Guild Wars 2

Cecilia.5179:

Alatar.7364:

DeceiverX.8361:

Alatar.7364:

DeceiverX.8361:

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what’s being said here, but the Daredevil can do a ton of damage while dodging via Lotus and Bound.

Nobody uses Bounding Dodger unless he is out of mind. Lotus is the only exception, used only by Condi builds. Unhindered combatant is the only one for 90% of Dardevils

Wat.

I’d like to see your sources on that one lol.

My vast experience and time spent in sPvP/WvW is my source =D

I see a lot of thieves with bounding dodger in WvW. It is preferred for D/P since it is a leap finisher.

I never comprehend why would anyone using D/P waste 50 precious Endurance just to leap finish when Heartseeker is perfect for that role and it’s even more cheaper. Now if Bound is a “blast” finisher, then sure I can see its value, but as “leap” — it is a waste of resources. I also doubt that these Bounding D/P users are any good or at least baby-sat by a Druid because such glass-cannon build don’t last very long in WvW.

Svarty.8019:

what do you think thief needs to be balanced

1. Cooldowns – like every other class has.
2. Removal of Stealth – a broken mechanic in every game that has it.
3. Two dodges, like everybody else has.

These may seem like nerfs, so obviously some compensation should take place. I leave this to the designers to design.

The problem with leaving the designers to design for compensation is that, they never do it properly. Example, the cooldown that was recently added to the stealth attack should have been compensated by the removal of Revealed — yet they never did.

At this point, they might as well get rid of Initiatives since they have no kitteng idea how to balance it and do it with cooldowns with everyone else. However, what you don’t realize is that, if Thief has cooldowns instead of Initiatives, you’ll see some devastating combos in gameplay that you have not seen before and I can assure you that you would want to put the Thief back at Initiative based. You might be incline to think that Thief has no cooldown, but that is just an illusion. The Initiative system is the most annoying among all cooldowns because it has the ability to totally lock out any expensive skill or satisfying combos. Be careful on what you wish for.

Just like Initiatives, they have no kitteng idea how to balance stealth either, and yes, they might as well get rid of it. Then again, what’s a Thief profession without Stealth if not another Warrior, only weaker? The problem with Stealth is that they went for 100% invisible when in fact, there was an iteration during the early stages of development that they want Stealth be transparency rather than invisibility — similar to the Predator’s stealth mode. That would have been a better way of doing it instead of adding Revealed debuff as hard counter because 100% invisible is just too much.

As for the 3rd dodge, the Thief never needed it. It was fine with the original Feline Grace.

Moonsinn.5382:

Alatar.7364:

DeceiverX.8361:

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what’s being said here, but the Daredevil can do a ton of damage while dodging via Lotus and Bound.

Nobody uses Bounding Dodger unless he is out of mind. Lotus is the only exception, used only by Condi builds. Unhindered combatant is the only one for 90% of Dardevils

The OP was talking about staff acro build which absolutely uses bounding dodger. Vault also deals a ton of damage with an evade frame.

Bound is never a source of complaint, Dash is. With Dash, a Thief can get out of anything that is made to slow it down. With Bound, once you’re CC’d you’re SOL. That’s why the main understanding is that, the Thief can’t do damage while dodging.

Some skills do grant a small window of evasion while doing some damage, but the “tons of damage” comes from skills without evasion and cannot be used while dodging.

I know, that’s why I said just an understanding of the basics and the fundamentals, but it seems that is very difficult for them to grasp. This is why they also failed into perceiving what their future would be like. Their vision is very narrow and short-sighted.

Alatar.7364:

I’d also like to point out that Thief can’t do ANY damage while dodging, while Mesmers, Eles, Rangers, etc. can still deal out tons of dmg while being invulnerable Nobody seems to care about that.

That’s also been mentioned by me.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

What people who complains about evasion is missing is that, when the Thief evades, they do no damage. Now compare that to professions with Aegis, Invulnerability, Blocks, Resistance, etc. While they avoid damage, they dish out tons of damage back. That’s where these thing gets imbalance and where the Thief is force to chain evades just to survive while doing zero damage at the same time.

The decision to add Elite Specs and a new profession without fully understanding the existing Core professions is a very bad and stupid idea. Nobody seems to grasp what each profession does and without the most basic and fundamental understanding, we got DD for Thief. Even the Reaper suffered, but not as much as the Thief, which is an “afterthought” profession.

fluffdragon.1523:

I picked thief because it was the most active class in a game

I agree that Thief is an active class, but not the most active due to limited resources (initiatives) and poor selection of skills. Compare the Thief to Elementalist and Engineer, where skills are constantly being rotated, Thief is the most monotonous and boring class and weapon swapping is punishable by death.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The numbers speaks for themselves.

Probably a daft question, but what are the numbers supposed to be speaking about? Player population? Number of thieves in game? Llama attacks in Moscow?

ANet needs to have a science teacher yell at them about the importance of axis titles haha xD

lol, you have to follow the conversation to understand the context. But yeah, that was my fault not including the context.

My point is, the current business practice they are riding on doesn’t convert to high revenue as shown in the graph. QoQ, YoY are both down.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

What they need to do is nerf DD. Yes, that’s right, DD needs to be nerfed despite the fact that Thief is perceived to be the weakest profession. It is necessary in order to fix the profession. Lotus Dodge is obviously meant for DA, Dash is obviously made for Acro in addition to 3rd dodge, and Bound can easily be in CS. Staff can be unbound from DD. So after all these changes, we’ll have a strong Core traitlines and DD as an Elite that grant access to Physical skills. This way, no matter what Elite spec they come up with, it will simply by a flavor spec rather than a stapled spec.

I can see where you’re going with that, but what happens if bound was in CS and dash in acro and you took both at once? As much as I dislike having grandmaster slots for that, from a coding perspective they need to be in the same tier of the same spec, or in none of them like ranger pets are.

I said those GM traits are obviously made for those traitline. I didn’t say that they should plug those trait into those traitline as is. Picking both can be programmatically conflicting, but that can easily be solved as simple as adding a toggle option on the skill bar which dodge you want to use — where the player can change it if they are out of combat. This way the Thief can be versatile without ever needing to respec all the time. This is not an idea I came up with, this is an idea that was suggested before in this forum that I think has merit.

Unfortunately, I don’t think nerfing DD will actually help at this point. Adding more options to do the same thing (defense, dodge, whatever) through subsequent elite specs just means we either get a more potent version of the original thing each time stuff is added (by combining like traits from two specs, see acro/DD dodge specs), a ton of unused skills, or both.

DD needs to be nerfed if they intend to add new Elite Spec in the future. There’s no other way if they want the next xpac to sell. If they don’t nerf DD, they will have to add a new Elite spec that is way better than DD, furthering the problem of power creep, otherwise the new Elite spec will be lackluster in comparison.

They could easily avoid this issue by doing what they promised and giving us something new with each elite spec, not just another evade focused line like they did with HoT. Reaper is a good example of doing it right, nerfing acro to give the three dodge functionality back with DD is doing it wrong.

Their refusal to get rid of Revealed limits their option in terms of expanding the Thief profession. How can they expand the Shadow Arts if they despises stealth? A lot of wasted potential. IMO, an Arcane Thief using an off-hand focus, who buff allies and steals buff, would have been more interesting than DD.

That said, I still think there’s not much you could add to the thief without breaking it in some way, and as they seem to be only balancing around one or two sets currently the situation is going to get worse with each expac. I honestly think that the specialisation design is the single worst thing they did to their game for this reason.

The Elite Spec is not a bad idea, their implementation of it is. The Thief would have been better off if they only add Physical Skill with DD and all other stuff that came with it was added to improve the Core traitlines.

The way they designed HoT unfortunately seems to look like it was designed as if it’s the last thing they would be doing before NCSoft dissolves ArenaNet — it just lack future xpac considerations. They just pour in everything in this xpac as if it is their last.

Simonoly.4352:

It generally feels as abusive as loads of other HoT stuff, although I think it frustrates people more because of the constant repetitious evades. I would say putting a cast time on Signet of Agility would be a nice way to offer some window for counterplay. You can use it whilst dodging to get more dodges which was fine in the old days, but a bit bonkers now I will admit. Not as obnoxious as other things though and learning to interrupt Vault helps.

You speak as if other professions has no access to Dodge/Evade/Vigor.

What people who complains about evasion is missing is that, when the Thief evades, they do no damage. Now compare that to professions with Aegis, Invulnerability, Blocks, Resistance, etc. While they avoid damage, they dish out tons of damage back. That’s where these thing gets imbalance and where the Thief is force to chain evades just to survive while doing zero damage at the same time.

The numbers speaks for themselves.

Azukas.1426:

You also fail to realize that this is a business to make money. So an xpac that has a new class and introduce new traitlines is going to be OP. You should have known it from the announcement because they have to make money.

I’m afraid that is quite accurate — it’s something I just don’t want to consider as one of the factors in their balancing the game. However, they don’t need to shoot themselves on the foot in doing so.

Let’s just assume that that is the case, that they are purposely making the new traitline OP in order to sell xpacs. So what would be the next traitline going to be? You can’t just keep making an OP traitline every time. Sure you might have players buying xpac, but there will be players who’ll see that as pay-to-win-scheme and just leave the game. Looking at the state of the game and their revenue from the last press release shows that their current ideology on xpacs, balance, profits, etc needs to be reassessed because obviously it’s not working.

What they need to do is nerf DD. Yes, that’s right, DD needs to be nerfed despite the fact that Thief is perceived to be the weakest profession. It is necessary in order to fix the profession. Lotus Dodge is obviously meant for DA, Dash is obviously made for Acro in addition to 3rd dodge, and Bound can easily be in CS. Staff can be unbound from DD. So after all these changes, we’ll have a strong Core traitlines and DD as an Elite that grant access to Physical skills. This way, no matter what Elite spec they come up with, it will simply by a flavor spec rather than a stapled spec.

In fact I’ll give you a 100% guaranteed correct advice. If they release a new xpac the skills/class will be OP as kitten

I don’t agree with it but it’s still a business

That’s bad business practice though and looking at their revenue it shows that it’s a very bad decision.

DeceiverX.8361:

Which is why I said what I said to begin with; ToTC and LA pretty much remove the need for CS. The initiative bonus and utility via BT/Trickster push out Acrobatics and SA’s utility and heavily negate their purpose in terms of defenses, which Daredevil just for the most part totally invalidates.

That’s the problem. A single trait line should not be superseding any trait line, they should be fair option. That’s why LA should not have been in Trickery.

As for Acrobatics, I’ve already addressed the issue and I’m going to repeat it again. Acro should have the 3rd dodge.

As for SA, the problem with it defensively is the Revealed debuff — which should be abolish since it undermines the whole traitline.

Elite Spec should be an optional flavor and should not be a stapled traitline. At this point, the Devs have created something in DD that the Thief really needs that will make their next Elite Spec underwhelming. In order the fix this, they need to give Acro the 3rd dodge and unbind Staff from DD. Unhindered Combatant can very well go in Acro too — they can just combine it with Don’t Stop.

DD is over stuffed with what the Thief really needs so putting them all in a spec that rolls out is — IMO — really stupid decision.

We could have a thread go on for a hundred pages as to reworking and re-organizing the thief traits in a logical way, and honestly I feel like there are so many differing opinions on what belongs where I think it’s probably for the better to just leave it here :P

You’re right, however that’s the whole point of this thread to discuss the differing ideas on how to fix the Thief profession. The first step is to define what exactly the Thief’s role in the game. Second is to define what each trait line should be doing for the Thief. Third is to make the Core specs’ foundation solid and keep the Elite Specs as minor boost on certain build instead of a stapled spec that every Thief should have. This will lay down a very good foundation for the game and it won’t make balancing a total nightmare.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m not suggesting to remove these options or that intrinsically they’re poorly implemented; quite the contrary. Tr isn’t replaceable not only due to essential utility, but also because in many cases it just provides the thief with better or similar options to other more depth-focused trait lines.

That shouldn’t be the case. The Thief’s traits needs a big shake up and swapping of traits. There is only one possible optimized build now because that’s how the Dev did it. They made their preferred build and toss everything else on an empty slot that’s why we have traits like Bewildering Ambush in Trick and Improvisation in DA, when they should be swapped. Trickster (trait) should be a minor GM trait taking the slot from LA, then add LA to DA — LA really don’t belong in Trick.

DeceiverX.8361:

One would think that the fury access on ToTC which is one of the biggest reasons it’s taken would be in superior form in the trait line literally named Critical Strikes. CS only ends up superior if the thief constantly makes attacks and traits a GM into it. You’re comparing an adept trait with no competition in a utility line to a full investment in CS which is already considered bad in PvP as it is.

Not sure what you’re arguing against since all I’ve said was that there is an alternative to Trill and if one want’s Trill, then they should spec Trick. Which mean, there should be an actual merit for taking Trick and not because it improves the Thief playstyle by lower Steal CD and giving more initiatives, but an actual traits that support a trickster’s playstyle.

LA offers more front-loaded damage than DA as a whole does (or better damage in general unless Executioner is used), and almost as much as CS, and it’s a minor trait in a utility line, so there’s literally zero build investment made.

Like I said, there should be a good reason to take Trick. However, Trick should be a line for utility assistance instead of source of damage. LA can easily be place in DA — but I digress.

BT’s boon-breadth removal is difficult to beat anywhere, unless again you also take a deep investment into SA and stealth attacks by using RS, which with the stealth attack ICD is nigh impossible to make work on most builds or against most classes at the moment. So basically, to gain the benefits of Tr, you need to run CS/SA/Acro and still suffer from the initiative penalties of not doing so, no steal cooldown reduction, and no CC play, while also needing to be in combat for an extended period in order to start breaking even rather than getting the benefits on-engage while doing the entire +1 role better because of its gains being on-engage.

You’re just going on with your stance without considering why we are having this conversation in the first place. Trick or any trait line should not be mandatory. In case for Trick, Steal CDR and +3 init should be removed from the line and be made baseline. The only real reason to spec for Trick is to enhance the Thief’s utilities — IMO Improvisation should be in Trick and swap it with Bewildering Ambush, then Deadly Trapper and Pressuring Strike swap — just as an example. In short, a lot of “trickster” traits should be in Trickery (another example is Trapper’s Respite should be in Trick). Again, I digress.

Staff is hardly mandatory for Daredevil.

It’s more like DD is mandatory to use Staff.

Daredevil has more than one extra dodge due to ET, and Acro didn’t have three raw evades, and Daredevil carries more with CV mixed in as well.

I don’t think any elite spec unless made massively overpowered will phase out Daredevil. Daredevil is too conceptually powerful to be replaceable unless the thief/next elite just ends up being mathematically overpowered.

To be honest, the idea of the 3rd dodge should be a profession ability exclusive to Thieves. We can all agree that a lot of things in DD helps the Thief play better. The fact that when a new Elite Spec rolls in and the 3rd dodge, Unhindered/Bound/Lotus, and Staff rolled out with it will make the new Elite Spec really lame in comparison. Also, it is fairly obvious that the DD is made in the expense of Acro and making the Elite Spec more essential than the Core trait is a sign of a bad decision. They should have made the Core as a solid foundation and the Elite Spec for flavor. The Physical aspect of the DD should have been enough and they should have added the rest to the Core, like giving the 3rd dodge to Acro.

Alveen.7239:

this new staff acro dodge spam meta is so stupid, idk how you can nerf it but like acro needs a nerf.

dodge spam, block spam, invulnerability spam, aegis spam, heal spam, resist spam etc.

welcome to GW2 — pick up your canned food an enjoy your meal.

DeceiverX.8361:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

This has been mentioned time and time again. Thief needs 15 (or 18) initiatives base, low Steal cooldown, and Staff without spec’ing DD. Those are only real reason why Trick and DD became mandatory in most cases.

18 init would be way too much baseline, for one, and Trickery will be effectively mandatory so long as ToTC, LA and BT are still used in one trait line with no similar or superior options to any of them in other lines.

Trill, Lead, and Bounty don’t need a counter part since they should be the appeal of Trickery. Besides, other than Lead, the other two has alternatives.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Those are only real reason why Trick and DD became mandatory in most cases.

Wat.

You mean the third dodge, amazing cleanse potential on EA or huge additional damage, CV, effectively a second heal from DF, and either an effective immunity to immob/cripple/chill or easily-permanent stealth uptime were not good enough reasons not to take Daredevil?

3rd dodge should be put back in Acro. We had it there before and they should put it back. The other traits are right fit for a Elite Spec so if you like those, you can spec for DD. However, by removing the Staff from DD removes the mandatory aspect of DD. The only reason DD is preferred only because there’s no other Elites out there to choose from. If the Staff is unlinked to DD, many builds can use the Staff without needing for DD especially if DD doesn’t really fit into their build.

The only reason to ever drop Daredevil aside from ghost thief is if core trait lines get massively buffed (unlikely), ANet absolutely gores it with aggressive HoT-content nerfs (even more unlikely) or ANet power creeps the next elite spec to the point the thief becomes actually overpowered (also fairly unlikely).

Or add a new Elite Spec, which is very likely.

Silverbolt.2301:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Silverbolt.2301:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Silverbolt.2301:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Mintyfreshsmell.1568:

After reading countless QQ thief threads, this one takes the cake for me. After years and near constant nerfs, you want to take away one of the very FEW last things our class can do, because you have a hard time fighting them? LOL no.

You want to cripple Thieves ONLY real mechanic when EVERY CLASS BUT THIEF HAS A REVEAL, because you are angry that Thieves are using their ONLY ability to get close to you without you seeing. Please just learn to play. When a thief Stealth stacks, he loses the ability to use other abilities for a few seconds. That alone is enough.

If I were a dev I’d not only close this thread, but ban you from kitten posting on the Thief board.

The problem with your response is that, you didn’t read this thread. Because if you did, my suggestion, for instance, advocates in removing the one major thing that cripples the Thief, that is the Revealed debuff.

You sound like you really like D/P, but at the same time you don’t know how to play it effectively.

You’re making it sound like D/P is difficult to use. It’s the easiest weapon set to use, compare to other Thief’s weapons set. It’s very effective even in the hands of noobs, no L2P required.

You want to play condition damage effectively, use D/P.
You want to use trapper rune effectively, use D/P.
Power base effectively, use D/P.
Venom condition? D/P.
Troll trapper rune? D/P.
D/P, D/P, D/P
You just can’t go wrong with it.

The real question is, is there an ineffective way to play D/P?

That’s the whole point…I was making fun of you. It’s an easy set and the only set that is promoted by ANet (cause the balance team is clueless), yet you seem to have trouble playing it judging by your cry for a removal or nerfing of the revealed debuff.

Riiiight, that’s why I’ve ran so many effective builds using D/P that I’m really having a hard time using it. You lived in a Bizzaro World if that’s what you think.

No, I live “in a Bizzaro World” where you fail to use D/P so hard, that you think revealed needs to be removed or nerfed.

So when you come back to the real world is when your statements will matter. I’ll wait.

Eval.2371:

• We lack survivability to deal with aoe cleave. When we are in a big fight we resort to haphazardly dodging to avoid aoe cleave because if we don’t we melt to sheer amount of it.

I think you mean passive survivability because dodging is the active version of it.

The only reliable passive survivability the Thief have is buried in SA and only active when in stealth — yet ArenaNet keeps on adding anti-stealth into the game.

The Thief have the survivability, however they are crippled by Revealed debuff and self- inflicted Revealed attached to any attacks done in stealth.

If they choose to keep Revealed debuff, they need to get those traits outside of SA and have them trigger even not in stealth. If the Thief uses a skill that would gran them stealth, but cannot stealth due to Revealed, the traits should still trigger as if they are in stealth, perhaps in a shorter duration (e.g. 2sec). Otherwise, Revealed debuff just needs to go.

• We lack the ability to indefinitely pressure targets that have an abundance of passive defenses or immunities. Stealth attack? block. Unload spam? invuln, Stack bleed & confusion? resistance.

This is really not about the Thief, rather it’s about those professions. ArenaNet needs to create a window of opportunity against those professions. The constant turtling is not only annoying to play against but as an spectator, it’s also boring to watch.

• Trickery & DrD are mandatory. Because of the two above, we are reduced to spaming both our defensive and offensive mechanics. Be it aimless dodges in hope to avoid cleave, or unloads chained together because its our only good option, or stacking stealth endlessly until we have an opportunity to land a stealth attack. Not having trickery or DrD limits your ability to succeed in either category as you will run out of resources.

This has been mentioned time and time again. Thief needs 15 (or 18) initiatives base, low Steal cooldown, and Staff without spec’ing DD. Those are only real reason why Trick and DD became mandatory in most cases.

Shadowstep.6049:

I am not talking about wvw duels…… -_-

I am talking to a wall apparently, nvm.

Apparently — because that wall just put a full stop to your nonsense.

Shadowstep.6049:

I haven’t said d/d is easy (power that is; condi one is different story). It is simply easier to start with as a new player because it is very one dimensional (aka do dmg only). Just because d/p can fit in different builds, doesn’t make it easy. It makes it universal. Being effective on d/p is everything but easy.

All Thief weapons are one dimensional. All weapon set has one role — to do damage. So it’s lost to me on what the heck are you talking about as if you’re arguing in a Elementalist Forum and not in Thief Forum.

You don’t have to be an expert in Thief to be effective with D/P. Knowing the fundamentals on playing a Thief is enough — there’s nothing complex about the set. Compare that S/D, D/P is nothing special. SS (#3) → AA or BP (#5) → AA will win you a fight -- that’s how easy it is to use. If you do that with D/D, you’ll die due to higher risk and squishiness of the Thief.

What does d/d teach you as anew player? How to land backstab. Oh yeah, when to use HS.

No, what D/D teaches new player is how squishy Thieves are that going in melee range is a death sentence. D/P makes sure that going in melee is safe and easy using SS or BP. D/D is a bad weapon set to start new players — they should start with P/D imo.

What does d/p teach you as new player? How to land backstab, when to use HS, what to interrupt and when, how to use combos, how not to get interrupted while doing that combo, when to use gap closers and which, fact that blind goes through block etc.

New players could care less about combos and interrupt. That’s not even close to a realistic view of things. D/D is bad for new players since they have no idea how to manage initiatives and how and when to use evade. D/P is much easier because of blind — no need to manage initiatives because all the new player would do is use BP and stand in it and auto-attack until the target is dead.

The sets have different dimensions, simple as it is. Saying one is easier than other is stupid. D/D suffers so to say from lack of utility, d/p suffers from management of that very utility.

It is fairly obvious that D/P is far easier than D/D whether you’re a beginner or an expert, to say otherwise is asinine. D/P doesn’t suffers from managing utilities — you’re just creating some complication that was never there just to make your argument sound.

D/D has one big problem, that is survivability. The blind-on-stealth-trait in combination to regen-on-stealth-trait were very good for this weapon set. The fact that this weapon set relies on those traits is evidence that this weapon set is not an easy set.

Silverbolt.2301:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Silverbolt.2301:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Mintyfreshsmell.1568:

After reading countless QQ thief threads, this one takes the cake for me. After years and near constant nerfs, you want to take away one of the very FEW last things our class can do, because you have a hard time fighting them? LOL no.

You want to cripple Thieves ONLY real mechanic when EVERY CLASS BUT THIEF HAS A REVEAL, because you are angry that Thieves are using their ONLY ability to get close to you without you seeing. Please just learn to play. When a thief Stealth stacks, he loses the ability to use other abilities for a few seconds. That alone is enough.

If I were a dev I’d not only close this thread, but ban you from kitten posting on the Thief board.

The problem with your response is that, you didn’t read this thread. Because if you did, my suggestion, for instance, advocates in removing the one major thing that cripples the Thief, that is the Revealed debuff.

You sound like you really like D/P, but at the same time you don’t know how to play it effectively.

You’re making it sound like D/P is difficult to use. It’s the easiest weapon set to use, compare to other Thief’s weapons set. It’s very effective even in the hands of noobs, no L2P required.

You want to play condition damage effectively, use D/P.
You want to use trapper rune effectively, use D/P.
Power base effectively, use D/P.
Venom condition? D/P.
Troll trapper rune? D/P.
D/P, D/P, D/P
You just can’t go wrong with it.

The real question is, is there an ineffective way to play D/P?

That’s the whole point…I was making fun of you. It’s an easy set and the only set that is promoted by ANet (cause the balance team is clueless), yet you seem to have trouble playing it judging by your cry for a removal or nerfing of the revealed debuff.

Riiiight, that’s why I’ve ran so many effective builds using D/P that I’m really having a hard time using it. You lived in a Bizzaro World if that’s what you think.

Azukas.1426:

You mix in a nice Steal CnD BS for a fast burst.

With Lotus Dodge, I don’t go with BS after Steal-CnD, instead I go with DB capitalizing on the damage boost plus the vulnerability stacks.

Shadowstep.6049:

~snip~
If you actually think d/p is that easy, you are welcome to play core dp in legend – let’s see how far you get with it. Please record it so we can all see how easy dp is.

What a useless waste of response. If you think that D/D is easier than D/P, then where is your recorded game play in Legend using that weapon set if that is your way of proving something to be easy or difficult?

I know D/P is easy because I’ve used it in many different builds. Other weapon set just don’t work with certain builds, but D/P fits right in.

Loading.4503:

Would you use a trait on thief if it helped ignore all invulns and defensive buffs on your target so all attacks hit, but it’ll be noncrits or half the condi stack and durations only? Or something of that concept

No — because it’s counter-intuitive. The whole point of a trait that ignores defenses is to bypass said defenses so you can deal full damage. If this trait will cripple that damage, then what’s the point? Might as well wait out the duration of their defense and unload full damage on the target.

For other professions, this trait might be a good trade off since they can afford it having cooldown based skills, but not for Thieves. Thieves’ initiative resources is precious and for each initiative spent, it has to count for some big return.

Why D/P is the easiest? It’s simply because it has access to stealth and has one of the lowest total initiative cost. I can easily do combination attacks in D/P that I can never do in other sets due to high initiative cost. D/P is very efficient and effective on everything that a Thief needs to do. Nothing can compare to it.

At the very basic form — no armor, no traits, no other skills — D/P is noob friendly. At the highest skill level, D/P is still the easiest to use since other weapon sets are just clunky or buggy and unreliable. I find it surprising that someone will argue that P/P is easier to use — lol, it’s not. If one will think that pressing #3 is easy, just wait when you ran out of initiatives, let’s see if the set is still easy then. No one can even pull a decent skill combination using P/P since it’s neither easy nor effective. That weapon set has a lot of issues need to be addressed before it can qualify to be easy to use.

EDIT: typos

Silverbolt.2301:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Mintyfreshsmell.1568:

After reading countless QQ thief threads, this one takes the cake for me. After years and near constant nerfs, you want to take away one of the very FEW last things our class can do, because you have a hard time fighting them? LOL no.

You want to cripple Thieves ONLY real mechanic when EVERY CLASS BUT THIEF HAS A REVEAL, because you are angry that Thieves are using their ONLY ability to get close to you without you seeing. Please just learn to play. When a thief Stealth stacks, he loses the ability to use other abilities for a few seconds. That alone is enough.

If I were a dev I’d not only close this thread, but ban you from kitten posting on the Thief board.

The problem with your response is that, you didn’t read this thread. Because if you did, my suggestion, for instance, advocates in removing the one major thing that cripples the Thief, that is the Revealed debuff.

You sound like you really like D/P, but at the same time you don’t know how to play it effectively.

You’re making it sound like D/P is difficult to use. It’s the easiest weapon set to use, compare to other Thief’s weapons set. It’s very effective even in the hands of noobs, no L2P required.

You want to play condition damage effectively, use D/P.
You want to use trapper rune effectively, use D/P.
Power base effectively, use D/P.
Venom condition? D/P.
Troll trapper rune? D/P.
D/P, D/P, D/P
You just can’t go wrong with it.

The real question is, is there an ineffective way to play D/P?

Mintyfreshsmell.1568:

After reading countless QQ thief threads, this one takes the cake for me. After years and near constant nerfs, you want to take away one of the very FEW last things our class can do, because you have a hard time fighting them? LOL no.

You want to cripple Thieves ONLY real mechanic when EVERY CLASS BUT THIEF HAS A REVEAL, because you are angry that Thieves are using their ONLY ability to get close to you without you seeing. Please just learn to play. When a thief Stealth stacks, he loses the ability to use other abilities for a few seconds. That alone is enough.

If I were a dev I’d not only close this thread, but ban you from kitten posting on the Thief board.

The problem with your response is that, you didn’t read this thread. Because if you did, my suggestion, for instance, advocates in removing the one major thing that cripples the Thief, that is the Revealed debuff.

DeceiverX.8361:

Dug up from earlier:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The fault is at the design of the weapon skills leaving it without cooldown. A simple cooldown on Backstab (and all other Stealth attacks) would have solved the stealth problem without punishing the stealth mechanic

Seems like the developers agree with you for putting an ICD on the attacks. Granted, it seems most players don’t. They’re never removing Revealed, though. Not happening. If they do, so many people would leave in droves it’d be pretty bad, honestly.

That comment is quoted out of context. The idea behind that suggestion was in conjunction of removing the Revealed debuff or instead of adding the Revealed debuff. The context where that comment came from was — instead of adding Revealed debuff, they could have just added the ICD.

Adding the Revealed debuff is a lazy fix. Adding the ICD without removing Revealed debuff is just dumb.

To balance Thief, the following needs to be addressed;
1) Maximum Initiative to the weapon set total cost ratio — some weapon set have a total cost of 20+ initiatives while the maximum initiative pool is 15 with Trick trait line. Either increase the maximum initiative pool or reduce the cost of weapon skills.

2) Least number of weapon skills — compare to other professions, Thief has the least weapon skills. Looking at Elementalist, they have 20 skills per weapon set that gives them flexibility from DPS, tank, and healer. The limited weapon skills of Thief was based on the Beta design of Steal, where the Thief gains a full set of weapon skills based on the item they’ve stolen. Since this feature never made it to release, they never really address the lacking of weapon skills for Thief. In order to address this issue is to give Thief more weapon skills by giving them more weapons to choose from without the need of Elite Spec. Staff should not have been tied to Daredevil.

3) Expanding Dual-Wield mechanic — the problem with balancing skills with the Thief is the fact that some skills are shared among other weapon sets. Thus, D/D and P/P will never receive the proper balance they need to make these weapon sets viable. In order to balance this, ArenaNet needs to expand the dual-wield mechanic. So if the Thief equips D/D, this will not just replace the skill #3, instead, it will replace all 5 skills giving D/D its own weapon skills exclusive to this weapon combination. This way, balance Heartseeker or CnD will have no direct impact to D/D anymore since D/D will be using different #2 and #5 skills — and any buff that D/D will receive will not break D/P, for example. P/P requires some kind of survivability (e.g leap backwards) or stealth mechanic, but it will never get it from the current pistol skills. With 5 exclusive skills for P/P, it can receive some survival skills without over-powering D/P or S/P.

4) Revealed debuff — this should be redesign to be use as a ground targeted stealth strip. Stealth attacks (or any attacks from stealth) will not apply a Revealed debuff instead will simply reveal the Thief or any stealth characters. In conjunction, stealth duration also needs to be addressed.

5) Capping stealth duration — this should be across the board since it is not healthy to play against someone who can perma-stealth like Engineers. Thief also have abused this feature with other methods extending stealth more than the intended duration of 4sec. In order to do this, stealth should no longer be capable of stacking. Meaning stealth cannot be reapplied to a target who is currently stealth. This will put the stealth-chaining to a high skill level and will give the opposition a small window for counter-play.

There are more, but that’s it for now.

Just cap the stealth to 4sec and be done with it.

All these irrelevant talks only muddies the point of what’s being talk about here. Ok, we get it, you want your favorite weapon set buffed, but this is not the place to discuss that. If by any chance that ArenaNet ever nerfed D/P then there’s really no need to talk about other weapon set at this point until we’ve seen what this nerfs result would be.

In my opinion, Revealed is the self-inflicting nerf that needs to go away. This self-inflicting nerf only exists to tame and balance the over-stacking of stealth. If the stealth is cap at 4s (with SA), the Thief will have to keep track of the stealth timer — re-stealthing too soon will have no effect, so they have to pay attention on the timer. This will balance D/P since they can no longer re-stealth without appearing first. Of course the Thief can drop a BP before the stealth wear off then HS to re-stealth, but that requires a high level to skill and at the same time, the smoke field will give them away for a possible counter play.

Revealed debuff will then be unnecessary, so this effect will simply be a “stealth strip” instead of debuff with duration. A D/P user who is stripped with stealth will have to go through the process of BP->HS giving the opposition the ability to counter play. The redesigned Revealed (as a stealth strip) will work as a ground target skill and any stealth character will be revealed within the radius of the target area. This way, the skill like Sic ’Em will no longer require to target the Thief, because to be honest, it is useless if you cannot target the Thief. So using Sic ’Em, the pet will go to the target location and basically “shout” and all stealth character within the area will be stripped of stealth. This is the best way to counter party wide stealth from Mesmers also.

To those who cries about killing D/P, this will not kill D/P rather it will put it on a higher skill level to be used properly and effectively. Low skill and inexperienced players can instead rely on utility skills to go in stealth.

To those who will argue that CnD->BS chain will be broken without Revealed debuff, I have a simple answer, don’t just stand there like an idiot. A single dodge can break this chain since CnD is highly telegraph.

There’s really no need to buff anything right away because the removal of the Revealed debuff should be enough to elevate the effectiveness and efficiency of the Thief. There’s a lot of irrelevant nonsense in the thread so place let’s try not to derail this.

DeceiverX.8361:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I’ve read all the back and forth in this thread (only the relevant ones) and it seems that the idea of ICD is not a good thing for Thief overall.

The intended use of stealth is to have a maximum duration of 4s and I don’t believe that stacking stealth for a longer duration was ever the intention. Now building off this presumed intention, any additional stealth stack should have no other effect if the duration time already reached the maximum of 4 seconds. As a compensation, any excess stacks of stealth is converted to some kind of buff, e.g. Resistance, Protection, Stability, etc. This way, you can still leap multiple times into a smoke field to get some additional buff instead of extending stealth.

As for Revealed, it should never have been a duration debuff. Revealed should simply remove the stealth buff, that’s all. All the skills that apply Revealed needs to be redesigned to “Reveal target area for X duration” — so if a Thief in stealth moved to this area, their stealth buff is removed. Revealed Training can then be redesigned to counter this by giving the Thief Reveal immunity for X seconds; “You cannot be revealed for 2s when walking on a Revealed area”.

So as for the OP’s suggestion, I don’t think we need anymore ICD.

Without Revealed, we’d be back in the land of people spamming CnD without actually knowing how to play the class, and doing just fine.

RT would negate all purpose of any revealing effect as well.

Revealed isn’t overpowered so much as some essential aspects of the thief need to be decoupled from stealth itself. If we saw less of a dependency, revealed wouldn’t be so punishing except against bad players that can’t deal with being squishy and not having a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Reveal should still exist, but not as a debuff with duration rather as a “stealth strip” effect.

I’ve read all the back and forth in this thread (only the relevant ones) and it seems that the idea of ICD is not a good thing for Thief overall.

The intended use of stealth is to have a maximum duration of 4s and I don’t believe that stacking stealth for a longer duration was ever the intention. Now building off this presumed intention, any additional stealth stack should have no other effect if the duration time already reached the maximum of 4 seconds. As a compensation, any excess stacks of stealth is converted to some kind of buff, e.g. Resistance, Protection, Stability, etc. This way, you can still leap multiple times into a smoke field to get some additional buff instead of extending stealth.

As for Revealed, it should never have been a duration debuff. Revealed should simply remove the stealth buff, that’s all. All the skills that apply Revealed needs to be redesigned to “Reveal target area for X duration” — so if a Thief in stealth moved to this area, their stealth buff is removed. Revealed Training can then be redesigned to counter this by giving the Thief Reveal immunity for X seconds; “You cannot be revealed for 2s when walking on a Revealed area”.

So as for the OP’s suggestion, I don’t think we need anymore ICD.

@OP
That would only be acceptable if Revealed is removed in the process since we don’t really need this ICD plus the Revealed — that’s just crippling.

DeceiverX.8361:

…and having the attack rarely land isn’t unreliable, particularly when considering the change to BV?

That’s unrelated to RS and should be discussed in another topic.

DeceiverX.8361:

If the thief wanted to rip Aegis and more boons he already could have before.

Stealth attack -> Aegis pop -> (precast) Stealth Attack again -> Steal/BT.

And he still can.

Non-stealth attack while stealthed -> Aegis pop -> (Precast Stealth attack) -> Steal/BT.

And it is still put on the revealed cooldown by this point. In essence, there’s really no point to the ICD if the target already has aegis and the thief isn’t stupid.

Aegis was just a simplified example. Spamming stealth attacks also occurs against passive block, evade, etc.

At its best in most cases, RS still isn’t worth using unless your opponent plays with no Aegis. Depending on compositions, though, makes this trait too niche imho to warrant taking really anywhere.

There’s a second component to the trait, which procs against targets without boon.

If they were afraid of ripping two more boons every 4s then they would have put a higher cooldown on RS itself over the ICD on stealth attacks, since it’s still possible to do.

They can surely do that too, but that would make the trait unreliable thus becoming useless.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

No surprises there. The only lingering question is, should the Stealth Attack cool down be tied to Rending Shade and not across the board?

To be clear; if you spec for Rending Shade, your stealth attack has the 1s ICD.
If you didn’t spec for Rending Shade, stealth attack has no CD.

I personally have no problem with 1s ICD, but to make more people happy, I think keeping the ICD in Rending Shade is a good compromise.

Why should Rending Shade have a CD in the first place? It requires the attack to land for it to proc if it lands you have a CD in the form of Revealed.

Not sure what you’re talking about. As of right now, whether you spec for RS or not, stealth attack have a 1s ICD. Since the ICD and RS was introduced at the same time, it’s a safe assumption that the decision to add the ICD was because of RS. So if that is the case, tie the ICD to RS.

The ICD is completely separate from Rending Shade, just because it was in the same patch does not mean they are related in any way, and it would be completely pointless to put a 1 second ICD on Rending Shade due to the existence of Revealed, since your attack has to land to even proc Rending Shades boon strip.

If that’s what you choose to believe.

Without the ICD, the Thief can pop an Aegis then attack again to proc RS. As it stands, it prevents bad Thief from spamming stealth attack until it connects and the only real benefit in doing so after the patch is when the Thief is spec’d with RS.

Other stealth attacks gain no benefit.

And the 1sec cd on stealth attacks shouldn’t have ever been introduced there was no reason for it and no explanation given by Devs for its existence.

As I’ve already said, even if you don’t agree with the connection of the ICD to RS, as a compromise, only apply ICD when spec’d with RS.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

No surprises there. The only lingering question is, should the Stealth Attack cool down be tied to Rending Shade and not across the board?

To be clear; if you spec for Rending Shade, your stealth attack has the 1s ICD.
If you didn’t spec for Rending Shade, stealth attack has no CD.

I personally have no problem with 1s ICD, but to make more people happy, I think keeping the ICD in Rending Shade is a good compromise.

Why should Rending Shade have a CD in the first place? It requires the attack to land for it to proc if it lands you have a CD in the form of Revealed.

Not sure what you’re talking about. As of right now, whether you spec for RS or not, stealth attack have a 1s ICD. Since the ICD and RS was introduced at the same time, it’s a safe assumption that the decision to add the ICD was because of RS. So if that is the case, tie the ICD to RS.

No surprises there. The only lingering question is, should the Stealth Attack cool down be tied to Rending Shade and not across the board?

To be clear; if you spec for Rending Shade, your stealth attack has the 1s ICD.
If you didn’t spec for Rending Shade, stealth attack has no CD.

I personally have no problem with 1s ICD, but to make more people happy, I think keeping the ICD in Rending Shade is a good compromise.

SwiftFishy.2643:

I mean since the base game was $60 for 31 areas and HoT is 5 new areas. $15 seems like the right amount for the content.

Just wait for the next expansion and you get HoT for free (“…when we say Guild Wars 2 is buy-to-play, we’re only asking you to buy one thing: the current release…”), of course you then need to buy the current expansion in that time for $80.

If that ever happens, it will be a gem store back pack/glider combo for 3200 gems.

Taobella.6597:

biggest one i think of off the top of my head with out making extramly long list is forward back stab made a video on it a long time ago. basically when you pass threw a player you have 15 range – hit box detection allow you hit the back with out turning around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y0nEAvcoMI

Now you’ve done it. I still want them to think that counting to 3 is the best strategy. :/

babazhook.6805:

Wargameur.6950:

Straegen.2938:

Not really a trick but something I see newbs not doing is priming a steal. So many thieves steal then attack rather than start an attack and steal. Doesn’t work on all weapon sets but most targeted attacks with a wind up are prime candidates. Pistol Whip is probably the best example.

Is that also recommended for AA-chain ? I already do it with “special-skills”

Needle trap is lovely here using this tactic for either power build or condition. Precast needle and steal. Time it right and it lands right on the enemy giving a three second immob. PW can follow.

If you have trappers respite traited you can precast your heal and steal to the enemy allowing you that heal and its effects along with dropping a needle trap on target. This can work with Withdraw wherein if you steal at the right time in the withdraw, you proc the heal and cleanses but in essence withdraw on top the enemy with that needle trap dropped.

I used this with Caltrops followed by Scorp Wire. Typically, the initial response to a Caltrops is to dodge out of it. The casting time on Scorp Wire timed the dodge really well by connecting just right after the evade frame, basically pulling the target back in adding more stacks of bleed and cripple.

Improvisation tooltip updated for clarity:
Improvisation – You can use stolen items twice. One random skill category is/will/might/may/can/eventually immediately recharged when you steal.

Kawloon Fuathach.3807:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Kawloon Fuathach.3807:

Zero.6592:

Tringsh.2380:

Shadow protector is OK (crap in pvp) but (…)

Isn’t Shadow Protector complete junk? 3 seconds of regen to allies on something very situational, how does that even make any contribution at all?

It is pretty bad, granted it stacks multiple times with every application of stealth (Shadow Refuge, Blast Finishers, etc. etc.), and you can stack it repeatedly on yourself by stealth stacking through BP, or any other Stealth skill you have. However, the problem therein lies in the fact that… what Thief really takes Healing Power? 99% of the time that regen is going to be overpowered by any other Professions, so in the end it just becomes somewhat detrimental.

It seems you have not heard of “Ninja Nurse” build for Thief.

I have, but who honestly wants to just be a res-bot when playing Thief?

It’s an answer to your question. Ninja Nurse takes Healing Power — they’re not just a res-bot.

Kawloon Fuathach.3807:

Zero.6592:

Tringsh.2380:

Shadow protector is OK (crap in pvp) but (…)

Isn’t Shadow Protector complete junk? 3 seconds of regen to allies on something very situational, how does that even make any contribution at all?

It is pretty bad, granted it stacks multiple times with every application of stealth (Shadow Refuge, Blast Finishers, etc. etc.), and you can stack it repeatedly on yourself by stealth stacking through BP, or any other Stealth skill you have. However, the problem therein lies in the fact that… what Thief really takes Healing Power? 99% of the time that regen is going to be overpowered by any other Professions, so in the end it just becomes somewhat detrimental.

It seems you have not heard of “Ninja Nurse” build for Thief.

Fennecus.7605:

will I be frustrated and disappointed with difficulty? Or can I be viable to run that way?

Frustrating, sure, but it’s not boring. P/P is a single target weapon set and the mobs in HoT comes in horde which is the main source of frustration. Thief simply doesn’t have enough Initiatives to constantly switch targets and the loss of Ricochet makes it even more frustrating. It’s the best ranged weapon set we have only because there’s really no other choice. When it comes to AoE damage, you’re better of using a Shortbow or go into melee with the Staff.

In terms of viability, it really depends on your play style and skill level. P/P can ranged from trash to highly viable depending on what kind of player is using the weapon set. It’s really easy to be trash as Thief if you mismanage your Initiatives and cooldowns or have no situational awareness.

saerni.2584:

It can be useful if you think of it as an extra backstab. If you try to force it to be something it isn’t then of course it won’t be effective for you.

Hidden thief works very well for P/D using it for an extra sneak attack. With cool down reductions in Trickery it is an extra stealth attack every 20 seconds. Well worth it if you know how to dodge + steal to prevent auto attack from breaking stealth. It can work if you aren’t trying to one shot your enemy and plan your attacks accordingly.

Let’s assume that you took both SA and Trick…your daggers suddenly turned into a pair of toothpicks.

Only troll build uses Hidden Thief.

Ubi.4136:

I get the impression that orbs will be on sale in the gem store and the next content update will almost require them.

(*oh look, the bloodstone knights now have an 8k range instead of the already ridiculous 4k range they have now)

lol hahaha, my thoughts exactly.