Jugglemonkey.8741

The main thing I get enjoyment from in this game is making my own off meta builds for roaming (some of which were obnoxiously strong). Many of them have been rendered obsolete or outright removed by balance changes. I figure that just gives me chance to find something new and move on to the next build, so in that way I retain the "fun" in my experience. Change is a constant in this kind of game. The longer you're here, the more things will change and the only real question is if you like the changes and if you still have fun playing the game. If you are unwilling to change with the times and adapt to the new systems then the answer is probably not, but that's a very subjective thing that really cannot be answered by looking at a forum. Something else to bear in mind is that plenty of people (myself included) will complain about the 5% they see as negative while enjoying the other 95% of the game, and the fact that we KEEP complaining is evidence that we are still invested in it. Evidently you are too, otherwise you'd not have bothered to post this thread.

So it's for 'special' players by which you presumably mean players that aren't good enough to play other classes, and it's basically unplayed despite the fact that it's broken. Yep, makes total sense.

Yep, like i said I'm not saying it's a good trait. Just wanted to make sure it was understood properly 🙂

In theory, support specter with the new shadow arts line would be good with the protection, healing, cleanse etc from SA traits all being applied to allies. The line was clearly reworked with this in mind as an end goal. The problem is that now there is no stealth from traits, you are pretty much forced to take blinding powder and shadow refuge to apply that support to your party. Support specter is expected to provide alacrity, it does that through wells, and taking enough wells to provide sufficient alacrity uptime means you have no room on the bar for stealth utilities. Sure, you can blast stealth using shroud skills which is great while solo/duo roaming but put that in a team fight situation where your smoke field is going to be overwritten by water/light./fire fields and it's often not good enough. Support specter will basically never be a thing unless this issue is fixed because most other alacrity supports in the game can provide alacrity alongside heals and other important boons (think mechanist, renegade), and a heal/stealth oriented specter (ie, one who takes SA over deadly arts and doesn't bring alacrity) simply doesn't provide enough heals or DPS to be viable on it's own (especially after the shroud nerf). In order to fix this either alacrity needs to be decoupled from wells so you can take stealth utilities or group stealth needs to be accessible without utilities. It's probably healthier for the game for stealth to be linked to skills and utilities only, so that leaves decoupling alacrity from wells. Anyone see another way for specter to work with the new shadow arts? Or is someone making use of it now in a way I haven't thought of?

It's probably just me thinking this, but on top of losing the group protection it really bugs me that well of bounty no longer gives swiftness. Specter was originally balanced to be a slow but tanky version of thief, that objectively failed since wells are shadowsteps but in order to fix that the tankiness is removed as well as the swiftness access. So you want us to be slow and squishy? Pick a direction and stick to it xD

When it says shadowstep, the trait isn't referring to the skill, it's referring to the mechanic. That means shadowsteps from sword 2, D/P 3, P/D 3, Sc/P 3, standing rifle 4 as well as utilities such as infiltrator's signet and shadowstep will all give you back endurance when used. It's still not amazing and I also preferred the 300s version, but it is better than you thought at least.

GW2Skills has 6s base duration for the weakness from weakening shroud. So yeah, looks like they did effectively stealth nerf it while fixing it. https://imgur.com/a/2GNUYRV

Kash is right. Think of death's retreat like heartseeker: it is a melee attack that moves you, is a leap so you can stealth, but if you're in stealth when you hit something with it the damage component will knock you out of stealth. The only difference really is that it's a backwards leap that looks and functions like a shadowstep when it comes to terrain. Edit: if you use predator, the projectile part of the skill is a lot easier to see too.

Tbh knowing Anet, they'd just ask what's wrong with speaking American.

It would probably help for people to note what class they're playing when they comment on this. I get what @Sahne.6950 is saying about being fine with overloads for stunbreaks but bringing 2-3 stunbreaks is often a lot more than most people run because of build constraints. I main thief so I'm usually running three stunbreaks minimum but that's what my class is designed for, your mileage may vary.

Hmm. I definitely didn't feel like I was getting 4s of superspeed on deadeye rifle when I tried it, felt like 3s, so maybe I'm wrong there. Thanks for the heads up about superspeed tho haha

Could the removal of initiative make the Thief more interesting and easier to balance? No.

It doesn't even really affect deadeye rifle. Superspeed doesn't stack, so dodging on rifle used to give 2s of superspeed that got refreshed to 2s one second later, giving 3s total. Now it gives 1.5s then 1.5s one second later for 2.5s total superspeed. I'm not even sure the devs thought that through at all.

The thing that makes me laugh is that they didn't fix the tooltip. It shows the old amount, just to taunt us xD

I'll give up my oooooops buttons when you give up your blocks, stability, healing, invulnerability, etc.

I'm not upset because thief isn't OP in PvP. I'm tired of people asking for nerfs to thief despite acknowledging that it is not OP simply because it irritates them. That is a stupid reason to nerf something. To put it another way, your posts irritate me, but calling for you to be banned from the forums simply because your opinion exists would be an overreaction, no?

You missed my point I think. You dont have to like thief, just like I dont have to like necro, but you wanting to nerf thief mobility simply because you don't like them disengaging is like me saying core necro shroud should be removed so I can hit the necro better. I focussed on necro shroud because I know Svarty is a necro main, personally don't care about necro shroud and it's fine as is. I just wanted to point out that disliking how something works because of its core design is a bad reason to call for nerfs, regardless of the subject at hand. I responded sarcastically because after 10 years this topic is painfully tired, especially when it comes from someone like Svarty who has been playing the game for a long time and really should know better by now. Thief has always lacked a lot of the defensive abilities that other classes exactly because have because they have mobility and stealth, to the point that every Thief build that doesnt play decap in PvP has always been nerfed into the floor a few months later. Picking people off when they are weak and then leaving the fight is precisely how ANet have balanced thief gameplay for the last 10 years, nerfing anything that performs well enough to duel or hold point. The issue with specializations like specter, willbender and harbinger is that they are too tanky and do too high damage in PvP settings for the mobility they have which let them cover multiple roles simultaneously. Specter is having it's sustain drastically cut next patch, so it will probably go back to playing the decap and +1 role. Removing that role by removing the mobility would require massive buffs to its sustain to make it viable, at which point you find yourself in the same dilemma warrior currently finds itself in. That's why thief players are taking a dim view of this topic: we have have had precisely one role in competitive modes for the entire duration of the game, and people saying that thief ought to be nerfed because it is the best at it's single role without realising that the rest of the class is otherwise very underpowered gets very tiring. If it wasn't thief being the fastest class in PvP, you'd be complaining about the next fastest. That's how it's always going to be when you have classes with different mobility levels and defensive levels that corresponds to that mobility. I'd advise you to get used to it, because after 10 years it's not going to change.

Also, remove core necro shroud. I don't find that fun to fight against either, and since that's the balance metric we're apparently going for here....

Thief has less actions per minute on it's weapons skills than other cool down based classes due to how initiative works and the fact you have a shared resource pool across both weapon sets (seriously, go do the maths). If you really want to buff thief by giving us more teleports, stealth and evades, or by giving us meaningful sustain on top of that, be my guest.

The other thing is that most shroud generating skills are % based. This means a >50% nerf to shroud total also means a >50% nerf to shroud generation in terms of actual numbers. It won't be any easier to generate shroud, you'll just get less bang for your buck all round.

If any series deserves a reboot in this age, it's timesplitters. Those games were immensely fun.

Do you really want multiboxing deadeyes hitting you with 5 death's judgements simultaneously? Because that's what your change would allow, and despite how hilarious it would be, I can't see how that's good for the game mode.

Also thieves don't have burn. That's just salt.

The thing that baffles me at the moment is how much Anet fail to understand the base mechanics and trade offs of thief in general. I mean, they're putting all this effort to get shadow arts and acrobatics to work with specter and just failing spectacularly (at least, i hope the 300s trait changes are aimed at specter, if they were aimed at anything else they missed the playing field, never mind the goal). New SA is great on daredevil and deadeye but removing the stealth access removed the only reason you'd consider running the line on specter. Even if they made acro amazing for specter they're ignoring the fact that because they have failed to deal with trickery being a mandatory pick (even making the issue worse with the trade off), and because they have nerfed damage to the point where you hit like a wet noodle if you dont take critical strikes or deadly arts, nobody is ever going to take shadow arts or acrobatics over trickery and a damage line. Echoing what others have said, i have hardly logged on in the last few months. I have over 8k hours on thief thief over the last 10 years, 11k ish hours total, and i have probably spent thousands in gems monthly over the years it was better for me given my shift pattern at work. I don't see myself playing or spending at all at the moment, and that's directly because the state of thief isn't as fun now compared to what it used to be. edit; if you want to see what i mean, try playing a sword thief vs a cele harbinger or ranger. See how tryhard you have to play to make a dent and how badly they can play and still win. I don't mind an uphill fight, i rather enjoy it, but if mechanics are constantly removed that people enjoy and make builds around then sooner or later you hit the point where its no longer fun.

Well, that's mostly because it isn't right. With 25 might a celestial build is going to be sitting on roughly 2.5k power and 1.5k condi damage, which is roughly where a marauder or trailblazer build respectively would start with no might at all. Dedicated builds will always deal more of their damage type than a celestial build can, but a celestial build will sometimes deal more total damage between power and condi, and that's the real issue. For instance, my trailblazer specter can get 7k total condi ticks and my cele build only gets 4k ticks, but when you factor in the skill that applies condi hitting for 3k power damage per use the cele build will out DPS the trailblazer.