Guild Wars 2

~200 gold. I spend some, earn some, havn’t really left my margine. I could sell a bunch of things and actually try to hit 300 or 400+ gold, but I don’t really see the point. When I get vast amounts of money I tend to blow it all on something ridiculous :s

I recall the road map set by anet in the early summer was to release new skills before 2014. So far, they only released 1 new skill per profession, which imo did a great job BUT, I thought it was going to be more than just 1(I don’t count the antitoxin spray because its just too obvious it was meant for the tower of nightmares, maybe they’ll change it. And by change I mean not make the toxin a part of the collusion). Ofcouse things are subject to change, but that’s only half the issue I have.

There are still those skills that no one dares use which begs the question, are we going to see the old skills fixed BEFORE the new skills are released, or is this going to turn out like gw1 where we have more useless skills than we do ectoplasm?

Same kind of goes for traits, which I also heard about, will the current traits be mostly polished (never can be perfect) before the new ones are set in motion, or are we going to just continue using the good ones because who in the world wants to do damage with a banner summon?

rjinx.1378:

side note/request:
please remove Hard to Catch all together.

Or make it actually break stun, or stealth.. this trait is just horrible.

Side note-

Other useless traits include:

Assassin’s retreat (really? On kill? that’s not retreating you fool)
Potent Poison (our poison duration is long enough)
Improvisation (too random, and we don’t get bundles, I mean who made this?)
Patience (easily outdone. Not worth a 20 point investment)
Fleet shadow (can’t really see it being picked over II or III. Maybe merge into patience to make it worthy?)
Instinctual response (no control, can really backfire when you need stealth)
Last refuge (same deal, no control)
Long reach (yes, lets steal from afar Vs. gaining fury might swiftness, or caltrops or dps? Every adept trait beats this guy, and for obvious reasons).

When you look at the numerous profession skills and compare their use to thief, do you think it’s enough?

This does not include added benefits to them, because everyone has traits that can vastly improve their profession skills. I’m talking strictly about the base of the profession skill. Is steal really enough or do we deserve more?

Smoke bomb- helps rally people, assuming they know not to throw junk at “trash mobs” and break that stealth.

Shadow’s refuge- same deal but also for skipping certain sections that aren’t worth the effort. Also makes the panel and bomb parts in the dredge fractal really easy

Smoke screen- when walls are needed, but also in fractals like ascalon where you LoS them at a corner. The 7 second blind field makes it ideal for avoiding their heavy hits.

Pistol whip- best for LoS areas, coupled with signet of malice and signet of infiltration for initative management. You throw #5 down and pw, basically never die until you run out of initiative. Kinda depends on your build. I’m not even full zerker and my pw can get up to 11k sometimes, cleave.

Shadow step- great for the last minute dodges. It also makes breaking the seals in the Cliffside fractal much easier on the arm part, because you can avoid a lot of hits by porting in and out. Due to high mobility and the long range teleport, you can even ooc to recover some bosses while your team distracts. That’s if you really need to recover, don’t do it just because you got hit for 7k.

Shadow Arts- I always run atleast 30 into SA, because I can swap major traits for some real good things. Like in the water fractal, thief has really weak underwater stealth. So I can put on stealing grants stealth. In the grawl fractal where you have to halt the veterans from reaching the prisoners, venom share with devourer venom and basilik, really helps keep them down and controlled. Its a really good trait line, plus the extra toughness goes a long way in fractals where the term “trash mob” is almost obsolete at high levels.

Scorpion wire- good for various reasons, mainly just in times where you don’t want to move and need to melee something like the chest seal in Cliffside, when the archers keep poking you and you want the hammer guy to get a hit. Or for distracting the ogre in the asuran fractal along with Off-hand pistol to remove his defiant stacks (or the boss in dredge fractal to getting it under the bucket). You kinda have to look for its uses but it does come in handy.

Weapons- by this I mean have all of them. 2 pistols, 2 daggers, sword, sb. Don’t waste time with condi builds, thief conditions are either really slow or too risky to apply. Your best bet is something along the lines of utility or dps, or both. I run 0/30/30/0/10, the 10 in trickery mainly for thrill of the crime because I enjoy fury and swiftness as a thief but you can also put on merciful ambush during the grawl fractal boss incase someone goes down. 30 in CS is just to hold up my end of the damage but it also has some good defensive traits like Concealed Defeat (grawl boss, uncategorized fractal, etc) and practiced tolerance (vitality is important on thief) and pistol mastery (when dual pistols are useful). 30 into SA for reasons stated above basically, it goes a long way. For example, the regen in stealth covers up the burn from the grawl boss, so you can SR and stealth rez someone who got defeated and not worry about dying.

Those are the only tips I can think of, I did a ton of fractals back in the spring/summer and do it often these days just hoping I get a useful ascended gear piece (2 zintyl weapon chests now…. kick in the nads if you ask me). Out of all of them, the reactor fractal is my favorite. Soloed the last 10-20% of the boss 3 times now, seems like people cannot see blinking platforms all too well :/

Sigil of purity (removes Condi on crit, Cool down 10 seconds), sword, and withdraw.

I almost always use withdraw unless in pve on some high platforms. Its cool down is short and its utility fits thief perfectly, removing pesky movement impairing conditions. I don’t even need sword unless said pve event is condition heavy. In spvp/tpvp and wvw withdraw and shadow’s embrace is more than enough. It does its work and without heavy investments into anything. Outside of that, conditions hurt thieves hard, its something we lack without special effects.

Atm, thief has a ton of completely useless traits and it makes real build diversity hard without working off of the SA trait line. It’s possible, just not fair nor as effective.

No weapon skill for thief grants initiative, kinda defeats the purpose of costing initiative. But I like the ideas, and agree that thief deserves OH sword. Mesmer gets it (for w/e reason) and warrior gets it, thief is a dual master. They should be able to dual wield any 1H weapon.

Just my thoughts on the skills:

Sword/X:

1. Parry- Enter a counter stance, reflect the next attack if within melee range.
   0 cast time
   2 second channel time
   Counter inflicts vulnerability (3 stacks 10 seconds)
   5 Initiative cost(as to not block projectiles forever)
   -> Throw blade- throw your blade and inflict cripple.
   5 seconds cripple
   1 initiative cost
   900 range

1. Furious Strike- Stab you foe and grant fury.
   Moderate-heavy damage
   5 seconds fury
   6 initiative
   1/4 second cast time

Sword/Sword:

1. Cleansing Cyclone- Deal damage and reflect conditions.
   Duration 1 second.
   4 initiative Cost
   Radius 130
   Combo Finisher: Whirl

Dagger/Sword:

1. Trick of the Trade- Transfer one condition to your foe while evading backwards.
   Cast time 1/4 second
   Evade 1/2 Second
   4 initiative Cost
   Evade distance = retreat skills

Pistol/Sword:

1. Severed Conscious- Thrust your blade into your foe. Each attack they use inflicts confusion while active.
   Blade duration 4 seconds.
   Confusion duration 1 stack for 5 seconds per attack
   Initiative cost 5

Even though it was a burden on my schedule, I kinda missed having these unique mobs have a long, window to spawn in. Maybe back then the rewards rarely justified the rarity of loot or eye bleeding wait times, but not having to spam them made up for it greatly.

Champion enemies, IMHO, should be like this.

1. Long respawn time (1-5h?). Depending on the loot/title/etc that it offers, longer. There is no claim system, so you don’t have to worry about someone taking it from under you (hated that).

2. Have much stronger loot tables. No one should be forced to wait hours on hours for a slim chance at their desired reward, if a mini boss is going to require a large wait time, make it worth while. Not 100% loot, but it should be worth the effort.

3. More skins that only drop from these champions/legendaries. Also, make them account bound. Remember, skins aren’t a necessity, they should have some rarity attached so those with it can look more unique. The crystal Guardian, that dark purple sword, everyone just buys it. It was a good looking sword but just like legendary skins, it got over used real quick once supply got up.

4. Make them scale with nearby player count AND have interesting mechanics. There are a ton of bosses that aren’t a simple swing and loot fest, its clear that its possible just some of them are all too predictable or leave no real impact on those around. Walls, conditions, shields granting a boon on absorb, etc. No zerg should be able to stomp it no matter how large.

Champions in open pve in this game just don’t scare me at all. I stumble into one and just go “meh”. I can either outrun it no problem or solo it. If its in a champ train zone, it usually dies by the time I turn around. I’ve done the champ train in frostgorge a couple times and not only did I get weak loot, it was HORRIBLY boring. I mean the champs die in like 5 seconds, where is the fun in that? And we just go in a circle and do it over and over… I don’t get how anyone can sit through that for more than 40 minutes without moving on.

This is NOT a thread to complain, this is simply a collection post. What ever skill that has more negatives than positives or has absolutely no reasonable application to any build, post them here. I know only a few professions so I’m just curious at how bad everyone is doing with them. Try to post in organization as to not cast upon the wall of text. If you need to explain why a skill is useless, it probably isn’t so don’t bother. (A skill or trait having more negatives than positives can also relate to taking up a slot over something else).

Thief(skills):
Ice drake venom
Needle trap

Thief(traits):
Potent Poison
Improvisation
Patience
Slowed Pulse
Hard To catch
Fleet of Foot
Fleet Shadow
Assassin’s Retreat
Long Reach

Warrior(traits):
Powerful Banners
Short Temper
Cull the weak
Vigorous Return
Sweet revenge

Ranger(Skills):
Storm Spirit
Search and rescue

Ranger(traits):
Predator’s Instinct
Companion’s Might
Stability Training
Master’s Bond

Question, when making a map, there is this constant desire for an exciting secondary objective like the orb in Spirit Watch, or the lords in the forest. However the latest map, skyhammer seems to entirely focus this, due to its massive effect on the battlefield. Where in the process of developing was it decided to behave this way?

1. It cannot be blocked.
2. Has a really short cool down with massive damage.
3. Classes like necro, Mesmer, guardian, etc excel in this map due to knock offs and controlling the laser platform.

Also, these game modes are conquest yet I see player kills grant the team score. Imo this promotes zerging, because there are many professions who can hold a point alone, while the zerg dominates another objective (2/3). What are the thoughts on this?

bewhatever.2390:

Ummm…as an ele, the last time my downed 2 skill saved me in WvW was, wait a minute, never. Still just as squishy 3 seconds later as I was before, just annoys and wastes a few seconds of the time of the person finishing me off.

If I’d been within reach of a tower or keep door going down, I would have dodgerolled backwards into it before going down…but then any class can do that.

Lets say your tower is being hit and you’re on an ele. You see the group ahead and they notice you. Obviously, they want to lock you down, and keep you off any siege that may be inside.

What do you do? Mist form.

If that fails whats next? Vapor form. If you’re not in the tower by then its likely cuz you are new.

Most ele I see can get into the tower with mist form alone, which is ok I suppose, but they should not be able to just waltz in when downed, and get back up. No one but ele can. And again, you build squishy you will die squishy, not all ele’s are running full zerker in wvw, you may be walking that road alone I’m afraid. A thief can stealth and run in, which is about as equal to mist form imo because you still take damage in stealth even though it lasts much longer. But this is about the downed state, so I’ll try to stay on that.

I can’t recall a single time I’ve been able to get vengeance off cd when going down outside a keep or tower, thief teleports but they can’t go inside the portal, Mesmer can’t enter the portal even if they got incredibly lucky with their #2 position.

Is blind/stability/invulnerable/portal stomping fair? No. But it has no affect on ele, and that’s not balanced. Why should other professions suffer from pathetic downed states while the ele has guaranteed 3+ seconds to hold out for a rally or enter a safe spot?

Downed states from best to worst (IMO):

-Ele(stated a million times)
-Ranger(#2 ignores blind, #3 in water is incredible)
-Thief(can avoid stomp with good timing, stealth is meh)
-Guardian(aoe kb, although easily negated by stability/blind)
-Mesmer (most people still stomping the clones… kinda sad but I guess its “effective” at this point in time.
-Engi (long, quick pull although easily avoided up close, but aoe launch is neat if the cd wears off)
-Necro (can heal/dps while an ally heals. Otherwise, really lame/avoidable.)
-War (long cast time, and slow moving hammer, I see this as a matrix reference tbh. Vengence likely to never come off cd, unless the enemy is against stomping, which is rather weird).

Guaridan’s and Warriors may be able to raise rather quickly, but you can still stun them. If they waste stability just to maybe rally someone, its kinda dumb on their end because 3-4 seconds of standing absolutely still and soaking up damage is going to hurt like kitten. Often I see soldier classes try this and they end up being killed seconds later even if they do manage to raise their ally, its just too much damage for anyone to take.

As for the downed skills, they could be more interesting but first I’d like to see balance. Some people have AoE skills to deal with stomps, some people have teleports, but ele can run/jump and prolong death far better than anyone. There is soo many more options for what an ele wants to do in the downed state, with easier access. Vengence doesn’t even come close, because of its incredibly long cooldown, and Mesmer is the 2nd to appear and also has a cloak affect warp around them when they appear, its pretty obvious.

I think its sad you can even sell legendary weapon. What’s the point in a unique skin if you can sell it? Even if the price was at 4k, the fact that it has a price tag is kitten enough.
Where is the adventure when making a legendary?
Where are the multiple legendary skins per weapon? I see GS got 3, seems that the art team loves them great swords. I want to be a unique butterfly, not part of these mainstream skins.

I want a legendary, the fact that it will always be the highest tier(not above the highest tier) and can have its stats changed at any time is quite rewarding. I just don’t want to burn myself out grinding for a skin hundreds of people already have, and what if I don’t like the skin? Transmute? Kinda defeats the purpose. It’s been over a year, where are the new legendary skins?

They could use event items (not living story event, don’t make it THAT exclusive), could use a drop from a guild mission, could use a drop from specific wvw encounters (SM), could use something from fractals (relics, shards/etc), could use something account bound from a specific boss either in open world or a dungeon with a moderate chance to drop, anything. The only “adventure” is map completion and although its nice to explore, the running and the heart completing was boring. Most fun I had was the mini dungeons and some hidden events like the one in brisban dealing with the white mantle.

Upham.6137:

4. I suppose it is okay for PvP and WvW, because enemies will usually stomp the clone instead of you.

No, that doesn’t happen unless the enemy is terrible. The mesmer is always the second one to appear.

To sum up, mesmer downed state is not that bad. You can still prevent the stomp if you are blinded or the enemy has stability on, that’s a big deal in PvP.
And in PvE rogue is still great for rallying. [/quote]

Not only that, when you are revealed, a black cloak swarms around your body. Its really obvious which memser is the real one. I think if the intention was to throw off the enemy, deception should remove that reveal effect of the cloak, and the order in which you appear should be random. I do know if a Mesmer dies in a corner or near a ledge of some sort, that they usually don’t port very far but I guess that’s the downfall of dying in a bad place.

Upham.6137:

NinjaEd.3946:

…snip….
-Ele, start stomp, expect invulnerable, chase them to finish because stomps take about 4 seconds, and most ele’s aren’t crazy enough to pop vapor form until right b4 the stomp.

That’s pretty much it for anyone who has played some PvP.
And like you have already said: guardian, warrior, ranger, engie, and necro interrupts are all negated by blind and stability.

Thief teleport can be negated by teleport skills. If he ports away a second too fast you can port to him using thieves infiltrators strike, eles lightning flash, mesmers blink and guardians flashing blade.

Mesmer port is negated by doing what you said, the only chance they have is porting far enough but that’s more random than anything.

And then eles, they have a granted 2 seconds of the stomp animation, then 3 seconds of invulnerability, and then 3 more seconds until you can finish the stomp. That’s a total of 8 seconds to stomp an ele, which wouldn’t be a problem in a 1vs1 with nobody else around, but anything other than, yeah, it’s an advantage for sure.

Like I said though, those stomps were without stomping benefits like blind, stability, teleports, invulnerability, etc. In 1v1, there is no real advantage I mean all the ele does is live a little longer. But most fights aren’t going to be 1v1, and those 8 seconds can be the difference between a rally, and defeat.

sinzer.4018:

If i recall you can immobilise an ele before they use Vapor Form and they wont be able to move.

I’m aware, but not everyone has an immobilize lasting 3+ seconds that’s quick to cast. Also #2 is readily available almost immediately after the invulnerable state wears off after being downed, which makes timing this rather difficult if the ele is say, right outside of a tower/keep/base(forest map in spvp).

This post is only directed towards the downed state for the professions, it has nothing to do with “class X can kill class Y easy, idk what the issue for you is”. That btw has no argument here, because class x isn’t always going to be up against class y, there are 7 other professions who have rather different results when downed. Here’s what I have come to work with against the downed state on a general basis W/O using blind or SS or some unique method to finishing.

-Guardian: start stomp, wait about 2 seconds, dodge, resume stomp.
-Warrior: Start stomp, wait for them to pull arm back, dodge, resume stomp.
-Thief: start stomp, nothing to do but wait for the ss. Some thieves do it immediately which is rather silly, in which case I just walk over and stomp.
-Ranger- start stomp, wait about 2 seconds, dodge, resume stomp.
-Engi- start stomp, wait about 2 seconds, dodge, resume stomp.
-Mesmer- start stomp, wait about 2 seconds, move, resume stomp, often they will reappear close enough for the channel to finish.
-Necro- Start stomp, wait for mark above my head, dodge, resume stomp.
-Ele, start stomp, expect invulnerable, chase them to finish because stomps take about 4 seconds, and most ele’s aren’t crazy enough to pop vapor form until right b4 the stomp.

In pve, npc’s cannot cross jumps for the most part. That is where I see vapor form to be op, because there are a ton of places an ele can hide since they can still jump in vapor form.

Squishy if you build so, ele can burst heal a ton of remove conditions quite rapidly. They may be the lowest health tier and in light armor but they can recover really well with some builds, which I see as fair since they kinda need something to keep them afloat. In spvp/wvw they can 100% avoid a stomp for a few more seconds and in some cases, get into a safe spot to completely recover and not worry about being stomped. Its not a cry for “help, I can’t l2p”, that isn’t at all fair to the other professions. Warrior has to cry for ages before vengeance even pops up, and even if they get credit for killing something they may not even rally, group stomping a warrior is way to easy.

Guardian- KB, % max health heal
Thief- Teleport, stealth
Warrior- worst surprise ever, rally (if lucky)
Necro- fear, poison field (meh)
Engi- pull, aoe launch
Ranger- aoe interrupt, pet heal(doesn’t stop stomping)
Mesmer- prolonged defeat, small dps
Ele- INVULNERABLE + MOBILITY, immobilize

I put caps for ele to express my issue. This goes for anywhere, wvw, spvp, pve w/e. Being invulnerable while able to move around has a way higher chance to rally than any of the others. War/necro/ranger/engi/guard can be negated by blind/stability/invulnerability. Thief can avoid a stomp but they can’t avoid obvious dps (ZOMG he stealth, where did he go?? OH still here), Mesmer can be fooled into using #2 and still stomp them (sometimes), how is the ele downed state at all fair? The whole idea of the downed state is to have a fighting chance, yet ele seems to have the odds in their favor. That isn’t balanced, at all. The only profession comparable to ele downed state is ranger when in water, because you can’t stomp underwater and if they get their pet on them its REALLY hard to finish them but how many encounters really occur underwater?

This needs changing. It isn’t a “playstyle” to be at such a rewarding downed state, and it certainly isn’t fair to the other professions who suffer from such easy finishes. It should either last 2 seconds(so immobilize can really be an effective counter) or it should be changed to something along the lines of which attunement you died under (earth, you kd, fire you shoot backwards, water you become a block of ice, lightning you can teleport).

Every profession has a falling damage trait, and every profession has some variation of a downed state trait (although silly tbh). These traits should all include immunity to blind while downed, blind seems all too easy to stomp people. As a thief main, I find it rather unfair to go stealth or blind for a finisher, but I also find it rather op with stability finishing. There should be a REAL fighting chance when downed, and it should be balanced across all professions. No downed state should be better than the next, and this means the #2’s and #3’s should match in power.

-the hammer on warrior should knockdown foes in a line, and let it be a directional cast.
-Fear should be around the target it’s casted upon for necros.
-engi should be able to pull all foes within a small radius (450?)

these downed skills should be able to somewhat counter a group stomp, don’t give this ability to a select few.

Stooperdale.3560:

“Well thieves aren’t for everyone, you know. Either work harder or play another class.”

Sanduskel is up to 48 posts in this thread now with expert advice like that. Just ignore him.

Yeah Im not an expert in these forums but I’ve already picked that out, this Sanduskel guy has no evidence to back up his posts. Can’t even call them opinions because he doesn’t back them up aside from rewording his earlier post.

Any who, I wish thief had more rewards for steal, and staying out of stealth. It seems like the term thief is entirely out of context here, since a majority of our strong traits include entering or staying within stealth. It should of just been named assassin if this was the aim, steal as a profession skill just seems far too much of a burden for some thieves. Every profession has multiple benefits from a profession skill, even without traits into them, yet thief either spec’s into it or doesn’t. No benefit to holding steal, no added benefits to stolen skills through traits, very limited sustain from steal (mug). On some builds I almost feel like steal is like a pet for rangers. Sure its there but I really don’t care for it, it doesn’t contribute to my build in any significant way and that’s a problem. If something as concrete as a profession skill can’t be useful by all builds for that profession, there is something wrong. The stolen skills themselves can be neat but in some cases its more of a trash skill than anything significant.

Well they changed it to steal boons as opposed to removing them. Maybe 2 boons was too many, but to be fair thief doesn’t have many boons to live off. I wish they kept its goal without nerfing it entirely. Like only remove 1 boon on FS, steal only 1 boon on LS. That way its still working to counter boon heavy builds like engi ele and guardian, without simply giving thief way to much control over the fight.

The problem I see with a lot of thief changes (playing since launch) is anet doesn’t seem to have a direction with them. They gave sword/dagger a incredible change, and then nerfed it 3 times so far (cost more, 1 less boon ripped, IR change). P/x has yet to receive any needed buffs, and the #2 just is all up and down the spectrum with changes. Sb had the only skill with 1200 range and that was nerfed, which really didn’t make much sense even for wvw as many other professions could do what theif could with the AoE against far away siege, in fact dragon’s tooth doesn’t even need los as long as the siege can be clicked on.

-P/p is weak. Dead weak, I’ve watched some people try to pull it off and its just laughable even with a glass-ish build. The only real dps is unload and it was barely hitting me for 4k full chain. I even tried the build at one point and I was hardly getting above 5k, but I would be initiative starved a lot. Thief needs a good Direct Damage range build, and their only 2 ranged weapons seem to favor conditions/utility far more. (Yeah and running around spamming cluster bomb is not good direct damage, it usually gets you killed for being a kitten).

-P/d is slow and hard to maintain. Even with condition duration traits/runes/sigils the bleeds are just tiresome to keep up. The torment is nice but you’re a ranged fighter, being within melee range just to apply a condition seems to suggest something entirely different. It’s alright in the sense it’s doing its job to keep that gap but p/d condi builds should get some sort of buff to either a faster AA, or a longer bleed from the stealth attack. There are a lot of builds that can clear conditions like no tomorrow, and taking forever just to put a dent in someone’s hp just to have to turned off is… depressing. There are a ton of profession who have a much wider array of conditions with quicker means to apply them with lethal DoT.

-S/d was fun while it lasted, but now after numerous nerfs to sword I just started to lose hope in it. The whole goal I believe of sword/dagger was to counter boon heavy builds. It isn’t a super high dps weapon, getting the full aa chain off is difficult without getting pummeled by cc and using IR. Imo the stealth attack frontal blind is rather useless, I wish it had something more exciting like good damage from the front, daze from behind. I love the daze for interrupting a rally or stomp, but the blind is meh. I havn’t found it all that useful but maybe it’s just me.

-S/P just seems strange. Sure PW hits rather hard and cleaves but thief is usually on their toes and rolling about, any skill that roots them in place (yes I know it evades) just doesn’t fit their theme. I personally wish we had a new dual skill for sword/pistol, even if at times I had fun with pw in spvp.

-sb is almost mandatory for thieves. The utility, and the combo skills are just too good to pass up. No, please don’t nerf it, but make other weapons more attractive or give us another weapon for utility. Could have focus with some group orientated skills related to boon sharing or group stealth/boon. Point being we need a viable alternative if we wana pass up sb. Very few people run w/o sb, I’d be willing to bet more than 75% of the players who main thief have a sb in there somewhere.

I actually like the shadowstep steal has. It’s a gap closer, which thieves utilize best since we are a melee focused profession, and it also can used to negate a burst of AoE’s if you are attentive to your surroundings. If you have the trait that grants stealth on steal, you can actually completely throw off a enemy (unless you have throw gunk pulsing).

For instance, a warrior uses their mace burst skill, and your stun break is on cooldown. You can shadowstep to them or to a nearby foe, the stealth is just long enough to recover from the stun and appear almost unharmed. Considering we only get 1 real profession skill, I kinda wish there were more traits revolving around its use. There are 0 traits involving stealth attacks (directly) also, which is kinda sad. I also wish there were more benefits to spending our initiative rather than just for the weapon’s utility.

Currently we have assassin’s reward, which… is sad. Warrior can burn their adrenaline and restore endurance, or cure conditions per bar. They can also gain various bonuses for holding onto that adrenaline. Thieves get nothing for holding onto steal/stolen skills. Steal isn’t a bar or anything but some builds have absolutely no use for it aside from moving. Would it be too much to ask for a trait adjustment to transfer 1 condition to your foe when you steal? We are low on effective condi clears and it fits the whole trickery that thieves work with.

Dancing dagger has its use. Its a 100% projectile finisher, and if you’re running p/d or d/d there are condi spec’s for them. Try using dancing dagger through a friendly combo field and you’ll notice its use. For power builds, it works well if you want something like on crit sigils on the OH dagger. Throw it into a small group, proc the sigil because it bounces and is likely to get atleast something. Its not meant for direct damage, its meant more so for utility.

CnD is very expensive I agree, but its the cheapest method of gaining stealth if you look at it. D/p spends 6 +3 to gain stealth, and using utility skills means a cool down is in play. Ofc there are benefits vs CnD like D/p is guaranteed stealth unless stunned, but everything has to have drawbacks or there is no balance. The only issue is that CnD only counts kitten initiative towards assassins’ reward but tbh, that trait is awful even with their proposed “buffs” to it.

Death blossom needs no change, idk if you even play thief if your gana suggest that. You must play zerker hs spam builds if you havn’t heard of d/d condi builds. Also thief has VERY few weapons to choose from, the order we equip them is our diversity and is a rather neat one. Death blossom needs a rework if anything, because the evade is rather clunky (often I still get hit while “evading”) and is really short moving. Even if I get 2/3 of the bleeds in I’d rather move a little distance than completely miss the target because they took 3 steps to the side and laughed. Even with swiftness this skill is really obvious.

Patience should change, I agree. Maybe along the lines of damage reduction while in stealth, a different way of handling incoming damage. Maybe 10% while in stealth or a value of toughness that scales on your level? As an initiative trait it really gets outdone by almost everything else in the tree.

SoS isn’t something I run often but I do believe it has its uses. The active imo isn’t as good as it probably should be, but people have their uses for it. For instance, I’ve saved a couple player’s in wvw by blinding someone who was chasing them and used something like earthshaker or guardian GS #5. Personally I wish this skill was a blast finisher at the location of the target (you do make a poof cloud at their location). Aside from that its fine as is.

If signet of agility became a stun breaker, I would kiss the feat of anet’s headquarters. The skill has soo much potential and the endurance refill flows perfectly for a thief themed stun break.

I wish we had atleast a 3rd profession skill( I consider stealth attacks as a profession skill in its own way), something along the lines of a defense we generally lack like condi clearing or recovery outside of stealth. Or even allow it to hold a stolen item and keep steal separate so you can hold it for a better time. Often I feel like I’m wasting stolen skills just to get to my steal, which has a lot of benefits. I wish I had the option to hold a stolen skill for a better time.

Others
-Slowed pulse, change to apply 10s regeneration if you take 10% of your max health in condition damage. ICD of 15 seconds.
-Improvisation, transfer 1 condition you are suffering from to your foe when you steal along with its current effects. Take away the full rng effect of this skill, and thief doesn’t use bundles.. so sorry to break it to you.
-Power shots, also add increased range to sb and Harpoon gun. 100 just so we can spec to be long range, closer to being on par with other professions, who get 1200 range on land.
-Merge Fleet shadow (VI) into Fleet of Foot(VII). Change Fleet of foot to remove 1 condition when you evade an attack with an ICD of 8 seconds. More options to remove conditions outside of stealth using the next best tool thief has to survive, dodging. Perhaps it can have no ICD but swap places with Hard to catch (useless skill atm). It would be rather strong at that point and Should require a heavy investment but pay off for non-stealth builds.
-Hard to catch, change to break stun and grant stability for 1 second on incoming disable. Same ICD. Whether it moves down or stays in grandmaster, the random teleport WHICH btw proc’s even if you have stability, is just horrendous considering the errors shadow stepping runs into across uneven terrain.
-Merge Long reach (VI) into Bountiful Theft (VII). Long reach is NEVER taken over the numerous other major traits that by far exceed its use.
-New trait “Refreshing signet” signet’s maintain their passive effects for a short while after being used. (5 seconds?). This mainly ties into SoM, and justifying its active but also works well on Assassin’s signet, since 15% bonus dmg is actually incorrect in its own way, because you lose the power it grants.

Some things that I believe thief really could use and why.

Venoms
-Merge Quick venoms into Venomous Strength (IV).
-Add new trait “Infused Venoms”(VIII) -Transfer 1 condition on successful venom strikes.
-Bump the chill duration for ice drake venom to 1.5 seconds per strike. I’d prefer 2 seconds but wouldn’t we all ^^ Anyways small steps, no drastic changes.
-Slightly bump the baseline for leeching venoms or bump its healing power scale. It’s not bad but its not good, especially considering the investment needed to make it at all viable (you lose a lot of utility/dmg). Imo it should be a type of thief bunker build who uses this to sustain, hopefully using spider venom (most strikes).

Weapons
-Sword: change LS back to 1 initiative cost (steals 1 boon now), or change how the skill behaves. By nature thief is rather selfish, maybe it could steal 1 boon and share it with nearby allies? Or perhaps FS can remove 1 boon and LS steals 1 boon, effectively keeping its intended purpose (to counter builds that rely on boons).
-SB: speed up #5 and #2 just a tad bit. Nothing serious but both of them seem rather lacking. Besides no one really uses #2 at long range unless its against a structure, sooo easy to spot and avoid.
-Pistol: I generally stay away from pistol MH, because its so slow. The amount of work needed to keep the bleed stacks up is tiresome, especially against builds who can remove conditions like its nobody’s business. I’m not sure if the aa just needs to be quicker or the bleed needs to be slightly bumped. Again I don’t use it all the time so maybe I’m wrong.

Stealth The big fish
-Hidden assassin, work on allies you stealth as well. More party love for thief?
-Shadow’s protector, add an ICD of 10 seconds. This will work for each unique player you stealth, remove the “does not trigger if your ally already has regeneration.” part.
-Revealed, occurs if you start to finish someone because I agree, it is rather unfair. HOWEVER, finishing while invulnerable should also be looked at (engi/ele). TBH invuln finishing is more unfair, because you actually watch them laugh and kick you in the face.
-Stealth duration, cap at 20 seconds. After 20 seconds you exit stealth revealed. W/o the reveal it really isn’t 20 seconds now is it? Anyway 20 seconds is over SR and more than enough for a thief to decide, “am I staying, or am I fleeing?”. The goal being, there will be no such thing as perma stealth. Eventually you will see them, so just keep those eyes peeled for a hooded figure.
-Hide in Shadows, bump stealth duration by 1 second. It has a cast time and a long cd with a not so high heal. Sure the condi removal is neat but not every fight is going to apply burn poison and bleed on you, its mostly situational imo, and doesn’t work too well at healing against DD builds who can usually interupt your heal.
-Allow meld with shadows to work on Leap skills through smoke fields. The perma stealth nerf is nice but I believe this is a justified return to not harm the utility of d/p combos too much.
-Patience, really not as strong as other traits. Even with the infusion of shadow’s change, I still won’t use it because there are much stronger substitutes that don’t require a heavy investment. Perhaps change to “Shadow Shield”, reduce incoming damage while in stealth (10%? or a scaled value of toughness) It is a master trait, and in a defensive trait line. Numbers can always been tweaked, but its just a thought.

Traps

-Merge Master Trapper(V) into Corrosive traps(II). Mainly because the amount of trap related traits are very few on thief, and standing alone are rather weak for their long cd. Also traps don’t seem to have much attention aside from shadow and ambush. Add new trait in Acrobatics ,“Powder traps”, traps create a smoke field when triggered. Field duration 3 seconds, 3s blind per pulse (1.5 seconds per pulse resulting in a max of 2 hits miss).
-Swap Combined Training(X) with Potent Poison(V). Change Potent poison to “Diseased Traps”, Traps spread the conditions of the foe that triggers it to their allies. (occurs immediately after it is triggered, to apply the trap conditions as well). Along the lines of epidemic, the goal being to make aoe conditions on thief more rewarding, the bleed on sb is rather weak and caltrops can be avoided quite easily or even ignored in larger groups.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

As a Thief main,

Can you give me some depth behind the Infiltrator’s Strike change? Especially why have you decided to add more cast time to Infiltrator’s Return instead of disabling the skill when the thief is stunned/dazed/immobilized?

In my opinion adding more cast time just makes the whole mechanic more clunky and still allows Thieves to get out of sticky situations they shouldn’t be able to.

If a Thief is stunned, unless he uses a stunbreaker, he should remain as such. Infiltrator’s Return bypassing CC is clearly broken and counter intuitive in my opinion.
If a Thief is stunned or dazed he shouldn’t be able to use Infiltrator’s Return. You need to add some punishment if a Sword Thief is caught without a stunbreaker up. You need to create some separators between average thieves and GREAT thieves. *

A GREAT Thief would use Infiltrator’s Return before the stun arrives, that’s good reward. An average Thief wouldn’t have the timing to avoid the stun and therefor would be punished.

Skill vs Reward/Punishment is something we need

Infiltrator’s Return can’t be the “OH SHIET” button. That’s not very balanced for competitive play.
Introducing this fix, would you go as far as not going foward with this cast time increase and maybe reducing initiative cost? What are your thoughts on this?

You do realize the only stun breakers thief has are either long cd, not all that controllable, or actually hurt you more than help? Also we have no stability, but sure, we’re op….

Infiltrator’s return does NOT break stun as it used to, which is fine. I actually thought that it was rather op back then, but now all it does is displace. It doesn’t recover from launch, or knockback, it just moves you away. Ranged players have no problem getting a few more hits in before you’re back up.

We also have 0 protection and blocks/counters on land. So I ask you, do you even play thief? I can’t help but notice that someone who “main” thief asking for further nerfs to the already overrated profession is coming from the fields of solo queue where pug stomping is a pleasure.

JonPeters.5630:

Ok some more incoming updates

THIEF

• No longer swapping Flanking Strikes and Trickster because we felt it was taking away more build diversity than it was creating. We will revisit what to do with Trickster in the future.

NECROMANCER

• Weakening Shroud. This trait now does a smaller version of Enfeebling Blood when entering Death Shroud. Bleeding (1 stack only; 6 seconds [10s with full condition duration spec]). Weakness (2s [3s with full condition duration spec]). No ICD.

Necro one in particular I would love some discussion on I’ll go post in the sub forums for each of these professions to allow some discussion on pros/cons.

Thanks,

Jon

Sounds good, unfortunately I rarely use that trait, but glad to see it’s intention preserved for thief burst. As for necro, I’m still learning it slowly so I’m hoping to love it before and after these updates.

Umut.5471:

Necro suggestion :

Please buff staff usability till the addition new weapons. Aoe support to your team(mostly in wvw) is why most of us play necro.
Staff #5 needs longer fear for example.(fear damage can be reduced but we need longer cc) Staff #4 doesn’t help our allies anymore. Staff #2 is mediocre but gets nerfed constantly because other classes get better and better condition removal abilities with every patch. It gets removed before giving even 25% damage in wvw. Our 240 radius trait has been moved to master tier which is a major nerf to the staff. Please make our main role(aoe) viable again. Don’t think for pvp or pve, make seperate changes for wvw please.

To be fair, its an aoe bleed/regen and comes back rather quick. I agree that #4 isn’t all that good simply because it’s hard to know if its helping when zergs collide. Its kinda just something you throw in the mess and hope it sorts itself out, which I never really liked. With a fear field I can stop a stomp, with the chill I can slow the backline, with #2 I can dps and see the numbers regen. Idk… maybe its just because I’m still building my necro knowledge up.

As for boosting its DD, I hear many of my guildies pull off impressive numbers with a power necro using staff. These are people who main necro in wvw, so call it blind trust but I’ve seen their ability to play necro. Also staff is quite a support weapon, only reason ele meteor shower does a ton is because ele can’t weapon swap. Fire is their dps on staff, but it’s also EASILY interrupted, and lava front is easily avoided.

I have a quick question regarding the thief initiative change, as it seems to be held onto.

Is the goal to reduce the spamming of skills, or is it to get us away from being dependent on initiative based traits?

From the builds I fiddle with, I usually spend a lot of initiative from just using the skills, not even spamming them. What I have atm are various methods to regain quick initiative if I need. Whether it be swapping to sb and porting out of a Ring of warding, using BPS + HS to recover quickly, headshot to interrupt a heal skill, whatever it may be. If I NEED a quick burst of initiative I can get it. This change seems to direct thieves into holding onto initiative more, and idk if that ALONE is good.

I play thief and warrior quite a lot, and I know of quite a few traits that benefit a warrior for holding onto their adrenaline, both offensive and defensive. Thief has only offensive and the utility of most weapon sets far outweighs the minor traits giving us slightly more dps which btw are expensive to even obtain (25 points). I have no problem with spamming skills, and even thought HS spamming is easy to avoid I think it is rather kitten. On the other hand I see no use in holding onto 50% of my initiative because I’m afraid to spend it and dig myself into a hole I can’t escape.

nicknamenick.2437:

They already compensate some things for other classes..

Zero compensation for warriors.

I don’t see thief compensation, aside from lowering what we are forced to use.

Anywho, warrior is pretty strong atm, not just in pve. They have been getting buffs and changes and new traits so that they can be what they’re supposed to be, brutes. However at the same time it was overlooked how once not so popular builds became incredibly overused, and it wasn’t really diversity as much as saying “use this build, it works!” Balance should be making more viable builds not replacing the old ones with something WAY stronger.

Rafahil.2857:

Just to be sure this get read I must say once more that the Thief’s Opportunist trait nerf should be looked at, because if this happens the sword/pistol and pistol/pistol sets will suffer. Pistol whip and unload which will basically render both weapon sets completely useless.

Edit: also I forgot to mention, have you even looked at the Improvisation trait yet? It’s randomness is too much and its second part is just useless.

Feels like that trait was “stolen” from an engineer HAHAAHHA

But really, that trait is aweful.

Windy.3158:

HAH! Balance changes to get people to play a variety of styles. So explain how the changes you plan on implementing benefit the D/D Ele….? They don’t one bit! You completely destroy the class and make don’t make them viable any more with the traits and how you are rearranging them! This is an utter joke… D/D, S/D and Staff are all viable at this current moment in time for the Elementalist and therefore no changes need to be made with regards to movement of traits, perhaps only slight re-adjustment of internal recharges or durations etc.

ANET ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING!

You don’t see the red tag posts? They are listening. The issue is a lot of these changes aren’t small, so its no wonder it’s upset a large sum. I’m not too happy with the thief changes, but then again they aren’t finalized yet so I’m not losing faith yet.

I think instead of heavily nerfing opportunist, it swap places with practiced tolerance. Reason being its a precision trait line, and the major trait feels like something that could benefit all thieves more as a minor trait, due to our low health pool. Now if a thief traits 30 into CS, they have more of a choice to trait for what their build needs.

Do I suffer from low initiative? I should probably get opportunist. Or
My initiative regen is fine, do I care for a little spike of dmg? Critical haste, or

Maybe its just me but I don’t agree with nerfing minor traits so severely because we have no control over them like we do with major traits. This ofc wouldn’t fix the trait, but at least we won’t be FORCED to deal with it.

That or lower the proposed ICD to 2 seconds. The trait is there for quick attacks to restore initiative, don’t ruin its purpose if the plan is to already nerf all traits granting small bursts of initative.

Lithril Ashwalker.6230:

In otherwords you just told him – your fault for roaming alone, got ganked, got kitten…people have to understand its like a house of matches, one right placement and thief falls apart.

I did get a little carried away didn’t I? But I stand by my points, people asking for thief nerfs aren’t looking for balance they’re looking for easy mode. There are already effective ways to deal with perma stealth (which I think is a bad concept to begin with, and glad that it’s getting nerfed), its just whiners don’t care for Q&A time, they just want things “fixed” for them, and not for others. Simply bumping or lowering values isn’t going to solve anything, its going to ruin the class more and more. It needs restructure, options to compete with the other 7 professions.

Thief has 2 viable means to surviving. Stealth, and evasion (dodge/teleports). I’m not asking for mercy just because I’m a thief, I’m asking to think kitten what thief has to work with if you start poking at its viable builds. Adapting only goes so far before you have to simply move on to something else.

elikal.7356:

THIEF BURST DMG FROM STEALTH:

To be honest, I dont know anyone really reads the Nth post here. But ONE thing bugs me in the balance, the Thief-Stealth-system.

I think the Thief build where one Thief can essentially perma-stealth and do ungodly damage from out of stealth in WvW has to go. It is not fun, and doesn’t really contribute to the ongoing war either. It’s just profoundly unfun and there is virtually no way you can do against it.

Give the Thief a different concept. Like doing dps, but not in that amount and maybe you raise his dodge and escape mechanicsm and nerf the dmg burst. A perma-stealthed Thief can endlessly harass you, leave the fight whenever he wants, reenter at his whim, and you can’t do anything about it to counter that.

It’s unfun, not balanced and the entire stealth-burst-DPS mechanic has to go.

EDIT: ELE ARE TOO WEAK

Also, I feel Elementalists are way too weak. No class is so much forced to constant lolcoperting, is so much a weak jack of all trades, but good at nothing. Either the damage needs to rise considerably, or some mechanisms to keep the enemy at bay OTHER than CONSTANT lolcoptering are needed.

Glass cannons usually die like throwing a stone at a pane of glass. Pretty simple concept once you get a hold of it. The only people who die to them are usually uplevels or are a glass cannon build themselves, in which case you kinda had it coming.

Look at it this way, you run with a small group, no thief should be able to wipe you. No matter how skilled they may be, thief isn’t a group fighter. They may pester you awhile but there should be no window for them to pop out, burst someone down, and finish them without some response. NOW, if you’re roaming, you’re already in no mans land. Anyone can jump out and attack you, they don’t need stealth as a simple LoS could surprise you in the ruins. Mesmers also have stealth btw, and are far better duelers than thief, mainly because they don’t get constant nerfs to the chest. The difference is the skill level to play a good Mesmer and a good thief. Thief IS in fact quite easier to play, doesn’t mean anyone can jump on 1 and start taking over the ruins but people see it and by people I mean the troll videos/posts on various thief builds. Most people can’t grasp stealth counters, so those looking for an easy fight exploit that weakness, make them cry, and they come to the forums to rant about it. Bottom line, there is a clear line between those who have counters to stealth, and those who don’t understand them yet. Those who don’t understand it yet should be asking for help and not requesting a nerf. Thief is VERY squishy, and has few answers to everyday dueling. They don’t need flat nerfs they need adjustments for more viable builds.

Tman.6349:

NinjaEd.3946:

Traps

-Merge Master Trapper(V) into Corrosive traps(II). Mainly because the amount of trap related traits are very few on thief, and standing alone are rather weak for their long cd. Also traps don’t seem to have much attention aside from shadow and ambush. Add new trait in Acrobatics ,“Powder traps”, traps create a smoke field when triggered. Field duration 3 seconds, 3s blind per pulse (1.5 seconds per pulse resulting in a max of 2 hits miss).
-Swap Combined Training(X) with Potent Poison(V). Change Potent poison to “Diseased Traps”, Traps spread the conditions of the foe that triggers it to their allies. (occurs immediately after it is triggered, to apply the trap conditions as well). Along the lines of epidemic, the goal being to make aoe conditions on thief more rewarding, the bleed on sb is rather weak and caltrops can be avoided quite easily or even ignored in larger groups.

Others
-Slowed pulse, change to apply 10s regeneration if you take 10% of your max health in condition damage. ICD of 15 seconds.
-Improvisation, transfer 1 condition you are suffering from to your foe when you steal along with its current effects. Take away the full rng effect of this skill, and thief doesn’t use bundles.. so sorry to break it to you.
-Power shots, also add increased range to sb and Harpoon gun. 100 just so we can spec to be long range, closer to being on par with other professions, who get 1200 range on land.
-Merge Fleet shadow (VI) into Fleet of Foot(VII). Change Fleet of foot to remove 1 condition when you evade an attack with an ICD of 8 seconds. More options to remove conditions outside of stealth using the next best tool thief has to survive, dodging. Perhaps it can have no ICD but swap places with Hard to catch (useless skill atm). It would be rather strong at that point and Should require a heavy investment but pay off for non-stealth builds.
-Hard to catch, change to break stun and grant stability for 1 second on incoming disable. Same ICD. Whether it moves down or stays in grandmaster, the random teleport WHICH btw proc’s even if you have stability, is just horrendous considering the errors shadow stepping runs into across uneven terrain.
-Merge Long reach (VI) into Bountiful Theft (VII). Long reach is NEVER taken over the numerous other major traits that by far exceed its use.
-New trait “Refreshing signet” signet’s maintain their passive effects for a short while after being used. (5 seconds?). This mainly ties into SoM, and justifying its active but also works well on Assassin’s signet, since 15% bonus dmg is actually incorrect in its own way, because you lose the power it grants.

yes the pistol MH is kinda garbage and PP thieves don’t use it for damage, we use unload and only auto while we wait for our HUGE ini. expenditure to regenerate. ALL pistol skills have crazy ini. costs in comparison to the damage that they do but that’s exactly the thing i’m worried about with this patch is stealing and meld with shadows are my main two ways of being able to keep up with the redic amount of ini. that pistols drain. with this nerf i will be able to attack 4 times LESS a minute and i’m not OP by any means already. i guess we can just throw the baby out with the bathwater and hopefully one day we’ll just scrap PP altogether

Kinda bummed me out when they decided to continuously nerf #2 on pistol mh. I mean immobilize is fine, but you put it on a “spammable” skill, nerf the vuln stacks, and bump the initiative cost. It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. That is no way to rework a weapon set, pistol is just plain weak.

P/p thieves have to rely on 1 skill basically, unload. The aa is slow and condi based not DD, #4 is fine and #5 really costs a ton of initative for little gain to a p/p thief. Thief has very few weapon choices, dual skills and stealth attacks are the only real diversity between them, but Anet can’t seem to settle on their balance so they keep nerfing them until they all suck. Sorry, but from a thief day 1 and watching the meta shift over and over all I see is less reward to playing thief.

Traps

-Merge Master Trapper(V) into Corrosive traps(II). Mainly because the amount of trap related traits are very few on thief, and standing alone are rather weak for their long cd. Also traps don’t seem to have much attention aside from shadow and ambush. Add new trait in Acrobatics ,“Powder traps”, traps create a smoke field when triggered. Field duration 3 seconds, 3s blind per pulse (1.5 seconds per pulse resulting in a max of 2 hits miss).
-Swap Combined Training(X) with Potent Poison(V). Change Potent poison to “Diseased Traps”, Traps spread the conditions of the foe that triggers it to their allies. (occurs immediately after it is triggered, to apply the trap conditions as well). Along the lines of epidemic, the goal being to make aoe conditions on thief more rewarding, the bleed on sb is rather weak and caltrops can be avoided quite easily or even ignored in larger groups.

Others
-Slowed pulse, change to apply 10s regeneration if you take 10% of your max health in condition damage. ICD of 15 seconds.
-Improvisation, transfer 1 condition you are suffering from to your foe when you steal along with its current effects. Take away the full rng effect of this skill, and thief doesn’t use bundles.. so sorry to break it to you.
-Power shots, also add increased range to sb and Harpoon gun. 100 just so we can spec to be long range, closer to being on par with other professions, who get 1200 range on land.
-Merge Fleet shadow (VI) into Fleet of Foot(VII). Change Fleet of foot to remove 1 condition when you evade an attack with an ICD of 8 seconds. More options to remove conditions outside of stealth using the next best tool thief has to survive, dodging. Perhaps it can have no ICD but swap places with Hard to catch (useless skill atm). It would be rather strong at that point and Should require a heavy investment but pay off for non-stealth builds.
-Hard to catch, change to break stun and grant stability for 1 second on incoming disable. Same ICD. Whether it moves down or stays in grandmaster, the random teleport WHICH btw proc’s even if you have stability, is just horrendous considering the errors shadow stepping runs into across uneven terrain.
-Merge Long reach (VI) into Bountiful Theft (VII). Long reach is NEVER taken over the numerous other major traits that by far exceed its use.
-New trait “Refreshing signet” signet’s maintain their passive effects for a short while after being used. (5 seconds?). This mainly ties into SoM, and justifying its active but also works well on Assassin’s signet, since 15% bonus dmg is actually incorrect in its own way, because you lose the power it grants.

Some things that I believe thief really could use and why.

Venoms
-Merge Quick venoms into Venomous Strength (IV).
-Add new trait “Infused Venoms”(VIII) -Transfer 1 condition on successful venom strikes.
-Bump the chill duration for ice drake venom to 1.5 seconds per strike. I’d prefer 2 seconds but wouldn’t we all ^^ Anyways small steps, no drastic changes.
-Slightly bump the baseline for leeching venoms or bump its healing power scale. It’s not bad but its not good, especially considering the investment needed to make it at all viable (you lose a lot of utility/dmg). Imo it should be a type of thief bunker build who uses this to sustain, hopefully using spider venom (most strikes).

Weapons
-Sword: change LS back to 1 initiative cost (steals 1 boon now), or change how the skill behaves. By nature thief is rather selfish, maybe it could steal 1 boon and share it with nearby allies? Or perhaps FS can remove 1 boon and LS steals 1 boon, effectively keeping its intended purpose (to counter builds that rely on boons).
-SB: speed up #5 and #2 just a tad bit. Nothing serious but both of them seem rather lacking. Besides no one really uses #2 at long range unless its against a structure, sooo easy to spot and avoid.
-Pistol: I generally stay away from pistol MH, because its so slow. The amount of work needed to keep the bleed stacks up is tiresome, especially against builds who can remove conditions like its nobody’s business. I’m not sure if the aa just needs to be quicker or the bleed needs to be slightly bumped. Again I don’t use it all the time so maybe I’m wrong.

Stealth The big fish
-Hidden assassin, work on allies you stealth as well. More party love for thief?
-Shadow’s protector, add an ICD of 10 seconds. This will work for each unique player you stealth, remove the “does not trigger if your ally already has regeneration.” part.
-Revealed, occurs if you start to finish someone because I agree, it is rather unfair. HOWEVER, finishing while invulnerable should also be looked at (engi/ele). TBH invuln finishing is more unfair, because you actually watch them laugh and kick you in the face.
-Stealth duration, cap at 20 seconds. After 20 seconds you exit stealth revealed. W/o the reveal it really isn’t 20 seconds now is it? Anyway 20 seconds is over SR and more than enough for a thief to decide, “am I staying, or am I fleeing?”. The goal being, there will be no such thing as perma stealth. Eventually you will see them, so just keep those eyes peeled for a hooded figure.
-Hide in Shadows, bump stealth duration by 1 second. It has a cast time and a long cd with a not so high heal. Sure the condi removal is neat but not every fight is going to apply burn poison and bleed on you, its mostly situational imo, and doesn’t work too well at healing against DD builds who can usually interrupt your heal.
-Allow meld with shadows to work on Leap skills through smoke fields. The perma stealth nerf is nice but I believe this is a justified return to not harm the utility of d/p combos too much.
-Patience, really not as strong as other traits. Even with the infusion of shadow’s change, I still won’t use it because there are much stronger substitutes that don’t require a heavy investment. Perhaps change to “Shadow Shield”, reduce incoming damage while in stealth (10%? or a scaled value of toughness) It is a master trait, and in a defensive trait line. Numbers can always been tweaked, but its just a thought.

Sanduskel.1850:

wigs.9761:

LOL! THIEF – You guys are totally going to kill this class. reducing init. gain? Gonna nerf the thief so that it doesnt evade so much, i think is what i read. Isnt the point of thief to get into battle drop some burst then get out before you get 1skilled. lol! Next your gonna limit are stealth skills and reduce um

I was just starting to learn to play my thief… you guys do realise how hard it is to play a thief, i mean good? evading hitting and hiding is our niche xD

I disagree. I think this will liberate the class from the hated permastealth crutch.

Perma stealth nerf is fine, the reduction in vigor is bad. I mean Mesmer and guardian both have traits to have a permanent upkeep on vigor, and that was untouched. I can understand anet’s hatred towards anyone with permanent vigor, but they seem to of overlooked some obvious suspects. I’m hoping they catch it soon but also that they don’t nerf vigor on thief soo harshly. We are to squishy to have our evasion capability toned down with no compensation.

BTW, wouldn’t it be nice if Conjurer (VIII) for elementalist also made it so the AA on conjure weapons didn’t count as a charge? Would be a nice spec to try out if the aa didn’t eat the charges up so quickly.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

a t s e.9614:

Healing signet needs NO NERF , don’t listen to the whiner . Warrior has no sustain outside of high regen . Those hammer dmg nodes nerf are perfect . But im dissapointed about thief changes honestly , S\D is the only viable build anet

The change to initiative regain baseline is a huge buff to ALL thief builds, so don’t jump so early to those conclusions!

No offence but I don’t believe that for a second.

The change to infusion with shadows to proc upon ENTERING stealth is fine, it solved a major issue with perma stealth. HOWEVER, nerfing the thief’s ability to control their initiative pool is, well, a nerf. The way I see it if this proposed change were to take affect, thief would be waiting for their initiative to regen as opposed to using a signet, or steal or stealth to quickly gain some back. Thief is all about quick decisions and positioning, all of which rely on complete control over our resource. I don’t doubt the 1 init/sec is a good thing, but it’s not the solution many whiners post about.

Perma stealth should go, or better yet have a stealth duration cap in which a player can stay in stealth (somewhere just above SR as to not nerf the skill). But we need compensation, because our best survivability traits are from entering/staying in stealth as well as evading. Both of which seem to be overshadowed by a nerf hammer with no return to “balance” it out.

There are a ton of things that could be adjusted/reworked to make thief not so dependent on stealth.

BoB.6082:

ENGINEER.

The vigor nerf will destroy us in team fights. In team fights we don’t have fail safes for getting caught. Once we get caught were done. We also don’t have stability to make up for not having vigor. I use 3 kits and 1 stun break. I think the vigor nerf will leave us close to not viable at mid fights since it will be very hard to evade the incoming cc. I’m talking about real top tier tourney teams. Most the complaints you are getting are from hotjoin players any good player can 1v2/1v3 them so they are going to think we are op and complain.

You think that’s bad, you should look at what thief has in store.

leman.7682:

Taken from mesmer post:

Scepter
Scepter is still missing something but we don’t want to overload the autoattack as we think that promotes more mindless play and are trying to move away from builds that focus so much on the “1” skill. I feel like that scepter should be the tricksy defender that can stop enemies from attacking and defend allies, but maybe it’s single target nature is keeping that from working.

Are there changes possible to necro weapons that greatly revolve around just that – spamming ‘1’, whether it’s the dagger, the DS, the axe or the scepter.

In general after palying most professions I feel that necromancer, which is my favourite character, is really left behind in the fun weapon category. They are usually decent, good even, but all are missing some nice skills that would make the gameplay more fun.

Usual necro fights:
Snare skill (Chillblains, Grasping Dead, Dark Pact) -> DPS AoE -> ‘1’, ‘1’, ‘1’
Repeat.

I probably am a little biased, but that’s how I feel. Could the necro get some interesting chains on their skills to make it more fun than it already is?
I think there is no discussion making things more fun and more active should be the way to go when designing and evolving each profession.

Once again, thank you, Jon, for taking your time at the weekend.

I don’t main necro but I do have one leveled and I see quite the opposite. For axe, the #2 and 3 are really strong, and depending on the build come in handy. Dagger #3 has a bit of a long cd but it does work well with #2 if you want the full effect. Personally I only use dagger for those 2 skills. Scepter however I agree, the aa is much better. The #3 doesn’t really suit the weapon but I guess it’s there just to work if a build doesn’t have many ways of gaining life force, #2 is alright but I feel like it could use more utility like if it hits only 1 target the cripple duration is increased.

Stillmoon.6894:

here is some sugestion
on necromancer:
- could you consider removing the reanimator trait, that trait is very bad for a dueling necro because the downed opponent can easily kill the critter and rally. i stopped using the toughness traitline because of that
- adding passive condition trait. although it is not too necessary added passive condition damage will help necro a lot because there is so many condition removal now and we need more damage to compensate for that

on warrior:
- revenge skill recharge is too short. its almost impossible to kill a warrior on my character now without the warrior using revenge skill. and the most annoying thing is the character didn’t give world exp.

on thief:
- could you please the stealth on thief. permanent invisible thief are the worst. at least give it a 1 or 2 sec delay before the thief could use another stealth skill.
- please remove the trait that remove conditions on stealth, its is really annoying when you cant hit them and even more annoying on my standpoint if they can get away with removing the damage source

well just some suggestion to balance the game from my standpoint :P
hope you consider this

Vengence can be avoided, by simple finishing them off. You can

A. blind them and they miss that slow hammer.

B. start to finish, wait about a sec, watch them take 8 weeks to pull the hammer out and press dodge. By the time that’s over, you can once again finsh them off, and vengeance won’t come off cd. Warrior downed state is pathetic already, please don’t offer silly requests.

Thief doesn’t have strong condi clearing outside of stealth. Shadow’s embrace is a strong trait, everyone has them and is entitled to hold them. I don’t think you play thief at all to understand what position we are in.

Sreoom.3690:

Vi Au.8341:

I must disagree with the vigour change for thieves. Thieves are supposed to be the most mobile class in gw2. We should be able to dodge more and evade more than other classes.

I don’t mind mobile and evasive…but thieves get mobility, evasiveness, condition cleaning and insane damage while stealthed. My ranger at best can only prolong my eventual death in WvW 1v1 encounters with thieves. Heck, last week six of us had a hard time dealing with two perm-invis thieves in Bay.

So…hide in shawdows…yes. one-hit, one-kill from shadows? Please no. The class is called Thief….not assassin.

Vigor isn’t a stealth thing, its a boon that most thief builds rely on. Nerfing it is just pigeon holding us into using lame stealth spamming builds more, because our ability to dodge in combat is going to shorten with this proposed change. Vigor doesn’t remove conditions, and it doesn’t reduce incoming damage or heal us. Its how thieves are able to live out of stealth, by evading. We have the lowest tier of hp, little boon access, its disgusting.

STOP NERFING THIEVES ALREADY! We aren’t top tier in anything. Not in pve, not wvw, and not spvp. Very few people seem to understand how weak thieves already are, so they rant about them on their blogs and post in these forums hoping that 1 day, it will be easy mode for them removing the purpose of thinking altogether. Outside of stealth, our ability to sustain offers no room for error. We dodge at the wrong time, or try spiking at the wrong time, anyone with proper knowledge can shut a thief down. We have few stun breakers, low condition removal (outside of stealth), and no reliable regen (outside of stealth).

Ele- burst heals, regen, protection, stability, invuln, condi clearing

Necro- 2 health pools, decent condi clearing, protection, insta cast fear(avoid burst)

Guardian- regen, aegis, various heals (on boon application, meditations, symbols, dodge, virtue, some weapon skills), and tons of condi clearing/convert

Warrior -healing signet, shout heals, condi clearing, highest health pool with heavy armor

Mesmer- clones, critical infusion, invulnerability, stealth, condi clearing, sword(#2&3)

Ranger- Trolls potion, regen, decent evasion(endurance/skills), could use some better controlled condi clearing but not too bad.

Engi- various boons, regen, burst heal, perma vigor, condi clearing, invulnerability, some stealth.

Thief- stealth, low condi clearing unless using shadow’s embrace, evasion. Change us, don’t nerf us.

Routa.4136:

I main a thief, and I do agree that thief should be brought down a notch, however…
From what I judge from those changes, Thief is on its way to become hilariously vulnerable to all kinds of conditions. I miss the time before the condition damage/cleanse meta, when these changes could have been made without any fuss.

Thief needs changes to condi clearing as well as stuin breaking. Sword #2 no longer stun break, so I see nothing wrong with it. Even from a warrior or ranger stand point, it needs no attention. It’s simply to displace the dps momentarily. Stability does the same thing and thief has NO stability. I’m not suggesting adding it, but work around it. Simply removing class mechanics is no way to balance. You need justification and not simply because you are a dev. What do we get in return out of stun/movement impairment? What do we get out of no survivability? What do we get out of no buffs? We aren’t WoW, we are GW2. BALANCE, don’t make it easy mode in pvp.

dragonkain.3984:

Well, no offence but nerfing engineer was utterly stupid move considering nobody uses them in competitive play AT ALL. And you only keep nerfing engi, it’s like ????????????????????? at first, and then you realize that stupid changes come only from stupid people. no offence ofcourse but it’s just truth.

Again, no offence, just an opinion from a person that understands logic pretty well, that’s all.

Are you sure? Because in tpvp or spvp I see a engi all the time. They aren’t weak in the mists.

Thief IS weak in the mists, and deserves reworks not nerfs. PLEASE STOP NERFING thieves. We need adjustments not total and utterly game changing wack a mole methods until the lower half of the community stops crying about class X. Changes, not nerfs. I see no suitable compensation for the thief nerfs that are proposed, none at all.

username.4932:

Disapointing to see Anet asking feedback and doing the exact opposite of the community feedback, they are just spitting in our face.

How the hell do you think gardian community asked for more DPS (everyone asks supports and heal buff) ?

How the hell can’t you read the reports everywhere about healing power stuff being useless and people willing to use it for something really useful ?

What’s the point asking user feedback if you don’t read it ?

Just fyi, these aren’t set in stone. Its just what they’ve come up with and even if it WAS set in stone, its months ahead and hopefully subject to change.

That being said, the ranger changes look neat and appropriate, and warrior changes don’t really impact too much, idk if the hammer dps reduction is needed but then again, I don’t use it for dps to begin with. The proposed thief changes bug the kitten out of me though. I see no good in making initiative gain mostly regen based, it should lay in the hands of the build and be managed as such. Its fine to change the 2 initiative upon ENTERING stealth, but don’t nerf all the other sources. Its called resource management and thief is the only class that really has to worry about it. Nerfing their control on that is a big smack in the face.

I’d like to comment on the propose thief changes.

-Initiative gain should NOT require a slow regen. Thieves have 0 cd but our weapon skills cost initiative and are mostly offensive, what we have atm are a few traits that let us directly control that letting us land combos. Thief only has 1 gain from spending intiative, and the plan seems to be move that trait further away. Make more benefits to spending initiative, and maybe add a total cd to staying in stealth if resetting a fight is the issue. Don’t nerf our control over a resource.

-Thieves have very few boons. We have no protection, our regen is mediocre unless in stealth, no stability, no aegis. I see the issue that thieves may spend a lot of time dodging rather than fighting but keep in mind, dodging thief means no direct dmg to the enemy. If they can’t control someone who is dancing that’s a fault in player skill and not how thieves stay afloat. We have the lowest health pool, and by nature are quite squishy, so we rely on dodges. Although I never have, some people may only spend 10 into acrobatics for vigorous renewal, this would just ruin any chance of that staying, an indirect nerf at best.

-From what I see, there are just nerfs to this rather than an improvement to the class. Taking away more control over our builds, and dishing little to no incentives to try new things. Also, I saw no notes in improving venoms which still remain rather weak. I know all classes have some list of skills/traits that are useless but thief really needs more diversity. Just like the change to Larcenous strike, we had a control build. Maybe 2 boon stealing was too much, but it could of just been changed without completely removing the effectiveness of the build. A Couple ideas could be

_remove 1 boon on flanking strike, steal on LS
_Steal 2 boons but lower the duration of the stolen boons.
_steal 1 boon from the front, steal 2 boons from the back
_steal 1 boon and apply it to nearby allies (range 150?)

Instead we are left with 2 initiative to steal 1 boon, atleast change it to 1 initiative. I thought the goal was build diversity.

FrownyClown.8402:

Scale it down make it scale better with healing power

Yup you should of made the post^^

Healing signet active is worthless, the passive is the only good part, and making it a boon is just bad in every way. It just needs to be more of a dedicated option and not the “go-to” skill. Healing power scaling would solve that nicely.

Thief? OP? HA you must be a zerker ele.

Really l2p and leave thief alone. We are still recovering from the shock at the last patch, and likely will need some pain killers to deal with the next patch.

Shadow return isn’t op, its viable. Our access to stability is almost non-existent and short cd stun breakers aren’t in supply. Advice? Control. Thieves are sitting ducks against control builds.