This is not a sarcastic question, but can AN rename the thief the assassin as it was in GW1? It feels as though a lot of complaints come from “thief hits too hard/thief has too much stealth.” Renaming it would emphasize that that’s what it is supposed to do. When the names of some of the abilities were taken from the assassin abilities, I don’t know why the name of the class needed to be changed.
Thieves are the only class that lacks counter-play. Stealth has no counter – bad design. It reduces the possible actions the opponent can use. 5 > F1 > 1 is not skill.
Watched it, but that combo that you mentioned is that introductory to get people into the their. The thief noob tube if you will. It requires some maneuvering to pull off thus some coordination with the keyboard and mouse to try to get behind to fire off the BS. While this may work for a while, as soon as they meet up against someone who has seen it a couple of times, it’ll stop working as they’ll block, dodge, fear, knockback, knockdown, stun, or blind the thief as soon as it stealths. In this way CnD, steal, BS is training for all classes. However, this is limited to a single target at a time. A much more rewarding build capable of taking on groups is the condition build. Still counterable, but requires more skill from both players. The problem is though is this is pretty much where it ends. Sword dagger, while highly mobile is more of a nuisance and support build than anything else as it lack the oomph needed to take down higher toughness or vitality classes. So the thief gets an OP sticker because it allows people to enter the game with a fun mechanic and rewards good players who enjoy a good combat condition build. So what I take away from this is that the dagger doesn’t in fact need a nerf, (or stealth for that matter), but the other weapon combos (S/D, S/P, P/P) need a buff so that other builds become more attractive and rewarding to the thief players. As it is, even the very skilled players are pushed into staying in the D/D causing all complaints to virtually be about one specific setup available every 45 seconds.
Perhaps backstab could be brought in line (although I really don’t think its damage is out of line) if the deep wound condition were brought back from gw1 and applied instead of double damage from behind. Have it stack intensity with a cap of 4, starting with 15% health reduction, 2 stacks at a total of 25% health reduction, 3 stacks for 30, and 4 stacks for 33. Really if someone can make it up to the 4 stacks without removing the condition, then they deserve to die, but then backstab would scale better with the target being attacked, whether they be squishy or a tank. It might also change the playstyle mechanic of backstab because instead of using it in a front ended burst, they would use it as a finisher since it could be removed as a condition.
At this point, venoms seem redundant. Apply poison same as dagger auto attack? That seems like a useful reason to put it in a utility slot. Instead of poison for dagger autoattack, why not bleeding for 4 seconds? It would make spider venom a unique condition and therefore worth taking. This would also bring D/D 1&3 in line with each other as a nice stacking combo.
Also, I don’t think the stealth mechanic needs any changing. If this is due to a processing power problem with the servers or something, why not make the revealed animation of the swirling shadows last the entire length of revealed, since this is what players should look for because of the rendering issue. It may only be a stopgap until the rendering issue can be fully addressed wherever the problem may lie, but it would give people a target to attack in the meantime.
I could take or leave a sword off hand. It may be a chance to reintroduce flashing blades (if I’m remembering my names properly from gw1) as a dual skill, allowing for maybe a more defensive offhand which doesnt rely on blind.
It would be nice if our traits allowed the chance to cause bleeding on a crit somewhere along the line. Maybe putting it in trickery and calling it barbed blades or in the accuracy line since the more accurate you would become the more likely you would aim for an artery.
Venoms could be left to do the exact same abilities if instead of applying them to weapons, you threw down a venomous smoke bomb at your location with an AoE effect (radius 240). Then venomous aura could leave combo fields on top of those as well. You get cc that makes sense for a thief as well as a cool venomshare build. Basilisk venom could have the same radius as bps, or maybe a tiny bit smaller, and leave a confusion combo field.
(edited by Maugetarr.6823)
While I haven’t been playing the engineer for very long relative to my thief or warrior, I don’t think a hammer would fit the aesthetic very well. Engineers come off to me as “i may not be strong or have magical abilities, but I have the brains to match everyone else,” which is why they seem to have such a vast array of abilities which can be equated to other classes. A hammer would be unwieldy in their hands. A sword or dagger on the other hand (not to be confused with offhand) with some built in tazer effects would much more fitting. # 1 slot being a chain of slash-slash-shock with a confusion or weakness effect on the end, #2 being a short ranged arc lightning with a cripple effect and say a 10 second cooldown, and #3 being a lightning bolt air on top of the character that either stuns or knocks back. It would pair well with the shield that already works off electrical properties, at least from a fluff standpoint.