Thief CORE Mechanics are TOO GOOD in Competitive Modes

[Vismooth.4128]

1 hour ago, kash.9213 said:

Then my first point still stands.

And I still don't really see that it'd be such a bad idea.
But it's alright, we can agree to disagree on this.
I like current thief in any case and have had plenty of fun across all of its specs, but at this point I just want Anet to do something with it other than bringing it even lower down. Doesn't really seem like they either care or understand what to do with the mess they created, especially considering the first things specter is to receive are nerfs and not fixes for the bugs that had existed since its release.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Vismooth.4128

[DeceiverX.8361]

18 hours ago, Vismooth.4128 said:

If Thief was changed to be a cd-based class, flanking strike wouldn't exist in the same iteration it is now, that's the whole point.
No one's saying "move initiative to cds and keep the skills the same", it would necessitate a complete rework of every weapon skill and trait that had to do with it, like I stated in my original message. Which is also why it'll never happen. Thing is, even if you moved thief to cds, kept it mostly the same, but gave it, like, multiple ammo stacks for certain relevant skills, it still would've worked better this way, at least I think so.
And correct me if I'm wrong on this, but Alacrity boon doesn't affect initiative gain in any way either.

I'd argue cooldown-based skills on a class meant to be played risky and glassy are contradictions by virtue of taking away that level of improvisation the class gains access to.  And if you get ammo on essential skills... it might as well just be initiative but with costs reduced to be honest, because the only justification for spam is usually either overloaded abilities or everything else just being nerfed into oblivion and made borderline not-worth-using in 99% of situations.

The real problem here is the class's defenses are tied primarily to things which actively deny the opponent to even engage with what the thief is actually doing, and being things which mostly modify powerful restricted mechanics like stealth and dodges, they become oppressively strong when built into them (see, historically: SA), and the offenses are kept too weak as a means of compensation, with no way to invest back in those because then the class either can't survive by investing in damage or invests in survival and gets just enough damage to slowly grind people down with said non-interactive mechanics.  With SA made way more engaging than before, the target shifts to thief's lack of damage or red-headed-stepchild of Acrobatics being sub-par now that people are actually engaging the class.  It's not that it needs stronger abilities on cooldowns, but just stronger damage options when invested in in general.  Because now there's little means of actually investing in damage having been nerfed to handle the old non-interaction design.

It's been historically most-glaring on the thief because these tweaks to its mechanics are tied to core-game mechanics, but the fact is the class needs tradeoffs just as any other does in order to be balanced, and should require deep build investment in order to specialize deeply.  It's the same problem the elite specs have, except the class has kneecapped PvP/WvW damage to compensate for its really oppressive levels of agency in terms of picking its fights/leaving them that it gets from only one or two trait lines, which are usually in contention for top-tier sustain and utility within the class, as well as some other damage bonuses, too.

It's why specializations and the three-trait-line system are major failures from a balance point of view.  Suddenly the deep investment power-spikes that came from M/GM traits became free bonuses, and the way a lot of classes and specializations are set up, those spikes were and are enormous in defining the success of its class.

In the old system, you'd suddenly be left with getting only a fraction of an elite, OR Shadow Arts, OR Crit Strikes, OR core game with both.  Now the power of the elite is justified against other traitlines, and works out, and you can make big disparities in the strength of those deeper traits and how the stats pan out.

Edited September 28, 2022 by DeceiverX.8361

[Leger.3724]

7 hours ago, Squeesidhe.4761 said:

Got it, makes total sense. 

 

Here's some pvp context:

> I am bad at most video games

> I play thief and suddenly am extremely hard to kill

> All other games must be bad and this game is good because I am good at it

You are completely right. It must be all those other games that suck. This game definitely has things balanced well which is why a ~400 strong playerbase regularly queues for 5v5 spvp. What's that Tobias saying? I just blue myself? No wait, it was "there are dozens of us!".

Edited September 28, 2022 by Leger.3724

[Mincsk.6028]

On 9/24/2022 at 4:43 PM, Svarty.8019 said:

All variations of Thief are hard to play well. I acknowledge that fact. It's a blessing that there are only a few who can master this abomination of design, but when they do, holy smokes, it's incredible - it's no accident that the most impressive and outrageous roaming videos are made by thief players.

 

It's been clear since way back in the day that an average thief can outperform anything else in competitive modes. Come on. It's time to change the core mechanic to something sensible, get rid of the idea that it's fine to have ..well... everything on a single class and without cooldowns. 

 

 

Please understand that I'm not just asking for nerfs. I'm asking for a rework. Make things more balanced, let's see some LEVELLING UP!

 

Thief is trash right now. Try going in wvw roaming in tier 1 or 2 in wvw solo and "destroy" anything lol. I wasn't super good at thief but half decent and any +1 fight you have to use every ounce of initiative and utility cooldowns to try to escape. You act as if thief can 1vs2,3,4,5 or something. 1vs1 thief can do okay but it's still not the best in wvw. I think in spvp it has to do with gear scaling and available gear sets. "thief are hard to play well". I main thief 4 hrs a day for a yr straight in t1 wvw before the shadow arts nerf and i was only okay. If I spent that much time on any other profession I'd probably have better results. When you come at this like "wow thief is clearly the best ever" that's straight up saying nerf it to the devs because redesigning the profession would easily irritate the entire playerbase of that profession. Like think about your main and you roast a noob in pvp then that noob is on the forum "nerf redesign into something i can kill" lol

[Leger.3724]

11 minutes ago, Mincsk.6028 said:

Thief is trash right now. Try going in wvw roaming in tier 1 or 2 in wvw solo and "destroy" anything lol. I wasn't super good at thief but half decent and any +1 fight you have to use every ounce of initiative and utility cooldowns to try to escape. You act as if thief can 1vs2,3,4,5 or something. 1vs1 thief can do okay but it's still not the best in wvw. I think in spvp it has to do with gear scaling and available gear sets. "thief are hard to play well". I main thief 4 hrs a day for a yr straight in t1 wvw before the shadow arts nerf and i was only okay. If I spent that much time on any other profession I'd probably have better results. When you come at this like "wow thief is clearly the best ever" that's straight up saying nerf it to the devs because redesigning the profession would easily irritate the entire playerbase of that profession. Like think about your main and you roast a noob in pvp then that noob is on the forum "nerf redesign into something i can kill" lol

 

I think some of you are missing the point:

 

You escape any losing engagement. Okay fine, you blow your initiative. So what? Your character determines if there will be a fight and then unless you massively screw up you will determine how the fight ends with you securing a kill or with you running away leaving the other player no reward for beating you.

 

Every other pvp game on the planet tries to avoid these scenarios. They try to prevent one player from determining the start and end of a pvp engagement. It's really, really, really bad game design in GW2.

 

My problems with pvp go way beyond thief. But there is a reason the pvp player base is numbered in the hundreds, maybe the 1000-2000 on a great day. People voted with their feet back to games that have well thought out and balanced combat... and that does not describe GW2. They can fix PvE by scaling things up or down, by messing with PvE mechanics. But there is no solution to hide bad mechanics, bad skill design when it comes to PvP.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Leger.3724

[Jitters.9401]

On 9/24/2022 at 6:19 PM, itspomf.9523 said:

In fact, their defenses consist almost exclusively of:  dodging, stealth, blind,

I mostly play a condition mesmer now in wvw. My defenses are evading (far less than a thief has) and blocking.

 

If you look at the amount of times you see a thief able to use their dodges/stealth/blinds/ you will see that their defensive capabilities are far far superior to most other classes. 

 

I mained a thief in wvw exclusively for a lomg while till last major update.  I didn't like being forced to use stealth as a main defensive skill because I found it to be overpowered.

[Jitters.9401]

3 hours ago, Mincsk.6028 said:

Thief is trash right now. Try going in wvw roaming in tier 1 or 2 in wvw solo and "destroy" anything lol. I wasn't super good at thief but half decent and any +1 fight you have to use every ounce of initiative and utility cooldowns to try to escape. You act as if thief can 1vs2,3,4,5 or something. 1vs1 thief can do okay but it's still not the best in wvw

I disagree whole heartedly. 

 

Like I said before. I stopped playing thief in wvw because I didn't enjoy being forced to a different playstyle (too much stealth). It is OP and does not fit what I enjoy.

 

However...  Pre update my best with the thief was me vs 5.  I was always initiating fights with multiple enemies. Sometimes I'd attack a group of 4 or 5 just to down (not stomp) someone who annoyed me, then run away... and anytime I saw that group I'd hit that same person again and again and again.... usually because they threw seige on me after I lost a fight against a much larger force. 

 

So no. Thief is not trash in wvw.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

Teef have too much freedom, they need to screw up really hard to even die. 

[senftube.6081]

6 hours ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

Teef have too much freedom, they need to screw up really hard to even die. 

 Lol every decent souldbeast can kill thief as a freekill. Same for most Condi builds or Celestial .

[Burial.1958]

17 hours ago, Vismooth.4128 said:

And I still don't really see that it'd be such a bad idea.
But it's alright, we can agree to disagree on this.
I like current thief in any case and have had plenty of fun across all of its specs, but at this point I just want Anet to do something with it other than bringing it even lower down. Doesn't really seem like they either care or understand what to do with the mess they created, especially considering the first things specter is to receive are nerfs and not fixes for the bugs that had existed since its release.

What I don't understand is that most people want more and more diversity in classes and builds, and then there's another proposal where you want to make the thief exactly the same and rob him of his special mechanics. The thief is one of the least played classes in the game and people still seriously think he is OP. Do you know what OP is? A mech that can press 1 and has an AI that does damage with backstab coefficient without position and without having to do anything for it  .

To give thief 0815 CD mechanic will change nothing. Then he is a freekill for sure or ArenaNet have to give him Boons and Passives too what is kinda pretty boring because this game is already a Passive/boons Clownfiesta atm.

[Vismooth.4128]

3 hours ago, Grebcol.5984 said:

What I don't understand is that most people want more and more diversity in classes and builds, and then there's another proposal where you want to make the thief exactly the same and rob him of his special mechanics. The thief is one of the least played classes in the game and people still seriously think he is OP. Do you know what OP is? A mech that can press 1 and has an AI that does damage with backstab coefficient without position and without having to do anything for it  .

To give thief 0815 CD mechanic will change nothing. Then he is a freekill for sure or ArenaNet have to give him Boons and Passives too what is kinda pretty boring because this game is already a Passive/boons Clownfiesta atm.

Don't misunderstand my posts, I really like the way thief was designed originally, it's what made me stick with the class for the longest time so far playing this game.
All I'm meaning to say is that I, personally am, ready for more radical solutions in case there's even a faint chance of thief's position getting better.
Of course I would like it even more if Anet started paying attention to what we currently have and started fixing things that need fixing (*ahem* specter bugs from EoD release are still there *ahem*).
I wasn't really talking about things that are OP or not. I know the state of mechanist and the reason it's so overrepresented in the community. It takes something being good to be popular. Which is probably why so few people dedicate themselves to playing thief in the first place.

[Bern.9613]

Sooo thief is the only class with stealth, shadow step and power? Does it also have the highest starting hp pool? Does thief also have invulns? Does thief also have a lot of blocks? Does thief also have a lot of reflects? Does thief also have the highest hp regen? Does thief also have 4 elements with 5 skills each? Does thief also have tool kits with another 5 weapon skills? Does thief also have the longest weapon range? Does thief also have the shortest cool downs? Does thief also have the ability to generate every boon in the game? Does thief also have the ability to generate every condition in the game? Does thief also have a constant pet, clone or mech to deal extra damage? WOW this thief has everything. Where does one get this thief?

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

The thief's initial design was to be a very strong duelist/assassin character. Few classes were honestly able to hold up well against thief at launch because the design of thief was literally to be a strong 1v1 class.  And it was never intended to fight fair, because it cannot afford to do that.

 

Thief's role in competitive was to be a playmaker. You harassed enemies to keep them busy. Or if you find someone roaming solo in competitive, you killed them and remove them from the next team fight.

 

The design consequence/trade off is that thief is PUNISHING if you screwed up. You had mobility, stealth, blind, interrupt, and dodges. Thats all you get for defense - which are all primarily short lived active options. You had no ability to generate stability, protection, aegis, no real way of healing yourself beyond 6, and ypur utilities have some of the longest cool downs. And were extraordinarily situational. Your weapon skills are not designed for damage, but utility so face rolling a burst is not an option. Your burst damage (which is heavily nerfed) comes from realistically only a single option which is easily missed and punished. You burn your init you are dead. And your init pool is shared between weapon swaps. You offered little team support, and there wasn't much thief could do to handle crowds. When a thief is able to 1v4 its generally because people stupidly chase him letting him kite.

 

 

So... No. There's no problems with thief's design. Just problems with how nerfed it got.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497

[Squeesidhe.4761]

14 hours ago, Leger.3724 said:

You escape any losing engagement. Okay fine, you blow your initiative. So what? Your character determines if there will be a fight and then unless you massively screw up you will determine how the fight ends with you securing a kill or with you running away leaving the other player no reward for beating you.

 

Every other pvp game on the planet tries to avoid these scenarios. They try to prevent one player from determining the start and end of a pvp engagement. It's really, really, really bad game design in GW2.

 

 

Um... what? 

 

Admittedly I haven't played, say, WOW in a while, but my recollection of Rogue is this is EXACTLY how it worked. Except it had perma-stealth to do it. Wildstar isn't around any more, but the stealth class in that game was even more "Rogue" than WOW. Most any MMO or even games like LOL, stealth-attach characters work roughly the same way. 

 

The ENTIRE gameplay concept for stealth classes is to set up an overwhelming blitz, and then stealth away if it goes wrong. Dart in, dart out. You're supposed to lose 1v1 in a straight fight in most cases. You're supposed to be a sneaky, underhanded kitten who uses dirty tricks and poison and ninja moves to  take out stragglers or the wounded, then run away and get set up to do it again.

 

Everything you're complaining about seems to be fundamental to ANY stealth class, not just GW2 Thieves. 

 

"They try to prevent one player from determining the start and end of a pvp engagement. It's really, really, really bad game design in GW2." I mean... huh? No they don't. Quite the opposite. What are you even going on about, seriously? 

 

[Squeesidhe.4761]

On 9/25/2022 at 5:32 PM, Svarty.8019 said:

I do not want not NERFS, nor dismantling of the class. I would like to see something as interesting as the current mechanics, but different.

 

 

LOL

[senftube.6081]

6 hours ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

Guys, don't be angry for me writing facts as usual, it's okay. Just accept reality.
Decent teef will murder soulbeast, condi builds and celestial builds.
Bad teef will even die to berserker core engineer.

 

To moderation: Sorry, but what I wrote was faaaaar from insulting or rude in any way or form, try again with logical argument this time. Facts don't care about feelings.

Must be those alternative facts.

[Mincsk.6028]

On 9/28/2022 at 12:40 AM, Jitters.9401 said:

I mostly play a condition mesmer now in wvw. My defenses are evading (far less than a thief has) and blocking.

 

If you look at the amount of times you see a thief able to use their dodges/stealth/blinds/ you will see that their defensive capabilities are far far superior to most other classes. 

 

I mained a thief in wvw exclusively for a lomg while till last major update.  I didn't like being forced to use stealth as a main defensive skill because I found it to be overpowered.

You play a class that is almost impossible to target the real player then complain about how powerful stealth is. Every time you blink, or stealth ppl lose target on you and target one of your clones... And stealth is oped? Thief and mesmer hold hands in the (learn2counter) mechanics my friend. "(far less than a thief has)"lmao so this means you cast shame on thief players because they are so overpowered... Yet the fotm rerolls don't go anywhere near thief which makes that an odd argument. Idk your posts feel biased for some reason? The thief profession isn't very well represented in any aspect of this game other than spvp so we know it's not overpowered. (<points> to the huge amount of mechs as proof of the results of being an actual overpowered spec).

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Thief has less actions per minute on it's weapons skills than other cool down based classes due to how initiative works and the fact you have a shared resource pool across both weapon sets (seriously, go do the maths). If you really want to buff thief by giving us more teleports, stealth and evades, or by giving us meaningful sustain on top of that, be my guest. 

[Leger.3724]

On 9/28/2022 at 12:54 PM, Squeesidhe.4761 said:

 

Um... what? 

 

Admittedly I haven't played, say, WOW in a while, but my recollection of Rogue is this is EXACTLY how it worked. Except it had perma-stealth to do it. Wildstar isn't around any more, but the stealth class in that game was even more "Rogue" than WOW. Most any MMO or even games like LOL, stealth-attach characters work roughly the same way. 

 

The ENTIRE gameplay concept for stealth classes is to set up an overwhelming blitz, and then stealth away if it goes wrong. Dart in, dart out. You're supposed to lose 1v1 in a straight fight in most cases. You're supposed to be a sneaky, underhanded kitten who uses dirty tricks and poison and ninja moves to  take out stragglers or the wounded, then run away and get set up to do it again.

 

Everything you're complaining about seems to be fundamental to ANY stealth class, not just GW2 Thieves. 

 

"They try to prevent one player from determining the start and end of a pvp engagement. It's really, really, really bad game design in GW2." I mean... huh? No they don't. Quite the opposite. What are you even going on about, seriously? 

 

 

So a dead game and a game with a small pvp community are your comparables?

 

I guess if the definition of success is failure you've schooled me.

 

I was thinking games that actually get played like say League of Legends with 100+ million active monthly users. They seem to understand how to design a game to make fun pvp interactions and they also have stealth, teleportation spells/blinks/whatever you call your character teleporting from one location to another.

 

 

 

[Kulvar.1239]

On 9/24/2022 at 10:43 PM, Svarty.8019 said:

All variations of Thief are hard to play well. I acknowledge that fact. It's a blessing that there are only a few who can master this abomination of design, but when they do, holy smokes, it's incredible - it's no accident that the most impressive and outrageous roaming videos are made by thief players.

 

It's been clear since way back in the day that an average thief can outperform anything else in competitive modes. Come on. It's time to change the core mechanic to something sensible, get rid of the idea that it's fine to have ..well... everything on a single class and without cooldowns. 

 

 

Please understand that I'm not just asking for nerfs. I'm asking for a rework. Make things more balanced, let's see some LEVELLING UP!

 

For fun I ask: what would you replace initiative with then ? Because a class need to have its special F1 up to F4 mechanic that is impactful to its gameplay.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Also, remove core necro shroud. I don't find that fun to fight against either, and since that's the balance metric we're apparently going for here....

[Zacchary.6183]

On 9/24/2022 at 4:43 PM, Svarty.8019 said:

..well... everything on a single class and without cooldowns

Initiative is a global cooldown.

[ASP.8093]

On 9/27/2022 at 9:37 PM, Mincsk.6028 said:

Thief is trash right now. Try going in wvw roaming in tier 1 or 2 in wvw solo and "destroy" anything lol.

Ok. It's very doable with enough practice. For example, Shadow Arts Deadeye absolutely demolishes melee-heavy builds, many glass-cannon builds, and a lot of condi spammers. The new changes have been pretty good for that because the faster cleansing and extra initiative gain makes it easier to pick apart the stupid tanky Trailblazer/Celestial type builds that a lot of "roamer"/"havoc" type players are playing.

 

On 9/27/2022 at 9:37 PM, Mincsk.6028 said:

I wasn't super good at thief but half decent and any +1 fight you have to use every ounce of initiative and utility cooldowns to try to escape. You act as if thief can 1vs2,3,4,5 or something. 1vs1 thief can do okay but it's still not the best in wvw.

The key to doing 1v2 or 1v3 on thief is to split people up, using stealth and ports for misdirection. It doesn't take a lot — people botch mobility skills or get stuck on terrain all the time.

Bring Shadow Portal if you want to go into 1vX situations a lot. Having a one-touch 2000+ range escape means you can play way more aggressively with your other utilities (like using Shadowstep to secure a stomp). Your goal in 1vX shouldn't be a total wipe, it should be to bring down as many as you can while you're still alive and bail out after you exhaust your resources.

[ASP.8093]

On 9/24/2022 at 4:43 PM, Svarty.8019 said:

get rid of the idea that it's fine to have ..well... everything on a single class and without cooldowns. 

Thief doesn't do support, area damage, or hard CC very well (Specter has opened up some options on these fronts but it's still not the top dog in these categories).

The flexibility of Initiative is offset by the way thief weapon skills are typically designed with more "purity of purpose" than other class'. Head Shot just being a quick single-target daze instead of an area attack or a hard stun, for example. Playing thief gives you great flexibility in offense, defense, and mobility, but you pay for all that with the same resource — meaning playing safely reduces your ability to burst or control other players.

Also, Initiative is a single resource across all your weapons. So you can't do what other classes do and unleash a whole fresh set of abilities just by hitting that ~ key.

[Leger.3724]

5 hours ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

Also, remove core necro shroud. I don't find that fun to fight against either, and since that's the balance metric we're apparently going for here....

 

When the game mode is numbered in the hundreds of players maybe it is time to look at what is fun and what is not because the mode has clearly failed.

 

When a thief can determine, when, where, if and how a pvp interaction ends... maybe that needs to be looked at by Arena Net. Maybe that's not a good idea to keep people coming to your game.

My issues with pvp go far beyond a thief but this thread was started in general discussion. Some people who casually pvp wanted to show they were upset with the design of the thief and the core mechanics of stealth and teleportation.

And thread was interesting enough and good enough and specific enough to be used as an example to Arena Net of why the pvp scene is dead and the wvw scene has been dying for years. The core combat mechanics are just awful. You can paper this over in pve and you don't have to deal with it in casual pve much. But there's no hiding anything in pvp/wvw. The thief was the subject so the thief is what I looked at.

If you want to talk necro start a thread. Talk about why you dislike fighting necros in pvp. I don't think thief is the only problem in pvp by any stretch of the imagination. Mechanics cross professions/specializations in this game so the problems with stealth and teleportation aren't limited to the thief though I would say they are the most egregious on that profession.

Edited October 2, 2022 by Leger.3724