Thief Balance changes coming!

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048(DEV) - ThiefOur focus on the thief in this update has been toward daredevil, its traits, and the trade-off that it was inherently built without. Daredevil traits have been reworked to focus on three categories: choosing your defense in the Adept tier; choosing your damage in the Master tier; and choosing your dodge maneuver in the Grandmaster tier. With this update, we are adding a trade-off to the profession skill that keeps the theme of a melee-oriented specialization.

Repeater: Initiative cost of this skill has been reduced from 4 to 2 in all game modes.Staff Strike: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 6.5%.Staff Bash: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 6.5%.Physical Supremacy: This trait now causes Steal to become Swipe, which reduces the range from 1,200 to 600 and makes the attack unblockable.Marauder's Resilience: This new trait converts 7% of power to vitality while reducing incoming damage from foes within 360 range by 10%.Weakening Strikes: This trait has been moved from the Adept tier into the Minor Master tier and has had its functionality changed. This trait will now cause the daredevil's next strike after dodging to weaken enemies. This weakening effect can be applied to multiple targets at once if the skill used is an area-of-effect skill. Reduced the weakness duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds. Increased the damage dealt to weakened foes by 7%, and reduced damage taken from foes by 10%.Escapist's Absolution: This trait has been merged with Driven Fortitude and renamed Escapist's Fortitude. It is now an Adept-tier trait.Staff Master: This trait no longer grants a percentage damage increase based on endurance. Instead, it grants 120 power, and grants an additional 120 power when the thief wields a staff. The endurance gain per initiative point remains the same.Havoc Mastery: This trait has been renamed Havoc Specialist, and it has been moved to the Master tier. This trait now grants 5% bonus damage for each bar of endurance that is not full.

This seems very interesting! Daredevil has always been just a better thief with more of everything. Now it has some real trade offs. This will hurt PvE quite a bit for us though.

I’m hyped. They are doing a lot this patch and things are definitely moving in the right direction.

If these changes are legit, then I am not sure what ANet is going for. Steal becoming Swipe and losing half of its range is a massive nerf. I don't think making it unblockable is going to actually make up for it.

The minor trait tradeout from Driven Fortitude to Weakening Strikes I suspect is going to make Daredevils better duelists as it enables Weakness spam whilst also giving back some damage Daredevils sorely need. I have a really vague feeling that people are going to be complaining about the Daredevil's Weakness uptime on foes now.

If I had to guess, they are trying to turn Daredevil into a more of a duelist, which is fine in concept, but they are going about it in a weird way. I suspect the range nerf to "Swipe" is going to be way too much for some people.

EDIT: After thinking about it a bit more, there are two things in all of this that they are ignoring if they actually care about the Daredevil:1) Impact Strike is still really clunky and needs tweaking. It's in an odd spot where it's great when it works, but a lot of the time it doesn't work.2) Brawler's Tenacity (the 20% reduced physical skill cooldown skill) is going to be outshined by it's new Adept counterparts and may need to be looked at.

@"Exitus.3297" said:If these changes are legit, then I am not sure what ANet is going for. Steal becoming Swipe and losing half of its range is a massive nerf. I don't think making it unblockable is going to actually make up for it.

The minor trait tradeout from Driven Fortitude to Weakening Strikes I suspect is going to make Daredevils better duelists as it enables Weakness spam whilst also giving back some damage Daredevils sorely need. I have a really vague feeling that people are going to be complaining about the Daredevil's Weakness uptime on foes now.

If I had to guess, they are trying to turn Daredevil into a more of a duelist, which is fine in concept, but they are going about it in a weird way. I suspect the range nerf to "Swipe" is going to be way too much for some people.

I agree. I think the trade of all these buffs; more hp, reduce damage(enemies), and increase damage they want to trade off the range steal(swipe) and add unblockable. I would think 900 would be better and not 600. However, during a dual, I would steal upclose so they dont see it coming. The only problem I think it would be when you are chasing down low hp enemies. And this is coming from a guy that does Wvw only..

EDIT: Spellings

@Xenji.4907 said:

@"Exitus.3297" said:If these changes are legit, then I am not sure what ANet is going for. Steal becoming Swipe and losing half of its range is a massive nerf. I don't think making it unblockable is going to actually make up for it.

The minor trait tradeout from Driven Fortitude to Weakening Strikes I suspect is going to make Daredevils better duelists as it enables Weakness spam whilst also giving back some damage Daredevils sorely need. I have a really vague feeling that people are going to be complaining about the Daredevil's Weakness uptime on foes now.

If I had to guess, they are trying to turn Daredevil into a more of a duelist, which is fine in concept, but they are going about it in a weird way. I suspect the range nerf to "Swipe" is going to be way too much for some people.

Pretty much this. I agree 100%.

EDIT: Boldface isn't working apparently.

I like the change to repeater as that should be enough to put the p/d set where it needed. Tests needed.

The change to weakening strikes is significant as the weakness seems to be no longer tied to a critical hit. If that the case it a significant boost to condition and hybrid and in particular to those that use deathblossom in Dagger dagger. Now my read is the weakness is applied after a dodge and not a dodge/evade. I am very anxious to try this out in power and in Condition.

Marauders resilience will mean around 2000 more vitality in a typical power build which a decent chunk This about 2/3rds of whay Valkyries armor can get so might allow me some tweaking in exisiting builds to focus on damage.

Havoc Mastery is interesting and much more dynamic now. While it might make it less damage over the long term , i tend to prefer this type of skill where a bit of work needed to get the most out of it. I wish the percent damage add applied to condition as well :).

The steal to swipe will be quite a hit and especially to those that focus on staff as there little chase down utility in the set.

All that said I am quite happy with the way we now get previews and with what is seemingly a greater frequency on balance changes.

I’m happy Repeater is now cheaper but I still don’t like the lockout time on Shadowstrike.

I do like the attempt to balance out elite specializations. Daredevil becoming less mobile by cutting down Steal distance is rough but we will see how it ends up with everything else.

@babazhook.6805 said:The steal to swipe will be quite a hit and especially to those that focus on staff as there little chase down utility in the set.

Actually, I wasn't thinking of this.... I believe they don't want staff builds to be fully chasers since they are zerg focus with the splash damage and etc. Now with the changes they can dual better now but loses the chase. I am now leading over to its a fair to nerf the range but to 900 instead of 600. xD

I can't wait to try DD with Staff again, however those changes seem a tiny bit too chaotic to me (math wise) and dmg wise, especially when the new Havoc Specialist is in the same tier as reworked Staff Master, I simply don't think there should be a decision between those two, in PvP Staff Master would always be the better choice (not in WvW), while moving Havoc Specialist (or Staff Master) to the same tier as Marauder's Resilience would actually require decision making for each game mode, a trade-off as suggested by the Devs.I think if they did Swipe to be 900 instead of 600 and removed the very very very unnecessary nerfs to AA staff dmg, then Staff Daredevil (non-vault spam one) could actually become somewhat viable duelist.

PS EDIT: I am gonna be that whiny guy and say that 600 on Swipe is truly crazy low range, 900 would be the sweet spot indeed.

@saerni.2584 said:I’m happy Repeater is now cheaper but I still don’t like the lockout time on Shadowstrike.

I do like the attempt to balance out elite specializations. Daredevil becoming less mobile by cutting down Steal distance is rough but we will see how it ends up with everything else.

The way i look at the lockout is with the lower INI you can get more of these off dirt cheap. What I was finding is even if I could get two off after a shadowstrike , the second would very often not happen due to INI being burned. I prefer the longer lockout :)

the only change they actually made here today was the steal being 600 range now. the class will still play exactly the same. these changes are all fluff so they could sneak in the steal nerf. also why is daggerstorm untouched for the 3rd patch in a row?

@"MindWipe.3028" said:the only change they actually made here today was the steal being 600 range now. the class will still play exactly the same. these changes are all fluff so they could sneak in the steal nerf. also why is daggerstorm untouched for the 3rd patch in a row?

Relax. Yes 600 is harsh but "still play exactly the same"? Are you serious? More damage, More Hp, and more weakness up time? Yeah it's the same...

@babazhook.6805 said:

@saerni.2584 said:I’m happy Repeater is now cheaper but I still don’t like the lockout time on Shadowstrike.

I do like the attempt to balance out elite specializations. Daredevil becoming less mobile by cutting down Steal distance is rough but we will see how it ends up with everything else.

Fair enough. I do this this makes double Repeater an option. I just wish the lockout time was 3 seconds (still long enough for queuing double Repeater) so I can kite better against enemies with multiple gap closers.

Might be tough finding a target within 600 range to Steal out of circles before you melt but I guess the other changes should keep you up while you bounce.

@babazhook.6805 said:I like the change to repeater as that should be enough to put the p/d set where it needed. Tests needed.

The change to weakening strikes is significant as the weakness seems to be no longer tied to a critical hit. If that the case it a significant boost to condition and hybrid and in particular to those that use deathblossom in Dagger dagger. Now my read is the weakness is applied after a dodge and not a dodge/evade. I am very anxious to try this out in power and in Condition.

Marauders resilience will mean around 2000 more vitality in a typical power build which a decent chunk This about 2/3rds of whay Valkyries armor can get so might allow me some tweaking in exisiting builds to focus on damage.

Havoc Mastery is interesting and much more dynamic now. While it might make it less damage over the long term , i tend to prefer this type of skill where a bit of work needed to get the most out of it. I wish the percent damage add applied to condition as well :).

The steal to swipe will be quite a hit and especially to those that focus on staff as there little chase down utility in the set.

All that said I am quite happy with the way we now get previews and with what is seemingly a greater frequency on balance changes.

I know you meant to say around 200 :P

Anyway, I hate to keep spamming this thread but this got me to thinking quite a bit on what this means for Daredevil. Keep in mind I main a D/P Dash Daredevil and I primarily play SPvP and dabble in WvW.

As a general rule, Daredevils are gaining a little bit of damage and staying power at the cost of mobility. (Beware of the wall of text to follow because I'm going to get very specific. Please also forgive typos).

Combining Escapist's Absolution and Driven Fortitude into Escapist's Fortitude in the Adept row will significantly boost its value. So in this row, Thieves are going to have to decide between taking 10% less damage from Melee attackers (and a small health boost), Condi Cleanse and Healing on a dodge for ~450 without Healing Power, or 20% reduced cooldown on Physical Skills with a 10 Endurance return. Looking at them on the surface, both of the new Traits outshine Brawler's Tenacity by quite a bit unless the Daredevil is running more than one physical skill and isn't too worried about conditions or sustain. This means that Daredevils whom only took Channeled Vigor for a Physical skill with this trait will have to rethink taking Brawler's Tenacity, because now they don't have that built in heal-on-dodge. The value of Channeled Vigor will go down relatively speaking because the value of Brawler's Tenacity's competition will go up. That means they either get the 16 second cooldown Channeled Vigor, or they get the ~450 Heal and condi cleanse on a successful dodge. With that in mind, I expect some Thieves may simply opt for Withdraw while getting Escapist's Fortitude. But of course, there is more to it.

The damage increase on the new Weakening Strikes will be a small but nice damage boost for Daredevils while also making it less punishing for them to stick to targets in small bursts. Because it is now tied to dodging, this may be one reason Daredevils may opt for Channeled Vigor over Withdraw even if they don't take Brawler's Tenacity, because the Weakness application is tied to dodging itself.

Overall, this means if you are a D/P Daredevil main like me, you will see small boost to damage on weakened foes whilst also taking less damage from said foes if they are weakened. We can theoretically get more daring (no pun intended). Daredevils whom opt for Withdraw may see less overall healing (Channeled Vigor is still very slightly better in Healing-per-second even without Brawler's Tenacity) as well as less Weakening Strikes application, but they will also benefit from the condition cleanse it offers, which is nice if you don't wish to stack Exhaustion from Unhindered Combatant more than you have to. Withdraw is in and of itself a dodge, but then again Channeled Vigor gives a dodge so I don't see them as too different in this area other than that Channeled Vigor benefits from the new Weakening Strikes whereas Withdraw will not (but I'm also not sure how much this will matter). I can imagine some D/P Daredevils will take Brawler's Tenacity with Channeled Vigor alone regardless even if that means their dodges will no longer heal them or cleanse conditions because of just having more dodges in general.

Then we get to the new Steal... or Swipe, rather. It goes down all the way from 1200 range to 600 range which is a really nasty hit in terms of mobility. However, this also opens up an opportunity. Despite how Power-Creeped Dagger Storm is, D/P Daredevils have been suffering from not having the unblockable openers (I am of course referring to Basilisk Venom). Having Swipe be unblockable means that the Daredevil could have more general outplay potential, which works out well for duels with other melee. This means that Daredevils could simply move away from Basilisk Venom if they choose and not be particularly punished for it. this is part of the reason I wish ANet would take another look at Impact Strike, because despite how good it can be, it is held back by how clunky it is. Still, the range nerf still might be a bit much for Thief mains who may just ultimately avoid Daredevil altogether and stick with S/D core Thief.

The new Havoc Mastery is a pretty noticeable change, so we may end up seeing more non-staff Daredevils making their way to PvE. Maybe.

@Exitus.3297 said:Combining Escapist's Absolution and Driven Fortitude into Escapist's Fortitude in the Adept row will significantly boost its value. So in this row, Thieves are going to have to decide between taking 10% less damage from Melee attackers (and a small health boost), Healing on a dodge for ~450 without Healing Power, or 20% reduced cooldown on Physical Skills with a 10 Endurance return. Looking at them on the surface, both of the new Traits outshine Brawler's Tenacity by quite a bit unless the Daredevil is running more than one physical skill and isn't too worried about conditions or sustain. This means that Daredevils whom only took Channeled Vigor for a Physical skill with this trait will have to rethink taking Brawler's Tenacity, because now they don't have that built in heal-on-dodge. The value of Channeled Vigor will go down relatively speaking because the value of Brawler's Tenacity's competition will go up. That means they either get the 16 second cooldown Channeled Vigor, or they get the ~450 Heal and condi cleanse on a successful dodge. With that in mind, I expect some Thieves may simply opt for Withdraw while getting Escapist's Fortitude. But of course, there is more to it.

Great point and agreed. I totally forgot people might use withdraw instead it will pair up nicely with the new combine trait escapist. But people with channeled vigor will more then likely choose Marauder's Resilience for more hp to heal.

@Exitus.3297 said:Then we get to the new Steal... or Swipe, rather. It goes down all the way from 1200 range to 600 range which is a really nasty hit in terms of mobility. However, this also opens up an opportunity. Despite how Power-Creeped Dagger Storm is, D/P Daredevils have been suffering from not having the unblockable openers (I am of course referring to Basilisk Venom). Having Swipe be unblockable means that the Daredevil could have more general outplay potential, which works out well for duels with other melee. This means that Daredevils could simply move away from Basilisk Venom if they choose and not be particularly punished for it. this is part of the reason I wish ANet would take another look at Impact Strike, because despite how good it can be, it is held back by how clunky it is. Still, the range nerf still might be a bit much for Thief mains who may just ultimately avoid Daredevil altogether and stick with S/D core Thief.

Agreed. I believe Basilisk Venom is more for pve and that is what I think Anet wants to keep it that way. Which pushes me to see Dagger storm is more for pvp because the long dodge frame for holding/fights on nodes and etc. And Impact Strike is for wvw which is why I use it. Clucky .... maybe but I still love it for the stun and possible double down. If they buff it then please slightly.

****I still hoping they change the 600 to 900 for Swipe!

EDIT: Spellings

This is the most confusing set of unneccessary thief nerfs yet. The change to make swipe mandatory just means thief cant use DD in sPvP (which most already werent using so its not even like they nerfed something that was common), while the PvE changes shuffle around a bunch of traits to make it so thief would have to play with only 1 endurance bar available just to be able to maintain the same DPS (and even then, the loss of endurance gain means that you wont be able to keep up the Bounding Dodges damage bonus, so you actually lose out on DPS) and with no bars to have more DPS, but then the staff auto inexplicably gets nerfed to make sure that even if you play that risky, you still do less damage than before. On a class that was already not a very good pick in most situations. Why was it nerfed? This is PvE not PvP, so its not like the weird bias Anet has against PvP thieves applies here. They just decided "hey, thief is still viable in raids and Fractals. Lets change that".

@Xenji.4907 said:

@"MindWipe.3028" said:the only change they actually made here today was the steal being 600 range now. the class will still play exactly the same. these changes are all fluff so they could sneak in the steal nerf. also why is daggerstorm untouched for the 3rd patch in a row?

you dont get more damage, look at where the traits are going to be located. it is going to be almost the same in the end. and yeah you get the weakness which is good but in the end it is minor. this is not going to change the way dd is played it is just going to slightly adjust it. other than the steal change of course...

Swipe pretty much imo makes any non staff builds unviable at toptier as drd.

DP thief not being able to spike closer than 600y is a joke so that build is dead which was closest to SD. Now its all about playing sd thief only, fun. ???

@bluri.2653 said:Swipe pretty much imo makes any non staff builds unviable at toptier as drd.

DP thief not being able to spike closer than 600y is a joke so that build is dead which was closest to SD. Now its all about playing sd thief only, fun. ???

I absolutely agree, thats why i made the thread about the change of this trait. This is not thought through at all and staff is just a sub par pointholder it needs changes to work. d/p is out of meta with this change and thats unjustified it is a weaponset that a lot of people enjoyed playing in pvp for years.

Although the drop to 600 range hurts badly, With steal now being unblockable might we see Bountiful Theft dropped in Trickery in favour of Trickster?

This would give much lower CD on Withdraw making it the better option over Channeled Vigour and creating space for the new Power->HP trait to be run, as tricks (including the heal) now provide some condi removal, lowering the necessity of the new Escapists trait.

With all these changes might we start to see something like a s/d DD Brawler with Bounding Dodger moving into the Meta?

EDIT: i just want to add that 600 range seems like way too much of an overnerf and as everyone has suggested 900 is likely the sweetspot

@Ustaf.2953 said:EDIT: i just want to add that 600 range seems like way too much of an overnerf and as everyone has suggested 900 is likely the sweetspot

Sorry bro but there is nothing SWEET about range reduction xD. This whole Swipe idea is beyond stupid. Anet will lose out big time on this patch.

sounds like rev just became the new roamer time to reroll.

@MindWipe.3028 said:

@Xenji.4907 said:

@MindWipe.3028 said:the only change they actually made here today was the steal being 600 range now. the class will still play exactly the same. these changes are all fluff so they could sneak in the steal nerf. also why is daggerstorm untouched for the 3rd patch in a row?

That entirely depends on the setting. In PvE, you are mostly correct. Every Daredevil in PvE took Havoc Mastery, Staff Master and Bounding Dodger (unless you are a complete memer like me and you use S/P with Impactful Disruption for solo PvE). Now the damage from Havoc Master is being moved into the Minor trait Weakening Strikes. Between the trait applying after every dodge and the Staff 2 skill, there is no reason your target shouldn't have Weakness. However, this also means that Staff PvE builds only need 2 active traits to optimize for damage instead of 3. They basically get a nice little boost in the Adept row, such as Brawler's Tenacity. This means more Fist Flurries. If you were a Channeled Vigor user to keep up Bounding Dodger, that will be up more frequently as well. So they get a slight buff.

In PvP, Thieves tended to focus around utility more than damage, with the exception of Impactful Disruption. They didn't typically pick up any damage modifiers because they weren't as efficient for a well-rounded build that focused on mobility (Brawler's Tenacity, Impactful Disruption, Unhindered Combatant). Now they get a 7% damage boost no matter how they choose to build as long as the target has Weakness in addition to Weakness spam to back it up, and Weakness is easily one of the strongest conditions in the game in its own right. Being able to apply Weakness that much more frequently in addition to Lotus Poison in Deadly Arts means that Daredevils will be better able to make trades. Even if an attack that hits the Thief isn't a glancing blow, it will still always deal 10% less damage if the target is inflicted with Weakness. Even if you were a Daredevil who opted for the current rendition of Weakening Strikes, you still gain that 7% damage boost. Long story short, Daredevils can trade more frequently without being reliant on applying Poison from their auto-attack chain or steal. They will be able to stick to their target for a couple seconds at a time significantly more frequently without as much fear of getting pummeled by their opponent whilst also doing a little bit more damage. The gameplay may not change drastically, but it will definitely be more rewarding across the board.

As for the new "Swipe" range, yeah bringing that down to 600 is pretty dumb. Honestly the whole Steal to Swipe change is a really shallow change. It seems like they didn't put any thought it into it at all. It's almost as if they pulled a random buff and nerf out of a hat and said "Yeah, that is how Swipe is going to be unique!" Why did it need to be unblockable? Why did it need to be 600 range? How do these changes tie into the feel of being a Daredevil? Because reasons, apparently. At least the Deadeye's Mark made sense in terms of how it tied in with the feel of being a Deadeye. Is the Daredevil going to get new stolen skills out of this? How about a slightly reduced cooldown? Better yet, here is an interesting idea: Keep the 600 range on Swipe, but then also add a second cast to it so that the Daredevil has the option to Shadowstep to the same target as long as they are within a particular range threshold, like 900, and they cast it within 10 seconds (it would only be a Shadowstep, not another Steal). I'm just spitballing here, but I hope I made the point clear.

EDIT: Grammar

I don't get it. Are these "trade-offs" for elite specs suppose to make us take a second look at running vanilla specs? Because as far as I'm aware vanilla thief has exactly one viable build and that is only for pvp/wvw (S/D) and even that has been on the receiving end of many nerfs.

Making steal 50% worse for daredevil isn't a "trade-off" it's just making daredevil worse for nothing, nobody is going to consider running vanilla builds for this, and nobody is going to run DD for a neutered un-blockable steal. It just makes the current options worse for absolutely no reason.

IMO the "trade-off" for running DD was precisely that it changed thief so very little compared to most other elites, all it really gave us is 1 dodge and... staff?The whole reason vanilla S/D is viable at all is because swapping out DD for acro means we lost very little in terms of power and gained synergy/sustain.

Apart from granting access to staff and new utilities (most of which are never used) DD was basically equal in value to most other thief trait lines, main reason DD is run in PvE is because staff happens to be the highest DPS weapon, not because DD has really good traits (I personally think Trickery has better traits) or because we need that extra dodge.

TLDR; Before the patch DD gave us 1 bar of endurance + staff, after the patch DD gives us 1 bar of endurance + staff and a worse version of steal, why? Was it considered OP after more then 3 years? Is DD so over-tuned (lol) that it NEEDS a trade-off to "balance" it? Was this designed to make baseline look more attractive in some way?