Guild Wars 2

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

As a Thief main,

Can you give me some depth behind the Infiltrator’s Strike change? Especially why have you decided to add more cast time to Infiltrator’s Return instead of disabling the skill when the thief is stunned/dazed/immobilized?

In my opinion adding more cast time just makes the whole mechanic more clunky and still allows Thieves to get out of sticky situations they shouldn’t be able to.

If a Thief is stunned, unless he uses a stunbreaker, he should remain as such. Infiltrator’s Return bypassing CC is clearly broken and counter intuitive in my opinion.
If a Thief is stunned or dazed he shouldn’t be able to use Infiltrator’s Return. You need to add some punishment if a Sword Thief is caught without a stunbreaker up. You need to create some separators between average thieves and GREAT thieves. *

A GREAT Thief would use Infiltrator’s Return before the stun arrives, that’s good reward. An average Thief wouldn’t have the timing to avoid the stun and therefor would be punished.

Skill vs Reward/Punishment is something we need

Infiltrator’s Return can’t be the “OH SHIET” button. That’s not very balanced for competitive play.
Introducing this fix, would you go as far as not going foward with this cast time increase and maybe reducing initiative cost? What are your thoughts on this?

The problem you don’t acknowledge is S/D’s reliance on Zerkers gear to do acceptable damage in organized play (TPvP, SPvP). Running stats any Dagger MH spec would consider “burst” allows Sword MH to do enough damage to actually drop a target eventually.

Sword relies on evades (which are being reduced via vigor uptime reductions), IS/IR (which is being nerfed) and FS to avoid damage, and LS to generate boons for extra survivability (which lost 50% of its effectiveness Oct 15th). With the high amount of easy to land, short CD CC’s there are currently in the game, Sword thieves need more than just stunbreakers to survive in any realistic situation, because they have to dodge CC AND most damage, or they melt. There’s no protection or stability to rely on, no huge HP pool, no high armor – they have to actively evade most attacks. And don’t forget, you gave thieves absolutely no way to generate Stability with in class abilities, unlike every other class in the game

If Anet wants to increase the damage on sword AA, IS, FS, and PW, that would be a different story – as it stands, sword needs to be in the fight and targetable longer than say D/P when running Glass Cannon stats. I wish I could compare S/D to other effective thief weaponsets other than D/P, but we don’t have any.

As others have pointed out, Point 2 under Jon’s post is kind of disheartening. It either points to a very base level misunderstanding of how IS/IR works (which calls into question their ability to balance it), or they’re claiming that spending 5 init AND a utility such as Inf Sig, Steal or Shadow Step is “too effective” for stomping.

The suggestion that is puts more value on running a secondary weaponset that enables stomping (like say OH pistol) also feels shallow – if you’re not aware that Shortbow is basically a requirement for thieves, you don’t play one. The mobility it allows a roamer (Thief’s only position in TPvP atm) AND the team fight options it brings to a class too squishy to mix it up among the AoE fest team fights can become are part of the reason thief even remains viable in TPvP.

Dakan.9463:

Now the teleport should actually remain. Here’s why: It is an awkward mechanic and disorienting for the thief himself but this lets it also act as a counterweight to the rest of the effect. A kind of penalty if you will that could be turned into an advantage by a skilled player.

This is just silly.

If I’m chasing someone and they stun me with a ranged attack, and HtC teleports me directly backwards, no amount of Skill can be applied to fix that situation.

If I’m trying to prevent a decap and HtC teleports me off point, there is no amount of “skill” that will stop the point from ticking in my opponents direction.

You know what they call it when my character moves without my express input? Fear, a control condition. Beneficial effects shouldn’t behave like control effects.

Aeden.5896:

On Hard to Catch. I hope it’s understood that the only reason a lot of thieves take this trait in sPvP is because it’s the only viable trait once you’ve filled out 10/30/0/20/0.

Ningyou explains this clearly in Sensotix’s thief interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR5OL9GB-VA#

That does not mean it’s a good trait or that people even want it, it’s simply the only viable one.

I think it needs to, at a minimum, break stuns. But probably even more than that to be something people actually want since it can really screw you over (chasing some one and then out of no where getting teleported away is terrible).

Hard to catch will never be a good trait as long as it moves the player around without their input. Not having complete control of where my character moves to sounds more like a control effect to me (Like say, Fear) – the fact that it’s supposed to be beneficial is just silly.

First of all, thank you for taking the time to come here and explain your though process on the changes.

Initiative changes

I’ve been asking for a Initiative regen bump for months now, so Kudos on that decision. Part of it though was to remove/modify some of the init regen traits to be more interesting. The initiative per second changes to opportunist, quick recovery and kleptomanic make complete sense, considering the new base init regen. What doesn’t make any sense is that the traits haven’t gained anything in compensation – they’re now fairly kittenty.
Quick recovery will never, ever be slotted at .1 init per second – consider adding “Cleanse one condition on dodge” with a Five Second ICD.
Opportunist is underwhelming for a 15 point minor trait – .2 init per second is bland, and does little to help differentiate thieves with points in CS from other thieves – consider adding “Strips 1 boon on crit” in addition to the init regain, 5s ICD.
Klepto is in the same boat as opportunist – boring, bland, does nothing to differentiate specs – consider adding “Transfers 1-2 conditions to target on successful steal”

Infiltrator’s Return

Please elaborate on why it’s necessary to kill Sword mainhand. A Sword thief has to go full Zerkers in PvP to do enough sustained damage to actually drop a target. With the amount of random, mindless CC spam flying about in every single fight, relying on stunbreakers just doesn’t cut it, because we’re not running a spec that drops a target in 10 seconds and is made of glass. We’ll be out of stunbreakers long before the fight is over, and 1 stun can result in half our HP disappearing. If you must, shorten the return distance on IR to limit just how far a thief can go when escaping using the skill or reduce the amount of time before IR flips back to IS (to force the thief to keep spending init on IR/IS to have his escape button ready), but a cast time will just ruin the spec entirely (IMO, of course, its not like I’ve tested it). Please test any changes to this thoroughly. Please also remember, you designed thief with 0 access to stability – I feel 1 skill on a specific MH weapon that allows a very squishy class with evade based survival mechanics to move but still remain stunned is a fair trade off.

Infusion of Shadow

Couldn’t agree more – perma stealth has always felt cheap and against the design of stealth to me.

Flanking Strikes

Flanking strikes needs to be good enough to compete with Uncatchable, Long range and Thrill of the crime before you can discuss moving it out of tier 1 – In tier 2, it clearly doesn’t compare to Bountiful theft.

Vigorous Recovery & Bountiful Theft

Thank you for considering this – 50% seems like a very big change for a “Shaving” balance philosophy. I think 25% on Vigorous recovery (reducing it to 6s) and 33% on Bountiful Theft (reducing it to 10s) makes much more sense – if it’s still a problem, we can address it in the next patch.

It’s also worth noting that you’ve moved Hard to catch down a tier, without addressing how awful the trait is. No thief is “gaining survivability in the Acro line” by slotting Hard to catch – it’s poorly designed, and has too much potential to be a hindrance to ever be slotted by a serious player. Please consider redesigning it entirely.

The PW ‘fix’ feels like a bandaid, not a true fix – it feels like PW will be marginally useful like it was prior to the 15th.

There’s been plenty of attention paid to nerfing S/D into uselessness (IMO), and fixing permastealth in D/P, but absolutely no attention paid to underperforming weaponsets (P/P, D/D) – I Understand fixing overtuned stuff comes first, but you can’t just keep wrecking our few TPvP viable weaponsets without fixing the ones that have been useless for months (or in the case of P/P, since launch)

Thank you again for keeping us informed, I hope my opinion on the matter can be of some help.

Neoheart.2750:

It’s not perfectly fair. Hard to discuss without typing math (no point as it doesn’t exist within and with the limit of other factors) but let’s say you could potentially be stripping 2 boons inside of 10 secs. 1 from LS and 1-2 off your CD. It would be potentially more OP than the 3 on LS because u can crit without spending ini. Coincidentally this whole patch seems to be addressing builds that have an abundance of ini and the abuse of skills that brings around.

LS steals boons – I’m suggesting stripping boons. It’s a good change for thief specifically because we have options to steal boons – with bountiful theft and LS, stripping boons can be a detrimental effect – 1 less boon to steal. It’s not entirely beneficial.
I also don’t see how this patch is about addressing “Specs that abuse Init” seeing as base init is not going to be roughly equivalent to Quick recovery + inf Sig – seems like they wanted to bring init regen up, not punish init regen specs. The poor handling of redesigning Init regen traits seems like more of a blundering oversight than a purposeful choice.

Just think about the builds/traits that would effect. Not going to go into detail but with traits like hidden killer, skills like black powder and fury uptime it’s safe to say a boon would be stripped every 5-6 seconds and easily so.

Seems fine to me – they nerfed LS from 2 boons stolen to 1, and now thief no longer counters boon bunkers. That was the main drive behind allowing LS to steal 2 boons, and it worked against boon bunkers – they were still able to generate the boons they needed, but they had to fear S/D thieves. Nerfing LS back to 1 boon has reintroduced boon bunkers who can mindlessly spam boons back into the meta, because there is no longer a mechanic that can punish it.

Also bare in mind that this is just a minor adept trait we are talking about. Look where bountiful theft is and it’s CD…that’s wat anet deem “perfectly fair”

15 points is a minor master trait, not adept.

Neoheart.2750:

50% chance to strip a boon on crit? Are you serious? Lacerous strike stripping 3 Boons would less OP and your suggestion is on a minor adept trait!

50% chance to strip boon on crit, on a 5 second ICD seems perfectly fair. How would an on demand skill that can potentially be up once every second stripping 3 boons even be comparable?

jmatb.6307:

Excalibur.9748:

jmatb.6307:

Bad thieves will get nerfed hard, but the good ones will still be good, if not better than they were.

How do you know this, do you even play thief?

Yes I play thief among other classes.

The initiative boost is huge. It’s one of those things that doesn’t look good on paper, but will shock you in game.

Like many others, you fail to acknowledge the changes to init regen traits. The fact that init regen traits now produce less init per second makes complete sense to me, considering the boost to base init regen. What doesn’t make sense is the fact that they don’t offer anything else is compensation. Opportunist, Quick recovery and Kleptomaniac are now all garbage – you’re forced to take 2 of them if you go 15 points into CS or 5 points into Trickery, and quick recovery will now never be slotted. There is potential to open up new specs due to faster init base init regen, but that will have to be tested – all we can tell for sure is that some init regen traits are now horribly bland and UP. Opportunist, Klepto, and quick recovery should have secondary effects added to them (like Signet use) to better define specs that trait along those lines.

The sword changes are very important for the game, because that single weapon has been holding back two entire classes’ total packages.

The sword changes will likely kill sword – S/D has to equip a Zerkers jewel and roll as a glass cannon to do respectable sustained DPS. Stats that would make a Dagger MH spec a burst oriented killer allow S/D to do the sustained damage it needs to actually kill targets. Lets also note that losing 50% vigor uptime on our 2 vigor producing traits doesn’t mesh with Anets stated “Shaving” style of balance updates. 15-25% is a “Shave”, 50% is a lazy nerf hammer.

My thoughts on the proposed thief changes.

Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.

Nice, been arguing for this for a long time

Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.

Sounds like it’ll kill sword – please test this thoroughly before going live.

Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.

Sounds like a bandaid that will leave PW marginally useful, as it was before. Please considered a re-design.

Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.

Nice – a well designed trait in a line that needed more well designed traits

Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.

Sounds minor, but a buff is a buff.

Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.

Sounds boring, and underpowered for a 15 point minor trait. Please add something that helps define the spec, rather than .2 init per second for high crit specs. Consider also stripping 1 boon.

Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.

Fair considering new base init regen, secondary effect makes it worth it to slot.

Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.

Sounds good, will have to test.

Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.

Finally – permastealth has always felt against the design of stealth in general, glad to see it

Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.

This doesn’t sound like “Shaving” to me – 50% is alot to start off with. Why not try 25% and see how that pans out.

Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.

Still not getting slotted in PvP – maybe WvW? I Don’t know.

Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.

Absolutely pointless to slot now – please add something else (cure 1 condition on dodge, 5s ICD?)

Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.

Sounds awesome – the one change I am most excited to test

Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.

Still never getting slotted due to poor design

Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.

Now an underwhelming 5 point minor trait – please consider adding something else to it (transfers X conditions from you to your target on steal?)

Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.

No one is taking this for 5% more damage With a positional requirement

Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.

Again, 50% does not sound like “Shaving” to me – consider a 33% reduction here.

Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.

I can’t see taking this over Thrill of the crime, Uncatchable, or even Long Range.

Kaon.7192:

I really like all of these suggestions.

Offensive: Might -> Fury -> Retal -> Swiftness
Defensive: Aegis -> Stability -> Protection -> Vigor -> Regen

I disagree on the defensive end – Protection is by far the most important. 33% damage reduction is insane – it allows a GC to pretend like its doubled its toughness for the duration. Followed by stability, vigor, and regen. Aegis is (IMO) the least important – 1 block that is telegraphed (since the aegis boon is visible) is fairly easy to counter.

Daishi.6027:

It’s a trade off.

Long story short you are rewarded for more calculated play. This is not a bad thing.

This doesn’t make any sense, due to a lack of details.
Can you please elaborate?

Dekk.3459:

evilapprentice.6379:

Hard to catch will be useless without a redesign – I don’t need any effect teleporting me without my explicit input. There’s too many scenario’s where it’ll be detrimental for me to ever even considering slotting it.

Exactly. I dont want to be the only class with no condition removal, subpar conditions, subpar dps, no damage mitigation and have to deal with positioning. Im not a masochist after all… this is a game, games are fun.

This might seem egotistical, but check out my post https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Init-traits-redesign/first#post3140020 on init trait redesign.

I think it would address the issue of kittentily designed init traits (assuming all the proposed balance changes go through of course), while also addressing some weaknesses in the thief repertoire.

Coulter.2315:

evilapprentice.6379:

Coulter.2315:

Its to encourage pve players to pvp and gives pvp players access to some cash/festival items (they sell for more than crafting dyes). I do think they should maybe give a choice between pvp rewards or pve rewards. Fiddle with it a little but the idea is sound. More players doing pvp means more focus on it because a larger % of the population plays it. I remember when zaishen keys were put into GW1 was a great boost to gvg players.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the PvE items for PvP play incentive.

But tournaments? Do we really need an incentive for PvE players to hop into tournaments? That’s what Hotjoin is for!

Like you said, a choice between the two would be optimal, and make everyone happy. But the idea of incentivizing players with no pvp experience to hop into tourney ques sounds kittening ludicrous to me.

I’d rather run the risk of having the odd bad player in my soloq team every now and then if the same incentive lured some ppl who genuinely had a good experience and took up pvp. If you have decent enough soloq rating you wont likely get paired with pve ppl anyway – i never get put on “noob” teams and my rating aint great. Even more importantly this would be yet MORE incentive for anet to refine their rating system because new pvp players wont like getting matched against ppl who destroy them. Adding more people gives more chances at a thriving pvp community and gives more data for anet, i understand your worries but its big picture stuff.

I do get what you’re saying, but it’s a bit of a catch 22.

I want PvE players to be interested in PvP to bolster the community. However, PvE players with little experience have no business in solo q – it’s harsh to say, but true. The lowest ranks of Solo q shouldn’t be inexperienced players kittening around, it should be filled with players with at least a modicum of PvP experience.

Hotjoin, with all its unfortunate flaws, is the place to learn how to PvP. Anet could certainly do a better job emphasizing smart play in hotjoin, and training players for PvP in general, but the tourney que is for players interested in competitive PvP – its not competitive to fight players who have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.

Nolimitz.9467:

i honestly would build around quick pockets first than i would ever take assassin’s reward quite honestly. Moving Assassin’s reward up will only cause to not be used even further and it pretty much dealt some crappy sustain heals while having to be engaged constanly in order to get full use out of it. If any dev is listening the only way hard to catch becomes a viable trait to be taken is if you reduce the CD, 30 seconds is way too long and with amount of CCs that happen within a glass thief’s lifespan the CD is too ridiculous to justify a random shadowstep back which could easily be closed in by 1 gap closer from a melee class

Having used Assassins reward in its current form, I disagree. I have high hopes for the new assassins reward – I have much more use for it than quick pockets, tbh. Quick pockets will also be de-valued a bit with the new base init regen.

Hard to catch will be useless without a redesign – I don’t need any effect teleporting me without my explicit input. There’s too many scenario’s where it’ll be detrimental for me to ever even considering slotting it.

Nolimitz.9467:

it is getting pretty ridiculous… protection was available to us before in the shadow protector trait since perma stealthing through d/p is being taken away i request another form of damage mitigation. Shadow protector was originally designed to give protection…. can’t this be a thing?

I agree with you 90%.

I ran 10/0/0/30/30 with assassins reward for a while, and it was….serviceable.

It wasn’t great, don’t get me wrong, but it definitely added a noticeable length of survivability as long as I wasn’t getting bursted hardcore. The fact that 10/0/0/30/30 was all about insane init regen certainly helped, but still.

The new Assassins Reward should be a noticeable buff, especially considering their proposed quick recovery will be so worthless that nobody takes it, and no one is taking hard to catch regardless what tier its in. 30 acro will be all survivability traits for most players – Assassin’s reward, pain response, and vigorous recovery.

It should be noticeably more powerfull for 30 acro specs. Is it enough? Not by a long shot, especially considering their proposed changes to sword, Vigorous recovery and bountiful theft.

However, if some of those nerfs are reversed/lessened in severity, I think it could work.

Coulter.2315:

Its to encourage pve players to pvp and gives pvp players access to some cash/festival items (they sell for more than crafting dyes). I do think they should maybe give a choice between pvp rewards or pve rewards. Fiddle with it a little but the idea is sound. More players doing pvp means more focus on it because a larger % of the population plays it. I remember when zaishen keys were put into GW1 was a great boost to gvg players.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the PvE items for PvP play incentive.

But tournaments? Do we really need an incentive for PvE players to hop into tournaments? That’s what Hotjoin is for!

Like you said, a choice between the two would be optimal, and make everyone happy. But the idea of incentivizing players with no pvp experience to hop into tourney ques sounds kittening ludicrous to me.

Mrbig.8019:

Excalibur.9748:

Mrbig.8019:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Thieves are definitely receiving buffs for builds that lacked on initiative regen. Sword MH is pretty much being shafted, but 1/4s cast time is still pretty quick, you can dodge stuns with that. I can name several stuns right now that can be avoided with it. Obviously the direction they are going with the sword main hand is, if you are caught, you are caught, in that .25s you manage to get away you are rewarded with your life.

The vigor nerfs are acceptable, questionable why bountiful theft got changed but who knows, maybe it will get reverted.

And of course, initiative nerfs are going to happen when they increase the base initiative regen, not to surprising. Thieves overall were buffed, maybe some new builds can come to fruition.

The issue is that even with the cheese following shadow return instant nature, S/D thieves are barely on par with current meta proffs, which are not getting nerfed enough, while the thief is getting gutted.

Now thieves won’t be on par anymore.

if they nerfed hard engies-wars-necros-spirit rangers than i would have been fine with these brutal nerfs to thieves, but since it didn’t happen, i’m not fine at all.

I was the first advocating for an Inf strike nerf, but what is going to happen on 10th december is beyond silly.

the inf strike nerf you wanted, isn’t what everyone else wants. this is the nerf everyone else wants. they want to prevent shadow return being used to trivialize CC.

i agree with you that S/D is not viable anymore though.

Since CCs are so overabundant, there’s no point in in gutting the only efficient option a profession has to deal with them ( since if you play */P you’re getting eaten alive by other professions such spirit rangers, necros, engies, hambow wars and all the ridicolous AoE spam /Aoe condi spam which is acutally what PvP is about).

The ini buff is pointless if you do not have any efficient set to play with. Now swords are being removed from PvP, dagger is subpar.

We’re left with venom share and body shot spamming, hoping our teammates will make good use of the 30 secs immo.

This is no cheese at all, well played aNet.

/sarcasm

I dont understand why the vigor nerfs are 50% – anets stance has always been “Shaving” – 50% less doesn’t sound like shaving. 25%, maybe even 33% for bountiful theft – not 50%. Most of the thief changes have been huge percentages that seem more like lazy nerfs than shave and re-evaluate (DD, CnD, LS cost and boons trip, the proposed vigor changes…).

Regardless, please visit https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Make-a-Stink/first#post3140045 and leave your opinion.

Also, please express your opinion on the preview post, though I’m sure you’ve already done that.

I dont PvE.

I get PvE rewards are nice for hotjoin for people who want PvE stuff from PvP…but for tournies? I want PvP rewards for doing well in tournaments.

JonPeters.5630:

I’m back!

Ok I had some time to talk through some of the engineer discussion. Overall Engineer is in a difficult place because they have a ton of good adept traits, not a lot of good master traits, and again a good # of grandmasters so you end up spreading points fairly diversly to get all the good adept traits but lose out on a lot of power by failing to get as many grandmaster traits. Here is what I see a lot of talk about:

Incendiary Powder
Moving this was just something that was a long time coming. It was simply forcing almost every engineer into 10 points in Explosives which was really hurting build diversity. We have tried to counter this by improving other triats that might now be reachable by dropping those 10 points. For example Modified Ammunition, Elixir Infuxed Bombs, and Armor Mods. Now all three of these lines, some more than others, have a strong reason to invest 30 points to match the strong grandmasters already in the other lines.Grenadier, Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, HGH, and Automated Response.

Firearms
We still feel this line is lackluster and in the future some merging and redesigning will take place, but we took the lowest hanging fruit for now. We talked about this line more than any other trait line, but at the end of the day the work and testing required got out of scope for this release. The other spot this line could get a quick pick-me-up is by making at least 2 or 3 of the adept traits in this line good choices.

Invogorating Speed
The indirect nerf to this through speedy kits will reduce some surviveability in the alchemy line, but we felt like it was important given how much other strong stuff that line has.

Master tier traits
Some good suggestions on builds that might open up if we improve some of the master tier traits would be good to see. Here is a pretty decent list of master tier traits that I still find underwhelming.

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents, Power Wrench, Leg Mods.

Keep the discussion going and let’s see if we can find some room in those traits to bring those trait lines some more into play.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to the engineer sub-forum
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/December-10th-Balance-update/page/2#post3139496

Hey that’s great! Thank you.

I hope you find a similar amount of time to discuss the changes to thief, one of which in particular seems like it will kill one of the 2 PvP viable weapon sets out of 6 (since SB is basically a requirement for second set).

WTF are these bags I can’t open?

Doggie.3184:

I would absolutely love some form of a decent condition removing trait that doesn’t require stealth. I like the Kleptomaniac one the most, :P I want to be able to use 30 trickery w/o shadow arts and not have 0 survivability against conditions.

I like my suggestion for klepto because it forces a choice.

Do I steal whenever I want, or do I try to save it for when I can ditch 2 conditions?

It also fits the trickery traitline well, seeing as it boosts condition damage.

Arkantos.7460:

evilapprentice.6379:

Quick recovery – Gain 1 additional init every 10s, cleanse one condition on dodge, 5 (or 10?)s ICD

nope …. it has to be cleanse one condition every 5 secs
why ….. warri can cleanse 3 while weaponsswitch every 5 secs
i dont want to spend all utilies Slots/rune slots for condition cleanse , and after the vigor nerf ….

The numbers are just suggestions – everything needs to be playtested and balanced using a much more complicated process than I’m willing to do as a non-paid volunteer.

The heart of the discussion is adding things to traits that with these proposed changes would be butt-kitten useless.

infantrydiv.1620:

evilapprentice.6379:

infantrydiv.1620:

Basically, very skilled top tier players learned how to use S/D to avoid almost all burst while dealing significant damage.

On the flip side, very, very bad players complained about very bad perma-stealth players ganking them in WvW

But, thieves are not really getting nerfed because they are getting a 33% higher base initiative regen. These changes are good for the class in general in my opinion. We might even see the return of d/d to competitive play with the improved initiative regen

They also lowered Initative regen traits (understandably), without adding anything to them to make them interesting or useful (the part that doesn’t make any sense).

Common thief specs (10/30/0/30/0 and 10/30/0/0/30) aren’t going to see much difference in their init regeneration, because opportunist and kleptomaniac are bland, boring, subpar minor traits, and no one is going to slot Quick recovery unless they do something to make it not awful.

It does potentially open up some other specs that avoid worthless init based traits (which means less than 15 points in CS and trickery, very popular trait lines at the moment), but we won’t know that until the new meta stabilizes (assuming all those changes make it into the patch).

The perma-stealth change wasn’t a nerf – IMO permastealth was against the spirit of the game, the way the dev’s designed stealth, and I’m glad to see it. The 1/4s cast time on Inf return sounds like it’ll kill sword, but again we’ll have to see.

They did nothing to address Death blossom, how useless P/P is in general, and their PW “Fix” seems more like a bandaid then a real fix – on paper, it’s mostly nerfs coming to thief.

The only bright point is that 30 acro specs have a buffed Assassins reward to look forward too, and since no one in their right mind will be using quick recovery, You’ll probably see alot of thieves running assassins reward and pain response. New sundering strikes also seems like it’s finally well designed, and being in DA in a bonus because DA needs traits worth taking, but it’s nothing to jump for joy over.

I’m not sure how hard the Opportunist nerf will hit us really when paired with the new +33% initiative regen. Thieves obviously still have lots of useless traits.

It’s not about how hard the change will hit the class – it’s about the trait now being boring and kittenty. .2 init per second is bland and kind of useless – it should be something that helps differentiate players who put points into CS from players who didn’t. If instead it had a 50% chance to restore 1 init and strip 1 boon on crit with kitten ICD, it’d be a good trait that differentiated those with points into CS from those who didnt.

It’s clear to me at this point that converting Unload to a condition based attack and converting Death Blossom to power would open up a ton of possibilities for thief in general.

Personally I’d like to see Death blossom keep it’s short evade frame but deal aoe damage of around 800 per crit on a glass cannon thief (for a total of around 2k damage). This would give D/D more survivability and finally a complete weapon kit.

For unload, I’d like to see this attack changed basically to something similar to Sneak Attack (5 bleeds, some power damage). Then I’d like to see the stealth attack changed to a 600 range attack which deals burning damage. Torment could be substituted for either of these attacks too if it was hard to balance burning.

They could just design the skill to do both – Make each unload hit proc bleeding, and balance the direct damage so that it was good, but not the best – that way for power/crit specs, the kittenty 43 per second bleeds you get at 0 condition damage help the skill still do solid damage for your damage setup, and vice versa for condition setups. Then do the same for DB.

This is getting off topic.

If we could please ignore the trolls and focus, It would be appreciated.

With the proposed patch notes, Opportunist, Quick recovery, and Kleptomaniac are now garbage traits. It seems silly to finally buff our base init regen (which I’ve been suggesting for a while), and turn 2 minor traits you cant avoid if you go into CS or Trickery into a complete waste of time.

Here are my suggestions to keep them competitive and help flesh out thief specs.

Opportunist -50% change to regain 1 init AND Strip 1 boon on crit, 5s ICD

Quick recovery – Gain 1 additional init every 10s, cleanse one condition on dodge, 5 (or 10?)s ICD

Kleptomaniac – Stealing returns 2 initiative, And transfer 2 conditions to your target.

These changes keep the traits interesting and help define the trait lines more thoroughly – as it stands, Opportunist is .2 init Per second for crit based specs (which sounds god awful for a 15 point minor trait), quick recovery will not ever be slotted over Pain response and Assassins reward, and Kleptomaniac is at its best, with steal being used every single time its on CD with SoH, .1 init per second – which makes it worse than Opportunist.

Sanduskel.1850:

Perma stealth was an abuse of mechanics. it needed a shearing.

Please read the very first post, where I placed “The Death of D/P permastealth” in the “Good” section.

If you can’t be bothered to read before you comment, don’t post.

JonPeters.5630:

• Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.

Nice, been arguing for this for a long time

• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.

Sounds like it’ll kill sword – please test this thoroughly before going live.

• Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.

Sounds like a bandaid that will leave PW marginally useful, as it was before. Please considered a re-design.

• Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.

Nice – a well designed trait in a line that needed more well designed traits

• Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.

Sounds minor, but a buff is a buff.

• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.

Sounds boring, and underpowered for a 15 point minor trait. Please add something that helps define the spec, rather than .2 init per second for high crit specs. Consider also stripping 1 boon.

• Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.

Fair considering new base init regen, secondary effect makes it worth it to slot.

• Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.

Sounds good, will have to test.

• Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.

Finally – permastealth has always felt against the design of stealth in general, glad to see it

• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.

This doesn’t sound like “Shaving” to me – 50% is alot to start off with. Why not try 25% and see how that pans out.

• Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.

Still not getting slotted in PvP – maybe WvW? I Don’t know.

• Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.

Absolutely pointless to slot now – please add something else (cure 1 condition on dodge, 5s ICD?)

• Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.

Sounds awesome – the one change I am most excited to test

• Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.

Still never getting slotted due to poor design

• Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.

Now an underwhelming 15 point minor trait – please consider adding something else to it (transfers X conditions from you to your target on steal?)

• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.

No one is taking this for 5% more damage With a positional requirement

• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.

Again, 50% does not sound like “Shaving” to me – consider a 33% reduction here.

• Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.

I can’t see taking this over Thrill of the crime, Uncatchable, or even Long Range.

What I’m confused by is the difference between Anet’s stated balance method (“Shaving”), and the actual way they go about making changes.

Was Dancing dagger losing 50% of its damage sound like a “Shave”?
How about CnD losing 33% of its damage (in pvp)
Or Our vigor traits losing 50% of their effectiveness?
Or LS doubling in cost, then losing 50% of its boon steal?

PW and cluster bomb were “Shaved” when they lost 15% of their damage.

When I hear “Shave” I think 15-25%. Take a little away, see if it makes a difference, then take more if needed the next time a patch rolls around. 50% losses to start with don’t sound like “Shaving” to me, they sound like lazy nerf hammers.

infantrydiv.1620:

Basically, very skilled top tier players learned how to use S/D to avoid almost all burst while dealing significant damage.

On the flip side, very, very bad players complained about very bad perma-stealth players ganking them in WvW

But, thieves are not really getting nerfed because they are getting a 33% higher base initiative regen. These changes are good for the class in general in my opinion. We might even see the return of d/d to competitive play with the improved initiative regen

They also lowered Initative regen traits (understandably), without adding anything to them to make them interesting or useful (the part that doesn’t make any sense).

Common thief specs (10/30/0/30/0 and 10/30/0/0/30) aren’t going to see much difference in their init regeneration, because opportunist and kleptomaniac are bland, boring, subpar minor traits, and no one is going to slot Quick recovery unless they do something to make it not awful.

It does potentially open up some other specs that avoid worthless init based traits (which means less than 15 points in CS and trickery, very popular trait lines at the moment), but we won’t know that until the new meta stabilizes (assuming all those changes make it into the patch).

The perma-stealth change wasn’t a nerf – IMO permastealth was against the spirit of the game, the way the dev’s designed stealth, and I’m glad to see it. The 1/4s cast time on Inf return sounds like it’ll kill sword, but again we’ll have to see.

They did nothing to address Death blossom, how useless P/P is in general, and their PW “Fix” seems more like a bandaid then a real fix – on paper, it’s mostly nerfs coming to thief.

The only bright point is that 30 acro specs have a buffed Assassins reward to look forward too, and since no one in their right mind will be using quick recovery, You’ll probably see alot of thieves running assassins reward and pain response. New sundering strikes also seems like it’s finally well designed, and being in DA in a bonus because DA needs traits worth taking, but it’s nothing to jump for joy over.

Walker.3056:

To all people that think init regen is better now the answer is NO its way far behind from what it was just because of this one change:

Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.

This is a HUGE nerf CD increased from 1s to 5s means at least 5 less init regen while fighting, This is a BIG nerf on PvP and PvE

In PvP, you weren’t critting 4-5 times per second, so that math is not accurate. Overall, the opportunist change is in line with new, faster base init regen – it’s just a kittenty trait now.

Excalibur.9748:

evilapprentice.6379:

I don’t understand the evasion nerf without some other survivability changes. Thieves aren’t tough. They don’t get protection, blocks, or immunity skills. So now we evade less, can’t escape with Inf return anymore…and that’s it? No other changes to thief survivability?

I’m sure we’ll get it if we’re no longer viable in tPvP. But it’s a good start to kill off all the cheese specs.

I disagree that high evasion was a “Cheese spec” – do you know another way to survive as a thief other than evading attacks? You certainly don’t have the health/mitigation to just eat it.

Don’t bother bringing up Double S/D with energy sigils – that spec has been dead for months because it’s crap – yes, it was a troll spec, but it wasn’t effective, and has been buried.

I don’t understand the evasion nerf without some other survivability changes. Thieves aren’t tough. They don’t get protection, blocks, or immunity skills. So now we evade less, can’t escape with Inf return anymore…and that’s it? No other changes to thief survivability?

Init regen change was great, I agree. I’ve argued for it on the boards 2 or 3 times, in fact.

Leaving init based traits where they were, only kittentier? That’s my issue. Some of the now worthless looking init traits (Opportunist, Quick recovery, Klepto) should have been changed to better define their trait lines, instead of being left in place – it’s only conjecture, but they all look borderline worthless.

At least with Quick recovery I can just not take it, but any CS or Trickery trait line is stuck with this placeholder crap.

Excalibur.9748:

It’s unfortunate that S/D, my main set will take yet more nerfs, but I think this is a good start to cutting down the level of cheese of this class. I don’t want to play a class everyone hates. I want to be good in PvE, WvW, dungeons, PvP, zerging, GvG , all modes like the warrior.

The nerfs seem pretty drastic to me (inf. strike, and opportunist stand out) but I’m sure we will get compensation as I still have faith in ANET.

The opportunist change isn’t so bad, when you consider the fact that base init regen is now faster. It’s dreadfully boring though. Why not change opportunist to something more interesting? Regenerating 0.2 init per second when you’re constantly critting seems like a really boring, kittenty 15 point minor trait – just change it entirely to be something interesting and useful for the crit line.

After reading the balance preview, I see a mix of good and bad ideas.

Good
-Base init regen bump
-Death of D/P perma stealth
-Assassins reward being buffed
-Sundering strikes now sounds like a useful trait, in a line that needed useful traits.

Bad
-Inf return cast time
-Init traits remain where they are – the point of better base init regen is to give us more trait options that help define the spec, not leaving them in place just kittentier.
-Evasion reduction without offering us some other survivability options. If anet feels thieves evade too often, they need to offer us some other way to survive in fights – just nerfing vigor uptime leaves an already squishy class with less options. Combined with the Inf return cast time, it seems S/D will become completely unforgiving.
-Absolutely no attention paid to P/P or Death blossom, PW change seems like a bandaid more than a fix.

So, what do we do? We make a stink.

The point of posting this preview was to give us a chance to voice our opinions on the changes, so lets do so. Most importantly, do so with in the confines of the posted rules. Don’t be rude, overly dramatic, make threats, etc etc etc. Be polite and concise, back up your opinions, offer solutions, but post. Post constantly. Let them know what their mistakes are, and suggest better ways to make the changes they’re proposing (because those changes are, for the most part, being made – lets just hopefully nudge them in the most intelligent direction)

If this sounds silly to you, you haven’t played a thief long enough – since release we’ve been hit with a wave of ridiculously stupid changes (4s revealed in PvP, Dagger OH nerf, etc), all from the communities endless kittening about how impossible thieves were to kill. Some players still complain about Heart seeker, if you need any further convincing. Lets try and use that same power to our benefit for once.

pantsforbirds.9032:

I’m fine with the changes. The initiative change will be good for any thief not traited for int regen. Obviously perma stealth is dead now, but thats not too bad. The biggest problem i have is the lack on condi removal thieves will have now. Our main source of condi removal came from shadow arts, so i guess we will see how that plays out. Perma stealth was never that great in tpvp, so i think overall tpvp thieves will be fine. We will probably see more 10/30/0/0/30 thieves using d/p.

I don’t understand why they increased base init regen, and then just reduced the traits with affect init regen. It feels like Init regen will mostly stay the same for most builds – why not replace the init regen traits which now look like kitten (Opportunist, Quick recovery, klepto), with traits that actually help define the traitline?

Tyler Chapman.1832:

a t s e.9614:

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

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

But you also nerfed Init regen traits – I don’t see how much overall net change this will make. Why not, instead, replace some of the init based traits with traits that help define builds?

FluffyFox.2756:

If thief sword is going to get a cast time for infiltrator’s return, would it be possible to look into flanking strike and larcenous strike again? Ever since it was nerfed to only steal one boon, I find myself almost never using it, due to the fact that boon durations are generally very short, they are re-applied very easily, and there’s no control whatsoever on which boon you will be stealing anyways.

I do agree that it was too powerful at 2 boons stolen per larcenous strike, but I find it far too weak at 1 boon stolen… do you think the skill could be modified in some other fashion so that it’s not such a waste of initiative anymore?

It should still 1 boon, then another boon of a subset – protection, vigor, retal or regen – that way it properly limits the power of boon bunkers without overpenalizing DPS/hybrid setups that rely on might/fury/swiftness to fulfill their roles.

Bravo on finally addressing thief base initiative regeneration. I’ve been suggesting that be looked into for quite a while.

However, part of the point of doing so was to remove the reliance on so many initiative based traits, and instead replace them with effects that make the class feel more varied and unique, instead of traits that just let us use our abilities at an effective pace. Why keep all the init based traits and just reduce their effectiveness? This is especially aggravating for the minor traits, which you can’t avoid taking if you go into that trait line.

It looks like most specs will stay almost exactly the same, perhaps switching out Quick recovery (which now tentatively looks like crap for a master tier trait) with Assassin’s reward (which now looks much better).

Why not update some of those init based traits (Quick recovery, opportunist, kleptomaniac) with effects which actually help define the playstyle?

Concerning Pistol Whip – I obviously can’t test it, but it still seems like players will Still be able to walk/dodge roll out of the second half of the damaging portion of the skill. I’m not asking that the stun lock the player down for the full effect, but there has to be some point into using PW besides for forcing the opposing player to dodge out of the last half of the swings. It seems like it needs more of a re-design than a tweak at this point.

Instead of a .25s cast time on Infiltrators Return, just lock it down when CC’d You’ll achieve the same effect without ruining the fluidity of play that sword relies on. Regardless of which you go with, I think it’s a silly choice, but if you’re determined to further limit S/D, please do it in the smartest way possible

Paulo.8459:

selan.8354:

well i think anet has to make a decision here though. either give the thief a lot of evades and nerf stealth or leave the permastealth in the game and remove the massive evades. imagine a thief with less stealth without the eveades….they would be very lost and very squishy. id rather have their stealth toned down than their evades.

A stealthy thief doesn’t evade very much.
A evasive thief doesnt’t stealsh very much
A thief built for evasion AND stealth doesn’t kill anything and doesn’t contribute to the team at all.

Nail head, meet hammer.
Nicely put Sir.

Thedenofsin.7340:

evilapprentice.6379:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

Boon stealing, lots of blinds, lots of stealth, lots of teleports, condition removal every time you shadowstep, every 3 seconds in stealth, low cooldown on heals, regen while stealthed, abundant access to vigor.

Thieves have tons of survivability. This ability is just broken.

You’re going to need to drop the hyperbole if you want people to take you seriously. Here, you’ve taken some things a bunch of different thief specs are capable of, and attributed them all to S/D, which just isn’t true.

-S/D has 1 way to blind – Tactical strike from the front. It is not used often. Utilities that blind also aren’t popular when running S/D
-As I’ve already pointed out, Stealth offers very little to an S/D build – it’s almost always used to gain access to a daze to interrupt a stomp or res. S/D has better tools for repositioning, and they don’t cost 6 initiative.
-You drop 1 condition every time you Shadow return, not every shadowstep. 1 condition for 5 init seems fair to me.
-Dropping conditions in stealth (which again, isn’t something S/D builds get much use out of) is from a trait in SA…a traitline which S/D doesn’t spec into
- Yes, withdraw has a low CD. While you are correct, you’ve done little to explain why it’s “So OP”
- Regen on stealth is Again something you get from SA (30 points in), and I’ve already explained how S/D thieves don’t use Stealth OR SA
-Yes, thieves do have abundant access to vigor – as you might have noticed, I mentioned that thieves survival mechanics are heavily reliant on evades – vigor being the only defensive boon thieves have abundant access to while having absolutely no in-class access to stability/protection/aegis seems fair to me.

If you can’t make your point without hyperbole, exaggeration, and lies, you don’t really have a point to begin with.

Master of Timespace.2548:

It is somewhat overpowered yes. Damage reduction would be in place, but I want the boon removal back.

Please explain why you think the skill is OP. DPS is on par with Auto attack, and auto attack causes cripple and weakness. I think 5 init is fair to pay for an evade and a boon strip that does the same damage as pressing 1 close to your target.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

But they do have stealth and a heal that has no cast time, not to mention the many teleports they have access to. This particular build also has some access to stability through Lyssa runes and basilisk venom. When pondering whether if a build has to be shaved, it isn’t relevant what the class in question in general relies to. All that matters is if the build as whole is too powerful or not. However, when the actual nerf is done, then one of course has to consider that class in general so that balanced builds aren’t affected too much.

Stealth does not mitigate damage. It just makes you untargetable. It also prevents contesting points. It isn’t a very powerful tool for S/D because it costs 6 init to access, they generally don’t have any points in SA, and it doesn’t open up any strong options for them. 90% of the time, you’ll see an S/D thief stealth to interrupt a stomp/res/long casting time ability being used without stability.

Access to stability via rune choices is not the same as in-class access to stability. Also note, Lyssa runes are generally taken due to thieves inability to drop a large number of conditions in a short period of time – if you’re using it for stability, you’re not going to have it for condition cleansing.

What is it that makes you feel that S/D is overpowered, and needs to be shaved?

garethh.3518:

evilapprentice.6379:

In other games I’ve played, there were usually 5 or 6 different builds, per class, that were considered powerful and versatile enough to PvP with. They each brought different skills and tools, leading to a more fun game.

So you’re saying, because a game had 5-6 builds per class and was good, a game has to have 5-6 builds per class to be good?

No. That’s a very simplistic way to misinterpret my comment. If I meant to say a game must have 5-6 builds per class to be good, I would have just said that.

Yes different skills and tools to pick from helps a game.
There is a kitten ton of room to work that into 16+ builds.

You seem to have missed the core of the post though and instead took away that I feel “this games doesn’t need more diversity in gameplay”

Which is completely off… what I’m saying is that the game needs diversity in gameplay, and the best (by leaps and bounds) way to go about it is to adjust/tweak/redo existing weapons/mechanics/exc. to be more engaging and make
gameplay more dynamic.

There is no point in quantity if it’s all terribly made, the specs out there right now seem so boring and undiverse because they are boring and undiverse… that’s not an issue with the number of specs, but quality of them… so far Anet doesn’t care a drop about making specs engaging, only making more boring and undiverse specs viable which won’t change anything in the slightest.
(yet increase build diversity…)

And I still disagree. Your suggestion seems to be “make the existing 1 or 2 specs much more versatile”…which still leaves players with 1 or 2 builds to choose from, which to me is boring. I don’t want to play a jack of all trades, I want to play a focused class. I want my decision to feel like they matter, not be running the same spec as half the population because it has so many options covered.

I’d prefer if I had 5 specs to choose from, each with varying levels of focus in different areas, with different strengths and weaknesses, so it feels like my choices matter.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Ashanor.5319:

It’s fine. Watch the animatons.

Don´t go that way. warrior have some good animations and still it will be nerfed. It depends how much people qq.

“Watch the animations” is a simple way to put it for people who understand all the complaints surrounding S/D thief.

The animation you’re mostly watching for is Flanking Strike (FS), the evade. It does low damage even in a Glass setup, and doesn’t have any special effects attached to it (ignoring blocks, stealing boons, etc) beside the evade. Don’t try to use .75 and 1s casting time skills when you know a thief has FS up, because that’s what it’s their for.

The secondary animations you want to watch for are CS and LS – they have the same animation, and carry the bulk of the damage and utility in the set.

Put simply – save your big attacks for after the thief has used FS (hard to miss, it’s a very visible/flashy move) so you know they can’t FS again. Pay attention to the location of their return circle. If you force a thief to use SR to evade your big swings (because they blew FS and don’t have the survivability to eat a big swing), you’re winning – the initiative cost of these skills adds up quickly.

If you can force me to use my skills when you want me to, rather than at my own discretion, you’re winning the fight.

garethh.3518:

Zerbo.5381:

A common complaint among the PVP community is the lack of viable builds..

No on in their right mind gives a kitten about build diversity.
There are already a over a dozen top tier builds to pick from, that’s EASILY enough to sustain a population.

The issue is that the vast majority of top tier builds suck balls to play.
Anet hasn’t shown a lick of interest in making builds more engaging to play (or maps more fun!!)… they only balance… balance out crappy gameplay…
That’s driven GW2 into the ground.

I disagree with you 100%. Knowing that there are only 2 thief builds that even have a chance in TPvP (one of which is considered generally superior) is disappointing.

In other games I’ve played, there were usually 5 or 6 different builds, per class, that were considered powerful and versatile enough to PvP with. They each brought different skills and tools, leading to a more fun, varied game.

As fun as it is to think about what new weapons we’d all like to see, I’d prefer to focus on requesting that Anet fix our non-viable existing weaponsets.

P/P is still a joke, S/P was inadvertantly broken when it was revealed that a rounding error was the only thing keeping PW even marginally useful, and D/D still suffers from the fact that dagger OH is underwhelming, and having a condition based kittenty evade skill in the middle of a direct damage set.

Almost half our weapon sets are non-viable, and among those non-viable weaponsets, 66% are so poorly designed they’re unplayable.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

If you really think it takes 0 skill to play S/D well, but all means, roll one and try it out.
I think you’ll find yourself surprised.

S/D needs to be glassy to do competitive sustained damage – one mistake can and will cost you half your health. You don’t get time to think about what you’re going to do next – you need to know what your possible next steps are going to be 5 seconds into the future, and have enough experience to make the correct snap decisions based on how the fight plays out.

Thedenofsin.7340:

the boonsteal isn’t the problem. The problem is that it’s spammable evade, which is completely broken.

The evade is not spammable.

Every time a thief evades, he has to either spend 2 init and .5 seconds casting LS, or wait 5s for FS to cycle back on.

If I were to spam my 3 key, I’d spend 50% of the time evading, and 50% of the time standing in place.

Kavia.8249:

An idea to fix flanking-larcenous:

Remove chain aspect of this attach. Make flanking strike a stand alone attack that does minimal damage and steals 2 boons. Keep evade. increase initiative cost to 5.

You want evade and boon steal? You can have it but you can’t do damage at the same time. Damage/Utility/Defense – pick two you can’t have all three.

The DPS of sword AA and FS->LS are roughly on par.

AA costs 0 init, and inflicts Weakness and Cripple.

FS->LS costs 5 init – it better do something special if it costs 5 init, does similiar DPS to AA, and doesn’t have weakness and cripple attached. Evading and stealing a boon is completely reasonable for spending 42% of a standard initiative bar.

Also note, you don’t get all 3 in 1 skill – FS is Defense, LS is Damage and Utility. If you need defense and you have LS up, you don’t get it. If you need damage and utility and FS is up, you don’t get it.

kito.1827:

evilapprentice.6379:

It’s a combination of both – please feel free to roll one and try it out.

i did, and it feels ridiculous to play like the worst coward á la attack-hide-regen-reattack-hide…
so i never liked the play style and really hate those cowards – i still don’t think thieves should go because obviously many like it – but at the “s/d turning point” with all the evades it started to get disgusting.

thieves – like many others – got overlook because of the warrior QQs and as usual hide in their shadows ;p
i think the this change to evasion would be a good one

You’re very clearly letting emotion play a large role in your opinion here. You don’t really understand the need for the mechanic as it is, you just hate the way thief plays, and therefore everything they do is OP and needs to be nerfed. It’s not really a compelling argument, or a good way to look at balance objectively.

kito.1827:

evilapprentice.6379:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Here is a list of things that you should nerf:

13, Inf Strike – not moving people to somewhere without line of sight

Thieves rely on mobility to remain relevant – please get used to it.

14, Larcenous strike – remove evasion from flanking strike
15, feline grace – add 10s icd
16, Shadows refuge – cooldown

You know what sounds fair? Take the class that relies on evades almost exclusively to mitigate damage and kill their evades.
Why bother with 3 separate points when you could have typed “Lawl, delete thief”.

huh??
does it rely on mobility or on evades now?
imo with the stealth mechanic + evades + mobility i think a better way would be to make those “evade skills” a 50% chance to evade – for every evade skill ingame, which of course includes other classes – but evade itself stays as is

It’s a combination of both – please feel free to roll one and try it out.