Guild Wars 2

uglydan.1638:

A dash of sunshine. In this case, it’s like saying I have herpes, but hey, at least it’s not Gonorrhea.

I think it’s more like “hey you have cancer, but it’s treatable.” It could go either way, but we can only hope for the best.

Raiden.1375:

Well D/P thieves have access to an AoE blind, or are you saying D/D thieves specifically are in the wrong place if they are in a large group fight?

I’m just saying that group fights aren’t the dagger thief’s forte. At least in my mind, D/x thieves are assassins. D/p thief does have access to AoE blind, but it comes at a pretty steep price, and it costs even more if they want to use it to enter stealth. I guess the issue I am stuck on is trying to have D/d be successfully differentiated from D/p, because for the longest time, it was my impression that D/d was just a worse version. The way I see it, giving CnD the AoE blind is just trying to make it similar to D/p, which I don’t think should be the focus.

The blind application when landing an attack from stealth is to help cover the revealed duration which is when thieves are the most vulnerable. The AoE blind on stealth portion of Cloaked in Shadow would essentially be an upgrade to the single target blind from Cloak and Dagger, but it doesn’t only help Cloak and Dagger either.

I just don’t really see anyone else taking this trait, I guess. That might be due to my own ignorance though.

About the stealth portion of Cloak and Dagger not being blockable/evadable (the damage and blind portion is still avoidable): Do you guys think that would be too strong even though attacks from stealth that are blocked or evaded would now remove your current stealth(not reveal), and considering that D/P thieves (and X/P with the new Daredevil Bounding Dodger trait) can access stealth just as easily.

I just find this mechanic to be a bit strange. Still required to be in melee range, but not required to land a hit. It might just be simpler to have CnD grant stealth and AoE blind regardless of whether or not anyone is in melee range and remove the damage portion. Flavor-wise I think this is OK because this would be like pulling a cloak over yourself, and having the dagger (backstab) ready, rather than stabbing first and then pulling the cloak. Balance wise, this might also be ok because D/d is not as good at chasing as D/p, and it is trading the ability to fight out of stealth for more power using stealth. The problem I see with my idea is that it may end up being too strong for S/d which will be able to access stealth easily AND maintain good presence outside of stealth.

Matthrian.6035:

You have to understand. Anet prides themselves in their PvP as well as balance. For the most part they do a wonderful job. But here, you have a class which has run rampant and been at the top of the game for any competitive PvP for the past 3 years. If you want your game to grow as well as interest to grow you need to fix the imbalance.

3 years is definitely an exaggeration. Here is some proof

Even prior to June 23rd, I don’t think they were absurdly over the top, only slightly. If anything it’s been these past 3 months that have everyone edge.

Besides, it was already confirmed by Josh that ele is being worked on.

Matthrian.6035:

They’re still insane. Getting 20+ might stacks within a couple of seconds is just stupid. Ele’s have needed a nerf for the longest time and Anet refuses to do anything about them.

I don’t think this is fair. What gets worked on is decided by management, not the game developers. If the heads of the company thinks that HoT will get the most money, then that is what they will tell the game developers to work on, not balance changes. Screaming about it isn’t going to change anything.

Aidal.4901:

Not sure what the point of this is, but this has been my experience with stealth/reveal.

Reveal unless focused down on (More than one player) is problematic, but for that you can simply disengage, Infiltrators arrow X2+Shadowstep gets you 3,000~ units away from anyone in about one second, during this time, you can escape and think about a new plan of approach or just outright escape, by this time you’re out of range of any potental reveal and can cloak freely.

Reveal in the one on one since is debatable, the only contest there is a ranger and engi, that can prevent cloak before it’s established, but to do that you have to be visable first. Entering cloak outside of the 1,200 range still allows you to steal-stab. And if you’re busted, again Shadowstep is a great escape utility.

It sounds like this discussion is based entirely around using cloaks and disregarding the other utility skills a thief has, which if you do that it does seem to come up short.

Well in both cases, you are assuming that we have enough initiative and Shadowstep off cooldown. Let’s not forget that it takes 9 initative for the meta D/p thief to enter stealth. That is more than half of our initiative. We will definitely not be able to I-arrow twice afterwards if we are revealed. As for Shadowstep, I would hardly call it fair for a short cooldown skill to force the use of a very long and important cooldown.

If that isn’t enough, we will apply reveal to ourselves anyway if we attack you from stealth.

On a different note…what if full speed omni-directional movement was also added to the DD’s repertoire? Maybe it’s a bit gimmicky, but it would let us feel pretty mobile…also it will help ranged playstyles by being able to strafe better.

Nike.2631:

I think the Daredevil has room to get stronger (and maybe even should) but that if we get those gains its gonna be inside the existing framework and not come by granting all three current GMs as a toggle that can be changed mid-match AND forcing them to come up with three more GW-magnitude traits, code them, and test them before a very real, very public deadline of Oct 23.

I think this is pretty reasonable. I just wish that you could’ve gotten this across without all of the condescension and self-righteousness…at least that was the tone I was getting from your posts. It would have led to much more meaningful discussion than yelling at each other about what the devs do or whatever.

@Nike

So…I’m not really sure what you’re trying to accomplish with your argument. Are you suggesting that Daredevil is strong enough as it is, or do you acknowledge that, in its present state, it isn’t strong enough.

As I’m sure you’re aware, if you think the former, then no one here will take you seriously. Otherwise, tell us how you would improve the Daredevil spec if not by making the core mechanic stand out more.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

else what’s the point of this discussion?

Clearly to laugh at our plights.

Edit: /s

Nike.2631:

It comes down to if you’re only “getting 1 more dodge per encounter”… you’re doing it wrong. How the heck are you positioning yourself so badly you need 3 dodges every 10 second (because by Grenth if you aren’t rocking Sigils of Energy on a dodge-monger….) and how can you possibly be doing any decent DPS with more than 20% of your time locked up in dodge-state?

Quit playing jackrabbit and position properly! There’s no PvE content in the game that should be taxing your dodges that hard and if its a player up in your grill like that POP SOME STEALTH. Nobody needs a dodge every 3.333 seconds like a metronome ticking and that means you are going to get times when you’re recharging your endurance pool above 100 which nobody else can do. Bamm! Every time that happens you are getting more than one extra dodge per encounter.

DD isn’t about stealth though so I think that is a moot point. In fact, the entire theme fo DD is to be diving around in combat (like a jackrabbit). Now, I’m not proposing we be reckless, but we should be rewarded for playing aggressively, which means being in the fight. If our elite mechanic is going to be around this extra dodge, then I think we need to be able to use it a lot more often than we’re currently able to.

I think you just need to breathe some fresh air…maybe go outside or play another game? Getting angry and going on tilt in game isn’t going to help you much more and probably only makes the issue worse. Also, judging from a recent post, the matchmaking issue is something they are actively working to improve.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

alchemyst.2165:

Everyone crying about our new “elite spec mechanic” being “locked into a gm trait” is really starting to become annoying. Technically our new mechanic is being able to dodge three times, which is actually pretty big, considering that is something very unique to daredevil. (I wouldn’t be against a regen increase as some suggested, but still.) Our GM’s augment them, which is exactly what a trait should do. Seems like you guys just can’t be pleased.

You’re missing the point.

Taking Necro for example, their Shroud is augmented without taking any GM trait — plus they have access to 5 new weapon skills.

Same goes with the rest of the professions except Thief (not counting Ranger).

Augmenting the endurance bar is crumbs compare to the augmentations the other professions will receive.

This is kind of hard to talk about for me because I agree with both of you haha. I think the half way then is that our Endurance bar just isn’t augmented enough.

So…maybe I’m being a bit hypocritical here, but I don’t think arguing about each other is really helpful as feedback. My impression is that as the discussion about certain opinions became more developed, the arguments became more about destroying the credibility of the poster, rather than the validity of the argument itself. There’s just no need for such hostility towards each other…we’re all just trying to make things better for us.

Kocoff.7582:

What Azmodey said makes sense, he didn not explain it properly.

If your reveal is usually from 4 to 6 seconds, then Stealth should be buffed from 5 to 10 seconds. If the mechanism you propose is a simple subtraction of stealth time – reveal time, then stealthed needs to be reasonable buffed for this to work.

Most of our stealth is 4 seconds when traited, if we get hit by a 6 seconds reveal, then end up with -2 secs of Reveals, making things unbalanced again.

the math needs to be redone and made reasonable, because then we will end up with 3 secs of stealth – 4 seconds of reveals, and it won’t achieve the intended goal.

SO what he meant was, Either really increase the duration of stealth ( I say at least 5 seconds) OR completely limit all Reveals by 2 seconds maximum.

I hope it’s clear now.

Ok I think that is pretty reasonable. The numbers are always easy to tweak, but the main point was just to present an idea for making reveal less harsh on us.

Raiden.1375:

Cloak and Dagger only has a single target blind, so this would upgrade it to an aoe blind. This trait also synergizes well with Hidden Thief and Hide in Shadows. It blinds nearby foes when you land an attack from stealth as well now, which is arguably even more useful than the blind on stealth.

The reason I don’t like Cloaked in Shadow is because I don’t think that thief should really need an AoE blind…if a thief is finding himself in a large group fight and he is using D/x, I think he is really in the wrong place.
I do agree that applying blind when attacking from stealth will be helpful where thief is strongest though…so I’m really wondering if it would be balanced to just make this entire trait baseline for CnD itself, since the trait is essentially an upgrade as you said yourself.

Phil.8901:

If you take the other 2 dodges, the dodge damage will reveal you if there is someone is in the range.

So no, gm traits are all bad options with SR.

Btw if you want to drop SR, thief needs a completely new source of defense to survive.

The old broken s/d with the old feline grace needed SR to survive.

Every meta thief build in the past and in the present needed SR.

Without SR, thief is pure garbage.

DD, with acrobatics too, can’t survive with only dodges without SR.

And we have also bandit’ s defense with more 5 s on cd.

I think what you’ve said highlights a pretty big issue about thief. What should happen, then, is to have thief as a whole be reworked to be able to survive without SR…not build more on it.

Edit: this is going to take a bit of time though, but I think it is still more important for Daredevil to be self-defining as something different from the core thief…and that means not relying on SR to survive.

I think the greatest difficulty with this is getting it to work well with the game engine. The way I envision this working is by having the reveal work client-side…and I really don’t think that is a good idea as it opens the game up to hacking, etc.

Conceptually, it’s a pretty cool idea though.

azmodey.4576:

I repeat myself I know.

If there are skills that reveal stealth I think the stealth thief skills should be unlimited in duration not 2, 3 or 4 or at least tripled.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean with this…you want thief to be able to apply an unlimited amount of stealth to himself…per skill? That’s…absurd to say the least.

On the other hand, removing the limit on the amount of stealth that we can apply (at least to ourselves) also seems like dangerous territory. People already complain about perma-stealth thieves so I don’t really think I would want to throw more fuel onto the flame.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Every line has its own design philosophy. The reasons daredevil is created the way it is, is not the same as why critical strikes or any other line is created. Not every line is going to have damage, survivability, and utility. Those three are extremely broad representations of daredevil only. Crit strikes is not necessarily going to be built with damage, survivability, and utility sub-lines in mind.

That’s the whole point.

I don’t agree that Crit Strikes can’t be built with the design philosophy in mind. They would just have to be implemented in a creative way…for example

on crit – gain health (defense)
on crit – regain initiative (utility)
on crit – apply harmful condition (offense)

Kageseigi.2150:

Full Banker

Heehee…

Anyway…I think that this isn’t really so much our fault, as much as those tanky builds being too strong right now. I did argue before that we had significant pull in the evolution of the celestial meta, but I would consider our inability to fight them to be a different issue…one which was not caused by us, but rather by celestial classes being too strong in general.

Raiden.1375:

-Signet of Malice should have its active heal reworked similarly to Warrior’s Healing Signet. It wouldn’t have to give resistance, but something interesting that would make you want to activate it more in certain situations would be nice. I’m not exactly sure what this skill needs, but I am open to suggestions.

Maybe have this regain 1 initiative per hit for some seconds after activation?

Raiden.1375:

-(5) Cloak and Dagger will now apply 3 seconds of blind instead of vulnerability. Only the blind and damage portion of this skill can be nullified(blinded, blocked, evaded etc).
As long as you are in range of your target and not currently revealed, you will gain the stealth. This makes sense because the stealth portion isn’t a direct attack on the target (similar to applying a boon to yourself), and it will help make D/D more on par with D/P.

I’m not sure this is really reasonable, partly because I think there may be some implementation issues, but also because automatically gaining stealth would be very powerful for builds that don’t need it…for example S/D. I think just giving it the blind is probably good enough…maybe make it small aoe around you…kind of like waving a cloak around?

Raiden.1375:

-(Major|Master) Bountiful Theft: Rip one boon from the target you Steal from and grant it to yourself and nearby allies. Steal an extra boon whenever you steal a boon from a foe. This will still make Steal steal 2 boons total from your foe. This will also effect Larcenous Strike so it will also steal 2 boons if you take this trait instead of 1. No longer grants vigor baseline.

I really really like this one. This would definitely enhance sword gameplay, but I think a big issue might be it’s competition not being good enough.

Raiden.1375:

-(Major|Grandmaster) Sleight of Hand: Daze the foe you Steal from for 1 second. Bewildering Ambush is also combined into this trait since Sleight of Hand no longer further reduces the recharge on Steal.
-(Major|Grandmaster) Improvisation: Moved from Deadly Arts to Trickery since it seems to fit here better. Still allows you to use stolen items twice. In addition, Stealing will now grant you an Improvisation buff for 10 seconds that reduces the cool down of the next utility skill you use by 50% instead of randomly recharging an entire skill category. This works similar to Engineer’s Kinetic Battery trait.
This new functionality will allow for more skillful play instead of being so random.
-(Major|Grandmaster) Quick Pockets: Reduces weapon swapping to a 5 second cool down and restores 1 initiative when you weapon swap while in combat.
This should be good competition for Improvisation and also seems like it should be a possible feature for thieves. Thieves don’t benefit as much as other classes from swapping weapons in combat because both weapon sets we use share the same initiative pool, but the initiative gain on weapon swap should help with that a little, and having more flexibility on when you can swap weapons is nice to have.

Wow, this tier is pretty crazy…so much good stuff to be had…I think this would be an excellent example of what the GM tier should look like.

Raiden.1375:

-(Major|Adept) Dagger Training: 100% chance for dagger attacks to poison enemies for 3 seconds (5s ICD). Number of stacks applied is based on the number of daggers you have equipped. D/D will apply 2 stacks of poison, P/D and D/P will only apply 1 stack of poison.

Personally, I don’t find just having poison in this trait to be strong enough to see any usage. My suggestion is to take your idea of having benefits based on the number of daggers equipped, and to make it reduce initiative cost of dagger skills by 1 per dagger. This may be a bit strong for this tier though, so I think it could be switched with Revealed Training, which I think is just generally uninteresting.

Raiden.1375:

-(Major|Grandmaster) (New Trait) Debilitating Weakness: When you apply Weakness to a foe you also apply 3 seconds of Slow to them (20s ICD).

Compared to the other two Grandmaster traits, I feel that this just absolutely destroys the competition. I do really like this though…it is quite powerful.

Raiden.1375:

-(Minor|Adept) Opportunist: An old thief trait brought back and moved to this tier instead. 50% chance to restore 1 initiative on a critical hit (10s ICD).

I think that since it has such a long ICD, it should be ok to have it have 100% chance to restore initiative.

Raiden.1375:

-(Minor|Grandmaster) Ferocious Strikes: Deal 20% extra damage to foes whose health is above 50%.
Currently only deals 10% extra damage to foes whose health is above 50%. This trait is sort the opposite of Executioner, focusing on doing more damage to foes above 50% health instead of below. I don’t see why Executioner should deal more damage over the same size health threshold and also not be limited to only critical hits.

Keep in mind that this is a minor trait…taking Executioner is a conscious choice of the player, while Ferocious Strikes is granted simply by speccing into CS. I’m not disagreeing with your proposed change…I just want to make sure you are aware that this is granted as baseline for CS.

Raiden.1375:

-(Major|Adept) Shadow’s Embrace: Remove a condition from yourself when you enter stealth and when you land an attack from stealth.

I actually think this might be too weak as it is since it hinges on you being able to land that attack to gain full benefit. It also becomes progressively weaker as you stay in stealth longer, though I think this your intention. So anyway…I think this would be better if it just removed a condition when leaving stealth. That way, you can clear conditions faster if you attack quickly (more rewarding), but are still granted the condition clear by staying safe, though you have to suffer through them for a bit longer (less rewarding). Since it also does not reward camping stealth, I think that would be a balanced change.

On a side note, I think it is an excellent idea to start culling passive playstyles from our repertoire. This should extend to the other professions as well, in my opinion

Raiden.1375:

-(Major|Grandmaster) Cloaked in Shadow: Blind nearby foes when you enter stealth and when you are land an attack from stealth.

-(Major|Grandmaster) Shadow’s Rejuvenation: Recover 1 initiative and 450 health when you enter stealth and when you are land an attack from stealth.

I think since you’ve already added blind to CnD, this would be redundant. D/p has plenty of blind already and will definitely opt for Shadow’s Rejuvenation instead. Same will happen with D/d now that CnD has the blind portion of the skill. I think this could be a good time to bring back Hidden Assassin. It can use the same mechanic of gaining effects on enter and exit stealth, and I think it offers a nice offensive counterpart to Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

As for Shadow’s Rejuvenation itself, I think it would be better (and still balanced) as a enter/exit mechanic, compared to the enter/attack mechanic that you have going, since you’re trading the reward for more time in stealth.

Raiden.1375:

-(Major|Grandmaster) Don’t Stop: Fine as is, but the converted immobilize to cripple should be the same duration as the immobilize was instead of always applying 4 seconds of cripple.

I think maybe moving the stunbreak component of Hard to Catch here would make it more viable.

Whew…that was a lot to read, and these were all excellent ideas.

Paulie.6215:

Love it. But means Anet will never do it.

I’m just waiting for the outright deletion of the thief class at this point.

Aww don’t be like that…I know that the times have been pretty hard recently, but if we don’t keep trying, nothing will change.

Zero Day.2594:

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

My signature in blood…wish I could have gotten it to display in the text box…
http://i.imgur.com/tUaabar.png

I wish my blood would write so diligently and in gradient.

Patented blood pen…also known as Microsoft Word

What if instead of having Reveal just completely nullify stealth, it just reduced the duration of the stealth?

For example, suppose I just finished standing in Shadow Refuge, and I have, let’s say, 15 seconds of stealth. Then a Scrapper comes along and decides to use Detection Pulse. Instead of just pulling us out of stealth and slapping a 6s reveal on us, it just applies the 6s reveal on us which cancels out 6s of our stealth. This will mean that it has meaningful use during combat against stealth, but does not entirely screw over the person using stealth just because it exists.

Likewise, if you have reveal on you, applying stealth to yourself while reveal is active cancels out that much time on reveal, so if you ABSOLUTELY need to stealth, you can still get it, though at a steeper cost.

This also has the added benefit of making stealth better for thief than for other classes…though by how much is not really for me to say.

I don’t like this idea because it would encourage attacks against a person instead of attacks against his/her argument. There isn’t any meaningful discussion to be had if everyone discredits each other because of low leaderboard standings or rank, etc.

Phil.8901:

I appreciate your work Karl but i think We need to consider the real thief and DD status.

New dodges are a nightmare for the synergy with SR, New dodges are GM traits and basically are nerfing the SR usability. Honestly GM traits that nerf one of the best thief skills + Anti-reveal meta on HoT will be really too much.

Basically i don’t think you’re buffing the open field mobility in the right way.

Our open field mobility is super linked to SB#5. That’s all.

You need to give us an alternative to SB#5 if you want to buff open field mobility.

Vault is a good candidate (at least staff would make sense) if it could work on vertical axis with and evade frame + more range (ofc less damage). This + a dodge with 450 range could be interesting like mobility, considering they are GM traits that nerf SR usability.

But in the current state a dash like this is only a pure nerf. The other alternative is making damage during the dodge, so the synergy with SR is always bad.

Pls consider this point, Thief future scenario is already really bad, we really don’t need auto-nerf.

I kind of want to talk about these points, since they are good points, but I also think they are missing the idea behind DD a little.

When DD was first presented to us, it was supposed to be a fighter, brawler, etc. type of spec. To achieve that, DD gives up a lot of its stealth (if not all), and trades that for evasion and sustain. With that in mind, I think that it is good that this spec discourages us from trying to also take stealth. The issue here is that maybe we aren’t being rewarded enough for giving up such a huge part of our survivability.

This then brings me to my next point…I think that a lot of issues with DD come from issues that aren’t addressed in the core thief. The biggest offender in my opinion is shortbow. Thematically, the thief/rogue archetype should be mobile and fast. The problem here is that almost ALL of our speed and mobility in the core thief class is placed in shortbow. Trying to get around without the shortbow is pretty miserable. This is why I’d like to see the mobility offered by shortbow taken down a notch, and redistributed across the rest of the class. In other words, I think the thief should be mobile regardless of what weapons he/she takes. If done well, this should open up a lot of diversity, since thieves wanting maximum mobility can still take shortbow and move across the map quickly but sacrifice some power for it, and thieves who want to fight are still reasonably fast, though not as fast as with their mobility tools, and can contend with opponents they engage on.

So…I was just thinking about an idea for Shadow Refuge…what if it was tuned to be used more aggressively, rather than for escape?

The idea is something like this:
Shadow Refuge reduces duration of revealed by 1s each second. Grants 1s of stealth each second. Grant 1s protection per second (so we don’t just get aoe’d to death instantly). Lasts 10s. 45 second CD.

In my mind, this gives the feel of diving in and out of stealth and assaulting enemies from where they least expect…I think it would be a pretty powerful area denial skill against single targets, but maybe it’s too strong?

Edit: apparently if I abbreviate 45 seconds it becomes kitten

My signature in blood…wish I could have gotten it to display in the text box…
http://i.imgur.com/tUaabar.png

I guess I’ll apply…

IGN: Lily Volpe
Thief Type: Scholar. I can spend all day theorizing, but in the end if I can’t play then what is it all worth?
Server: Jade Quarry
Experience: I have never had as much fun with any other class than with thief. I started playing near release as guardian for about a year…then after a roughly 1 year hiatus from the game, I came back to play elementalist. About 6 months in, I decided that I should try thief. Best decision I ever made…well except maybe the June 23rd patch making me reconsider my choice a bit but hey we all have our moments of doubt right?

Edit: I suppose I should add that I am predominantly a PvP player.

I like this a lot…but I can’t agree that it’s a simple task of implementing this. To be completely honest, I think that this is what the devs envisioned as a dash as well but were unable to implement it this way for technical reasons. It looks like to me that the functionality of dodges just doesn’t mesh well with new animations…for that to be reworked, it may take a lot longer than we would like. But this is just speculation on my part…I don’t really know since I’m not a game dev hehe

Silverbolt.2301:

Wow, I went from being impressed to sorely disappointed between your last updates and these.

It’s almost like you took everyone’s amazing suggestions, and then ignored every single one of them, except the ones that would be simply fixing what’s already plainly broken…the evasion skills.

I hope you realize that, at its current iteration, this e-spec will fail at an epic proportion, compared to the other classes’ (I’m sure druid will be better too at this point). In no shape or form will this e-spec be able to overshadow the current weapon sets. I don’t need to repeat why, because numerous people (myself included) have already talked about this numerous times.

What is wrong with fixing broken skills? Making the class feel fluid and fun to play is going to be more important than it’s performance in a game mode. Once everything is working properly, then they can focus on looking at our changes, but for now I think they have the right priorities. Besides, there is nothing “simple” about fixing animations and functionality. That stuff is so much more than just a number that needs tweaking.

Mosharn.8357:

Since there are more anti stealth stuff going around, I think thieves should get more evade and block type of builds. Theres already a lot of evade stuff now with the daredevil line but I think they should add some counterplay spec where you rely on blocking and countering enemy attacks when timed right.

Bandit’s Defense is basically what you’re looking for then, right? I haven’t played Daredevil yet, but this skill seems incredibly strong. It’s a VERY short cd stunbreak (maybe the shortest in the game), as well as a block and decent potential cc.

kaikalii.4198:

I know a lot of people think that the acro line is garbage now, but I’ve been using it in its new state for a while, and I really like it.

It does suck that feline grace is gone, but we do have some traits that I think make up for it, namely Hard to Catch and Don’t stop.

Hard to Catch is very unique. Not only is it a stunbreak, but it’s also instant. You will still be interrupted, but you will not actually be stunned for any noticeable amount of time. Don’t Stop essentially makes you immune to immobilize. These two traits have saved my life so many times. No, you can’t dodge quite as much as you used to be able to, but those CCs that you would have dodged are nullified automatically. I honestly do not think that the line is any worse than it was before.

The problem is that those traits are crutches. It’s fine that these traits exist to lower the skill floor, but what about the skill ceiling? The problem with acro thief before was that they could spam dodge their way through a fight (allegedly) and come out on top. In my experience, unintelligent spam dodging really only delayed your demise, but that’s only personal experience. My issue is that there is not enough reward for intelligent play in acro. The only viable options are ones that help you if you mess up. There are not enough tools present to prevent you from messing up. It’s like the difference between preventative measures and damage control. Damage control is ok…but we would be happier if those things never happened in the first place, especially since, as thieves, we don’t have a lot of time to spare for damage control.

Edit: oh and also…some recent developments were made with Daredevil that basically nullify the usefulness of Don’t Stop haha

ronpierce.2760:

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

ronpierce.2760:

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

Zero Day.2594:

:|

Trait: Thief’s Rage
Function: Every attack applies 2-3 stacks of 15 seconds burning. Every targetable skill also causes 2-3 stacks of 15 seconds burning. (No ICDs)

(Stick this into w/e trait line and however many times across different trait lines as you wish.)

That would be my suggestion for an OP buff/gift.

Hmm…I think they should just passively stack burn on surrounding targets in a 900 unit radius. 3 stacks of 15 seconds per second sounds about right.

And Eles STILL only have to dodge roll or swap to water and you get killed soon after. GG, nice try! L2NotSquish

Well, since the burn application itself doesn’t do damage, it shouldn’t reveal us from stealth right? Ele’s don’t HAVE reveal so all we need to do is perma stealth around them and they are POWERLESS TO STOP US HAAAHAHAHAHAHAAA…right?

“Tempest still felt a bit weak, and because they deal with lightning, which lights up things, Tempests in air pulse 2 seconds of reveal, which stacks, every 1 second in a 600 radius. Also, because they control both fire and water, it didn’t make sense for burning to affect them.”

“Also blinding ashes ICD removed.”

ANetpls

ronpierce.2760:

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

Zero Day.2594:

:|

Trait: Thief’s Rage
Function: Every attack applies 2-3 stacks of 15 seconds burning. Every targetable skill also causes 2-3 stacks of 15 seconds burning. (No ICDs)

(Stick this into w/e trait line and however many times across different trait lines as you wish.)

That would be my suggestion for an OP buff/gift.

Hmm…I think they should just passively stack burn on surrounding targets in a 900 unit radius. 3 stacks of 15 seconds per second sounds about right.

And Eles STILL only have to dodge roll or swap to water and you get killed soon after. GG, nice try! L2NotSquish

Well, since the burn application itself doesn’t do damage, it shouldn’t reveal us from stealth right? Ele’s don’t HAVE reveal so all we need to do is perma stealth around them and they are POWERLESS TO STOP US HAAAHAHAHAHAHAAA…right?

Zero Day.2594:

:|

Trait: Thief’s Rage
Function: Every attack applies 2-3 stacks of 15 seconds burning. Every targetable skill also causes 2-3 stacks of 15 seconds burning. (No ICDs)

(Stick this into w/e trait line and however many times across different trait lines as you wish.)

That would be my suggestion for an OP buff/gift.

Hmm…I think they should just passively stack burn on surrounding targets in a 900 unit radius. 3 stacks of 15 seconds per second sounds about right.

Kageseigi.2150:

I believe each of those quotes holds two very important points, but I feel the first ends with something not completely accurate.

First, I would say that the ability to choose the terms of engagement and disengagement (and even avoidance) is the heart and soul of what it means to be a Thief. To lose that is to lose the very essence of the profession. The capability is sometimes due to stealth, other times mobility. It really depends on the weapon set/build. But it is most important to not lose that.

Secondly, it’s true the Thief can’t hold its own in a fight right now. It’s glass, but it’s not a cannon. And I believe that’s where the inaccuracy comes. I think the Thief has already given up too much fighting capability for the mobility it has. Even if it was overpowered at one time, the pendulum has shifted to the other extreme. So I don’t believe that is a need to give anything up for at least a decent upgrade to sustainability.

I understand it’s no fun when you feel helpless because you cannot see your opponent, or even if you can see him, but you just cannot get close enough to hit him. But it’s also no fun at all to know that even if you build to full damage potential and get the drop on your foe, scoring hit after hit, you’re most likely not going to break though his defenses enough before he recovers or gets one solid blow in that will leave you on the ground. And if you don’t build for full damage, your defenses still won’t be strong enough to survive a battle of attrition.

By no means am I a great Thief. But I’ve attempted to run without stealth. I’ve tried full power builds, I’ve tried full crit builds, I’ve tried more balanced builds. I’ve run with a utility bar with 4 stunbreaks and 4 condi-removals. On glass builds, I don’t need that many stunbreaks because I’ll already be dead after one stun or maybe two. On more sustainable builds, I don’t have enough condi-removal to be able to maintain pressure, especially against certain builds.

When my own stuns affect me, when I catch on fire because I’m being blocked, when I take damage because my attack actually hit like it was supposed to, when I catch someone off guard and nearly down them, then they pop an invulnerability and barrage me with no fear for what seems like an eternity… well, that’s no fun either. As a Thief, I am not rewarded enough when I do attack successfully, I am not rewarded enough when I am successful at evading, and I am even punished when I do apply pressure like I’m supposed to! Who thought of that?

Honestly, the trait that best describes the style a Thief should live by is “No Quarter.” Yet when we attack aggressively, we are punished for it, and we don’t have the means to survive. A melee class with little health and toughness, but not enough punch. We are like a glass pitcher fighting a stone. It doesn’t matter if the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, it’s going to be bad for the pitcher.

What can fix the Thief? I don’t really know. But I do know that it needs buffs, not nerfs. Even if its the ability to take a few more hits without a decrease in our damage output. Playing a game like Ninja Gaiden can teach you that just one or two hits can mean the difference between success and game over. But I think one issue is that people try to balance the Thief like they would every other profession. But it is unique, so it doesn’t work well. It needs to have its own rules. Some things may seem crazy in theory (both good and bad), but they may work out perfectly.

You have good points, and I agree that thief needs buffs and not nerfs. I am completely fine with being wrong about this. My foremost goal is to get good discussion going and just get SOMETHING to change in our favor. But anyway, let me explain my reasoning behind this. I sent this in a pm to T Raw earlier (and I’m pretty sure he will have some nice disagreements for me when he gets to it) but consider the thief’s ability to kill.

Assume that it is something like 40/60. 40% of the time, thief will get the kill. Great. But what about the 60% of the time? Only two things can happen if we don’t kill someone. We run away, or we die. Considering our current ability to run away, I would say that of the 60% of the time we don’t kill, 40% of it is a disengage (usually on our part), and 20% is our death. Now put these numbers side by side…40 kill/40 disengage/20 death. Using these rough numbers, you can see that we are far more likely to kill than to die. Of course our current numbers are more like 10/70/20 or something around that, but the point is that we have far more escapability than we should if we are to be capable killers. This is why I think that our escapability (thereby our mobility) needs to be scaled down.

As for what can fix thief…I don’t know either. This is why I want to discuss these topics. I admit that I am pretty stubborn, and it’s going to take a lot more than simply telling me I’m wrong to convince me that I am.

Also another thing I want to address…other classes being OP right now shouldn’t mean that we get balanced around them. I get that everyone is strong against us (or in general) right now, but to maintain fun gameplay, I think that the power level can’t be too high.

PS: As a personal request…I feel like we are kind of derailing this thread a bit, so if anyone would like to continue this discussion, please either pm me or make a new thread. Thanks!

swinsk.6410:

I don’t see any specific examples of how a s/d stops necros from building LF…

Necros just has to hit spec armor whole he’s taking damage and presto LF…

Besides s/d sucks due to now… Pretty much a non viable build since the nerf to acro line and several sword skill nerfs.

I don’t play any necro, and I don’t often fight them, but a quick visit to the wiki can show a lot.

A list of their lifeforce generating skills:
Staff 1 (all staff skills if traited for)
Axe 2
Scepter 3
Dagger 1c
Signet of Undeath
Spectral Armor
Spectral Grasp
Spectral Walk
Lich Form

If you take the meta Celestial Necro build, you will see that the only life force generators are Dagger 1c, the Staff skills, Spectral Armor and Lich Form. Again, I don’t really play necro, but I’m pretty sure necros don’t use Lich form for life force. Spectral Armor does generate a lot of life force, but that looks like it is more effective against fast multi-hit attackers rather than slower harder hitting attacks. It is also on a 50s cooldown, so it’s not something they can just use on a whim.

The rest of their life force comes from their weapon skills. My guess is that staff is the big generator, since all of the skills generate life force. A bit of contention, though. From what it looks like to me, the marks grant life force regardless of whether or not they are evaded…meaning in terms of life force generation against marks, s/d does not have an advantage over d/p.

S/d will, however, get an advantage against avoiding the auto-attacks that staff throws at them. I’m not sure how much of an advantage it is, but if we are comparing s/d with d/p, then s/d does indeed have the upper hand in this engagement, at least in terms of preventing the necro from generating lifeforce.

ronpierce.2760:

I will say, though, I actually do not think giving Thief burn is the answer. if anything, you guys should be praised for being the only class in the game without access to it. Burning needs toned down and other conditions actually need to be brought up a bit. Not sure how common knowledge it is, but Burning is roughly the second easiest condition to stack (Bleeding being #1) and deals damage roughly 5:1 or 4:1 (depending on condition damage levels) to other conditions. That’s HUGE and definitely needs some re-balancing. This would help a lot in many aspects of the game, though.
…
Potent Poison: It’s a bit boring. As the hybrid tree, I think it would be interesting to make it something like “Fast Acting Poisons (a better name?): Inflicting Poison also deals initial damage (probably around 250 base per stack applied, scaling with power and can critically hit), and increases poison duration by 20%.” (Reason: It lends to that idea of a hybrid condition/power tree, and gives a unique involvement with poisons that benefits both stat focuses. I’m not sure I’d want to keep the damage of poison boost because, ideally, they will bump the damage of poison across the board, and I’m not sure it would be necessary. Overall, I think this could make for a fun trait for both pvp and pve when properly tuned. Adds some AoE damage to Shortbow#4, too.)

This is fair. I do agree that burning is too strong right now, but I don’t see us being the only class without burning to be something that is praiseworthy. That said, since I think of poison to be a more debilitating condition, it would be cool to have more debilitating conditions added on by poison…such as, say, chill…something like applying poison applies chill…similar to Lotus Poison.

I do like the idea of having Poison deal it’s damage faster…but I think having a hybrid of power and condition damage is not going to work very well since we will not be able to survive long enough to deal substantial damage. Since poison should be a longer lasting, lower damage condition, what if the trait “Fast Acting Venom” reduced the duration of your poisons by, say, 20%, but boosted the damage by 50%? Probably the numbers need some work, but the idea is the same. I guess this would also mean that our poison applying skills will need some reworking, but everything we’re suggesting is a pretty rigorous rework anyway.

ronpierce.2760:

I always thought it’d be cool if they left DA as this somewhat ‘hybrid’ playstyle and had traits work more closely to their poison application. And a quick note, because initiative costs are so numerically low, 20% doesn’t work out very well. I’ll address an alternative below.

Some rough suggestions being:
Dagger Training: All dagger attacks have a 25% chance to apply 3 seconds of poison. Initiative generates naturally 10% faster while wielding a dagger (main or offhand).

So the reason I don’t like this (initiative regen with dagger) is because 10% more initiative means 1 ini every 10 seconds. We have a Signet that does this, and maybe it’s just me, but it feels VERY insignificant. I do agree that trying to cut the ini cost by % is a bit weird due to smaller numbers, so what if dagger training just reduced ini costs by a flat 1 ini per dagger skill?

ronpierce.2760:

Deadly Trapper: I’m honestly just not sure. Might is in the right place, being a power/condition hybrid spec. I think the issue with the trait lies MORE in the traps themselves, but I could be wrong. Also not too sure about throwable traps. It could work, but they seem to want to move away from that direction, so it might be unreasonable to suggest.

Yea…I’m honestly not sure what to do with traps (I don’t use them). The goal is to make it fun for the thief to use them, but not be terribly annoying for opponents to deal with. I think an issue right now is that the traps themselves don’t do enough, so I agree that the traps themselves need work.

ronpierce.2760:

Panic Strike: Here’s what I’d do, but again, it might be questionable to some thieves. I would rename it “Paralysis Poisons”. Using the method of Chronomancer’s critical hits, I’d make it "Every 5th poison you apply (not necessarily to a single target, a stacking self-buff in the same manner), cripples the target for 3 seconds. Poisoning a target immobilizes them for 1.5 seconds (20 second ICD, no stack requirement). (Reason: This allows the trait to be used more through the fight, but a little less crazy immobilize all at once. It also prevents the trait from being wasted on warriors with Berserker stance up because it will not effectively be poisoning. At a basic level, this means your first stealth on entry would immobilize the target, giving a good opening set up, and the cripple adds to condition coverage and keeps a target from escaping. Overall, its just more thematic and fun and requires more skill to use. Depending on how much harder this makes the trait to use it could possibly even stay at 2 seconds, numbers obviously would be in flux. Let me know what you think.

I actually do like this. However, a problem I see is that it appears like there is synergy between this and Dagger Training, but in reality, we are losing control of when to apply our immobilize when we take the two together. It’s partly to do with the fact that each hit with the dagger only has a chance to apply poison.

I’ve got some things that need to be done atm so I’ll just leave this here for now. Thanks!

T raw.4658:

Looks like i’ma have to spell it out for you and just address your entire stance with this once post.

Team Fighting Ability was the sacrifice that thieves made for their mobility. Not 1v1 capabilities.

Well I’d argue that we just gave up Fighting Ability in general for our mobility…or at least it was taken from us.

T raw.4658:

So when you are considering whatever it is you are considering go back to that statement.

Now we will inevitably get the response of “Give up mobility for Team Fighting Ability” and I will remind you that this is a thief….You Can’t Give It Team Fighting Ability.

It’s the way the class is made and functions at a base level. There are zero boons, invulns, blocks, group heals, water fields, good condi removal, etc. The undisputed fact is the thief class is the absolute squishiest class in this game. The dev time required to completely remake and balance the thief from the ground up isn’t happening at this point in time in a game’s life. If this was alpha circa 2012 yeah i’d say go for it….but its 2015 3yrs after release.

Yes so even the new touted Daredevil spec will fail to give thieves sustain or group fight ability due to the way a thief is built at the base level, but we are fine with that. We signed on to thief knowing this and willingly accepted it. Thieves figured out ways to function with in a group setting utilizing their special skill sets, but here we are horribly UP with only Shortbow 5 keeping us meta. Now I read people want to nerf Inf Arrow……lol

OK…yea…you’re right about the team fight capability…but if thief was able to get around the map and still be able to fight people evenly 1v1, don’t you think that just having a thief around is extremely oppressive for the opponents? I almost want to say that this was how we were before…and that is why we are where we are now. You want to go back, and I get that. It was fun for us to play back then…but try to understand, it’s not a lot of fun for other players. When I think about it, I feel like Thief was a HUGE contributor to the evolution of the Celestial meta that we see today. Why? Because we completely destroyed any competing DPS class. You are asking the devs to put us back in that position…and I don’t agree with that.

As far as dev time goes, all we can do is wait. All I will do is do my best to remain positive. There is no use in making ourselves feel worse than we already do.

Kocoff.7582:

That is my point actually, I don’t really see anything to change for Deadly Arts, but there is always room for improvement in terms of synergy, and since you did good job with those suggest I wanted pick on your mind even more lol.

But your concept of balance is definitely in par with mine. We definitely don’t want to push, because let’s face it, we want to have fun as much as our enemies.

Hi, so I’m not the guy but I have a few ideas about Deadly Arts. As with most other traitlines we have, there just isn’t anything better to take than what we currently do…so some competition will do well.

Dagger Training: add Reduce Initiative costs of Dagger skills by 20%. All classes have some traits that reduce weapon cooldowns…this would be our version I guess…maybe a bit too strong? (also useful in PvE)

Trapper’s Respite: (Drop trap at beginning of heal) Triggered Traps heal you for [some amount].

Deadly Trapper: add Traps can be placed at range. I think all trap skills should have a trait like this.

Revealed Training: I know this has PvE applications, but it’s honestly not that great of a trait…not sure how to rework it though…might just need to be replaced with something more interesting.

Potent Poison → Chemical Burns: Applying Poison applies Burning (x seconds). Seems thematic enough for me…gives thief access to a powerful condition, and numbers can be tweaked accordingly.

So these are my ideas. I tried to keep them more or less toned down…thoughts?

T raw.4658:

Besides countering shatter mesmers in pvp group fights who did they counter?

Thieves had such excellent group fighting skills too right?

Oh thats right they weren’t a complete roll over class so people’s lack of personal skill clouded their vision

OK guys cmon let’s not get hissy with each other. I think you both have valid points on the matter, but as far as “balance” goes, thieves were in a relatively decent place…at least that’s what I thought. I mean the theme of the class discourages teamfighting, other than diving in to finish low health targets so I think his point has merit. Likewise, not having good teamfighting ability was also an issue, which was the one we have been waiting for 3 years to be fixed, so your point also has merit.

Hi, maybe some of you have seen me around on other topics. Maybe you guys don’t like me or my suggestions, but I am trying to keep a positive outlook on things.

Amante.8109:

Oh man… if you think it’s bad here, it’s even worse on the PvP forum. Tread lightly!

Well…it’s done now…I’m sorry if I have just unleashed the biggest kittenstorm this forum has ever seen.

So…I know there is not a lot of friendliness between classes with everyone calling each other OP and whatnot, but on the thief forums recently, there were a few excellent suggestions made by a non-thief class to help us out. Maybe we don’t all agree with his suggestions (and maybe he is wrong), but I think he clearly put a lot of thought into the ideas he presented us with.

I am hoping that he is the not the last non-thief that we get well thought-out suggestions from. I am asking any of those willing to either discuss here or on the thief forums about your thoughts on the class, and what changes might be done for the betterment of PvP, or the game as a whole.

Thanks ^^

ronpierce.2760:

Much of what I said actually benefits thief staying power…. Almost all of it, actually. I did very little that would make you much easier to kill. Unless you mean trading some of the easy “get out of jail, free” cards for better combat presence. Yeah, I prefer thieves become a better combat class and have to think and plan their escapes a bit better. I’m not going to cover that idea up. Camping stealth is a design I absolutely do not support and in fact, I think I would play thief more often with a style similar to the suggested, which benefits using stealth efficiently rather than just to reset a fight you screwed up on.

I just want to say thank you…I think you’re one of the few (if not the first) non-thieves to give us something more than “thief needs nerf.” I wish that more of us here would appreciate that.

Jana.6831:

Can you guys somehow take this to another forum as you don’t seem to have the slightest idea about thieves yet think you know how the class should be nerfed so you guys can kill it faster.

I’m open to suggestion. Tell us what you think then.

Amante.8109:

It’d help if there were more than literally one non-Thief player suggesting constructive and well-thought changes. And believe me, it’s just that one—I’ve been keeping track

Should I ask on the PvP forums…I’m somewhat afraid to do so…but that would probably get feedback haha

Amante.8109:

This doesn’t mean to get abusive, inflammatory, or mired in negativity, because there’s plenty of that to go around on this subforum already.

I think that this is the most important part. We need to push for change, but we need more than people complaining about how bad they think ANet is at balance to get those suggestions taken seriously.

I should also note that when structuring your proposed changes, it would do good to explain your reasoning behind your suggestions. If we can understand the reasoning behind what you are looking for, maybe we can build on it or point out flaws with those suggestions.

Now my personal wish…is to not be so dismissive of the suggestions made by non-thieves. I know it sounds bad since most of the time they shout for nerfs and such…and maybe they don’t understand certain things about our class, but what I think all of us need to understand is that what we want for ourselves isn’t necessarily fun for other classes to fight against. Of course they should offer us more than simply “thief op,” but if they give us suggestions on class changes, I don’t think we should be so quick to dismiss their claims, even if we think they are wrong.

Zero Day.2594:

Too much work, not enough paid hours, job’s stressful plus you got kids screaming you suck on the forums – I’ll just leave a note saying do it tomorrow (3 years later… the note is covered by another note saying the same thing) and do what makes me happy today, I guess, or maybe go help the gem store people out/HoT sales/marketing team.

I think that’s core philosophy.

---

While I haven’t played DrD, let alone the game for god knows how long now (end of LS 2?), reading the DrD traits did make it seem like it was the most coherent line out of all the other thief lines…

In all honesty guys, everyone that’s been rattled lately, and everyone that’s been pouring out suggestion after suggestion, I highly doubt that we will see core changes for BWE3 or even before/at release of HoT. The earliest possible balance patch would be a couple (3-4) months after the release of HoT, and even then I think it will be geared more around elite specs. – ( This is just speculation of course, but it would make sense, since the elite specs, given enough actual play time will show their unbalances ) – And you can also tell that nothing this “grand” will happen because they would have likely announced it as “The Big Core Rework”, followed by a couple of weeks of PoI (or w/e the new stuff is called) with of course a couple breaks/holidays in between, and around next year summer would be the earliest that they actually implement it.

It’s of course admiring how much you guys care about the game/class… If that makes you feel any better.

We can’t lose hope. I also think that we should not be turning away suggestions we don’t like. It doesn’t paint a good picture of us as the Thief community. As you say, everyone is pretty rattled…no one sees any positive change on the horizon…but we can’t give up…regardless of whether or not the devs come to read our suggestions, if we stop giving them our feedback, there will be NO chance of change. It’s probably a good idea to also stop talking about how bad we think they are at their jobs. It doesn’t help. We all know it doesn’t…so stop it.