Guild Wars 2

Your opinion is informed. Your fears are real in regards to this topic.

You are also not alone.

People are complaining because warriors are the only profession able to maintain high damage and mobility while still remaining fairly tanky. They also have easy access to stunlocking and if they choose to go a little further into their tankier traitlines, they can not only maintain a decent amount of damage but support as well.

Most other professions have a hard time being effective in one area because another area of combat usually suffers.

But Allie, do you guys play them enough? That is what this thread is really asking.

I spent my entire year+ playing this game on my thief and from what I have seen is that there is a large disconnect from what thieves need and what the devs think they need.

Now I don’t want to come off as flaming, but it’s the truth.

During the Dec. 10th the changes that were planned decreased the maximum amount if Initiative per second a thief can manage by exactly 1/3. I tried to offer alternatives because I knew that this would have pushed veteran thieves further away from the profession, which that’s what it did. I knew the update would hurt most of the builds while the only one to feel any buff was pistol/dagger, which it did.

So naturally I knew that the update that was planned wasn’t going to be constructive for the profession as a whole. And I even explained why. Half of the reason why thieves took the initiative regen traits is because the rest of them are lackluster.

It kills that profession’s build diversity when you have several overpowered traits for a very weak utility set (venoms) or you have alot of filler traits (every +5% damage traits) that do not provide any noticeable change to a build’s performance. They simply do not help in any way which is why nobody will take them.

We’ve seen one of the devs play a lvl 20+ thief in pve and a few devs constantly die in a fractal, but any experience beyond that is debatable.

EDIT: Seriously, I could have written a mutli-page guide for playing a thief filled with every bit of information on every trait, traitline, skill and weaponset with enough details to give players a general understanding of them all. And they too would see how much fixing the profession needs.

TChalla.7146:

Forum Mesmer: These are the posters that say the same thing over and over again, basically cloning their original comments excessively, usually prefaced by “My point still stands.” (I’m guilty as charged on this one.)

CONFIRMED: Sanduskel mains a mesmer.

Mesmers were not designed to be walking lootbags.

I would be set if DB scaled better with with and inflicted longer bleeds. Otherwise I can make due with what I have now.

Substance E.4852:

Zacchary.6183:

Muchacho.2390:

thefantasticg.3984:

It is painfully obvious no dev, period, mains a Ranger… That’s why we will remained handicapped with the band-aided pet.

They also dont play necro and i am not sure if they play ele (i feel they dont).

You can say the same for thief. The Dec. 10th update discussion for thieves is evidence of that.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/278436-dec-10th-thief-changes/

They really believed that thieves were going heavy on the initiative gain and regen traits “because initiative regeneration was too slow and was causing players to either take traits to supplement it, or have their effectivness suffer”.

Now, that is partly true. The real reason why thieves never take anything else is because around 80% of thief traits are either situational or plain crappy. And I listed them, giving each of those traits a reason why they sucked. I even gave my general consensus about the thief traitlines and their problems. That comment even got some support. But nobody listened….

I could’ve also listed why certain weapon sets were prefered over others, but I had to confront the troll who wasted an entire page of comments saying the same thing he was saying for the few months prior. If you read through a few pages on that topic you’ll know who I am talking about.

The whole discussion was shot.

Good god, if the dev’s seriously think initiative regen is too slow then we are in even bigger trouble than I thought.

Yes… well they decreased the maximum amount of initiative-per-second a thief can have by 1/3 with that update. So you can stop worrying about it.

And tbh, idc if the profession gets nerfed as long as arenanet actually provides compensation for it. Like the whole profession gets a nerf in one area but then a bunch of the traits I listed are more appealing (i.e. 10% instead of 5% increases, utilities that don’t rely on all associated traits to not be a waste of slot space, trait placement that makes sense and benefits builds that use it, etc.).

Arenanet can start by looking at my list and testing it for themselves. :I

Muchacho.2390:

thefantasticg.3984:

It is painfully obvious no dev, period, mains a Ranger… That’s why we will remained handicapped with the band-aided pet.

They also dont play necro and i am not sure if they play ele (i feel they dont).

You can say the same for thief. The Dec. 10th update discussion for thieves is evidence of that.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/278436-dec-10th-thief-changes/

They really believed that thieves were going heavy on the initiative gain and regen traits “because initiative regeneration was too slow and was causing players to either take traits to supplement it, or have their effectivness suffer”.

Now, that is partly true. The real reason why thieves never take anything else is because around 80% of thief traits are either situational or plain crappy. And I listed them, giving each of those traits a reason why they sucked. I even gave my general consensus about the thief traitlines and their problems. That comment even got some support. But nobody listened….

I could’ve also listed why certain weapon sets were prefered over others, but I had to confront the troll who wasted an entire page of comments saying the same thing he was saying for the few months prior. If you read through a few pages on that topic you’ll know who I am talking about.

The whole discussion was shot.

thiefcro bump

Julie Yann.5379:

I think they play pretty much all classes to some degree so in a way it is true. They don’t all main warriors though.

Question is: “Do they play them all enough?”

Because from what I have seen, they havn’t. What they should be doing is assigning 1 balance dev to 1 profession for every profession. Then those devs collaborate with players who main the corresponding profession to help develop balance patches. Then the devs collaborate with each other to tweak the patches so they don’t hurt any of the professions.

Golem—is—the—optimal—choice—for—a—new—playable—race.

One—hour—flood—control—is—now—in—effect— for—Troll-o-Tron Ver. 6183.

Initiating—standby—mode.

sminkiottone.6972:

Only skilled players play thief because is the most difficult and underpowered class… yes yes XD

Apparently alot of unskilled players are playing thief as well because players are starting to realize that Stealth > baddies.

sminkiottone.6972:

Zacchary.6183:

Apparently alot of unskilled players are playing thief as well because players are starting to realize that Stealth > baddies.

also good player with spammable stealth vs good player without stealth always wins the one with stealth.

Made a mistake ? no problem, go stealth and try again untill you get it right.

PROTIP: d/d conditions > any stealth build because:

1.) The heavy AOE bleeds will melt the thief.
2.) d/d is thief’s best chase setup.
3.) The heavy cripple d/d conditions provides aid (and aids) in chasing.
4.) Works without stealth.

If we had “Remove 1 condition on dodge.” nobody would be kittening about thief condition cleanse.

Oh! Oh! I got a few!!

Warrior Elite
“RAAAAAAAGH!!!” (5s)
Shout
Explode the heads of enemies by yelling at them.
Damage: 50,000
Heal: 50,000
Range: 10,000
Gain Invincibility for 1h.

Warrior Elite
“PFFFFFFBBBT!!!” (5s)
Shout
Pull out horn and blow in it.
Range: 50,000
All enemies in range are put in a defeated state. Defeated enemies gain all conditions for 24h.

Warrior Elite
Kill Signet (5s)
Signet
Passive: Enemies are dead.
Active: Enemies are dead.
Range: 5,000

Thief Elite
Lol balance! (1s)
Activates automatically.
Sacrifices all initiative and then teleports you next to nearest hostile enemy with Revealed (24h), Immobilize (20s) and Daze (20s).

Elementalist Elite
Die (5s)
Put yourself in a Defeated state. I mean it’s going to happen anyway amirite?

Ranger Elite
AI! How does it work?! (20s)
Put yourself in a downed state. Your pet gains Blamed (Your pet is at fault for you being in the Downed state).

Necro Elite
Petting Zoo (60s)
Summon
Summon 15 random fleshy, bony, bloody or organy minions each surrounded by their own separate cages.
All nearby enemies’ children will throw a tantrum that inflicts every condition to everyone within range for 15 seconds if they do not get in line at the kiosk and pay the entrance fee. Life is then siphoned from nearby enemies’ wallet. Enemies gain 5 stacks of Minion Feed.
Tantrum Range: 1,000
Entrance Fee: 50 silver
Wallet Siphon: 15 silver

Mesmer Elite
Framerate Break (120s)
Glamour
Summon hundreds of clones that immediately burst into MASSSIVE sparkly purple butterfly explosions until enemy client times out.
Range: 2,000
Explosion Range: 5,000
Clones Summoned: Alot

Guardian Elite
Grant ALL the boons! _o/ (5s)
Meditation
Grant ALL the boons _o/ to everyone in range.
Number of boons: ALL
Range: 2,000

Engineer Elite
Thingamajig (5s)
Turret
Drop a Thingamajig at target location.
Thingamajig causes confusion to everyone in range (including engineer and allies) because nobody know wth it actually does.

In all seriousness I would rather them fix what they already have before making new ones.

hihey.1075:

Because 99% of the people playing this game are really bad.

This is [/thread] people.

I am not expecting anything more than what they’ve been doing for the past year+.

Unless they start providing the updates the playerbase kept asking for I don’t see myself coming back.

Competent players are OP.

Everything has a counter. It’s called experience.

Of course! I totally forgot that utilities and elites don’t use initiative when interrupted! How silly of me.

But in all seriousness your first post talked about initiative and spamming skills in general:

urdriel.8496:

what is really OP is no CD skills, and a initiative mechanic that let thieves spam skills.

Second, initiative is used before the skill fires off. If it does it any other time, its a bug.

Nice try but you are still wrong.

urdriel.8496:

Yes , experience counts,.

And??

Was your thief friend who said that my opinion is wrong because im not a game designer……

BTW, no point to talk about thieves in a thief forum, still playing with the OP mechanic, i have a thief and it is really fun to play.

It is apparent that you don’t even read people’s posts. Let me spell it out for you….

You are wrong. Initiative does not need a counter because:

1.) It provides a universal cooldown for the thief, meaning that when it’s gone the thief can only autoattack until enough initiative regenerates. The thief cannot simply switch weapons and continue attacking.

2.) There are a few skills that are purely meant to do damage. Most of them can’t outdps the autoattacks anyways. The rest are either expensive to use or utility-heavy and weak. But not only that, thieves need the utility of those skills to maintain access to stealth and evades which are the main forms of survivability thieves have.

But if you still think the spam needs a counter, then all I have to say is one word:

Interrupts.

urdriel.8496:

Zacchary.6183:

urdriel.8496:

Sry, but if in a MMORPG a mechanic doesnt have counter is broken, something broken is unbalanced, something unbalanced is bad designed.

You are not a game designer though.

can I only have a opinion about a game if i’m a game designer?
can I only have a opinion about a NBA player if i’m a NBA Player?
can I only have a opinion about a TV Serie if i’m an actor or a director?

No but you do need experience for your opinion to carry any weight.

For example, I am a former thief main who spent over a year theorycrafting the thief profession. Because of it, I have WAY more knowledge and experience with the profession and I use it to make points in regards to discussions on the thief. Now you can argue with me about the profession all you want, but in the end I know more and know what I am talking about. And people will have to listen to me sooner or later lest they trudge through the same irritation I went through playing as one.

As for game designers, I am not one but I have done alot of homework on it, enough for me to point out that programmering and designing are two completely different fields. A designer does not have to program their designs however to help with budget companies usually combine both into one. But in their natural state, a designer could write a notebook worth of design and give it to you to program it into a videogame.

Main point is: experience counts.

urdriel.8496:

Sry, but if in a MMORPG a mechanic doesnt have counter is broken, something broken is unbalanced, something unbalanced is bad designed.

You are not a game designer though. The initiative system for thief is not broken or poorly designed. I can list what is though and why:

1.) Nerfing Thieves into a corner. The way arenanet has been nerfing this profession I can only assume that they want everyone playing d/d. And I say this because out of all of the weaponsets they messed with, d/d remains touched on the least. It is still about as viable as it was months ago.

2.) Useless utilities, overpowered related traits. Venoms by themselves are not worth slotting. However, once you equip 5 out of 7 of their related traits they become viable. Thief signets are underwhelming with at least half of their effects situational or useless, but if you equip both of their traits they go from instacast signets into initiative and might stack banks.

3.) Trait and utility fillers. What I mean by “fillers” are those skills and traits that are only there to maintain a sense of variety. Doesn’t matter if the trait or skill is worth using so long as the profession has that sense. Things like Combined Training, Power Shots and skills like Needle Trap are so weak that you hinder yourself by taking them. Seriously, what is 5% when its for weapons that don’t put out THAT much damage? About 100-200 points of damage. Maybe 500 if you are zerking. Not very significant. In fact, combined training boosts the damage of dual skills just slightly above the autoattacks. Which reminds me…

4.) Autoattacks are best dps. And this isn’t exclusive to thieves either. What is the point of having straight damaging skills when you are better off letting AA do it’s thing?

goldenwing.9654:

The reason thief gets called “OP” is they’re NOT fun to play against.
There’s a reason Thief is the most hated profession in WvWvW/sPvP by a long shot, I’ve even seen people /dancing on thief corpses ect.

That’s funny because as a former thief main I know one thief build that can take melt other thieves like it’s nothing. Something I like to call d/d conditions and the best part about it is…

Maybe if players followed suit they could learn how thieves work and perhaps have a much easier time playing? Cuz I havn’t been beaten by another thief yet.

Thiefcro ohpee.

If a thief soaks up damage like a dry sponge it’s also going to hit like a dry sponge.

/thread

MonMalthias, you are a hero for pointing out mistakes Arenanet has made in essay.

However the problem isn’t that nobody is trying to light a fire under their butt to get them fixing the issues that exist in this game. The problem is Arenanet’s refusal to listen to the players that have way more experience in certain parts of their game than the devs themselves have. And surprisingly there are PLENTY of those kind of players.

For example, The CDI on the thief forums was basically there so the devs could claim that they discussed with that part of the community by use of a technicality. But that became apparent only when they later returned with a set of patch notes reworded to look like the discussion had an impact when nothing actually changed.

By the end of that CDI, nothing changed and the profession as a whole got nerfed (again). Venom builds aside from venomshare still were overall worthless. Buggy skills were still buggy. Not only that, the entire CDI thread was derailed by one person who posted a whole page worth of comments, all of them basically saying:

I am glad anet is removing permastealth. As a thief, I don’t use permastealth.

So with the thief CDI completely ruined, the part of the veteran thief community that did not reroll or quit GW2 began driving for the deletion or overnerfing of the thief profession so as to make a statement to Arenanet.

It sounds stupid to alot of people, but then again there are others who feel thief is the least boring profession of them all. And it kills those players to know that arenanet simply does not care. The way that the thief has been handled by anet for the past year has increasingly left it’s playerbase wondering if the developers just plain hate the thief profession. Because if that was completely true, the thief community would be assured that the final destination for the thief profession was to be a one-trick pony (zerk backstab).

That itself felt like death to the more passionate thief players. Hense, most of the veteran thief community quit or rerolled all because the staff’s responses combined with their actions within the CDI showed the thief community that the developers never cared nor will they ever care.

The thief forums are now a complete joke and the profession is still riddled with problems of its own.

There is no such thing as spammable elites OP.

Also lyssa runes have a CD.

Terravos.4059:

No….Unless that trait randomly gets you killed in a fight.

The Worst Trait in the game still remains Last Refuge

Actually its Hard to Catch since it (tends to) teleports you into a zerg while you remain stunned and there is nothing you can do about it.

At least with Last Refuge, you have leeway to make it work for you.

No thieves should get rifles.

Omnitek.3876:

When you gonna 1v1 me bro?

Zacchary.6183:

Those guys look like they sucked…. like massive pistol/pistol type of suck.

The average players WvW skill is… sub fry cook at a fast food joint. EotM skill level is “I failed to cook a hot pocket in the microwave because it took more than 3 button presses to start it”.

I saw a player with a “burn a glass of ice water” level of skill once.

Imagi.4561:

Burnfall.9573:

“Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth”.

Maugetarr.6823:

Zero Day.2594:

Pretty sure you all are blind.
It is in fact good changes!

Instead of nerfing multiple skills in one patch, only one is being nerfed.
Instead of a giant nerf, it’s a small nerf.
Instead of nerfing crucial skills/traits, it’s a random skill that’s not really going to have much of an impact… (o.O did anyone see it coming? are we really going to QQ about a little poison duration reduction… compared to other nerfs we had…)

I don’t know guys, but I think it some good changes… Lol, it’s almost like you guys are expecting buffs to be handed out to us…

It’s funny in a sad way, but I have to agree with this. How long have we been asking for no changes (positive or negative). At least we know we’re getting close to not being nerfable anymore when it’s choking gas that’s getting nerfed.

Tldr: agreed it could be way worse than this.

Regardless if we are unnerfable, people will continue to complain about thieves and arenanet will continue to nerf them BCUZ STELFF!!!

Those guys look like they sucked…. like massive pistol/pistol type of suck.

Form.8741:

…No, give us back all the evade and damage we deserve instead. Problem = solved.

Actually that is just going to add to the QQ train’s kittening power. I do think this is a good idea since a thief has very little access to defensive boons.

I would also like to suggest a few other traits based on this concept as well as offer a few other concepts aswell…

Shadow Guard 30s cooldown (replaces Hard-to-Live)
If you are Stunned while stealthed, you gain Revealed (3s) instead.

> The purpose of this is to increase survivability by offering a stunbreak to thieves while revealing them to sorta balance the passive stunbreak. I also want to bring to light the possibility of Reveal-to-Aid type traits.

Caught 15s CD
Revealed replenishes 20% Endurance.

Shadow Salve 10s CD
Remove the most severe condition on you. (Meaning longest duration, highest stacked or both.)

Just a few off the top of my head.

Karolis.4261:

Fihed last refuge description for you
“Gain Protection on revealed " and thats it.

What about “Stealth when health reaches 25%. Gain Protection (5s) on revealed.”?

Azarhiel.4579:

A small scale city can be built in 5-10 years…

Gathering materials during one year is enough to rebuild a wooden city, the reconstruction may take 2-3 years for a small town

Well, LA is made of boats and large bricks clumped together into building-like things. They’ll just need to go to orr and salvage all the boats there.

LA would be fixed in 2-4 weeks afterwards. :I

Zelyhn.8069:

“an expansion worth of content” ?

I’ve heard that before …

Yeah, that sounds familiar.

hihey.1075:

When you mentioned “Great Trait” and “Hard to catch” in the same sentence, everything crumbled apart. Nice attempt though

I skimmed through it and saw warrior. Then I thought, “this is a well written troll”.

Same effect.

Mobile Lootbag

It is popular with canthan thieves.

Cynz.9437:

really good players will still kill bad players

I concur.

[Sooooo….. where is all the new content I’ve heard so much about? :I]

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zacchary.6183:

Revealed completely turns them into mobile lootbags so I propose that thieves get protection on revealed to balance this.

I laughed. If you’re dying when not in stealth you’re obviously running something that has no vitality or toughness. I run apothecary, and a guildie runs Soldier’s. We don’t die out of stealth, and if we’re stealthing, we’re running from battle. Actually wear something that keeps your toughness and/or vitality up, you’ll die less.

A thief doesn’t invest in toughness or vitality because it does not help, unless of course they want to hit like a dry sponge.

Another thing, revealed nullifies a whole traitline and kills thief survivability so giving them a small cushion like kitten protection on revealed would balance all those hard counters.

Revealed completely turns them into mobile lootbags so I propose that thieves get protection on revealed to balance this.

What: Thif soup.
Why: BECAUSE THIF SO OP!!! GET IT?!?! THIF SOOP?

You probably don’t. :c

Crawford.4135:

I think you’re honestly the smartest poster I have seen on these forums. I could not have said what you said any better. This is why I quit the game. ArenaNet can have their CPU bound game along with their horrible thought process behind the game.

I have never seen a game rise up in hype before release and fall faster than its own hype. GW2 is a joke.

Do people really believe we are that stupid? I hope not. Its offensive enough when every bit of knowledge you worked for is considered trash by the populace, but to think someone believes that I could be bull****ed with flashy wording? No. I am not a total idiot. Sorry.

How bout we work on other professions before we make the most viable profession in the game even more viable?

But teef op… wtf players

Sasajoe.1509:

Zacchary i know you are playing thief & you try to save your skin but the ranger’s pets are the buggiest thing there is & the forums support this fact also + having in mind your statement & obvious lack of knowledge of ranger profession I assume you have never ever really played a ranger.

If you had you would have probably known that when you press the f2 ability for example your pet starts automatically run towards your target & since the brown bear has cleanse on a 600 radius it is not reliable at all.

Also ranger pets can almost never hit moving targets because of the root animation for the worthless AI. But I assume you didn’t know that either.

Also if you choose a bear pet you sacrifice some of the usefulness of the cc pets like dogs & spiders (which both aren’t really that astounding by themselves too but have a use or two)

& last but not least thieves having the ability to stealth whenever they want is only a plus for them in most cases – wvw* (leaving structured out of the quiestion)

I think it would be great balance for starters if devs moved empathic bond to a 10 pts trait & also gave more stealth to rangers.

Since they don’t think the current state of stealth is broken there should be no problem for that to happen.

You are right I have not played Ranger for very long, however I understand the concepts required to play pet-based classes on a competitive basis in WoW and the concepts have not changed in GW2.

However buggy a pet is or how hard it is to handle your pet, it’s performance in combat is entirely dependent on the player because it’s a team effort 100% of the time. Those kinds of classes are forced into team play. And as a team, there must be coordination or the performance of the team suffers.

For example:
> If I need my pet by me right now I make it run to me while I run to it.
> If my pet is suffering while my health is high, I try to draw fire and kite while my pet recovers. While that’s happening my pet goes from tank to dps.
> If my pet has a hard time hitting someone, I root them or force them into pet’s attack range through kiting.

Get it?

As for thieves, Shadow’s Embrace and Shadow Return are the most viable condition removals a thief has. Every other trait is either weak, situational or only removes certain damaging conditions and most of them are on long cooldowns with the only exception being Signet of Agility and that only cures 1.

The low hp does not help either. If the conditions are too lengthy or not removed fast enough, the thief will melt. Hell, cripple and immobilize spam alone can kill a thief let alone a few stacks of bleed. So in order to maintain a competitive condition removal thieves need Shadow’s Embrace which is, like I said, one of our best forms of condition removal. Nerf it to hell and thieves will start using s/x which is currently sub-par.

Sasajoe.1509:

Bear is very unreliable & slow cast, signet of renewal has a 10 sec interval effect on passive – active has HUGE cd & also kills the pet, healing spring cd is also too high & the healing is very little & also rangers don’t have a long stealth breaks in order to deny reapplications of conditions.

.5 seconds isn’t slow and like every pet-based class in existence the pet is only as good as the player controlling it. And no, pets are not bugged. I’ve been a Hunter main on WoW for over a year and those pets were buggy, but I got passed the problems anyway because I knew how my pet handled. I didn’t treat them like meat bags/extra dps like most of the rangers I see on gw2. Same on here.

Empathic Bond is on average 1 condition every 1.3 seconds (vs 1 every 3) however you don’t have to remain camouflaged to get the benefit. You just have to keep your pet alive which is entirely your fault if they die. Not only that, it isn’t even your best removal. And if your rebuttal is pets suck, then you are wrong. See the first paragraph.

Healing spring is a water field. If damaging conditions are killing you THAT quickly you can do blast and leap finishers for 1.3k hp. At least you guys have a water field on hand whereas thieves have to borrow. And btw, thieves’ best heal Hide in Shadows is also on a 30CD and only cures select conditions.

Stealth doesn’t deny anything. You get hit with anything in stealth and you eat the entire attack. The only thing stealth denies is autotargeting which you shouldn’t even be using anyways.

Sasajoe.1509:

Zacchary.6183:

Hitman.5829:

Very simple and to the point:

Shadow embrace need to be put in grand master trait. If the thief want to have a survival build then let them spend 30 points in shadow arts.

Simple, crystal clear.

End of story

No. Shadow’s Embrace is one of thieve’s best condition removal and it’s barely on par with other professions. I am not even going to ask what you plan to give thieves to compensate for such a big nerf because I know you will answer with “moar skill-based play”.

You’de have wasted less time and done more by just saying “delete thief”.

EDIT: btw if thief condition removal is OP then why are you not on a thief abusing this in the condition meta. Lemme guess… pride.

well I’d respond to that, some people don’t enjoy easy-mode while playing. & back to the thing :

Why should I with my ranger spend 30 points in WS trait line to get empathic bond which isn’t even close to how good Shadow’s Embrace is ?
Why shouldn’t rangers have equally good trait ?

Because you guys have Bear, Signet of Renewal and Healing Spring to compensate whereas thieves have Shadow Return and Signet of Agility.

Oh and Empathetic bond lasts forever whereas Shadow’s Embrace requires the thief to remain stealthed.