Proposal for thief changes/redesign

I've been talking with some of the thieves I play with on NA and over time we have discussed changes/redesigns to the thief class that we think would make it more balanced and fun to play. Most of our focus during this discussion was on traits and some specifics on the thief. I decided it'd be a good idea to write most of what we talked about into a list and put it here as a proposal for the thief class.

General Changes to the Class:

• Stealth skill cd removed as it was a stupid change to begin with (there's already a hidden CD in the form of an aftercast which could slightly increase as compensation if people think there isn't enough time between backstabs)
• Pistol 5 now blinds every second because this set needs the defense in melee and frankly aoe is available enough that the argument of "it's too hard to bomb that small circle" is no longer merited
• Bountiful theft's boon removal is now a baseline function of steal
• Sleight of Hand's recharge reduction to steal is baseline (daze is now 1.5s)
• Preparedness is now baseline (initiative costs are balanced around it anyways)
• Vigor is un- nerfed in pvp (now grants 100% endurance refill rate)
• Because of vigor being stronger and defenses shifting more to dodging properly all auto invuln procs (includes endure pain's passive and stone signet's passive) are removed
• Damage overall is reduced so the meta isn't so damage heavy
• Sustain is overall reduced
• Counter cc is removed
• Sword 3 now automatically cycles between FS and LS. FS is no longer unblockable. LS damage increase on boonless foes reduced to 15%
• Angling your screen down now allows you to reduce hs leap distance for stealth stacking. I get removing it for other leaps and such but this skill is pretty much only used for stealth stacking now so it'd be great if it wasn't functioning the clunky way it does now.

Traits:Start with defining the role of each traitline (or what it should be theoretically):Deadly Arts- Conditional damage and debuffCritical Strikes- Damage modifiers and critical strike bonusesShadow Arts- Stealth based play and sustainAcrobatics- Damage mitigation through evasionTrickery- Utility and steal enhancementDaredevil- Brawler style focus and mobility

We know these are the roles each line is designed to do. However, some of these lines are not performing their defined roles within the class in a way that allows for diversity in traits and builds. Some of them aren't even functional with the current designs because they are simply outclassed by other lines doing their job better than them and doing other jobs at the same time.

So this is what I would change in each tratline:Deadly Arts

• Remove Improvisation from Deadly Arts and replace it with a trait that gives 1% extra damage per boon on target and 1% damage reduction per boon on target (with multiple people attacking you it would use the boons of each individual player as a grand total of damage reduction (only counts each unique boon 1 time)
• Revealed Training: Swapped with Leeching Venoms

Critical Strikes

• Keen Observer: Lower health threshold to 75%
• Twin Fangs: Lower health threshold to 75%
• Practiced Tolerance: Change the Ferocity back to Vitality

Shadow Arts

• Leeching Venoms: Swapped with Revealed Training
• Cloaked in Shadow: Switches places with hidden thief which now also has a -50% effectiveness of cripple while under the effects of stealth

Acrobatics

• Instant Reflexes: Removed and replaced with "Power of Inertia: Gain might (10 seconds) when you dodge"
• Pain Response: Removed and replaced with Escapists' Absolution now with a 3 sec icd per condi cleanse
• Feline Grace: Now gives 15 endurance after a dodge like it used to (removed the vigor on evasion)
• Guarded Initiation: Take 10% less damage while above 75% health (both damage and condition)
• Swindler's Equilibrium: Removed the damage increase (double steal is enough utility)
• Hard To Catch: -10% Damage while under the effects of vigor or swiftness (doesn't stack to 20%, stays at 10% if you have both boons)
• Endless Stamina: Gain 10 endurance when you gain vigor
• Assassin's reward: Now generates 1 initiative when you evade an attack with a 3 sec icd
• Upper Hand: initiative recovery removed and regen duration reduced to 4 seconds (can't stack as much regen) with a 1s icd

Trickery

• Bountiful Theft: Boon rip is made baseline and this trait is replaced with improvisation (only the stolen skills used twice part. The random cd recharge is gone as rng should not account for the potential to make big plays or have huge cd resets.)

Daredevil: Fills too much a a better acro role and needs to be more brawler oriented. Focusing on buffing sustain and tankiness allows daredevil to continue being used but actually have a different and defined role in thief play.

• Base mechanic: Steal is now a self blasted aoe that will deliver steal's attack in an aoe radius and steal an aoe buff you can apply to yourself and allies based on how many targets you hit you will heal for 20% of all barrier that is removed
• Brawler's Tenacity: Endurance regen removed and replaced with "Gain 1000 barrier when you use a physical skill (1000 for a thief using marauder amulet since I don't remember all the math going into that)"
• Driven Fortitude: Heals for 500 whenever you mitigate damage from an attack (blind, evade, block, etc)
• Escapists' Absolution: Removed from this trait line and is replaced with Gain Armor and Condition Damage reduction when you are hit (basically is old adaptive armor; caps out at 200 armor and 20% condition damage reduction)
• Endurance Thief: Replaced with "Gain a 2000 barrier when you steal" (thief wearing marauder amulet)
• Buffed dodges continue to function the way they do now except dash has the exhaust thing removed

Feel free to comment any concern or disagreement. If you support it please try to get this thread more attention so we can raise chances of something like this being put into the game.

I approve of this +1

I'm going to be critical because to be honest the thieves you've talked to must have either not talked about these as a collective or have very little idea what they're doing in respects to greater game balance and gameplay integrity.

A lot of these are hard to justify because they also used to be that way and were completely and totally busted at the time, or it's just answering powercreep with more powercreep/bad design. Most of the suggestions aren't even really necessary if damage/sustain/etc. on other things get nerfed as proposed, anyways.

Like 1s pulsing blind on Black Powder used to be a thing and was completely oppressive at the time if used by people who weren't idiots. I actually made a dedicated healing power thief that while no longer possible due to changes to venoms, was literally immortal into any melee 1v1 matchup due to this. It seems like excess for the sake of excess.

The stealth attack ICD removal would be okay if stacking stealth were removed. But stealth stacking and no ICD makes it basically impossible for core guard to win a matchup into thief via Aegis use.

I think they'd probably need to nerf BT than just make it baseline because that is just insanely strong.

Un-nerfed vigor in this s/d meta would be oppressive, especially for S/D + Acro +DrD running SoA since it's now a bulk cleanse, offsetting the need for EA.

Stealth uptime has barely been effected by the HS camera changes (use about-face) and stacking stealth on D/P finally now has a bit more counterplay at the expense of the opponent also being blinded by needing to stand in the center of it, so I don't see why this is an issue because the thief can just choose to run after initial stealth (while the foe is blinded and can't do much to hurt them) or make the attack immediately.

S/D auto-cycle was a thing previously and was also extremely overpowered. It made it extremely safe to use the kit to engage with FS -> IS -> Steal (BT) + unblockable LS -> IR over and over stealing 5 boons at a time with a high coefficient. While FS being unblockable is oppressive to some builds, at least it carries some degree of risk to steal boons and deal unblockable damage, and if they toned down the blocks/sustain in-game, it wouldn't be necessary to keep it unblockable while requiring more of S/D than just rotating a few skills for mobility, immob, condi cleanse, boon stealing, and unblockable burst. S/D's ability to chain evasion also gives the kit a lot more utility for those not playing S/D as a primary set, which a lot of people are starting to take as a secondary in anything except sPvP as the vertical mobility isn't essential.

With the above in mind, preparedness baseline allows S/D + CS + Acro +Daredevil 15 init, 1 init on dodge, three base dodges, 100% endurance regen rate, 6000 barrier (below), damage on dodge, and high sustained damage/burst from CS with no tradeoff on a simple rotation. Too strong.

Nobody would use Hidden Thief anymore on SA builds because Rejuv overshadows stealth on steal in every regard.

PoI returning to Acro proves overpowered with the aforementioned changes to sword and vigor as CS + massive might is HUGE damage gains; my AA's with S/D in WvW on signets hit for 8k's as it is.

Changes to make Assassin's Reward have Upper Hand's functionality++ seems pointless.

Applied Fortitude + Assassin's Reward is a 1k heal for dodging with FS which is insane.

DrD blast basically puts Hidden Thief as baseline for all OH pistol builds which don't need more stealth love.

DrD base steal + Endurance Thief is redundant and applies a 3000 base barrier plus reset with double steal from acro is a 6000 barrier on a 20s cooldown baseline that steals AoE 6 boons and applies buffs on a build running asinine amounts of sustain and evasion as it is.

Exhaustion removed with the aforementioned again continues to break evasion builds.

What the thief really needs?

• Other classes being less immune/blocking to things all the time -> FS damage coefficient cut by 50% and cannot critically hit, LS up by 10%.
• Stealth stacking removed from all classes and initiative costs rebalanced for various skills and traits.
• SA reworked to promote entering and exiting stealth from non-stealthed states; benefits of frequently becoming revealed/playing aggressively with stealth rather than camping stealth as its only benefit.
• DB and DDagger reworked/changed to make the D/D kit/skills function as I've described in other threads numerous times (mobility on DB, no-bounce on DDagger but bumped damage coefficient and static AoE "fan" of hits sourced from target).
• Unrelenting Strikes in CS made on-steal to make Trickery properly optional for anyone running CS/Stab builds.
• Some kind of change to make Scorpion wire work.
• Smokescreen to 20s.
• Shadow Trap's insane cast time removed from non-triggered state (akin to spectral walk)
• HiS to cleanse torment and confusion
• Shadow Refuge literally cut in half in every way; pulses, healing, and cooldown.

DE/Rifle changes with stealth stacking removed:

• Death's Retreat down to 3 init.
• Malice generation rate baseline to 3s, M7 reduce to 2s
• DJ unaffected by quickness but remove audio tell.
• DJ bonus damage per malice stack dropped down from 15% to 10% due to faster buildup
• Mercy cooldown reduced to 20s

@Ario.8964 said:General Changes to the Class:

• Damage overall is reduced so the meta isn't so damage heavy
• Sustain is overall reducedstating this at the begining and asking to unnerf alot of stuff while only proposing little as tradeoff cant work.what i also fail to understand is this:@Ario.8964 said:Traits:Start with defining the role of each traitline (or what it should be theoretically):Critical Strikes- Damage modifiers and critical strike bonuses
• Practiced Tolerance: Change the Ferocity back to Vitalitywhat has my vitality got to do with damage modifiers and critical strike bonuses?

all in all i prefer DeceiverX'S list in the post above.

@"Ario.8964" said:General Changes to the Class:

• Stealth skill cd removed as it was a stupid change to begin with (there's already a hidden CD in the form of an aftercast which could slightly increase as compensation if people think there isn't enough time between backstabs)

IMO, keep the ICD but remove the Stealth requirement. Thief should be able to backstab based on position alone. Dagger Skill #1 should automatically change to Backstab if the Thief is behind the target. If they can check for Twin Fangs, they can make this happen. In addition, once Backstab is on cooldown, it should automatically switch to the normal Skill #1, then switch back to Backstab once it is out of cooldown if the Thief is still behnd the target.

Other Stealth Attacks without positioning requirement should stay as Stealth Attacks. Tactical Strike, for example, doesn't have the same requirements to be effective even though it has different effects based on position, so it would remain as stealth required attack. Backstab is the only Stealth Attack skill with two requirements to be effective (stealth and backside).

• Pistol 5 now blinds every second because this set needs the defense in melee and frankly aoe is available enough that the argument of "it's too hard to bomb that small circle" is no longer merited

Pistol 5 is fine. What needs to change is the Blind application. Blind should stack. If they have 3 stacks of Blind, they should miss 3 attacks.

• Bountiful theft's boon removal is now a baseline function of steal

Yes, please.

• Sleight of Hand's recharge reduction to steal is baseline (daze is now 1.5s)

No good. In a lazy and casual day, I can deal 12k DPS. Shutting off their skill in 1.5s is more than enough time for me to kill them. This is not healthy for the game since I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end.

• Preparedness is now baseline (initiative costs are balanced around it anyways)

Yes, please

• Vigor is un- nerfed in pvp (now grants 100% endurance refill rate)

No good. Instead, make Thief's vigor grant 100% endurance instead of making it across the board. Perhaps a trait that would replace Preparedness.

• Because of vigor being stronger and defenses shifting more to dodging properly all auto invuln procs (includes endure pain's passive and stone signet's passive) are removed

I agree, however, it should remain in PvE only.

• Sword 3 now automatically cycles between FS and LS. FS is no longer unblockable. LS damage increase on boonless foes reduced to 15%

In the light of the Mirage's skill Axes of Symmetry, the Thief should be the one who can teleport to the flank and make a Flanking Strike attack, albeit in quick succession. No more spinning animation, just straight up Shadowstep then attack.

• Angling your screen down now allows you to reduce hs leap distance for stealth stacking. I get removing it for other leaps and such but this skill is pretty much only used for stealth stacking now so it'd be great if it wasn't functioning the clunky way it does now.

I really want to make Heartseeker a ground targeted skill and stopping when it hit something.

• Practiced Tolerance: Change the Ferocity back to Vitality

I disagree. IMO, it should change "...based on your precision" to "...based on your vitality"

Shadow Arts

Shadow Arts should include a trait that adds evasion to Shadowstep. This will make the Thief's Shadowstep less generic since other professions are now also using this technique.Example:Shadow Form: Thief takes on a shadow form when shadowstepping. Evade: 0.5s

• Instant Reflexes: Removed and replaced with "Power of Inertia: Gain might (10 seconds) when you dodge"

Instant Reflexes should extend the evade frame on dodge to 1.5s. We don't need anymore might.

• Hard To Catch: -10% Damage while under the effects of vigor or swiftness (doesn't stack to 20%, stays at 10% if you have both boons)

This is too similar to your Guarded Initiation. Instead, IMO, I would rather see the ICD reduced to 25-30s.

• Endless Stamina: Gain 10 endurance when you gain vigor

This should simply improve the base endurance regen by 50%, so when the Thief gains Vigor, they should have the maximum regen rate.

• Upper Hand: initiative recovery removed and regen duration reduced to 4 seconds (can't stack as much regen) with a 1s icd

This is where Driven Fortitude effect supposed to be.

Other changes I like to see;

• 5 skills dual-wield if using the same type of weapon in each hand - instead of only replacing skill #3, it replaces all 5 skills. Basically treating dual-wielding of the same weapons like a two-handed weapon. This will ensure balance to any changes to daggers and pistol skills. Example, the nerf to D/P will never EVER affect D/D nor P/P.
• As I mentioned above, Shadow Form trait that adds evasion to Shadowstep skills.
• Unbind weapons from Elite Specs. Core build should be able to use both Staff and Rifle.

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

• Unbind weapons from Elite Specs. Core build should be able to use both Staff and Rifle.

can i then play a rifle daredevil? or a staff deadeye?

IMO for core to be more relevant across all classes there needs to be a core only traitline, for instance the one that improves core class mechanics and used to reduce their cd. that would be for thief trickery, for warrior discipline, for mesmer illusions, for guard vitues, for nekro soul reaping, for ele arcane, for ranger beastmastery, for engi tools and for rev probably invocation ( got added after those trait changes so not sure). i am aware some classes depend heavyly on those lines atm regardless of build. but locking them to core would open up options to give elite specs a more unique playstyle, without making them way too strong.with every core traitline available to elite specs, there cant be put too much into those elite lines. with a core only traitline ( that doesnt have to be mandatory to use for playing core but only available for 3rd trait slot) there could be shifted more 'power' into the 3rd traitline choice to define a playstyle while then picking 2 more 'utility traitlines'.

@MUDse.7623 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

• Unbind weapons from Elite Specs. Core build should be able to use both Staff and Rifle.

I don't see why not.