Guild Wars 2

I don’t have any concrete proof, but probably not.

The order will likely remain Aegis (so that BT actually hits with steal), and stability (so SoH is worth taking), then everything else.

Withdraw was nerfed.

20% longer CD for 10% more healing – that’s pretty much the definition of a nerf.

IB4 – “but you can take trickster! and it’s 4% faster!” – Yes, we could take trickster…to bad no one ever will, since it competes with BT (and requiring a trait to get it back to its old CD would still be a nerf)

babazhook.6805:

To the new dagger training and the question as to why people would ever choose this over mug.

You have to look at all the traits here. Poison on daggers will also Inflict weakness. Now a Deathblossom on the dagger dagger set will not only inflict 3 stacks of bleeds but odds are against a single target a stack of poison and weakness. Thats more reason to use DB than we had before . If I am d/d and use heartseeker in quick succession on a fleeing foe I can get poison and weakness on him which will hit just as he most likely to use a heal. Preventing 2k on a heal is just as good as getting a 2k hit in off mug every 21 seconds and that blow he retaliates with changed to a glancing blow because of weakness from that poison is like a heal.

Now back to DB . Weakness, poison, 3 bleeds is not all bad but if you manage to catch one of the evades as you DB in and are in the acrobatic line I can get vigor and an INI.

I can see reasons i would use over mug.

If you can see a reason to use anything in the adept tier over mug, you need glasses.

Since 6 trickery is a forgone conclusion (for anyone not taking the new spec), it’d be madness to ditch even just the heal on Mug for a 33% chance to poison for 2 whole seconds.

You already have serpent’s touch, lotus strike, and choking gas – trading mug for 2s more poison (33% of the time, no less) is a losing prospect. Sure, you can concoct tons of niche scenarios where dagger training is better, but for the vast majority of realistic scenarios, mug blows DT out of the water.

Harrier.9380:

Can I haz your…

Actually, I agree. I don’t give a flying kitten about new PvE event grind, so basically all I get out of €45 price is Revenant + elite specs.

I guess the cash I set aside for HoT is going into steam sale now.
Any recommendations what to get?

Fractured Space is in alpha, but it’s looking really solid. Also, the pricetag will leave with tons of cash leftover for other stuff.

DeceiverX.8361:

evilapprentice.6379:

EazyPanda.6419:

Razelesh.1035:

I believe it is that long to prevent people from waiting it out and then teleporting forward again to chase an enemy.

Its already possible now.
Just jump and use it at the same time, you’ll not shadowstep back when you use return, and it will only clear your conditions.
Tho using it takes 5 initiative, but still handy when you are out of shadowsteps.

It’s up to you to judge whether you’ll need the return, and use both versions according to the situation.

This is an exploit (Taking advantage of an unintended interaction), and shouldn’t be considered as a viable tactic for using the skill.

If they want to fix it, or feel the need to due to balance issues, they can. There are already circumstances almost identical to a jump-cast which force the return anyways. Almost every S/D thief worth their salt uses this “exploit.”

Then almost every S/D thief worth their salt is exploiting. “Alot of people are doing it” and “The set isn’t balanced correctly” are not excuses to exploit bugs. We’re not talking about a company who moves quickly – the ele lightning whip/stow was an acknowledged bug for a while before it was fixed. Just because Anet isn’t scrambling to fix it is not an excuse to knowingly and purposefully exploit a bug.

EazyPanda.6419:

Razelesh.1035:

I believe it is that long to prevent people from waiting it out and then teleporting forward again to chase an enemy.

Its already possible now.
Just jump and use it at the same time, you’ll not shadowstep back when you use return, and it will only clear your conditions.
Tho using it takes 5 initiative, but still handy when you are out of shadowsteps.

It’s up to you to judge whether you’ll need the return, and use both versions according to the situation.

This is an exploit (Taking advantage of an unintended interaction), and shouldn’t be considered as a viable tactic for using the skill.

Seyiwaji.4082:

i don’t understand what you mean.

Then I’m not sure why you feel qualified to suggest changes to the class.

Any thief who’s played S/D for more than 5 minutes followed that post exactly, yet somehow you missed it. You’re probably not qualified to suggest changes to the class.

Not that this suggestion is a particularly bad one, it’s just clear you’re not really familiar enough with the skill to suggest changes.

DarkSyze.8627:

evilapprentice.6379:

ronpierce.2760:

evilapprentice.6379:

@Shadow

Like I told TerrorSquad, you’re wasting your time. Supreme believes that the only current counter to stealth is “AoEing the area you saw them stealth in”, and despite MrBigs claim of 5k games played he believes the only counter to stealth is “random dodging”.

If these players haven’t figured out how to move, think and predict (as you outlined) in the last 3 years, you walking them through it isn’t going to help. All the logic in the world proves useless against blind zealotry. None of these forums warriors came here for a discussion or an exchange of ideas, they came to shout their “point” (incorrect as it is) loudly and repeatedly in the face of all common sense. Unless they get a button whose function is “I win against stealth now”, they won’t be happy.

Anyone complaining about stealth 3 years in would be better served playing a less complex game that doesn’t expect its players to learn things on their own.

You sure love your buzzwords don’t you?

“Just as much as bad players love requesting nerfs for a class they haven’t bothered to learn, and haven’t put the effort into learning how to fight”.

Let me ask you a question:

No.

ronpierce.2760:

snip

To be clear, I am not automatically against a “Redesign”. I’d be open to discussing a well designed suggestion. Supreme’s suggestions however are not a redesign – they’re straight up nerfs, and ridiculous ones as well. Most players who suggest changes for thief weight their changes at 100% nerf and claim thieves are OP, or propose a 90% nerf with a 10% buff and try to sell it as an even trade.

Thief does not automatically beat every other zerker spec in an actual fight. They’re actually pretty on par with most zerker specs (fights being determined by skill), they just have better mobility. This creates an issue because you can’t really take anything away from thieves damage wise(their spike is worse that SF air ele, their short term burst is worse than LB ranger, and they have none of the blocks/invulns/sustain options of either of those classes), and if you touch their mobility they’re a worse choice than most other zerker classes.

What we’re talking about right now is Stealth, and I’m sorry, if you think stealth is OP in capture point PvP, you haven’t been paying attention. If players still haven’t figured out that the Dagger weilding thief who disappears has 3-4 seconds to get behind them and respond accordingly, that’s on them. Thieves “go crazy” when you mention nerfing stealth because it’s already an underpowered mechanic in capture point SPvP – you can’t contribute while you’re in stealth, and countering stealth can sometimes be as easy as just walking directly away from where you saw the thief enter stealth for 3 seconds.

I don’t believe I’ve ever said “learn to predict steal”, and certainly not in this discussion. I also didn’t design steal, which at baseline is terrible for a class mechanic, but when you dedicate 5 out of 7 major traits becomes fairly strong. I’d be happy with a steal that had some of its traits rolled into baseline, and had other more interesting traits unrelated to steal to replace them, but that’s a discussion for another post.

If you want thieves to “adhere to many of the same combat expectancies that the rest of us do”, I hope you’re ready for thieves with a mix of passive defenses, blocks, invulnerabilities, decent condition removal, hard CC that lasts more than half a second on weaponsets, better access to soft CC on weaponets, functional access to conditions other than bleed, functioning sustain, and probably a few other things I didn’t mention because all of that is literally off the top of my head. People love to kitten and moan about all the things thief can do while completely ignoring the downsides of the initiative system, their almost non-existent condition removal and their entirely active defenses.

If you don’t think thieves are hurting for viability, go watch TerrorSquads Ranked Que primer, because it’s actually pretty spot on. It paints a very clear picture of thieves extremely limited role in the current Meta, and as a side bonus SirVincent points out how that strategy was completely shut down by a team heavy with celestial bruisers in a recent tournament.

ronpierce.2760:

evilapprentice.6379:

@Shadow

Like I told TerrorSquad, you’re wasting your time. Supreme believes that the only current counter to stealth is “AoEing the area you saw them stealth in”, and despite MrBigs claim of 5k games played he believes the only counter to stealth is “random dodging”.

If these players haven’t figured out how to move, think and predict (as you outlined) in the last 3 years, you walking them through it isn’t going to help. All the logic in the world proves useless against blind zealotry. None of these forums warriors came here for a discussion or an exchange of ideas, they came to shout their “point” (incorrect as it is) loudly and repeatedly in the face of all common sense. Unless they get a button whose function is “I win against stealth now”, they won’t be happy.

Anyone complaining about stealth 3 years in would be better served playing a less complex game that doesn’t expect its players to learn things on their own.

You sure love your buzzwords don’t you?

Just as much as bad players love requesting nerfs for a class they haven’t bothered to learn, and haven’t put the effort into learning how to fight.

@Shadow

Like I told TerrorSquad, you’re wasting your time. Supreme believes that the only current counter to stealth is “AoEing the area you saw them stealth in”, and despite MrBigs claim of 5k games played he believes the only counter to stealth is “random dodging”.

If these players haven’t figured out how to move, think and predict (as you outlined) in the last 3 years, you walking them through it isn’t going to help. All the logic in the world proves useless against blind zealotry. None of these forums warriors came here for a discussion or an exchange of ideas, they came to shout their “point” (incorrect as it is) loudly and repeatedly in the face of all common sense. Unless they get a button whose function is “I win against stealth now”, they won’t be happy.

Anyone complaining about stealth 3 years in would be better served playing a less complex game that doesn’t expect its players to learn things on their own.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mrbig.8019:

evilapprentice.6379:

Supreme.3164:

Terrorsquad.2349:

Laraley.7695:

Terrorsquad.2349:

If, after trying that, you’re still at a loss for how to counter stealth, it’s possible that GW2 is too complex a game for you, and you might be better served playing something simpler and more straightforward.

This. I can really not believe how ppl can call stealth OP or even need more counterplay to it (inside PvP Conquest).. I’ve never had any probs vs teams with stealth setups when playing a non-stealth class/build, as I play mostly thief myself. So I know how they work and how they CAN rotate if they’re decent. Stealth really needs no counterplay.

As said before, I would agree to a max stealth cap but that’s all. Although, I do think thieves should get something small in return for that.

Well, I would disagree here. Stealth does need a counterplay, but most people do not realize that it already has a counterplay.

I said it multiple times in my other comments: Stealth has more counterplay than block has. What I tried to say for 10 times in this thread is that it doesnt need more counterplay than it already has. I phrased my last sentence you quoted wrong, just a typo

Spamming aoe in the last location you saw the thief is a strategy that works only against freshly made thieves..and not even in most case; so i really wonder about what counterplay you’re referring to

… If you think spamming aoe in the last place you saw the thief is the only counter play to stealth no wonder you are having so much trouble countering it.

If you aren’t willing to put the effort in to learn how to counter stealth, you don’t deserve it. Complaining on the forums until it’s handed to you on a silver platter is a much worse tactic then just learning to play.

As I’ve already said, perhaps GW2 is too complex a game for you.

Stealth has no counter aside random dodging.

That’s why people run thieves in the first place, cuz stealth openers.

Gw2 pvp is “insta down people from stealth” till people realized how strong it is, just look at those Esl games ( where people are not sucky enough to bring 5 celes cuz they’re not even able to push 3 buttons in a row after a stealth stacking), or maybe get better and go play vs such teams.

But please go on defending something that even the best players of this game are complaining about since headstart, do it pls.

Thief nerf request have reached next level solely cuz Panic strike thief is so lame it can’t be beared anymore.

Stealth opens (entirely due to the thief profession) are the most skill-less and lame thing in gw2. There is zero counter play by definition.

If you honestly believe this, there’s nothing more that can be said. This game is too complex for you. You’d be better off playing something simpler and more straightforward, a game that doesn’t ask its players to figure out things on their own and instead put’s it all in “Push button to counter” form.

lordhelmos.7623:

At high level MMR, S/D was the de facto duelist. Every team comp had a S/D because it gave you near infinite dodges while still letting you go full glass damage.

It was really OP. On S/D you could dance circles around a melee warrior with blinds/dodges, effectively eliminating every warrior melee spec out of the meta.

This build was good, but it did need to die. Glad they saw this.

Because S/D has so many blinds available to it.

If you’re going to claim a build was OP, you should probably know how it actually worked. When you don’t know how it worked, you just end up looking silly.

Supreme.3164:

Terrorsquad.2349:

Laraley.7695:

Terrorsquad.2349:

If, after trying that, you’re still at a loss for how to counter stealth, it’s possible that GW2 is too complex a game for you, and you might be better served playing something simpler and more straightforward.

This. I can really not believe how ppl can call stealth OP or even need more counterplay to it (inside PvP Conquest).. I’ve never had any probs vs teams with stealth setups when playing a non-stealth class/build, as I play mostly thief myself. So I know how they work and how they CAN rotate if they’re decent. Stealth really needs no counterplay.

As said before, I would agree to a max stealth cap but that’s all. Although, I do think thieves should get something small in return for that.

Well, I would disagree here. Stealth does need a counterplay, but most people do not realize that it already has a counterplay.

I said it multiple times in my other comments: Stealth has more counterplay than block has. What I tried to say for 10 times in this thread is that it doesnt need more counterplay than it already has. I phrased my last sentence you quoted wrong, just a typo

Spamming aoe in the last location you saw the thief is a strategy that works only against freshly made thieves..and not even in most case; so i really wonder about what counterplay you’re referring to

… If you think spamming aoe in the last place you saw the thief is the only counter play to stealth no wonder you are having so much trouble countering it.

If you aren’t willing to put the effort in to learn how to counter stealth, you don’t deserve it. Complaining on the forums until it’s handed to you on a silver platter is a much worse tactic then just learning to play.

As I’ve already said, perhaps GW2 is too complex a game for you.

@Terrorsquad.2349

Terror, you’re wasting your time. These are people who, 3 years into the game, still honestly believe stealth is a strong (So strong that it’s OP) mechanic in capture point format. They are utterly convinced of their position and little will sway them, as is evidenced with most of the posts in this thread.

It’s funny how thieves (actual thief players, not forum warriors who start posts with “As a thief player”, then spout verbal diarrhea that makes it blatantly obvious they have no idea how thief works) never complain about stealth. Even S/D players who have nothing to lose if stealth were nerfed seem to have no problem with it. It’s almost as if being experienced with the thief class gives you insight into how a stealthed thief will play, and allows you to counter it. But it’s not simply a button on a bar that a player can press to beat stealth, so that makes it “impossible to counter”.

To those of you complaining about stealth, even though this will fall on deaf ears I will offer this advice to you. Do what every other player does when they feel another class is impossible to beat; roll that class, run that spec, and see how well you do. Pay attention to what counters you, and mimic it.

If, after trying that, you’re still at a loss for how to counter stealth, it’s possible that GW2 is too complex a game for you, and you might be better served playing something simpler and more straightforward.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
Please clarify regarding the above link.

EremiteAngel.9765:

true that it can already be done with instant blink skills

BUT those are on LONGER cooldowns and don’t give the insane things that a traited LOW COOLDOWN steal does

Steals base CD is 35s (21.5s traited). Inf Sig’s base CD is 30s (24s traited). Those numbers don’t seem very far apart to me.
Furthermore, you’ve completely ignored how your initial thread was incorrect on every point it tried to make. The things traited steal gives have a cost related to them (the traits), and how does that factor in at all?

You don’t have a valid or worthwhile point to make. F2+F1 in the new system is currently possible in the current system, sometimes via steal and sometimes via Inf sig (which has a very similar CD to steal).

Please stop rabble rousing, this is a non-issue.

Everything you’re claiming will be “too OP” is already a possibility with Inf Sig. + stolen item. It hasn’t broken the game yet, so I doubt this change would either.

Plus, those skill still have animations. It’s safe to assume if you see a thief way out of melee range start his “Mace Crack” swing, he’s probably planning on using Inf Sig to get it to connect. Pretending like there’s no reliable counter is silly, it’s animation reading just like every other skill in the game. It works exactly the same way as when you see a D/D thief start a CnD while between 300-900 unit range – you just know the steal/inf sig is coming.

I’m not saying there isn’t some merit in discussing how the new Steal split should work, just don’t pretend like something that’s been possible since launch will all of a sudden become broken because of slightly better access, and let’s not outright lie about how counterable something is when you can still see it coming.

Also, you should note that in the preview video, they specifically mentioned stolen items are being redesigned (“They’re losing their damage component” is what was said, IIRC)

Ensign.2189:

KrHome.1920:

I guess you all underestimate the huge damage boost we get from the new stats and excutioner.

It’s in the neighborhood of 13%, at the cost of the boon duration and vitality current Acrobatics gives. It’s not trivial but not something I’d characterize as a ‘huge damage boost’.

13% doesn’t seem accurate. Are you sure you’re counting executioner and ~200 power, ~300 ferocity/precision (of course, still conjecture)?

13% seems consistent with just Executioner (roughly 10%), and 300 ferocity/precision (15% more crit, 20% more crit damage), and doesn’t take into account the additional power.

What Anet needs is a clear idea of what roles classes should fill, better balance around those roles, well designed and speedily implemented infrastructure additions, more variety in game types and maps, faster updates, a PTR, a well staffed team dedicated to all these changes, and a time machine that allows them to start to implement all of this 6 months after the game released rather than be still floundering at it nearly 3 years later.

The sad truth of it is that the “Esports” ship has almost certainly sailed. Too many failings, too much ignoring the playerbase, and too much waiting has hurt this game to the point where recovery is extremely unlikely.

@ensign

Don’t get me wrong, I believe Acro could be better designed, but IMO it’s still leagues better than the trainwreck that CS is. I’m surprised in your earlier post you ranked it above acro – what we saw previewed was bland, underpowered, and disjointed. Nothing syngergizes well, opportunist is gone, first strikes is weaker, unrelenting strikes is crap, the adept traits are bland, 2 of the 3 master traits are borderline useless, and all 3 GM traits are woefully UP. Even the currently poorly designed Acro blows it out of the water.

Concerning your points

While fluid strikes is slightly better than exposed weakness for S/D, I don’t feel its particularly substantial, considering your slightly better condition application with 6 points in DA.

We don’t yet know how stats like boon/condition duration from traits are being handled in HoT. I can’t imagine they’re being abandonded entirely, but for either of us it’s just conjecture.

Your analysis of “Actually evaded attacks” was from duels and small skirmishes. Duels have nothing to do with PvP in this game, and I feel like your observations aren’t exactly enough to conclude how often FG will actually trigger. We’ll have to wait until the changes are live to see.

As for SE, 13% Seems like a lot to me – the 20% from SoH is considered mandatory in every thief build, and the quicker steal recharges the quicker you have access to poison, weakness, mug, 2 initiative, fury/might/swiftness/vigor, 2 stolen boons, daze and your (potentially better utility/support designed) stolen item. We haven’t even talked about Improvisation – it means less damage, but with withdraw becoming a trick, it has an 80% chance to recharge a skill off of standard S/D bar, and again assuming the redesigned stolen skills are good, gives you a second use. You also calculated that 13% from your previous analysis of “actually evaded attacks”, which I pointed out earlier doesn’t feel accurate enough to be basing other judgements on. Not being excited about a quicker steal CD seems to be like an underestimation on your part.

Poor access to swiftness? Steal with pack runes is 13s on a 21s CD (faster with swindlers), and 2 seconds for every dodge. That’s not even counting the trigger from Pack runes themselves or the 30% additional duration from the current acro tree. In the current system, you should effectively have perma-swiftness. If ‘Dont stop" remains just projectiles it’ll be crap, but if they upgrade it to any attack it has the potential to be phenomenal.

This seems like a whole lot of doom and gloom for no reason. You’re focusing on all the negative aspects without taking into account the positive ones.

First of all, let’s acknowledge that this is all conjecture, both your points and mine below; What we’ve seen in the preview isn’t necessarily what we are going to get.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take what was revealed at face value, and look at S/D thief.

1) S/D is going to gain a lot of damage in HoT.
Recall that 2/0/0/6/6 is going to change to 6/0/0/6/6, meaning you can take 2 more DA traits. Those traits, as previewed, include panic strike and executioner, which are both excellent DPS traits. Also note that as far as we know currently, amulets are going to be making up for the stats lost from traitlines. 6/0/0/6/6 with a zerker ammy should now have similiar stats to our current systems 6/6/x/x/x. This means S/D should be seeing much harder hits.

2) FG is triggered by a successful evade, not a dodge roll. This means you’ll potentially be getting FG’s benefits when using Flanking strike/Disabling shot/Death Blossom/Pistol whip, and even from ‘Dont Stop’.

3) Swindlers equilibrium can further reduce steal CD, giving you more vigor from BT. If you prefer Hard to Catch, it’s finally been competently designed and will refill all of your endurance.

It’s also worth noting there were a couple of verbal mentions in the stream that were intriguing. It was specifically mentioned that stolen items were losing their damage component, which leads me to believe they’ll be stronger support/defensive utiltiies. I’m paraphrasing here, but when speaking about “Dont Stop”, one of the dev’s said that only dodging projectiles felt weak, and maybe it should be bumped up to any attack. If “Don’t stop” evades any attack while under the effects of swiftness with kitten ICD, then S/D just got a pretty substantial buff.

If you take into account the new higher damage potential and the new defensive options (again, assuming they play out as I’ve laid them out), then S/D thief has gained a good amount of damage and no longer needs as many evades as it currently has.

Dahkeus.8243:

naphack.9346:

Torch is not as unlikely as you may think.
Yes. More blinds.

However:
Confusion, burning, condi clear, …
There is a lot of things, torch can be used for.

For me, it has always been a tossup between torch and rifle. It could be either, but there is no way to know until it’s revealed.

And the how do you explain stealthing while holding a big glowing torch? Lol

The same way Mesmer does?

If you’re looking for a more “real” answer, the thief could use momentary blinding light to disappear from vision, play with shadows, use smoke….I mean we are talking about a class that can disappear from sight right in front of you just by hitting you with its dagger, so yeah.

Treetoptrickster.4205:

Currently the only weapon that gives sure-fire stealth is offhand dagger and we have Hide in Shadows, Shadow Refuge and Blinding Powder for stealth granting utilities.
If, after the update, you don’t take one of those options or spec in Shadow Arts then you will have no direct access to stealth. Hidden Thief is a trait that grants you three seconds of stealth when you steal and – when the new trait system comes around – it won’t be an option anymore so I suggest making it baseline. Stealth is a large part of the Thief’s identity and we even have an entire mechanic build around it. Not having access to stealth robs a Thief of that. It won’t break the game if it isn’t added back in but I really think that adding a two second stealth to base steal would be a good change when the changes come.

http://dulfy.net/2015/04/24/gw2-specializations-ama-livestream-notes/

Hidden thief has been rolled into Descent of Shadows. You now release a Blinding powder when taking falling damage or when you steal, with an 8s ICD.

Let’s also note that “Sure fire stealth” is actually available with Pistol offhand – D/P has guaranteed stealth (unless HS is interrupted) by leaping through BP’s smoke field.

DeceiverX.8361:

OP should just make another video with weapons to demonstrate that the problem actually needs attention.

Just thinking about the extra some-odd 18 stacks of bleeding, multiple torment, and stealth/blind uptime is enough to make me cringe.

If dire/perplexity was not a possibility, this wouldn’t even be remotely possible.

I don’t see a lot of people saying “There’s absolutely no problem with this spec.” Most people (myself included) are pointing at Dire/Perplexity/Condi duration food (WvW only crap) as the issue. The problem is players with little critical thinking skills popping up to holler “Wow look at how broken thief is, and all these players defending it because they just want to stay broken” has muddied the conversation a bit.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Even if the disparity is only .5 sec, it is enough to favor taking Trickery because it is still better in the long run.

No, that just isn’t true. In the current system, if the difference between 6 trickery steal and 0 trickery steal was .5 sec, or even 5 full seconds, you’d see a lot more 6/6/2/0/0 variants running around. It’s unfortunate that the previewed CS and Acro lines are pretty bad, but assuming they’re brought in line with DA, SA and Trickery, a 3-5s difference between traited and untraited steal won’t be enough to make trickery a “must have” line.

The best course of action is to completely eliminate the disparity and give the lower cool down to all spec. 30sec CD is outdated and was based on a system that never made it out of beta. 20sec CD, with no other ways for CDR is, IMO, the right number since most of the time Steal aren’t used as soon as it became available anyway, so having a longer cooldown only unnecessarily limits our capability. We’re Thief, we should be able to steal as often as we can.

Every class gains some CD reduction on their class skills from their class line (unless I’m mistaken), so I can’t imagine eliminating it completely, even if Anets trait design heavily favors lowering the CD of steal as much as you can as a player.

The only thing that might pose a problem with a lower CD is the new Descend into Shadows, where BP triggers on steal causing AoE blind and stealth. Albeit this is already a problem if the Thief spec’d for both SA and Trickery. IMO, I think BP on Steal is a bad idea and I hope they change that.

While I agree this feels powerful on paper, I’m not willing to call anything OP until the expansion. It’s obvious that the landscape is changing pretty drastically for most classes, and we haven’t even seen most of the specializations yet. I’m excited for thieves potentially being able to drop SR as a required utility in team play, assuming DiS can perform a similar function (hell, it could even replace SoH for interrupting stomps, if trickery wasn’t a psuedo-mandatory traitline).

Maugetarr.6823:

evilapprentice.6379:

Sadrien.3470:

Let’s consider the benefits of SoH being baseline and the problems.

Pros:
Opens the ability for thieves to play 6066 which have extremely strong surviavbility + damage and cc ( is this really a pro ???)
Cons:
Will make thieves stronger as a class which will affect balance as they are already very strong.
Makes 10 stacks of confusion on steal possible ( destroying balance because no other class can do that on a under 30s CD. )
Ruins gm choice in trickery line.

If you currently think “thieves are very strong”, we’re playing different games. Go watch terrorsquads video where he explains how a thiefs only role is to cap unguarded points, contribute to uneven fights, and avoid 1v1’s entirely (unless of course you’re fighting a mesmer or another thief). Your analysis also completely ignored the current issue with SoH.

When I first saw this thread, I agreed that SoH didn’t need to become baseline. The more I thought about it however, I began to see the problem. So many of thiefs strong traits are tied to steal that it’s almost impossible not to take SoH just for the 20% CD reduction. It’s not even as if you can take a spec that doesn’t use steal traits – in the new system, you’re taking at least 1 of the following lines – DA, SA, or Trickery (ignoring the new specialization at the moment), and in each of those trees the traits tied to steal are better than their counterparts (though it be different when the changes go live, of course). With Acro being a little UP and CS being pure crap (again, that may change), you’re probably taking all 3.

That being said, the answer isn’t just to make SoH baseline. Instead, I’d like to propose a compromise. Add the following to the new baseline steal
- Steal 1 boon and grant it to the thief themself.
- Steal CD reduced by 10%
- Steal dazes for .25s

Redesign the following traits
Bountiful theft – steal now rips a second boon, grants vigor, and shares everything with up to 5 allies in the radius (So a traited BT in this proposed system works exactly like it does now)
SoH – Lots of possibilities here, but it needs to be redesigned, and does not include any further reduction to steals CD.

Now thieves are not forced into Trickery just for the CD reduction of SoH, and thieves can still interrupt stability stomps, but without trickery you can use Aegis to counterplay it.

Not sure we need the 0.25 daze baseline, but I like the idea of the CD reduction being rolled into baseline while the trickery line still includes a reduction (like how they’re doing to attunment swapping). A single boon would also be nice, but I think the CD reduction is the most important part of balancing out the GM traits in that line.

You are correct.

Removing the CD reduction from SoH and making it baseline makes it so that Trickery is no longer psuedo-required.

The other changes I suggested were to give other trait lines (CS, Acro, SA) a fighting chance – even with the CD reduction baseline, trickery is a no-brainer for any viable thief build after DA. Adding the other effects to baseline makes it so that you can ignore trickery and still retain a small portion of its usefulness.

Sadrien.3470:

Let’s consider the benefits of SoH being baseline and the problems.

Pros:
Opens the ability for thieves to play 6066 which have extremely strong surviavbility + damage and cc ( is this really a pro ???)
Cons:
Will make thieves stronger as a class which will affect balance as they are already very strong.
Makes 10 stacks of confusion on steal possible ( destroying balance because no other class can do that on a under 30s CD. )
Ruins gm choice in trickery line.

If you currently think “thieves are very strong”, we’re playing different games. Go watch terrorsquads video where he explains how a thiefs only role is to cap unguarded points, contribute to uneven fights, and avoid 1v1’s entirely (unless of course you’re fighting a mesmer or another thief). Your analysis also completely ignored the current issue with SoH.

When I first saw this thread, I agreed that SoH didn’t need to become baseline. The more I thought about it however, I began to see the problem. So many of thiefs strong traits are tied to steal that it’s almost impossible not to take SoH just for the 20% CD reduction. It’s not even as if you can take a spec that doesn’t use steal traits – in the new system, you’re taking at least 1 of the following lines – DA, SA, or Trickery (ignoring the new specialization at the moment), and in each of those trees the traits tied to steal are better than their counterparts (though it be different when the changes go live, of course). With Acro being a little UP and CS being pure crap (again, that may change), you’re probably taking all 3.

That being said, the answer isn’t just to make SoH baseline. Instead, I’d like to propose a compromise. Add the following to the new baseline steal
- Steal 1 boon and grant it to the thief themself.
- Steal CD reduced by 10%
- Steal dazes for .25s

Redesign the following traits
Bountiful theft – steal now rips a second boon, grants vigor, and shares everything with up to 5 allies in the radius (So a traited BT in this proposed system works exactly like it does now)
SoH – Lots of possibilities here, but it needs to be redesigned, and does not include any further reduction to steals CD.

Now thieves are not forced into Trickery just for the CD reduction of SoH, and thieves can still interrupt stability stomps, but without trickery you can use Aegis to counterplay it.

Sagat.3285:

I will keep saying that they shaved SA miraculously without nerfing it to the ground stop saying it got buffed. We shall see how smooth the transition will be.

I’d love to hear your thought process on this. Are you basing this entirely on Cloaked being GM?

Red Jay.2516:

Darn, reading some comments in this thread…

Screaming and kicking and spitting vitriol at OP rather than willing to admit that maybe… maybe there is a certain combination of thief skills, traits and runes that might be a bit too powerful and need an adjustment.

Just wow. Thief subforum at its best.

I was honestly unaware that disagreeing with OP’s assessment and offering logic and reasoning were considered “Screaming, kicking, and spitting vitriol”. Of course I am on the thief boards with it’s usual band of automatic detractors, so perhaps that’s my fault.

On that topic, what exactly does your post add to the conversation? You haven’t offered any opinion worth noting, nor does it offer any logic/reasoning (although how could it, without a point to support)? All you’ve done is occupy some space on a screen with empty text.

My assertion is that the issue here (if there is an issue at all, see below for details) is a result of Dire stats/Perplexity runes/Condi duration food (things only available in WvW), not the thief class itself. Below, I’ll repeat my logic and reasoning for you. If you have any sort of logical counter-argument, please feel free to post that.

- Since this spec doesn’t rely on SA to be effective, it has the potential to be useful in PvP. Since it’s not considered a PvP meta spec, the thief skills themselves probably aren’t strong enough to be considered the issue in “a combination of thief skills, traits and runes that might be a bit too powerful and need an adjustment.” Perhaps the Gear/Runes/Food are, but the thief itself is not.

- No game mode is won by dueling. A WvW highlight reel of duels does not give you any useful metrics to determine whether or not a build is “OP” or not, because efficacy in a duel is not directly or even semi-directly translatable into winning a PvP/WvW match.

- Even if we assume the opponents in this video were average or above average players, they clearly did not know thief well enough to read Mango’s spec. I play thief – when I see a thief standing on the other side of a Caltrops field, with no weapons equipped, and see his hands moving, it’s safe to assume it’s scorpion wire and just dodge it. This video took advantage of the fact that the opponents weren’t sure what his build was trying to do, and didn’t know what skills to dodge.

So there you go. If there is a problem with this build (because remember, WvW duels don’t “prove” anything), then it lies in Dire/Perplexity/Food. Like I said, if you have any relevant thought that counters my argument, I invite you to respond. I’m not holding my breath though.

I’ve suggested this in the past, and it’s just as relevant today.

Before a 4v5 game starts, the game should force 1 player from the team with 5 players into spectate mode (on a delay, so they can’t scout the game).

Allow people to volunteer for spectating, so you don’t ruin team synergy. Reward the person with X reward progress/rank points etc, and leave their MMR unaffected (maybe? that point might take some testing to figure out).

It’s not a perfect or permanent solution, but 1 player being forced to spectate and (potentially) angry is ALOT better than 4 players getting steamrolled and sick of the system. It’s also an extremely simple change that the games code already mostly supports – no need to redesign match algorithms (in the short term of course) or introduce new functions, it’s all in the game already.

Shezu Tsukai.8291:

Let’s open it up. And have some fun.

What are your (creative) guesses for some skills for the thief’s new rifle specialization?

Suprise shot – 5 initiative.
4 second cast
applies stealth for 2 seconds 2x damage modifier, 1200 range

hotfix within a month
“We feel stealth is too powerful on this skill, so we changed it instead to a 2s blind field with 1s pulse interval instead.”

First patch (6 months down the road)
“We feel this skill offers too much in 1 package. Initiative cost increased to 6, blind field now pulses once every 2s”

Second patch (12 months down the road)
“We feel this skill is still too strong. Range reduced to 900, multiplier reduced to 1.5 in PvP.”

Third patch
No changes, because rifle thief is dead.

Fourth patch
“Thieves don’t seem to be using rifle at all, so we added 1 stack of 3s confusion to Surprise shot. "

This is getting out of hand.

You got a very sparse preview of the Dragonhunter. How about you wait until you at least have some idea what the spec actually does before you start complaining that it’s UP/OP/Unfun to play/killed your parents, ok?

Noha.3749:

Its not as complicated that a thieves role and value should need 2 pages of text..

Thieves fill the role of roaming support more or less.
They +1 some fights
They depac/cap nodes
They rarely do, but are capable of 1v1
They add stealth, poison and blinds, sometimes burst
They are fast. Really fast

They depend on others just as much as anyone, however they cant fill the brawler role,
which is meta. Spike damage vs brawlers is not as efficient, but adds up when assisting a friendly brawler that is brawling with another brawler too long. They are also efficient with being fast enough to support another objective before its too late.

A Brawler does his best fending off 2 or more players for as long as possible.
Fending off 2 brawlers is easier than 1 brawler+1 thief.

Therefor a brawler easier fills more roles because people are rotating and you will encounter more than 1 player at a time most of the times.

If you ever watched one of those wrestling shows on television (dont mind them being rigged), then you can pretty much compare the combatants to the brawlers, and the thief to the allied observer throwing in a chair to his beloved combatant, and then quickly moving on to the other cage to assist another ally. The assist can go either way, the chair can break, the opposing combatant can use it to his advantage.
But with the right timing and skill it CAN determine the outcome for to the better.

Some players want thief to be more than “Sometimes effective brawler support and contester of unguarded points”, and I don’t think that’s ridiculous.

mango.9267:

evilapprentice.6379:

So please, explain to me, why is it you feel that the class itself is the problem when the build goes from “OP Broken can’t win against it it should be nerfed” in WvW to “Almost completely worthless” in PvP, the only real difference in the 2 specs being their gear/rune/food buff choices?

I specified earlier that I think the biggest problem is dire, but that’s not the only problem.

And I keep specifying that I believe you’re wrong in that assessment.

To be completely fair, I believe someone posted a video earlier that ran the exact same traits (yes, even hard to catch) in PvP and had some success with it. Granted, he took refuge and shadowstep over needle trap and wire, but the general 4/0/0/4/6 caltrops idea is very similar.

So that’s your criteria for “Op enough to be nerfed”? Someone’s PvP highlight reel showing “some success”? You realize how silly that sounds, right?

I saw that video when it was originally posted. I even tried the spec out. It’s fun, it’s different, and you’re right that it’s not completely useless. It is however no where near good enough to be considered a meta build, and not deserving of nerfs. At least part of its effectiveness (50%, imo) stems from the fact that your opponents don’t know what to expect. Players see you rocking S/D and don’t expect dodge trops/caltrops/condition pressure. If it became popular enough to be run by multiple players, it’d quickly fall into the “Good enough for Hot join/Yoloq fun but not much else” categeory, and nothing in that category is strong enough to deserve nerfs.

It’s also worth noting he’s running SR and SS over Needle trap and Scorp wire because in PvP, those 2 are essential. SR brings team support (the best team support in Thief’s shallow repertoire, in fact) and SS is a necessary stunbreaker because he can’t rely on Dire stats to keep him alive if he eats CC.

S/D lost most of its damage and all of its “Burst” (note the quotation marks) when they locked LS behind FS hitting its target. Players can now watch a thief spend 4 init and dodge both FS and LS by just dodging FS. The only other decent multiplier in S/D is Crippling strike, and if you’ll almost never get all the way through the AA chain to CS without taking massive damage.

S/D has nothing on any of the meta bruisers, they easily out sustain S/D’s damage and the out damage S/D’s sustain.

Toxsa.2701:

evilapprentice.6379:

Toxsa.2701:

Nephrite.6954:

If only anet would stop trying make Thieves a condition class then it’ll definitely help boost our power builds. Cause then people would stop complaining about how broken we are ==.

+1 this. Thief shouldn’t be able to have access to easy confusion, bleeds and torment. Their specialty should be poison and raw damage. I rather most thieves go direct damage in WvW than abusing the condition specs . They shouldn’t be able to tick so much damage while stealthing /evading/ teleporting none stop.

Sad thing is Anet is going to make Thief’s condition spec even stronger in HoT… lol
Gonna enjoy thieves taking down the whole lord room in Stronghold by spamming bleed trap procs while stealthing and evading

It’s pretty obvious anything I say is going to fall on deaf ears, so here’s a challenge.

Take this spec into some ranked que, play it for a week, then come back here and tell me how ridiculously OP condi thief was and how every one of your fights was an absolute breeze.

Hell, you can even equip weapons if you like – that should make the entire thing a cakewalk! But you’ve got to keep the traits, utilities, heal and elite as is.

You go and do that for a week, then we can talk about how broken condi this is. Until then, we can keep pinning the blame on Dire/Perplexity.

Anddd when we mention about WvW and potentially Stronghold which involves no conquest, people always derail the point to ranked qued to justify this spec, even though this video is CLEARLY taking place in WvW.

Thieves always use this as an excuse to defend their condition spec and Shadow Art. It’s not an issue currently because of conquest and celestial uber cleanse, but we’ll see how it goes when Stronghold comes out.

All I’m trying to do is encourage a little critical thinking on your part.

The Dev’s have clearly expressed that the games balance is based around 5v5 PvP maps. How well a spec Duels in WvW (which is a metric that means nothing, since you can’t win any game mode by dueling) has absolutely no bearing on whether or not a class is OP. Concerning Stronghold, let’s wait and see how that plays out.

But let’s ignore those 2 points for now.

Now, the point of mentioning ranked que was not to derail the thread, but to have you sit down and think for a moment. Thief with Spec A and Gearset A (Dire/perplexity/food buffs) is considered “OP”, while Thief with Spec A and Gearset B (PvP ammy/runes/no food buffs) is not considered OP. What’s the difference between those 2 specs?

Don’t worry, I’ll just tell you. It’s the gear. You couldn’t possibly come to any other conclusion without being disingenuous (special caveat below).

It is important to note that SA is usually a special factor here – in PvP, thieves can’t use SA because you cant contest/flip a point while in stealth, while in WvW you can sit in stealth as long as you like. Luckily, Mango’s posted video shows us that his spec doesn’t use stealth for access to damaging conditions or need to sit in it for sustain, so that isn’t a factor in this conversation! His spec should be just as powerful in PvP because it doesn’t rely on sitting in stealth for its survivability/damage! It might be even more powerful, since in PvP people are forced to fight over small circles, while in WvW they could just walk away from you.

So please, explain to me, why is it you feel that the class itself is the problem when the build goes from “OP Broken can’t win against it it should be nerfed” in WvW to “Almost completely worthless” in PvP, the only real difference in the 2 specs being their gear/rune/food buff choices?

Toxsa.2701:

Nephrite.6954:

If only anet would stop trying make Thieves a condition class then it’ll definitely help boost our power builds. Cause then people would stop complaining about how broken we are ==.

+1 this. Thief shouldn’t be able to have access to easy confusion, bleeds and torment. Their specialty should be poison and raw damage. I rather most thieves go direct damage in WvW than abusing the condition specs . They shouldn’t be able to tick so much damage while stealthing /evading/ teleporting none stop.

Sad thing is Anet is going to make Thief’s condition spec even stronger in HoT… lol
Gonna enjoy thieves taking down the whole lord room in Stronghold by spamming bleed trap procs while stealthing and evading

It’s pretty obvious anything I say is going to fall on deaf ears, so here’s a challenge.

Take this spec into some ranked que, play it for a week, then come back here and tell me how ridiculously OP condi thief was and how every one of your fights was an absolute breeze.

Hell, you can even equip weapons if you like – that should make the entire thing a cakewalk! But you’ve got to keep the traits, utilities, heal and elite as is.

You go and do that for a week, then we can talk about how broken condi this is. Until then, we can keep pinning the blame on Dire/Perplexity.

mango.9267:

In some sense, every trait tells you how to play, so that’s a pretty vacuous statement. The problem with LR is that it’s mandatory in SA, not that it’s necessarily a bad trait.

You missed the key phrase there. Here, I’ll add it in bold. and penalizes you if you don’t play that way. It’s fine for a trait to encourage you to play a certain way, it is not fine for that trait to penalize you for not playing that way. For example, if I went 3 points into acro, took Power of Inertia, and never once dodged, that would be fine (Poor play, but fine), because while I never took advantage of my acro traits once, I wasn’t penalized by the traits for not doing so.
LR has the potential to actively penalize you with revealed for playing offensively when you’re low on health. That makes it a bad trait.

To be fair, it’s not exactly a common spec. But yes, the trick is to avoid scorpion wire, not steal. And yes, a lot of players do try to predict-dodge steal, and some of them are quite good at it too.

Again, missing a word. Trying to blindly predict-dodge steal is silly. Other players success in predict-dodging steal is fine, we’re talking about how in your spec, it was obvious that dodging scorpion wire was vastly more important than dodging steal.

I don’t see how every variable was in my favor. If anything, I think I’m at a significant disadvantage starting without weapons, but compensate by running full dire/perplexity.

Every variable was in your favor to get away with claiming that your spec won without using weapons. You picked Thief (which gets most of its condi pressure from traits and utilities). You set up unrealistic fights where players would have just escaped from you every time you ran to heal instead of waiting conveniently in range for you to get back. You ran a spec that your opponents were unfamiliar with, allowing 1 easily dodged skill to do most of your DPS, and you did it all while running a statline most already agree is poorly balanced (you would have lost most of your fights without both the toughness and vitality on Dire).

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun video to watch. You clearly know/play thief well, and most cases better than your opponents know their classes. It’s just not a video that proves or tells us anything usefull. You set up a duel (which has no bearing on PvP or WvW), fought some people who didn’t quite know what to expect, then claimed condi thief was OP. It’s a silly waste of time.

mango.9267:

I wasn’t trying to prove anything about LR. That’s just my opinion about the trait. I understand perfectly well what most thieves complain about: they hit 25% health and try to stealth from, say, a CnD, only to have LR proc in the middle of the CnD animation. I admitted that this was less of a problem for this particular build because it didn’t run weapons. However, I also find that I don’t really have a problem with LR, even when I do run weapons, and I think most of the complaints are L2play issues.

You weren’t trying to prove anything, but you specifically mentioned you felt that it proved something. I was merely pointing out how you were wrong, like how I’ll point out that your last sentence above is wrong. The problem with LR is it tries to tell you how to play, and penalizes you if you don’t play that way. It’s hilariously bad design, whether or not you jury rig it into working for you or not.

You’re reading too much into what I said about hard to catch. I only said it was strong in duels. I didn’t say it was good in PvP, nor did I say it was better than the new version.

Saying it’s good in duels has no value – there is no place in the pvp sphere where duels really matter, so it’s akin to saying it’s a great trait in PvE – doesn’t matter if its true, you posted a WvW video, so it doesn’t matter.

You’re right about that, but that “very specific situation” describes pretty much all of WvW. Unless you think Anet should neglect WvW entirely when balancing, you should also find the risk/reward of condi thief imbalanced.

WvW is by it’s nature unbalanced. The game’s balance design is explicitly based around 5v5 SPvP. That probably sucks for WvW, but that’s the way it is. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Dire amulet was an awful design choice, but that’s the issue here, not any specific spec that uses it.

Again, this is all correct in theory, but in practice, it doesn’t work out that way. A lot of opponents try to avoid steal and will blow dodges when they think I’ll steal. Other times, they’ll see me casting caltrops or needle trap and try to dodge to avoid those (note: you can cancel both animations to bait dodges). After they’re out of dodges, it becomes very difficult to avoid scorpion wire, which will force them into the trap/caltrops. Lastly, improvisation will often recharge one of the utilities, making it even more difficult to keep track of what I have.

Trying to blindly predict-dodge steal is silly, and bad play. Considering how most of your DPS was wrapped into Trops and Needle trap, dodging scorpion wire is the obvious priority – the fact that no one figured that out shows that they didn’t really understand what your spec was doing.
Improv has a 20% chance to recharge those abilities. 20% <> often. You wouldn’t consider a 20% chance to win a fight good, and losing 4 out of 5 fights wouldn’t be considered “Often” winning.
I’m not saying your opponents are terrible players, but they clearly have no idea how thief works. Also, from what I saw, you never did bait dodges by cast-cancelling – they just failed to dodge scorpion wire.

All I’m saying is this video doesn’t really offer anything worth discussing. You displayed a bunch of fights where almost every variable was in your favor, and came to a conclusion everyone who has a basic understanding of the games mechanics came to – the Dire statline is silly.

mango.9267:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlmgJOkFdfM

At the urging of some friends, I’ve uploaded a sequel to my first weaponless video.

Discussion

Last time, my intent was primarily to entertain, but also to shed some light on just how broken condition thieves are. However, instead of that, the discussion more or less devolved into one big criticism of “your opponents are all bad, so condi teef isn’t OP”.

In an effort to respond to that, I’ve only included clips against players I would consider at least decent, from a variety of WvW tiers. Every one featured in this video is competent, and I’d even go so far as to say that some of them are very good.

Condition thieves (especially dire with perplexity/balthazar/krait) are incredibly powerful in small scale scenarios, with almost no risk attached. The active defenses from acro-trickery allow me to avoid most telegraphed bursts and the passive sustain from full dire lets me straight up tank everything else.

As always, comments, criticisms, suggestions are all welcome.

Addendum

I’d also like to point out a couple of things about last refuge/hard to catch.

1) Last refuge: In a couple of the clips, I would have definitely lost without the last refuge proc. Granted, it’s not as much of an issue for this build because this build doesn’t use weapons, but at higher levels of play, last refuge still saves you more often than it kills you.

How exactly have you proven that? Almost everything you’re doing is passive – you don’t even have weaponskills that could potentially reveal you when LR procs. All this proves is that you have a very basic misunderstanding of other players issue with LR. Let’s also note that “higher levels of play” and “WvW” don’t really belong in the same sentence in most situations.

2) Hard to catch: It’s actually quite strong in duels. A lot of thieves like to steal + backstab, but hard to catch will automatically shadowstep you away (faster than any human could react), causing the backstab to miss entirely. Similarly, a lot of S/F eles gale —> phoenix mechanically, and hard to catch will move you out of phoenix automatically.

Most peoples complaints concerning hard to catch are in PvP, which revolves around capturing small circles. Being randomly placed somewhere else, the trigger of which is in someone elses control, still suffering from the CC is awful for an “automatic escape” trait in PvP. “In Duels” also isn’t a very good metric for gauging a skills usefulness, since duels are not the primary focus of any PvP mode. The new version is much better.

All you’ve really proven is that Dire is a silly amulet, and that a condi thief using one is OP in the very specific situation where sitting in stealth as long as possible isn’t penalized, in a big, wide open field that allows you to take maximum advantage of your mobility to stall for CD’s, against opponents who wouldn’t just run away from you at that point.

Let’s also note that you considered most of your opponents “decent”, and I saw alot of scorpion wires into trap/trops hit – any experienced player would have seen that coming a mile away. They should have had dodges galore to ensure it missed considering you weren’t using weapons. Seriously, you had 3 other abilities to use once trops were down, and one of them (DS) has an insanely obvious animation. Your opponents could have just spammed dodge any time you were visibly casting an animation and avoided 90% of your trops damage.

’Nuff said.

ronpierce.2760:

T raw.4658:

ronpierce.2760:

babazhook.6805:

ronpierce.2760:

babazhook.6805:

ronpierce.2760:

There is a huge difference in basking in a stealth all-purpose heal and using a shout to heal, like you know, being able to train them down still, being able to actually persue your enemy.

SA being the “Tanky spec” keeps being used but it’s not. It’s the safe hit-and-run tree. There’s very little about it that helps make it Tanky rather than a reset tree. It’s about as corny as PU is.

Which is why the argument that it needs a downtweak invalid. It a distinctly different type of heal then the others mentioned and the fact you have to “sit in stealth” to garner its benefits is not an advantage over those others that can get that instant heal rather then over a time and continually pressure an enemy.

That difference is what makes it annoying to the point almost game breaking. It’s sad when the logic becomes “if a thief ran away, you win the fight.” That’s garbage in every way possible. They could easily make it so that it was still strong but not only promoted fighting, helped you WHILE fighting, such as the example I gave.

Again I do not find it irritating at all. When a thief just stealthing I just go elsewhere. Your issue is not shadows rejuv. You are arguing against stealth itself. If they removed the skill shadows rejuv entirely they will still stealth. Those that sit in stealth now will still sit in stealth.

Only one skill SR allows a long term stealth and the only reason I ever used that skill was to cleanse conditions or to get out of a fight I was sure to lose or to run past a pack of people at a gate so as to get into a castle to defend it.

There are a whole pile of warriors that run away when they lose a fight and there no way I can catch them on a guardian. I have been with teams of 3 or 4 others tryng to catch one of these warriors and can not. That warrior heals all the while he is running.Using your reasoning we should remove all escape abilities so they have to stand and fight.

Many will (and have) argued Warrior mobility could be tuned down, redirecting the issue isn’t really fixing my issues. Problems in a game are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, there is a difference between stealth and stealthing and rejuvenating really fast. If you out-reset your enemy you can dwiddle them down in a very frustrating way.

FOR EXAMPLE:
Say thief and X fights. Thief and something else is at 40% but the thief can hide and regenerate to 100% in the time that person can just heal and end up at about 70% health and the fight starts again at 70% versus 100%, what do you think is going to happen? And the problem doesn’t end there. Stealth makes it hard to break that pattern because unless the thief is really bad, it’s hard to continue pressuring them.

(bad meaning you just SR in the middle of the fight and get cleaved because you didn’t take any additional measures).

This happens in WvW all the time, in fact it’s common for thief to kill multiple enemies at once with relative ease. The only thing preventing this from happening in spvp is stealth preventing node capping and the timer, both of which become less of an issue in SH where these types of builds will likely shine much more.

Thank you for posting this as now i can end this argument.

40% of 12,000 hp is 4800 hps. For a thief to fully rejuvenate to 100% health by utilizing shadow rejuvenation is like 20 seconds.

That’s 20 seconds of uninterrupted stealth….

1. HoT removes 20 secs of stealth.
2. Most classes who solo roam can fully heal in 20 secs
3. Most thieves are running more than 12k hps so it’s longer…

You don’t have a heal either, I take it? SR replaced your healing capabilities entirely and is your not source of healing or something?

But you’re talking about SR, not SR + heal skill.

You can’t complain about SR and claim that it’ll get a thief up to 100%, be proven wrong, then go “But you didn’t factor in the heal!”. Of course we didn’t, we’re talking about the healing you get from SR.

I get the feeling you just don’t like SR and you feel that’s enough of a reason for it to be changed.

Do the math with both players having a heal and tell me how it goes.

Why would we? We’re talking about SR, not “SR and all the other possible ways you could heal”.

Auesis.7301:

Don’t Stop is being changed for sure. They said on stream that they weren’t happy with how it feels and so it’s going to have some other effect. The idea they put across was that you would evade the next attack when you gained Swiftness. That would be much stronger than what this is. We’ll have to see what they end up with.

If they go with this one, it’ll hopefully quell all the FG complaints. A free second evade every 5 seconds when you dodge (since you get swiftness after you dodge) combined with the increased vigor effect and vigor uptime is nice. It would also work well with Thrill of the crime and steal (assuming it’s off CD). It’s a little clunkier to use, but more powerful since you’ll just evade the attack regardless what you’re doing.

Ohoni.6057:

Oh, I don’t care. And no one else who matters does either. It’s a PvE/Psuedo WvW trait that doesn’t have any real value in the context of the your spec.

Yes. And nobody cares about PvP specs either, except PvP players, whom nobody cares about because PvP is lame. It only exists as a way to round out your dailies when there are two Fractals in the rotation.

Wanting something is not a proper justification for having/getting something.

Wanting something is the only justification for having/getting something. This is a game, there’s nothing to it aside from a collection of wants.

Sure it is. I can’t wait to see how you well the 1.0 X multiplier backstab that gets blocked and reveals you for 10 seconds sits with you when it gets implemented. After all, that is what so many players want, and it being the only justification for having/getting something, I’m sure it’ll be implemented.

Hahahaha.

Ohoni.6057:

Acro – Yeah, the new FG is weaker, but there are some fun possibilities here. S/x 6/0/0/6/6 has some mighty potential if the redesigned stolen items are any good – Swindlers, don’t stop, FG, they all trigger on an evaded attack, not a “dodged” attack (If I’m hearing correctly), which will happen often. Improv tied into all that has the potential to be strong. This trait line is the most heavily dependent on how powerful the new stolen items are, I think, due to the synergy with trickery and Improv.

1. Acro no longer has the fall damage trait, meaning if I want the fall damage trait I have to abandon Acro entirely, or if I want acro I cannot have the fall damage trait. I want both and don’t you dare call me “entitled” for wanting both things that I currently have.

Oh, I don’t care. And no one else who matters does either. It’s a PvE/Psuedo WvW trait that doesn’t have any real value in the context of the your spec.

2. I like being able to dodge three times in a row, even if none of them actually “evade” anything. I like it just because of the Swiftness buff, or even just because I can. The changes to FG mean that I won’t be able to do this anymore, especially if none of the dodges actually evade any damage. I loved being a Thief that could just bounce all over the battlefield and always have dodge available, and they’ve taken that away from me. I am upset about that and don’t try to convince me of a silver lining that does not apply to my enjoyment of the game.

I want more options. I want either Descent to be moved back into Acro (which has mostly junk in the Master/GM tiers anyways), or for the ability to spec into four trees if I want to spec into four trees. And I want Feline Grace back in it’s original form.

Wanting something is not a proper justification for having/getting something. Wanting to be able to dodge 3 times in a row (regardless of whether or not you’re evading anything) is silly and an extremely poor justification for anything. Thankfully, Anet isn’t making changes on what you ‘want’ with no good reason as to why you want it. FG is certainly weaker, but the entirety of DA and SA are stronger, so it looks to me like a net gain. Whether or not you enjoy the changes is not the goal in mind. The goal is whether or not a reasonable person would enjoy the changes, and at the moment, at least tentatively, it seems like they’re working successfully toward that goal.

It should absolutely be Quickness, and not Haste. kitten , Haste is a stunbreaker – why would you need a stunbreaker when you’re not stunned?

Maybe 6 seconds and a 60 second CD could be changed to 3 and 30, but in no case should it not be Quickness.

I’m only going to suggest modifications to the traits suggested. Also, I did not watch the stream, I’m going on information provided here – http://dulfy.net/2015/04/24/gw2-specializations-ama-livestream-notes/

Unrelenting strikes – change the trigger to over 50%. Thieves already hit harder the lower their opponent’s health is on multiple other traits/skills. This balances out the split somewhat, and isn’t all that powerful to begin with.

First strikes – this is listed as “10% more critical damage with 6 or more init” on the link. Assuming that’s accurate, that’s awful. Keep it as 10% more damage with 6 or more init" or a flat unconditional increase of 10% to critical damage.

Side Strikes – Merge the original Furious Retaliation into this – it’s garbage at the moment.

Combo critical chance – this was a poorly designed trait prior to the proposed changes, the fact that it’s remained unchanged is almost insulting. Maybe change the % to 10 and merge opportunist into this. Whatever you do, do not publish this trait as listed – it is not a worthwhile choice for any thief spec, current or future. You might as well put only 2 traits and a blank space in the slot.

Sundering Strikes – change this to 50% on hit or 100% on crit, or quadruple the duration- as it stands, it’s weak for an Adept trait, much less a master trait. Unless you plan on redesigning P/P or S/P, thieves weaponsets that can take the most advantage of this trait range from UP to worthless, so this trait needs to be more powerful.

Hidden killer – Add 20% additional crit damage while in stealth. In the old system, going 6 points into CS gave you 20% more crit damage, regardless of amulet choice. Hidden Killer is much weaker without that guaranteed additional damage, so add it into the trait itself.

I’m more than a little confused about the doom and gloom people are spouting.

With the exception of Crit strikes, alot of these changes seem pretty good on paper.

New Shadow arts is borderline OP in any mode where stealth isn’t penalized (IE, conquest)- 50% DR as a MINOR trait, 2 heals, init regen, and condi cleansing. Granted it’s poorly designed from a “Choices” standpoint, it’s still powerful.

Deadly arts – Mug, panic strike, executioner. All in 1 line. It’s also worth noting a few other things. The 10% damage isn’t qualified on Improvisation (it might still be with bundles, I didn’t watch the stream). Also, noted in the link, steals are being redesigned and having their damaging components removed – this (hopefully) means much better access to sustain/CC/things thieves don’t get outside of the stolen items themselves. Assuming (kittenumption, I know) that the redesigned steals are strong, having 2 uses (on top of random utility line reset and possible damage bonus) is nice. Since our usable heals are getting categories as well, improv refreshing a heal is a possibility.

Trickery – almost entirely unchanged – slightly better options for other specs (pressure striking, maybe flanking strikes heavily dependent on how it’s implemented), otherwise it functions identically to how it does now, which is fine considering it’s strong enough to be mandatory in every thief meta build.

Acro – Yeah, the new FG is weaker, but there are some fun possibilities here. S/x 6/0/0/6/6 has some mighty potential if the redesigned stolen items are any good – Swindlers, don’t stop, FG, they all trigger on an evaded attack, not a “dodged” attack (If I’m hearing correctly), which will happen often. Improv tied into all that has the potential to be strong. This trait line is the most heavily dependent on how powerful the new stolen items are, I think, due to the synergy with trickery and Improv.

Yeah, it’s still the illusion of choice in most of the tree’s, but some of the new combos are potentially very powerful.

Terrorsquad.2349:

evilapprentice.6379:

Thanks for posting this Terror! It’s helpful, useful, and most importantly a good example of a problem.

Vincent is 100% correct – thief is completely outclassed in the current meta. Your video and tips almost explicitly say so.

“Don’t try to 1v1 unless it’s a thief (the weak class you’re playing) or a mesmer (the class thief hard counters).” – what other class in the game running its meta spec can only handle 1/4 of the class choices in a 1 on 1?

“Only outnumber fights, don’t try to even them up” – Thief isn’t even good enough to run in an even fight – they’re only good for +1’ing a fight, which isn’t heartening, any class can make a fight uneven and do so successfully. What good is outnumbering a fight then you’re leaving your team outnumbered somewhere else?

I’ve said this before, but what good is mobility if you’re kitten near worthless when you get to your point? If you’re so weak that you can only make a difference when your outnumbering your opponents, why bother? As vincent keeps saying, taking a class that can effectively defend a point instead of a thief means less rotation, which means more points, which means winning the game.

Thief is in a horrible place right now – your guide paints a very clear portrait of that.

You can’t look at a class that shouldn’t 1v1 6 out of 7 classes (we won’t count thief v thief for obvious reasons) and shouldn’t even consider evening up a fight and pretend it’s in a good place.

Hmm, I think you missunderstood the point of not having a 1v1 with a thief..

Let me explain with a concrete example:

• Point A has enemy d/d ele grabbing it
• You, as thief, should not engage
• If you do, it’s not that you’ll lose (well, eventually yes, vs an ele) but you’ll be +1’d by the enemy because the fight takes TOO long.
• Fights that take long are an extra oppurtunity for the Thief/mesmer to +1, obviously.

… That’s just the very definition of “too weak” in a capture point game though. You made the video, you should be aware that “killing your opponent” is not the only criteria for a functioning spec – the amount of time it takes to do so is very important. If you can’t at minimum decap the point in a realistic amount of time, you’re too weak for the format. Thief has no tools for decapping, no tools for holding a point, and don’t do enough damage to burst down any of the meta bruisers solo.

So again, the reason why you should not 1v1 as Thief (or basically w/e class you play which can’t decap quick enough or contest the point long enough) is because you get the risk of being +1’d. Not because the thief is weak.

Out of curiosity, what classes other than Thief/Mesmer fall into this “Do not attempt 1v1’s” category?

Example:

• Sending a Shoutwarr to Point A in prev example to fight
• Fight will take atleast a minute if you let it end
• Doesn’t take a minute for Mes/Thief to come by and burst your shoutbow down in 2seconds
• Point A lost + 1 bunker/cele on respawn

I’d like to see your math on any viable thief spec bursting down any other non glass cannon in 2 seconds.

You also didn’t mention a word about “Only join teamfights to outnumber, never to even the odds” – how many other classes are considered ineffective in an even match, you think? Yeah, i get the idea that thief is incredibly mobile and would be more effective hitting up a separate capture point instead, but that only flies if said capture point is completely unattended or has a theif/mes at it (which it won’t, since neither class has the tools to hold a point against anyone). Not to mention that leaving your teammates in a X vs X-1 fight means your team is probably about to lose a point anyway.

It’s fine for a class to be weak in 1v1’s or team fights, but it’s kind of hard to see a class that’s weak in both as anything other than a burden in a capture point format.

There’s also the point that vincent keeps bringing up of the team which fielded a thief in the exact manner you’re describing and got completely shutdown because of it, which seems to lend more weight to his view than yours.