Invictorum.7643

Chaining and init dumping into stealth only activates the entrance part though. So kinda self defeating in the long run, especially with Anet's longstanding nerfs toward Thief initiative costs. Plus if you force a thief to back off for 30 seconds on his cooldowns while you cap a point? Congrats, you win the fight. You dont think this is a healthy gameplay style, and half of us thieves don't feel willbender's current design is a healthy gameplay style. We're free to our own opinions. It wouldn't kill the trainline, it'd do the opposite. Most PvP/WvW Thieves would be MORE forced to take it. Our other traitlines simply aren't viable half the time with half the weapons. There's a strong reason we constantly use D/P or Rifle, and it's because those are the only weapons we can make work against most targets. D/P because it lets us use a majority of our kit most of the time, and it has incredibly utility through on demand daze from pistol 4, and smoke fields on pistol 5. Rifle because it is quite literally our ONLY viable long range choice. Pistol is a one trick pony, and dead in the water immediatly after, while shortbow only sees use because Infiltrator's Arrow is simply too good to pass up because of Z axis mobility. SA will continue being the only other choice alongside Trickery, simply because it allows us to survive in the current meta of boon and condition spam. It has both condition removal entering/exiting stealth, and a tiny bit of healing. Otherwise a condi bomb will kinda just delete thieves. Once they're viable to play over the current mainstays, you will. But because of how the game is currently balanced, Thief will constantly have Trickery and SA staple glued to their sides.

Degenerate gameplay? It encourages popping in and out of stealth, instead of constantly stacking it. Which is effectively just a glorified target break. I dont really see how that could be considered degenerate, considering a chunk of Mirage's kit does the same thing. SA as a whole got rebalanced to move away from stealth stacking literally because people complained about "degenerate gameplay", to this system of encouraging constantly dancing between stealthed and unstealthed. If it's nerfed further, it's probably gonna end up a dead traitline and then you get to deal with acro/tricks/DD sword/dagger duelists again.

We'll just go back to Tricks/Deadly/Crit strikes like we used to kekw

brb hitting someone with the 45 second cooldown Death's Judgement that has 5k range, 100% crit, 100% life steal, rips all boons, immobilizes target on use, unblockable, and hits for 30k damage, ignoring all armor.

Because Marked isnt designed to completely shut out a core mechanic of a class. It's there to mitigate the ability for people to constantly hide, so they cant just hide inside a tower/keep once it flips. It's also more so made as a mechanic to allow defenders the ability to know something is coming. If the target loss is one of your main complaints against stealth, then do you also believe that mesmer skills that drop target should also be nerfed?

Wrong person to quote, buu I'm saying that the complaints about thief from the few more egregious outcries here are highly exaggerated, and trying to put some mathematical context to it, before going into the actual gameplay context of no one would ever use step and steal just to run away. >_>

Let's assume its the most average D/P Daredevil thief. The only mobility choices on such a build are shadowstep, steal, and shadow shot. Only two can be used to escape, Shadowstep and Steal. 1200+1200+450 comes out to 2850 distance. Let's even add on top of that with Shortbow 5, Infiltrators arrow. 900 distance. So an absolute maximum of 3750 over the course of 3 seconds (which is a bit of a stretch in 3 seconds alone), assuming that your only stunbreak wasn't used in the fight, and the core mechanic of the class wasnt used in the fight. A situation that doesnt really happen. Unless it's a pve thief that doesnt want to fight players at all, which is kind of an outlier in this discussion.

I'm curious as to what skills you think a thief is using to do that? 1200 from Shadowstep 1200 from Steal (if they burn it on movement? which isnt really done) 450 from each Heartseeker So burning two major cooldowns and most initiative, leaving them completely open to a chase down depending on who theyre fighting. Because a willbender can catch up real quick.

Not even just aoe's. Most abilities dont require a target, I cant even remember how many times i've gotten caught my cheeky guardians with hammers, or anyone who has the experience to quick 180 to mitigate backstab damage because most thieves will wait till near the end of stealth before backstabbing to maximize initiative regain and healing. I've said it a million times, but Thief is a noob killer. It preys on lack of experience, but once you know how to fight a thief, they become far less troublesome than other classes. And not too many people pick it up and keep running a thief, because it's far easier to pick up just about any other class. The problem here is that thieves in their current design, it needs to be more than one traitline redesigned. Trickery in its current iteration needs to have some parts just rolled into general passives, because every single PvP or WvW build borderline requires it because of the extra initiative, the 15% damage boost via initiative spent, and the init on steal. Because Anet "balanced" abilities by upping initiative costs, it's forced Trickery to be a borderline mandatory trait line to remain competitive. And fun fact, Acrobatics was actually gutted just before HoT because it overlapped with Daredevil too much. Several Daredevil traits were actually in Acrobatics before, so buffing it now probably wouldnt make thieves too bad. But with the current design of thief, it's not really viable to run Acrobatics without both trickery and critical strikes, and that locks you out of elite specs. It just doesnt bring enough damage to the table without building completely for damage, but none of the elite specs really allow that. The problem here is that because of how intrinsic stealth is to Thief's kit, more so than any other class, any nerf to it almost requires some form of return for Thieves so that they arent more heavily screwed by it. Also, the whole reason Hide in Shadows is a thing for mesmers, is because it's actually BETTER than stealth. It has a maximum of 9 stacks, so if you gave that to thieves, you'd be making stealth arguably stronger than currently. Thief stealth currently has a stack maximum of 5, so 15 seconds total. Hide in Shadows can go up to 9, at 27 seconds. So yea, give it to thieves are your own peril lol.

It's a good thing we play a game where a target isnt always required to initiate attacks. Any pvp'r with experience knows you have to play mind games with thieves, and use certain attacks to fish for them in stealth. And stealth doesn't make you immune to CC either. Here's a genuine question. How do you want stealth to work? Exactly like mesmer's hide in shadows? What passive or additional mitigation are you gonna give to thief to make up for it?

Because it doesn't? You still get fully hit in stealth. It's why knowing how to fight a thief is important.

#no

Now where did I leave my popcorn... 🍿

I don't think most people will ever actually sit and learn how to fight Thief, tbh. Any class built on subversion and disguising intent will inherently be one of the most frustrating to face, to the point where people will just avoid dealing with them. Also helps that S/D is honestly one of the most fashionable and aesthetic sets to work with, tbh. It just hits right when you have that good set and design to work with.

I mean, having fought some members of Srge individually, y'all are good at what you do, but at the same time running 3 support builds in a 5 man group is kinda silly. Fought your 5/6 man groups on GoM a couple times this week too, and we had to pull at least double your number usually from the roamers to get through three or four support/healer builds lol. This is just another prime example of Anet neglecting to adjust the power of boons compared to the original design, despite giving extreme application to most builds.

Genuine question, have you played thief in WvW for an extended period of time? Because as of late, Thief has been steadily outclassed in most of its previously strongest areas, due to power creep from new elite specs, relics, and other factors. Willbender genuinely has better burst movement and burst damage, while also packing the sustain that Thief so sorely lacks. Thief has stealth for its own form of sustain through obscuration. And it's not like they're unhittable in stealth either. One strong condi bomb on a thief? Gonna take repeatedly stealthing/unstealthing to clear if theyre running SA, and most of the time you can't do it fast enough. Power mesmer may gas out faster, but it accelerates at a much higher pace, especially with the new Weaponmaster stuff. 25 Vuln stacks in an opening hit, followed by shatters? Hurts like heck, man. I will admit that thief normally does counter mesmer, but with how strong Cele builds are, as well as the ability to boonstack to an insane level has severely mitigated what burst can do. Not to mention that Mirage can just laugh and make their clones evade if they're running Infinite Horizon. And on the 11k health bit, please. It's genuinely easy for almost any build to be able to do 11k damage in VERY quick order. Hell, I've seen Cele builds able to do that much in the span of a few seconds. One final note, for P/P Cele DD. One target painter ruins their entire day. There isnt enough burst damage to stop you from using one real quick. (I will say though, let that build die. It's a blot on the class)

Ranger, guardian, and dagger ele have better mobility Edit: should note that I mean Willbender guard, not core/DH/FB Mesmer does this too. And willbender does the insta port bursting just as well, if not better. Because once you actually catch the thief, they pop like a balloon.

power block mirage running sword. Just genuinely one of the only builds i rage against because to me its just incredibly unfun to fight.

Deadeye can be as strong as any of the top meta contenders, but as long as the top meta contenders can pack a lot of ranged hate/reflect, DE won't find much play.

As of late, it feels like Thief has had its niche taken over by the elite specs of other classes. Willbender acts effectively as a better assassin. Mesmer and Ranger act as better long range burst classes. Firebrand, Revenant, and Mesmer make for better supports than Specter can hope to be once you're above 5 people. I'm honestly kind of scrambling for strings, but what do y'all feel Thief's niche is? What can it do better than others, that ACTUALLY effects combat and group play?

You havent fought good ones then. Just like old guard, willbender can kill someone just as fast as thief. The singular rectangle wall that they can just walk around? Or use a non-projectile to get around? The problem with Cele Harb is purely a stat thing. Too many passive stat boosts on top of bloated boon design currently, makes cele harb have effectively as many stats in condi/power as dedicated stat sets, while maintaining all the other stuff. That would make concentration work on stealth. And boon copying abilities work on stealth. That would get out of hand REAL quick.

Genuinely not sure if serious. Remove the single biggest effect of a skill, lower cost by 1 initiative. At that point, Shadowshot is legitimately just a better ability on the same weapon, if running D/P. P/P loses its ability to consistently throw blind out via blackpowder -> unload. Black powder cannot have its smoke field removed without then rebalancing pistol offhand as a whole for thief. And even then, stealth based gameplay is the most core design FOR thief, there's an entire trait line built around it.

Medi S/S Willbender, Full burst shatter Mesmer, Fresh Air catalyst, Explosives holo, Sic em Soulbeast. If a thief is dumping initiative on the opening burst, they lack any initiative to chase. And unless the thief dumps all initiative to get a full stealth off a Shadowshot? You WILL see them coming. Player or golem?

That would be gutting it though. The skill has functioned in the way it does since the launch of base GW2. It has an incredibly low power coefficient, costs 6 initiative, and only blinds for 2 seconds on the initial shot. Thief would need to be given some other basic access to stealth if such a core piece of the weapon was removed. Removing the smoke field from pistol 5, would be like removing any of the auras from ele's focus abilities, or blocks from shield abilities.

Those kinds of numbers only happen on builds running minimal to 0 toughness from gear though. And as someone who's been playing thief since launch, and been on the receiving end of thieves much better than I, if your opponent hasn't tried to open a gap or pop defensives by the time the steal and CnD have gone through? Then maybe they shouldn't be running gear that doesn't accommodate for slower reaction times. And one giant thing people forget is that while Thieves have that massively frontloaded damage, they have so many tradeoffs for it. There is basically 0 staying power if the thief is running that kind of build. Running Deadly Arts means no Shadow Arts, which in turn means the thief has basically 0 functional condition cleanse when they need it. They are going ALL in on that burst damage, but will crumble when forced to deal with conditions. And that's assuming theyre running Daredevil, since Deadeye is even worse are sustain with D/P use. And if they fail to secure the kill because their opponent reacted accordingly? They have little to no recourse outside trying to run away, if their opponent lets them. But on the flip side, the exact same thing can happen to a thief from other classes. Ever have a FA ele just lightning flash to you real quick and chunk you down to 40% before getting one crit in fire, and doing it again? Willbender being effectively just blue thief right now? Or Mesmer who can have just as much, if not more burst than a thief. Massive burst isn't something purely in the court of Thief. Thief can just hide it a little better, so of course it's going to turn fresh players into red puddles. In literally every PvP game where you can play a class that can hide your actions, that class inevitably becomes the noob killer. I truely get where people come from on this situation, but far too many people are trying to use whats meta, or what other, more experienced players tell them to use. When in reality, they need to work up the skills and reactions to be able to use that kind of gear, because without the foresight, experience, and understanding on how to react to other players? You're just going to end up with a frustrated new player who doesn't see why they cant overcome in a fight that they were poorly prepared for. They need to learn to anticipate, and they cannot learn until they muster up enough experience. And unfortunately, experience is earned from each fight, win or loss.