FrancisN.9276

Alright, we hear ya. In return of the proposed nerf, what do you suggest thief gains to make it balanced?

I guess they want us to switch to spears or pistols for cc spam

It is possible to put vault in the middle of the combo, but ini cost-to-damage-wise, it is worse than Weakening Charge by itself.

I am a bit torn about Weakening Charge change. On one hand, forced movement is horrendous when fighting bosses near a cliff or an area with lethal boundary. On the other hand, it works well with Acrobatics because of Fluid Strike giving 10% damage increase buff after movement skill.

Debilitating Arc change is to give thief access to a defensive evade, which sounds like an improvement at first, until people remember Staff 5 is already an evade that hits like a truck, works on multiple targets, is more flexible and only cost 1 ini more. They did not bother to pump Defiance damage on Helmet Breaker either after making it cost more to access (now staff thief has to go through Debilitating Arc (4 ini) everytime, making a Helmet Breaker cost 6 ini in total).

I am aghast that they said the reason for this nerf was to give us access to an evade skill - while we have already have staff 5 as a more controlled evade and 3 endurance bars.

Whenever I play group content with everyone stacking together, it is almost impossible to see what animation is being played, so I have to rely on the skill icons to see which part in the chain skill I am at. The biggest issue with this is these icons flip WAY too late. Devs can easily fix this by making the icons flip to the next skill right at the moment of input, rather than after the end of the skill animation.

I have the same issue. This Lance skill never works for me unless I use my mouse cursor to click on it manually.

Spear power coeffiency is pretty bad, but because it has always been like that since beta and they did not bother to buff it (when nerfing condi output), I cannot keep my hope up for positive thief spear change. In its current state, spear is, at best, a mediocre defensive weapon with some sustainability to facetank champions while sacrificing most mobility that staff has.

Except for the power coefficiency. In full berserker gears, I almost always rank 3rd or 4th on arcdps

I soloed this guy today down to 55% and then 4-5 more people jumped in. I thought it would scale him up, but we ended up swooping him together. Epic. Edit: the rewards were not worth the time, though.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but here is my understanding of thief class mechanic: 1. Alacrity does not increase initiative regen. 2. Thief does not have 2 separate initiative bars for each equipped weapons while other classes have 2 separate cooldown bars, both of which are benefited by alacrity. 3. Relic of rivers give 4s alac on 10s CD dodge. With vigor, it is 4s alac every 7.5s.

On top of our increased initiative cost, other classes have permanent access to alacrity with relic of rivers now.

The idle combat stance looks cool, but the character should hold those spears a bit further from the tip. Also, for thief, the autoattack, swirling the spear in a figure of 8 with one hand while the other hand stays idle, is awkward.

I have been enjoying thief spear gameplay so far, despite the low dps number it provides. In its current state, it leans more toward a defensive weapon than an offensive one because the offensive combo hits like wet noodles while the defensive combo is the best sustain option thief has ever had.

A really interesting point about Acrobatics you have there. I did not choose it out of fear that they have not fixed Swindler's Equilibrium not triggering for land spear. Would you say, for spear, choosing Acrobatics fits Daredevil better? The same way Shadow Arts fits Deadeye?

For spear, which one is better, power or condi?

I was expecting the nerf hammer to hit thief shortly after new expansion launch, just like when SOTO weapon master dropped, so I stayed clear away from any Deluxe option when getting Janthir Wild in case it became a flop. Perhaps next time I'll stop prepurchasing altogether.

I remember Mukluk saying he was most excited about thief's spear than other profession's spear. I wonder what he will say on the next few days.

That's it? A bunch of nerfs to condi without any buff to power coefficiency? I guess we have to wait until December patch.

Autoattack being just a 2-hit feels awkward, especially when those 2 hits are back-to-back like the single first dagger autoattack. The way character uses one hand to swirl the spear around while the left hand is free looks really weird. Distracting throw, being both a range attack and a lead attack makes you lose a gap closer on spear 3, whose follow-up skill requires melee range - this does not feels right. Combo flows smoothly. Animation team certainly make a lot of improvements compared to Daredevil staff skills.

I have suggested Sequence Skills for Thief before, so this is exactly what I was talking about back then. How good the implementation is remains to be seen, although I can't help but be a bit more optimistic for daredevil's future.

Housing and the ability to give other players a tour of your house, because I imagine that will help with gemstore sales.

I am rolling with a combination of Dragon and Marauder gear to achieve exactly 60% crit rate without infusion, which adds up to 100% after Critical Strike traitline and fury. I also use the relic that grants fury everytime I disable an opponent, which I can trigger reliably by Helmet Breaker to keep fury uptime 100%. Since this combo gives a more dodge iframe, I also choose Acrobatic to get vigor on evasion and might/condi cleanse on bouncing as well. DPS loss compared to full Berserker gear is like 15% when OW solo.

The damage buff to sword is welcoming and warranted because that weapon has been lagging behind for almost a decade. However, venom rework is rather weak. They just make it stack more so having more than one venom-build thief in the party grants some dps buff, which is a bit of a rare occurence. If there is a need for utility skill rework, I would say the whole line of Preparation skills needs it. Did they fix the bug with Swindle's Equilibrium not reducing CD?