Guild Wars 2

BurrTheKing.8571:

Chicago Jack.5647:

Warriors are actually in somewhat of a good spot now. The big thing that needs to be addressed is a reason to press their heal button.

They just have to quit crying, and start learning how to do something other than press all their weapon buttons in succession.

I still don’t understand why people think that pressing your heal is so much more skillful than not having to press a button. Against many builds the fact that it lacks a burst of healing is very much a weakness. When a Thief loses to me it’s because they spend too much time playing passively in stealth. The longer you draw out the fight the higher the chance the Warrior will win.

Because healing means you are in the fight. If you don’t heal you die, so not having to even try to heal is the issue. Other people have to time their heals, some rely heavily on them. Healing signet is just all the time and with high toughness makes it even stronger. Dragging a fight on should not come from passives, some effort should be present.

CC in wvw is fine. In zergs most people bring some form of aoe stability and group healing there are builds meant to work together. In s/tpvp its an entirely different story because most people aren’t running synergy builds as much as filling a role for that match(bunker, roamer, etc). Currently all I see is 1 bunker, 4 people mix n matched to run between mid and their home point and its boring as kitten. Even the EU tourney put me to sleep watching them just mindlessly fight mid and take 0 outside objectives.

There is no DR on disable effects, which just leads to button smashing and in the case of warrior, is really easy to do and rotate. Hambow is a plague in pvp right now, and at least 90% of them are just pressing 1-5 with F1 and swapping weapons sadly with positive results because it’s AoE (except backbreaker). Disables in pvp need DR, there is no skill in having 2-5 people use a cc on a class with no stability, especially when that cycle can be repeated fairly quick.

BobbyT.7192:

Oidmetala.8426:

this rune is for sure to strong atm

nearly every power profession run it.
and it makes nearly all power professions much stronger then they should be at the moment.

warriors run strengh runes
mesmers run strengh runes
eles run strengh runes
some thiefs run strengh runes

this 4 professions run around with ~20 perma might and just kill everything

so there is of course no condi meta atm
we have a power meta

Weren’t people complaining about the condi meta, and wanting a power meta?

I think the problem is that everyone uses this if they want damage. Other rune sets just do not compete, and with the change to critical damage ferocity runes provide far to little. The whole point of the rune/sigil rework was to open up options, all I saw was a bunch of options nerfed, a small few buffed, and atleast 3/4 of them still being garbage.

Only place p/p has its place for dungeons is the volcanic fractal boss. When he bubbles, go stealth, and spam that 1 (since the bubble is # of attacks). At single target dps p/p is stronger if you have the set up, but sb brings far more utility and rarely do you come into single target bosses. You don’t even have to spec into sb and it has stronger hits if used correctly.

Huh, weird.

Here is what I ran

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAsY8Yl0Mpyp9Ox0J0PNhTBxVA8eEr4Ed3hkmBA-TpBGABDcEAeuMQDHEAAeAApdCAsZ/BA

Dee Jay.2460:

I gave some pretty detailed feedback on traits here.

Most of it is still relevant as the patch really didn’t change much about our issues.

Most pertinent imo is fixing Last Refuge, adding Condition Removal alternatives other than Shadow’s Embrace and reworking some of the dull +X% damage traits that are far too prominent, especially in the Deadly Arts tree.

I looked at that thread and it certainly covers a lot of trait issues which leads to the same builds over and over (because nothing is worth taking their place). We have a ton of potentially good utility skills and traits but they don’t all bring enough to the table. Shadow Arts is our best trait line, I mean just look at the choices you get from adept. I enjoy acrobatics and non-stealth heavy builds but I can’t blame people for abusing them from time to time.

@ Zero day, Many of the trait suggestions I gave were to pull thief out of being an overall selfish class(hidden killer, furious retaliation, etc). Some of them were to remove the 1 sided traits that didn’t offer enough to compete with other traits in their tier(dagger training, power shots, etc). Others were just strange with either RNG attached or being far to uncommon that it wasn’t something you could work off of(initial strike, improvisation, etc). Just to clarify the reasons haha, glad you went ahead to repost it all I like your format more.

I’m scared to run with less than 15k health. I did make a life steal build using s/d though, pretty fun to sit on a point and annoy people.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAqY8al8MpopNNx0J8PNBNBxdxrRO8OMfpMaFAA-TJBGwAJeCAAOJAOLDYa/BA

Needless to say I don’t kill anyone. At least I shouldn’t. O.o

Screw the meta OP, break the chains!

I use dp, don’t use any SA anymore. Reason being last refuge screws me up so many times I go from “alright Ima get this guy” to “time to dip”. D/p doesn’t necessarily have to use much stealth, I use it for the utility and focus on wiggeling them down. Mug helps greatly in that. In the event I’m low health and have steal off cd, I will make sure blind is removed and that my target isn’t going to block or evade me because the 2k heal is pretty nice. Generally I don’t fight on a point so I don’t see as many conditions, and if I do I got lyssa and sword on my side with generosity. In other words, poison doesn’t bother me much atleast not enough to give mug up.

Still using lyssa, call me old but I still enjoy it and up to 5X condi removal ain’t bad. Wish I had my stability back though… skyhammer is a pita as is.

Pawstruck.9708:

The formatting and length ruin this for me. I can’t even understand you at all. Couldn’t get past the first paragraph.

I cut out a lot of chatter, hope it helps.

Ision.3207:

Didn’t you hear the news? A noob was killed in WvW by a stealthThief, so Improving the Thief is NOT allowed in any way – and forever more.

;-)

PS: You have some interesting thoughts, but you would be FAR better served introducing them one at a time (so it doesn’t look like a total class remake) and posting them in the Professions forums instead of here.

I considered that, except that this is only for thief (if it was stealth related I certainly would, since thief is not the only stealth class). Also there is a lot of whiners in there who have very very twisted stances on thief with little information to back it up. I agree thief isn’t the most balanced, but its painted to be far to strong than it actually is, which leads to shouting contests from both sides and the topic is easily derailed from people not willing to L2P and/or rude comments directed at specific people.

I’ll see if I can revise the thread though, it does look a little like the ancient wall of text. Still have a few topics I’ll touch in the coming days as well as some tweaks to previous thoughts.

[Sword]

-#1 (Tactical strike) Change functionality of the front attack to a condition transfer (1). Sword thief to me always seemed like a dirty play style with some degree of control, something a blind just did fit to well in especially for how much of that we already have.

-#2 (Infiltrator’s strike/return) Small change, change functionality of IR to, “Return 1 initiative if a condition is removed”. Time to reward some active thinking and not nerf this skill, its still in pain.

-#3 (Pistol whip) Tied to the skill spam change, I think it’d be safe to reduce the initiative cost to 5 for pvp and return a small % of damage back (5%?).

-#3 (Larcenous strike) Add functionality to cleave. Why? Because Mesmer sword auto attack out does this skill, which is quite sad. The increased cost and 50% boon stripping nerf (2->1) this skill needs some love. Could just as easy reduce the cost back to 1 initiative since it only steals 1 boon now. 1 or the other.

[Dagger]

-#2 (Heartseeker). Further the damage spread from high to low health to deal less damage at higher health and more damage at lower health. This will hopefully get us closer to removing hs spamers from embarrassing themselves and reward those who use it for dps at the right times. The damage increase at lower health would be much lower than the damage loss at higher health, we’re trying to reward good use of the skill not make it easier to abuse.

-#3 (Death blossom) Increase the distance it travels by say 80 units (just a little) and make it a full evade. Keep the after cast to not allow easy evade spam but atleast those who know the duration of the animation can use it wisely in avoiding certain attacks.

-#4 (dancing dagger) For dps, its meh, for gap closer any other weapon would do better, and its highly unreliable to hit. Change functionality to, “Throw your dagger to poison your foe. Poison duration 4 seconds”. Increase the projectile speed to make it hit more reliably. This is just a start, I’m sure there is some better utility to this skill than a single target poison but a 3 second cripple that barely even makes contact is rather pathetic.

[Shortbow]

-#2 (Cluster bomb) Return the range to 1200, there was no reason to this nerf, -300 range is a big nerf especially to the class with no ranged weapon that has even 1000 range (although power shots would make SB 1000 but that’s a master trait).

-#5 Debatable, but I’d suggest removing the blind in favor of 1 less initiative. Although the blind has some use, it is far to uncommon to come across. This skill is to get around and avoid a burst if you are immobilized or caged in (RoW, Static field, etc). Otherwise no problem with this skill.

(Update)

Weapon skills were a bit tricky to suggest a change. Earlier I thought reversing some previous nerfs was suitable but not all the nerfs were due to the fact that they could be spammed. For instance, removing the stun break from IR was because it had no risk associated with it, and increasing the cost of LS was because the incredibly high evasion up time with full boon stripping in seconds.

Weapon Skills

[Pistol]

-#1 (Vital Shot)- Increase the base damage slightly as well as the power coefficient. Sb, is multi target longer range(due to flight path) higher base damage and a slightly stronger power coefficient when compared to pistol. I see a problem…

-#1 (Sneak Attack) Increase the bleed duration of sneak attack to a base of 7 seconds for pvp, 6 seconds for pve/wvw. Reason for the split is p/d is most certainly strong in wvw with higher condition durations from either foods or gear, and conditions hit a lot harder in wvw as well. Goal of change is to help define what role pistol plays in a power or condition spec.

-#2 (body shot) IMO, p/p needs some form of sustain that won’t drastically buff p/d. Change functionality to,
-While moving away from your target, back step while firing an immobilizing shot, while moving towards your target roll forward and fire a close range shot causing vulnerability." Immobilize duration 1 second. Vulnerability 6 stacks for 4 seconds. Back step 180 units. Evade 1/2 second. 4 Initiative. back step would not evade, it is merely a quick step. The forward cast would have a slight aftercast to not allow evade spam, which is why there is an increase in condition duration base.

-#3 (shadow strike)- A small bump in the torment duration (6 seconds). Reason being p/d doesn’t use the torment for damage as much as a cover up condition (although it still does some damage). Since you teleport away, it isn’t reliably spammed unless against a wall.

-#3 (unload) Add functionality, “Each attack applies vulnerability. 1 stack of vulnerability for 1.5 seconds.” This skill has a 1.75 second channel time, goal being that multiple shots will start to hurt real bad. Also a small bump in the power coefficient since this weapon set takes a lot of investment just to make an impression for being single target which means less survivability which means… rally bot.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Sparrow.5936:

It says on weapon swap 20% reduction…

That’s exactly what it does. It reduces weapon swap recharge time. It’s good when you have sigils that triggers on weapon swap, like Sigil of Battle and Sigil of Energy.

It reduces weapon swap, does nothing against the ICD of swap sigils which are 9 seconds. Would be neat if it did affect those however. All the recent patch did to these runes is make non-warrior’s using it get 2 seconds down on weapon swap, and kept warrior’s with [Fast hands] to still get only 1 second less on weapon swap.

Considering that p/d has cnd, which means stealth, which means sneak attack (the high bleeds), I think they should work around that. Make the aa power portion stronger so p/p gets some love (although it needs more than that), and buff the bleeds on sneak attack. The duration would be the most likely subject, since it only shots 5 x and 2×5 bleeds would be broken. Maybe 8 seconds base for sneak attack bleeds?

As for the duel skill (unload), I’d suggest either straight buffing its damage or power coefficient, or have each bullet apply a 1.5 second vulnerability. That way a full channel actually hits pretty nasty.

-when withdrawl sends you off a cliff
-when last refuge reveals your true self

Few things with the build.

1. Scholar is a bad rune choice for thieves, especially mixed with zerker. Maintaining over 90% health is near impossible because, in your case, that’s only 1390 health before you lose that bonus damage.

2. Basically you have full glass gear with mostly glass traits. Also you have side strike with little stealth, meaning getting on their back is not going to be common since they will always see where you’re at. You’d be better off with furious retaliation or practiced tolerance. Also since you have limited stealth access, I would take the points from shadow arts and put them towards deadly arts for mug or even sundering strikes to bump your pw damage. Unless you have some way of entering stealth in quick ways it doesn’t do you much good to spec into SA. You already have pain response and Hide in shadows with sword, condition clearing is fairly set there vs using up 2 traits up on something you can do only every 30+ seconds.

3. In wvw, expect glass vs glass fights to end abruptly. Unless you use stealth yourself or are good with vantage points you’re in the jungle. On my roaming build I can teleport over 3k units in the blink of an eye and burst them down in many cases. It’s risky, but it certainly puts them on the defensive which works in my favor.

4. You don’t need full glass stats/runes/sigils to pull off damage. Timing your burst and staying out of their burst is what it comes down to. You can always test this in pvp, where stats aren’t so ridiculous and you can learn a lot about various builds without spending a fortune (because it’s free).

Lack of evasion, teleports and stealth make p/p a risk. Also it is a hybrid set since the sustaining damage is both bleed and power, and only 1 of the skills does any damage while also leaving you quite vulnerable to either interrupts to a heavy hit. Its funny to play with ricochet but not effective against moderately skilled players.

Anything you’d like p/p to do, there is a weapon set that does it better. Kinda the reason we have an adept trait that gives 10% damage to pistols, it just screams, “I’m weak, feed me!”.

Hats off to the OP for breaking a long trend of thief hate!

With the krait rune buff, double condi duration sigils, and dire yeah condi thief is a pain but they are pretty bad against classes that use AI or transfer conditions. Even on my power necro putting 18 stacks of bleed on anyone is really painful.

Burnfall.9573:

Well said.

these good suggestions would help in the redesign/rework of thief class.

That is the shortest response I’ve ever seen you post burnfall. Well done!

I’d step in if people weren’t on a crusade to make button smashing viable (referring to those who think thief takes no skills and has the best defense). Many thief players have already stated being in favor of 1-cast stealth attacks, since stealth attacks are a huge impact on a build (sneak attack, BS really). Yet, anti-thief protests want it to go further for no reason other than that they aren’t experienced enough to handle them.

Wonder what the forums would be like if you weren’t allowed to post without being rank 30+ with over 50 games on at least 4 different professions. Maybe people’s perspective would be different, and those with some experience would be able to back up their claims without it sounding like a rant.

Well, mesmers do take skill but once mastered, are by far the best duelers. Only competitor is a d/p thief who waits for the right moment to burst however can just as easily be blown to bits if they overstep that attempt. I’ve watched some high level pvp 2v2, its like putting 2 beta fish into the same tank and waiting for one to get ripped to shreds (not recommended kids).

I can’t say I hate them atm, because clearly there is a bug with the summons atm and bugs should have no say in regards to balance. However even before the recent bugs Mesmer clones could hit like a truck and the Mesmer could spec to be near impossible to take down while vanishing and recovering to full. Some people I’ve come across use Mesmer primarily because they’re not as coordinated and the AI help them keep up with the fast paced but at the same time its annoying watching AI do all the work while they just hop around. It’s sad when phantasms and clones are more useful than a ranger’s own pet.

From a thief perspective I envy mesmers. They can do anything we can do and then some, while also supporting allies to some degree. Its a thief enchanted with +1, which is upsetting. Even without a shatter spec they can still burst or melt you in seconds.

From a warrior perspective, kinda don’t have one. They give me trouble time to time but warrior is drowning in defenses naturally. Also I don’t play him often.

From a necro perspective luckily I’m mid range so I don’t get kited as much but lack of evasion makes it really easy to get locked down or interrupted. Only thing helping me keep up is DS to wipe out a majority of the clones/phantasms but I have to use it carefully or they interrupt me. Often mesmers just teleport just outside my range and maintain near perma cripple with occasional immobilize to where I’m just limping around while slowly melting.

From a ranger perspective, don’t play it anymore. Gave it many tries, its either far to boring to play or simply not good enough to deal with the meta.

From a engineer perspective, don’t play it as much but aside from condi Mesmer I don’t have any issues. I can dodge and aoe the summons all day, and from traits it’s hard to lock me down.

Even still, I would bet thief gets more hate than mesmers which I don’t understand why. Maybe more people play thief because its easier to learn than Mesmer?

Zero Day.2594:

NinjaEd.3946:

Hey zero day, love the work you’ve done in this thread. Since you seem pretty good at collecting threads, can you by any chance collect thief Change requests? You know, a Thief change wish list? Maybe the dev’s can get a positive perspective for a change.

Yeah I can probably start that within the next few days, if I don’t forget… Very busy times for me right now lol, despite my appearances on forums. If you start it (by all means), I will help keep it up…

So… originally, this thread was supposed to be really for actual nerf requests, and it is to a certain degree, especially those that are reposted (originally by…). Then to a certain degree it’s like a “Jester”-thread… Jesters would get away with saying a lot of things normal people wouldn’t be able to say to kings, bringing up possible issues with the current community/town… The joke requests made here, kind of reflect the thief community’s view on those that cry about them…. Then to a certain degree, it’s just a fun/funny thread… Make up the most brutal way to destroy the class… post here!
TBH some “nerf” requests that did occur on the forums, i didnt add on to here as… really the OP was diligent in what they wrote, and proposed change (I guess this is where what you’re asking would be usefull) as opposed to “nerf everything to make my life easier”…

There were a few other requests to make… “Warrior Buff Wish List” and “Thief Buff Wish List”… Which yeah would be like this thread…

The one problem i can foresee though trying to make a “Change List”, and trying to keep it serious… is that people will kitten random “nerfs” in it…. And I’m not exactly a mod to move that around (o.o actually i have a 1 hour flood control on me, due to my lashing out on people)… See rarely do people post actual changes… today I think two OPs were made in the balance forums (4 if you count the legit responses…)… which is like the blue moon being up or the stars aligning… Or a new market of consumers opened up for GW2… but yeah very strange…

Fair enough, if a thread like this can be joked with I don’t see how a collection of reworks can be taken serious. Still, seems like people are following a system here which you seem to of done better than the ranger CDI so kudos! People post what, a reason, small tale, and done while others seek outside posts and condense them to add to the list.

Acrobatics

[Assassin’s Retreat] swiftness on kill, we already see how many people are abusing the superior sigil of speed, this must be broken!… Change functionality to grant 5 seconds of vigor on kill instead. Either you get vigor from active combat(vigorous recovery)or you get it from focus firing.

[Master Trapper] Change functionality to, “Trap skills cause AoE reveal to enemies when triggered”. Reveal duration 4 seconds. Number of targets 20. Radius of effect 360 units. Nice for Mesmer but mainly a trait for zerg play in wvw to counter enemy veil or mass invis if used well. Traps aren’t generally attractive anyways but atleast this would have a role.

[Fleet Shadow] Add additional effect, " Move 50% faster and ignore cripple and chill while in stealth". This does not remove the cd effect of chill or remove the conditions, just when in stealth you ignore it’s movement impairing effects. Does not work against immobilize.

[Fleet of foot] Remove a condition on dodging. 50 endurance removes 1 condition. Move to GM traits. No ICD.

[Hard to catch] Change functionality to grant stability for 4 seconds with the shadow step to actually break stun on disable OR to shadow step away and grant stealth for 3 seconds on disable. Bump ICD to 45 or 60 seconds if need be, at least have this trait function.

[Assassin’s Equilibrium] Move to Master traits. Simply put, not worthy of a GM trait even with high BD. In the evasive trait line, it’d be better to dodge the disabling effect and any other conditions/damage attached to it than to reveal yourself and eat that attack.

[Assasssin’s Reward] Increase healing power scale from .05 to .1 to give a purpose to healing power gear for thief. SA grants healing power on its own so the heals from it are naturally more powerful with a lesser effort. To make use of AR, you have to spend initiative and get it back just as fast. It’s gata compete with its neighbor as a defensive trait line on top of being a GM trait, it should reap some suitable rewards since you are targetable.

Trickery

[Instinctual response] Change functionality to “Blind nearby foes when disabled”. Blind duration 3 seconds, ICD 10 seconds, Radius of effect 120 units.

[Long reach] Add additional effect, “unblockable”.

[Trickster] Additional effects depending on the trick casted. (Haste: affects cooldown recharges)(RFI: Removes revealed)(Scorpion Wire: If pulled, the enemy loses 1 boon)(Caltrops: Invisible, applies to uncatchable as well).

[Initial strike] change to every 3rd basic attack gain 1 initiative. ICD 1 second. (3rd hit, wait 1 second, counter starts again).

Goal of the above trait suggestions is to open up choices that weren’t otherwise useful in any build. Traits should compete with one another to some degree, and a few should remain situational (hence why I left decent of shadows alone). If for whatever reasons the above traits are too strong to pass up, then numbers should be toned down but if they offer as strong a utility as its neighbor traits, then there is some good to it. Thief is not the only victim of poorly made and/or located traits. I can’t even begin on guardian or ranger but, the low weapon selection and defensive options has an impact on build diversity which is not healthy for new players and leaves a stale taste for old players. If you made it this far, I salute you for reading and await any critique you may have.

Critical Strikes

[Keen observer] 90% health especially on a power thief, is rather hard to maintain. Either bump % crit chance or slightly lower the parameters to 80%, something suitable for a minor adept trait to not be too strong.

[Furious Retaliation] Change functionality to "Grant allies fury when you hit a foe below 50% health. Same duration, same ICD, radius of effect 300 units.

[Concealed defeat] I’m iffy on suggesting this but change from smoke screen to shadow refuge, adding an ICD of 60 seconds. I like this trait in some dungeons but it does little in concealing your demise against melee. Could change to only apply 2 pulses instead of 4.

[Pistol Mastery] Merge [Ankle Shots] into this. Move to master traits.

[Combo critical chance] Scraped for combined training. Increase combo skill damage to 7%. Reason being 5% crit chance for a precision trait line seems a little pointless, and low to begin with if its going to affect only 1 skill type.

[Heavy rounds] Replacement for ankle shots as an adept trait. Pistol shots have a chance to be unblockable. 15% chance.

[Hidden killer] change functionality to apply to stealth attacks (meaning sneak attack will crit each shot).

[Invigorating Precision] Heal for a percentage of your critical damage. (2 options) 15% for single target skills, 7% for AoE skills OR increase by 1% for every 100 healing power. 1 or the other, obviously not both.

Shadow Arts

[Last refuge] Scrap it, burn it, toss it into a wood chipper. Place [Cloaked in shadows] In its place.

[Master of Deception] Add additional effect,“Using a deception skill removes 2 conditions.”

[Slowed pulse] Odd trait but since this trait line only has 4 non-stealth related traits and 2 of them being venom related, I suppose it had a place. In any case, lower the ICD to 10 seconds, the regen duration to 5 seconds, and proc off poison as well. Long ICD traits that grant boons are terrible against classes that can remove them.

[Shadow Protector] Remove the functionality, “Does not apply if ally already has stealth”, and add an ICD of 10 seconds per unique target(similar to lotus poison).

[Cloaked in Shadows] since this is the new minor adept trait, something new to replace it, preferable for non-stealth users (aka venom share). [Vigorous Venoms] Gain healing power based on the number of active venom strikes (based on the highest number of unique venom, does not tally up all venom attacks so spider + skale will not equal 8 stacks) Healing power per venom (40, level / 2).

[Power shots] Add additional effect, “Increase range by 100”. Not sure what justification there is to not granting thief a 1200 range weapon but atleast something would be nice for a master trait. Believe it or not, 300 units is a pretty big difference.

[Patience] Easily out done by infusion of shadow in the short term, promotes perma stealth for long term which is not healthy. Change functionality to “Recharge endurance quicker while in stealth”. 5 additional endurance every second in stealth(essentially in-stealth vigor).

[Hidden assassin] Change functionality to apply to allies you stealth as well.

Steal

Incredibly strong when spec’ed for it, lousy when not. The other 7 professions don’t have to spec for their F mechanics to make some use of them, some of them even have the luxury of chosing what those F mechanics are to some degree. The big problem with steal is on its own, it is not universally beneficial to the thief. You can’t choose what to steal (that would be op), you get no benefit from holding onto steal or the stolen item, it basically becomes a gap closer in the end. I love how steal works because it gives thieves the benefit of adapting to fights if they use it correctly, but even so untraited it provides very little. In a mix with the trait suggestions at the end, I’d propose to grant steal a passive effect when off cool down.

[Steal]- Regenerate 1 initiative every 10 seconds when in combat. Same active(removes the passive initiative regen, naturally).

To not make initiative management absent,

[Infiltrator’s Signet] Gain 1 initiative when targeted by a disable (3 sec ICD). Same active.

Initiative is universal to a thief. If a thief wants to hold onto it, they get a bonus. If they spend it, its usually for a purpose and they already get a bonus. A nerf to infiltrator’s signet passive would be necessary because without it the need to trait for initiative regen would be almost gone.

Now onto what I believe the traits should be changed to (the easiest place to find OP suggestions). Numbers are obviously subject to change.

Deadly Arts

[Back fighting] Why would you spec for being downed? Scrap trait. Could change to “[Deep Wound]” When revealed, your condition duration is increased (20%). Ideas for anything but this terrible trait.

[Corrosive traps], merge [Trap master] into this.

[Venomous Strength] Bump might stacks to 3. If need be, reduce duration of might.

[Potent poison] bump to 50%. With the nerf to choking gas, there is no reason why an adept trait shouldn’t have some kick for thief but warrior gets 50% bleed duration in a condition trait line for the same investment (and bleeds hurt a lot more since they stack intensity).

[Improvisation] Change effect to “Recharge 1 utility skill on cooldown (random for multiple skills) on steal. 10% damage while holding a stolen skill.” If used properly, you can use only 1 utility skill and recharge it on a successful steal effectively doubling the cast. Move to GM traits.

[Dagger training] Add additional effect," lower initiative cost of off-hand dagger skills by 1".

[Combined Training] Replace [Combo critical chance] from CS. New trait [Ice drake venom], venom strikes apply chill (1 second).

[Residual venoms] Move to master traits. Maintains venom share potential while buffing non-venom share users for using venoms. Being a master trait, you can’t reduce the recharge (quick venoms) and get extra strikes without a full 30 investment, but a buff to improvisation opens up potential choices for venom share and non-venom share (condi using improvisation to stack a venom).

[Ice drake venom] Not a trait but in realation to the trait rework, changed to [Karka venom]- Transfer 1 condition to your foe on your next 2 attacks. Behaves like any other venom, 45 second base cool down, no cast time. Grant venom share defensive support, and with redone traits an alternative to condition clearing.

[Revealed Training] Bump power amount to 300. This effect does not work on stealth attacks, so that leads to pw or hs. Since spamming hs often leads to self inflicted death, you’re left with pw which s/p has very limited access to stealth making it difficult to abuse. You’re also going into a trait line more dedicated to venoms and condition application, losing precious ferocity and precision.

(Long read ahead, don’t say I didn’t warn you)

By improve I mean it would work for both parties. “Thief isn’t fun to fight against”, “thief is too squishy”, “Thief is annoying”, “thief hits to hard”, he said she said, list goes on. It takes too kitten long for these balance patches to come out, and lately I can’t tell if thief needs a stronger rework or ranger does because both are actively complained about (1 being too weak 1 having mixed feelings. Take a guess at which is which).

Complaints are bound to be endless and I have no intention of stopping them in their tracks but when almost a quarter of the threads on the balance discussion sub-forum are thief related (mostly nerfs), I’m shocked anet hasn’t taken the time to gather thoughts. Hopefully a thief discussion erupts soon by the dev’s but until then, I’ll reside within this.

Traits

Unfortunatly, many thief traits have 1 sided bonuses which leads to underwhelming results. Pistol mastery, Dagger training, venomous strength, etc. This makes certain traits that are nearly essential for the build to function very spread out resulting in more sacrifices than it should. Thief support is also limited to offence, while leaving a vast majority of defensive support skills/traits to be rather selfish or ill behaved (shadow protector not granting regen if you already have it for example). Ill post my suggestion of a trait rework towards the end but to be as blunt as possible, almost every trait needs to be looked at and revised.

Weapon skills [Initiative]

Another big thief topic. The absence of DR on pressing 1 skill over and over is the cause of many weapon skill nerfs. The problem the few skills that do any damage often end up being the primary source of damage so spamming then over and over is a sad but necessary tactic in some cases (p/p, s/p). It’s a fact that thief weapon skills have lower condition durations, cc durations (daze/stun) and lower scaling for power however it isn’t that much lower, and with no DR it got abused and abused ever since which lead to nerfs and cries to this day. Two options imo to fix this issue once and for all.

1- Add a counter for all weapon skills. Repeated use of the same skill puts a debuff that increases the initiative cost of that skill by 1, capping at +3 initiative. This debuff is reset after 1.5 seconds of not using that skill or after using another weapon skill other than auto attack. This would apply to skills with separate parts such as IR, LS, Detonate cluster.

2. Implement reduced effects for repeated uses of the same skill. If the skill is meant for direct damage, have it deal reduced direct damage each consecutive use. If the skill is meant to apply a condition, have its duration reduced. This effect would also stack up to 3 times, each stack reducing the effect by 25% so using the same skill 4 times would leave the 4th cast with 25% of its full effects. Skills like choking gas would not proc this effect on themselves, because they naturally pulse but field 1 from choking gas would have a 33% longer duration than field 2 of choking gas. Pistol whip would do 75% less damage on the 4th cast but the 1/2 second stun would remain untouched since pw is primarily there for damage. There could be a 2 second debuff period for each skill, also resetting if another skill is cast in that time.

Stealth

Really simple, we need better sustain out of stealth. Not saying we don’t have any, but its noticeable less than Shadow arts in both style and effects. Stealth has a lot of solid options while acrobatics generally struggles to keep up. This ties into the trait rework I’ll do towards the end but there are 2 things acrobatics needs to improve on and that is active combat healing, and condition clearing. It’s there, just not strong enough.

(reserved for typing)

naphack.9346:

recently got my kitten handed to me by some d/d + sb condi bunker with krait runes and death blossom spam…
Don’t ask me for the details, I couldn’t get a similar build rolling, so I suspect, the player was simply way better than me.
He’d pop up and drop 20’ish bleeds and poison on me instantly with plenty of cover condis. It was not only, that he was especially skilled at dancing around me, what was more frustrating was, how he managed to keep those cover condis up all the time.

Pre-patch I tried a button spam build every day. 1 day it was death blossom, another it was unload. With death blossom I traited so I could quite literally press 3 over and over and over and annoy the kitten out of people. Granted its only a 50% dodge up time, it still killed a bunch of people over and over (coupled with uncatchable and high endurance regen). Best counter to such troll builds? Kite, and save condi clears for when the stacks get high (12+).

P.S. only did this in hot join, and when I was bored. D/d is not a viable tpvp condi build, any kittens killed in the described lobbies were only stunt doubles and no one was harmed in the process.

Hey zero day, love the work you’ve done in this thread. Since you seem pretty good at collecting threads, can you by any chance collect thief Change requests? You know, a Thief change wish list? Maybe the dev’s can get a positive perspective for a change.

Dahkeus.8243:

Immune to stun stuff is for professions that tank damage. Thieves avoid damage. Yea, it sucks that this trait is pretty worthless, but you can still prevent stuns with evades/blinds well enough.

Well with 0 DR on stuns in this game, stability is something everyone should have some access to if they spec for it. Not to the degree that warrior and guardian have but it should be present, point being to handle stun locks.

You’d be surprised at how many people still spam hs in pvp.

Critical haste has its good side. If it proc’s after a bs you can get a shot of endurance from the aa which also hits rather hard, with sb kinda meh, sword would be good since the chain is rather slow.

I always have practiced tolerance but if I have enough crit % from either build or fury, I’ll often take critical haste for that extra kick during a burst.

@Op, no IP is not worth it. Pair the global loss in dps (ferocity) and giving up executioner your dps will be drastically less, which means your critical damage will be drastically less. In the preview the dev’s mentioned 10k crit would amount to 500 hp (anyone can do math). What they forgot to keep in mind is you won’t get 10k crits with IP in any consistency to make it noticeable.

As people above have already said, if you’re going into CS for combat sustain you’re doing it wrong. CS is a dps trait line, and the % for IP is far to low. Sure you can couple it with SoM and AR and get some heals but you can check the battle log and see how pathetically weak those crits are healing you for even over time. I’ve said it probably a dozen times now, if the worry was that IP was going to make AoE too strong (sword, sb) then they could separate the conversion % for single and AoE target skills. That way d/x could get some decent recovery from a successful back stab but pw and cluster bomb won’t be soaring through the roof with green numbers. Also to scale it slightly off healing power (every 100 healing power, 1% extra). As it stands, there is no use in IP aside from pve which is a terrible source for profession balance discussions.

Oh and its off critical hits only, which unless you have constant fury +high precision gear isn’t always. In addition it scales off critical damage which means another stat you are gearing for now. That’s 2 stats to put any effect on a GM trait. From an investment perspective this GM trait is horrible. From a combat healing perspective, you get far more in return from AR or even shadow protector/rejuvenation.

Few things on the build you posted.

1. If you’re running full zerker and find yourself running more than fighting, its probably one of your top issues. Full zerker on a thief leaves little room for error, and being a “noob” as you say makes learning the play style much more difficult. Mix in some valkryie gear, you will maintain the crit damage (or ferocity) and power, with a small loss in precision but a nice bump in vitality. I’d throw in a chest and leg piece for valk or an amulet and rings or earrings, not too much to where you lose any hope of critical hits but enough where you see some bonus to vitality. Another alternative would be swapping one of your traits in critical strikes to practiced tolerance to turn some of that precision into vitality which in your case, is a lot (126 vitality or 1260 health).

2. No rune selected, no sigils and no sb. Rune/sigils is probably just a little mistake, I’m sure you’re not actually running without those but it would help to know as far as giving you a suggestion on which to choose. However the sb is a good helper especially if you like poking at zergs without being on the frontline. The aa and the poison field work great but you have to be aware of 2 very important things; where the enemy train is heading and where the enemy backline is. If you have good awareness of your surroundings then you’re in good shape.

3. No foods, no oils/stones. Since you wvw, you have to get into the habit of having these. I personally hate being put on an arms race with it but it does make a big difference. There are a ton of foods to choose from, and some could work really well in your case such as orrian truffle meat stew (passive endurance regen + might on dodge), or carrot soufflé (power on kill, critical damage). Again this could just me a slight error and you haven’t posted it, but idk. If you go into pvp to hone your skills in there is no foods so probably best to try it there with less factors to take into account.

Outside of that it’s just learning a rotation to fire off your skills without spamming them because that leads to easy to counter behavior which is one of the lovely aspects of thief, little room for mistakes especially on a stealth-less build.

All you can do as a moa is run like the wind! Given their other elite choices I don’t have an issue with being moa’ed although when multiple mesmers chain it on you its rather upsetting. Instead of saying “Finish them” it should say “Why me?”.

Idm moa, but I wish the #2-4 had some purpose other than rooting yourself to take more damage. I don’t mean add damage to it or make it sustain like a regular profession but the root function is aweful.

Here’s what I’ve concluded on p/p.

1. Very obvious. They rely on 1 skill for dps, and that skill is rather easy to negate if the enemy has even a little awareness of their surroundings. I tested this by making a spec for p/p that solely focused on spamming 3, evading, maybe interrupt a heal here and there and evasion. Since the aa is a hybrid and the remaining 3 skills are utility you’re left with #3 for a majority of your damage which is either expensive, weak, or little of both. The lack of a suitable #2 and low dps on #3 I was only slapping people and killing people who still use A and D to turn in pvp.

2. The utility from #2/4/5 doesn’t do much good to the thief defense. #2 has a long aftercast, #4 doesnt’ last you in the long run, #5 only affects those who aren’t aware you can melee outside the circle or range. Other weapon sets have strong evasion or can reposition themselves either from teleports or stealth.

As fun as it can be, it’s not practical for a thief in any pvp enviroment. If they just changed the #2 to something useful then maybe it can partake in competitive play but right now its just not comparable to the rest.

@ OP, I salute your initiative (pun, yes) to shed some light on this toxic topic. Unfortunately even if you tell them 2+2=4 they won’t believe you and will say math is op. I’ve watched counter-thief videos, I’ve read counter-thief threads and replies, and only a fraction of them did any good (few people said “thank you”).

Point being, we will never win.

I run power necro and am doing just fine against all kinds so far (support, power, condi). I can reapply so many conditions so quickly they for some reason think that’s where my damage comes from and are often confused on how to kill me aside from spamming healing skills. Support ele I cc them a lot, condi ele I let them stack conditions and then send them back at the time I feel best, power ele for w/e reason button smashes and moments later die. It could just be the new mega server thing and I’m just finding a lot of bad players but so far its been ok.

If you’re condi necro then I’m afraid I can’t be of help as I do not run nor have I ever ran one.

+1, doesn’t hurt stealth too much while helping those who are oblivious to it. I like it!

Condi meta is not that out of control, its just simply being ignored (for w/e reason). Power necro, power thief, even power warrior and I’m doing fine in spvp. Necro is my favorite because I let them stack all the bleeds in the world and then use dagger #4 and laugh as they melt. Thief I just don’t give them the chance to apply condi pressure, warrior just face tanks for the most part but I only play him for kittens and kibbles.

Still can’t find any fun in ranger though power or condi… Engineer is the only condi class I play and its also for kittens and kibbles, because I’m well aware of how annoying they are to fight against.

RedSpectrum.1975:

ShadowNinja.1238:

NinjaEd.3946:

ShadowNinja.1238:

Why would you use basi in pve thieves guild and dagger storm are much better.

BV ignored defiance, which meant you can interrupt some skills that are normally difficult to interrupt (and with venom share you can keep them still for roughly 3 seconds because no one seems to know what “rotate” means). Thieves guild is a horrible elite in dungeons, they don’t evade and get wiped out far to quick.

One thief applies blind which is extremely useful.

Not just that but it fooled me for the longest time due to lack of circle, but that puff cloud of smoke is actually a smoke field as well

It still isn’t better over dagger storm. In a boss setting, BV out performs TG because it ignores the almight defiant stacks while the thieves generaly get wiped out because blind doesn’t work to good against defiance. In a group utilizing LoS the blind although is neat isn’t long and the thieves die really quick from basic AoE (in high level fractals they get 1 shotted most of the time).

From someone who went through the burden of daily fotm 48, Dagger storm for groups and reflection, BV for bosses. TG just never cut it. Thankfully I got out of that kitten many many months ago, but I havn’t seen the functionality of TG change other than that it can be used underwater now (which is awesome!).

Burnfall.9573:

Sincerely,

I don’t blame you for having fun and enjoying your God Given class,

i seriously don’t

what is not fun and enjoyable is how we: the remaining classes: (excluding warrior),, were put here to be killed by you

we’ve waited too long,

no helper,

no comforter,

no one savior

Uhh……

hm…..

I will not….

Cogbyrn.7283:

The fact that it’s even possible for a player to be rewarded with proper anticipation by still taking the spike damage is insane to me. Yes, it can kind of be dealt with, but should it really have to be?

I don’t see what your issue is then. If it can be dealt with, then why is it an issue?

I can deal with conditions on a thief, although I generally struggle (same with engi). Should I have to struggle? Your issue with stealth seems to be only the uptime on it, which is an issue. Popping in and out of stealth is easy to counter but when they stalk you for 5+ seconds its hard to counter their attempts (not impossible though). That evade is rewarded, because you usually see them revealed or front-stab you by the time you recover from the roll, thieves don’t waltz into a back stab unless you give them the opportunity.

Cogbyrn.7283:

NinjaEd.3946:

snip

So if I appropriately time a dodge against a Thief I can’t see and Evade the Backstab, then get Backstabbed at the end of my dodge roll, that’s perfectly fine and well-designed? Just curious if you see a problem with that scenario.

Say there are 2 points. Point A is where you stand right now, and point B is where you will end up if you dodge rolled. If you dodge roll from A to B and see “evade” there is only 1 place the thief could be. A front-backstab is very weak, but that also gives you a indicator on where to throw an AoE or cc skill. Now don’t be ridiculous and spas out with button smashing, generally a thief who see’s their enemy evade a backstab will dodge toward them because they know what most people do in that case.

Any other scenario’s feel free to post, I’ll gladly go step by step if this wasn’t helpful enough.

Interceptor.2653:

This was clearly meant to be part of a balanced breakfast, i.e. combined with SoM and life leech from food. I suspect that they might amp up the gain a bit in a future patch, but ANet has to be careful with combat heals, so it’s better to release it somewhat underpowered and see what players do with the thing.

Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to compare this trait with Executioner or Hidden Killer, which do different things. It’s better set next to Assassin’s Reward or Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Im not comparing mechanics I’m comparing their investment. Generally you gain some you lose some when picking traits, in this case choosing IP over execution or hidden killer is you gain little lose a lot. I agree that they can’t just oversize this trait or we’ll run into another 8+ months of HS (healing signet) kitten, but there is no way this is the final result for this trait.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Spicyhash.7605:

You will get nothing but hate from apologists on these forums for posting a thread like this. If you do not enjoy the game, don’t play it. I, too, quit after the feature pack but like to read the forums to see how other people are coping with it.

The condition cheese will eventually wipe out any PvP or WvW population and it will seem almost surreal the number of people running condition builds.

Yah, I’m used to getting crap form people on these forums (mostly Thief/Mesmer players). I agree that this condi situation is only going to get worse. I’d much rather run power builds but now it feels like I hit so little while in full glass while condi users can run Dire and get sustain and damage all in one.

You have it coming, when you attack people for saying you need to L2p in a valid setting(not the exact words but I like to sum things up when I can). Sorry to say but no sympathy from me, there are enough warriors to replace you and another 300 if they quit.

I will agree though, the condi meta is getting old but power builds still have a place you just have to try a lot harder now. I already made an axe/mace hammer warrior and having some enjoyment when my aa hits for 2k+ a crit. Should try pvp, although condi builds are very common the ferocity change hardly touched pvp power builds.

I see this being no different than being blown to bits by a mesmer or medi guard or axe/x warrior who couples a stun + eviscerate. Any of these are capable of jumping into a fight real fast, and focusing a target down with near the same frequency of a thief with much higher defenses.

Ensign.2189:

Thieves are really, really punishing for newer players to deal with. Playing against them requires fast reflexes that new players haven’t trained yet; stealth is incredibly confusing when you don’t have the experience to predict where they’re going; and the whole glass + high burst set-up is built to punish the mistakes that new players make constantly.

I’d go a step further and add “and players who don’t play much pvp” which would include all pve and blobbing in wvw because neither are a real test of your profession for dueling purposes.

Smaller scale fights like havoc squad vs havoc squad and s/tpvp yes, you have to rely on your profession knowledge to win. People who are planted and run back to the zerg get ganked by a thief, suddenly its the thieves fault for being spec’ed to snipe stragglers. People just aren’t interested in hearing that the reason they died is because they need to L2P. It can be insulting to hear that, but when those people blindly accuse another profession of being broken with 0 intentions of learning something then L2P earns its spot. Pretty sure thief is the only profession with enough nerf posts that someone has gone out of their way to collect them into 1 mega thread (and I salute them for their bravery).

There is no need to add reveal skills, period. Why? Because people will only hurt themselves in the long run by wasting a utility slot to deal with something that they probably already have the tools to deal with while also sacrificing the slot for something they may actually need (stun breaker, condi clear, cc, etc). I highly doubt that such reveal additions would be put onto popular utility skills, more than likely onto skills that make sense and of them only “sic em” did because pets can sniff out the enemy (and to give rangers something to chew on since they aren’t in the best position for balance).

Most people don’t understand stealth counters, which is fine. It’s not like when you joined this game you fight a bunch of stealth npc’s and are given traps or big neon signs saying “AOE HERE!” or “PREPARE TO BLOCK”, etc. Saying that you don’t understand stealth counters is fine, but saying they don’t work at all is just ignorant. The issue with flat nerfs to stealth or granting reveal to a bunch of skills is you simply trash any thief who spec’s into SA. They survive from entering and staying in stealth, and for good reason because it is the best of the 2 defensive trait lines. Unless there is some compensation rather than “just remove it” don’t expect much cooperation amongst other players.

Many thief players have given their advice in dealing with stealth (haven’t seen many Mesmer’s giving counters, did we forget they stealth too?). Also many thieves have offered solutions to mechanics that need tweaking without straight up pulling a nerf bat out to break the glass cannon and still people keep reposting the same sob stories after blocking out any real advise anyone tries to give. It’s not as broken as people claim it to be, it just takes knowledge to counter and experience. Instead of asking for nerfs, how about practice in hot-join?

Although not meant to replace a healing skill, for a GM trait its pathetic. I think anet forgot w/o executioner you won’t get heavy crits in (20% is a lot), so the health on-crit-only is not that appealing.

They should of either:

A). Split the health % on crit for single and AoE targets. That way spamming cluster bomb or pw doesn’t become unstoppable, but atleast using a shadow shot or hs can do something of notice.

B). Add an ICD (1, 1.5 seconds?) and bump the heal across all crits.

C). let the percent scale off healing power (for every 100 healing power, increase heal by 1%). Keep in mind that spec’ing for healing power means a big loss in dps, so even at 800 HealP you only recover 13% of your critical damage as health which won’t be much but it could make magi + IP a nice bunker.

They said in the preview “These traits are not meant to compete with other GM traits”. News flash, you can only have 1 gm trait per trait line, of course it has to compete. If someone is going to lose 100% crit (valk/caval builds) in stealth or give up 20% extra damage at <50% health I think the heal should be more noticeable than a mediocre regeneration.

Zero Day.2594:

hmmm seems about the same intellect as the others that have been complaining about the thief.

OP, can you please formulate what you want nerfed about the thief, so I can record it in my list of things to nerf.

Yup folks, this post is legit. Oh yeah….. TEEF 4eva OP! YOLO

(Few posts down, a thread asking if thief is the weakest class…. a bit further down a post asking if a broken/rarely used set will get some love)
(Wonder how long it will take for this post to get infracted…. if anything, cya in a ~week guys)

Although anet will likely take your post as mocking, I think you’re doing them solid. Plus it means if in the near future (2016+) if they decide to start merging the repeated thief nerf posts they have a place to put them.

I don’t get how they merge or remove posts that are related to the same thing but when it comes to thief nerfs its all spread. Is it something they puff a pipe to and sip on whiskey while laughing in a rich mans tone? I can’t possibly see this many “TEEF OP, #logicabsent” being productive in any way.

ShadowNinja.1238:

Why would you use basi in pve thieves guild and dagger storm are much better.

BV ignored defiance, which meant you can interrupt some skills that are normally difficult to interrupt (and with venom share you can keep them still for roughly 3 seconds because no one seems to know what “rotate” means). Thieves guild is a horrible elite in dungeons, they don’t evade and get wiped out far to quick.

Was there a forum daily added that I’m not aware? I see “thief op” posts so often, it could only explain there is some reward to making one.

@Op, you just need to practice. Also in that photo, you took 8k in burning, something tells me you lack condi clear and melted shortly after a backstab.