[June 25 Balance Update Preview [THIEF]]

Peek in here once in a while. I see not much has changed for thieves in 2 years.

I'll have a peek at the spear skills, but man.. looking at things around here gives me no joy.

[07/18/2023—July 18 Balance Changes]

Lmao I went on vacation and didnt even get to play the changes much so I guess I have no reason to return, why am I even here? GO AWAY! *Shoves bottles off the table*

[June 9th Thief Balance Patch Preview Discussion (The original thread)]

All for Acrobatics finally getting some attention. Time to whip out the goold ol' S/x.

[Thief nerfs incoming]

lmao if they wanted to tackle stealth I am surprised they didn't go for either heartseekers leap or black powders smoke field.

 

[May 2 Balance Update Preview]

Ha.. ha?

[Passive Aggressive Emoji's plaguing the forums]

Substitute for downvotes... Nothing complicated about it.

[Signets of Power & Trickster Suggestions]

On 3/29/2023 at 2:18 AM, ZeroTheRuler.7415 said:

I think they used to have one?

I wonder... Maybe ANET should have devs only play thief for two or more weeks or, better yet a month, to get a better idea on how thief feels (raids, strikes, wvw, pvp). That might help our cause too.

I think they would only agree to this by binding them to a chair and threatening them with 2 days old flat microwaved pizza.

[Perma stealth on thiefs is wrong in WvW. Offers no counterplay.]

1 hour ago, kash.9213 said:

Not sure what's up with the part in bold. 

Scepter needs it's own stealth application, even if it's costly. Most of Specter is fine but our Tethers get melted and deplete Shroud too fast under focus. 

They hit up like one or two Acro traits recently, but it's still second rate. 

Your quick and dirty is already the Anet approach. That's why Initiative is soo costly on some skills and they have to make up for those nerfs later by making stuff like DE's allstars. Have fun with your quick and dirty dude, but maybe take a stroll down memory lane first. 

 

Just comedic flair, I think.

I highly disagree when you say most of specter is fine, but that's fine.

Yep. Still useless.

When quick and dirty is the pattern, quick and dirty is what to expect; just so happens quick and dirty is the solution I propose, that would also make an interesting impact. As I said, I don't expect anything resembling a sophisticated solution to the matter, but you seem to hold them in higher regard than me.. or higher standards. Time will tell, I guess.

[Perma stealth on thiefs is wrong in WvW. Offers no counterplay.]

2 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

I play mostly Specter in large fights when I get time to play. I would want another mostly sustainable smoke field to blast for group stealth -> barrier & Rot Wallow Venom. I think I mentioned that before in this same thread but people get tunnel vision in these threads. Even with pistol 5 right now, it's multiple steps that aren't super fast where a lot can go wrong. People might say to use a utility slot, but that's long cooldowns, where I need Wells (signature specter kitten and people expect that alacrity), and other players and groups aren't going to give up so much of their own stuff or pull any punches.

Still do something about Acrobatics. I almost always have S/D on me anyway but the skills and that kits use of space would be nice to lean more into. A new acro would need to make some interesting combat that involves movement or working an area though, not just a few stat changes on a trait while they tank another trait or two for another decade with something like a ten minute cooldown.

Edit: salt endures in this sub when you get confused face from the same people and it's not an argument post. 

I am not the right person to have the specter discussion with thats for sure. I consider it garbage and flawed from the get-go and whoever came up with it deserves a good finger-wagging. That it relies on stealth-attacks when it's weapon provides none, it has to sacrifice its entire goddamn utility slot lineup to provide consistent alacrity, single-target miniscule barrier application?! WTH EVEN IS Sc/D #3?! It doesn't do what it's supposed to half the time!

It's not even funny. Anyway that's my non-constructive rant on specter. Not for me, moving on.

If they removed the smoke-field on pistol #5 and you rely on that to blast stealth, you would not have a good time if it turned into a dark-field. Gonna take off my captain obvious hat now...

At this point I just want to see them acknowledge that Acrobatics exists, because currently it might as well not. Used to be great a couple years back for S/D. I too would like to see them get innovative with it, but honestly I would also have a laugh if they managed to sink it further.

 

I also don't really have faith that them folks at Anet can find a more sophisticated solution for thief, like give and take changes that make sense, that's why quick and dirty is my current stance atm, consequence be damned.

[Perma stealth on thiefs is wrong in WvW. Offers no counterplay.]

So I've been having the damndest fun watching Burnfalls rambling like a mad man. Good entertainment.

Eitherway I should probably chime in as I do play the class on occasion, totes, pinkyswear, cross my heart.

Anyway as was mentioned on the first page: Turn the smoke-field into a dark-field on Pistol #5.. also remove Heartseekers leap-combo. This is obviously the source of many peoples frustrations but it would also highlight thieves weaknesses and potentially other strengths, so while thieves could struggle for 3 months till the next balance patch; hopefully someone on the devteam was paying attention to do something about it. It's the quickest and dirtiest solution they could make and requires little effort.

OR the change will just cause thieves to adapt and find another way to roll people, eitherway watching the situation develop after such a change would be prime entertainment.

S/D is more fun anyway. DO SOMETHING ABOUT ACROBATICS ALREADY ;_;

[Power Specter for general PVE?]

If you can swap gear without too much trouble I'd give it a whirl just to satisfy your curiosity, sometimes a change of pace is neat, but sadly there's no secret sauce to Power Specter for PvE. Hopefully that gets remedied and they wake up at some point.

As for Condi D/D Sp, I have no idea. Never tried it. I believe you when you say Daredevil does it better.

[chill]

On 3/29/2023 at 1:34 AM, Kolly.9872 said:

First of all give thieves 2 different initiative bars for when they swap weapon set.

Then we can discuss of other weird things.

Heh, watch them crank up the cost of Infiltrators Arrow to 15 for that, even if you aren't running Trickery.

[Power Specter for general PVE?]

What you don't want to hear:
 

Spoiler

It will work, in the sense that putting a left-shoe on your right foot will still cover your foot.

I've done exactly what you are trying to do much because of the same reason with weeks of varying experimentation from traits to to runes to stats, and the short of it is that what you are expecting is exactly what is going to happen.. you'll fall behind in damage by turning yourself into an alacrity bot with some minor heals going on. There's simply nothing for power-builds in the specter tree.

Mechanically S/P power specter feels fun to play, since you are zipping all over the place with alacrity some heals and what-not, but numbers wise.. I could never shake that feeling.

Anyway 2 cents:

Just ditch Marauder. You don't need the extra health because you have a second health-bar. If you need health just give your jade-bot a rank 10 core, should give you ample health for open-world.

Since you are using Critical strikes you can drop some precision in favor of more power/ferocity. Currently Fury only gives you 10% when it can give you 25%, and since Fury more or less permanent on thieves it seems like a waste. I know 7% of that is from flanks which are not always optimal, do what you will.

I'd swap in Consume Shadows because anything else is frankly worthless unless you are playing with 1 friend. You build lifeforce instantly in many cases so it's total consumption is no loss, and the AoE heal goes into the support angle, no?

Just use No Quarter for the damage and fury. Specter has no survivability problems and you get enough heals from your wells, shadow-steps and Consume Shadows (it heals you too), or you can just camp Shadow.

I like to drop well of Silence for well of tears. You get enough cleanses from merely popping into shadow, and you are sacrificing enough damage as is, and keeping Alacrity uptime gets easier. Unless your explicit goal is to cleanse someone else.

Maybe stick with Chronomancer runes unless you can deal with the long cast-times of the wells, or cast them in your haste-window.

You can get pretty good Quickness uptime with Chrono runes, if you get your boon duration to around the 30%-40% mark. You sacrifice damage but you spend less time casting wells, and your alacrity lasts longer.

 

There is a kind of interesting tagging build though that takes advantage of runes, regen-food and shadow-steps with the trait Shadestep to give people Rot-Wallow-Venom constantly.

I'm forgetting details and who mentioned it though, think it might've been @Jugglemonkey.8741 who mentioned it somewhere.

[SKILLS AND TRAIT BUFF WISHLIST for PVE]

Do ANYTHING with Acrobatics! ANYTHING! ;_;

[Signets of Power & Trickster Suggestions]

Fury uptime seems like the least of my problems tbh.

Can someone explain why Pistols regular attack does half the power-damage rifle does? Actually can we talk about the state of P/P in general? I mean this is nothing new to me but a lot of small things y'know...

Ehh nevermind, don't wanna hijack this thread. (bot den wye dyd u paost eet nyehehehhe)

[I don't want to be rude, but the writing...]

I hate the writing. I feel like NONE of the characters take anything seriously and it just makes me not give a darn either. This modern MCU-style quippy writing couldn't die out any faster. I love Canach as much as the next guy, but I don't need an entire cast of him.

[CURB THE BOON UPTIME IN YOUR GAME!!]

I agree but it won't happen. Gaem too Haerrd2blast.

[What missing weapon/theme/gameplay niche do you want?]

On 3/5/2023 at 1:03 AM, LyraOrpheo.8450 said:

I'd like a viable playstyle that doesn't use Scepter for Specter, for starters

I am using S/P on my pure power-specter build and it is borderline AMAZI- heheheh No it uhh, it is not great.

[Return our second dodge and fix mesmers!]

On 2/28/2023 at 11:28 AM, apharma.3741 said:

It's not just CMC's logic, it was one of the primary complaints from many top PvP players when mirage came out including many of the best mesmers in the game from EU. You made a mistake and got stunned? You can just dodge the damage. You got immobilised? Just dodge the follow up and bonus you cleanse the immobilise because everyone ran elusive mind. Essentially it was a bad safety net for players and it broke the contract of fair play where hitting you with a hard to hit skill that should leave you vulnerable denied the follow up. Additionally you could avoid damage or CC that might interrupt a channel on temple, interrupt a rez or a stomp. I see people are only considering 1v1 but often a mirage can burn a dodge or two to secure the stomp and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
This isn't a commentary on the strength of the class, it's on the mechanic of mirage cloak and how it circumvents a lot of rules in the game.

There is no other class that can do this on top of their usual ability to safe stomp, rez, channel etc. Maybe mirage should be redesigned from the ground up, maybe even the whole mesmer class and elite specs at this point. Though given how Virtuoso turned out I don't have much hope.

Been reading pretty far back through these pages, but this is one of the few nuggets of value I read.

[Bring back Ricochet]

18 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

 

Mild tangent, I'm so tired of pressing "the one button this weapon set has that does damage",  killing some guy that pressed like 20 block skills but missed all his damaging skills, then getting hatemail for pressing one button. Like, the class forces you to press 1 button -a lot- with how init hungry most of the skills are. 

 

I'd love if thief skills gave buffs or flipovers to other weapon set skills upon successful hits so my damage source isn't just 2...2...2...2..2..1..2-

I have a brilliant idea!

We all know Improvisation. Lets take this idea to the next level, and give thieves trickery line a new baseline!

Basically anytime we press a skill, that skill will flip and swap places randomly with any of your 1-5 skills, so if you want to use an ability more than once you cannot just press one button repeatedly, you gotta make sure to press the appropriate button!

This solves the problem of monotonous gameplay where all we press is one button repeatedly and it adds EXCITEMENT!

Oh and let's also remove preparedness +3 base initiative bonus, imagine having the ability to press the same button so many times in a row and not knowing what will happen, it would literally fry players minds! So the solution is to make that happen less frequently.

This would fit perfectly in the Trickery traitline because it plays a real trick on the player! It's PERFECT!

[How pro group Quickness Deadeye are we]

Eyyy anybody remember Periphal Vision? It was amazing!
But yeah sure. Why not.

[Thief is the only class who]

I.. surprisingly dont want more burns. Burn is stupid strong and we need less of it overall, not more of it. Alternatively nerf burn, then give us burns.

[Honestly, how much more story do we need?]

Only inclusion I want that is story related is a big'ol SKIP-BLABBERY button. Replaying the story is such a goddamn chore and most of the time I aint invested anyway. The story they are trying to tell lost me at the end of the last LS.

[ok thief won mAt]

2 hours ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

They did gut thief

Then gut it more.

[Some suggestions and discussion with Thief mains on a Specter wishlist]

First off they really should drop the whole single-target healing gimmick.

Alternatively update their decade old UI to better support that style of gameplay, while at the same time giving other classes the "capability" to do the same. Admittely this is so unlikely I don't know why I bothered bringing it up, but oh well.