Guild Wars 2

Locuz.2651:

No…plz stop the powercreep. Other classes need to be toned down…dont buff thieves. -_-

Core thief has needed a buff since before HoT was released.
That being said though, alot of OP’s idea’s are far too much.

Thieves need their defensive traitlines buffed (Acro is a dumpster fire and SA is not far off) and spec diversity increased by taking some of the functionality in mug, bountiful theft, and the steal reduction of SOH and making it baseline (as well as all of preparedness).

Those are the main problems. There’s also a lot of little things (CS being wholly inferior to DA, adept and master tiers of DA being locked into mug and panic strike, etc etc)

My prediction is people will post ridiculous things on the forums.

Some will try and predict how OP thief will be, some will blindly insist that thief will be OP, and still others will claim that thieves are already OP, and any buffs to thief will cause the explosive demise of this game. There’s alot of minor variations between the 3, but those are the primary themes.

If Anet ‘s developers are lucky, the designers will cave to forum pressure and cancel everything before the designers make any changes. If they aren’t, we’ll probably see some lackluster changes that don’t really fix any problems for thieves, but will allow Anet to wash their hands of the problem for another year.

Thief
Guys, we get it. You’ve got no sustain. You’re at a disadvantage nearly every fight because while everyone else is healing/blocking/immune/dropping conditions, you’re just twiddling your thumbs. Half of your traitlines are worthless (including BOTH your defensive lines), and you’ve had a shortbow cemented into your second weaponset slot since the games inception; But there’s good news. We’re upping your melee AA damage! Isn’t that great? Oh, also, we’re going to finally put out the Dumpster fire we turned Acrobatics into half a year ago. Kind of. Maybe. You trust us, right?

Tengu.5267:

“Thief

In the recent history of thieves, their damage roles have been largely burst-based due to initiative, while their autoattacks do little to sustain their DPS. In addition, initiative often needs to be used defensively, which can take a toll on overall damage output. Our design for this profession tends to lean toward damage, mobility, and evasiveness. In the first quarter of this year, we’ll be looking to drastically improve thief melee autoattacks until their overall sustained damage when coupled with initiative use is extremely dangerous. In addition to the damage improvements, we’ve done a bit of reworking and improvements to the Acrobatics specialization line."

This sounds promising..

I unfortunately disagree. It sounds like they’re pushing our damage back up…which sounds nice, until you remember why thief has been getting stomped with nerfs for the last 3 years.

In case you forgot (or weren’t around for it), it was because our damage was so high that when combined with our mobility, we shut down every other zerker (marauder now) spec.

So, as far as I can tell, the changes will be nice for 6 months to a year before we’re nerfed again.

Oh, let’s also not forget how more damage doesn’t offer us much for getting around passive defense triggers.

Serious Thought.5394:

Like I’ve been saying- only reason to take this line (unless you really want the augmented steal) is for preparedness. Anet makes it baseline, sudden build diversity ensues, they realize how bad this line is minus 4 or 5 selectable traits. Profit?

Sleight of hand / lead attacks is pretty mandatory in pvp as well.

As long as DA is obviously superior to CS, steal is going to heal, do damage, apply poison, apply weakness (via the poison), potentially reset some heal/utlities/elite, and give you 2 stolen items. Reducing the CD on steal ~15 seconds is much too vital to be ignored, especially considering the alternative lines range from bland to dumpster fire.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Because we have OP stealth and permanent evades!

I’ll start:

Guarded Initiation (Thief)

Remove conditions when striking an enemy while your health is above the threshold.

Health Threshold: 90%
Vulnerability: 1% Incoming Damage, 1% Incoming Condition Damage
Weakness: -50% Endurance Regeneration, 50% Fumble (Unrestricted)
Slow: Skills and actions are slower.
Conditions Removed: 1

VERSUS

Diamond Skin (Lel-ementalist)

Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold.

Health Threshold: 90%

This comparison is disingenuous for multiple reasons.

Comparisons of traits across classes are generally tricky, because you have to acknowledge and agree upon each classes strengths, weaknesses, and design goals. You haven’t done any of that here.

On top of that, you’re comparing it to something in Acro – Acro currently has the appeal of a dumpster fire being put out with baby diarrhea. If it’s not the worst trait line in the game, it’s top 5 without a shadow of a doubt.

On top of that, you’ve picked the absolute worst trait in the dumpster fire trait line. Everyone involved with Guarded initiation (from design, to testing, to approving) should probably have lost their jobs . It’s worse than just having an empty slot, because at least an empty slot isn’t insulting. It’s inclusion shows a very fundamental lack of understanding for both the thief class, and the games basic mechanics in general.

babazhook.6805:

evilapprentice.6379:

Domey.9804:

I really like your ideas evilapprentice. But daredevil does exactly what you Want acro to so. I mean…those buffs to dodges should be in acro like before acro nerf…and daredevil should get something else than enhancing dodges or wnb acro 2.0.
But since This wont increase anets income, they wont do any big changes. I expect some minor buffs to venoms (again) , some little putput for traps (kittening again). And some cheap number tweaks for daredevil.
Acro does not even exist.

Daredevil has a couple of things (Driven fortitude and Escapists absolution basically) that overlap, but it’s a much different line. It’s got a mix of offensive, utility and defensive abilities in each tier, and most of them are not contingent on successfully evading an attack.

Acro would look more like this

Pain response – successfully evading an attack grants 4s of regen and cleanses 1 damaging condition (5s icd)

Feline grace – successfully evading an attack grants 3 stacks of “graceful strikes”. Landing an attack consumes 1 stack of graceful strikes, restores X endurance (3 or 4) and grants 2 seconds of retaliation. 3s ICD, Max 3 stacks (charges are expended exactly like venoms)

Guarded initiation – successfully evading an attack grants 3s of stability (1 stack),3s ICD

Don’t Stop – successfully evading an attack grants 2 seconds of superspeed, resistance and quickness, 4s ICD.

I would rather not see too many benefits accrue to one element in the game in this case on evade or people are shoehorned into loading up on the evades to maximize potential and then too much accrues from one thing.

As example assuming we have as you suggest then on every evade (barring ICD) one can get healing, a condition clease (DD line) superpseed resistance , stability , quickness , endurance regen , retaliation, regen and another condition cleanse. It too much when people double up (DD LINE Acro line) , and they will.

You’re listing the effects without the durations and without pointing out how many traits you’re describing or the ICD of said traits (they will not go off on every evade, especially if you have to evade 2 attacks in close proximity of eachother), which I agree does make my suggestion seem insane. Getting those buffs for 1-3 seconds on evade makes it a lot more reasonable, some of those effects you listed have built in counterplay (the endurance regen and retal are contingent on landing a strike with a venom-like buff AFTER successfully evading), and you’re describing all the major traits and 1 minor trait from acro as well as 1 major and 1 minor trait from DD.

…I would much rather see enhancements to our shadowstep abilities and or a few ON interrupt traits such as “On interrupt lose two conditions” or “On interrupt gain resistance for 5 seconds”. One focusing on shadowsteps can have access to “all shadowsteps gain 200 range” or “gain 5 stacks might on shadowstep for 8 seconds”

This way you can garner diferent flavor of theif rather then one loading up on evade benefits or stealth benefits.

What do sets without interrupts or shadow steps do then? D/D, P/P, and Staff are going to have at best 2 shadowsteps (steal and SS, no one takes IS or ST), and only D/P has the real potential to seriously take advantage of an “on interrupt” defensive build (and maybe S/P, assuming the changes fix its issues)

Neither suggestion is perfect – some weaponsets have built in evades, others have built in interrupts or shadowsteps. While not every set has a weaponset evade, dodges have much better universal uptime across weapon sets than shadow steps or interrupts.

Honestly, it seems like the best bet would to turn acro into a mix of on evade/on interrupt/on shadowstep abilities, so all of our weaponsets have potential defensive choices that work with it. We don’t need another SA, an underpowered defensive line that only really works with one weaponset.

Domey.9804:

I really like your ideas evilapprentice. But daredevil does exactly what you Want acro to so. I mean…those buffs to dodges should be in acro like before acro nerf…and daredevil should get something else than enhancing dodges or wnb acro 2.0.
But since This wont increase anets income, they wont do any big changes. I expect some minor buffs to venoms (again) , some little putput for traps (kittening again). And some cheap number tweaks for daredevil.
Acro does not even exist.

Daredevil has a couple of things (Driven fortitude and Escapists absolution basically) that overlap, but it’s a much different line. It’s got a mix of offensive, utility and defensive abilities in each tier, and most of them are not contingent on successfully evading an attack.

Acro would look more like this

Pain response – successfully evading an attack grants 4s of regen and cleanses 1 damaging condition (5s icd)

Feline grace – successfully evading an attack grants 3 stacks of “graceful strikes”. Landing an attack consumes 1 stack of graceful strikes, restores X endurance (3 or 4) and grants 2 seconds of retaliation. 3s ICD, Max 3 stacks (charges are expended exactly like venoms)

Guarded initiation – successfully evading an attack grants 3s of stability (1 stack),3s ICD

Don’t Stop – successfully evading an attack grants 2 seconds of superspeed, resistance and quickness, 4s ICD.

Core thief has 2 issues right now

Complete garbage defensive lines (yes, even SA)
“Must have” traits leaving almost no room for spec variety.

Let’s try to resolve this.

Baseline traits -some traits need to be made baseline (in some form) to give thieves actual options in trait choices.

Mug – Make the heal portion of mug a part of base steal. the “Mug” trait now reads “Steal does damage (Same coefficient as now) and grants 5 stacks of might for 8 seconds”

Preparedness – Made baseline. There isn’t a thief PvPing today that doesn’t have 15 initiative, it’s almost as if our skills are balanced around that fact. Replace it with whatever.

Bountiful theft – Steal now steals 2 boons and applies them to thief only. Bountiful theft now reads “Steal also grants vigor and applies the boons to allies within the radius” so traited BT is exactly as it is now.

Sleight of hand – Remove the 20% additional steal CD. Lower steal’s CD to 25s base, and increase the CD reduction of Lead attacks to 20%, so steal without trickery is 25s and steal with trickery is 20s. This one probably seems the most extreme, but the bottom line is SO much of thieves power and traits are tied into steal that a trait that lowers it an additional 20% is basically mandatory. It needs to be remedied.

SA – The incentive to stay in stealth needs to be removed entirely, for the games health in both PvP and WvW. Swap “meld with shadows” with the first minor slot, and add "Gain ‘Lingering Shadows’ while revealed’. The idea here is protect thieves in between stealth uses, discourage stealth camping, and give SA powerful benefits that are tied to good play, and counter-able by the enemy at the same time.

Shadows embrace – Remove 1 damaging condition on entering stealth. While under the effects if Lingering Shadows, landing a strike against an enemy grants resistance for 1.25s, 1s ICD

Shadow protector – When entering stealth, gain 6 seconds of regeneration. While under the effects of Lingering Shadows, landing a strike against an enemy grants Aegis for 1.5s, 4s ICD

Shadow rejuvenation – When entering stealth, Heal for X. While under the effects of Lingering Shadows, landing a strike against an enemy heals for Y, 1s ICD.

Cloaked in shadow – Same as it is currently, add While under the effects of Lingering Shadows, landing a strike against an enemy grants 1.25s of protection, 1s ICD

Acrobatics – I’m not going to go into detail, but same idea as I laid out with SA – successfully evading an attack grants some defensive buff/effect for 1-3s, with a 3s ICD – the longer ICD is designed to punish evade spamming, and turn Acro into a traitline that protects thieves in between dodges, so dodging attacks isn’t their 1 and only defensive mechanism from Acro.

Vornollo.5182:

Straegen.2938:

SoulSin.5682:

I haven’t tested properly, but on the last Closed Beta I could “cancel” the kick from bandid defense by dodging.

I can’t seen to be able to cancel the kick now.

I’ve used a lot that skill on CBT, it was a 10 sec stun break and could basically block ranged attacks freely.

It still gets prevented when using Dash at least as of last night. Haven’t tried it with a different dodge though.

Bandit’s Defence Kicking part can be cancelled by all dodges (including the base dodge without a GM dodge selected) aswel as the stowing of your weapon.

EDIT:
Now that I think about it, I’ll test if it can still be “overruled” by another skill (like how you can overrule the Strike on Infiltrator’s Strike with CnD if timed right).
Will update accordingly.

Not trying to be rude, but this information is of little value – if I used BD, it’s partly (or entirely) because I wanted the block. If I was going to blow 50 endurance on a dodge anyway, it takes away a lot of the value of DB.

Regardless of whether or not you can dodge out of the kick, it should be redesigned to roll-over on block, or else it’s kind of a kittenty, limited skill that won’t find it’s way onto a thief’s bar most of the time.

Staff is fine. Perhaps it could use some minor tweaks (mostly in Weakening Charge), but it’s a solid set and definitely among the more PvP viable sets thief has.

Furthermore, EA and DF have nothing to do with staff. You take trickster in trickery if you want condition cleansing, mostly because it’s your only choice, and because it’s better than EA. Neither EA or DF are worthy of being a major trait, they should be merged into the 15 point minor and a new major trait designed in its place.

A good write up, but a couple points of contention (IMO of course)

Bandits defense – Currently, the kick is a liability. Any experienced player is going to come at you with stability up and punish you during the kick animation. This is worse in team fights where any experienced team knows to FF you while you’re kicking since all of your defenses are active, you’re locked into a useless animation, and you’ll melt in half a second. The kick needs to become a rollover-on-block that allows you to choose when (and if) to use the kick.

Weakening charge – make the range 170 and 360 degrees, and this skill all of sudden becomes pretty decent – when used at the right range, you’ll be able to go through your target and still land all 3 hits.

Escapists absolution – I Still don’t believe this trait is worth a major slot. Giving your opponent control over when you can use this trait (you have to evade an attack) makes it a liability, unable to ever be truly counted on as your primary condition cleanse and relegating it to a “support cleansing” role. It should be merged with Driven Fortitude and another major trait designed in its place.

It took 6 months and around 10 posts across 3 official guild wars forums and Reddit, but the issue has finally been at least acknowledged.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3xd25d/thief_heal_withdraw_still_missing_10_healing/cy3y2i7

As I said in that thread, I’m not thrilled with the timeline, but let’s all at least say thanks to Grouch for taking the time to let us know that Anet is aware of the issue – that’s vastly better than being in the dark about the whole thing.

Yup, here it is.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3xd25d/thief_heal_withdraw_still_missing_10_healing/cy3y2i7

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Thief-heal-Withdraw-STILL-missing-10/first#post5865676

Link to the Bug Forum thread – perhaps Anet has never taken this seriously because there’s never much support on the Bug forum threads?

The thief heal skill Withdraw never received the 10% base healing power buff outlined in the June 23rd patch notes.

If someone could look into and rectify this, it would be much appreciated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3xd25d/thief_heal_withdraw_still_missing_10_healing/

Link to the reddit thread, in case there’s some potential for cross-platform support

2/10

I mean, kudos on the trait selection – something not too important, but still holding a place in thieves hearts. You just went nuts with the nerf suggestion though. Very heavy handed attempt, you really need to work on your subtlety.

Another patch released with Withdraw still missing 10%. Say what you want about Anet, but you can’t deny that they’re consistent.

alchemyst.2165:

3. Why do people still complain about things not “refilling 100 PERCENT endurance”? Daredevils already have a crap ton of endurance regen capabilities, who cares honestly. The coding for these skills doesn’t refill a percentage, it refills a number amount. Not a bug.

Because it’s silly to design and implement an elite spec that doesn’t scale with old baseline stuff.

And I don’t recall which exactly, but either SoA or HtC used to (or still do) say “100%”, and still only refill 100 endurance – so there’s a bug in there somewhere.

Josh Davis.6015:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Upcoming-Balance-Changes-Week-of-December-14-2015

Why is Withdraw still missing the 10% base healing buff it supposedly got in the June 23rd patch?

Gabriell.4856:

Momekic.8603:

I have noticed just recently that if you inflict an enemy with Pulmonary Impact via the utility or trait, and you stealth right after it will cause you to be revealed when PI inflicts it’s damage.

Its annoying that it works this way, and it should not reveal us, considering (for example but not limited to) mesmer can drop a berserker clone then stealth, and the zerker does damage the mesmer does not get revealed.

Im mainly bringing this to people’s attention. As much as I don’t think it should reveal, and I consider it a bug, it may very well be working as intended.

If there is the slightest chance we could get a comfirmation if this is a bug or intended that would be awesome.

Maybe…just maybe get good and keep track of PI proc and dont stealth? Get good? Is that too hard to ask for?

Or maybe, just maybe, thief can have nice things?

Like an elite spec that offers things that mesh and scale well with old things?

We already have DD replacing acro, new buffs not included in consume plasma, and SoA/HtC being changed from 100% to 100 endurance with no documentation.

But by all means, insist it’s a L2P issue.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

Can we stop with the knee jerk reactions? It was a buff much more than a nerf, since you can’t put steal on CD from out of range. When was the last time you intentionally used steal in combat without a target?

Only trait I can think it really affects is stealth on steal, and very few ppl use that.

If the only trait you can think it really affects is stealth on steal, you’re not really qualified to talk about it, or thief in general.

Paulie.6215:

It wasn’t a nerf.

Except that it was.

It was a nerf.

Steal is now less versatile with no upside other than an extremely minor “ease of use” change.

Ara.4569:

You should post it on reddit. Official forums aren’t monitored.

Thanks for the info, I’ll do that.

I’ve been posting this on the Bug and Thief forums for months now, to no avail.

The thief heal “Withdraw” still doesn’t have the 10% increased base coefficient that was part of the June 23rd patch notes.

Please do not move this to the thief or bug sub-forums; this bug primarily affects PvP, where HPS is most important; It has also been ignored in those subforums for months.

The thief class heal skill “Withdraw” is still missing the 10% base coeffecient buff that was listed in the june 23rd patch.

So I can’t login to check, but it’s not in the patch notes: Can anyone verify for me that withdraw is still missing 10% so I can go make yet another post in the bug forums?

Jana.6831:

Quadox.7834:

People.
People.
People.
Anet doesn’t want any class be be bad. If they could choose through a simple button press, they would make the classes balanced and the people happy. Stop pretending like “Anet rally hates thief”, and anything of that sort. It reeeeaally does not help.

CiS in grandmaster and revealed skills/traits – ’Nuff said!

Let’s not forget killing S/D and gutting Acro to sell us Daredevil and Staff.

Oh cool, moderators merged my topics…for some reason.

Perhaps I was unclear. This post is asking why Withdraw was still missing 10% a few weeks ago.

The post you closed down to merge into this one was asking why Withdraw was still missing 10% after yet another patch – 2 patches in fact, since I originally created this topic.

Thieves are also still missing the 10% base healing power buff that Withdraw supposedly got in the June 23rd patch.

I’ve posted a topic with nearly every patch. I’ve posted them in the thief forums and the bug report forums; other individuals have posted them in the PvP forums (which were quickly removed for some reason, even though this ‘bug’ highly impacts PvP)

It’s not a complicated topic, it doesn’t take much time or attention; it’s all laid out right in the title. Withdraw is still missing the 10% base healing increase it supposedly “got” in the June 23rd patch.

Please, fix it.

Seriously?

I’ve posted a topic with nearly every patch. I’ve posted them in the thief forums and the bug report forums; other individuals have posted them in the PvP forums (which were quickly removed for some reason, even though this ‘bug’ highly impacts PvP)

It’s not a complicated topic, it doesn’t take much time or attention; it’s all laid out right in the title. Withdraw is still missing the 10% base healing increase it supposedly “got” in the June 23rd patch.

Please, fix it.

Azukas.1426:

The biggest problem is not the lack of presence but the disdain they show for anyone who doesn’t put forth their opinion in what they deem the right way. Forget that people did that for years and are now fed up with the lack of care from Anet….

Anyways I’ll cut this off before I get infracted

Ooh ooh, story time.

Back when they previewed the patch that killed S/D (where they added the .25s cast time to Inf return), the devs made their disdain for players pretty well known.

So, they preview the changes coming to thief (among which is the .25s casting time for Inf return change). Their logic was that it was “too powerful” to spend 5 init and either steal or inf sig on a safe stomp so they were adding a cast time to inf sig. Nearly every single thief playing S/D, many of them considered “Top” players at the time, pointed out how this was a terrible idea, and how it would kill S/D. Nearly everyone asked why they couldn’t just disable using Inf return while stunned/in mid stomp animation, which would achieve their goal without deleting S/D from the meta.

There were about 6 pages of mostly these questions with absolutely no dev response before someone posted a different question. I don’t recall if said question was sarcastic, an attempt at trolling, or just from a very inexperienced player, but the question was supremely basic, to the point where anyone playing thief for a day knew the answer. All of a sudden, the Dev’s found time to care and answered this extremely silly question.

I called them out on it – i wasn’t overly polite, but I wasn’t exactly rude either – I wanted to know why they had the time to answer softball questions but couldn’t be bothered to address the 100+ thieves who wanted to know why they were killing S/D instead of just “fixing” it. The dev then decided to highlight my response as a perfect example of forum misconduct, I guess because I was accusing him of ignoring the community and only answering softball BS. They never answered any of our questions, the patch came out, and it killed S/D.

Tl;Dr: For the most part devs do what they want to, your opinion as a player doesn’t really matter. If you ask them why, they’ll tell you to kitten off in a forum friendly manner.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Either that or it’s bugged and just doesn’t have it….either eay this needs to be addressed

Whatever the reason, it needs to be addressed. It’s been 4 months.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Gabriell.4856:

RedSpectrum.1975:

Gabriell.4856:

evilapprentice.6379:

It’s been 4 months. I’ve personally posted the topic a number of times, and I know others have asked the question in multiple threads.

Why is withdraw still missing the 10% noted in the patch notes? You increased the cd 3 seconds to accommodate a trait that competes with another build defining trait so no serious PvP thief can take it, but we still haven’t seen the increase.

Because stupid kitten like you and a lot of others believe in the devs. Simple as that.

And talking like that is why the devs probably don’t believe in this class

So we have to kiss thier kitten Really? What do you suggest everyone do? Wait patiently and lick thier b u t hole in hopes they buff us?

Drop the 10% heal already. They arent going to give it or it would of happen months already.

Let’s just make withdraw threads not just in the thief forum but in the pvp and hell even the bug forums. Maybe that sort of tenacity will cause a result, be it negative or positive

Well, I threw it up on the bug forums (which I think I’ve done once before, but mostly I’ve focused on the thief forums). Let’s hope it gets some traction there.

The thief heal skill “Withdraw” never received the 10% base healing buff outlined in the June 23rd patch notes. Please fix.

Thank you.

Maugetarr.6823:

evilapprentice.6379:

Full Disclosure: I don’t own HoT, so I can’t test this build. The following opinion is based just from looking at the build on paper.

I want to like this build, it looks like so many things come together to build 1 nice little package. The issue I’m having with it however is that it doesn’t really change how you play thief. It doesn’t look like you’ll be “brawling” – your sustain is limited to higher vit/toughness than usual for a thief and DF. You’re even more exposed to conditions than the “standard” thief builds.

Also, all of your damage is single target, and relies on having D/P equipped – the second you switch to Sbow, your ability to do damage almost completely dissipates, and your defenses drop to just DS.

When I think Daredevil brawler, I’m thinking something more like this

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVn0MBlOh1OBGOBkmiFYCzLMEHaDzfwRYLULBEAyAA-TZBEABaVGAgDBw+7P8wVAohHAAA

Of course I can’t test it, but (on paper) it looks like it has everything your build has, only more. Weakening strikes and Vault are both listing around 2k for a target with 2600 armor – that’s without counting staff master, lead attacks, exposed weakness, or executioner, and they’re both AoE. You’re impossible to pin down both withdraw and dash, and your DR will bounce between 7 and 27%. You’re also much, much more resistant to conditions (you could even swap Staff master for EA if you really needed to), and if you keep staff master in place you’re probably on par or above the endurance regen with Brawlers tenacity. Shbow doesn’t offer much in the way of damage, but CG and CB at least give you access to weakness for sustain.

If you ever end up trying this build out, let me know how it performs.

I tried it out a mix of the suggested build you suggested and the build I originally presented here

Here’s the results

Looks like it performed about how I expected (with a little more damage and a little less survivability, due to your tweaks).

How did you like it, compared to the D/P Pulmonary impact build?

Full Disclosure: I don’t own HoT, so I can’t test this build. The following opinion is based just from looking at the build on paper.

I want to like this build, it looks like so many things come together to build 1 nice little package. The issue I’m having with it however is that it doesn’t really change how you play thief. It doesn’t look like you’ll be “brawling” – your sustain is limited to higher vit/toughness than usual for a thief and DF. You’re even more exposed to conditions than the “standard” thief builds.

Also, all of your damage is single target, and relies on having D/P equipped – the second you switch to Sbow, your ability to do damage almost completely dissipates, and your defenses drop to just DS.

When I think Daredevil brawler, I’m thinking something more like this

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVn0MBlOh1OBGOBkmiFYCzLMEHaDzfwRYLULBEAyAA-TZBEABaVGAgDBw+7P8wVAohHAAA

Of course I can’t test it, but (on paper) it looks like it has everything your build has, only more. Weakening strikes and Vault are both listing around 2k for a target with 2600 armor – that’s without counting staff master, lead attacks, exposed weakness, or executioner, and they’re both AoE. You’re impossible to pin down both withdraw and dash, and your DR will bounce between 7 and 27%. You’re also much, much more resistant to conditions (you could even swap Staff master for EA if you really needed to), and if you keep staff master in place you’re probably on par or above the endurance regen with Brawlers tenacity. Shbow doesn’t offer much in the way of damage, but CG and CB at least give you access to weakness for sustain.

If you ever end up trying this build out, let me know how it performs.

Crit strikes is a functioning line – it could use some tweaks, but it’s low on the priority list when there are raging fires in our defensive lines.

Acro is worthless. Insultingly so, since they gutted it to sell us Daredevil. It needs to be redesigned from the ground up, either using Popeurbans “Mobility arts” idea, or focusing on defenses triggered on successful evade to keep thieves alive in between evade frames. For example, a trait that grants some combination of defensive boons on successful evade for a short duration (2-4s) with a similar cd (2-4s) to deter evade spamming.

SA is also pretty terrible. All of the good traits encourage stealth camping, which is silly in both PvP and WvW. Any effect that has an effect that scales with time spent in stealth should instead be changed to have 1 effect “on first entering stealth”, and a separate (but similar) effect while revealed. For example, SE could be changed to “Remove 1 damaging condition on entering stealth. While revealed, gain resistance for 1.25 seconds every time you successfully land an attack, 1s ICD”. This forces a thief to actually engage targets to get the benefits of their traits and it has a powerful effect balanced by allowing for counterplay by your opponent.

That would go a long way toward fixing core thieves primary issues.

James Quall.6029:

As I recall there was mention made of how they know pistols aren’t where they need to be and there was a rework in the makes, and specific mentioning that the 24-26% damage boost to the skills was NOT it but just to hold thief over until the rework came.

Now what it is or when it’ll be only god knows, but if I were a betting man I would say first quarter balance patch and not whenever they cook up another round of elite specs.

Recall ~2 years ago when body shot didn’t have immob, a 10stack of vulnerability for a criminally short period, and a ridiculous aftercast? IIRC, they changed it to the current version with the reasoning that “This’ll give P/P the nudge it needs to be a useful weapon set”.

So don’t hold your breath for a functioning P/P – it’s been broken for 3 years, they might fix it a few months before the servers go offline permanently.

PopeUrban.2578:

Prediction:

Gunslinger will be an elite spec with rifle. They’ll put buffed ricochet in it. It’ll be a GM trait in the same tier as a capstone rifle trait so you have to choose between them. The other gunslinger traits will have a common theme of pistol/rifle/utility choices. People will be mad about it for a week just like feline grace/daredevil. Then everyone will forget about it after a few months.

Have many forgotten though? I certainly haven’t. Spent my 55 dollar refund from HoT on better games, and I plan on asking where withdraws missing 10% is every patch. I see an awful lot of thief complaints on here and PvP forums – while they don’t exactly ask why Acro was made entirely non viable so it could be sold back to us in DrD, they are continually asking for thief core buffs, which would hopefully start at replacing acro with the Mobility arts line you pitched. After that, all we really need is SA “in stealth” traits modified to “when first entering stealth AND while revealed” functionality, and we’re probably almost well balanced.

Disheartening to know it’ll never happen though.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Hitsuke.5304:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Hitsuke.5304:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Nocta.5274:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I have one question:

What did you do to counter conditions BEFORE Escapist Absolution?

I think you’re relying on EA too much.

We used Shadow Arts.

Then if what the OP said is to be believed that DD has a flaw that can be exploited, then why choose a trait line with such flaw and not use SA?

If the OP is using staff (which I’m assuming he is) then it doesn’t take a theoretical physicist to work out why SA is useless.

That’s a trade-off, not a flaw. And if condition damage really is a problem, then perhaps Staff and DD are not good choices for the meta. It’s a high condition damage meta and you choose a build that has little or no way to deal with condition — and nobody see anything wrong with that?

I wouldn’t call it a trade off personally. A trade off is when you chose more damage over condi cleanse, dropping SA is a no brainer as Staff has zero stealth options. So it’s more or less a necessity, and all you are gaining is a different playstyle (over D/D or D/P).

But you’re not restricted to Staff, you can always swap to a weapon set with stealth. Or trait Hidden Thief so you gain stealth on Steal, which is also on a low CD if also spec with SoH (Trick).

Sure, if we pretend that shortbow isn’t absolutely required for a thief be of any use in the meta, we can use another weaponset – of course when we return to the real world, you’re still stuck with Shortbow and 1 other weaponset. And turning Steal into your only option for condition cleansing feels outright silly – now your only access to SE is gated behind steal (20s CD) so now you have to save steal for when you get hit by condi’s or risk not having any cleanses at all? That’s not what anyone would call “reasonable options”

The bottom line is, the perceived flaw or weakness is cause by a weak build, not by a single trait.

I do agree to an extent that complaints about condi-cleanse are a bit silly when you can trait trickster and run withdraw. Cleansing two conditions every 14 seconds is easy using withdraw combined with EA.

Exactly.

Yeah no, 2 conditions every 16 seconds (because that’s what the traited CD of Scorp wire is) is kind of terrible for taking use a utility, your heal, and a trait that competes with BT (BT enhances the DrD line with vigor AND makes SoH worth due to Daze-through-stun, it’s a big trait).

The only time a trade off comes into the equation is when you have to choose between Trickster & Bountiful thieft… Choosing boon strips and the DD synergising vigor you get from it or going with Trickster/withdraw for low CD condi cleanse.

If you choose to drop SA, the other choice is either DA or CS, which means you’re trading survivability for damage. If you drop SA for Acro, then you should spec for anti-condition like Pain Response. There’s really no room to complain since there are so many options.

Better hope all those conditions hit you before PR triggers, or else you’re left with 0 condi cleanse… it’s almost as if PR is pretty terribly designed as a condi counter…

If ANet actually bothered their kitten s and added that all elusive 10% to Withdraw it would be a no brainer.

Currently I bring Channeled Vigor since it gives the most heal for a short CD, not to mention it refills endurance too. So it seems that because of CV that the missing 10% will simply fade into the background, which is a shame.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Nocta.5274:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I have one question:

What did you do to counter conditions BEFORE Escapist Absolution?

I think you’re relying on EA too much.

We used Shadow Arts.

Then if what the OP said is to be believed that DD has a flaw that can be exploited, then why choose a trait line with such flaw and not use SA?

There’s a dozen reasonable answers to this, and you know them all Vincent.

I swear, I’ll never understand how in some posts you come across as level headed and reasonable, and in others you’re a purposefully obtuse syntax stickler.

Because while guarded initiation is a terrible, terrible failure of design, and it follows a long list of terrible designs (Assassins equilibrium, the original hard to catch, moving AR up to GM tier while only adding an addition 1 HP healing per 100 HP, and so many more), it’s up to Anets judgement as to whether or not they’re satisfied with a trait.

Withdraw, on the other hand, should be 10% stronger – it’s right there in the patch notes. This isn’t a question of “is this a bug” or “the community doesn’t think it’s strong enough”, we’re in the situation “the skill literally does not match the parameters anet set for it.”

It’s been 4 months. I’ve personally posted the topic a number of times, and I know others have asked the question in multiple threads.

Why is withdraw still missing the 10% noted in the patch notes? You increased the cd 3 seconds to accommodate a trait that competes with another build defining trait so no serious PvP thief can take it, but we still haven’t seen the increase.

This would have probably carried more weight 2 years ago. Not much you can do when you simply don’t have the tools available to you to succeed.

lighter.2708:

D/P thief top tier as always since the beginning of the time in pvp..

PvE, just go look at the DPS chart..

Thief is a joke in PvP. It’s currently at the tail end of a loooooooong slide to rock bottom. Anyone saying otherwise is willfully ignorant, or purposefully spreading misinformation.

If you like being unable to fight any other class 1 on 1 while also being a liability in any team fight where you’re not outnumbering your opponents, and instead prefer to teleport around looking for empty spots to sit on for 4-14s at a time, roll thief. If you want to have fun, choose any other class (except warrior, which is also currently struggling)

xXBurningEmberXx.6085:

m8… l2p… backstab can go as high as 12k (1 shotting most classes)

Out of the games current 9 classes, 6 of them have Base HP’s higher than 12k, meaning that “Most classes” can’t be 1 shot by a 12k backstab (which is also a highly suspect number in PvP). Only berskerker ammy wearing thieves, guardians, and ele’s (In effect, absolutely no one) could be 1 shotted by this mythical 12k backstab.

If you’re going to make things up when you post, at least require us to have more than a passing knowledge of the games most basic systems to disprove them.

What’s most unfortunate is, while this is most likely a troll post, if I didn’t take the time to point out how ridiculous it is, we’d have players believing this blindly due to their own desire to believe that thieves are broken.

Kageseigi.2150:

Thief

Deadly Arts: Improvisation: Fixed an issue that prevented this trait from recharging physical skills when stealing from an enemy.

The newest patch actually did something 100% positive for the Thief!!! No nerfs at all!!!
It only has to do with the Daredevil, but it’s a start! :-D

Ps. Well, that was the only documented change for the Thief. So be on the lookout for ghost changes… like the one that removed the ability to keep stolen items from pre-match.

I’m sorry I can’t share in your enthusiasm – fixing things to work the way they say they work isn’t a buff, it’s simply Anet doing their job.

As others have pointed out, it actually works out to a nerf, with a lower % chance the lines you have equipped are reset. That’s not to say they shouldn’t have fixed it, just that they should have foreseen this issue when they planned on adding a new line to thief and tweaked Improv accordingly.

On a sidenote, why is withdraw still missing its 10% buff?