Ripping the band-aid off thief.

[Curennos.9307]

Thief's dependence on the Trickery traitline and shortbow#5 has gone on too long - it will be extremely difficult to justify better long term changes to thief that allow it more role flexibility while shortbow enables huge map mobility, and Trickery...Is just far too necessary. It contains some things that, based on the rules anet has set across classes, some things in Trickery should not exist because it subjects thief to cost-benefit rules other classes operate under but without some of the benefit. 

 

TLDR at the bottom.

 

Context

I am primarily a sPvP player. I don't really touch WvW because I'm lazy and the thought of actually wandering around looking for fights sounds like too much effort. I also do some PvE, but honestly PvE will always have a meta that the majority will run because snowcrows posted this or that build, so I don't really care too much about that as long as DPS there is 'viable'. This is primarily sPvP focused, so I apologize in advance if any of these sound like absolute madness from a PvE or WvW perspective.

 

 

First, Trickery and other key mechanics

1) Thief no longer has a weapon swap cooldown. All things that involve a weapon swap cooldown, such as Quick Pockets, will remain unchanged. Other classes have weapon swap cooldowns to create interplay between what skills they have available at any given time, and in exchange they have a total of two different auto attacks and 8 skills, which they can cast in any way they please. In comparison, thief has max 12 ini (3 with trickery, we'll get to that later) they can use to cast any skill multiple times in a row. Thief does not fit into anet's weapon swap mechanism the same way other classes do and has the drawbacks without any of the benefits. This change will also give thief more access to weapon swap cancel options, which would be a nice side benefit.

 

That said, I do think there should be a mitigating factor, and because I'm feeling especially unimaginative right now - weapon swapping will cost 1 initiative, with the first weapon swap every 9 seconds being free. This may be unnecessary, but good to toss that in there. Planned, well thought out weapon swapping should be rewarded, but being able to swap cancel anything and have access to any weapon skill almost instantly is still very strong.

 

This may make the Quick Pockets GM trait (which is horrendously designed, extremely boring, and should be changed to retain its core function while having a bit extra sprinkled on top) more attractive, too. Alternatively, remove the ini gain from quick pockets and just make it eliminate the weapon swap cost.

 

2) Steal giving initiative (landing steal - I don't think missing steal gives ini but if it does, it shouldn't) is now baseline. Steal now steals 1 boon baseline with the same priority as bountiful theft, and interrupts with a 1/4 second daze. 

Preparedness maximum initiative is baseline. I don't care enough about this minor trait to suggest additions to it. Moving on.

 

Lead Attacks steal recharge reduction is baseline and reduces steal cooldown to 25 seconds (because 26 irritates me). Stacking damage increase moved over to Critical Strikes because having a single traitline be both the go-to for boons/boonrip/interrupts and have a solid damage increase is ridiculous. Replace it with something boon related - making it give +1 to boonrips would be interesting, especially if it applies to the weapon sigils, but that's for someone else to think up. I don't want to impinge too much on Spellbreakers, they've been abused enough.

 

Slight of hand: Unchanged**, kind of. Good option for extra daze duration and steal CD reduction. Imo, grandmaster traits should be more playstyle defining and thief has...almost none of that. It could be changed to play into the interrupt playstyle, where successfully interrupting gives Steal a larger cooldown reduction or some other benefit, but I don't want to poke it too hard.

 

Bountiful Theft: Stays the same, but increases boons stolen by steal to 3 (total - as there is 1 stolen baseline). This could easily be made into a GM trait where it granted you exact copies of boons stolen, encouraging thieves to target the highest boon generator in fights.

 

Shortbow#5 and thief F4/5 skills

I won't touch on any other shortbow skills here except #5. In short, I'd reduce shortbow#5's distance by half, decrease the ini cost to 6, and adjust the 5 second blind on ending location to a 2 sec blind +1 sec weakness + 1 ini gain if it hits a target. Buff as needed so it's useful for engaging, but less so if used to escape or rotate quickly. Weakness would help the thief engage without immediately imploding, but the blind duration is ridiculously long.

 

Next, add two skills: F4 and F5. F4 is a teleport and F5 is stealth. They function on a shared ammo system - the thief will start with 2 charges. The first charge has a cooldown of 8 seconds and the second charge a CD of 16 seconds. Or 10 and 15 seconds, or 10 and 18 seconds, or...whatever works. The shadowstep is a 2 ini cost, 450 unit range skill while the stealth skill gives 2 (or 1, if needed) sec of stealth for 2 ini. These skills will be CORE THIEF ONLY and vanish when switching to an elite spec. These will cement core thief's rotation speed superiority while still allowing shortbow 5 to accentuate the travel speed. The napkin math would be to nerf shortbow 5 by like...1/3-1/2, put that power into core thief f4/5 so that core thief rotates somewhat faster than other thieves, but elite specs can still fill the role.

 

My napkin math: Shortbow5 never should've been made 8 ini, so I'm going to pretend anet was reasonable and adjusted it to 7. This makes the skill worth approx 128 units of movement per second/per ini. 450 range and a 6 ini cost puts it somewhere in the realm of about half that. The other 450 units of range per 7 (or 8, rather) seconds would be held by the thief's f4/5 skill(s), totaling a slightly higher time/ini cost than currently but having an option for burst movement as compensation, + a bit of stealth to be used in combat as well. Further, 2 charges of a shadowstep would give thieves access to Shadowstep (the utility skill) stomp functionality if need be, because that utility has also been basically required since...ever?

 

Honorable mention: Shadow Arts

Change every single thing that says 'gives X benefit in stealth' to give said benefit in a burst when coming out of stealth. Also remove the stealth duration increase in Meld With Shadows.

 

Ex: Shadows Rejuvenation: No longer gives health and initiative while in stealth. Instead, gives a 1-2k heal (or barrier) + 1-2 initiative when coming out of a stealth. Can be adjusted as needed to only activate when coming out of stealth when revealed, and only when revealed by the thief's own actions to prevent weird interplay between revealing say, a rev revealing a thief and giving 'em a heal + ini. 

 

Cloaked in Shadow: Blind duration reduced to 2-3 seconds, blinds when coming out of stealth, and change sword's stealth attack to not conflict with this somehow. 

 

Honorable mention: Critical Strikes

This traitline needs more damage without adding more burst. Let's steal something from Guardian, because why not - guardian GS has...a power damage based DoT. I think it's the only one in the game, unless you consider pulm impact the same thing? Anyway...

 

The traitline should give 100% uptime of Fury. Not sure how but it should.

 

The lil traits, blast I can't remember what they're called but they're the hexagons, not the squares. They should add a mechanic that involves stacking some kind of power DoT on an enemy - single target only, except for a GM trait that helps with AoE - then add a few 'boom' effects in the GM traits. If Lead Attacks was moved over here, it could be a 1% damage increase per stack of the power dot on an opponent, up to 15%, and being able to consume them somehow for a bigger bonus. Similarly, Invigorating Precision would give healing, then a bigger heal when consuming the stacks on an opponent somehow. 

 

Hidden Killer is...If I recall correctly, it has a dedicated fanbase and should be preserved, but idk. Maybe make it a hexagon trait? And then fill in with a trait that does somethingsomething AoE boom. Who knows.

 

Overall, this traitline needs to give more damage that isn't bursty, more consistent, and less boring. +300 ferocity from Fury is the most boring thing I have ever seen. I mean, it's nice but...MEH.

 

Stolen Skills

Some of them are game changers and tilt a matchup heavily in thief's favor, some of them are absolutely worthless. Well. Only two off the top of my head are bad - ranger stolen skill and engineer. Engineer is just...I don't know. Make the radius bigger? It's so small and would be nice to have some more threatening AoE pulses. 

 

Ranger's stolen skill is nice, but whenever I use it it seems to go on a cooldown for some unfathomable reason. Also, I think it only cleanses 1 condi? Having this be the go-to steal target for thieves in a fight looking for more cleanse would be great, but it currently only cleanses 1 condi. Bump the cleanse up, cut the duration a little, all good.

 

Others are varying levels of good/okay, and could use either a trim or small change to fit in better. Mace Head Crack is nice, but could use a bit of a trim. 3 sec daze is bonkers and could easily be 2 sec, or 1 sec + a boon (aegis or prot if it lands?). Essence Sap seems overall 'meh' and I'd like it if it was less power damage with more focus on the Slow. Consume Plasma is..actually I forgot this was nerfed, it looks like it's in a pretty good spot now.

 

TLDR

Nerf shortbow 5, move the removed power into a f4/f5 skills for core thief + a lil extra stealth for the core thieves, as a treat.

 

Trickery has too many things that should be baseline because thief feels AWFUL without them (and specter would feel even worse). Fix it, but preserve the strongest aspects within trickery - everyone else gets Trickery lite so that ppl are no longer forced to run it, but Trickery is still the tricksiest for trick related things. Builds that use trickery now should be relatively unchanged, while builds that didn't use trickery (aka, all zero of them) no longer feel kitten without it. 

 

Fix Shadow arts to stop encouraging ridiculous stealth stacking, shorten stealth durations, etc, encourage dipping in and out of stealth quicker.

 

Fix Critical Strikes to be less 'here's some flat out damage, here's a little more damage, and you know what? I'm feeling generous, so here's some (still kind of uninteresting) damage'. 

 

 

Thoughts, also a note on numbers.

Anet isn't paying me, so these are numbers off the top of my head in however long this took and I put almost zero effort into organization. Are the numbers wrong? Probably. Are the concepts wrong? Also quite possible. I am 99.99% sure, though, that something has to be done about Trickery and shortbow for thief's long term health. I am also 100% sure that Throw Gunk sucks and I hate it. Anywho, have a nice Sunday everyone.

 

[Zacchary.6183]

Good ideas overall. Unfortunately for trickery, anet has never jumped on those suggestions and it seems like they never will. One suggestion I had to remove the issue with initiative interaction altogether was to give weaponskills a normal CD with an initiative cost that, when paid, will reduce the CD of that skill to 0.

Edited February 6, 2022 by Zacchary.6183

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

Nerf shortbow 5?....hasnt it already been butchered as is in wvw enough? U can o ly cast it one time now in wvw

[Curennos.9307]

4 hours ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Good ideas overall. Unfortunately for trickery, anet has never jumped on those suggestions and it seems like they never will. One suggestion I had to remove the issue with initiative interaction altogether was to give weaponskills a normal CD with an initiative cost that, when paid, will reduce the CD of that skill to 0.

Tbh I'm hoping anet just does **something** new, at the very least. This also sounds like a workable concept.

 

1 hour ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

Nerf shortbow 5?....hasnt it already been butchered as is in wvw enough? U can o ly cast it one time now in wvw

As I said at the very start in my post under the section labeled Context, I am not a wvw player. My understanding of wvw is that sb#5 is that it's primarily the vertical mobility that's useful on terrain, and with my suggestion it'd be usable twice in a row and, while the range would be nerfed, it would still enable thief to climb up and down. Can you elaborate?

 

TLDR: No, it hasn't been butchered enough. In some cases, anet nerfs something that's very strong, but doesn't 'follow through' so to speak. In the case of SB 5, nerfing it only made thieves *more* dependent on it and really didn't do much, if anything, to fix the issue. They also nerfed it in the wrong way - the purpose and strength of the skill was still relatively intact.

Edited February 6, 2022 by Curennos.9307

[Tails.9372]

The issue is that A-Net doesn't even adhere to the "rules" they set just for this class. It's even outlined in the official class description that thief is supposed to have a "toolbox" instead of a "rotation" type approach to weapon skill usage and in that regard the main issue isn't even trickery but the weapon sets themselves.

If the main source of a weapons sets single target damage is front loaded into the AA (with the other skills being more focused on utility) then the whole thing works as it should and you don't really have any issues with initiative management at all. On the other hand if the main source of a weapons set single target damage comes from a skill with initiative costs then trickery becomes almost necessary for prolonged fights and damage and utility skills start competing against each other for initiative which can lead to situations where it's the best choice to ignore your utility options (and the related game mechanics) just to keep up your damage (Ever heard someone saying that P/P "only spams 3"? That's one of the two reasons as for why that is.).

Sadly just changing up trickery is not going to solve this issue. Some sets would need a partial redesign (which can be done though dual skills) or at least some trait changes that specifically target the sets in question (e.g. by making some of the weapon related traits lower initiative costs of the weapon skills by one which btw. is already a standard thing they do for many of the "non-thief" weapon traits in form of CD reductions).

I also agree that they should be more lenient with the drawbacks they put on weapon swapping. According to A-Nets class description weapon skill usage on thief (and thus weapon swapping) has the stated goal to be "flexible and responsive in combat" which isn't really done justice here.

[Curennos.9307]

5 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

The issue is that A-Net doesn't even adhere to the "rules" they set just for this class. It's even outlined in the official class description that thief is supposed to have a "toolbox" instead of a "rotation" type approach to weapon skill usage and in that regard the main issue isn't even trickery but the weapon sets themselves.

If the main source of a weapons sets single target damage is front loaded into the AA (with the other skills being more focused on utility) then the whole thing works as it should and you don't really have any issues with initiative management at all. On the other hand if the main source of a weapons set single target damage comes from a skill with initiative costs then trickery becomes almost necessary for prolonged fights and damage and utility skills start competing against each other for initiative which can lead to situations where it's the best choice to ignore your utility options (and the related game mechanics) just to keep up your damage (Ever heard someone saying that P/P "only spams 3"? That's one of the two reasons as for why that is.).

Sadly just changing up trickery is not going to solve this issue. Some sets would need a partial redesign (which can be done though dual skills) or at least some trait changes that specifically target the sets in question (e.g. by making some of the weapon related traits lower initiative costs of the weapon skills by one which btw. is already a standard thing they do for many of the "non-thief" weapon traits in form of CD reductions).

I also agree that they should be more lenient with the drawbacks they put on weapon swapping. According to A-Nets class description weapon skill usage on thief (and thus weapon swapping) has the stated goal to be "flexible and responsive in combat" which isn't really done justice here.

Absolutely. I'm not claiming my OP will solve all the problems. However, I do think this is at least one of the best places to start, as I see the way thief's traitlines are set up as the primary limiting factor in making other changes - the current design of shadow arts vs anet trying to make adjustments to stealth (or d/p for that matter), the current design of shadow arts vs...basically anything else makes things difficult. I'm sure we could all outline whatever else changes we want to see to thief's weapons, etc, but I felt the OP was getting too long as it is, lol.

[Stx.4857]

Trickery does too much.  It's the go to initiative regen / quality of life tree, it's the bleed damage tree, and it's the offensive Boons tree.  It also has nice passive damage from lead attacks.  Some of this should be spread around to the other trees.  

 

The only builds I know of that don't use trickery are maybe power raid builds that get their Boons from support and don't need the extra initiative because a lot of dps is from auto attacks.  

 

I don't think shortbow needs more nerfs.  5 has been nerfed already.

[Curennos.9307]

On 2/8/2022 at 1:20 PM, Stx.4857 said:

Trickery does too much.  It's the go to initiative regen / quality of life tree, it's the bleed damage tree, and it's the offensive Boons tree.  It also has nice passive damage from lead attacks.  Some of this should be spread around to the other trees.  

 

The only builds I know of that don't use trickery are maybe power raid builds that get their Boons from support and don't need the extra initiative because a lot of dps is from auto attacks.  

 

I don't think shortbow needs more nerfs.  5 has been nerfed already.

Why don't you think shortbow doesn't need more nerfs tho.

 

My beef with it from a design standpoint is that it's such a strong mobility tool that it shapes thief's entire role in sPvP - which means the bar for mobility has risen for that role. It pushes other classes out of the role and force anet to give those classes even **more** mobility if they want to have some role overlap (everyone and their mother is getting teleports and whatnot in EoD). The tools given to one class do not exist in a vacuum, they're impacted by the tools of whoever you're fighting.

 

This is also an issue within thief itself - it forces out all other weapon sets. Even rifle barely holds on with death's retreat.

 

The weapon is basically exactly like trickery in the way it functions. It does way too much and so forces everything else out. Anet could nerf trickery a few more times and it would **still** probably be a staple in all builds.

[kash.9213]

18 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Why don't you think shortbow doesn't need more nerfs tho.

 

My beef with it from a design standpoint is that it's such a strong mobility tool that it shapes thief's entire role in sPvP - which means the bar for mobility has risen for that role. It pushes other classes out of the role and force anet to give those classes even **more** mobility if they want to have some role overlap (everyone and their mother is getting teleports and whatnot in EoD). The tools given to one class do not exist in a vacuum, they're impacted by the tools of whoever you're fighting.

 

This is also an issue within thief itself - it forces out all other weapon sets. Even rifle barely holds on with death's retreat.

 

The weapon is basically exactly like trickery in the way it functions. It does way too much and so forces everything else out. Anet could nerf trickery a few more times and it would **still** probably be a staple in all builds.

The mobility can be adjusted by reduced range, or trajectory speed to be more easily interrupted, but then reducing the Initiative cost again. There doesn't need to be any nerfs. It definitely should give strong mobility, but in the form of positioning (the blind makes sense in that context to protect you while you orient around the target) given the lack of stats and sustainable modifiers holding you up, but it doesn't need to be a map traveler which it seems to be where the problem is at. 

[Curennos.9307]

54 minutes ago, kash.9213 said:

The mobility can be adjusted by reduced range, or trajectory speed to be more easily interrupted, but then reducing the Initiative cost again. There doesn't need to be any nerfs. It definitely should give strong mobility, but in the form of positioning (the blind makes sense in that context to protect you while you orient around the target) given the lack of stats and sustainable modifiers holding you up, but it doesn't need to be a map traveler which it seems to be where the problem is at. 

 

On 2/6/2022 at 1:54 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

In short, I'd reduce shortbow#5's distance by half, decrease the ini cost to 6, and adjust the 5 second blind on ending location to a 2 sec blind +1 sec weakness + 1 ini gain if it hits a target. Buff as needed so it's useful for engaging, but less so if used to escape or rotate quickly. Weakness would help the thief engage without immediately imploding, but the blind duration currently is ridiculously long.

 

[kash.9213]

3 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

In short, I'd reduce shortbow#5's distance by half, decrease the ini cost to 6, and adjust the 5 second blind on ending location to a 2 sec blind +1 sec weakness + 1 ini gain if it hits a target. Buff as needed so it's useful for engaging, but less so if used to escape or rotate quickly. Weakness would help the thief engage without immediately imploding, but the blind duration currently is ridiculously long.

 

Dang, good call, I missed that earlier in the thread. I like the added Weakness, aside from the mitigation, that might make use of a few traits. 

[DeceiverX.8361]

SB5 needs its range for vertical mobility in sPvP.  Otherwise the kit really isn't worth using.

Short of putting a targeted shadowstep as a class skill and then removing the mobility from D/P and Shortbow I don't really think there's a good way to find a healthy balance since touching shortbow really does hit the less-viable, less-mobile kits quite hard.

[Raiken.1476]

Thief has so many band-aids that ripping just one isn't going to solve anything. Acrobatics is dead, so is sword, and there's not a single good power weapon that isn't locked behind an elite spec... and even that is debatable. That said, I don't have any idea why they keep the weapon swaps the way they are...

[DoomNexus.5324]

On 2/9/2022 at 8:35 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

Why don't you think shortbow doesn't need more nerfs tho.
My beef with it from a design standpoint is that it's such a strong mobility tool that it shapes thief's entire role in sPvP

Shortbow#5 only provides the bonus of vertical teleports now, other than that it has gotten nerfed so hard already that just leaping with heartseeker is as viable as using shortbow. The range nerf was already pretty bad (1200 down to 900) but since the initiative cost has been increased on sb#5 it is pretty much unusable for anything other than running around alone decapping stuff. Even with the trickery initiative boost you can literally just cast it once and have to wait for additional ini to regenerate on a second cast you are out. Basically any combat capabilities are lost until you've regenerated at least some ini again which would render you almost useless and an easy target for several seconds.. I think shortbow#5 has been nerfed way too much already.

And no, I think "your beef" is based on a false premise.. Thief is not in the state that's in because shortbow#5 exists but quite the opposite. They rely on its strong mobility (sword#2, dagger#2, d/p#3 too) because thief can't do anything else well. Thieves can't tank/sustain well, they can't support (yet) at all, they don't even deal a lot of damage anymore.. Anything other than out-of-combat mobility and you're better off just using a different class all together. Rev for example basically does everything thief can but a lot better - apart from the out-of-combat mobility. Thieves gravitating towards mobility is a symptom of being bad at everything else, not the other way around.

Quote

In short, I'd reduce shortbow#5's distance by half, decrease the ini cost to 6, and adjust the 5 second blind on ending location to a 2 sec blind +1 sec weakness + 1 ini gain if it hits a target. Buff as needed so it's useful for engaging, but less so if used to escape or rotate quickly.

What you are describing is basically Shiro Rev and we already have that so please no... Also if shortbow#5 range gets decreased any further it is honestly just flat out unusable even if you bring down its ini cost. And I don't want to speak about "invalid path" issues rn. 
Halving the distance while reducing ini cost by just 25% is a hard nerf btw, making it basically 50% more expensive (now 900 range for 8 ini, then (450+450) 900 range would cost 12 ini). How is this supposed to improve things again? Even with the added bonuses, this would be nowhere near worth it. Keep in mind that ini is shared across all skills and weapon sets. Why would I want to engage with a 6 ini skill if all it does is add a 2s cd and 1s weakness if I could as well throw out 2 heartseekers and at least deal a bit of damage.
And shortbow is not only the de-facto secondary weapon for thieves because of its #5, now even less so than previously.
#2 is a very underestimated AoE skill with a ton of damage output (even 1v1 it can be a lot higher than d/p + it is easier to hit since it's AoE), #3 is a dodge + in-fight mobility, #4 is probably as important as #5 due to the AoE interrupt, making it an extremely valuable skill in teamfights and especially when (multiple) people rezz or stomp, given they don't have stability ofc. I would even argue that #4 now is even more important than #5. One important job thieves have to basically always had to do is to interrupt rezzes, especially Signet of Mercy on support guards since Steal would (in conjunction with Trickery) rip stability and interrupt the signet. With sb#4's daze and the rezz-creep we now have I think this job just got even more important and this can REALLY turn games.
Add this to the fact that thief has initiative and no weapon cooldowns (apart from stealth attacks) and there would be no benefit in having a second pure-offensive weapon like s/d alongside d/p for example. All you do with it is switch to a tool set you are not traited for, so using it is just suboptimal. There are exceptions of course like rifle + d/p but for the most part shortbow just features a better addition to basically any main weapon set. It's not just sb#5.

@edit: To add to this:

On 2/6/2022 at 7:54 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

Trickery has too many things that should be baseline because thief feels AWFUL without them

I think trickery is not necessarily too loaded imho. The only thing that's making Trickery a necessity is the 3 initiative it gives, as it is just waaaay too important to even think about swapping it out for the majority of builds. Since Anet apparently can just balance thief skills by increasing initiative cost, having those 3 additional initiative are basically baseline now.

Edited February 12, 2022 by DoomNexus.5324

[Curennos.9307]

1 hour ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

Shortbow#5 only provides the bonus of vertical teleports now, other than that it has gotten nerfed so hard already that just leaping with heartseeker is as viable as using shortbow. The range nerf was already pretty bad (1200 down to 900) but since the initiative cost has been increased on sb#5 it is pretty much unusable for anything other than running around alone decapping stuff. Even with the trickery initiative boost you can literally just cast it once and have to wait for additional ini to regenerate on a second cast you are out. Basically any combat capabilities are lost until you've regenerated at least some ini again which would render you almost useless and an easy target for several seconds.. I think shortbow#5 has been nerfed way too much already.

And no, I think "your beef" is based on a false premise.. Thief is not in the state that's in because shortbow#5 exists but quite the opposite. They rely on its strong mobility (sword#2, dagger#2, d/p#3 too) because thief can't do anything else well. Thieves can't tank/sustain well, they can't support (yet) at all, they don't even deal a lot of damage anymore.. Anything other than out-of-combat mobility and you're better off just using a different class all together. Rev for example basically does everything thief can but a lot better - apart from the out-of-combat mobility. Thieves gravitating towards mobility is a symptom of being bad at everything else, not the other way around.

 

By all means, bump it to 600 units and 5 sec of weakness or something, I'm not the dev in charge of any of this. Perhaps a better phrasing would have been "I want to nerf and buff shortbow 5 in a way that gives thief more flexibility in how it fills its role in sPvP". I want SB5 nerfed to the point where people can suggest other buffs to thief and no longer have to deal with 'but Sb5 gives strong out of combat mobility and +1 potential, so no". I added in open ended 'buff as needed until x'/'I am sure that exact numbers and specific recommendations in here are wrong'. 

 

And anet absolutely needs to deal with the invalid path thing. I've been doing ranked in a sword/dagger core thief lately and the amount of kittens I vomit from my mouth every time I end up on the godforsaken djiin map and SB5 or sword2 fails...urgh.

 

Anywho. I had a few paragraphs about my premise but tbh, I think it was just badly phrased initially. Who knows. I think you're bonking against a brick wall that doesn't exist here, Whatever the case, I'll try to rephrase this. In short:

 

- Thief has certain design choices, etc that 'lock it in' to certain playstyles and options and detract from the class's long term health

- Shortbow is one of these options

- Within shortbow, SB5 is a contributing factor to thief's superiority in those playstyles

- Thief has the best (admittedly not as solid a lead as before, but still) out of combat mobility

- A not-insignificant contributing factor to this is shortbow5

- Basically every thief build except for the DE setup that uses rifle includes shortbow. If you imagine a pie that is 'here is where thief's class power lies', shortbow overall would take up a disproportionately large slice of the pie, and SB5 a certain slice within the slice.

- Thief would be OP if it had as much of a lead in out of combat mobility, and mobility in general, as it does if it also had more access to other defensive mechanisms

- My point is that within their selection of mobility options, there is this issue of relatively oppressive strength of SB5. Thief can't get *out* of the state it's in due to several things - the point of the OP was to list out the things I thought were keeping thief 'stuck'. Like trickery, shortbow is borderline required - in some cases, it's because of the current meta (SB4 being extremely valuable atm), and in others it's just because it offers solid options that aren't necessarily OP (SB2 offering good damage, I imagine someone could make an argument that it needs a damage shave but I don't care about it rn). Nerfing shortbow5 will allow more options in the future when changing other weapon skills in ways where the response would normally be 'this change will be very obviously too strong when stacked with shortbow'. You disagree with my premise but you just restated it back a different way -

 

What I'm after:

- I want SB5 nerfed, then buffed in a way that it still remains useful out of combat, but has additional in combat use (because using an 8 ini skill in combat is a death sentence unless you're running away) to loosen shortbow's overall monopoly on holding a lot of power in thief's 'out of combat mobility' kit. 

- When SB5 is adjusted in this way, other changes can happen - either in ways things on thieves are not normally buffed/changed/whatever, by adding thief-thematic things to them that normally would be too much when combined with the original incarnation of SB5, by making changes to other weapons.

- ^Such as moving the mobility current present in Sb5 to other places. An option I offered was additional f-skills to core, though obviously adjusting other weapons to offer slightly more mobility, or different kinds of mobility, is also an option.

[DoomNexus.5324]

12 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Anywho. I had a few paragraphs about my premise but tbh, I think it was just badly phrased initially. Who knows. I think you're bonking against a brick wall that doesn't exist here,

I understood what you were saying but I still think this is not true.
Imo you could even delete sb#5 all together and thieves would still pick shortbow as secondary because sb#2 and #4 are extremely good in team fights (basically the only thing we can offer for team fights) and well.. what else should we choose?
For example if I'm playing meta shadow arts d/p thief then why should I use s/d , p/p , s/p , p/d or... that's it.. (core) thief has no more options.
I mean.. tell me any one weapon sets that profits from having basically anything else than shortbow apart from rifle + d/p for stealth setup. Because I can't think of any that might have a chance for being meta or even viable in let's say plat 2+.

That's what I mean by saying the shortbow supremacy is a symptom (of a lot of other design flaws), not the cause. It's not a shackle that keeps us tied into the role, quite the opposite, it's the key that let's us stay meta.
Sure, I mean shortbow has its contribution we can agree on that, but that's like taking away someone's crutches who just had an accident and can't walk properly anymore. First they need to learn walking again, then you can replace or remove the crutch, not the other way around.

[Curennos.9307]

2 hours ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

I understood what you were saying but I still think this is not true.
Imo you could even delete sb#5 all together and thieves would still pick shortbow as secondary because sb#2 and #4 are extremely good in team fights (basically the only thing we can offer for team fights) and well.. what else should we choose?
For example if I'm playing meta shadow arts d/p thief then why should I use s/d , p/p , s/p , p/d or... that's it.. (core) thief has no more options.
I mean.. tell me any one weapon sets that profits from having basically anything else than shortbow apart from rifle + d/p for stealth setup. Because I can't think of any that might have a chance for being meta or even viable in let's say plat 2+.

That's what I mean by saying the shortbow supremacy is a symptom (of a lot of other design flaws), not the cause. It's not a shackle that keeps us tied into the role, quite the opposite, it's the key that let's us stay meta.
Sure, I mean shortbow has its contribution we can agree on that, but that's like taking away someone's crutches who just had an accident and can't walk properly anymore. First they need to learn walking again, then you can replace or remove the crutch, not the other way around.

Thief is full of design flaws, that I will +1, lol. But if something is so important that it serves, as you say, as the key that keeps thief in the meta. It doesn't really matter what you call it - and it feels kind of awkward speaking in metaphor(?) here, but I don't see how the distinction between the key and the shackle matters. It's the thing that thief is tied to if it wants to stay in the meta. 

 

I don't think any of the other SB skills really need a change, either, especially considering thief's relative fragility. Sb2 is a strong damage skill with some nice uses - AoE, damage while running away, being able to strip aegis and block stacks. On another class it'd be too strong, but thief isn't durable enough to get as much use out of it, and based on how ini works using the 2 skill means everything else suffers, so I find it fine. 3 is the typical evade that we can't really touch, #4 is an extremely niche skill that's vital in like...one scenario but extremely strong there and if that needs to be changed, that's for someone with a more creased brain and a lot more free thinking time than me. So I ended up on Sb5, the only one that looked like it could feasibly be changed to have actual impact. 

 

I don't disagree with the whole, learning to walk before taking the crutches away, either - rather, the OP was just to identity what I thought were the crutches and muse a little over possible solutions. I'm sure that if my entire OP and only things described was implemented thieves would be wrecked for a while - I'm just so, so tired of these things thief has to take otherwise it sucks. I would love to see SB brought down a tad and other weapons brought up so that we start seeing builds that don't include shortbow.

 

Do you disagree that shortbow5 needs to be changed somehow in conjunction with changes to other weapon sets so that thief has more than one 'key' it can use? And, if you agree, do you disagree with the idea that SB2-4 are basically not worth adjusting in a strategic sense (that is, when planning for long term class health, so excluding 'SB2 could use a damage nerf' or something) due to the role they fill in the kit? And, as an aside, do you think thieves would still be considered 'in the meta' if SB5 was deleted and replaced with...idk, a nondescript, generic skill that did not fill the same purpose?

[DoomNexus.5324]

2 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Do you disagree that shortbow5 needs to be changed somehow in conjunction with changes to other weapon sets so that thief has more than one 'key' it can use? And, if you agree, do you disagree with the idea that SB2-4 are basically not worth adjusting in a strategic sense (that is, when planning for long term class health, so excluding 'SB2 could use a damage nerf' or something) due to the role they fill in the kit? And, as an aside, do you think thieves would still be considered 'in the meta' if SB5 was deleted and replaced with...idk, a nondescript, generic skill that did not fill the same purpose?

Yes, I disagree that sb#5 needs to be changed (other than its cost being brought down to 6 again). In conjunction to other changes or not, doesn't really matter to me. If mobility gets nerfed I don't really care about what gets buffed instead.
I personally picked thief mainly because of its high mobility and ganking playstyle and stuck to it even in times where it was not really viable to play at all.
If I wanted to play some slightly less mobile brawler/duelist type of class I'd have switched to guard or rev a long time ago, maybe even ranger the other weapons were a bit more viable. With 20% pick rate my second most played class in sPvP actually is Rev (most of the time Power Shiro) because it's nice from time to time but I always went back to thief (65% pick).
And yes I honestly think thieves would just flat out fall out of meta if shortbow#5 was replaced with a non-mobility skill since, like I said, Rev and Guard both can already do what thief does but even better or they can at least bring more to the table (like proper team fighting capabilities or support) - apart from the ooc mobility. Engineer kinda too but not really.
I don't even have to speculate on that, we already had this scenario before mesmer portals were nerfed. Mesmer was in a pretty good spot back then (not broken but also more than viable) and due to how busted the portals were they were on-par with thieves if not even better. And thief fell out of meta because we didn't have anything going for us at this point. This was also when we still had a lot of damage mind you, and some other decent stuff that has been nerfed hard since then.
Same almost happened again back when Shiro on Rev was still busted with a lot of (infight) teleports, dodge rolls and quickness.

If anything I'd rather sacrifice stealth for some more reliable means of sustain, not mobility to shoehorn it into some brawler-type class. Thief - to me - is not meant to be a fighter, they have always been about ganking and I prefer this over a "proper" 1v1 or 2v2.
I would love to have an elite spec that's focused on brawling (more than daredevil as I think daredevil just specializes on ganking, not on sustaining an actual fight) but the existing specs should not be altered to fit into this role.

Edited February 13, 2022 by DoomNexus.5324

[Curennos.9307]

On 2/13/2022 at 3:55 PM, DoomNexus.5324 said:

Yes, I disagree that sb#5 needs to be changed (other than its cost being brought down to 6 again). In conjunction to other changes or not, doesn't really matter to me. If mobility gets nerfed I don't really care about what gets buffed instead.
I personally picked thief mainly because of its high mobility and ganking playstyle and stuck to it even in times where it was not really viable to play at all.
If I wanted to play some slightly less mobile brawler/duelist type of class I'd have switched to guard or rev a long time ago, maybe even ranger the other weapons were a bit more viable. With 20% pick rate my second most played class in sPvP actually is Rev (most of the time Power Shiro) because it's nice from time to time but I always went back to thief (65% pick).
And yes I honestly think thieves would just flat out fall out of meta if shortbow#5 was replaced with a non-mobility skill since, like I said, Rev and Guard both can already do what thief does but even better or they can at least bring more to the table (like proper team fighting capabilities or support) - apart from the ooc mobility. Engineer kinda too but not really.
I don't even have to speculate on that, we already had this scenario before mesmer portals were nerfed. Mesmer was in a pretty good spot back then (not broken but also more than viable) and due to how busted the portals were they were on-par with thieves if not even better. And thief fell out of meta because we didn't have anything going for us at this point. This was also when we still had a lot of damage mind you, and some other decent stuff that has been nerfed hard since then.
Same almost happened again back when Shiro on Rev was still busted with a lot of (infight) teleports, dodge rolls and quickness.

If anything I'd rather sacrifice stealth for some more reliable means of sustain, not mobility to shoehorn it into some brawler-type class. Thief - to me - is not meant to be a fighter, they have always been about ganking and I prefer this over a "proper" 1v1 or 2v2.
I would love to have an elite spec that's focused on brawling (more than daredevil as I think daredevil just specializes on ganking, not on sustaining an actual fight) but the existing specs should not be altered to fit into this role.

In that case, I'm curious - what do you think would need to happen for viable thief builds that don't incorporate shortbow to start popping up? The way I see it, whatever level Sb5 is at has to be matched or have alternatives elsewhere (hence why rifle DE is something you actually see floating around, because rifle4 skill can fill the same role in the toolkit). I think it's also worth buffing SB5 to have a more defined role - re: earlier suggestion of adding ini return when it hits a target, etc. That way the mobility skills can have different uses and quirks while still filling a similar role, like how death's retreat is a viable alternative to SB5 but has its own functional quirks (not a targeted teleport, poison, leap finisher, provides a cleanse).

 

Also, I do think DrD should be altered to fit the brawler role. Thief really always had a gank focus, which is why in a lot of ways DrD is basically seen as core thief 2.0. 

Edited February 15, 2022 by Curennos.9307

[DoomNexus.5324]

43 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

In that case, I'm curious - what do you think would need to happen for viable thief builds that don't incorporate shortbow to start popping up?

To me at least that's not really desireable in the first place so I can't really answer that question very well (more on that at the end tho).
Unlike any other weapon set shortbow brings a suplementary kit to any build. All other weapon combos conflict with one another as they are all offensive and would require different traits to be played effectively.

Let's say you want one weapon set to be d/p, then you will definitely want Daredevil and Trickery by default. So you may either choose Deadly Arts or Shadow Arts depending on your prefered playstyle. Ok, so now what are the options for another weapon set?

- I would dismiss p/d as an option immediately since d/p is a power focused weapon set and p/d is condi/hybrid so by default this doesn't really go together well.

- d/d is kind of awkward since it doesn't bring the in-fight mobility/gap closers required to do basically anything, so you'd need something like infiltrator's signet, essentially wasting a utility slot and also only be so useful.

- s/p has been gutted so it's not really an all-too-viable option in general anymore either (which is sad, I loved to play s/p deadeye couple years ago as nobody had any clue how to fight me.. this build almost got me into plat 3).

- s/d you would really want to have acrobatics, which already makes it not optimal as this means that you'll either play s/d or d/p rather inefficiently

- rifle and staff are also.. niche to say the least but if you want to go that route you are not losing too much on sacrificing shortbow anyway (as evidenced by the existing rifle + d/p build)

Okay so this is all we got as far as options are concerned. Already doesn't look too good imho.
Let's pick s/d since it is the least terrible option. How would the playstyle look like?
Engage with s#2 and change to d/p infight? Now you can't tp back if needed since you have to wait for the weapon swap cooldown first and you are also not stealthed so you can't even open with a backstab burst.
How about stealthing up, going in, backstabbing and swapping to sword so you can stay in fight for longer by spaming s/d#3?
hm.. You've only attacked two times and you are already out of initiative but since you didn't tp in with s#2 you can't quickly tp back to reset and are forced to stay in fight or burn utilities to get away safely..
like.. in general.. by burning initiative on one set you are stuck with nothing to use on the other set. Thief is heavily disincentivized to swap weapons mid-fight unless it is for "utility", which only shortbow really provides. I think Rev manages this pretty good by resetting the energy back to 50% on weapon swap but since thief is still stuck at 0 there's no point in swapping.

I mean.. maybe I'm just way to uncreative or not talented enough in terms of theorycrafting but I can't think of any synergy between two weapon sets on thief that isn't super niche (like rifle + d/p). Or rather that offers a better synergy than what shortbow brings to the table, namely a strong mid-range AoE attack, evades and mobility and an AoE poison attack that also interrupts.

And I haven't seen you answer my previous question so I'd be curious about your theorycrafting :)

On 2/13/2022 at 4:04 PM, DoomNexus.5324 said:

I mean.. tell me any one weapon sets that profits from having basically anything else than shortbow apart from rifle + d/p for stealth setup. Because I can't think of any that might have a chance for being meta or even viable in let's say plat 2+.

To answer this question:

43 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

In that case, I'm curious - what do you think would need to happen for viable thief builds that don't incorporate shortbow to start popping up?

I think the list above illustrates the issue pretty well.. Thief only has a very limited choice of weapons that can't be artificially equalized by kits or attunements. And most of those weapon combos are niche at best.
So my best bet for having viable builds without shortbow would start at improving the other weapon sets so they become viable again and not just for when the meta is right (like s/d against bunker metas).
But even then.. Why would you take it over shortbow, it would just result in a very awkward playstyle where you can't really utilize one of the sets and end up with basically a dead weight.
To fix this issue it would basically require an entire rework of how initiative works - which is most likely never going to happen.

Edited February 15, 2022 by DoomNexus.5324

[Curennos.9307]

58 minutes ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

- I would dismiss p/d as an option immediately since d/p is a power focused weapon set and p/d is condi/hybrid so by default this doesn't really go together well.

You would be surprised at how much power damage this can put out, actually. Of course, it certainly isn't anywhere near meta at the moment, but one time I was playing condi p/d and wanted to switch to power d/p for a game but forgot to swap the weapon slots and ended up playing power p/d for a game..Not bad tbh. Backstab has a 1600 tooltip and requires stealth + back. Shadow Strike isn't far beyond at ~300 + 1200 -> 1500 and repeater comes in at ~1300. Similar for the sneak attack.

 

58 minutes ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

- d/d is kind of awkward since it doesn't bring the in-fight mobility/gap closers required to do basically anything, so you'd need something like infiltrator's signet, essentially wasting a utility slot and also only be so useful.

- s/p has been gutted so it's not really an all-too-viable option in general anymore either (which is sad, I loved to play s/p deadeye couple years ago as nobody had any clue how to fight me.. this build almost got me into plat 3).

Yeep. I remember the days of s/p DE with quickness where you could pistol whip people to death because they didn't know what to do, lol. Was funny.

 

58 minutes ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

- s/d you would really want to have acrobatics, which already makes it not optimal as this means that you'll either play s/d or d/p rather inefficiently

Acro is nice, but aside from that one trait somewhat lackluster, especially since you can still benefit from things such as Deadly Arts Improv. s/d is a decent weapon set on its own, and especially useful with the boonrip in this meta. Being able to nomf boons just from using your main weapon skill is very nice. Is it improved by acro - definitely. But just because there's a trait that boosts something doesn't mean it's bad without it. I suppose this speaks more towards the weakness of acro in general, though. d/p, for example, is helped a lot by shadow arts but there was a time when kitten was still very viable (and iirc still is to an extent). THe main problem with these traitlines is that they're defined in no small part by how good they are against other thieves - and if you take acro while the other thief takes shadow arts, you're not going to have a good time. 

 

58 minutes ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

- rifle and staff are also.. niche to say the least but if you want to go that route you are not losing too much on sacrificing shortbow anyway (as evidenced by the existing rifle + d/p build)

Personally, I'm all for anet making e-spec weapons available to core and whatnot. It'd go a long way towards solving some issues. Of course, it'd likely also create a ton of other issues, but...eh, lol. You're right in that thief doesn't really have any core weapons that can compete with the space shortbow takes, and that staff and rifle actually can be viable alternatives but are locked behind e-specs. There was a time I tried staff/staff or staff/not shortbow and it was...okay, really.

 

58 minutes ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

Okay so this is all we got as far as options are concerned. Already doesn't look too good imho.
Let's pick s/d since it is the least terrible option. How would the playstyle look like?
Engage with s#2 and change to d/p infight? Now you can't tp back if needed since you have to wait for the weapon swap cooldown first and you are also not stealthed so you can't even open with a backstab burst.
How about stealthing up, going in, backstabbing and swapping to sword so you can stay in fight for longer by spaming s/d#3?
hm.. You've only attacked two times and you are already out of initiative but since you didn't tp in with s#2 you can't quickly tp back to reset and are forced to stay in fight or burn utilities to get away safely..
like.. in general.. by burning initiative on one set you are stuck with nothing to use on the other set. Thief is heavily disincentivized to swap weapons mid-fight unless it is for "utility", which only shortbow really provides. I think Rev manages this pretty good by resetting the energy back to 50% on weapon swap but since thief is still stuck at 0 there's no point in swapping.

A lot of this would be solved by some of my suggestions earlier 🙂 I'm definitely not saying the current state of things is workable. For example, my suggestion on effectively removing the weapon swap cooldown on thief - you now really can benefit from doing d-p/s-d because you can go in with s/d#2, swap to dp for damage if you want, and freely swap back if you need to retreat.

 

I don't know why you're asking me this question "I mean.. tell me any one weapon sets that profits from having basically anything else than shortbow apart from rifle + d/p for stealth setup. Because I can't think of any that might have a chance for being meta or even viable in let's say plat 2+." and expecting an answer when this is exactly the problem I'm trying to solve here. We both know the answer is: There isn't one (aside from rifle and, if you really hate yourself and your team, staff) and I've stated multiple times how I think shortbow has a too-strong hold on this position and that changing other weapons to better compete would be nice.

 

Again, maybe I am phrasing this badly but I am not asking you how you would make do with anything in the current state of the things. The current state of things sucks and I'm interested in how you would solve these issues, since you seem to be shooting my suggestions down.

 

58 minutes ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

So my best bet for having viable builds without shortbow would start at improving the other weapon sets so they become viable again and not just for when the meta is right (like s/d against bunker metas).

So we're in agreement, then xD

 

58 minutes ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

But even then.. Why would you take it over shortbow

Excellent question 😄 

 

I think this would be a good place to start:

 

- What weapon sees the least use, has a skill that is relatively dead in the water (or at least, underused/more niche than is considered reasonable), and/OR could feasibly be changed without impacting other functions and making certain builds op? (eg d/d#3 is an important condi damage skill that's useful for cthief in pvp and pve DPS, so any changes would have to preserve the original purpose of the skill without impacting it too much).

 

There is an excellent option for this - pistol. Specifically, Bola Shot or Shadow Strike. If we want to go a similar route to Death's Retreat, we could simply make Shadow Strike function the same way and not require a hit for the teleport - increase the ini cost, then add an ini gain when the hit lands to preserve in combat functionality.

 

Alternatively - and imo the better option - would be to no longer require a target for bola shot and make it a tiny targetted AoE that, on impact, immobs a target (prioritize whoever you're targetting at the time) and cripples/vulns both primary target and everyone else. Then, the skill would flip over to a leap or teleport of some kind that costs....eeh, 2 ini? And doesn't require a hit to flip over. Increase the travel speed of the bola shot, of course. This way the thief can maintain some out of combat mobility, have some in-combat use, and be a little slower than SB5 travel time. It could also be limited in the sense that you'd have to be able to shoot a spot with the bola to be able to tp there, meaning SB would still be superior in terms of z-axis mobility, but there would at least be another option for out of combat travel speed.

 

SB5 should still, imo, have an added effect + ini refund for hitting a target. Having a skill whose entire purpose is running away or long distance running is kind of meh. Refund 1 ini when hitting a target plus...Idk, some condis, barrier, boons, whatever. Or, heck, aegis lol.

 

Anyway, that's how I'd start things, off the top of my head. Not a perfect idea but it'd provide a viable substitute for shortbow, wouldn't be too much of a buff for c-thief (tho it would be a buff as they'd gain AoE cripple and a teleport to get in melee range for shadow strike, but personally I think that's fine, as SS struggles with requiring melee range to get the damage going and there's really only two options for that - steal or sacrifice a utility skill). Pistol also has the p/p power variant, meaning even if people don't like p/d (a valid concern, even if it's decent power damage), there's still another option. 

 

There are probably a few tweaks that could be made as well, but there's the gist of it. Of course, unhooking e-spec weapons from their associated e-spec would also help, and probably wouldn't be that OP. At least, if everyone has it it wouldn't matter.

 

 

Edited February 15, 2022 by Curennos.9307

[kash.9213]

1 hour ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

So my best bet for having viable builds without shortbow would start at improving the other weapon sets 

Utility but also use of space is what keeps either shortbow or rifle as my second weapon set. Shortbow 5 is good but shortbow 3 is fluid and just the right amount of distance clear on it's evade. Death's Retreat as a leap is already strong but it's distance clear (or a distance close) and how it repositions or reorients feels natural and has a nice radius, plus it manages topography really well. 

I'd need some of that tangible feel and use of space or positioning in some places on other kits to think about using them as a secondary. 

Edited February 15, 2022 by kash.9213

[DoomNexus.5324]

5 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

You would be surprised at how much power damage this can put out, actually. Of course, it certainly isn't anywhere near meta at the moment, but one time I was playing condi p/d and wanted to switch to power d/p for a game but forgot to swap the weapon slots and ended up playing power p/d for a game..Not bad tbh. Backstab has a 1600 tooltip and requires stealth + back. Shadow Strike isn't far beyond at ~300 + 1200 -> 1500 and repeater comes in at ~1300. Similar for the sneak attack.

 

Yeep. I remember the days of s/p DE with quickness where you could pistol whip people to death because they didn't know what to do, lol. Was funny.

 

Acro is nice, but aside from that one trait somewhat lackluster, especially since you can still benefit from things such as Deadly Arts Improv. s/d is a decent weapon set on its own, and especially useful with the boonrip in this meta. Being able to nomf boons just from using your main weapon skill is very nice. Is it improved by acro - definitely. But just because there's a trait that boosts something doesn't mean it's bad without it. I suppose this speaks more towards the weakness of acro in general, though. d/p, for example, is helped a lot by shadow arts but there was a time when kitten was still very viable (and iirc still is to an extent). THe main problem with these traitlines is that they're defined in no small part by how good they are against other thieves - and if you take acro while the other thief takes shadow arts, you're not going to have a good time. 

 

Personally, I'm all for anet making e-spec weapons available to core and whatnot. It'd go a long way towards solving some issues. Of course, it'd likely also create a ton of other issues, but...eh, lol. You're right in that thief doesn't really have any core weapons that can compete with the space shortbow takes, and that staff and rifle actually can be viable alternatives but are locked behind e-specs. There was a time I tried staff/staff or staff/not shortbow and it was...okay, really.

 

A lot of this would be solved by some of my suggestions earlier 🙂 I'm definitely not saying the current state of things is workable. For example, my suggestion on effectively removing the weapon swap cooldown on thief - you now really can benefit from doing d-p/s-d because you can go in with s/d#2, swap to dp for damage if you want, and freely swap back if you need to retreat.

 

I don't know why you're asking me this question "I mean.. tell me any one weapon sets that profits from having basically anything else than shortbow apart from rifle + d/p for stealth setup. Because I can't think of any that might have a chance for being meta or even viable in let's say plat 2+." and expecting an answer when this is exactly the problem I'm trying to solve here. We both know the answer is: There isn't one (aside from rifle and, if you really hate yourself and your team, staff) and I've stated multiple times how I think shortbow has a too-strong hold on this position and that changing other weapons to better compete would be nice.

 

Again, maybe I am phrasing this badly but I am not asking you how you would make do with anything in the current state of the things. The current state of things sucks and I'm interested in how you would solve these issues, since you seem to be shooting my suggestions down.

 

So we're in agreement, then xD

 

Excellent question 😄 

 

I think this would be a good place to start:

 

- What weapon sees the least use, has a skill that is relatively dead in the water (or at least, underused/more niche than is considered reasonable), and/OR could feasibly be changed without impacting other functions and making certain builds op? (eg d/d#3 is an important condi damage skill that's useful for cthief in pvp and pve DPS, so any changes would have to preserve the original purpose of the skill without impacting it too much).

 

There is an excellent option for this - pistol. Specifically, Bola Shot or Shadow Strike. If we want to go a similar route to Death's Retreat, we could simply make Shadow Strike function the same way and not require a hit for the teleport - increase the ini cost, then add an ini gain when the hit lands to preserve in combat functionality.

 

Alternatively - and imo the better option - would be to no longer require a target for bola shot and make it a tiny targetted AoE that, on impact, immobs a target (prioritize whoever you're targetting at the time) and cripples/vulns both primary target and everyone else. Then, the skill would flip over to a leap or teleport of some kind that costs....eeh, 2 ini? And doesn't require a hit to flip over. Increase the travel speed of the bola shot, of course. This way the thief can maintain some out of combat mobility, have some in-combat use, and be a little slower than SB5 travel time. It could also be limited in the sense that you'd have to be able to shoot a spot with the bola to be able to tp there, meaning SB would still be superior in terms of z-axis mobility, but there would at least be another option for out of combat travel speed.

 

SB5 should still, imo, have an added effect + ini refund for hitting a target. Having a skill whose entire purpose is running away or long distance running is kind of meh. Refund 1 ini when hitting a target plus...Idk, some condis, barrier, boons, whatever. Or, heck, aegis lol.

 

Anyway, that's how I'd start things, off the top of my head. Not a perfect idea but it'd provide a viable substitute for shortbow, wouldn't be too much of a buff for c-thief (tho it would be a buff as they'd gain AoE cripple and a teleport to get in melee range for shadow strike, but personally I think that's fine, as SS struggles with requiring melee range to get the damage going and there's really only two options for that - steal or sacrifice a utility skill). Pistol also has the p/p power variant, meaning even if people don't like p/d (a valid concern, even if it's decent power damage), there's still another option. 

 

There are probably a few tweaks that could be made as well, but there's the gist of it. Of course, unhooking e-spec weapons from their associated e-spec would also help, and probably wouldn't be that OP. At least, if everyone has it it wouldn't matter.

 

 

I think we basically agree, I just had an issue with the suggestion of removing/reworking sb#5 since it doesn't really improve anything regarding the other issues and pretty much deletes a playstyle I (and probably a lot of other thieves) really like.

But even if Anet manages to perfectly balance thief regarding lowering the mobility and increasing its brawling capabilities, my overarching question still remains tho.

On 2/12/2022 at 10:45 PM, DoomNexus.5324 said:

Rev for example basically does everything thief can but a lot better - apart from the out-of-combat mobility.

So even if thief can sustain a little better or does a bit more damage or whatever.. This puts it into direct competition with other brawlers like said Rev, Guard, some Engi builds, some ranger builds, etc.. They all have more damage output, can sustain more and even have some utility/supports they can bring to a team fight like boon share, fields, heals, etc..
Thief would basically need a massive rework to the point where it's essentially a completely different class to fill that role properly. At least that's my opinion.

I personally really like the ganking playstyle, the +1 role, since it serves for creating opportunities that can make or break the game.
By decapping far I'm not only preventing the enemy team from gaining some points over time but I'm challenging them with a choice: Do they rather want to lose out on points or do they want to turn their attention to the node, effectively setting my team up to outnumber them, possibly with an even larger snowball effect, etc. And since thief is so mobile I can even slip by a rotating guy and join my mates on mid, maybe creating that +1 for the team fight for example.
I'm not quite sure who said it but I think it was Vallun in his d/p video: "thief is a playmaker".
It's basically the quarterback in an American football team. If the team is bad then they are basically useless and if they are bad then they could almost not be there and the team wouldn't feel any difference. But boy oh boy, if a team and a thief synergize well (or any other good roamer tbh) then they can make some pretty incredible plays.
It's essentially a "servant leader" - constantly looking out to serve its team. Diverting as much attention of the enemy team to as many different objectives as possible while actively fighting alongside team members.
I really like this role and think it is fairly unique to thief due to its ooc mobility and disengage potential (partially due to the stealth) no other class can offer to that extent.

Due to the way initiative works thief can spiral out of control pretty hard if something's slightly busted, the same way mesmer can do that due to clones/phantasms/illusions or Rev due to how energy works (even tho it's much less of an issue on Rev due to weapon skill cds imo).
So I wouldn't want to request massive changes because they can quickly overshoot the target or even backfire.. I'd rather like Anet to refine the current role through subtle tweaks, maybe for example to how initiative is utilized. Back when sb#5 ini cost was increased I also suggested something along the lines of  this:

On 2/6/2022 at 7:54 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

They function on a shared ammo system - the thief will start with 2 charges. The first charge has a cooldown of 8 seconds and the second charge a CD of 16 seconds. Or 10 and 15 seconds, or 10 and 18 seconds, or...whatever works

for balancing shortbow#5 instead of flat out increasing its cost. Since increasing initiative cost has sooo many ripple effects it's imo an awful way of balancing thief in general.
For example 2 charges of sb#5 with 3 or 4 seconds cooldown and the old 6 initiative cost would imho sound like a much better idea than just increasing the cost to 8. I think the intention behind the nerf would still be fulfilled but isn't as disruptive.

[Curennos.9307]

On 2/15/2022 at 5:48 PM, DoomNexus.5324 said:

I think we basically agree, I just had an issue with the suggestion of removing/reworking sb#5 since it doesn't really improve anything regarding the other issues and pretty much deletes a playstyle I (and probably a lot of other thieves) really like.

For the record, I don't want to delete that particular playstyle - I just want thief to have other options for filling it and to, ideally, make thief still the top dog in that area but but not as far ahead of other classes. How that would work out on a 1-10 scale on thief vs its competitors and the specific details and ranges of skills on other classes in comparison to thief is a convo for another day tho, I don't really want to napkin math the numbers on rev's port, swiftness uptime etc.

 

My question to you about removing SB5 was to show how disproportionate the allocation of mobility power was inside thief's kit if removing a single skill could have such an impact.

 

On 2/15/2022 at 5:48 PM, DoomNexus.5324 said:

So even if thief can sustain a little better or does a bit more damage or whatever.. This puts it into direct competition with other brawlers like said Rev, Guard, some Engi builds, some ranger builds, etc.. They all have more damage output, can sustain more and even have some utility/supports they can bring to a team fight like boon share, fields, heals, etc..
Thief would basically need a massive rework to the point where it's essentially a completely different class to fill that role properly. At least that's my opinion.

It would require a lot of tweaks, but I don't necessarily think it would require anything on the level of a rework. For example, people are complaining about rez speed and rez traits - thief has one easily accessible in the first trait tier, but never takes it. The middle tier traits are decent competitors for a rez trait, and I'd be happy to give any one of them up and have it swap places with the rez trait, then buff the rez trait so it's worth taking. This is a minor change that could have thief offer some teamfight utility. I also don't think it's be as strong as on other classes, as guardians, necros, etc have more durability than a thief and are harder to beat up when rezzing because they have health and/or boons, whereas a rez trait on thief wouldn't be as strong cause they'd be more vulnerable to just getting smashed right in the middle of it.

 

Thief has its own unique way of bringing some support - some of which isn't as noticeable. Signet of Agility is quite good with its group cleanse and endurance restore, even if your teammates aren't likely to notice the latter as much and the radius is probably a bit too small. Bumping the radius a smidge would be helpful, and if taking kitten -> Improv it's possible to pump out a not-insignificant amount of group cleanse and endurance restoration. It isn't a skill I personally would take as specter, but with specter's access to alacrity **and** Improv, any utility skill that offers some measure of support can increase in value. And, heck, there's going to be specter, which will have an easier time teamfighting and brings more support - their stealthed attack from scepter when used on an ally is basically an entire healing skill on its own and can be extremely strong if you build for it even a little. If anet ever bothers to unhook thief from Trickery, I could see even more support options opening up.

 

Smoke screen is an excellent utility to rez or to use in a teamfight on point to give your allies some breathing room, even if it does need some adjustments at the moment. A well timed basi venom for your allies is magnificent. Shadow Refuge could be adjusted to be less stealth-stack-y but more supporty. There are plenty of minor tweaks that could be made to accomplish whatever purpose we want - from adding in some support options to letting thief teamfight a little more. Heck I think it'd be cool if assassin's signet gave some group-power buffs on use instead of just for the thief.

 

Overall, I'm really hoping anet does more imaginative things with expanding thief support. I know they're pushing the limits of the engine and UI with single target healing (which I will enjoy regardless), but there are also plenty of other ways thief could provide support and achieve some measure of durability differently than other classes. 

On 2/15/2022 at 5:48 PM, DoomNexus.5324 said:

for balancing shortbow#5 instead of flat out increasing its cost. Since increasing initiative cost has sooo many ripple effects it's imo an awful way of balancing thief in general.
For example 2 charges of sb#5 with 3 or 4 seconds cooldown and the old 6 initiative cost would imho sound like a much better idea than just increasing the cost to 8. I think the intention behind the nerf would still be fulfilled but isn't as disruptive.

I can admit I was probs too overreaching on my suggested nerfs to SB5. In retrospect, with how much mobility is being added to other classes come EoD, it's probably fine to just reduce the ini cost to 6 or 7 and leave it at that - wouldn't want thief to fall behind. Though I do wish there wasn't as much mobility creep as there seems to be floating around nowadays, and I would rather SB5 have a little more varied use and not be so vital to thief's role.

 

Anywho, I think we've reached some kind of a conclusion here. Thanks for elaborating about your points and listening to mine, was a rare gem of a convo on this forum.