Guild Wars 2

Bacon.4918:

Jon (or any Anet staff),

Please reconsider the proposed changes to opportunist. This trait encourages thieves to stay in combat which is apparently what you are trying to accomplish in the December 10th patch. Moreover, destroying this trait with a 5 second ICD hurts so many builds which aren’t d/p or s/d (what seems to be the main focus of your warpath). So please don’t change this trait or at least don’t make the ICD 5 seconds; that’s totally unreasonable.

I agree, this minor trait is fine as it is I dont see a reason to nerf every single init gain trait that thieves have, it is simply to drastic.

For some reason, you guys “shave” some professions with a feather and others with a katana…

You may play with your other characters for 4-6 month, just look at necros, rangers, eles, mesmers, warriors. They were once really bad. then got buffed to oblivion and then brought down a bit to match other strong professions, now it is thieves time to bit the dust and be terrible but in 4-6 month they will probably be op as hell for 1-2 month then brought back down, hopefully in par with other strong professions.

Since I exclusively play thief, I’ll stick to it and drag my sorry behind though those 4-6 month of being stomped in the face…

Josh Davis.6015:

As someone who has been on both sides of the fence (player and dev), I’m genuinely excited for these changes.

I think we’ve tweaked enough things to shake-up the meta, and the work our team has been putting into the reward system means we now have incentive to play outside of owning people (which, to me, is still satisfying). Mixed in with the changes to matchmaking – we’re definitely headed in the right direction.

Is it December yet?

ofc you are! you dont play thief, actually you play engi which is getting buffed so… how can you not be exited?!

Is it so hard to give us a time in GMT or CET?

Narcarsis.5739:

You’re asking why a glass cannon can hit you like a truck when you can turn around and do the same thing to them. As a guardian you can directly counter a thief with proper use of Blind, Aegis, Focus Shield, Invulnerability, Retaliation, Counter Pressure (Burst), Crowd Control (Pull, Immobilize), Large amounts of burning, AoE, etc. If I had to choose the most direct counter to my class it would be a DPS Guardian.

As for other classes such as Elementalists, Mesmers, etc. They put out more damage more often, along with providing more team utility.

If you’re complaining about backstab you’re playing poorly and deserve to die.

Cheers,

Caed

^^ this

Also, Caed it’s nice to see you man!

fix the link xD the “–we’ll” doesn’t belong there ehehe

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

Sorry Jon, you are trying to make it look like a buff when it isn’t.
Also, the only thing you keep talking about is the init buff, it is your only argument for countering the complaints about all the nerfs flying our way…

I do believe it is a buff (the init buff) but since we haven’t tested it yet ourselves, I’m not so sure it is as incredibly awesome as you make it look like. Also i don’t think that the init buff does not justify nor makes it up for the nerfs thieves are getting.

More initiative it is the answer for all the thieves problems nor more versatility, it means more spam.
For versatility you guys would have to change/replace some (useless) traits and buff some underused utilities and some weapon skills like Pistol MH, also some terrible stolen abilities would need to be replaced (ranger / engi).

Not to mention that Last Refuge and Hard to Catch still exist in this game. These traits are terrible! they harm thieves and benefit our enemies, no competent thief will ever take Hard to Catch… as for Last Refuge we don’t even have a choice do we?… (if we want to get into Shadow Arts). Does the Init buff fix this problem?!

The Init buff is not the answer for the thieves problems (like you make it seam like) and imo not even needed…

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

The most common builds atm are:

25/30/0/0/15
10/30/0/0/30
0/30/0/25/15

all 3 work well with D/P and S/x just varies on play style ( surviveability or burst)

humm…. and I thought P/P was born dead…

can you show us the numbers you ran to get tho the 68% loss of effectiveness?! I’m curious

JonPeters.5630:

Dekk.3459:

Good to see progress is being made. There has be a lot of versatility added to classes. And I know I am tired of saying this but where is the versatility for thief? There have been the across the boards attribute transitions for example %tough -> precision. Looking at thief you’ve buffed initiative base gain, and slashed trait initiative gain, and reduced mobility.

Don’t really see any versatility improvements for thief, you know, compared to balance of other class traits.

And engineer Transmute change, I applaud, it needs a longer ICD like 30s. If it was just removes a condition, then fine 15s… It converts a condition to a boon. So Transmute needs a longer ICD.

Versatility for thief. We are giving every single thief build 33% more initiative to work with. We have said this a number of times, but clearly it needs to be said again. If any other profession was getting a patch note that said: Decreased cooldown of all weapon skills by 25%, that would be considered a huge buff. The way initiative works is obfuscating how powerful this change it, but please consider the value of this change when weighing thief changes in this patch.

I don’t think that any thief doubts that the init natural regen increase is a very nice buff but what i think that what Dekk.3459 ment was about the trait changes and the versatility of combat, not the number of times thieves can spam this or that ability due to having virtually more initiative.

For example, competitive thieves only have 1 single weapon set, the other slot is reserved for the Shortbow, without it there is no mobility and versatility.

Thieves are not allowed to leave home without it. Very rarely you find a thief that does not carry a Shortbow but that thief is probably clueless or simply playing for himself and not for the team, he is hunting and killing random ppl in hotjoins not caring about caping nor wining.

Versatility as in team support besides Shadow refuge reses.
Versatility as in having a decent condi remover without having to use Lyssa Runes.

I remember a few month back you guys say something about merging some traits together and add a few new traits…

Giving Thieves a bit more init regen is good for us no doubt about it, but it adds very little versatility (or I miss to see it).

Also get ready for the tears in the forum about HS spamers, I might be wrong but after buffing init, the next step will be nerfing the dps…

HtC is one of the worse trait we have if not THE worst… It ports you randomly and normaly on the worse possible time.

i.e.
- Chasing someone that is about to die, you get CCed and ported far far away from your dying enemy allowing him to escape.

- Enemy is being stomped and knocks you down / fears / knocks back and you get ported away from him.

We have NO control over this shadowstep and it puts thieves in disadvantage more often then it helps… It should be removed completely along with Improvisation and Last Refuge.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Oghier.7419:

D/D didn’t get nerfed. Increasing base initiative gain by 33% is a pretty big deal.

It’s more than a big deal. It’s a MASSSSSSSSSIVE buff to all thief specs.

it IS idd a buff but… MASSSSSSSSSIVE???… o.O’

MASSSSSSSSSIVE is the nerf to vigor, now that is MASSSSSSSSSIVE!!

its a shame that both Jumper and Caed stopped playing…
on the other hand, thieves will have to come up with their own builds instead of following the “pros”. I guess well see who is good and who isn’t next year.

PUG is Pick Up Group, meaning random players with no organization or strategy whatsoever.

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist. Not ignoring other professions, I just have time for one right now.

Diamond Skin
We really love this trait as it opens up some very powerful potential in the earth line to run a defensive elementalist without relying on healing power. The strength of this build is going to be the ability to quickly string small heals together to maintain that condition resistance. I think it could see use in both high damage builds looking to avoid weakness and blind, as well as in defensive builds looking to tank condition heavy classes and condition heavy mobs. I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses. In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier, and because that is a good investment for this type of improvement. That being said, they may all not be powerful enough to warrant a master level triat right now, but I would rather increase the cooldown to 25% to get people to consider them than to have them be adept tier and allow elementalists to run all four of them.

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Arcane Abatement
This is moving to adept tier because all of the fall damage traits are in that tier and in our opinion it doesn’t feel good to have to spend 20 points in a line for this kind of trait. Alacrity was the first choice to swap with it here because of the reasons stated above.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

Last but definitely not least.

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

I hope this helps to steer the discussion for the elementalist changes here. I’ll post this on the elementalist sub-forum as well. Hoping to get to each profession one at a time.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to the elementalist sub-forum discussion
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/December-10th-Elementalist-changes/page/3#post3138306

Thank you VERY much for braking it down for us, showing your perspective and reasons behind the changes.
I know you are very busy and its weekend and all but whenever you have the time, could you please do the same for the other professions pleas?!

JonPeters.5630:

Almost 500 replies already so obviously you will excuse us for not addressing them all. Also keep in mind it’s now the weekend. I’ll try and get on for enough time sometime this weekend to address the bigger points of discussion but until then please keep the responses as civil as they have generally been thus far. We appreciate all of your assign for this stuff and are working hard to make the right decisions. I can say that many of the concerns brought up were at the heart of discussions when making these changes already so we are aware of a lot of the implications. This is an aggressive list of changes but we wanted to share them so that we could confirm what the highest risk changes were and try to discuss some reasoning. I don’t expect everyone to appreciate or understand the nuances of all of that reasoning, but I do have faith that you will be passionate about it so try and remember to look at all sides of the issues. It is called balance after all.

Thanks all and keep them coming. I can promise I will read every post in this thread. Have a great weekend.

Jon

Hi Jon, it’s nice to see you here on a weekend, it shows you care.

Now about the Thief changes, at first it was a shock to me the 50% cut on init regen traits but I guess with the passive increase on natural regen… well i gotta wait and play with it BUT the init regen traits will become insignificant and no one will use them besides maybe the shadow arts one. Basically thieves will have even less useful traits to play with unless you are adding other effects to this traits were the init regen is the secondary effect.

The Vigor nerf imo is a big hit, thieves all around with whatever spec they use, all rely on dodge to stay alive, basically you are cutting in half the thieves survivability and forcing them into x/p keep blinding ppl to avoid being obliterated…

You are “Shaving” thieves with a katana…

er… the best are already quitting, most of them have already left. the ones staying are the suborn…

Tyler Chapman.1832:

a t s e.9614:

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

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

Huge buff?! i beg to differ… it is a undeniable nerf, if the init regen traits are getting NERFED by 50% and the natural regen “buffed” by 25% meaning thieves will gain 4 init in 4 sec instead of the current 3 init every 4 sec wile loosing 50% of the regen from traits… I am very bad in math but looking at the numbers HOW can you say it is a BUFF?!

Why nerf thieves again?! this time offensively by reducing init gain by quite allot and and defensively by reducing the vigor by 50%…. as if the thieves had any survivability at all besides dodging…

I’m sure you will go on with these changes and nothing we say will change your mind, this threads are made to give us the illusion that were being given the opportunity to participate in development but we all know we have no influence whatsoever.

So yeah… go ahead and stomp thieves in the face once and for all… :’(

Baaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahaha

… Sorry could’t help it.

S/D thieves are so easy to counter… 4 month have passed since the S/D thief meta arrived, I’m amazed how so few ppl have learned how to do it…

A spear would be nice.

all i see in that screenshot is 6 warriors….

if they would use different weapons sets and swamp them would be nice too… they all only use one weapon set and its the same since beta…

would be nice to have a grid (in the the forum / a blog / website) were we could see at what time, who is streaming and what.

Just a suggestion.

My suggestions for new game modes are:

- Hutball like game (from SWTOR):
basically there are traps spread throughout the map, there is one ball and 2 bases the team that scores 3 times (takes the ball to the enemy base line) wins. This mode is very fun to play, it also promotes teamplay in both offensive and defensive as the ball carrier needs support and lines of pass so that he can throw the ball to a team mate (ground target) as the defending team tried to stop them and regain the ball. The traps add to strategy

- Conquer / Deffend / also exists in SWTOR):
There would be a keep or a tower, round 1, one team defends and the other attacks, the objective is to conquer this keep or tower. with 2 different “entry” points and 3 different layers to break in and once inside an orb to destroy. On round two the ream switch positions. The team that menages to destroy the orb faster wins. if non manages to destroy it, the one with more points (kills / siege destroyed) wins.

Note: I’m not a huge fan of SWTOR but i have to admit that the pvp there was by far the most fun I’ve seen

nicknamenick.2437:

There are still other broken classes with OP builds (if played well ofc)

Stopped reading right there! you know what!? you are right!! Some professions can be OP if PLAYED WELL. Warriors can simply roll their faces on the keyboard and get free kills. that’s were the problem is!

No one minds having good competitive Warriors to play with and against, thing is atm every single warrior is competitive, even the ones that played the profession for 5 min, skill is not a requirement to play warrior atm and that is simply lame…

Also lame is coming to the forum whining about other ppl whining. -_-’

ppl will never be happy, if they had changed it a different way, lowering the dmg, increacing the init cost or both ppl would cry and say “why not make it strip only one boon and leave the dmg and init cost as it was?!”

anyway, i think the change was good. from all available choices i think they did the best one.

as for pistol… i think that the auto-attack should have been the one buffed, not body shot nerfed…

Basilisk venom is a 1 sec stun on a 45sec CD not 1,5 sec.

It was my build for a very long time except i had the trait that gives 2 init on stealth.

unfortunately it is not viable for sPvP. every one can outlast the thief….

No repay so far… is this intended?! is the trait suppose to work only on pistol MH?
If so pls fix the tooltip…

DamFiNo.2817:

The ‘Skill recharging’ message makes the main chat unusable. Actually it would potentially make ANY of the chats unusable. Please remove it or at least make it optional. Thank you.

^^^ this

The traid said it has a 60% chance to cripple on a pistol crit. thing is it only works on pistol in main hand. non of the off hand pistol skills triggers the trait. i have tested it extensively and not a single proc.

Also it looks like it has an internal cooldown to it (about 10 sec) but it’s not mentioned on the tooltip.

Imagi.4561:

Volrath.1473:

Zacchary.6183:

I only use it for the endurance refill.

so in your opinion its fine if they stealth nerf our profession as long as it doesn’t affect you particularly?!

That’s a good attitude!

He didn’t say it was fine, just that the precision value doesn’t affect him. I also use it for endurance refill.

Also, it might have just been a tooltip change. Is there a different in your actual precision value/crit chance?

Good point. I just did the math and it is actually giving the 180 precision.
It is in fact a tooltip mistake.

Zacchary.6183:

I only use it for the endurance refill.

so in your opinion its fine if they stealth nerf our profession as long as it doesn’t affect you particularly?!

That’s a good attitude!

the other signets appear to be as they were.

Old Signet of Agility:
Passive: Grants increased precision.
Active: Refill endurance and cure a condition for each nearby ally.

• Passive: 180 Precision
• Active radius: 600

New Signet of Agility:
Passive: Grants increased precision.
Active: Refill endurance and cure a condition for each nearby ally.

• Precision increased by 10 plus one per level. = 90 Precision (previously 180)
• Conditions removed: 1
• Endurance gained: 100
• Number of targets: 5
• Active radius: 360 (previously 600)

This was not mentioned on the patch notes and it is a huge nerf!

I haven’t checked the rest of the signets yet…

1. Balance
2. Rewards
3. Game Mods / Making SPvP more atractive

Tks Chris!

oZii.2864:

Body shot is decent if you have the initiative for it. It is a ok change as I at least think about using it depending on what I am fighting if that was the intent then they succeeded. I seen some other thiefs using it that I have fought also on my other classes. So the skill is getting used by p/d thieves.

imo it is a waste of initiative. 4 init for a 1sec imob and 0.5sec after cast. that give you 0.5 sec to do whatever you can wile the target is still immobilized…

The only use I see in it would be to use Caltrops and spam #2 to keep the target in there but it can easily be countered with Stability, teleport, dodge and you would end up with zero initiative. cant see it synergise with any thing else wile solo playing.

with a team then you can use it to make it easier for your team to nuke the focused target but again you would end up with no initiative…

SoLeciTO.3490:

hahahah epic fail

^ this!! xD

there is a cap to critical chance and it is at 70% it doesnt matter if you have more that 70%….

fumcheg.1936:

Volrath.1473:

P/D thieves use CnD to enter stealth and Sneak attack to stack up bleeds, and ocasional Head shot to interrupt something important

what?

xD you got me there i posted late at night and was thinking about a million things

tks for pointing out that mistake.

also, wile you ar at it, make CnD not use initiative if it misses.

Incurafy.6329:

There are already like 3 topics on this change. :P

Sorry I didn’t see them for some reason…

If a dev wants to delete this thread feel free to do so.

I ONLY use BV for the Lysa runes, removes all condi and gives all boons for 5 sec every 45sec. with other elites have way longer CD.

retaliation…

Not to mention that if you wanna play competitively you need to be in the capture point circle to cap/uncap/avoid cap if you stay at a distance your are useless to your team.

Lux.7169:

infantrydiv.1620:

ronpierce.2760:

I’m a warrior, Whirl is a mother effer. Didn’t have to stand in it.

Yeah…times are tough for warrior right now… with things like berserker’s stance and perma stun and 1k health per second regen

eye roll

This

This this

Archaon.6245:

Seriously pve heroes stomping test dummies in hom for achievement instead of going pvp….line of being totally retrd have been crossed and as far as i know is probably bug using too since test dummies are not supposed to give you “kills”

Am i wrong? xD

Not to mention they are all rank 50+

Dikeido.8436:

Volrath.1473:

With all those systems and tools, how come you cant come up with an actual decent “Balance” Patch!? o.O’

Ok for you and anyone else that think like this [Or that Anet have Magic button that fix everything but they just don’t want to push it], WOW its been around for 7+ years . Do you see WOW able to “Balance” that game out?

At least wow ALWAYS had multiple viable builds for every class.
I played Mage, Druid and Rogue in all aspects of the game and I played it for 6 long years since beta. Mage and Druid were PvP Rank 13 (Max was 14 at the time).
It was possible to spec deep into any of the 3 talent trees and be effective.
In this game, atm only Warriors have more than 1 competitive spec. Every one else is FORCED to play the same old spec to have a chance of being effective in PvP.

As a Thief I have been playing S/D for over 6 month, although i try different specs and weapon sets I ALWAYS end up going back to S/D 10/30/0/30/0 or 0/30/0/25/15 in both cases the play style is exactly the same.

You can never compare Blizzard with A-net. Although I don’t like them I have to admit that they are very competent at what they do unlike other companies.

Why would you wanna play a thief?! o.O’

anyway… there is a sticky with the most common builds for pvp and pve.