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UNTRAITED SWIPE: Where's the Beef?


Kageseigi.2150

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@babazhook.6805 said:

@"Psycoprophet.8107" said:Unless of course it is their plan for thief to literally be a runner/decapper and nothing else.

I could understand that if they would actually design the Thief for that "role."Give the Thief traits to actually succeed in decapping. Examples...

Swift Swindler:
A control node with only the Thief present will capture/neutralize at twice the rate.

Undeniable Presence:
A control node with only the Thief present will capture/neutralize even if the Thief is Stealthed.

Unseen Defender:
A contested control node fully controlled by the Thief's team will not be neutralized as long as the Thief is present even if Stealthed.

Right Under Their Nose:
A contested control node will slowly neutralize as long as the Thief is present and visible. If the Thief leaves the control node or enters Stealth even for a moment, all neutralization progress will instantly be lost.

Security System:
The Thief leaves a trap on a control node that it neutralizes. When activated, the trap knocks all opponents out of the control node and creates an impassible forcefield around the control node that lasts for 5 seconds.

Could they break things? Of course. They are just examples. Unfortunately, the Thief is already broken. If it's going to be a decapper, they may as well give it the tools to succeed at it. Personally, I'd prefer better combat/assassination ability, but if they won't give us that, then the "sabotage/steal control nodes" aspect could be quite fun if given the proper tools.

While I understand the desire to improve thief, I do not think adding traits that are specific to one game mode is the way to go.

Where they went wrong with thief is in giving it a role that was very specific to the profession and then spreading all of those abilities to other classes wherein those professions did not "lose anything" to garner those abilities even as the tools that made this work on thief were made weaker. IE , lowering the ability to stealth on thief even as stealth passed out to other classes. Curtailing port abilities even as more ports added to other classes. Cutting back on burst damage even as more burst added to other classes.

Yes, I agree 100%. It's a shame that I'd even think about game-type upgrades, though I'm not sure what the recourse is.

While Conquest is point-based, those points require combat to achieve. Every other profession can capture, contest, or defend control nodes with their combat abilities. The Thief, however, cannot really do any of those well. Even the decap potential can be pretty much shut down these days by certain players/builds on some maps.

To add even more to the Thief's disadvantage, an entire traitline (Shadow Arts) is literally negated in Conquest because entering Stealth forfeits any chance of capturing/holding control nodes. I don't know of any other such punishment in the game... the closest thing I can remember is the old Diamond Skin trait that would completely deny condition-based opponents from harming Elementalists.

But you and every other Thief player know all of this already. It's still worth saying, I suppose. Maybe Anet will decide to read it and take it seriously someday.

Sadly, the Thief's only true "role" in Conquest is to be a decapper. It's the only non-combat "role" in the game. And it's the only one the Thief can perform decently. Unfortunately, without absolute mobile-supremacy (which is no longer the case), not even the Thief can take full advantage of decapping or +1-ing. And against proper rotations and compositions, taking advantage of any outnumbering situations is questionable. Really, how effective is a Thief in a 5v4 team-fight at Mid these days?

It's just all... so sad :'(

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@"Shade.8971" said:Anet actual reason was a trade off philosophy. DD gave extra tools on top of core thief so a nerf to DD steal was the tradeoff. Ironically enough, core thief was meta in SPvP before swipe came. What is even more ironic, no other elite spec was nerfed for this ridicoulous tradeoff kitten.

That's not entirely true, reaper shroud lose the core shroud range and cost 40% more Life force to maintain if you want an example.

Holosmith gets every toolbelt skill like core engi but with an extra I Win button.

Photon Forge is on F5, they lose a tool belt skill actually. You could say that scrapper don't lose anything, gaining this "extra" skill that revive/finish foes and is only ever useful in PvP/short scale fight.

Chrono and mirage are miles better than core mesmer yet were untouched.

True.

Even core rev was buffed with a new skill so herald wouldnt get nerfed.

We all know that core rev is still in alpha/beta test.

Daredevil was a spec that did not need to be touched. After much needed nerfs in HoT and powercreep of PoF, Daredevil needed only tweaks.

I agree with that, but ANet choose the easy way to enforce their will to strengthen their philosophy. Something that they've done mainly to soothe PvP player concern about powercreep. And I agree that adding more on top of the core professions without any trade off is worth being concerned about powercreep.

Whatever happen, there wouldn't have been any trade off well received by a community used to a powercreep e-spec after years of using it. They only reduce slightly daredevil mobility, honnestly they've been pretty soft and, yes, fair on the trade off for an extra dodge. Compared to reaper, DD just got it's range reduced, imagine if on top of that they had reduced initiative recovery rate and then removed a trait that reduce steal CD for no real reason. (See DD have it pretty easy compared to reaper when it come to trade off already).

With people asking for trickery to be "less mandatory" ANet is bound to make some deadly uncalled nerfs, a reduction of steal range is nothing compared to what people are calling for.

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I think since last year Nov patch the changes have been terrible, and made balance worse. Anet devs seem to have an idea, then make changes based on that idea, but with no testing and little understanding of the overall impact of these changes. They do not even bother to see if these changes achieved their goals.

The changes to DD as documented here, made DD worse. There were already significant trade offs between core and DD. The change was supposed to make DD better on point fighter, but there is much lacking for anyone who played DD for a bit, that the changes did not remotely touch.

The changes to berserker is another example. It did not make berserker viable. Just a meme 1 shot build, mainly in WvW.

Condi mirage was outperforming. Instead of fixing some of the issues that caused it to outperform, Anet just did a major blanket nerf to damage, to the point it is no longer viable.

Guardian was significantly nerfed, supposedly to create diversity. Yet all the changes did is limit FB to be the only competitive build.

Remember when Anet said they want to address boon stacking? Nothing came out of that except a nerf to boon beast. There are multiple other builds that stack ridiculous amount of booms that were not touched.

There are tons of other examples. As OP mentioned, Anet does these almost PR stunts, like boon normalization or trade offs. But they do not follow through. I do not know if they lack they competence or will. Regardless, there is huge disconnect between what they claim they want to achieve and what happens. There is little to no follow-up afterwards. And things are broken and left to rot.

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Yeah anet's balance team leaves a lot to be desired :/

Speaking of how trickery is pretty much mandatory, I wonder if its possible to drop it and make a build focused on sustain while ignoring steal/swipe. Something like Acro/Crit Strikes/DD. Each traitline provides healing through initiative, crits and evades respectively, but I'm not sure if it is enough to make a difference.

... then again you could also just run the tried and true Sw/D core thief with 2k heals on a 1200 range steal (+ a lot of other bonuses attached to it) and call it a day.

Maybe the solution to this trickery problem is not to nerf trickery, but to buff the other traitlines so they can compete (I'm looking at you shadow arts).

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@"Shade.8971" said:I think it's important to remember thief was and is a meta defining profession. They were a profession capable of in and out tactics with quick burst. So other professions needed a way to combat the thief. Anet just took it too far. Other classes can do what the thief can and better too, save for decap because of shortbow 5. Thief does not have an identity of its own. The only thing they have is steal and it is an extremely bloated skill.

ANet lost the plot when they started having non-targeted attacks that hit 5 players often at range for more damage than attacks that are close range single target and must be setup to be lethal. This in turn caused them to create more and more bunker meta to handle the AoE "slough" while never compensating the thief causing it fall further behind the meta. They then compounded the problem by nerfing various thief abilities and skills to issues that were long since resolved. ANet has systematically killed pretty much every weapon set on the class leaving only the best of the worst.

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@Straegen.2938 said:

@"Shade.8971" said:I think it's important to remember thief was and is a meta defining profession. They were a profession capable of in and out tactics with quick burst. So other professions needed a way to combat the thief. Anet just took it too far. Other classes can do what the thief can and better too, save for decap because of shortbow 5. Thief does not have an identity of its own. The only thing they have is steal and it is an extremely bloated skill.

ANet lost the plot when they started having non-targeted attacks that hit 5 players often at range for more damage than attacks that are close range single target and must be setup to be lethal. This in turn caused them to create more and more bunker meta to handle the AoE "slough" while never compensating the thief causing it fall further behind the meta. They then compounded the problem by nerfing various thief abilities and skills to issues that were long since resolved. ANet has systematically killed pretty much every weapon set on the class leaving only the best of the worst.

I agree. Worst part is that, if you think about it, with the current state of the game buffing thief to be on par with other classes would be one of the most unhealthy things anet could do. Since most of our kit is single target oriented, buffing thief would probably lead to more stupid oneshot builds instead of something truly balanced. And that's ignoring the delicate balance between defenses and mobility/stealth.

IMO the other classes need to be toned down in order to allow thief to compete. In fact, if you ask me I think thief is one of the most "fair" and balanced classes in the game (ignoring the cheese oneshot backstab DE build). It has no crazy AoE damage*, no invulns and almost no stab, but on the other hand its strengths are great mobility and easy access to stealth, and this is what makes the class special. I wonder if the people that play zerker and/or holosmith can say the same about their classes when both of those specs basically do the same: melt everything in an area around you while having a nice mix of defense and mobility.

*signet of power vault spam DD is a special case lol

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@"Creaitov.6328" said:I agree. Worst part is that, if you think about it, with the current state of the game buffing thief to be on par with other classes would be one of the most unhealthy things anet could do........IMO the other classes need to be toned down in order to allow thief to compete. In fact, if you ask me I think thief is one of the most "fair" and balanced classes in the game

I agree with this. Though I'm afraid I still have a difficult time understanding whenever I hear someone say that "the Thief is a balanced class." The reason I say that is because balance is a relative thing. And I don't really know what it's being balanced against. The Thief may be a very well designed class, but in comparison with the others in the current game, it's sadly very imbalanced. Again, I do know what you're saying, but I think the way it's phrased isn't quite accurate.

I also agree that the Thief doesn't necessarily need to be "buffed" up to the level of the others. I do believe that it would do the Thief a world of good if its traitlines were reorganized into very logical and exclusive categories. As I said in another thread, the Deadeye traitline shouldn't be the "assassin" line. The Deadeye should be the "ranged" line that focuses specifically on ranged weapons/combat... it really shouldn't affect melee at all.

"Deadly Arts"... what does that even mean? It's vague and too diverse. I understand poison traits being a "deadly art"... but why is Executioner and Improvisation included? Why are venom traits not included in the poison traitline? Wouldn't Executioner fit better in Critical Strikes? Wouldn't Improvisation fit better in Trickery?

I'd prefer to divide Core traitlines into something like the following...

  • Direct Damage
  • Condition Damage
  • Evasion
  • Stealth
  • Utility

I'm not even sure if Stealth deserves its own line anymore. It may need to be combined with Evasion or Utility to make room for another line.Make sure that each traitline includes ONLY traits that fall into its description.While you may lose some synergy between traits/lines currently available, you would gain more.

Deadeye would, of course, be the "Ranged" traitline.I'm not sure what Daredevil would be classified as exactly.

This wouldn't be the fix-all for the Thief, but it would be a big step in the right direction. I still believe that due to the initiative system, Thieves shouldn't be punished with weapon-swap cooldowns. I'm a big believer in a Thief, being fragile and focused on active gameplay (as opposed to passive), being able to have many options to adapt to any given situation, so removing many arbitrary limitations would be inline with its theme. Even if it could have stances/modes or dynamic traitlines mid-fight (similar to Elementalist attunements), that would be another possibility that could give the Thief fresh life.

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