You need to do something with shadowarts and smokescreen in pvp

[Crab Fear.1624]

I was thinking, on the most basic level, who gate keeps other thief builds out of ranked/meta/tourneys the most?

Answer it honestly.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Crab Fear.1624

[GhandiBot.6257]

Smoke Screen I agree with. It's waaaaaay too much value. Projectile block, massive aoe blind pulsing, and a combo field for stealth. Yet ANet nerfed Flash Shell on Mortar Kit. Just another classic example of inconsistencies in balancing.

Edited January 27, 2022 by GhandiBot.6257

[Genesis.5169]

Surely when double thief shows up on your team nobody is sweating about losing every fight because thieves have no staying power people and any form of pressure makes them run away thus making fights uneven most of the time. Surely doubles of any class is equally as bad right?

God what a joke of a thread and its still going on I promise you if SA takes nerfs people leave again out of disgust. Other people have defensive tools that completely ignore damage EVERYONE DOES EXCEPT THIEF and here you all are trying to nerf the only defensive tools thief has.

 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Genesis.5169

[Math.5123]

19 minutes ago, Crab Fear.1624 said:

I was thinking, on the most basic level, who gate keeps other thief builds out of ranked/meta/tourneys the most?

Answer it honestly.

SA dp thief gatekeeps other thief builds. 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Math.5123

[lightstalker.1498]

2 minutes ago, Genesis.5169 said:

Surely when double thief shows up on your team nobody is sweating about losing every fight because thieves have no staying power people and any form of pressure makes them run away thus making fights uneven most of the time. Surely doubles of any class is equally as bad right?

God what a joke of a thread and its still going on I promise you if SA takes nerfs people leave again out of disgust. Other people have defensive tools that completely ignore damage EVERYONE DOES EXCEPT THIEF and here you all are trying to nerf the only defensive tools thief has.

 

 

Thief has a different design and role in conquest. They are fast, and they hit hard asf. Staying power is not an argument. It's actually a bad thing, and just gives excuse for other class to have bad things. Thief's role lies in the ability to move from point to point quickly, and ganking down the low HP or primary target, and then LEAVING to the next point. You don't need shadow arts to accomplish this. Sindrener was even talking recently about how thief could just roll with deadly arts and still be valuable. You +1 and roam faster than anyone on the map.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

1 hour ago, Crab Fear.1624 said:

I was thinking, on the most basic level, who gate keeps other thief builds out of ranked/meta/tourneys the most?

Answer it honestly.

What do you mean by this? Thief has been the most meta defining class for years. Sidenode meta is determined by what, if anything, can survive a thief +1. Thief has been the best at rotating and decapping since forever. Even now in this dumb support + 2 necro meta you still need a thief to be in teamfights to stop signet rezzes and secure kills, in addition to all their other roles that they excel at. And if its not d/p then its condi thief or some other dumb SA build.

[CutesySylveon.8290]

14 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Okay. Let's briefly assume you're right about this. Answer some things for me:

Is thief in a playable state outside of SA? If so, how?

What do you want for thieves instead of Shadow Arts? Is there any pending suggestion to adjust their mitigation in any way so that they can survive any proposed SA rework, or is that just not important as long as they aren't annoying?

Yes, thief is playable outside of SA. I agree that other traitlines like CS are in dire need of reworks and Acro is still saddled with a 300 sec trait, but Thief should not have many mitigation tools at all of this caliber; it's the most mobile class with tons of debilitating and hindering capabilities that serve as its survival.

Tons of blinds, multiple instant cast interrupts, boon theft, stolen skills themselves are almost all fantastic skills, plenty of evasion, and stealth. On top of damage being low overall, it has plenty of tools to survive without SA, but it becomes downright trivial with it. This isn't even factoring in that it's not meant to be sustaining a fight anyway.

 

Thief will always be annoying, especially when Steal is part of their class mechanic, so it's not about making them not annoying, but having it be a fair interaction. 

[Jumpel.3972]

20 hours ago, CutesySylveon.8290 said:

Shadow Arts benefits D/p more than most weapon sets, yes.

Yes because D/P can stealth on demand !

If Shadow Art was the real problem, every thief build with it would be overpower.

 

Don't nerf a whole traitline and penalize many build because of one weapon set

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

 

3 hours ago, CutesySylveon.8290 said:

Yes, thief is playable outside of SA. I agree that other traitlines like CS are in dire need of reworks and Acro is still saddled with a 300 sec trait, but Thief should not have many mitigation tools at all of this caliber; it's the most mobile class with tons of debilitating and hindering capabilities that serve as its survival.

Tons of blinds, multiple instant cast interrupts, boon theft, stolen skills themselves are almost all fantastic skills, plenty of evasion, and stealth. On top of damage being low overall, it has plenty of tools to survive without SA, but it becomes downright trivial with it. This isn't even factoring in that it's not meant to be sustaining a fight anyway.

 

Thief will always be annoying, especially when Steal is part of their class mechanic, so it's not about making them not annoying, but having it be a fair interaction. 

I appreciate your response, but I don't agree with it.  That being said, SA is barebones anyway, so as long as they replace SA with something useful/fix acro/fix CS  there isn't anything Arenanet can do to SA that hasn't been done already short of punishing smokescreen camping.

Be my guest. As long as you ensure those weapon sets that don't focus on mobility get the mitigation you think mobile thief shouldn't have. 

3 hours ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

What do you mean by this? Thief has been the most meta defining class for years. Sidenode meta is determined by what, if anything, can survive a thief +1. Thief has been the best at rotating and decapping since forever. Even now in this dumb support + 2 necro meta you still need a thief to be in teamfights to stop signet rezzes and secure kills, in addition to all their other roles that they excel at. And if its not d/p then its condi thief or some other dumb SA build.

Nerfing SA won't stop thief +1. Itll just make it more dps oriented (because instead of slotting SA, D/P thieves will slot kitten). 

This not only fails to alleviate the problem that people have with +1 decap thieves shaping the meta, but practically ensures more people will play this way instead of one of those other dumb SA builds that trades mobility for a shred of staying power. 

It's just really confusing to me that people can't tolerate D/P S/A thief, but think nerfing S/A is going to solve that problem at all. And if your problem is with another S/A thief build, why?  I don't really care one way or the other about SA enough to ardently defend it, but it seems like nerfs to it won't address the problem. People are going to play thief until they can't, and if SA gets nerfed (or reworked, I dont know how you're gonna nerf SA when its stealth modifier is so light) you're only going to see a thief when its unfair for you. 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261
hooray, I was able to form an argument despite not being motivated.

[Genesis.5169]

6 hours ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

What do you mean by this? Thief has been the most meta defining class for years. Sidenode meta is determined by what, if anything, can survive a thief +1. Thief has been the best at rotating and decapping since forever. Even now in this dumb support + 2 necro meta you still need a thief to be in teamfights to stop signet rezzes and secure kills, in addition to all their other roles that they excel at. And if its not d/p then its condi thief or some other dumb SA build.

You confuse thief with.
Chrono bunker.
Symbolbrand.
Original Condi mirage.
Orginal Spellbreaker.
Release Scourge.

In all of these old meta's there were better bunkers and sidenoders thieves could do nothing about they have always been mid tier always shaping the meta get out of here please even in WvW at best they were okay roamers. In this current meta everyone has access to CC anyone can stop a signet res, kitten my DH can stop a signet rez with pull and DH's have little to no CC.

I'll give you one thing this meta has treated thieves better then mesmers, engineers still better sidenoders then thieves tho.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Genesis.5169

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

3 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

+1 decap thieves shaping the meta

How about we make infiltrators arrow cost even more initiative?

[Geoff Fey.1035]

4 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

How about we make infiltrators arrow cost even more initiative?

This hurts so much.  There's no need for it costing as much as it does in PvE. (6) PvP/WvW I get because it's a limited size map and/or mobility is KEY, but it's still huge (8). For reference, Specters baseline will have 9 Initiative. You have to ask "why" a Specter would ever use a Shortbow but at the same time good-lordy-loo.

To the subject itself--the issue people seem to have with Thief is that "stealth OP" and "Blind OP" but what would be both thematic (which is a huge thing for ANet) and equal for Thief survivability?

• Dodges--already exists in Acrobatics & Daredevil.
• Range/Disengagement--Deadeye.
• Mitigation (Weakness/Vulnerability/Chill/Slow)--already exists in Core, but mitigation is never a substitute for survivability (no profession in GW2 solely uses those conditions as their only method of sustain)

You could push survivability into CC (similar to Warrior, Engineer, and partially Necromancer), but you then need to offbalance the mobility of the Thief (those 3 professions are less mobile) to compensate, so then you're affecting 3 gameplay mechanics (Blind/Stealth/Mobility).

Specter is close to how ANet could rejig the entire Thief spec (i.e. massive mobility focus via Wells instead of Stealth) but then it would be taking what makes Specter special and distributing it to all of Thief, thereby making Specter itself less so.

To be clear I'm not advocating for that--Thieves are designed around mobility and opportunity, and where other professions can take a hit via. Aegis/Barrier/Toughness/Blocks, a Thief always has to be Dodging or making sure they are not in the line of fire.

If you're upset about Blinds--bring Resistance/condi cleanse.

If you're worried about Stealth--bring hard hitting AoE if you think a Thief is nearby.

Yes, you might get ganked before you can do anything, but the same could be said for someone no paying attention as a Ranger it drawing a bead on them or if a CC-lock-Condi-Burst Necromancer is creeping up from behind.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Just now, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

Specters baseline will have 9 Initiative.

sounds like 9 initiative cost is a good amount then!

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

9 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

How about we make infiltrators arrow cost even more initiative?

pain and wont stop people from dying to thieves

[Curennos.9307]

2 minutes ago, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

This hurts so much.  There's no need for it costing as much as it does in PvE. (6) PvP/WvW I get because it's a limited size map and/or mobility is KEY, but it's still huge (8). For reference, Specters baseline will have 9 Initiative. You have to ask "why" a Specter would ever use a Shortbow but at the same time good-lordy-loo.

To the subject itself--the issue people seem to have with Thief is that "stealth OP" and "Blind OP" but what would be both thematic (which is a huge thing for ANet) and equal for Thief survivability?

• Dodges--already exists in Acrobatics & Daredevil.
• Range/Disengagement--Deadeye.
• Mitigation (Weakness/Vulnerability/Chill/Slow)--already exists in Core, but mitigation is never a substitute for survivability (no profession in GW2 solely uses those conditions as their only method of sustain)

You could push survivability into CC (similar to Warrior, Engineer, and partially Necromancer), but you then need to offbalance the mobility of the Thief (those 3 professions are less mobile) to compensate, so then you're affecting 3 gameplay mechanics (Blind/Stealth/Mobility).

Specter is close to how ANet could rejig the entire Thief spec (i.e. massive mobility focus via Wells instead of Stealth) but then it would be taking what makes Specter special and distributing it to all of Thief, thereby making Specter itself less so.

To be clear I'm not advocating for that--Thieves are designed around mobility and opportunity, and where other professions can take a hit via. Aegis/Barrier/Toughness/Blocks, a Thief always has to be Dodging or making sure they are not in the line of fire.

If you're upset about Blinds--bring Resistance/condi cleanse.

If you're worried about Stealth--bring hard hitting AoE if you think a Thief is nearby.

Yes, you might get ganked before you can do anything, but the same could be said for someone no paying attention as a Ranger it drawing a bead on them or if a CC-lock-Condi-Burst Necromancer is creeping up from behind.

Cleanse/resistance aren't really valid counters to blind. There just isn't enough cleanse floating around to make it worthwhile, and resistance just isn't an accessible boon. To try and help deal with something, you would expect to, say, to put arbitrary numbers on something...sacrifices -1 in one area to gain +1 in another, but with the current state of things you're trading -3 in one area for +1 in another. 

 

As for the blinds - they can be fine, generally, but a lot of them tend to have some issues: ridiculously long durations (Shadow Shot has a 5 second blind. Just...why), pulsing in general (Black Powder, which I don't really consider a huge issue but it leads into..), extremely fast pulsing (aka smoke screen). Being that you have to actually try to hit something (and fail) to remove blind, a duration beyond 2, maybe 3 sec tops can be excessive.

 

Blind isn't necessarily OP on a mechanical level - it's just that the potential balancing parts of it have either faded away (was Shadow Shot's blind always 5 sec?) or never existed in the first place. Smoke Screen essentially shuts down EVERYTHING except a few niche channeled/casted ranged skills that are not projectiles, which isn't something that a great many classes have reasonable access to. That isn't to say smoke screen should be easily counterable - rather, that it is at the point where it's a feast or famine and could stand to be dialed back a little bit. It shouldn't shut out as many types of damage as it does and could stand to be decreased in both power and, imo, cooldown.

 

For Shadow Shot, 5 sec isn't much of an issue if you're a class that's relatively well-loaded with multi hit skills, quick skills, quick ranged skills, etc. A spiraling necromancer isn't likely to care overmuch that you're blinding them with shadow shot, unless they're sitting in a pulsing field. On the other hand, basically all of warrior is screwed pretty hard by the current state of blinds, where a thief can use shadow shot proactively as a means of sticking and damage, and the blind just ends up being a bonus because it lasts so long, can be applied so frequently, and warrior is so slow that it becomes a real issue.

 

Now, to be fair, this isn't *all* a thief's fault. Warrior in particular just needs some love, but I still think that even if (ideally, when) they get it, stuff like Shadow Shot will still deserve a decrease on the blind duration. Mind, I also think it's fine for slower, more melee focused classes to struggle against mechanics that due to their design have an advantage against them, but after a certain point that advantage is just too much.

 

In short, how much resources certain classes are expected - or forced - to spend to deal with a certain mechanic is not balanced out. The ratio of resource expenditure to counter vs resource expenditure to force someone to deal with a mechanic is out of whack.

 

Cleansing sigils can help with this, of course, and weapon swapping on my warr right into an arcing slice against thieves who think they're safe can be funny, but I think my point still stands here.

 

Which is basically the entire issue people have with stealth, too, when dealing with it entails:

- Cross your fingers and hope to god there's some reveal hidden away in your class somewhere, which may or may not exist and may or may not have some kind of reasonable tradeoff you can make to acquire

- Guess and hope you get lucky.

 

Both of which are deeply unpleasant scenarios to deal with. 

[Crab Fear.1624]

On 1/27/2022 at 6:07 PM, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

How about we make infiltrators arrow cost even more initiative?

How about we nerf blurred inscriptions

[Crab Fear.1624]

On 1/27/2022 at 6:49 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

Cleanse/resistance aren't really valid counters to blind. There just isn't enough cleanse floating around to make it worthwhile, and resistance just isn't an accessible boon. To try and help deal with something, you would expect to, say, to put arbitrary numbers on something...sacrifices -1 in one area to gain +1 in another, but with the current state of things you're trading -3 in one area for +1 in another. 

 

As for the blinds - they can be fine, generally, but a lot of them tend to have some issues: ridiculously long durations (Shadow Shot has a 5 second blind. Just...why), pulsing in general (Black Powder, which I don't really consider a huge issue but it leads into..), extremely fast pulsing (aka smoke screen). Being that you have to actually try to hit something (and fail) to remove blind, a duration beyond 2, maybe 3 sec tops can be excessive.

 

Blind isn't necessarily OP on a mechanical level - it's just that the potential balancing parts of it have either faded away (was Shadow Shot's blind always 5 sec?) or never existed in the first place. Smoke Screen essentially shuts down EVERYTHING except a few niche channeled/casted ranged skills that are not projectiles, which isn't something that a great many classes have reasonable access to. That isn't to say smoke screen should be easily counterable - rather, that it is at the point where it's a feast or famine and could stand to be dialed back a little bit. It shouldn't shut out as many types of damage as it does and could stand to be decreased in both power and, imo, cooldown.

 

For Shadow Shot, 5 sec isn't much of an issue if you're a class that's relatively well-loaded with multi hit skills, quick skills, quick ranged skills, etc. A spiraling necromancer isn't likely to care overmuch that you're blinding them with shadow shot, unless they're sitting in a pulsing field. On the other hand, basically all of warrior is screwed pretty hard by the current state of blinds, where a thief can use shadow shot proactively as a means of sticking and damage, and the blind just ends up being a bonus because it lasts so long, can be applied so frequently, and warrior is so slow that it becomes a real issue.

 

Now, to be fair, this isn't *all* a thief's fault. Warrior in particular just needs some love, but I still think that even if (ideally, when) they get it, stuff like Shadow Shot will still deserve a decrease on the blind duration. Mind, I also think it's fine for slower, more melee focused classes to struggle against mechanics that due to their design have an advantage against them, but after a certain point that advantage is just too much.

 

In short, how much resources certain classes are expected - or forced - to spend to deal with a certain mechanic is not balanced out. The ratio of resource expenditure to counter vs resource expenditure to force someone to deal with a mechanic is out of whack.

 

Cleansing sigils can help with this, of course, and weapon swapping on my warr right into an arcing slice against thieves who think they're safe can be funny, but I think my point still stands here.

 

Which is basically the entire issue people have with stealth, too, when dealing with it entails:

- Cross your fingers and hope to god there's some reveal hidden away in your class somewhere, which may or may not exist and may or may not have some kind of reasonable tradeoff you can make to acquire

- Guess and hope you get lucky.

 

Both of which are deeply unpleasant scenarios to deal with. 

Everyone can't have everything to counter thief.

Argument destroyed.

[Curennos.9307]

2 hours ago, Crab Fear.1624 said:

Everyone can't have everything to counter thief.

Argument destroyed.

That's not what I'm asking for. In fact, I didn't 'ask' or argue for anything in that post. I was telling you why you were wrong.

 

If you are interested in having that discussion, though - 

 

I don't want people to have easily accessible hard counters to thief defensive mechanisms. What I do want is for those defenses to be more interactive and less feast or famine (for example, classes tend to either have a reveal somewhere or they don't have a single one anywhere, resulting in a lack of buildcraft, tradeoff, etc in acquiring this or that tool to help deal with a certain situation).

 

This could be accomplished by things as simple as reducing shadow shot's blind duration to 2 or 3 seconds, slowing down the pulsing blind on smoke screen while giving it some other form of defense that only comes into play when the thief is hit (such as protection, healing, barrier, etc), and making a few select small changes to shadow arts (such as removing the stealth duration increase and replacing it with something else) so stealth stacking setups aren't as rewarded, which would make fighting thieves using those tools more interactive - not by providing total counters/negation to those mechanics, but by removing a lot of the 'slack' in those skills. Call it what you like - feast or famine nature, slack, etc.

 

Thief also deserves some changes so that it can feel effective, fun, and make its own build tradeoffs (or have those options to make those tradeoffs in the first place, in the case of them being Trickery's kitten for years on end). Crit strikes buffs/reworks, yadda yadda you know this bit already.

 

I also pointed out that part of this isn't really thief's fault, and that being able to make build tradeoffs - or lack thereof - is a problem to be fixed in other classes. For example, warrior's defense traitline is horrendously out of date and horrible in a lot of ways, and could easily get some love to help alleviate warrior's specific issues.

 

Hopefully that clears things up. If you're having trouble understanding anything else, let me know. Happy to help.

[Kuma.1503]

Maybe we should stop nerfing around the problem and rework stealth itself. 

When stealthed you can:

- Attack in stealth without getting revealed

- Be in close proximity to enemies without alerting them to your presence

- Receive no penalties in stealth such as a movement speed reduction or lock-out on specific skills. 

Every other game I've played had at least one of these mechanics to balance out stealth. 

Interestingly, you an also share stealth in this game, which is rare. 

 

Outside of stealth, and arguably steal (instant cast port with no tell that applies a ton of effects at once via traits.  No counterplay if you're not near a no-port spot), there's a lot of stuff on thief that could actually use a buff. 

Off the top of my head:

Staff, Sword, dagger/dagger, pistol/pistol, the acrobatics traitline, the crit strikes traitline, over-reliance on trickery,  and preparations (shadow portal is an exception).

There's a lot of stuff on thief that could use some love, but unhealthy mechanics force devs to make it weak in other ways otherwise players will riot. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Kuma.1503