrs old and I doubt that is their intention.

I thought when they were asked about Sword #2 stomping and shadowstep stomping they made a clear delineation between the the two which basically boiled down to CD time. Sword#2 + infiltrator signet had an effective 21-24 second CD (and you could alternate between them) while shadowstep stomping is once every 40 seconds when traited (maybe less via rng).

Vault can be strafed out of without having to dodge at all. It’s like dragon’s tooth on ele. It can also be interrupted as the evasion only covers the front portion. Once people start playing against staff thieves more and learning to time their interrupts and not backpedal (admittedly difficult with what seems like so few thieves running around) it’s going to be harder to land them than now.

You could make it instant cast without the ability to be used while stunned. I mean you can’t use withdraw while stunned. They removed Blinding Powder’s interruption of a channeling skill so there’s probably a way to make it not usable while stunned, but not interrupt a current channel as would happen with a stomp.

Cynz.9437:

basically they decided to screw every single thief in pvp/wvw/pve because of few new players that were incapable of using steal properly and used new cam feature

TIL I’m a new player incapable of using steal.

Luto.1938:

BFMV.3198:

I use action camera and it is kitten amazing. You are actually more responsive because you do not have to hold down a button to rotate, meaning it is one less thing to worry about.

Also the targeting is so good and it makes auto attacks even easier.

So my question to you is… did you have any issues with the way steal was working before?

I use the action cam as well. Occasionally I did have issues before with steal (even before the action cam). I have had no issues with steal since either doing fractals or playing PvP.

The action cam is also great for using skills like SB#5, vault, and shadowstep, just to expand on what BFMV was saying. Also the camera allows you to aim skills like withdraw, RFI, and Staff #3 while immobilized.

Paulie.6215:

-1

I love this change. No more wasted steals.

Anet please leave this change exactly how it is.

-1

I also like this change.

GoZero.9708:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Doggie.3184:

THEY MADE STEAL TARGET ONLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NINJA NERF!

/seppuku

The thread containing the most likely reason as to why.

Yup. Introduce a faulty unfinished feature and nerf the skills to accommodate this feature to hide its flaws. Because it’s the skills fault why such a faulty feature doesn’t work correctly — logic understood.

To be fair, I don’t see it as a nerf. At worst a neutral change.

I mean OOC thieves can still use signet of shadows. In combat thieves can use steal.

I would be mad if they’d nerfed SB#5. This is a minor change.

Thrill of the Crime was good in parties for 5 person swiftness and fury, even when out of combat (such as running from one place to another). Now that you need a target it can no longer be used on cooldown with no target to gain the associated boons. It’s NOT a neutral change, it’s absolute lose.

Out of combat it would have only been good for the swiftness and there are much better ways in a party of getting swiftness than wasting steal.