Which trait/skill/weapon skills do you want to see changed or reverted from past patches and why?

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

Which trait/skill/weapon skills do you want to see changed or reverted from past patches and why?

* Ricochet - this trait was absolutely amazing in Wvw or pvp for the ability to cleave and slightly increase our range on pistols.  Sadly its been made to pierce now and is renamed to Deadly Aim. This needs to come back and replace Deadly Aim. Harbinger has bounces with pistol that does not reauire traits, engineer has explosions...yet thieves have to trait for it and line it up. The change or removak makes no sense now years later.

* Unload - Before this skill's initiative was increased, gave a lot of bursts in exchange for sustain or stealth reauiring traitd and utilities to go stealth which was a fair tradeoff. Rangers can OneShot with ye old wombo combo rapidfire and Sic Em combinations and still outrange everyone yet the thief gets this weapon skill nerfed. Revert this or un nerf slightly for initiative cost.

Choking Gas - this skill was amazing for threshhold at specific poison stacks but feels mediocre making shortbow less and less useful, even for traversing the field. Increased initiative cost is ok, but revert it back to previous threshold mechanics and bring back the pulse interrupts when meeting these. EoD has wells on specter as well as other class and weapon skills that do this already, woyld be nice to breathe life back into shortbow usage.

The point is with current patch additions and new elite specs, the old patches from montgs and years ago make no sense now in current times and these wounds need to be addressed and skill, traits and other mechanics need to be reassessed and made more viable.

::will edit and add more later::

Edited April 15, 2022 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[Chips.7968]

Everything that has a 300s cooldown. Its been how many years? It's pathetic...  they should be embarrassed, but they clearly aren't.

Meanwhile, several hundreds of pwetty things added to black lion for people to splash the cash and new elite specialisations designed, "tested", added etc. Priorities and laziness. Yikes.

It's. just. a. couple. of. traits.

Edited April 21, 2022 by Chips.7968

[Asur.9178]

If they aren't even reading the new elite spec's feedback and bug threads, and are only listening to the biased opinions of those on their private discord, then frankly, it doesn't matter, because ANet is not reading these threads - you're only going to be getting your hopes up for no reason.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

On 4/21/2022 at 12:37 PM, Asur.9178 said:

If they aren't even reading the new elite spec's feedback and bug threads, and are only listening to the biased opinions of those on their private discord, then frankly, it doesn't matter, because ANet is not reading these threads - you're only going to be getting your hopes up for no reason.

Raid the private discord then?

[ixon.2496]

2 hours ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

Raid the private discord then?

 

Good luck finding a link or invite

[Overworld.9613]

Pressure Striking (Major trait- Trickery) - Current text: Cause 2 stacks of torment, limit once per 3 seconds. Text implies trait doesn't trigger more than once per 3 seconds. Trait is only limited like this on foes with a defiance bar. Needs tooltext improvement

 

Second Opinion (Major Trait- Spector) - Current text: Condition Dmg -> healing pwr; ++ healing pwr, ++ healing pwr with scepter. Compared to the other Adept traits for Spector this offers functionally nothing. Needs rework. rest of top row is selfish and damage related traits.

 

Seal Area (Utility Skill - Preparation) Current text: create area that blocks projectiles and prevents foes from entering or leaving. I've never seen it do that. Try placing this skill in a bottleneck in WvW and watch everyone walk through it. For a 3 second arm time 8 seconds of area denial is too low (it can stay low in pvp).

 

Detonate Clusterbomb (Weapon Skill Shortbow 2) Current text: Mash skill 2 for free extra damage if your ping is low enough. Skill never triggers at higher ping or closer target locations. Can I just hold the skill to get it to do it instead?

 

Shroud skills aren't listed in the Build Window, the only place to read the tool text is in battle or the wiki.

 

Dark Field Projectile finishers deal more damage via life steal than the Leaching Venoms and scale off power when you're much more likely to have low power when using venom builds. Leaching venom's needs a bit of a buff.

Life Siphon healing on leaching venoms only uses my healing power when affecting me, other players use their own healing power. It should take the higher value of the two instead to make it a more viable choice in more cases and not useless to zerk gear.

 

 Venom's in general: Why does a multi hit attack use multiple stacks of venom? Why does One rebounding arrow or dagger take up to 3 stacks for a single attack? I'm fine with channeled attacks using up a charge for each pulse, but not stuff that cleaves or richochets.

 

Siphon and Mark don't need a targeting solution like Steal and Swipe. Let them work like normal projectiles.

 

I can probably find more, but aside from wanting to let us use swords wrong in the offhand I think that's good enough for now.

(Off-hand sword for core thief FTW)

[Vidit.7108]

Ricochet is #1 on my list of things that need to come back.

I also want core weapon damage nerfs from the post-PoF era to be reversed or scaled back. Several traits were better off as percentages.

Extend daredevil steal range back to 900, especially now that it's the only espec that really steals anymore. 

Just put invigorating precision back to 10% and drop the fury modifier. 

[Tails.9372]

The are a lot of things I would change mainly to reduce redundancies, improve whats underperforming, to fix some fundamental issues various weapon sets are suffering from and to improve the gameplay of various weapon sets. But if I where to just focus on a few of them:

Critical Strikes: there are some redundancy issues here (like both Assassin's Fury and Twin Fangs esentially both primarely focussing on doing the same thing: increasing your damage numbers) other traits are either underperforming or have a mismatch with the core theme of the specialization so here is what I would do:

Assassin's Fury:
- remove the ICD (similar skills from other professions don't have one so I don't see why this trait should and it's not like as if you could spam fury onto yourself with no CD anyway)
- reduce the condi damage bonus from might down to 15 and increase the power damage bonus from might to 45 per stack
- the critical strike chance granted from fury is increased by 10%

Signets of Power:
Changing the activation conditions for the bonus effects from "on kill" to "on crit" and lowering the values if appropriate (no ICDs or anything like that) e.g. lowering the might gain from the Assassin's Signet bonus passive down to one stack.

Twin Fangs:
With Assassin's Fury as the primary source of your "selfish dps increase" and Signets of Power more used for general utility I'd like to see Twin Fangs being repurposed for something new like something thats focused around dual skills which is one of thiefs main class mechanics (just horribly underdeveloped at this point).

Sundering Shade:
Remove and bring back Sundering Strikes, increase the proc chance on crit to 100%.

Practiced Tolerance:
Change the PvE conversion rate to match the sPvP/WvW ones.

Deadly Aim:
Remove it and bring back Ricochet, expand the effects to include harpoon guns and make the proc chance upon critically hitting a foe 100%. Add a 1 ini cost reduction for both pistol and harpoon gun skills.

Hidden Killer:
Increase the time of the lingering aftereffect to 5 sec.

Invigorating Precision:
- increase the healing on crit to 10%
- increase incoming healing effectiveness while under the effect of fury by 50%

Not really a skill but related to them: the dual wielding class mechanic which should be extended to at least include the AAs:
- If you have two different weapons (either two melee or two ranged weapons) use the AAs of both of them in an alternating fashion.
- If you have a melee and a ranged weapon use the range appropriate AA.
- If you have two weapons of the same weapon type use a new dual skill AA that matches the weapon set in question (e.g. for P/P replace Vital Shot with Unload as the new AA (and add a new skill 3 in its place), cut down both the number of shots and the execution time to 1/4 and make it a smooth loop like Tainted Bolts).

As for some of the other weapon skills:

Bola Shot:
Add a 600-900 range disengage to it.

Measured Shot:
Remove the forced shadow step.

Shadow Sap:
Make it a ground targeted shadow step.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Tails.9372

[DeceiverX.8361]

CS on the whole.

Assassin's Signet and CS need to go back to being about stacking damage modifiers.  AS is too strong as fixed power on marauder builds, and CS has so little access to good damage modifiers it's just a massive waste of a trait line.

Acro... Probably most of those traits to their previous iterations when they weren't passives on 300s cooldowns.  Again, another trait line that's just kind of straight up bad.

Dagger Training.  It's just objectively worse now, and was already niche before, because even Mug does more damage per time from raw power gains.

Exposed Weakness.  It's significantly better in PvE but atrocious in the PvP modes without teamfighting/ganking.  Again, this massive boost to power damage should be in CS.

Basilisk Venom.  Reversion to 1 charge was literally only hurtful to x/D and P/P which already struggle.

Deadly Aim/Riccochet.  Pierce is good.  Reduced damage is not so good.

Lead Attacks.  No strategy in this anymore.  Always better to enter fights with max initiative now.

Hot Take:  Dagger storm to its  2018 version with higher damage and projectile denial with pulsing stability and longer duration.

[Roche.7491]

Just revert these two back. The nerf really destroyed the trait:

 

1. Larcenous Torment - revert back to additional 20% torment damage

 

2. Invigorating Precision - revert back to 20% critical lifesteal

[Stx.4857]

Revert the invigorating precision nerf.  

 

Bring back ricochet so pistols can get some form of AoE.  

[Jitters.9401]

On 4/26/2022 at 9:24 AM, Vidit.7108 said:

Ricochet is #1 on my list of things that need to come back.

I also want core weapon damage nerfs from the post-PoF era to be reversed or scaled back. Several traits were better off as percentages.

Extend daredevil steal range back to 900, especially now that it's the only espec that really steals anymore. 

Just put invigorating precision back to 10% and drop the fury modifier. 

I do not play daredevil and I use steal religiously. It is one of the best skills out there when used properly. 

[lvis.3824]

Basicly every ability & trait that is not played in any commonly known and played Builds should be look at.
Especially the cooldown numbers.
Perhaps it's time to add ammunition to some of those skills as well or some additional benefit in combination with certain underplayed traits.

[Chips.7968]

If we're not limiting it to traits that have been changed/altered, then may as well stick in short bow 2... 

 

Given the perma swiftness, ample use of runes that provide extra movement speed (and now superspeed becoming more common), the ranged attack on short bow 2 -- its too slow projectile wise. Under swiftness, I can shoot it at max range while running, and reach the impact point at the same time as the projectile. 

But tbh things are starting to feel clunky ingame these days. Laggy, unreliable, skills misfiring, not firing, random terrain/pathing issues appearing in really odd areas, so "projectile too slow" is really down a list 😄

Just when someone can throw grenades further, faster, stronger than a bow can shoot 😄 Well, it's not realistic anyway with talking cats and tamed sharks is it 😛 The arc idea is no longer even attractive (can remember when it could lob tower gates -- nerfed). 

Edited May 2, 2022 by Chips.7968

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

8 hours ago, Chips.7968 said:

If we're not limiting it to traits that have been changed/altered, then may as well stick in short bow 2... 

 

Given the perma swiftness, ample use of runes that provide extra movement speed (and now superspeed becoming more common), the ranged attack on short bow 2 -- its too slow projectile wise. Under swiftness, I can shoot it at max range while running, and reach the impact point at the same time as the projectile. 

But tbh things are starting to feel clunky ingame these days. Laggy, unreliable, skills misfiring, not firing, random terrain/pathing issues appearing in really odd areas, so "projectile too slow" is really down a list 😄

Just when someone can throw grenades further, faster, stronger than a bow can shoot 😄 Well, it's not realistic anyway with talking cats and tamed sharks is it 😛 The arc idea is no longer even attractive (can remember when it could lob tower gates -- nerfed). 

How about how Shortbow 3 states its a leap yet is not a leap finisher? -_-

[Tenal.1546]

On 4/29/2022 at 3:04 PM, Tails.9372 said:

Invigorating Precision:

 

- increase the healing on crit to 10%
- increase incoming healing effectiveness while under the effect of fury by 50%

Not really a skill but related to them: the dual wielding class mechanic which should be extended to at least include the AAs:
- If you have two different weapons (either two melee or two ranged weapons) use the AAs of both of them in an alternating fashion.
- If you have a melee and a ranged weapon use the range appropriate AA.
- If you have two weapons of the same weapon type use a new dual skill AA that matches the weapon set in question (e.g. for P/P replace Vital Shot with Unload as the new AA (and add a new skill 3 in its place), cut down both the number of shots and the execution time to 1/4 and make it a smooth loop like Tainted Bolts).

Yes, something like this. I really miss the effectiveness of IP along with a number other professions' self-sustain nerfs. I am enjoying my Specter, but I really miss running around mindlessly in OW on my P/P-Rifle DE farming not having so much to worry about dying to to a clumsy mistake (of which I make a lot) to something nasty I might run into.

Sure, Condi DD and even DE are still viable. I also am enjoying my selfish Condi Specter, but I just miss IP...and well, I won't repeat myself about the other self-sustain nerfs on other profs
 

 

 

[Tails.9372]

On 5/2/2022 at 12:23 PM, Chips.7968 said:

If we're not limiting it to traits that have been changed/altered, then may as well stick in short bow 2...

Yeah not a fan of SB 2 either, SB already has a ground targeted AoE and it doesn't really need another one with the way how ini based skills work. Just remove it an replace it with a rapid fire-esque skill. Make the arrows explode on impact (like e.g. engi pistol 1) and give it a blast finisher to retain that aspect of it. IMO this would be a huge improvement for the weapon set as I'm always for diversifying gameplay options if possible.

Also:

20 hours ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

How about how Shortbow 3 states its a leap yet is not a leap finisher? -_-

^ this

Furthermore, speaking of SB: the March 16, 2015 change to Infiltrator's Arrow should be reverted and at least for PvE I would also reduce the ini cost of down to 4 as I see no real justification as for why this skill should drain half the standard ini pool, especially with the way how weapon skills on thief work.

Edited May 3, 2022 by Tails.9372

[mdninjawarroir.1637]

SB: 

 Sb 4 I want back to normal because free aoe interrupt with a higher inv cost feels like a skill that was meant for power creep just so it can get nerfed. The interrupt on a target with 4 poison stacks felt way better since it was cheaper to use as well. Was not worth the trade imo.

Sb5: Please, least give us something back for increasing it's cost

Also, Preparations. . .I just want our normal traps back. Because Trapper rune was nerfed in pvp, I feel that Preparations are mostly redundant in terms of gameplay. This is coming from the bias of someone who used Shadow Trap in pvp near home's point them rush all the way to far. Then port back if it was being contested. I don't feel Shadow portal is really as useful as a tool considering how it might out of range most of the time I get. And yes I know Shadow trap only teleports the thieves on top of their target if it's triggered and against a wall if somethings in the way but we don't talk about that.

 

For Deadeye: 

This was a major complaint of mine, and that old DE felt more balanced compared to basically perma stealth spam insta oneshot  420 backstab scoping.

 

The only good thing I can say that new DE did was give us ranged protection on kneeling rifle 4. Lets us live the Longbow part of Ranger Sci'em but that's about it.

Now DE is just remembered for being basically P/P if P/P had an elite spec.  

 

 

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

On 4/30/2022 at 2:17 PM, Stx.4857 said:

Revert the invigorating precision nerf.  

 

Bring back ricochet so pistols can get some form of AoE.  

Ricochet forces positioning, without positioning no pierce/"aoe"...ricochet would be as other classes have it now with the aoe, but wouldnt require positioning. its way too much work.

"piercing" should be unblockable and unable to reflect or should still take some form of damage reduction as 5% damage reduction if its attempted to be blocked/reflected

[Dadnir.5038]

Improvisation: I hate that the recharged utility skill is random, 90% of the time it make me feel like I waste 50% of what the trait does.

Instant reflexes: Scrap this please. Useless in non-competitive content and made useless in competitive content.

Vigorous recovery: It might be me but I feel like this trait is one of the most useless trait in the thief's kit.

Hard to catch: Again, scrap this please. Useless in non-competitive content and made useless in competitive content.

Burst of agility: probably shouldn't have such a long CD since the stun break skill fact is basically useless to to the condition of activation.

Unhindered combatant: Can we get rid of this exhaustion crap, it hinder me. I don't know, make it so the trait do something else than removing movement imparing conditions if it's that much of an issue...

Edited May 15, 2022 by Dadnir.5038

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Make the second part of Sc/p 3 on specter hit 3 targets again and remove the quickness proc entirely. Never understood why they didnt do that the first time around tbh. 

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

28 minutes ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

Make the second part of Sc/p 3 on specter hit 3 targets again and remove the quickness proc entirely. Never understood why they didnt do that the first time around tbh. 

i 2nd this, quickness isnt good unless its on your entire party of 5...if it only does 1 target for menial duration it doesnt belong to begin with, PLEASE ALLOW THIS TRADEOFF! 3 target REGEN FTW!

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

On 5/21/2022 at 1:38 AM, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

i 2nd this, quickness isnt good unless its on your entire party of 5...if it only does 1 target for menial duration it doesnt belong to begin with, PLEASE ALLOW THIS TRADEOFF! 3 target REGEN FTW!

It's also just a needless power creep imo, not everything in the game needs to apply a boon or spam condis. The skill is already needlessly bloated because of the perma (!) slow it can apply to enemies on top of the barrier and healing to allies, if the quickness on allies was kept to make a thematic balance with the slow on enemies I'd actually be fine with both the slow AND the quickness being removed to make the skill 3 targets again. 

[Serperior.6541]

Bring old ip back 😞 

Edited May 30, 2022 by Serperior.6541

[Asahi.1487]

Backstab cause it hits like a wet noodle for the amount of setup it needs. Other classes have range are that does more for less investment