Guild Wars 2

Yamsandjams.3267:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Now if they could just remove that kitten auto-smokescreen from the deceptions trait, it would possibly be an appropriate alternative to shadow’s embrace for specialized builds.

Why, you a plan to go down often? Else this added auto-smoke can be ignored.

It’s just an annoyance.

If I gave you some food and served it with a pile of crap, would you eat the crap too? I’m not sure about you (and I won’t judge either way), but I’d rather the pile of crap just not be around my food at all. I don’t care if it’s a free extra I get with the meal, I just don’t want it there.

Bad analogy.

Basically, if you open the door, you’ll get tarred and feathered — so don’t open the door.

In other words, don’t allow yourself to go down — play smart.

Tarkan.5609:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Tarkan.5609:

The only way to go up to 100% endurance regen after the changes is with that one food though
i think thats +40% so would be 115%… the last 15% being totally useless

Um, after the change we’ll get 150% vigor just by picking Acro. Unless they changed how endurance works, that 50% from Endless Stamina will have no effect.

Ehm Anet are reducing the effectiveness of vigor by 50%
meaning the new 3rd minor trait in acro will give you vigor of an effectiveness thats equal to 75% of what vigor is currently doing
for everyone else vigor will have 50% of its effectiveness compared to the way its now

to be clear: Endless Stamina is the 3rd minor in acro atm which increases your dmg by 10% if your endurance is not full
It’s getting removed, the only real dmg increase that acro ever had (along with the removed might on dodge)

Makes sense. I wouldn’t change the endurance functionality either.

I probably need to check the notes again because I don’t remember reading the vigor change. Thanks.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Now if they could just remove that kitten auto-smokescreen from the deceptions trait, it would possibly be an appropriate alternative to shadow’s embrace for specialized builds.

Why, you a plan to go down often? Else this added auto-smoke can be ignored.

Situation normal.

ArenaNet should do more things like this, not add or buff.

Tarkan.5609:

The only way to go up to 100% endurance regen after the changes is with that one food though
i think thats +40% so would be 115%… the last 15% being totally useless

Um, after the change we’ll get 150% vigor just by picking Acro. Unless they changed how endurance works, that 50% from Endless Stamina will have no effect.

Heh, now ArenaNet can have their internal poll to see how many Thieves will actually pick Last Refuge. I won’t be surprised if it is zero…just delete it already.

Don’t get caught up with Endless Stamina…until they change the core functionality of Endurance, the endurance rate will cap at 100%.

Endurance is the resource used to dodge incoming attacks to evade them. The endurance pool is shown as a yellow bar just above the health orb.

Each dodge requires 50% endurance, meaning that characters can dodge twice in a row when at 100% endurance. Endurance regenerates over time, at a base rate of 5% per second and a max rate of 10% per second – effects which grant additional endurance regeneration do not stack beyond double the normal rate – for instance, any additional endurance regeneration while under effects of boon vigor (which already grants maximum increase in regeneration rate) has no effect.

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endurance

The following buffs will make Thieves even more broken.

- Steal has had its base range increased from 900 to 1200.
- Steal recharge reduced from 35s to 30s

Skills
- Haste: This ability no longer removes endurance. Gain Fury in addition to Quickness when activating this ability.
- Withdraw: This ability is now a Trick. Increased the recharge of this ability from 15 to 18. Healing (both base and healing power) coefficients have been increased by 10%.

- Tripwire: This trap no longer deals strike damage, which would previously bring the thief out of stealth.
- Needle Trap: This trap no longer deals minimal strike damage, which would previously bring the thief out of stealth.

- Cloak An Dagger: This ability has been un-split and its damage normalized. Damage of this ability has decreased by ~17% in PvE and increased by 25% in PvP.
- Combined Training: This trait was rolled in baseline. All skills categorized as ‘Dual Wield’ have received a 5% damage increase.
- Residual Venom: This trait has been merged in baseline. All venoms now naturally have one additional charge.

- Needle Trap: Increased the poison duration from 6 seconds to 10 seconds.
- Lotus Strike: Increased the poison duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.
- Venomous Knife: This skill now applies 2 stacks of poison for 8 seconds.
- Escape: Increased the poison duration from 1 second to 2 seconds. Movement speed adjustments no longer affect the intended travel distance.
- Serpent’s Touch: This skill now applies 2 stacks of poison for 10 seconds.

These changes cannot be allowed, the QQ bucket is full. The Thieves are too OP as it is with access to the stealth god mode.

The cooldown of Withdraw from 15 to 18 is a trick (no pun intended) because with Trickster, this skill will now have 14.4 cooldown plus the 10% to heal coefficient.

Not to mention how easy it is to spam traps while in stealth…can you imagine someone will be perma-knockdown by an invisible Thief from Tripwire spam?

Also an underwater skill buffs? This is getting out of control.

I’ve been making a comparison to the numbers and if the numbers are to stay and my calculation is correct, then this change to condition damage isn’t bad.

The only question is, how easy/hard would it be to get to 700 condition damage.

Source: http://dulfy.net/2015/06/15/gw2-ready-up-skill-and-balance-changes-livestream-notes/

T raw.4658:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

T raw.4658:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

T raw.4658:

They are increasing the damage per tick on builds that have +condi damage.

Thats not needed. The increase in stacks for PvE was.

Already condi burst is real in today’s game….

I think they’re doing it to compensate for the loss of condition damage from the traits.

We aren’t losing them they are just going to be tied to something else. I was under the impression you could choose which ones you want to better round out your build.

We are losing them since after the expac, we’ll have no stat bonuses from the trait line anymore (i.e. condition damage from Trickery).

Reallocating this bonuses doesn’t mean that it will be a 1-to-1 transfer from one place to another. The +300 condition damage from Trickery might be spread out starting with the increase in condition damage intensity — so that overall, even if we lost the bonuses from the trait line, it would feel as if we never did.

That being said a standard condi build runs well over 1k condi damage and their condi burst will rival power burst.

That is assuming that the conditions will function as it is now.

Knowing that the condition damage is now being stacked in intensity, your damage output having 1k condition damage now may only require, probably, 500 condition damage after the expac.

On top of that, they also mention that the base condition damage stats will be lowered and their coefficient value would be increased which further support the theory that you may not even need 1k condition damage to achieve the same result as you have now.

Not to mention that Vulnerability will also increase the condition damage on the target which is another indication that 1k condition damage may not even be necessary.

You really don’t get it do you?

Do a complete condi dump on someone with a thief using 1700 condi damage.

Watch how fast they get burned down.

Now increase that damage AND remember the poison is now stacking……qq

ps they also stated we aren’t giving the trait line stats they’ll just be reallocated. Think about it because anet would be nerfing steal HARD

Just as I suspect. You’re comparing the future changes to the current stats when you should be comparing future changes to future stats.

DeceiverX.8361:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

…

Thieves should have had F1-F4 skills, each as Steal but with different effects. For example, F1 = Steal + Thrill, F2 = Steal + Bounty, F3 = Steal + Mug, F4 = Steal + Daze — or whatever.

This way all these triggers will not happen at the same time using a single Skill.

So yes, let’s stay away from trying to balance Steal instead focus on the traits.

I just want to point out this is kind of a silly suggestion since one could just activate F1-F4 at the same time since they’re all instant-cast and do not interrupt currently-activating skills. It’d also give the thief access to four teleports which would be kind of insane.

They would all share a cooldown…steal is steal, the F1-F4 will only determine which effect you want to use with Steal.

As a side note, never – EVER – argue that mug being unable to crit is a disadvantage. It used to be able to, and I can tell you now that under current gear, I could one-shot any non-warrior berserker build in the game from pressing this one button if it were able to crit.

I call BS.

It can’t crit, but its damage coefficient is extremely high, especially relative to other damaging effects after a teleport.

It means nothing if you can’t crit with it.

zinkz.7045:

Thief is still imbalanced, which is why it has had a slot in nearly every team for the entirety of the game, and still does, despite the nerfs, thief can not be balanced by nerfs, its core design is too strong, giving a class best mobility, best engage, best disengage, high burst that is less telegraphed than anything except silly fresh air burst, a lot of low cast time skills, spammable skills, huge access to maybe the most powerful mechanic in the game (stealth), etc is just a broken design that they will never be able to balance by nerfs, it will either be OP so a must have on a team or nerfed into the ground to the point of uselessness.

I don’t agree with this since if Thief is really that imbalance, then why aren’t the teams consists of 5 Thieves then?

Surely the Thief has some use, but by no means it is imbalance.

Some of the core design of thief is mindblowingly bad, for instance skilled play like interrupts should be rewarded, yet we have a class that interrupts are borderline useless against, it is pathetic.

Why do you think a Thief is the best counter to another Thief? It is because one of the reason is because Thief can interrupt the enemy Thief.

So I don’t agree with you on this either.

So when people say thief should not be nerfed anymore, I agree, it should have certain mechanics / core aspects reworked, when there are 8 classes (soon to be 9) and 5 slots in a team, and one class has pretty much had a guaranteed slot for 3 years regardless of the meta, objectively that is very imbalanced.

Are you talking about the Warrior or the Guardian? Perhaps Engineer?

==============
@ronpierce.2760:

Really hard to tell. But in a game where objectives are HIGHLY important, mobility to the point of getting from place to place in a third of the time really causes a design block for certain classes that can’t really be overcome (Necro/Mesmer) which hurts their usefulness as a roaming role. Maybe not full mobility balance, but that gap needs closed in many ways.

Perhaps the problem lies in the map design then?

I don’t really see that this is a problem caused by Thief.

Secondly, I feel shadow arts of way too toxic by design.

I’m not a big fan of Shadow Arts either, so I’m for whatever change is necessary as long as it is compensated some other ways.

Some suggestions were:
Change Shadow Rejuvination to “Gain shadow Rejuvination when you land a successful stealth attack which heals and gains initiative every 2 seconds over 6 seconds. (Slightly reduced base healing, increased scaling from HP).”
- This reduces the need for stealth camping and even gives thieves a unique way to combat “tank” using stealth as an active form of defense.

You do realized that this suggestion is going to make stealth to last 6s instead of 3s right?

Change Shadow Resilience (50% reduced damage in stealth trait) to "Shadow Cloak: Gain protection for 3(4?) seconds upon leaving stealth. This effect had a 5 second cooldown.

This will cause problem since you’re basically rewarding reckless backstabbing. Think about it. I cast CnD, then backstab you — instead of creating a gap, I can now stay and auto-attack without any problem, not to mention how OP this will be when traited with Revealed Training. +200 Power and Protection after a Backstab = OP.

And Shadow’s Embrace to: Successful stealth attacks transfer two conditions to your enemy.

I’m sorry but this is a bad idea. Imagine if you applied Immobilized on me and I CnD->Steal at you? You’re now immobilized while I escaped in stealth.

Obviously, it’s a very rough list of ideas, but the idea is to discourage camping and reward effective use of stealth while giving thieves a bit of staying power. I feel this is more proactive design would be much better received.

As a Thief, I have expressed my opinion based om my personal experience why these suggestions will never work. This is just my opinion — feel free to disagree.

maddoctor.2738:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I was thinking more about allowing players to dodge/block/blind/invuln CnD so the Thief doesn’t re-enter stealth. More like how other powerful attacks have huge tells (like Earthshaker, Pin Down etc) CnD is not a weak skill.

Then how do you counter a CnD from stealth?

You can’t counter CnD from stealth but the cast time on CnD allows someone to counter it when it’s used outside of stealth, so the Thief does not regain stealth easily. Or at least that’s why I think CnD does have a cast time and a rather obvious and unique animation now so I doubt they will remove it, maybe lower it a bit so it’s more reliable vs moving targets[/quote]

Exactly. 1/4s cast time is more appropriate cansidering that it is a melee attack. I also believe that Revealed is sufficient enough to keep it under control.

maddoctor.2738:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

maddoctor.2738:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

- Skill Dancing dagger: Reduce consumption of initiative;

…or make it bounce 5 times.

Or make it cast faster. However, with the way they will nerf all movement skills this might need more drastic changes.

I’m fine with the current casting time, but I’ll agree with the projectile travel time being slow.

Oh right the projectile speed is more important than cast time indeed. Faster dagger will be the best.

- [MY opinion]Skill Cloak and dagger: Increase stack of Vulnerability.

This might become problematic because CnD also deals a lot of damage and often followed up by Backstab. I rather see CnD to receive a reduced casting time by half.

The only bad thing about reducing the casting time of CnD is that it’s a very powerful skill and needs some counter play, opponents need some time to react to it

What more counter play you need in addition to Revealed?

Revealed is to keep CnD from being cast conscutively to extend the stealth duration — your target doesn’t even need to counter CnD, the game is already doing it for them.

I was thinking more about allowing players to dodge/block/blind/invuln CnD so the Thief doesn’t re-enter stealth. More like how other powerful attacks have huge tells (like Earthshaker, Pin Down etc) CnD is not a weak skill.

Then how do you counter a CnD from stealth?

It IS hard to land CnD on moving targets sometimes due to that delay. Maybe (and that’s a huge maybe) keep it as stealth granting skill, make it faster, stack more vulnerability, cost less initiative but reduce damage output? Or too much? (I guess P/D Thieves won’t mind)

P/D will be strong after the expac since vuln will also boost condi dmg but I doubt D/D and S/D will be happy if CnD is nerfed/rebalanced.

edit: There is even a discussion to add a Telegraph to Steal: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/sugestion-Telegraphed-Steal/first

I’m already debunking that idea.

TyPin.9860:

@Sir Vincent III:
As I said, I am not any longer advocating my initial suggestion. You needn’t come back to it again.

Then don’t bring it up? I simply responded to what you’ve posted.

The issue is basically that steal (especially when heavily traited) has too many advantages and too less counter play. The problem doesn’t lie in steal being a non telegraphed teleport. The telegraph idea was just there to allow more counter play.

If you’re not advocating this anymore, then what’s your other idea as a counter play?

The problem may indeed lay in the traits that modify steal. Compared to other class mechanics heavily traited steal offers too many benefits for too less counter play imho.

Because the devs are lazy.

Thieves should have had F1-F4 skills, each as Steal but with different effects. For example, F1 = Steal + Thrill, F2 = Steal + Bounty, F3 = Steal + Mug, F4 = Steal + Daze — or whatever.

This way all these triggers will not happen at the same time using a single Skill.

So yes, let’s stay away from trying to balance Steal instead focus on the traits.

ronpierce.2760:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Nutshel.7264:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

The devs in charge of core balance said themselves on Ready Up that “if you believe thief is OP, you do not play one.”

Funny coming from them. It is hilarious how clueless they are about issues of some classes almost as if they didn’t play them at all – not to say that they don’t but sometimes it sure does feel that way

It’s not funny at all. That’s the main reason they keep nerfing the Thief, they don’t play the profession thus they think it is OP.

Some of us are less concerned with strictly “op” and gameplay. Don’t forget how Turret engineers felt. Design can be a real turn off. Feeling lien your enemy can dip whenever doesn’t feel great, especially as a slow profession like Necromancer. And in some cases, yes, Thief design currently is OP, it does push many zerkers out of use.

Are you sure that the problem is the Thief and not the zerker items?

Would you still feel that way if zerker does not exist?

Nutshel.7264:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

The devs in charge of core balance said themselves on Ready Up that “if you believe thief is OP, you do not play one.”

Funny coming from them. It is hilarious how clueless they are about issues of some classes almost as if they didn’t play them at all – not to say that they don’t but sometimes it sure does feel that way

It’s not funny at all. That’s the main reason they keep nerfing the Thief, they don’t play the profession thus they think it is OP.

maddoctor.2738:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

- Skill Dancing dagger: Reduce consumption of initiative;

…or make it bounce 5 times.

Or make it cast faster. However, with the way they will nerf all movement skills this might need more drastic changes.

I’m fine with the current casting time, but I’ll agree with the projectile travel time being slow.

- [MY opinion]Skill Cloak and dagger: Increase stack of Vulnerability.

This might become problematic because CnD also deals a lot of damage and often followed up by Backstab. I rather see CnD to receive a reduced casting time by half.

The only bad thing about reducing the casting time of CnD is that it’s a very powerful skill and needs some counter play, opponents need some time to react to it

What more counter play you need in addition to Revealed?

Revealed is to keep CnD from being cast conscutively to extend the stealth duration — your target doesn’t even need to counter CnD, the game is already doing it for them.

I for one believe that we don’t need stealth since I believe that it promotes bad game play all around.

That said, I want all stealth attack to trigger based on position relative to the target. So if I’m behind the target, stealth or not, I get to backstab.

So yes, I play Thief and I hate stealth.

Sizzle Hint.1820:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Leaping the full distance while crippled is 10,000x better than leaping some extra unit while under swiftness.

I disagree… HS without swiftness feels horrible =/

True, but it is a trade off I’m willing to accept.

Sein.5160:

- [MY opinion]For Problem of the high fragility (with low defense and Healt): 1 Perma skill passive [n°% Block and reflect fisical and conditional Dmg] OR [Auto-regenerates healing “n°” point for “n°” time];

This will not solve the “fragility” issue because poison reduces the effectiveness of health regen. The only real solution to this is to increase our base HP inline with other adventurer class (Ranger and Engi).

- For Problem with Dots: Decent condition cleansing;

ArenaNet is adding more condition removal in the next expansion and the one I like the most is condition cleanse on Trick Skill use.

- Skill Death blossom: Resolve the problem of the long-lasting and reduce consumption of initiative;

This has more problem than just the initiative cost. It also has a pre-cast and an after-cast delays that are cumbersome when used to evade attacks. The animation of Death Blossoms needs to be instant or have a reduced time delays.

At its current state, it is clunky and unreliable.

- Skill Dancing dagger: Reduce consumption of initiative;

…or make it bounce 5 times.

- [MY opinion]Skill Cloak and dagger: Increase stack of Vulnerability.

This might become problematic because CnD also deals a lot of damage and often followed up by Backstab. I rather see CnD to receive a reduced casting time by half.

Leaping the full distance while crippled is 10,000x better than leaping some extra unit while under swiftness.

TyPin.9860:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

TyPin.9860:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

TyPin.9860:

Almost every other class Mechanic is in some way “telegraphed”.

I don’t see Guardian’s shadowstep (Judge’s Intervntion) being telegraphed.

Marked the important detail there for you to better see

My point is; why start with Thieves if you can start with Guardians and Elementalist?

Their shadow step deals damage without the need to trait…Thieves requires to take Mug to deal damage — not to mention, their shadowstep damage can crit while Mug cannot.

You said “almost” but you never mention which shadowstep is being telegraph if not all of them.

First, I understand the problems with my suggestion and that it would destroy many combos. So I am not arguing in favor of it now.

Ok.

However, just mentioning only the Thief mechanic, does it inherently mean I find other class mechanic unproblematic? No it doesn’t. It only means I focused for this thread, in this forum on the thief mechanic. The assumption, I would need to mention all issues I have, when just focusing on one issue, is ridiculous. I mentioned in a side node though that the issue was not exclusive for Thieves. However, our both arguments are different in nature too. You focus seemingly on all damaging teleports, while I focus on non telegraphed class mechanics.

The feature I’m trying to point out is that, the teleport mechanic is not exclusive to Thief. Therefore, if you change steal to be telegraphed, it would have to also change other non-Thief skill to be telegraphed.

The fact that other non-Thief teleport is not a problem, despite on what you think about it, is telling that this suggestion will not go anywhere.

The point I was trying to make is, if you can convince the other profession to telegraph their teleport, then we can reach a consensus that non-telegraph teleport needs to be changed. Otherwise, it’s is a dead end.

Also, I have rarely issues with untraited steal. But traited steal is definitely stronger than any other teleport you find in the game. And it should, it is the class mechanic after all. Nonetheless is the relation between strengths and means of counter play in the case of traited thief steal way way in favor of strength, more than any other class mechanic, I might add. Well this unique ratio in favor of strengths is also the case when comparing steal with any other teleport. However, comparing a class mechanic to a mere utility skill might undervalue the class mechanic. And this is where I was getting at. I did not compare it to other teleports, because steal should be stronger than them, especially if you focus your build around that said class mechanic.

If you believe that Steal needs to be stronger than non-Thief utility skills, then why do you advocate for Steal to get a crippling nerf?

Also it seems that your problem lies on the trait itself and not on Steal, so your suggestion to balance Steal is misplaced when you should be suggesting to balance the traits that triggers on Steal instead.

T raw.4658:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

T raw.4658:

They are increasing the damage per tick on builds that have +condi damage.

Thats not needed. The increase in stacks for PvE was.

Already condi burst is real in today’s game….

I think they’re doing it to compensate for the loss of condition damage from the traits.

We aren’t losing them they are just going to be tied to something else. I was under the impression you could choose which ones you want to better round out your build.

We are losing them since after the expac, we’ll have no stat bonuses from the trait line anymore (i.e. condition damage from Trickery).

Reallocating this bonuses doesn’t mean that it will be a 1-to-1 transfer from one place to another. The +300 condition damage from Trickery might be spread out starting with the increase in condition damage intensity — so that overall, even if we lost the bonuses from the trait line, it would feel as if we never did.

That being said a standard condi build runs well over 1k condi damage and their condi burst will rival power burst.

That is assuming that the conditions will function as it is now.

Knowing that the condition damage is now being stacked in intensity, your damage output having 1k condition damage now may only require, probably, 500 condition damage after the expac.

On top of that, they also mention that the base condition damage stats will be lowered and their coefficient value would be increased which further support the theory that you may not even need 1k condition damage to achieve the same result as you have now.

Not to mention that Vulnerability will also increase the condition damage on the target which is another indication that 1k condition damage may not even be necessary.

T raw.4658:

They are increasing the damage per tick on builds that have +condi damage.

Thats not needed. The increase in stacks for PvE was.

Already condi burst is real in today’s game….

I think they’re doing it to compensate for the loss of condition damage from the traits.

Tarkan.5609:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Tarkan.5609:

Yamsandjams.3267:

While I can’t agree with making steal telegraphed, it does annoy me that “on steal” things, such as the confusion and daze, still apply even if you manage to dodge or otherwise prevent being hit by the steal. I’ve never understood why they just get that stuff for free, considering the ability is 900 range and instantly cast.

how the kitten are you getting dazed when you dodge the steal?
thats not true, same as thief is not getting vigor and stolen boons from a dodged steal

You can’t dodge/evade conditions, however, you can deny the Thief a stolen item if you timed your dodge/evade.

and deny him a lot more, basically anything but fury/might/swiftness (see the post above)
tbh i dont get your response, if my opponents dodge my steal they neither get the poison nor the daze or whatever, so you can actually evade that condi or what did you mean

Players dodging/evading my pistol auto attack still gets bleeding.

S/D + Withdraw works better on him and Sword #2 saves you a lot of dodges since you can get out of range when needed…not to mention it is also a condition removal.

Waste of utility slot, don’t bother with it. There are better alternatives.

The only time this is used is if you have a kamikaze-burst-build where you activate all signets to trigger Signet of Power before backstabbing someone. It’s kamikaze because if you failed to take out your target…you’re doomed.

Tarkan.5609:

Yamsandjams.3267:

While I can’t agree with making steal telegraphed, it does annoy me that “on steal” things, such as the confusion and daze, still apply even if you manage to dodge or otherwise prevent being hit by the steal. I’ve never understood why they just get that stuff for free, considering the ability is 900 range and instantly cast.

how the kitten are you getting dazed when you dodge the steal?
thats not true, same as thief is not getting vigor and stolen boons from a dodged steal

You can’t dodge/evade conditions, however, you can deny the Thief a stolen item if you timed your dodge/evade.

TyPin.9860:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

TyPin.9860:

Almost every other class Mechanic is in some way “telegraphed”.

I don’t see Guardian’s shadowstep (Judge’s Intervntion) being telegraphed.

Marked the important detail there for you to better see

My point is; why start with Thieves if you can start with Guardians and Elementalist?

Their shadow step deals damage without the need to trait…Thieves requires to take Mug to deal damage — not to mention, their shadowstep damage can crit while Mug cannot.

You said “almost” but you never mention which shadowstep is being telegraph if not all of them.

Zero Day.2594:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

RedSpectrum.1975:

This thread still exists? Clearly it represents the embers left after a flame has tried to been stamped out, like the thief community, therefore it needs to be nerfed, you thieves deserve nothing, not even the leather on your filthy backs

That is more than likely to happen when they’re done dicing up our stolen items.

Heh… Yeah I was thinking of taking this “thread” and making it into a website+app… which will be away from ANet’s reach… Plus that way I can edit/clean things up…(as in formatting/preventing derailment… so on) – Also correlate to how many changes have been made that have satisfied/partially satisfied a request. Generate word clouds (should be fun…)… get a list going for montages/“OP” videos (like that mlg no scope 360 range kill). At the very least crawl this thread and save it…. so i can parse it later… oh man… ideas keep coming, make a web crawler that looks for the words “thief” and “nerf”… Provide stats on how many nerfs/buffs/neutral changes have been made…

All that wrapped up in a troll/humorous theme.

at the same time, i doubt it will be used/visited much…. as in a minority come to the forums and a fraction of them might go to the site.

lol, each request is worthy of comic strip at least.

The one I don’t like is the change on Cripple and Chill. Cripple is a hard counter vs leaping Warriors and Guardians…after the patch, they can just ignore them. kitten soldier class QQing so hard not liking all the Caltrops all over the place.

pupi.2465:

Totally understand that Dahkeus, so i should drop 1 more trait in DA or CS to get 4 on SA and take condi clean and blind on stealth?

Also, i would like to ask all you, about this build i saw in a video from a very skilled girl thief…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQJAoal0Mp7plPx0J8PNRTBx9AmcA8+FtYGd9BA-TFCFABrpFAgHAQhq/clSQkU+Fz+DCcCASTHQAAEAP35O35O35czbezbezbWKAKGaB-w

She shows this build as a survival one, i guess is for 1xmany, but would be this build good as a 1v1 in general ?

That build looks old when Lyssa rune was still awesome.

You can still try it if you like, but I doubt it will have the same level of effectiveness.

This is a really interesting take on condition damage, but I’m worried that the stacking burning condition might turn out to be really OP. Albeit, I like the high stacks of bleeding, but at the same time, I don’t really want to be on the receiving end.

Source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/combat-changes-dotsanddashes/

RedSpectrum.1975:

This thread still exists? Clearly it represents the embers left after a flame has tried to been stamped out, like the thief community, therefore it needs to be nerfed, you thieves deserve nothing, not even the leather on your filthy backs

That is more than likely to happen when they’re done dicing up our stolen items.

pupi.2465:

This discussion is making me get a greater view for a general gameplay, i just did some random duels, and suceed, thank you all about this.

Still, with this build (i have no love for another, and i tried, all of them), i got my kitten kicked from condi builds, especially, Thieves and Engs. I hate conditions!

That is part of my point. Regardless of what you know about your opponent, if you don’t know how Thieves deal with conditions — you will fail as Thief.

Sebrent.3625:

We’re not asking for a nerf, Zero Day … at least not those that have most recently posted.

Instead, we’re discussing how ArenaNet needs to stop having traits that increase the effectiveness of skills/mechanics by +100% as it leads to the scenarios mentioned where either the skill/mechanic is UP without the trait (since balanced around having the trait) or the skill/mechanic is OP with the trait (since balanced around not having the trait).

Someone could try to say "but it could be balanced around +50% effectiveness … in which case it would be both as it’d be UP without that +50% it was balanced around and it would be OP with +100% given how that’s double the increase it was balanced around.

No matter what they do, it will always be OP when traited. It is a bad idea. They should just leave this alone than releasing a trait that everyone knows that will cause huge headache.

Just look at the number of things they have to rebalance to make this “2x uses” to work — it’s a waste of development time — it’s like Venom Aura all over again; nerfing venom to balance around the shared venom.

Phantom Master.9582:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Phantom Master.9582:

I understand the action/reaction goal with evasion skills they have in mind. But do they forget that this is an MMO? Most of us players have 100ping(some of us 200) and can’t do anything about it because we’re poor college kids.

No Dev in their right mind will ever balance a game based on some “poor college kids” slow connection and high pings.

If that is the case, change your profession.

Per 10 people I meet, 8 have a ping of ~100. (Lets not forget that most MMO players are young adults, mostly college kids)

That’s irrelevant though because GW2 has other professions that can cater to those who have bad connections — like Warrior for instance.

What: Last Refuge + Hard to Catch combo
Why: The Thief should not be able to shadowstep, blind and stealth at the same time when dazed at 25% HP. I was just going to finish the Thief off, then poof, he’s nowhere to be found. Since the stealth lasted for 3s and the Dazed only lasted for 1s, he was able to run away due to the Swiftness buff from Hard to Catch.

Klowde.9876:

I don’t agree with the idea that he should be more focused on what he is doing and less focused on the opponent. Also, he already indicated his build: d/d sb, 5/6/0/3/0. I agree, if you master the thief profession, it wont matter who are playing, but you have to outplay your opponent, and have knowledge of you opponent, otherwise you’ll get roflstomped.

Not quite my point exactly.

You can spend your entire Thief’s lifetime on studying your opponent but without self-reflection, this information means nothing.

The only time you can ever beat a Guardian is not because you outplayed him — it is because as a Thief you exactly know what your profession can do in that situation and that you have mastered the Thief’s skills to a point that it doesn’t really matter who you’re playing against.

The advice given about guardians is exactly what the OP wanted, and included what he could do and what he can pay attention to about his playstyle WITH REGARDS to what the guardian is doing. Knowing a rotation and play style won’t mean a thing if the guardian blocks all your attacks and you don’t realize it because you are focused on what you are doing, and not what your opponent is doing.

The problem is, there are multiple things a Guardian can do in a single combat that you cannot possibly prepare for. That is why this is not important.

What the OP needs to train for is to improve his reaction time so that he can evaluate the situation in real time and not waste time trying to remember what a poster have told him in the forum about on what to do in this situation, so that he can improvise his strategy and form a tactic on the fly. Therefore, your assumption that I was talking about “rotation” is false.

====================

DeceiverX.8361:

I completely disagree. Unlike the other professions, the thief does not have rotations and thus needs to be focused entirely on what his enemy is doing rather than trying to set up for something.

Then you’ll never improve since you’ll never know the mistakes you’re making.

Repositioning and basic mechanics, such as Infiltrator’s/Shadow Return locations should be mastered to the point where focus is not needed to know where you’ll be returning to and how far away you can move while returning on point.

Care to explain what do you mean by “mastered to the point”?

At what point that repositioning and basic mechanics and shadowstepping are considered mastered?

Shoutbow and Cele (and a variety of engineer builds) can almost totally ignore their enemies on principle that what their opponents are doing doesn’t matter as long as they maintain their rotations properly. The thief is the exact opposite.

I disagree. I don’t buy the fact that Thief is opposite, no rotation, or has no cooldown. If you mismanage your initiative or misuse your utilities, consider yourself under cool down.

Every time a Thief hides in stealth is a cool down. Blind → HS → BS is an example of a rotation. PW → Auto → PW is another example of a rotation.

Guards do well against thieves as a whole, so there is no real way to promote “win advice” or a way to utilize rotations to take advantage of the matchup in really any way.

That is why my suggestion is for the OP to focus on himself as a Thief than on his opponent. Because it is not about a “winning advice”, it is about the OP improving himself.

So you’re fighting a Guardian, you already admit defeat even before the duel? That is telling that you know nothing about your profession and what your profession can do.

Being a smart Thief is not based on what you know about your opponent, rather about what you know about the profession and what the profession can and cannot do.

My biggest advice is to get a feel for playing a guard and learning the weaknesses of the guard and how to take advantage of them as a thief. Getting a feel for animation timing/a solid handle on their mechanics and paying attention to what they’re doing (or what they aren’t able to do) is how you’re going to beat them.

This is a sound advice…if you want to play a Guardian.

Instead, as a Thief improve your reflexes and reaction time. You need to understand your skills and when to use them. Know when to take risk and when to be cautious. Patience is the key.

Your knowledge about the Guardian means nothing if you don’t have the descipline to use your profession effectively.

Phantom Master.9582:

I understand the action/reaction goal with evasion skills they have in mind. But do they forget that this is an MMO? Most of us players have 100ping(some of us 200) and can’t do anything about it because we’re poor college kids.

No Dev in their right mind will ever balance a game based on some “poor college kids” slow connection and high pings.

If that is the case, change your profession.

TyPin.9860:

Almost every other class Mechanic is in some way “telegraphed”.

I don’t see Guardian’s shadowstep (Judge’s Intervntion) being telegraphed.

I commend Dahkeus for the tip on how to deal with Guardians, but that is not the problem here.

To improve your skill, you need to pay more attention on what you’re doing than what your opponent is doing because unlike the other professions, you make a mistake as a Thief…it’s over.

So let’s not focus on what the Guardian was doing, but instead, tell us what you were doing, what build were you running and what is your playstyle?

If you master the Thief profession, it doesn’t really matter who your opponent is.

Hey all,
A heads up: we’re adding an F2U button for the items that you (thieves) steal from enemies.
With the way that stolen items exist, it’s not always the best option to use your stolen item instantly, but often you have to dump it in order to gain access to Steal again along with the rest of functionalities you are used to because we have no idea how to balance Thief so be grateful — we’re doing the best we can.

As a quality-of-life change, you’ll now steal from an enemy and see the stolen item in the F2U slot, while FMe will show Steal and its current cooldown. If you steal again without using the stolen item, it will be replaced/overwritten by the new one.

We weren’t able to show this on the core specialization livestream because we’re still not done nerfing the stolen items to the ground, but wanted to pass the message on so that it’s not just a bomb drop when the core specialization changes happen (when they’re ready) and instead with will be like a tear gas that will make every one QQ.

Cheers,
-Kurlz

/endsatire

NPCs gets specially designed skill sets all the time. If you played the Living Story (spoiler alert) you’ll see how OP Caithe’s D/D skill sets are.

Karl McLain.5604:

apharma.3741:

Any idea on how much of a rework stolen bundles are getting?

In the 3 hour AMA when we got to thief there was mention of changes to the stolen items.

Can we expect the same items just rebalanced a bit to be more fair or are we talking almost completely different things in some cases?

Great question!

There will be a couple of changes to items stolen mainly from players (though these do exist in PvE as well). This is mostly out of necessity due to the changes with Improvisation and in how you’re able to use a stolen item multiple times. Some examples:
The necro fear skull is going from 3 seconds maximum, to 2 seconds maximum. The guardian mace daze will be reduced from 4 to 3 seconds for daze. The ranger’s Healing Seed will have a reduced duration (10s -> 5s), but pulse twice as fast (2s pulse -> 1s pulse).

Needless to say, it’s not the goal to remove viability of using a stolen item once. There’s just a few cases in which using the stolen bundle twice does just a little too much.

Thanks for the feedback and for keeping things civil, everyone.

-Karl

I hope you realize that this is not a good trade off, more specifically that fear skull, 2s is just too short for a single charge.

I think that the best course of action is NOT give 2 charges of the same item and instead improve the item’s effectiveness.

For instance, just leave the fear skull as is but when traited, the fear duration is increased by one second. This will achieve the balance that you are trying to reach and at the same time not nerfing the Thief who don’t trait for Improv.

As for healing seed, keep the duration of 10s and give the faster pulse when traited.

TL;DR

No double item use, just improved effectiveness on stolen items.

nightblood.7910:

Yeah lich is an interesting thing. If its targeting something else, I go for it. I work to interrupt any necro going to lich form. If its already in lich and its just me and them, Ill leave for a better situation and let that lich run out.

And that is the thing about lich, lich when used correctly isnt a problem. Just like Moa when used correctly isnt a problem.

Either in a 1v1 can mean certain death but if either are being used in a 1v1 you actually won because now they have a long CD on their elite. Once you get that part in your head," I forced them to lich when they shouldnt have" or “I forced them to moa when they shouldnt have”, even if you lose the fight, you know you have won.

Others will argue that when they forced a Thief to go hide in stealth that they’ve won even if they lose the fight.

What do you say to that?

thunderfall.8095:

Well, we don’t need more health if we have condition removal.

If that is true, then Ranger and Engi should also have 10k HP since they also have access to condition removal.

IMHO, it is more feasible to just rebalance the Thief’s HP to match the other two than rebalance the other two to match the Thief, won’t you agree?

Vayne.8563:

First of all, without a crystal ball, no one could possibly answer that question. However, I don’t see how anyone can take the question seriously.

Even with a crystal ball, all you’ll see are threads of all the possible future intertwined with each other not knowing where it ends nor where it begins.

So, I don’t think a crystal ball will be of any help.

thunderfall.8095:

The thing about us thieves is that at the first sight of a lich we can decide"oh i don’t think I can beat it." and just stealth ditch the place until the lich is gone. Thieves are cowards, but in a good way.

The decision is not driven by cowardice but by tactical necessity.

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”

~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War

thunderfall.8095:

Sir Vincent III: You are right. Thieves need a decent condition removal skill. HEAR THAT A-NET! US THIEVES NEED CONDITION REMOVAL!

Not just condi removal but also increase in base HP, more inline with other medium armor wearer.