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Why doesn't anet like us?


AsiraasiB.7165

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I don't understand... Nerf after nerf after nerf after a buff nerf after nerf.. Anywho here's a list I tried to make, im sure I missed many...

September 2012:• Heartseeker: Reduced damage of the 100%-50% threshold by 20%. Damage thresholds changed. Old: 100%-66%, 66%-33%, 33%-0%. New: 100%-50%, 50%-25%, 25%-0%.• Descent of Shadows: This trait’s effect can now only trigger once every 8 seconds.October 2012:• Pistol Whip: Reduced damage by 15%.• Assassin’s Signet: This skill has been updated to grant 15% damage for 5 attacks rather than 50% damage for one attack.• Whirling Axe: This skill has had evasion removed from the ability and has a missile-reflection effect applied to the whirl effect.November 2012:• Dancing Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%.• Cluster Shot: This skill’s damage is reduced by 15% in PvP.• Cloak and Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.December 2012:• Fear (Stolen item— Skull): This skill now works like the warrior skill “Fear Me.” It will now actually hit its range, but also have a falloff on fear duration based on distance.• Instinctual Response: Now triggers at 10% damage instead of 20%.(Can be either nerf or buff)• Piercing Shot: This skill is no longer able to fire at enemies behind the player.January 2013:• Leeching Venoms: This trait no longer affects gadgets.• Smoke Screen: This skill’s blinding pulse no longer follows the thief.March 2013:• Caltrops: Reduced duration from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. Now indicates its radius.• Basilisk Venom skill: No longer immobilizes targets in addition to stunning them.April 2013:• Mug trait: Can no longer critically hit. Now heals the thief from a range of 1980 health to 2700 health. (Buff or nerf depending on wether you think healing makes up for no crits)• Smoke Screen skill: No longer destroys unblockable missiles.• Trick Shot skill: First arrow is no longer heat-seeking.May 2013:• Black Powder skill: No longer fires its projectile backward while moving. The field can still be generated.• Shadow Return skill: No longer has infinite range.June 2013:• Cluster Bomb: Decreased the range set from 1200 to 900.• Larcenous Strike: Increased the initiative cost to 2.• Nine Tailed Strike: Increased the initiative cost from 3 to 5.• Shadow Assault: Increased the initiative cost from 5 to 7.• Shadow Return (Infiltrator Strike Toggle): This skill is no longer a stun breaker.July 2013:• Shadow Trap: This skill now has a maximum duration of 120 seconds.October 2013:• Destroy Shadow Trap: This skill now has a 1.5-second cast time. It plays an effect on the thief and on the trap location when it is being cast. Added 5 seconds of regeneration.• Larcenous Strike: This skill now steals only 1 boon.• Basilisk Venom: Petrify is now removed on stun break.December 2013:• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.• Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.• Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 5s from 8s.• Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.• Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier. (since it might hinder some builds)*Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 10s.April 2014:• Pistol Whip has been split between PvP and PvE. It will now cost 6 initiative in PvP, while maintaining a 5 initiative cost in PvE.• Disabling Shot (SB): Reduced the length of this skill’s evasion component from 100% of the skill’s duration to 64% of the skill’s duration—an overall reduction of .3 seconds.• Choking Gas: Reduced the poison per pulse from 5 seconds to 3 seconds

MARCH 2015•  Infiltrator's Arrow: This skill will no longer activate if a valid path to the target point cannot be found. Infiltrator's Signet: This skill will no longer activate if a valid path to the target cannot be found, except when acting as a stun break. Infiltrator's Strike: This skill will no longer activate if a valid path to the target cannot be found. Shadowstep: This skill will no longer activate if a valid path to the target point cannot be found, except when acting as a stun break. Shadow Escape: This skill will no longer activate if a valid path to the target point cannot be found. Steal: This skill will no longer activate if a valid path to the target cannot be found

June 2015

 Cloaked in Shadow: Gaining stealth blinds nearby foes for 5 seconds. Release a blinding powder when you take falling damage. You take 50% less damage from falling.(big one for me i dont remember all the bad decisions that were made but this one I Hated making this a GM)(ps isn't this when they killed acro too?)

December 2015

 Steal now requires a target. Cannot steal for boons only(why tho?)

July 2016

• Stealth Attacks: All stealth attack skills will now have a 1-second recharge between uses. Staff Strike: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 5%. Staff Bash: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 5%. Punishing Strikes: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 5%. Venomous Aura: The area-of-effect aspect of this trait has been merged into venoms as baseline. The radius has been reduced from 360 to 240. The recharge reduction has moved to Leeching Venoms.

 Leeching Venoms: This trait no longer grants might to allies it is applied to. This trait now reduces the recharge of venom abilities. Devourer Venom: The number of stacks that this skill applies has been reduced from 3 to 2. Basilisk Venom: The number of stacks that this skill applies has been reduced from 2 to 1. Stun duration has been increased from 1 second to 1.5 seconds.

August 2016

 Infiltrator's Strike: Fixed a bug that prevented  Infiltrator's Return from becoming available when the skill was used in midair(tho this was a bug it was a big 'you wish' to thieves face)

March 2017

Traps: All traps created by the thief will have a 1-second arm time before the trap can affect enemies. Needle Trap: This skill now delivers a strike. Tripwire: This skill now delivers a strike

September 2017

•  Panic Strike: Reduced the duration of poison applied by this trait from 4 seconds to 2 seconds in PvP and WvW. Impaling Lotus: Reduced duration of conditions applied by this skill by 50% in PvP and WvW.

November 2017• Unhindered Combatant: Breaking inhibiting conditions with this trait now causes the thief to lose all endurance regeneration for 4 seconds. Direct endurance gains will still apply the full amount. Swiftness granted by this trait will now occur at the end of the dodge. Bandit's Defense: The recharge of this skill has been increased from 15 seconds to 20 seconds

Not to mention all the reveals and stealth Ed passed around to other classes these days... Only revealing we can do is on our selfThen there's tracking in stealth.. To me those should be a 50% hits for realism, I'm in stealth and I get it you started to attack but how can you still see me

Any class who's sneezes in our direction can rekt a unskilled thief, heck I've been downed by cleave attacks not even directed at me, not to mention the lovely aoe condis.

Yet we keep getting nerf after nerf smh

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That's the norm.

Up until 2014 they never touched the profession and only balanced based on crap they would hear in Black Gate's map chat (I think). Back then it was fucking horrible, since no matter what the thief community said Anet wouldn't listen. We would get nerfed so hard that certain sets completely lost their purpose with no buffs to compensate. It wasn't until thieves started shelving/deleting their thief toon en mass and playing either war or guard that anet started listening.

Nowadays they walk on eggshells around us but don't nerf us as heavily as before. Shit they even listen and buff us now which is a major improvement from years ago.

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I sorta wish they'd revert the gamewide vigor nerf. With all the damage flying around, it would be a boost to all of the evasive classes. Feline grace Endless stamina (RIP FG returning 15 endurance, 2012-2015) might have to lose the vigor being more effective part (or maybe reduced to 20%) but that might help with the pvp survivability since damage has slowly crept up while active defenses have been reduced over the past 5 years.

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@Maugetarr.6823 said:I sorta wish they'd revert the gamewide vigor nerf. With all the damage flying around, it would be a boost to all of the evasive classes. Feline grace Endless stamina (RIP FG returning 15 endurance, 2012-2015) might have to lose the vigor being more effective part (or maybe reduced to 20%) but that might help with the pvp survivability since damage has slowly crept up while active defenses have been reduced over the past 5 years.

Yes, please do that so I can shit on players even easier as mirage.

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@Asur.9178 said:

@Maugetarr.6823 said:I sorta wish they'd revert the gamewide vigor nerf. With all the damage flying around, it would be a boost to all of the evasive classes.
Feline grace
Endless stamina (RIP FG returning 15 endurance, 2012-2015) might have to lose the vigor being more effective part (or maybe reduced to 20%) but that might help with the pvp survivability since damage has slowly crept up while active defenses have been reduced over the past 5 years.

Yes, please do that so I can kitten on players even easier as mirage.

Well, the idea would be to tone down the dodge traits of mirage and DD. Since Acro was weakened considerably to make room for DD, basically the endurance regen traits would need to be moved back, and the utilities, traits, and staff attacks probably revisited. Similarly, mirage would have to see adjustments also based on the increased regen.

But, probably not gonna happen anytime soon/ever.

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There have also been boosts to all manner of skills only some of which detailed below. I do not think one can conclude "anet does not like us" by just cherry picking data.

As example immediately coming to mind are RFI and haste going from 60 to 35 seconds ICD and 50 to 30 seconds ICD respectivelyHIS boosted to remove confusion in addition to burn poison and fire with a regen extension.PR lowered to 16 seconds ICD . (it stared at 45 and was lowered in several steps) with both torment and then confusion added to the cleanses.16 percent boon duration in Acro. Cleanse on don't stop when swiftness applied of imapring conditions. Swindlers to 10 percent boost to sword. Swindlers resetting steal on an evade rather then the old lower by a second. Swiftness added to sword 2. Range on sword 2 increased. 20 percent damage add to larcenous against boonless foes. Boosts to panic strike, potent poison, the add of Assassins fury, twin fang added to CS (2 skills sin one and much more usable) , more boons stolen with BT. Hidden killer granting 2 seconds of 100 percent crit on reveal. Duration increases of Immob on body shot. Lead attacks changed .The add of MIGHT stacks to unload followed by INI regain if all hits strike.

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@babazhook.6805 said:There have also been boosts to all manner of skills only some of which detailed below. I do not think one can conclude "anet does not like us" by just cherry picking data.

As example immediately coming to mind are RFI and haste going from 60 to 35 seconds ICD and 50 to 30 seconds ICD respectivelyHIS boosted to remove confusion in addition to burn poison and fire with a regen extension.PR lowered to 16 seconds ICD . (it stared at 45 and was lowered in several steps) with both torment and then confusion added to the cleanses.16 percent boon duration in Acro. Cleanse on don't stop when swiftness applied of imapring conditions. Swindlers to 10 percent boost to sword. Swindlers resetting steal on an evade rather then the old lower by a second. Swiftness added to sword 2. Range on sword 2 increased. 20 percent damage add to larcenous against boonless foes. Boosts to panic strike, potent poison, the add of Assassins fury, twin fang added to CS (2 skills sin one and much more usable) , more boons stolen with BT. Hidden killer granting 2 seconds of 100 percent crit on reveal. Duration increases of Immob on body shot. Lead attacks changed .The add of MIGHT stacks to unload followed by INI regain if all hits strike.

Well, actually almost all of those buffs are pretty much totally useless. What the op is talking about is not that they don't buff thief, but more that they don't give any meaningful changes to the class. The last meaningful changes to thief were the buff to the auto attacks of staff and dagger, even the twin fangs change wasn't really so desirable for dps because the only thing it did was force power thieves to use spider venom, sure its a tiny DPS increase, but honestly its mostly pointless. Here is an image to demonstrate this:sQJvStF.png

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@Zlater.6789 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:There have also been boosts to all manner of skills only some of which detailed below. I do not think one can conclude "anet does not like us" by just cherry picking data.

As example immediately coming to mind are RFI and haste going from 60 to 35 seconds ICD and 50 to 30 seconds ICD respectivelyHIS boosted to remove confusion in addition to burn poison and fire with a regen extension.PR lowered to 16 seconds ICD . (it stared at 45 and was lowered in several steps) with both torment and then confusion added to the cleanses.16 percent boon duration in Acro. Cleanse on don't stop when swiftness applied of imapring conditions. Swindlers to 10 percent boost to sword. Swindlers resetting steal on an evade rather then the old lower by a second. Swiftness added to sword 2. Range on sword 2 increased. 20 percent damage add to larcenous against boonless foes. Boosts to panic strike, potent poison, the add of Assassins fury, twin fang added to CS (2 skills sin one and much more usable) , more boons stolen with BT. Hidden killer granting 2 seconds of 100 percent crit on reveal. Duration increases of Immob on body shot. Lead attacks changed .The add of MIGHT stacks to unload followed by INI regain if all hits strike.

Well, actually almost all of those buffs are pretty much totally useless. What the op is talking about is not that they don't buff thief, but more that they don't give any meaningful changes to the class. The last meaningful changes to thief were the buff to the auto attacks of staff and dagger, even the twin fangs change wasn't really so desirable for dps because the only thing it did was force power thieves to use spider venom, sure its a tiny DPS increase, but honestly its mostly pointless.

You fucking what? Useless?! The buffs back in August were huge for Sword thieves! And acrobatics is a perfectly viable option over UC (more now than ever since the last patch). Makes me wonder how you play the game when you drop lines like this:

The last meaningful changes to thief were the buff to the auto attacks of staff and dagger

No wonder you struggle with the class if all you do is rely on your auto-attack.

Don't get me wrong, thief is in a BAD spot, but to say that all of the buffs are just plain useless is just being disingenuous.

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@TwiceDead.1963 said:

@Zlater.6789 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:There have also been boosts to all manner of skills only some of which detailed below. I do not think one can conclude "anet does not like us" by just cherry picking data.

As example immediately coming to mind are RFI and haste going from 60 to 35 seconds ICD and 50 to 30 seconds ICD respectivelyHIS boosted to remove confusion in addition to burn poison and fire with a regen extension.PR lowered to 16 seconds ICD . (it stared at 45 and was lowered in several steps) with both torment and then confusion added to the cleanses.16 percent boon duration in Acro. Cleanse on don't stop when swiftness applied of imapring conditions. Swindlers to 10 percent boost to sword. Swindlers resetting steal on an evade rather then the old lower by a second. Swiftness added to sword 2. Range on sword 2 increased. 20 percent damage add to larcenous against boonless foes. Boosts to panic strike, potent poison, the add of Assassins fury, twin fang added to CS (2 skills sin one and much more usable) , more boons stolen with BT. Hidden killer granting 2 seconds of 100 percent crit on reveal. Duration increases of Immob on body shot. Lead attacks changed .The add of MIGHT stacks to unload followed by INI regain if all hits strike.

Well, actually almost all of those buffs are pretty much totally useless. What the op is talking about is not that they don't buff thief, but more that they don't give any meaningful changes to the class. The last meaningful changes to thief were the buff to the auto attacks of staff and dagger, even the twin fangs change wasn't really so desirable for dps because the only thing it did was force power thieves to use spider venom, sure its a tiny DPS increase, but honestly its mostly pointless.

You kitten what? Useless?! The buffs back in August were huge for Sword thieves! And acrobatics is a perfectly viable option over UC (more now than ever since the last patch). Makes me wonder how you play the game when you drop lines like this:

The last meaningful changes to thief were the buff to the auto attacks of staff and dagger

No wonder you struggle with the class if all you do is rely on your auto-attack.

Don't get me wrong,
thief is in a BAD spot
, but to say that all of the buffs are just plain useless is just being disingenuous.

I think he means the issue is that everything got so nerfed so many times that our main damage income became... AA. Which will be probably get hit at some point as well because some dev got ganked somewhere.

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@Cynz.9437 said:

@TwiceDead.1963 said:

@Zlater.6789 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:There have also been boosts to all manner of skills only some of which detailed below. I do not think one can conclude "anet does not like us" by just cherry picking data.

As example immediately coming to mind are RFI and haste going from 60 to 35 seconds ICD and 50 to 30 seconds ICD respectivelyHIS boosted to remove confusion in addition to burn poison and fire with a regen extension.PR lowered to 16 seconds ICD . (it stared at 45 and was lowered in several steps) with both torment and then confusion added to the cleanses.16 percent boon duration in Acro. Cleanse on don't stop when swiftness applied of imapring conditions. Swindlers to 10 percent boost to sword. Swindlers resetting steal on an evade rather then the old lower by a second. Swiftness added to sword 2. Range on sword 2 increased. 20 percent damage add to larcenous against boonless foes. Boosts to panic strike, potent poison, the add of Assassins fury, twin fang added to CS (2 skills sin one and much more usable) , more boons stolen with BT. Hidden killer granting 2 seconds of 100 percent crit on reveal. Duration increases of Immob on body shot. Lead attacks changed .The add of MIGHT stacks to unload followed by INI regain if all hits strike.

Well, actually almost all of those buffs are pretty much totally useless. What the op is talking about is not that they don't buff thief, but more that they don't give any meaningful changes to the class. The last meaningful changes to thief were the buff to the auto attacks of staff and dagger, even the twin fangs change wasn't really so desirable for dps because the only thing it did was force power thieves to use spider venom, sure its a tiny DPS increase, but honestly its mostly pointless.

You kitten what? Useless?! The buffs back in August were huge for Sword thieves! And acrobatics is a perfectly viable option over UC (more now than ever since the last patch). Makes me wonder how you play the game when you drop lines like this:

The last meaningful changes to thief were the buff to the auto attacks of staff and dagger

No wonder you struggle with the class if all you do is rely on your auto-attack.

Don't get me wrong,
thief is in a BAD spot
, but to say that all of the buffs are just plain useless is just being disingenuous.

I think he means the issue is that everything got so nerfed so many times that our main damage income became... AA. Which will be probably get hit at some point as well because some dev got ganked somewhere.

Ah. In that case, I get it.

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@Cynz.9437 said:

@TwiceDead.1963 said:

@Zlater.6789 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:There have also been boosts to all manner of skills only some of which detailed below. I do not think one can conclude "anet does not like us" by just cherry picking data.

As example immediately coming to mind are RFI and haste going from 60 to 35 seconds ICD and 50 to 30 seconds ICD respectivelyHIS boosted to remove confusion in addition to burn poison and fire with a regen extension.PR lowered to 16 seconds ICD . (it stared at 45 and was lowered in several steps) with both torment and then confusion added to the cleanses.16 percent boon duration in Acro. Cleanse on don't stop when swiftness applied of imapring conditions. Swindlers to 10 percent boost to sword. Swindlers resetting steal on an evade rather then the old lower by a second. Swiftness added to sword 2. Range on sword 2 increased. 20 percent damage add to larcenous against boonless foes. Boosts to panic strike, potent poison, the add of Assassins fury, twin fang added to CS (2 skills sin one and much more usable) , more boons stolen with BT. Hidden killer granting 2 seconds of 100 percent crit on reveal. Duration increases of Immob on body shot. Lead attacks changed .The add of MIGHT stacks to unload followed by INI regain if all hits strike.

Well, actually almost all of those buffs are pretty much totally useless. What the op is talking about is not that they don't buff thief, but more that they don't give any meaningful changes to the class. The last meaningful changes to thief were the buff to the auto attacks of staff and dagger, even the twin fangs change wasn't really so desirable for dps because the only thing it did was force power thieves to use spider venom, sure its a tiny DPS increase, but honestly its mostly pointless.

You kitten what? Useless?! The buffs back in August were huge for Sword thieves! And acrobatics is a perfectly viable option over UC (more now than ever since the last patch). Makes me wonder how you play the game when you drop lines like this:

The last meaningful changes to thief were the buff to the auto attacks of staff and dagger

No wonder you struggle with the class if all you do is rely on your auto-attack.

Don't get me wrong,
thief is in a BAD spot
, but to say that all of the buffs are just plain useless is just being disingenuous.

I think he means the issue is that everything got so nerfed so many times that our main damage income became... AA. Which will be probably get hit at some point as well because some dev got ganked somewhere.

S/x was barely used before those changes and after the same changes a wealth of new builds became standard with the subsequent complaints from other classes that the spec OP.

I can do the same exercise as the OP did with each and every class as EVERY ONE of them received Nerfs at one point or another and absolutely ignore all of the boosts and arrive at the same conclusion, that being "ANET hates our class" and be just as wrong.

All you need to is look at those polls headed by words to the effect of "which class does ANET hate the most" or "which class does ANET like the most" and virtually every person posting claims the class THEY play is hated the most and the class some other plays is like d the most. This mentality exhibited in your post where you claim all of the changes made to theif as next to useless when I use many of those "Useless" traits as do a large number of other players. For those that rely on metabattle as their only source of builds s/d has highly rated builds in virtually every mode all build on the back of boosts given in the same period the OP was detailing all the nerfs. Raids with the highest DPS spec rely on baseline venomshare. (note the build detailed does not take SA which it would have to do to venomshare prior). The SB build that is new there is built around boosts and adds. (interrupts on those standing in a poison field is huge in WvW)

You singled out twinfangs. The DPS gain is not minimal and no you do not have to take spider venom Any more then you had to take it when speccing this trailine before the two skills combined into one. The staff build on that same site uses Twin Fangs and i rather like it myself and find it does much more me then when the skills separated.

Another of the most used Utilities across all game modes and across all builds is one I forgot to mention and that SOA. Yes it suffered an endurance gain loss which IMHO was justified as it's original form was here before the Daredvil spec , but the add of 2 condition cleanses was the main reason I saw this as a fit for virtually every one of my builds. Had Endurance gain remained the same and those additional cleanses not added I would not find it as desirable.

Does this mean I think thief fine and in no need of changes? Not at all. I have objected to the change to UC and have suggested a number of other changes we might need. I have also expressed my concern with power creep in other classes especially focusing on the trend towards ever more persistent AOE fields that can be used at range. The majority of changes I want to see at the end of the day center around scaling back the abilities of some of those other specs with much more minor tweaks to the thief specs.

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@Zlater.6789 said:even the twin fangs change wasn't really so desirable for dps because the only thing it did was force power thieves to use spider venom, sure its a tiny DPS increase, but honestly its mostly pointless.Why would I need spider venom? I've always had the +7% crit chance when hitting from the side or behind on my thief. My main was valk/zerker with a somewhat around 42% critchance and thanks to that trait every CnD was a crit.In general it's the changes since including June 23th 2015 that have pigeonholed thief into one specific playstyle. D/P interupt, interupt, smokefield AA. And there's no way anet could go back from that easily. They really would have to redesign thief to match what the class was before June 2015 - and then have to finally nerf D/P. Also they'd have to nerf forced reveal and the blocks/passives of other classes. And also the stupid stealth attack cooldown needs to be gone. And I guess the world will explode before that happens, so yeah - whatever.

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@AsiraasiB.7165 said:Then there's tracking in stealth.. To me those should be a 50% hits for realism, I'm in stealth and I get it you started to attack but how can you still see me

Because instantly going invisible right in front of someone in broad daylight is a massively realistic representation of a thief being stealthy...

@AsiraasiB.7165 said:Yet we keep getting nerf after nerf smh

Several classes have had a lot a nerfs (engy for example for the first 15 months was the most nerfed class in the game, when scrapper came out it got nerfed virtually every patch for several months, etc), but really it is neither here nor there, because firstly one nerf can have more impact than ten and secondly it is only a real problem if the nerfs are out of line with balance, which really they weren't.

For the first three years of this game, balance was virtually entirely based on PvP, and guess what was only the class for that entire 3 years that was meta (to the point nearly every team had one), hence the nerfs, the real problem with thief is it is a bad design that plays by different rules, there is no balancing outside of them redesigning the trait / weapon / skill system to give far less choice and to have 'roles' a class can play as far more distinct with less mixing and matching of skills/weapons/traits, etc, but that is unlikely because it is a lot of work, and GW2 players are stupid and think more choice gives variety, when the reality is a much stricter, much more limited system would actually give classes more viable roles and styles they could play.

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I don't think ANet dislikes thieves, but I do think no one in development actually plays the class. It's a long observed trend in MMOs that classes without developer representation often get ignored for years at a time. Typically, only the bare minimum of changes to maintain the class as part of the core game are made, if even that.

As someone who has been playing thief on and off since release, the lack of passion and engagement with the thief from the development side is very evident. One glaringly obvious way this manifests is when game-wide system changes are made and only thief is left out. Two obvious examples immediately come to mind:

1> The removal of weapon range increasing traits. Thief is the only class that lost a range increasing trait without having the increase "baked in" (made baseline).2> Fixing the max range bug with Engineer's Shield pull skill. Scorpion Wire is mechanically identical, and yet remains unfixed years later.

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I'm surprised I haven't said this yet... in this thread.

The issue with thief balance is that the thief is an unfun class to deal with for other players. It is an extremely mobile, extremely stealthy, extremely bursty class. Nobody wants to deal with a class that can chase you down, turn invisible, and kill you without giving you a chance to fight back. It also isn't fun to fight an enemy that can avoid every attack you make while maintaining damage. Because of this, every other class must be realistically capable of fending off a thief assault with any well designed build. Much like how the necromancer must be the strongest class in a straight up brawl because they are slow and don't have active defenses, the thief must be the weakest class in a straight up brawl because they are very fast and have a ton of active defenses.

This is a reoccurring problem with assassin like classes in PVP games. While it is fun to play the sniper or the invisible guy, it is not fun to play against the sniper or the invisible guy. Any game that puts this kind of class into the game has to walk a razor's edge of balancing incomparable skills.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I'm surprised I haven't said this yet... in this thread.

The issue with thief balance is that the thief is an unfun class to deal with for other players. It is an extremely mobile, extremely stealthy, extremely bursty class. Nobody wants to deal with a class that can chase you down, turn invisible, and kill you without giving you a chance to fight back.

That is a) true for mesmer and engineer as well, b) for thief only true for D/P. The max stealth offhand dagger has is 4 sec. So it's not the class, it's a set.

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@Jana.6831 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I'm surprised I haven't said this yet... in this thread.

The issue with thief balance is that the thief is an unfun class to deal with for other players. It is an extremely mobile, extremely stealthy, extremely bursty class. Nobody wants to deal with a class that can chase you down, turn invisible, and kill you without giving you a chance to fight back.

That is a) true for mesmer and engineer as well, b) for thief only true for D/P. The max stealth offhand dagger has is 4 sec. So it's not the class, it's a set.

You've missed the point. I'm talking about grand design as a whole, and throughout history.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I'm surprised I haven't said this yet... in this thread.

The issue with thief balance is that the thief is an unfun class to deal with for other players. It is an extremely mobile, extremely stealthy, extremely bursty class. Nobody wants to deal with a class that can chase you down, turn invisible, and kill you without giving you a chance to fight back. It also isn't fun to fight an enemy that can avoid every attack you make while maintaining damage. Because of this, every other class must be realistically capable of fending off a thief assault with any well designed build. Much like how the necromancer must be the strongest class in a straight up brawl because they are slow and don't have active defenses, the thief must be the weakest class in a straight up brawl because they are very fast and have a ton of active defenses.

This is a reoccurring problem with assassin like classes in PVP games. While it is fun to play the sniper or the invisible guy, it is not fun to play against the sniper or the invisible guy. Any game that puts this kind of class into the game has to walk a razor's edge of balancing incomparable skills.

you are right about unfun against classes like this which you have mentioned...I remember from ESO meta on stealthy nightblade but with cancer proc sets armor which was dealing damage instead of you and this was 1shoting people from stealth and almost every player was creating build for defense from this

but now about gw2...now with new specs most of classes have now similiar mobility to thief...thief dont have much stealth if he isnt going for deadeye and cant spam to much evade, but everything of this at once now have mesmer, with every new clon he is getting or autoevade or stealth with not t mntion in just skills mesmer have to mch stealth while thief viable stealth can be from just2 maybe 3 skills where 2 are utility and one of them for today is very rarey used (not counting deadeye eltie)

as for me more unfun is really when I need to fight against mesmer because as I mentioned he have more stealth with evade at once, missing target on him with many clones and horibli to deal his burst....thief outside prepared with time rifle isnt able to burst you down that fast how mesmer can especially with 15+ stacks of condusion in just less than 1 sec while also when you have single target skills like for example just thief or enginier you wont be able to deal with mesmer because of his many clones, this is unfunf

thief at all if he wont kill you mhe will jsut run away and you kmostly will see you, mesmer..ugh lol mesmer never will need to run away from you if you arnt outnumbered, he will always rekt you or always be in safe space/mode near you with no necessity to run away like thief

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@Amante.8109 said:I don't think ANet dislikes thieves, but I do think no one in development actually plays the class.

i downed a thief with anet tag a few days back. it was a charr daredevil with staff.

@Vertep.2498 said:but now about gw2...now with new specs most of classes have now similiar mobility to thief...thief dont have much stealth if he isnt going for deadeye and cant spam to much evade, but everything of this at once now have mesmer, with every new clon he is getting or autoevade or stealth with not t mntion in just skills mesmer have to mch stealth while thief viable stealth can be from just2 maybe 3 skills where 2 are utility and one of them for today is very rarey used (not counting deadeye eltie)

as for me more unfun is really when I need to fight against mesmer because as I mentioned he have more stealth with evade at once, missing target on him with many clones and horibli to deal his burst....thief outside prepared with time rifle isnt able to burst you down that fast how mesmer can especially with 15+ stacks of condusion in just less than 1 sec while also when you have single target skills like for example just thief or enginier you wont be able to deal with mesmer because of his many clones, this is unfunf

thief at all if he wont kill you mhe will jsut run away and you kmostly will see you, mesmer..ugh lol mesmer never will need to run away from you if you arnt outnumbered, he will always rekt you or always be in safe space/mode near you with no necessity to run away like thief

but you do know that thief can permastealth without utilities if you build for it ? cause of d/p, and also dont need deadeye for it . so no mesmer doesnt have more stealth.with my thief i dont have issues with fighting mesmers at all(i dont play spvp , only WvW), but have been whispered by a few mesmers that its not fun playing against deadeye.as you have seen correct deadeye has pretty much only stealth as a defense so you have to stealth alot to avoid incoming damage against some classes you also can use range advantage for a short duraction. staying alot in stealth to avoid getting killed and comming out of it with an attempt to oneshot now and then with very limited hits in between cause too risky or not enough initative will lead you to a playstyle that is not really fun for your opponent. and if you keep an eye on you CDs and ini you will die very rarely, yes your opponent might avoid you killing him aswell but it still wont be fun.while mesmers are not in a bad position atm, most of them die alot more than a well played sniper and not seeing your opponent die all day, no matter how many friends you bring to pin him down is also causing frustration. i allways know when i die before that i will now take the risk and might die out of greed, if i was better i wouldnt take so many risks i guess.

so i am sure its more fun to play against a mesmer than a sniper wich is a way one could play a thief.

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@MUDse.7623 said:

@Amante.8109 said:I don't think ANet dislikes thieves, but I do think no one in development actually plays the class.

i downed a thief with anet tag a few days back. it was a charr daredevil with staff.

@Vertep.2498 said:but now about gw2...now with new specs most of classes have now similiar mobility to thief...thief dont have much stealth if he isnt going for deadeye and cant spam to much evade, but everything of this at once now have mesmer, with every new clon he is getting or autoevade or stealth with not t mntion in just skills mesmer have to mch stealth while thief viable stealth can be from just2 maybe 3 skills where 2 are utility and one of them for today is very rarey used (not counting deadeye eltie)

as for me more unfun is really when I need to fight against mesmer because as I mentioned he have more stealth with evade at once, missing target on him with many clones and horibli to deal his burst....thief outside prepared with time rifle isnt able to burst you down that fast how mesmer can especially with 15+ stacks of condusion in just less than 1 sec while also when you have single target skills like for example just thief or enginier you wont be able to deal with mesmer because of his many clones, this is unfunf

thief at all if he wont kill you mhe will jsut run away and you kmostly will see you, mesmer..ugh lol mesmer never will need to run away from you if you arnt outnumbered, he will always rekt you or always be in safe space/mode near you with no necessity to run away like thief

but you do know that thief can permastealth without utilities if you build for it ? cause of d/p, and also dont need deadeye for it . so no mesmer doesnt have more stealth.with my thief i dont have issues with fighting mesmers at all(i dont play spvp , only WvW), but have been whispered by a few mesmers that its not fun playing against deadeye.as you have seen correct deadeye has pretty much only stealth as a defense so you have to stealth alot to avoid incoming damage against some classes you also can use range advantage for a short duraction. staying alot in stealth to avoid getting killed and comming out of it with an attempt to oneshot now and then with very limited hits in between cause too risky or not enough initative will lead you to a playstyle that is not really fun for your opponent. and if you keep an eye on you CDs and ini you will die very rarely, yes your opponent might avoid you killing him aswell but it still wont be fun.while mesmers are not in a bad position atm, most of them die alot more than a well played sniper and not seeing your opponent die all day, no matter how many friends you bring to pin him down is also causing frustration. i allways know when i die before that i will now take the risk and might die out of greed, if i was better i wouldnt take so many risks i guess.

so i am sure its more fun to play against a mesmer than a sniper wich is a way one could play a thief.

so maybe this is why I didnt counting DE for this? but just DD but also if you want long stelth on DD you need to sacriface your ini only for this, you wont be able to use it on any other skill because this isnt cheap and as I wrote...mesmer have jsut nonstop evade with stealth when creating clones wchich are creating by 99% of his skills...so? while DD mayve have 3 dodges at once but that are just limited dodges while mesmer have free dodges while creating new clones with target break at once.

yes DE's are more annyoing but only wityh rifle and they need to be in untouchable position because they are to squishy if will get hit (not saying this is good because isnt this spec with rifle but just explaining) and DD if you will catch him on stun etc he will go down fast while with mesmer its just ughh...I wrote it in post before this is most fucked shit if you dont have aoe spam abilities like for example scourge or many other classes but we have also some classes which have abilities based mainly for just 1 target instead of hitting 3+ at once

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