[Patch Feedback] Consolidated Thief Thread

[SehferViega.8725]

@saerni.2584 said:I’ll also ask for your feedback if you are happy with a specific change and want to say so.

1. Backstab: Backstab now deals less damage then Heartseeker to players that are below 25% life. Heartseeker is spammable and should not make more damage then Backstab. IMHO Backstab should have 2.0 power coefficient (only Backstab not Maliciuos Backstab that is fine thanks to malice mechanic), while Heartseeker could have power coefficient 1.2 / 1.5 / 1.8 (instead of 1.0 / 1.5 / 2.0).

2. Pulmonary Impact: it's a playstyle mechanic that i love, but the actual damage is a joke. Revert the change or at least increase the power coefficient to 1.5 or makes PI able to critically hits.

3. Burst of Agility: 60 seconds cooldown in order to have 3 seconds of quickness is too much. Reduce cooldown to 30/35 seconds.

4. Lot of skills get its damage nerfed, the Increased initiative cost is a shame: we do less damage (like other classes) but we can also use less skills in the long time period. daredevil suffers the 600 range swipe, Shadow Shot is a must have, 5 initiative is too much in WvW.

[foste.3098]

@SehferViega.8725 said:

1. Backstab: Backstab now deals less damage then Heartseeker to players that are below 25% life. Heartseeker is spammable and should not make more damage then Backstab. IMHO Backstab should have 2.0 power coefficient (only Backstab not Maliciuos Backstab that is fine thanks to malice mechanic), while Heartseeker could have power coefficient 1.2 / 1.5 / 1.8 (instead of 1.0 / 1.5 / 2.0).

^this is how dagger should be balanced, with heartseeker having a scaling of 1.0/1.4/1.8. And if malicious backstab becomes an issue then balance it by changing the damage bonus it gets per malice stack.

My feedback is centered around wvw and 2v2-which we can view as dueling.

-Deadly arts is reduced to a pve only line in the state it is now, it gives marginal damage increase (unless traited for executioner) while now giving mediocre utility.Change mug to deal more damage but heal for less, this way the hp gap that trait makes remains the same but now it will be more offensive.Change improvisation to have a 15 sec ecd, this way you get to role a utility reset on every swipe/mark and not every other and it makes the trait work better with swindler's equilibrium.

-Shadow arts is mostly ok now as the main reason for its overperformance was the stealth uptime & access and the damage leaching venoms game.Rending shade should be un-nerfed to steal 2 boons because this trait was never an issue and having it remove 1 boon is just not impactfull against any class that builds around boons.

-Daredevil is mostly fine except staff is now a meme again, and would probably require a redesign of skill 3 to not be.Pulmonary impact is a dead trait, it deals less dmg than both mug and leaching venoms BUT those 2 traits also heal you/poison the enemy where as pi just deals dmg.Anyone who takes a second to think about it should see the issue; a pure dmg trait that requires specific timing to work should do more dmg than the 2 similar traits that work regardless of what your enemy is doing (except hard mitigation) AND they have utility in them. If pi does not get a dmg buff then it should get a secondary effect, for example weakness or vulnerability on interrupt as well as low damage.Impact strike does not deal nearly enough dmg to be effective for the time it takes to cast the 3 chain skills, you will never get the stomp skip in the current state of that elite. Ether make the chain faster or buff the damage it deals to make it worth using.

[saerni.2584]

I’ve started updating the OP post with new findings and feedback.

Please continue to provide specific feedback on issues that impact your playstyle and your specific suggestions for changes to make those issues less of a problem (but still compatible with the dev’s notion of game design/balance).

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

@saerni.2584 said:

@"Dzheen.5291" said:

Deadly Aim trait.

How this trait works depends on what race you play. It gives an advantage to races above average height. Since the shot goes from the center of our HitBox to the center of the enemy, the difference in height changes the trajectory of the bullet. As an Asura, I can't hit 2 Golems standing one after the other in the heart of the mist. As a human or a Norn, I hit both. Also if you get too close to target and target taller then you, you will shot to the sky.

Example of Asura shooting

Example of Human shooting

Solution:

make the projectiles fly parallel to the ground or replace this trait with old Ricochet

I’d report this as a bug. That certainly is not intended gameplay.

This is not a bug, that's how bullet have behaved. If you've used the Rifle, you knew this.

IMO, Deadly Aim is the most useless trait. Not only that it goes in a straight line but it's also doesn't go that far since pistol only have a 900 range -- it's pointless and useless. The piercing makes sense for Rifle since it can go up to 1500 range.

They should really bring Ricochet back instead of making useless traits like Deadly Aim. The time they've spent creating this should have been spent restoring Ricochet. Even if Ricochet just have two bounces, heck even one, it's still better than this POS.

[JonnyForgotten.4276]

Choking GasProblem: 6 feels like too high a cost in initiative, and the new Daze on impact is A) Not as useful on such a slow mocing projectile and B) Is simply not as fun. The pulsing Daze on poison stacks was much more strategic and had a larger payoff upon successfully building 5 stacks.Solution: Drop to 5 Ini, restore the Daze on stack count, except perhaps at 3-4 stacks to account for reduced poison stacking. Put Daze back at 1/2 sec per pulse. To me, it was simply just much more fun to build combos to attain those stacks.

Impacting Disruption (PI)Problem: Weak, weak damage. For an on-interupt skill, the payoff just isn't there. . . and, again, this is a skill that promoted active gameplay by it's very nature.Solution: Tune the damage up by at least double, reassess from there. Or, keep the current low coefficient, but allow PI to crit.

Overall, the patch didn't really feel too too bad running around in WvW last night in my same prepatch build (acro/trick/DE s/p rifle, BqBk). If anything, the longer fight times gave me a bit of an edge in some cases after I adjusted to not bursting nearly as hard. Ini costs definitely need some tweaking across the board (everything feels too high for the damage gained), and defensive traits/skills need some nerfing on some classes (what is this new Rev tank I kept finding?), but I think this gamewide nerf may have been a good step if the devs keep on tweaking everything.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

@JonnyForgotten.4276 said:Choking GasProblem: 6 feels like too high a cost in initiative, and the new Daze on impact is A) Not as useful on such a slow mocing projectile and B) Is simply not as fun. The pulsing Daze on poison stacks was much more strategic and had a larger payoff upon successfully building 5 stacks.Solution: Drop to 5 Ini, restore the Daze on stack count, except perhaps at 3-4 stacks to account for reduced poison stacking. Put Daze back at 1/2 sec per pulse. To me, it was simply just much more fun to build combos to attain those stacks.

Impacting Disruption (PI)Problem: Weak, weak damage. For an on-interupt skill, the payoff just isn't there. . . and, again, this is a skill that promoted active gameplay by it's very nature.Solution: Tune the damage up by at least double, reassess from there. Or, keep the current low coefficient, but allow PI to crit.

Overall, the patch didn't really feel too too bad running around in WvW last night in my same prepatch build (acro/trick/DE s/p rifle, BqBk). If anything, the longer fight times gave me a bit of an edge in some cases after I adjusted to not bursting nearly as hard. Ini costs definitely need some tweaking across the board (everything feels too high for the damage gained), and defensive traits/skills need some nerfing on some classes (what is this new Rev tank I kept finding?), but I think this gamewide nerf may have been a good step if the devs keep on tweaking everything.

Yeah I think pi definitely needs a dps increase for one and the ini increase on skills was definitely a bad move on top of already nerfing the damage across the board. I honestly have a hard time believing a dev could play most thief builds without trickery and not notice how limiting it is.

[saerni.2584]

Updated with some comments on Choking Gas.

I’d like to hear more discussion on Heartseeker/Shadowshot so I’m waiting to fill in the comments on those skills until a little later.

More updates coming as additional testing occurs.

[saerni.2584]

Updated with some comments on Shadow Savior.

I have some placeholder text for Heartseeker and some infilled categories including Stolen Skills.

If I don’t see significant feedback on those I will remove unused categories from the consolidation post.