Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497

No... No I don't believe you. Every class was given mobility and shadow steps that could match thief - which beyond guardian hammer - was a thief only feature. And many can actually outrun thief as long as thief doesn't have terrain features to abuse. You have necromancer, your beloved, with a "mesmer portal" and I have yet to see you complain about it. And since you want to say that noticable differences don't count with thief portal, I won't accept an argument that it's different. You want to complain about a class that gives themselves condi... The class that is the condi god? That's not a punishment. It's a feature given the number of ways that necro can simply convert condi into boons and corrupt boons. Maybe you don't know the profession as well as you claim? Most necros I see actually abuse this to their advantage. Additionally, if you've played thief as long as you complained, you would know why thief has some of the strongest escapes in the game. The thief CANNOT fight other professions toe to toe, because they don't have the same level of survivability. Necromancer shroud? It doesn't scale off vitality as well as necros and the skills aren't powerful enough to justify staying in it as long as necro. Daredevil block? It's a channeled skill that stops you from doing anything else on a cool down. Dodges? You can no longer dodge while immobilize outside of init burning skills. All skills thst burn init are costly. Something you would know... But ignore. Stealth? If you played thief long enough in PvP modes you'd knoe that experienced players aren't bothered by it. They know hoe to handle it. Keep their distance, spin wildly, or throw down AOEs roughly where the thief appeared. The smart ones AOE smoke fields immediately to zone thief out of them and force them to burn more init - or reengage. Smarter ones with no AOEs carries protection, ageis, and regen so getting backstabbed isn't an issue. Stun breaks? Thief is mobile. Use condi as they can't discard them as quickly. Now you want to talk about toxicity? At least Thief has counterplay and checks and balances. Lets talk about necromancer for a bit. How long was Reaper back in HoT release allowed to be unkillable and dominate sPvP? Almost a full year. How long has Scourge been allowed to absolutely dominate WvW because of their wells? Almost three to four years. And they are still amazing in WvW. Meanwhile thief's only contribution to a team is just roaming capabilities. Something Mesmer does better - lagging in only mobility vs terrain heights. And specter hardly brings anything good to the table because they can't stay safe when using support functions, and they can't heal for kitten because their healing power scaling is low.

Something tells me a thief hurt you, and you never bothered to learn how the profession works or its weaknesses. You're just one of the people that screams nerf because they can't be bothered. Thief's portal is not as powerful as a mesmer or scourge portal. It's not useful in ambushes because of the short duration. And it's one way, rewind only. So you can't use it to advance troops in wvw without having the thief run to the intended spot. Drop port, and run back. In WvW it also has a limitation of five players, and one in PvP. Thieves primarily use it as an escape in WvW, and to quickly move back to a fight after decaping in PvP. It's almost never used in a combat capacity. And it's rarely used in team play beyond ferrying a single ally back.

Just don't fight fair. The players don't like thieves because they have "too much damage and mobility." And we get nerfed from being able to fight fairly. So... be a dishonorable cur and show them what happens when you force thief to fight like this. Use berserker gear and some runes for health. Take dagger/dagger and prepare shadow portal, take assassin sigil. Take mug. The idea is to hit them with an alpha strike and start the fight with a massive resource advantage. Drop portal somewhere safe. Pop Basilisk venom if its off cooldown. Press 4, Channel 5 and steal on it to catch them with the first burst combo. Move to their back while they are stuck and stab them. Heart seeker them to death. If they live, swap to bow and shadowstep off. If you're in trouble use shadow portal to escape. If you're a daredevil you might want to carry distracting dagger. D/D has no interrupts, and they are usually gonna panic heal. Slow heals heal for a lot, and are interruptible. You can also pop an assassin's signet if you wanna end them rightly. Just be careful with the basilisk venom. Its easy to see coming and they will know what you're about to do.

Or make a way for daredevil to generate might for the group without spamming utilities.

Core, deadeye, daredevil for most stuff. I wouldn't bother with Specter outside of raids.

Seems kinda pointless... Because you can honestly do the fractals without all of that kitten.

I have a feeling you don't play thief. Repeated nerfs made it so that Thief can't spam blinds without Whirlaxe blind powder combo (Single blinds are easily countered), Thief can't spam ports as easily as you think. Infil's Arrow is so expensive that it depletes your Init reserves immediately, so all weapons suffer for it. And Sword's Port ability is easily punished as it has a cast time. A well timed stun, burst combo, or better... tossing a trap onto the return point will murder a sword thief. Evade options on a thief doesn't protect them from condi-bs. And their ability to spam evades is hindered by a variety of things. Init if they rely on sword and dagger or dual dagger, Exhaustion (A bs mechanic that shouldn't exist), and stamina (not having vigor or stripping vigor from a thief will kitten them royally) Even daredevils. Stealth also has counter play. but people don't care to do it. They would rather complain. You know what the thief wants, so you deny them. You spam AOEs on yourself to zone the thief away from you. Or if you were paying attention, you drop an AOE onto the thief or their smoke. Landing a tracking skill on a cloaking thief also continues tracking through the cloak. Sooooo... yeah.

Your target must be lacking a heart beat if thry can't figure out how to avoid a DJ without a body block, especially given it has a huge tell, a warning sound, a laser beam, and no tracking.

I haven't seen anyone request the ability to move while kneeling on the forums. The most common complaint is that the kneel mechanic feels clunky. And its not hard to figure out why. Its not the kneeling is the problem its that you have to also remember to jam a friggin key in order to spend half a second to stand before you can move. Anything that jumps on your face will murder you for it. Most people's instincts would be to immediately press a movement key to get out of the way. Which is called "expected behavior". This is something most players got used to in a game where movement matters. You don't just randomly introduce a behavior thats completely alien to the rest of the games behavior. Thats bad UX. Take a look at FPS behaviors. Kneeling is generally hold or you tap a button. But to stand you tend to have far more ways to get out of it that feels natural to the player and doesn't require them to do additional input in a bad situation. Running causes you to stand immediately. Jumping causes you to stand in all but stealth focused games. If the game features an advanced movement mechanic that stands you up. But the player can easily slide into a roll. Then you have release the crouch or press crouch to stand in place. Using your movement keys should just make you standup if you're not intending to dodge via double tap.

The better changes to kneel would have been... Keep old kneel range. Kneeling while moving will cause a short range slide. Dodge rolling and pressing kneel through animation ends the animation in the kneel position. Using the movement keys longer than what is necessary for a roll would disengage kneel. Rolling in kneel, and holding a movement key at the end of the animation will disengage kneel. The above is all you had to do to not make kneeling feel like garbage. Something nice to have? Introduce new trait called "Darn Good Ground" Increases stamina regeneration while in kneel, Increases distance of dodge roll (Not dependent on rifle), also further increases the range and velocity of rifle rounds while kneeling.

The buff only somewhat undo the damage they did to dagger auto some years back they "reduced the damage by 16%" but reality was 33, as the 16 was only if you hit the whole combo. Most are able to land 2 reliably. The primary reason why thief used daggers wasn't for the damage. But because of D/P cuz everything else is lack luster. Cuz guess what. Anet won't kittening listen to the thief players who tell them where all the problems are steming from.

I've pretty much stopped playing at this point. Went to FF14 while I hope GW2's balance team gets their kitten together.

By Anets treatment of us? In the trash and not allowed to have fun

Oh yay... thief changes. I knew to expect nothing good from balance updates. I learned to expect the worse. So I can finally be pleasantly surprised after 10yrs of repeated shafting. It's been a constant frustration for thief. But this is disappointment beyond all friggin comprehension. Still once again, you ignore some very outstanding problems with thief that we would like you to fix first. Which is initiative costs, over dependency on trickery, and our initiative regeneration. Our ability to compete with other professions who have FAR more tools to work with. And what we get?! Deadeye practically becoming even more useless with an RP walk speed, AND reduced range. No one thought this through, i can see that. Because it is legit faster for the deadeye to just stand up. Move, and hunker down. Than to RP walk to not only get closer... but to cover for the FRIGGEN 300 range loss. PVE changes that are nice... but doesn't fix anything else wrong with the other gamemodes thief has to struggle through.

Oh... fantastic... a nerf. I knew to expect to be disappointed. But good friggin lord this is horrid.

Well. They changed how kneel worked. In not sure if I care for it. 75% movement speed, and the init cost went to two. I got distracted so I didn't get to see the full changes. But Im guessing its not all that impressive (again) given how quickly thry just blasted through thief. And they reduced the range. So FML Once again firebrand got a lot of love.

You can... But you're likely not going to be respected. Thiefs barely have a place in WvW as it is usually treated as a zerg fest. Even with guilds. Thats not to say its useless. Its just people are pretty stupid when it comes to options. Thief commanders usually have small teams and are generally going to be doing things such as havoc, flanking, artillery, scout (just using the tag to reveal your location to your team), QRF, prods (bashing a fort to draw attention, then bailing), and smashing larger zergs. It might sound weird that a small team will smash a larger zerg. But its actually very possible. A large zerg is generally vulnerable while moving. You have a lot of stragglers that gets separated from the main group. Or they don't have any buffs up and ready for an ambush. A small zerf of ten to 20 can keep together much more easily and abuse this fact. By attacking the larger zerg while its moving and meat grinding the individuals who fell behind. The larger group will either ignore you, or turn around. If they ignore you, they lose a good chunk of the stragglers, making them less effective as they get picked off. If they turn around, its almost always a hurried trickle rather than an angry meatball. So they get picked off anyways.

Tanks generally just have a small bit of toughness for old content. Or just use a mechanic in the newer content and go full glass. Thief can tank. And it has been done before with raids. Generally, abusing dodges. If blinds and interrupts could be used then thief would actually be a very good tank. But as it stands, literally anything else is probably better and requires far less effort.

Thief initiative rework

So... Im guessing complaints from thief players are commonly ignored during player feedback incorporation. Cuz the common pain point still hasn't been touched. Also please, PLEASE do not force roles. The game was inteneded to avoid these things, allowing a player to do a little bit of everything defined within their class mechanics. As a thief yes Im a single target damage dealer. But I am tired kf being forced into a +1 fighter because you decided Im not allowed to effectively duel anyone without being eons above them in skill. Additionally, you remove the players abilities to adapt dynamically without being forced to completely change characters. Remember that whole thing about having no healers? You forced them against player choice. Reducing them i to a stack fest where you're required to wait for specific professions.

They acknowledged thief was heavily reliant on Trickery during the Specter Reveal. And told thieves they were going to want to take it. Not long after admitting thief has the worst build diversity of any class

The thief's initial design was to be a very strong duelist/assassin character. Few classes were honestly able to hold up well against thief at launch because the design of thief was literally to be a strong 1v1 class. And it was never intended to fight fair, because it cannot afford to do that. Thief's role in competitive was to be a playmaker. You harassed enemies to keep them busy. Or if you find someone roaming solo in competitive, you killed them and remove them from the next team fight. The design consequence/trade off is that thief is PUNISHING if you screwed up. You had mobility, stealth, blind, interrupt, and dodges. Thats all you get for defense - which are all primarily short lived active options. You had no ability to generate stability, protection, aegis, no real way of healing yourself beyond 6, and ypur utilities have some of the longest cool downs. And were extraordinarily situational. Your weapon skills are not designed for damage, but utility so face rolling a burst is not an option. Your burst damage (which is heavily nerfed) comes from realistically only a single option which is easily missed and punished. You burn your init you are dead. And your init pool is shared between weapon swaps. You offered little team support, and there wasn't much thief could do to handle crowds. When a thief is able to 1v4 its generally because people stupidly chase him letting him kite. So... No. There's no problems with thief's design. Just problems with how nerfed it got.

Same. I'm actually near that point. I love the game. But its getting harder and harder to find the enthusiasm these days with how hard my profession is getting abused on a regular basis. Last time I logged in was a week after the release of the expansion

I don't need to reiterate what others said. Against someone who knows how to deal with thieves? This build will get rolled hard, as it provides very little to protect you from the common problems a thief will be facing. You might argue that you have escape in shadow step and infiltrators arrow. But... Infiltrators arrow got nerfed so hard that using it as an escape option is impossible without strong map knowledge and good positioning due to the 8init cost. And with how dynamic GW2 is. You're not maintaining positioning to use it without getting killed. Shadowstep has a long cool down with no way of reducing it now. And many professions now have means of catching up to you.

So... the stream showed some elements of the balance patch. What we got for thief is... My personal opinion? I'm extremely disappointed. I was hoping for more. Hoping that longstanding complaints would be addressed. But I guess I was a fool for hoping? It seemed like things were going to be good. Warrior got a lot of changes that would help them out. They even got Fury back for berserker. Vendicator's dodge mandrop got a massive buff - it happens a lot faster now (2.5s). The Vindicator's tradeoff was removed, so they have two dodges. Druid also got some helpful changes. But thief? Thief got some pretty rough nerfs, and just more changes for better synchronization with a singular spec at the punishment of the other specs. The one little crumb of a cookie we were given is that they are looking into removing Specter's trade off. But there's no promise on when that's gonna happen. But honestly I don't care about it because specters still got some other issues that's keeping me from playing it long term. Heck the whole class still got a lot of issues that Anet created, and I can clearly see now... don't want to fix.