Thief changes upcoming announced

[Burial.1958]

2 hours ago, LoreChief.8391 said:

Hidden Thief losing the ability to Stealth with Steal/Siphon is a huge gamebreaker for me.  I play Specter and the only two ways I have for getting into stealth are via Siphon and Heal.  So now I can only stealth once every 20 seconds because Siphon will be uselessly 'blinding' enemies instead of them just literally not being able to see me in the first place.  Stealth scepter skill is a huge part of my damage since I play a support build, and now I'll barely ever get to use it.

Yeah stealth on steal was great. The other nerfs where okay but this one sucks indeed hard.

[Tails.9372]

Well, the main build I play got some inconsequential buffs as well as no nerfs which, at this point, I would already consider a win.

[Cynz.9437]

As predicted, dp/DE butchered by the looks of it (numbers on changes would be interesting to see, i fear it would be like 0.5 sec protection; removal of stealth on steal is huge nerf to damage and survival), specter is still laughable as support, total joke in pve (in comparison) as well. Mandatory trickery not addressed, acro/deadly arts not touched as well as many other issues.

I actually hoped that stealth skills will be changed because they are just so outdated given all the mechanics that were added with expansions. Just think about how much effort you need to put for backstab (gain stealth, get in melee (potentially die in process), behind target!!! for measy 3k? damage).

That is the "big rework"?

I feel like they make changes just to please other players but don't care how it would affect thief players.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Cynz.9437

[Sigma.2461]

I like the idea of improving the potential of thieves as support role, but I'm not sure if this is the right direction.
Looking at the changes - mostly with PvE in mind (including Raids, Strikes and Fractals) - there are a couple issues.

In my expierence the Specter was accepted as alac dps, but the healing variant (heal + alac) was not accepted in most cases. The main issue here was the lack of might provided by the build for the group. Maybe the increase of might stacks granted by Thrill of the Crime in the Trickery traitline will improve this, but I think it is not enough compared to other supporters.

The changes in SA in general may be fine, but it is harsh to lose stealth in both scenarios - when stealing or using a healing skill. I think a better approach would be to lose only one of those and see how this plays out. As mentioned by others, the change to Hidden Thief will probably make this trait useless in most occasions. Keeping Hidden Thief as it is would probably be a better choice.
The second issue with the changes in SA is how the newly added protection through Cover of Shadow. Giving protection may sound nice, but if you have to give your party invisibility to apply protection, it'll mess with rotations and tank mechanics and therefore, it is not a viable option for supporting a group.
In the end, for a thief only 2 traits remain granting stealth (Merciful Ambush and Silent Scope), so that now you are forced to use skills or combo finisher to gain it. Both traits are hardly usable for the majority of players since they either require a downed ally or access to the deadeye spec. For a class using stealth as a core mechanic the build variety was greatly reduced when limiting the means of accessing stealth.

The changes in Specter and Critical Strikes as well as the changes to the utility skills seem fine to me.

[Dadnir.5038]

Who is the player that was using seal area?

Edit: Nevermind, there is 1 build that use it currently after a few years under the dust.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Dadnir.5038

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

2 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Who is the player that was using seal area?

thatd be me

 

[Dadnir.5038]

3 minutes ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

thatd be me

What did you do for it to be nerfed? Did you lock the dev's little sister/brother in the trap?

Edited June 26, 2022 by Dadnir.5038

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

32 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

What did you do for it to be nerfed? Did you lock the dev's little sister/brother in the trap?

its just for spvp, not wvw or pve. pvp is lame rn anyway

[Yashizuko.9165]

This feels like Anet just sacrificed the whole shadow art traitline just to make specter work... i mean.. thief is about stealth and using it's tools and combos to get or stay in stealth, wich is a big part of the thief class mechanic choosing when to attack.

 

ANET im gonna be blunt and direct, this feels like when someone removes some of your toys and tells you "that's all right we have other toys" and im worried alot because this is what i have seen wow doing post WOTLK before their decline

 

If i want to play my thief ( as i did from 2012 ) like a super stealth gameplay in wvw expecially, i will probably not being able to, and that's what's feedback in forum is about.

 

#SaveShadowarts don't butcher it..

Edited June 26, 2022 by Yashizuko.9165
Missing last line

[senftube.6081]

The more I look at the Notes, the worse they get. Sure for Spectre the SA changes are great but for all other builds that use SA this will be an ordeal.
Anet takes away almost all stealth options from the SA trait line and gives us Protection, Superspeed (I guess it would be for a tiny timeframe) but forgets that we have no Stability or Invul. I think a DP thief would thus CC to death and just pew pew from afar. In addition, he would have to consume a lot of ini for the stealth uptime to even land a backstab.

I find it a pity that once again Anet does not dare to rework the acrobatics traitline. But to change SA alone would simply mean that all thieves have to play the Spectre or S/D in the future. Not exactly rosy to have only 2 viable builds left. In addition, the class identity is destroyed and the name "Shadow Arts" a fallacy or a meme.  For me, this looks like a great lack of plan by the developer, who has simply shot at pigeons supported by a few which hates the thief allways with stealth or without.

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by Yunari.9065

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

On 6/25/2022 at 12:18 PM, LoreChief.8391 said:

Hidden Thief losing the ability to Stealth with Steal/Siphon is a huge gamebreaker for me.  I play Specter and the only two ways I have for getting into stealth are via Siphon and Heal.  So now I can only stealth once every 20 seconds because Siphon will be uselessly 'blinding' enemies instead of them just literally not being able to see me in the first place.  Stealth scepter skill is a huge part of my damage since I play a support build, and now I'll barely ever get to use it.

Good luck getting access to stealth attack sceptor now, only way is to use utilities now unless you use sc/d....which is gonna suck anyway because if youre a healer why take dagger offhand?! They didnt think it through.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

2 hours ago, Ken Yuudachi.9807 said:

Unless they give a lot of other stealth ways, like reducing the cooldown of  the blinding powder, this will be an out-of-version change.

 

Thief classes in the current version, except for the specter, do not have the ability to obtain stability constantly.

Removing stealth time also means other thieves have to face long distance one shot attack by rangers or mesmers. At the same time, it still doesn't have enough support to make a non-specter thief fight on a node with bunker classes.

 

I strongly worry about the upcoming patch. The cooldown of the blinding powder will be an important point. Based on the information I have read so far, they are going to kill all non-specter thieves and push the specter to the top.

 

I have reason to believe that their changes were random and unconsidered.

 

 

welp. back to the drawing board for full thief gank squads in wvw...and i mean squads, not havoc size..

 

[kash.9213]

8 hours ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

Good luck getting access to stealth attack sceptor now, only way is to use utilities now unless you use sc/d....which is gonna suck anyway because if youre a healer why take dagger offhand?! They didnt think it through.

You can still sc/p 5 and shroud to blast or leap, but that's some work and you eat up shroud just to go back to weapons. I do it anyway to spread barrier but enough can go wrong in that time. 

Edited June 27, 2022 by kash.9213

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

4 minutes ago, kash.9213 said:

You can still sc/p 5 and shroud to blast or leap, but that's some work and you eat up shroud just to go back to weapons. I do it anyway to spread barrier but enough can go wrong in that time. 

just made a thread requesting the damage portion of Grasping Shadows and Mind Shock come BEFORE the finishers, maybe could be us dipping in and out of stealth more often for more trait usage with the upcoming patch changes. Think of Bountiful Theft in conjunction with Sleight of Hand on how it removes the stability BEFORE the stun.

 

[nopoet.2960]

Losing stealth on heal is manageable because we have a heal that does that but  losing stealth on steal is kind of a big deal.  It will make it hard for all range builds to get in and out of stealth with the exception of of deadeye because of one trait.  Maybe they mean for us to use blinding powder and  shadow refuge more but they need to look at the cooldown times of those skills with this change in mind.  Perhaps change reveled from preventing stealth to reducing its duration.  For example, if you use blinding powder (3 secs. stealth) but have 2 seconds of reveled on you stealth only last for a second.  This will allow better use of the other changes to SA. 

[LoreChief.8391]

Well they confirmed today that they are going through with the patch changes even though basically everybody hates them and Anet themselves admitted they were controversial and flawed.  F in the chat y'all, our geese are cookered.

[Nihlus.9724]

One big disappointing change that I wasn't sure they were going to do or not is they removed the 20% Deception Skill recharge reduction from Hidden Thief. It makes sense now why they unnerfed the CD of Hide in Shadows and Blinding Powder. But if they were going to make the CD reduction "baseline" I wish they would have reduced the CD of Shadowstep to 40 seconds. 50 seconds is a bit long for such a vital skill.

[smiiirf.3201]

So DE and D/P Butchered. S/D and Specter the only playable builds. Gj Arena Net gj

[GewRoo.4172]

1 hour ago, Leolas.6273 said:

So DE and D/P Butchered. S/D and Specter the only playable builds. Gj Arena Net gj

Not true. SA Deadeye is now arguably better bc it's Dodge is just busted after the changes. D/P is fine too & tbh I played SA DrD only bc of other SA thieves - the extra stealth duration and sources were so cheesy in duels that DArts or CS couldn't compete with SA. Obv thieves are not carried anymore by SA and have to learn their class but I don't see how this a bad thing. But soon you'll discover how good DArts actually is so there is honestly no reason to cry. Deception nerf sucks tho. 

Edited June 28, 2022 by GewRoo.4172

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

It possible to pemra stealth using 1 player x/p #5 and having other thieves blast it?