Guild Wars 2

Zeon.8239:

evilapprentice.6379:

Zeon.8239:

S/D thieves complain, saying that larcenous strike changing from two boon steals to one breaks the entire weaponset. Meanwhile, the glaring problem with the ability to spam evades goes pitifully unanswered.

You appear to be commenting on a spec that fell out of favor months ago. Please update your biases before trying again.

Just because it fell out of “favor” doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, or isn’t an issue.

“Spamming evades” is a symptom of Double S/D with Quick pockets.

That spec isn’t run anymore because of how bad it is – it’s predictable, easily countered, offers nothing in team fights, and is kitten -poor against the current bunker-ish meta.

It isn’t an issue anymore because it’s a bad spec that no longer works. If you’re talking about any spec with S/D as one of the weaponsets, you can’t exactly “Spam” evades, so the point is moot from the start.

Justin ODell.9517:

evilapprentice.6379:

… can we have an explanation as to why this is just happening now?

It can happen for a lot of reasons, and I honestly don’t know exactly what happened here.

Speculating, it’s possible the 5th user that dropped was a very highly rated player. This can confuse the match maker because the average skill rating of the red team (adjusted for the time each team has been waiting in the queue) could be very near the average rating for the blue team.

Improving match making to include parameters beyond just skill rating is on our radar.

Allow me to preface this largely negative statement by thanking you for responding to me – regardless of how I feel about the game, I appreciate you taking the time to address my concerns, and post on the boards in general.

My point wasn’t exactly “Why is this happening now”, but rather, why was this a possibility at all? I understand the matchmaking system will never be perfect, and that there will always be outliers. The situation we’re looking at is not one comprised of outliers – it’s SOP – it’s how matchmaking works. I don’t understand how such an easily exploitable, obviously flawed matchmaking system made it past internal QA, and out into the open field – we aren’t playing a beta, we’re over a year into release.

If Anet needs to go back to the drawing board, that is disappointing, but we’d rather hear it straight up from the company themselves than infer it from the way things have been handled over the last 3 months. We’re sick of just assuming everything will be poorly handled, because precedence has taught us that is the safe bet.

What do you need? What do you need from us, the community, to improve the issues that have become commonplace in the PvP environment? I understand that there is ALOT of negative crap to wade through on the boards, but some of us are genuinly looking forward to when this game is in a solidy designed, enjoyable game to PvP in – it’s been over a year, and it still isn’t there. We’re interesting in helping, but the only word we’ve heard thus far is “keep the constructive criticism coming!”, and that’s hard to take seriously when it doesn’t appear as though that’s helping at all.

Justin ODell.9517:

We’re working on this right now. Hopefully it will be available in the next PvP drop.

One thing to keep in mind is we perform matching based on a Glicko v2 rating, not player rank. So even though higher ranked players also tend to have a higher rating, it isn’t always the case.

@Cheri Wolf
I wrote a simulator to test several different ways of solving the problem, one of which is the way you suggested, so I’m glad we’re on the same page.

While that method improved things it also tends to weigh the match in favor of the first team. The current iteration we’re working on now is very similar, but greatly reduces the bias.

I appreciate that this is being worked on, but can we have an explanation as to why this is just happening now? It’s hard to justify an argument with the “PvP is the red headed stepchild” crowd when you treat PvP like a redheaded stepchild.

crouze.3078:

We want to “nerf” our good traits a little bit and buff our bad traits to have new “good” traits. We have to take everything into account.

I like your ideas. but merging traits means we need new traits as well.
the ideas are good though!

My favourite idea so far is the poison on crit trait.

When merging residual/quick venoms, how about a master trait that increases condition duration by 20% -30%?

Our good traits dont really need a nerf – Nothing on the “good” side is so powerful as to make the class broken. We need to bring bad traits up to the same level, IMO.

Zeon.8239:

S/D thieves complain, saying that larcenous strike changing from two boon steals to one breaks the entire weaponset. Meanwhile, the glaring problem with the ability to spam evades goes pitifully unanswered.

You appear to be commenting on a spec that fell out of favor months ago. Please update your biases before trying again.

@Popeurban

I disagree – I want my spec to be consistent and reproducible- I don’t want to win or lose a fight thanks to a lucky/unlucky Improv trigger. It’s not about how potentially powerful the trait is (to me, at least) its about how consistently powerful it is – I’d prefer something I can always bank on as opposed to something that ranges from fight-changing to utterly useless every time I use it.

S/D thieves will be nerfed.

Venomous aura will be buffed, but without the necessary fix to venoms, still leaving it worthless. (odd – “less” followed by “worth” = worthkitten…until I post this explanation, at which point it is no longer considered a curse)

Body shot will be buffed , but still remain a sub-par skill that does nothing to help define how P/P should play.

P/P will still be the thief’s absolute worst designed weapon set.

I’m going to stop before I die of alcohol poisoning.

crouze.3078:

V Potent Poison
Increases poison duration by 33%.

I’d move this to a new category, “Useless” – I can’t imagine any spec where this would be worth it over every other trait option in the line at the same level.

VII Improvisation
Stealing recharges all skills of one type (venoms, signets, traps, tricks, or deceptions). Deal 10% more damage while wielding a bundle.
Idea: Stealing recharges all skills of one type one of your utility skills. Deal 10% 15% more damage while wielding a bundle.

The RNG kills this trait – you can’t bank on randomly getting a utility back IMO, so that isn’t a good fix. Ideally, I’d like something along the lines of “Stolen items are 20% more effective, deal 10% more damage when holding a stolen item”, but the first part of that is tough to implement – some stolen items do damage, some grant boons, some place an AoE field… if they could find a standardized way to implement that, I think improvisation would become a much more useful trait.

VII Ankle Shots
Critical hits with a pistol have a 60% chance to cripple foes for 3s. (Cooldown of 10 seconds).
Idea: Critical hits with a pistol have a 60% chance to cripple foes for 3s. 6s (Cooldown of 10 seconds).

Can’t judge this trait fairly IMO, as P/P is a broken set, and P/D doesn’t have much use for crit. Hard to tell how useful it really is until thieves have a functioning Pistol MH set that values crit.

X Patience
Regain initiative faster while in stealth. (1 after 3 seconds)
Idea: Regain initiative faster while in stealth. (1 3 after 3 seconds)

Another trait for the “Useless” bin – a long time ago, someone did the math, and patience is provably worse than infusion of shadow in 99% of situations. Your suggestion isn’t bad, but promotes sitting in stealth even more than SA does now, and I can’t say I’m a fan of that. I don’t have a good suggestion for it however.

IV Assassin’s Retreat
Gain swiftness when you kill an foe. This effect cannot occur more than once every 5 seconds.

Another useless trait. Needs to be completely redesigned.

VI Fleet of Foot
Dodging removes cripple and weakness from you. (10s cooldown)

Merge Fleet of foot and Quick recovery into a T2 trait – Lose 1 condition and gain 1 Init whenever you dodge, 5s ICD.

XI Hard to Catch
Shadowstep away and give swiftness (12s) when you are disabled (stun, daze, float, knock down, launch, knock back, sink, or fear). This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds.

That useless bin keeps growing. Replace with “When disabled, cure’s all conditions,breaks stuns,grants 1s of evasion” with a reasonable CD (probably 60s). It is a T3 trait after all.

II Instinctual Response
Use feathers to blind and stealth when you take more than 10% of your health in a single strike. This effect can only trigger once every 60 seconds.

Reduce CD to 30s, or have it also cure cripple/immob/chill.

ryston.7640:

Hi all, I keep seeing this, and similar arguments crop up. I don’t really disagree with them but I have some thoughts I’d like to share.

1) GW2 launched with better support for pvp than most MMOs. This… is… true, Im pretty sure. But it also launched with a lot less than guild wars 1 did, and a lot less than it was hyped to contain. I guess it’s a glass half full or empty kinda thing.

This first sentence just isn’t true. I can think of at least 1 recent game that trumps GW2 in PvP support that I personally played and could be considered recent. The comparison would be embarrassing. The level of support at launch would have been more than adequate if patches were delivered quickly, and tested well prior to launch. They weren’t, so it wasn’t.

2) Best PvP of an MMO… I’m not sure about this but it wouldnt surprise me. It just hasnt got the best PvP of any mmo ever. GW1 had better tpvp before anet expanded it into bad, and DAoC had Realm vs Realm, which was a lot better than WvWvW. So again, half empty half full.

Best is a nebulous term, but GW2’s core is certainly strong. I think the only reason so many of us continue to care about the direction of PvP is because we can see how amazing this game could be if only all the peripheral kitten was handled well. The basic gameplay is fun to play, well designed, interesting, and unique. Unfortunately all the crap around the basic gameplay (Matchmaking, Leaderboards, rewards, balance, QoL functions, etc) has been less than adequate, poorly tested, and very slow to release.

dDuff.3860:

I have some information that Inf.strike will now cripple, PW will immobilize instead stun.
But i don’t know what buffs we will get for it.
Thoughts?

This could be potentially awesome if true – the overwhelming stupidity of these (hypothetical) changes will hopefully get whatever (hypothetical) idiot who suggested them fired.

0/10
Next time ask to be able to DW Greatswords, that would at least be entertaining.

2/10
Would not read again.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Can you make that case more stronger by adding supporting evidence? Can you show the loss of power and the increase in mobility in using Sb?

As Thief players, we all know this like the back of our enemies, but Anet don’t have devs playing Thief so they have no idea. So can you explain your claim that someone who has not played Thief will understand?

I wont say I completely disagree with you, but I’m not a paid employee of Anet – if I have to explain why Sb is more mobile, less powerful secondary weaponset then say D/P, I just don’t have the time. Some more complicated interactions could probably benefit from having an experienced thief explain them, but if Anet really needs me to explain the above, all I can offer is “Read the weapon skill descriptions, and look at the damage numbers”.

I’m sure that we both know that the Thief profession doesn’t flow very well. It seems that the Devs doesn’t know what to make of this profession. If you recall during the development, each class used to have energy similar to GW1, then they trashed that but left it for the Thief and call it Initiative. While other profession enjoys the limitless use of skills, Thieve has to settle with bursting. So our problem is beyond just the weapon sets.

Part of the problem also is the regeneration of Initiative, I believe 1init/1.33s is too slow. If the minor trait “Preparedness” makes the regen rate 3init/1.33s, then I believe that it will solve a lot of the problems we are facing with our current weapon set.

I agree that our base Init regen makes the class nigh unplayable – I’ve made posts about it before. I personally feel the gap between base Init regen and traited init regen should be narrowed, but that overall init regen shouldn’t be any higher than it is now for a player who has traited heavily for init regen.

Yes I agree that the swap cooldown is a limit, no different than profession’s skill cooldown. However, we both know that if we want to burst someone down, we start with a Backstab then pepper them with Unload interrupting heals with Headshots. Then if we really have to, we can finish them off with Heartseeker — but we know that when a Thief burst someone down, the fight ends sooner than 10s.

You’re spending an awful lot of initiative there in 10s – a single attempt at mitigation by your opponent (dodge, block, immunity, applied blind, etc…) will render that burst largely ineffective and leave you scrambling for the Init to finish them off before they heal/escape/down you. P/P in it’s current form is a big risk, seeing as all your damage is highly Init dependent. Even if we considered a well designed P/P (which for sake of argument is Direct damage based), it’s not like AA will fulfill the “burst” role.

Well I think it is obvious that they have no idea how to fix our profession and I really doubt that they are willing to fix it. So far, the “boon hate” and “torment” is blowing up in their faces.

They also don’t seem to take any thief related advice from the boards – I see them caving to “Wah, stealth is OP” pressure slowly but surely. I see them considering nerfing S/D because players don’t want to learn to time things. P/P has been abysmal since the basic meta stabilized back in Sept 2012, and it’s yet to be addressed, or even acknowledged (AFAIK)

(in reference to S/D – D/P)
That’s a very good example on what I’m talking about. Just look at that weapon set combination; it has control, interrupt, burst, stealth, blind, condition removal, gap closer, etc. If it’s not broken, it is super strong. The power level of that combination even goes further up when used with the right utility skills, traits, and runes.

These things we need to consider, because if we don’t, we’ll get the change we wanted then we’ll get nerfed back to the ground again.

If it is was so strong, I think we’d be seeing alot more of it. In the recent tourney, we saw 3 S/D SB thieves, but not a single S/D D/P thief. Again, this might be due to how necessary SB is for team fights/mobility, but even if in the future that changes, you’re talking about having those 2 different skill sets available to you for 10s at a time. HS is useless if you need it with 5s still on your swap CD. Your opponent has 10-12s to spam their boons and take advantage of them when they see you swap from S/D to D/P. I still don’t really see what’s wrong with 2 sets that follow the same basic damage philosophy (Direct damage, Condition damage) that each have their own strengths and weaknesses. That sounds to me like a way of playing the class that relies on a lot of skill and planning.

Dirame.8521:

This topic has been on my mind for months. I always wondered why the community at large couldn’t just say “No one play Necromancers with Dhuumfire or Terror or Warriors with Paralyzation till they fix them”. I believe the LoL community bans certain heroes for tournaments so why can’t we ban certain specs?

Because this game doesn’t currently have the spec diversity to ban anything at the moment.

Not that I agree with the overall sentiment per say, but it isn’t even worth discussing when classes have so few options as it is.

This is a silly argument.

It’s a competitive game, people are going to play what wins games. Maybe it’s a little cheesy, but you can’t fault someone for playing to win… that’s literally the point.

When you add in E-sports and cash prizes, its just plain stupid to not play the most effective spec you can – it’s Anet’s job to make sure that those specs aren’t broken or too cheesy.

@Sir Vincent

I don’t really see the problem with D/D / P/P – other classes have well built weaponsets they can switch between, why not thieves? Having weapon sets that compliment each other doesn’t make them broken. This goes for every weaponset I can think of. And if you really think about it, ShBow is currently considered a nigh mandatory weapon in TPvP for team fights and mobility – not taking it might boost your ability in 1on1 (In this hypothetical situation where most or all our weapons were well built) and small skirmishes, but you’re sacrificing things for that power

The initiative system changes the formula just a tad, but I have to imagine they had that in mind when they developed the class – if their intention was to have a bunch of dysfunctional or UP weaponsets due to the init system, I’d imagine they would have dropped it instead. There’s still a 10s weapon swap CD, so it’s not like you can switch to P/P for a quick headshot/BP then immediately switch back to D/D for your big burst damage. Hopefully the design team will notice any OP discrepancies and deal with them… 3 to 6 months after they’re released with inadequate testing, as is Anet’s MO.

Edit:
Not having any wasted Init doesn’t automatically translate to every skill being amazingly useful in every situation. D/P is a very well built set, but berserker stance shuts it’s non-stealth mitigation options down hard – combined with any form of stability, and your only option is to hide in stealth/dodge away until 1 or both those effects fade. This doesn’t make D/P OP or UP, just a well designed set.

You can already go S/D – D/P with a handful of specs, and it isn’t considered broken. Heck, it isn’t even considered particularly strong, because you’re giving up too much by not taking ShBow (which could be part of the problem, tbh).

Sir Vincent III.1286:

@OP
There is a flaw in your post and this is the main issue why some weapon set are horrible: weapon combination.

Do you honestly use P/P just by itself? Or do you use a weapon off-set that complements P/P?

What compliments a bi-polar weapon set where the only 2 skills designed to do damage (AA and Unload) use entirely different stats to deal damage? There’s no secondary weaponset that suddenly makes P/P well designed – it’s still very, very kittentily designed.

I know that P/D complements SB and by perfecting the weapons switching through practice, it is a powerful condition damage set.

Same as above. How does equipping a ShBow suddenly make it so that P/D isn’t at it’s strongest hitting 5->1 as often as possible in most situations? Once every 20s you might hit Shadow Stab to build range, then switch to ShBow I guess? The change to Shadow Stab was a good one, but the set still needs a little attention.

D/D + P/P is also a powerful weapon set combination for hybrids with access to burst after perfecting weapon switching through practice. SoM is OP with these sets. This is like having D/D, P/P, P/D, and D/P within your grasp.

Do you see alot of thieves running hybrids with access to burst that don’t make at least one of those sets worthless? If you’re running a condition focus (With access to burst, somehow), D/P is entirely useless and D/D is mostly useless. If you’re running a direct damage focus (with access to burst, believably), P/D is entirely useless, and P/P is mostly useless. You’re not gaining that much in versatility, and you’ve sacrificed Shadow Shot (a Strong skill) and Shadow Stab (a useful skill, buffed enough to finally break the 5->1 P/D monotony, if only a little). You also only have the opportunity to gain these benefits once every 10 seconds – Don’t get me wrong, if all of our sets were well designed, your point would be solid, unfortunately they are not.

My point is, if we are to address any issue, we need to look at the big picture and not focus on individual weapon set or build. Looking them individually will really make you sad, but that is not all what they can do.

Your big picture mostly crams weapons in to use 1 or 2 of their skills, which is the problem entirely. The weapon set should be well designed enough on its own that you have some reason to use most of the skills in the course of your average fight. Slotting P/P with D/D so you can unload at range, and have occasional use for HS and BP still leaves your basic AA useless, and body shot a waste of init (which may change after the added Immob in patch) which seems silly to me.

Nevertheless, I still want to see D/D and P/P have their own 5-skill dual wield set, instead of just the dual wield #3 skill.

Well, I can’t argue with you here.

Ryan.8367:

Thief seems pretty fine in 1on1s, but in teams i think it lacks, but it has it’s niche roll in taking out important backline / targets in general, just pressure alone by thieves in the backline is huge support.

The thieves I know and practice with are some of the best in the game , namely Triggerless, etc and I will say he has no issues beating people in duels/1on1 roaming combat. There’s no reason why any other thief shouldn’t either.

The thief skill ceiling is ridiculous and people just whine about the class being underpowered but it’s actually really good albeit lacking in terms of team support in ways.

The title of the post is “Stagnation”.

The point of the post is how stagnated the class is, with the majority of our already narrow weapon choices being poorly designed.

The weapons that work, work fine – the problem is how few of them work.

Oblivion.8307:

Guild Wars 2 Forum Code of Conduct – Do not post petitions, “I demand an answer” threads, conspiracy threads, or comments about circumventing the rules.

Thanks for pointing this out – now I’m just curious as to why we don’t have a PTR. If you have similar concerns, please continue to respond.

We’ve been seeing more Anet interaction on these forums since PAX, and I’d like to see Anet finally officially address this issue.

Many posters on these boards have called for a Public Test Realm(Server/etc…).

There are a lot of reasons why one is necessary, but I’ll just give an abridged list
- More thoroughly tested changes will result in less bugs/hassle for players
- Anet will be able to take advantage of free playtesting from the community who is interested in more thorough balance changes delivered in a more rapid timeline.
- It will give players sick of the current meta (not just this meta, whatever the “current” meta at the time is) somewhere else to enjoy the game.

Nearly every single patch has introduced issues of varying severity into the game, for varying lengths of time.

The meta that has been prevalent since the end of June is crap – 2 classes are considered nigh useless, and 3 are considered clearly overpowered.

A PTR will address most if not all of these issues handily, and I’d like to hear and understand ANets position on the matter.

If you agree or disagree, please let us know why, but try not to derail the conversation – I’d really like to know Anets plan for a PTR.

Casting bars are contrary to the overall design philosophy of the game so far.

The solution more in-line with how the game has been developed thus far is to allow players the option to render their enemies as a standard type – humans, for example. This allows the design philosophy (watch the action, not a cast bar) to progress unchanged while being fair to all. You still get to look cool on your own screen, while your enemy gets a fair view of whats going on.

In the short term, allow players to spend glory to acquire gems when they are already spending real money. As an example, allow players to spend 10k glory to acquire 800 gems for every 800 gems they purchase with real currency.

Obviously, this suggestion assumes that Anet will introduce something to PvP that will encourage players to spend real money in the first place, but I think its fair to assume that there is a plan in place to eventually reach this goal. Assuming this goal is reached, this grants some real value to glory while also ensuring that Anet gets paid for its time and effort.

So, a little background to set this post up.

In every MMO I’ve ever played, I’ve been a spec kitten. I get bored easily, and I like switching up my specs constantly – trying out new things, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and playing those specs until I get bored and switch to another functional spec. This has worked in WoW, WAR and Rift.

For perspective, this has always been from a PvP perspective- when I ran PvE, I used whatever worked best – its boring (IMO) anyway, and I just ran whatever made things progress the quickest.

Playing a thief in PvP has grown stagnant over the past few months. As far as I can tell, we have 2 effective specs that can work in TPvP.

S/D – it comes in many flavors, but it does only 1 thing – it infuriates people. The mobility granted due to the general lack of stealth (most effective S/D specs have little reason to go into stealth unless a daze can prevent a stomp/res/long cast) really frustrates kittenty players, and makes them do dumb things. The spec is fairly solid overall, even with how UP Dagger OH is (in SPvP), but there are tons of counters the community refuses to acknowledge because putting in any sort of effort is apparently taxing.

D/P – This only comes in 1 flavor – Burst. There are a few ways to get to that burst, but regardless of spec, they always focus on one thing – taking a target down ASAP, and bailing if that plan doesn’t pan out. I’m not knocking the spec (it can certainly work well), but it’s just boring to me.

There may be other specs that work in hotjoin, but who cares? The game is being designed around 5v5 organized teams – any spec that doesn’t work in that format is a waste of time.

Throughout the changes to thief, the class has remained mostly static – Anet would have us believe we’re still the stealthy/bursty class regardless of multiple nerfs to stealth and burst.

When they gave us a non-stealth, non-burst option, the community came up in arms – it’s apparently too difficult to attempt to properly time attacks against a thief who uses his mobility as a survival mechanic rather than stealth.

I just want thief to have some options.

P/D needs a little bit of updating (5->1 shouldn’t still be the best option in most cases).

P/P needs major fixing, and has needed such since the games basic meta has stabilized almost a year ago. Whoever put a direct damage attack in the middle of a set full of condition abilities and utility style weapon skills needs a serious talking to. Also, giving a class that relies on mobility and stealth for survivability NO access to stealth or mobility just seems short-sighted and insulting.

D/D needs some addressing – like P/P, its mind-boggling to see a condition based attack in the middle of a set so obviously dedicated to direct damage. D/P so completely trumps this set in such a majority of TPvP situations – It’s a wonder no one has addressed the design issue yet.

S/P needs some attention – PW has been poorly designed since the game was released. Haste made it seem appealing, but it’s never been a well designed skill. After a damage nerf, a general haste change, and the changes that made S/D playable (effective, even), S/P has been pushed to the sidelines for fairly obvious reasons.

Being a class with the narrowest weaponset choices (Ele and Engi have narrower choices, but class options that make them more versatile), it’s disappointing to see so many weapon set choices pushed to the sidelines due to bad design.

Anet, can thieves get some attention so they’re not pigeonholed into a very narrow role only supported by 2 weaponsets?

@Estoroth

Please explain how the developers stating that they want thieves to be the most mobile class in the game is irrelevant to the conversation about the mobility inf strike grants them.

An HP “Pool” is occupied by multiple classes – Thieves belong to the lowest HP pool, with guards and ele’s.

How is the nerf to thief burst irrelevant? It’s part of the reason thieves need mobility.

Your list of points is laughably incoherent – half of it is incorrect (“I have no idea where the thief went when he ported back, it’s not like the ability leaves a handy little red circle or anything”), the other half is exaggerated or just observations on the base mechanics of the game, as if they were “points”.

“It has No CD” and “Pretty much Spammable”- congrats, you know how every single thief weapon skill works, why it necessitated a point is beyond me.

“No counter play” – because closing to the circle is never an option, and the game has no ranged weapons.

“Can be used to completely negate stuns” – So stability and blocks are broken too then – better, actually, because they actually completely negate stuns, as opposed to SR which leaves you stunned, just somewhere else. See point about ranged weapons / closing to the circle.

“Low cost initiative” – 5 total initiative is not “low cost”, its 42% of a thieves standard Init bar.

“Causes immobilize” a 1s immobilize on a set with lousy burst is hardly something to complain about. S/D has 2 highly telegraphed swings that do the majority of the damage in the weapon set – without immobilize, they would never hit against a moderately skilled player with half a brain.

I could keep going, but why bother? When you have points, they’re poorly supported or silly, and when you don’t, you just dismiss things with absolutely no insight or reasoning. You have little idea what you’re talking about – please gain some experience with the game and explain your points more clearly.

Follidus.8027:

ensoriki.5789:

Why does this directly point to inf strike however? It doesn’t? I know what you’re talking about with the evades. I can play around inf strike, force it out and push accordingly. Chain dodges you have to sit through. Distracting shot and Flanking strike are the least punitive evades out of the four on weapon skills and FS brings significantly more to the table then Distracting shot. We see unorthadox stuff like evades on Dagger builds get thrown by players experimenting and it doesn’t work as well, even on DB because well DB has vulnerability time that a player grows accustomed to and can react accordingly to.

Because inf strike, along with dodge spam, just doesn’t seem right. You can’t stop a thief from going in and out of the fight. There’s no cooldown, there’s no LOS requirement, and he can shadow return while CC’d. The only way to stop it is by sitting on the place that the thief can shadow return to, but if it’s a team fight and you don’t have your whole team there, then the thief can just teleport to any of your teammates. This, combined with the evasion spam, just makes the play style very uninteresting to play against.

There we go – the crux of the argument – because you can’t pin them down.

Thief exists to go in and out of the fight.

“We want thieves to be the class with the best mobility” – The game’s developers.

No Immunities
No Blocks
No Protection
No Aegis
Lowest base HP pool in the game
Sub-par condition removal (in the current meta)
Sub-par access to regeneration (in the current meta)
Constant nerfs to burst, nerfs to stealth with more to come.

But they shouldn’t be able to zip in and out of the fight either, because that prevents you from 3 shotting them.

jportell.2197:

evilapprentice.6379:

jportell.2197:

Zetus.1476:

I’ve been noticing a build that’s virtually unkilleable (we’re talking needing around 3 people). Lots of condi damage, invisibilities and coming out of invis at full health.

How do you people deal with this? There’s no counter for invisibility and it’s chewing at my insides everytime I run into this build.

They don’t do much damage and they don’t cap a point… it’s basically a 4v5

In my experience, this is the far from the truth – they do very solid damage. running 10/0/0/30/30 S/D-shbow thief, they’re one of the few specs I have yet to figure out. Against equal skill level, I usually lose. Mind posting a spec so I can take a look at it?

its usually 20/20/30/0/0 they melt really fast to consistent condi pressure. It really isn’t that great if you have them on you team because they don’t actually cap a point. So you have to outlast and burst… They aren’t tanky at all.

I’d have imagined they were something more like 0/20/30/20/0 with Rabid – constant access to regen, protection and aegis with multiple stealths that leave pets to continue doing damage for you while you’re healing/repositioning. Pets that punish you for hitting/killing them. Why go 20 domination?

My spec has sustain, but not so much burst – I think this spec is just a soft counter for mine.

jportell.2197:

Zetus.1476:

I’ve been noticing a build that’s virtually unkilleable (we’re talking needing around 3 people). Lots of condi damage, invisibilities and coming out of invis at full health.

How do you people deal with this? There’s no counter for invisibility and it’s chewing at my insides everytime I run into this build.

They don’t do much damage and they don’t cap a point… it’s basically a 4v5

In my experience, this is the far from the truth – they do very solid damage. running 10/0/0/30/30 S/D-shbow thief, they’re one of the few specs I have yet to figure out. Against equal skill level, I usually lose. Mind posting a spec so I can take a look at it?

vrilek.4038:

SoH is good in current state. I would take of 10% dmg wielding a bundle from improvisation and replace it for something like this:

options
1) stealing converts up to 3 conditions into boons
2) stealing applies random venom
3) after stealing your next attack steal health
4) stealing have chance (30%) to reduce steal cooldown by 50%

RNG is bad (Which is why Imrpov is bad in the first place), so 2 and 4 are out.

3 is too similar to what Mug currently does, and mug deals damage – the Improv heal would have to be large to differentiate it from being a kittentier version of mug.

1 is basically what i suggested, though a bit modified. Transferring 3 conditions works better IMO – it gives condition thieves some options, fits both thematically and design wise in the Trickery line for a skill called “Sleight of Hand”, and is a GM Trait (converting 3 condi’s on steal feels a bit strong for 2nd tier trait)

OIIIIIO.7825:

The % Damage boost is good, the only trick is getting it to trigger.
So far in my testing it only works with Ele summoned weapons.

It seems to cater almost exclusively to the WvW crowd, which is silly (it doesn’t even become a “good” trait then, just less awful) – why have a 20 point trait that it mostly useless in 2 of the 3 formats?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Zacchary.6183:

Coloxeus.3480:

if you’re calculation is correct! well it really needs a major buff! i tried this trait before but i didn’t like it seems like a useless Master trait. or they shud move this to adept trait.

They need to buff the base heal and perhaps double the modifier. It is so underwhelming.

So…what happens if this is coupled with Signet of Malice?

This is the main issue with the Thief as a whole. Individual skills/traits are not that great but has a potential to be broken in a combination.

It’s not impressive enough to occupy the slot its in – even when you combine it with Signet of Malice.

In fact, I can’t think of a 10 point trait in any tree that I’d replace with Assassin’s Reward (in its current form) off the top of my head (maybe if it was 10 points into crit strikes?) – it’s generic enough to fit into any spec, just not powerful enough to be chosen over better/more synergistic traits. It could use a slight bump.

Lex.3975:

Shadowstep is a very nice and useful skill, but i wanted to make a suggestion. Cooldown for this skill is a bit too long, 30 sec would be nicer (at least in PvE), since i would like to use it more often (Nightcrawler’s fault) and duration in which you can use shadow return to be increased to 15 (same as with infiltrator’s strike).
I know this is probably not gonna happen, but i had to make a suggestion.

Bumping SR to 15s sounds plausible, but base CD at 30s would be too much- it’s fine at 50s.

While SoH is good, it doesn’t really fit the traitline its in so well – instead of a 20% Steal reduction, lets have it transfer X conditions to your target instead – this gives thieves slightly better condition mitigation, and works well with Trickery’s boost to condition damage.

DA suffers from some really kittenty trait choices after Mug – gives Improvisation the 20% steal CD reduction instead of the currently awful % Dmg boost while wielding a kit.

nagymbear.5280:

evilapprentice.6379:

I feel it makes sense for the thief – since Init is shared between weaponsets, it would give the thief some flexibility without being broken.

How would it give flexibility to thieves? You would still be bound by initiative, and the fact that you can only have 2 weaponsets.

1)-S/D Shbow – I really need to poison this warrior, but Shbow doesn’t do enough damage to overpower HS + AH – Now I can switch to Shbow for a mere 5s to get some poison/weakness on my target, then switch back to a set that does damage to maintain pressure.

2) -S/X D/X – I’m in stealth and I want to deal some burst, but dagger is less then optimal for the fight after I get out of stealth – 4 less seconds I’m stuck in a suboptimal weaponset.

3) -P/P whatever melee set – P/P until my opponent closes the gap, switch to melee for minor burst/whatever, open a gap and switch back to P/P

I could keep going, but you get the idea.

JETWING.2759:

No sense.

Warrior is weapon master, thief isn’t.

Just to belabor the point, Warrior is the weapon master – that’s why they can use almost every weapon in the game. Thief is the mobile/quick trickster class and thematically, being able to rapidly swap between weapons fits them much better than it does warrior.

Still have a delay on Inf strike, RFI, and Withdraw (just to name a few). I’d love to actually try Solo Que, but I’m not losing a point because my skills don’t go off when I hit them. Being outplayed is a fact of the game, losing because of a 3 month old, still unaddressed issue is entirely another.

Is there a fix on the way for this? It’s been 3 months at this point, and still counting. How are we supposed to take this game seriously?

Zacchary.6183:

I am using PvE as an example. The only difference between PvE and PvP is the enemies you face and while vastly different tend to require close to the same amount of planning and execution. Skill is relative and in most cases I find that using a thief takes way more than some of the other classes.

This isn’t solely because of the difference between combat mechanics but also because of the effort:reward ratio. Guards and Wars are facerolly classes and I am irked that their e:r is on the opposite site of the kitten spectrum of thieves.

I almost completely believe that thieves exist to be a scapegoat because thieves are handed the kitten end of the stick in almost every aspect of the game.

Won’t NPC’s Mindlessly stand In Caltrops/PW/BP/Stand and swing while you spam DB/stand stone still and let you stealth attack them/Etc etc etc…?

I honestly don’t know, I Don’t PvE.

To be fair, I don’t think anyone is crying about thief in PvE – I wouldn’t know for sure though.

Daishi.6027:

imo I don’t see any reason for players to be so against healing signet. I feel it’s more fair than Rangers Troll Unguent, not because of number to number but in context and synergy with a build.

Troll unguent has a cast time which can be interrupted, and not running healing spring limits a rangers condition removal options, making poison a relatively effective counter to the HoT.

HS+AH ticks passively, and thanks to cleansing ire/BS, it’s hard to get poison to stick.

Errant Venture.9371:

Littlefeather.8623:

Withdraw (Stun Break), Roll for initiative (Stun Break), Shadow Step (Stun break), Roll x3 for 6 seconds swiftness, catch me if you can, Im the Gingerbread man !

lol, It depends on theif build, most are cookie cutters though, people rarely see P/P, and dont know what to do when they encounter one, its fun staying at 900 range bursting down people. If any one comes up to me I blind them, if I get too low they cant catch me. But you can beat theif with any class, it depends on how versed you are and how versed they are at that time.

If you die to a thief running RoI AND Shadowstep, you deserve to lose.

I run RFI, Shadowstep AND Inf Sig, and regularly kill good players.

Lachanche.6859:

evilapprentice.6379:

Lachanche.6859:

. (speaking about king of the hill mode duels)

Which has abso-kittening-lutely no bearing on a team based Capture point game.

except when you go for the far point decap what happens 50% of the times is you have to 1v1 the enemy side holder.

Perhaps I read too much into the use of the word “Duel”.

Having a team you can rely upon for support and different tactical choices still changes things however.

Lachanche.6859:

. (speaking about king of the hill mode duels)

Which has abso-kittening-lutely no bearing on a team based Capture point game.

Rengaru.4730:

Errant Venture.9371:

All of the other skills you listed must be cast to use. that means a skilled player can interrupt or shutdown the heal, and after the heal has been popped there is a window where you can burst the opponent down. Healing signet matches those other skills but is 100% passive + cannot be shutdown using any mechanism in game.

Healing Turret has a 0.5 second cast, you can’t reliably interrupt that.

Also, a passive HoT is not always an advantage over an active burst heal,

• Poison is a strong counter to Healing Signet. Every second he dosn’t cleanse it the Warrior will lose 130 HP whereas with most other heals you only have to cleanse before you use it (some heals even do it for you).

• Sometimes you need the HP now not in 30 seconds (though the amount of stuns and utilitie skills make it easy to stall for time in a 1v1)

• HS is just raw health, many other heals have addition benefits (condition removal, adrenalin gain, boons, …)

Is Healing Signet strong? Yes, definetly.

Does it need a nerf? I dont think so, in my oppinion the real problem is not the Signet but the stuns and the amount of time you can stall on a Warrior.

The problem isn’t Healing signet alone – there are a few particular specs that are an issue, and it’s a big combination of things. Healing Sig + Adrenal health + Cleansing Ire + Berserker stance + Lots of CC + mediocre blocks/invuln + high health + high armor.

You can’t keep poison up on a decent warrior in the right spec, which removes your only way to mitigate healing signet and adrenal health. Those particular specs can also generate a lot of “heal time” with CC and blocks – they can buy time to regen at their full pace because they have the ability to constantly cleanse poison.

The phrase “There is no counter play” gets thrown around alot, but here it’s mostly true – the strongest counter play to lots of healing is a condition (Poison), and the warrior builds I’m talking about here have excellent condition removal. Poison is also rather weak against Healing sig and Adrenal health because they’re passive and stretched over a long period. You can heavily neuter a spike heal with poison – the longer a fight goes on against a passive heal like HS+AH, the weaker it is, and the builds I’m talking about are designed to last a very long time.

Littlefeather.8623:

Withdraw (Stun Break).

Withdraw does not break stuns. It breaks Immob/cripple/chill

I didn’t get a chance to watch any of the matches.

How did S/D thieves generate so many pets?

I mean, it’s the most broken weapon set on the most broken class with the hands down most OP skill in the game, the one with no counterplay options that evades everything, so I imagine it was mostly bunkers and S/D thieves.

Lordrosicky.5813:

There is no counter to s/d thief. You cant beat what you cant hit. Doesnt mean it cant be beaten. But still. No real counter

You could learn how timing works, and maybe switch to a ranged weapon.
But I understand how those might be extremely complex tactics more suited for hardcore TPvPers rather than people who just want to screw around in hot join.

On-topic: find the thief spec that’s giving you trouble, roll it, and play with it for a few days. You’ll learn the strengths and weaknesses pretty quickly.

JETWING.2759:

No sense.

-5s cd in weapon swap make thieves ridiculously op.

…How?

Assuming you put an ICD on quick pockets (which would be OP with no ICD, and OP specifically mentioned a quick pockets ICD), how is this OP for thief? it’s not like they can take advantage of quick CD’s, since they work on the init system – it just makes thief more flexible. The word “flexible” to me, fits thief very well.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

evilapprentice.6379:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

-words-

You use the phrase “On demand” the way most people I’ve ever interacted with would use “available”. IMO, “On Demand” conjures the image of “This ability is always immediately available to me”

Yes, exactly. S/D insures that those abilities are available to you.

You don’t have Daze or Blind “On Demand” – you have it available. You can CnD, then fulfill the positional requirements.

The situation has to demand the daze/blind, otherwise, why would you use it? Certain situation demands evade over blind, for example. Or Cripple over stealth. Etc.

Just because you want to blind in a given situation doesn’t mean that it is the right action to take. The decision you make separates your from noobish habit of using skill on impulse, rather than assessing what the situation demands.

This is why I used “on demand” to highlight who are those are lacking understanding on what S/D is capable of. You can judge those by reviewing the responses to my initial post.

You don’t have evade “On Demand” – you potentially have it available. If you’ve used FS to evade something, you’ve got 5 seconds/.5s LS casting time +2 init before you can use FS to evade again. Same goes for LS boon steal – It’s available, but not on demand

It seems to me that you are not understanding what “on demand” means. Just because your target has boon, doesn’t mean that you have to strip it. Just because you have FS available doesn’t mean you have to evade the next attack.

Note what I said in my initial post.

“The key here is the “on demand” portion because it allows me to be very strategic and tactical in my fights.”

Meaning you don’t waste CDs and Initiatives on impulsive tendencies, instead wait until the situation demands the use of certain skill. Only those who practice with S/D can understand this and how valuable each skill and each point of initiative is.

This goes for nearly every situation in which you described an ability as “On Demand” – You meant potentially available, which is correct.

Partially correct — explanation above.

I don’t see a problem with a weaponset that makes alot available to the player, as long as they set it up correctly. That sounds like a strong, high skill cap build to me – it isn’t particularly impressive when an X/P thief interrupts a skill, because Head Shot is always there – It is impressive if an S/D thief does so because he had to (potentially) close to melee, tag a target with CnD, then get behind them and connect with TS.

I just don’t see the problem with a powerful set that forces you to play well if you want to properly access it’s power – every class should have at least 1 weaponset that works like that.

I feel it makes sense for the thief – since Init is shared between weaponsets, it would give the thief some flexibility without being broken.

Caffynated.5713:

Up is down, left is right, being invisible is underpowered because people don’t attack you.

Welcome to the new generation of GW2 forum emos.

Making a really stupid argument for thieves might be the only way to bring to light the really stupid arguments people make against thieves – common sense certainly hasn’t worked up until this point.

3 Steps is far too much. Here’s 1 easy step to fixing thief
1) Force anyone who wants to cry about thief on the forums to play one for a week against players with a modicum of skill.

And you’re done – You’ll either learn a thief’s strengths and weaknesses, or be asking for some buffs to thieves less than viable weaponsets/utilities/traits.

It’s hilarious how I can pick up a class I’ve never played before and almost perfectly counter a thief after I’ve reached the point where I remember what my buttons do.