Swift.4126

This. While this update is generally very good and I absolutely love the changes to Warrior and Ranger, the Thief portion of it is very disappointing. Most of the nerfs are perfectly fine and well-deserved, but it feels like the only goal here is to balance Thief, not to make the gameplay fun. Here are some of the things that bother me about this update: While Condi Specter was absolutely devastating, Power Specter, while genuinely fun to play, was already considered mediocre at best. So why not just give Specter a fixed base amount of Shroud instead of binding it to Vitality? Maybe somewhere between 15 and 20k in PvP? That would mean half the shroud for the meta build, while for the niche power variant it's only reduced by ~20%. Honestly I'm totally fine with hitting the overperforming Thief builds (cSpecter and Deadeye) with a hammer in pvp, they're not fun to play or play against. (one button spam) The old Well of Bounty was just a great and always useful skill. Low cooldown, decent mobility and if you pair it with the F1 you can even get quickness from it. Now with a 35 second cooldown in PvP and most boons being borderline useless because you already have them from your F1, I see no reason to play this. If you want to add aoe stab to thief that's great, but rather than removing something that's played in every game mode, why not in the form of overhauling the Daze Well, which isn't currently played in any game mode? And while the description of this change suggests, it's a Well of Bounty buff, it feels more like a major nerf to me. feelsbadman Changes to Acro: It honestly seems like the whole purpose of the changes was just to remove the 300 second cooldown, but not to give Acro anything useful instead. Does anyone really think that the new Instant Reflexes is an amazing and fun trait, worthy of the 2.5 years it took to develop? Hard to catch might be useful on Sword... except if you play Sword you would never drop Swindler's Equilibrium, that trait is the only reason to play Acro right now. Why not create a trait that gives a (random) boon (which you don't already have) after shadow stepping/successfully dodging an attack or something like that. Idk...would have been really nice to see some major changes and actually have a reason to try Acro again. For now, it remains useless in all game modes. Scepter 2 untouched, this is probably the worst weapon skill in the game. I think there were 5 specters in the last mat final and that skill wasn't used once. Pistol Whip has been incredibly bad in all gamemods for years, left completely untouched. No self-only visual effect on Shroud 5 like on Ele Air Dagger 5. Such a small detail, but it shows the lack of attention. Trickery still mandatory in pvp for 10 years. Not fun. I would have really liked it, if each of the core trait lines got a minor/baseline trait to restore initiative. Klaptomaniac in Trickery, Upper Hand in Acro, Shadow's Rejuvenation in Shadow Arts and maybe move Quick Pockets to Deadly Arts and create something for Crit Strikes. This would also be a nice buff for core Thieves since you would have three of these powerful traits and only two if you pick an elite specialization. All in all, it just feels like there hasn't been much thought given to the Thief changes. Shoutout to the guy who made specter you did an amazing job, love the shroud mechanic and the teleport on Wells, it's so fun to play and has so much potential, it's just sad to see that there is no follow-up on that and Thief is back in maintenance mode.