Thief Players Revolt!

[senftube.6081]

Thief can't have nice things. 10 years of nerfs and one of the least played class in the whole game and the Devs keep nerfing them hard. Now is the point we should say: NO Anet!

[Mincsk.6028]

38 minutes ago, Yunari.9065 said:

Thief can't have nice things. 10 years of nerfs and one of the least played class in the whole game and the Devs keep nerfing them hard. Now is the point we should say: NO Anet!

When I want to play a thief I'll go look at other offerings. Rogue/druid in wow, burglar in lotro, ninja in bdo, Unfortunate gw2 doesn't offer this play style as a functioning profession within the balance of the other professions. Maybe ashes will have the play style I like sometimes. Anet has a hard time with the basics imo like guys we just want normal class fantasy from d&d sometimes.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Mincsk.6028

[AikijinX.6258]

The thing is as long as we have access to stealth, any nerf we get is justified. *laughs in scrapper sneak gyro*

[Squeesidhe.4761]

51 minutes ago, AikijinX.6258 said:

The thing is as long as we have access to stealth, any nerf we get is justified. *laughs in scrapper sneak gyro*

I visited my Mesmer a day or two ago, and was surprised to notice how much stealth she has. She can put out a lot of personal and group stealth. So much so, in fact, that I was wondering if Mesmer was actually the better stealth class. 

[smiiirf.3201]

I say NO ArenaNet!

[Cyninja.2954]

59 minutes ago, Squeesidhe.4761 said:

I visited my Mesmer a day or two ago, and was surprised to notice how much stealth she has. She can put out a lot of personal and group stealth. So much so, in fact, that I was wondering if Mesmer was actually the better stealth class. 

 

Let's compare https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth with https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hide_in_Shadows_(effect) and reconsider your statement shall we?

 

I know you ware trying to be dramatic, but come on, not even the most dedicated thief enthusiast can take your claim seriously.

 

On thief overall, it be great if the developers found a way to balance thief overall in less extreme ways (extreme in either direction). Unfortunately the initiative system, not only stealth, seems to be a very hard to balance design decision.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Burial.1958]

2 hours ago, Ken Yuudachi.9807 said:

No, it's useless. We had been trying to maintain neutrality for years. We've come up with many available options so that they wouldn't destroy entire class when balancing the specific build, but ArenaNet says 'No.' and ignored all opinions. Just simply cut off all types of shroud builds.

They might have a follow-up patch to fix it in the next month, but it's all kitten to me. If your balance isn't done, don't release it. Why do players have to tolerate your laziness to play a game that is fundamentally unbalanced? The player's experience depends entirely on the balance team's ignorance idea after a nap someday.

It's all bs unless the balance team disbands. I don't want to spend my time on such an irresponsible game. I'm out.

Now...after years of neutrality we should also roar it seems. The scrappers did it and they got love again from the devs. Thief had not 1 patch in 10 years where we had positive patchnotes. At some point the pain threshold is reached and you start to get tired of it. They nerf rework our class so that we have to adapt again and again. But slowly the point comes where everything is just crap.

[Chips.7968]

If balance was kneejerk after every "patch" then we'd still have more endurance on signet use, and no exhaustion on daredevil dash.  

In reality, those changes weren't the END OF THE CLASS that some made it out to be. Everything needs some time to be evaluated well. Have they overdone it this time, or the changes should never have been made? Did you not think spectre was strong?

I'd agree it'd be nice if they spent more time evaluating the impacts of changes more fully, but then we'd never see a damned thing happen.

 

[Valisha.8650]

get lost anet

[Squeesidhe.4761]

2 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I know you ware trying to be dramatic, but come on, not even the most dedicated thief enthusiast can take your claim seriously.

 

Calm yourself, I said I was surprised by how much stealth the Mesmer could actually put out. I hadn't played the class in a while and I had forgotten. I don't need a dissertation on it. 

If I recall, I was reaction to speculation that it is the stealth mechanic that is attracting Anet's ire. But if that's the case, Mesmers also have stealth. So why aren't they being nerfed into mush? 

 

Edited October 5, 2022 by Squeesidhe.4761

[Cyninja.2954]

19 minutes ago, Squeesidhe.4761 said:

 

Calm yourself, I said I was surprised by how much stealth the Mesmer could actually put out. I hadn't played the class in a while and I had forgotten. I don't need a dissertation on it. 

If I recall, I was reaction to speculation that it is the stealth mechanic that is attracting Anet's ire. But if that's the case, Mesmers also have stealth. So why aren't they being nerfed into mush? 

 

For one, the far more limited access to stealth (not a single smoke field to be found on the entire mesmer kit) compared to thief.

Not to mention the absolute lack in ability to actually remove revealed, which only Deadeye has with its ultimate.

The rest is: longer duration cooldowns on stealth abilities and overall less stealth abilities even without comboing into smoke fields would be my first guesses.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Bern.9613]

11 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

For one, the far more limited access to stealth (not a single smoke field to be found on the entire mesmer kit) compared to thief.

Not to mention the absolute lack in ability to actually remove revealed, which only Deadeye has with its ultimate.

The rest is: longer duration cooldowns on stealth abilities and overall less stealth abilities even without comboing into smoke fields would be my first guesses.

Many times I've seen mesmers stealth up at 1200+ range and 1 shot people and engis for that matter. So yea.... Higher hp pool, double 1200 blinks, prismatic understanding, mass invis, veil, decoy, prestige. No stealth? I see 14 secs of stealth. Wanna try again?

[Cyninja.2954]

2 hours ago, Bern.9613 said:

Many times I've seen mesmers stealth up at 1200+ range and 1 shot people and engis for that matter. So yea.... Higher hp pool, double 1200 blinks, prismatic understanding, mass invis, veil, decoy, prestige. No stealth? I see 14 secs of stealth. Wanna try again?

 

The claim was that mesmer was the better stealth class, which is ludicrous at best. Again even a simple wiki comparison gives a clear overview over which and how many different stealth skills both classes have, for players who are lacking the experience with both classes. I also never said mesmer had no stealth, in fact it is the class with the 2nd most access to stealth skills in the game.

 

The 1 trick pony 1 shot build has been around since day 1 and it doesn't even require stealth to work. It also requires a specific time frame to execute. What was the claim of most thief players? Learn to dodge?

[MrChatters.9461]

16 hours ago, Grebcol.5984 said:

Now...after years of neutrality we should also roar it seems. The scrappers did it and they got love again from the devs. Thief had not 1 patch in 10 years where we had positive patchnotes. At some point the pain threshold is reached and you start to get tired of it. They nerf rework our class so that we have to adapt again and again. But slowly the point comes where everything is just crap.

We have a right to roar, sure, but we aren't represented nowhere.

For scrapper particularly were made a lot of YouTube videos and reddit posts, a lot of twitch streamers were focused on it, and so on. (Discord?)

 

I dare you to try and defend Thief class on Reddit. There's literally zero chance to be listened on there if you don't sugarcoat anything and don't praise devs as godly entities (I mean it's not only a thief issue, it's reddit in general);

and how's the ratio of youtubers on scrapper : youtubers on thief? Specially when thief video/streams are made by that skillful 0.01% that's playing thief since '15 making it look viable, for PvP mostly.

A lot of newcomers have it HARD playing thief even on base Tyria maps (I've seen this with few friend that i brought on gw2), so they switch to another class and in that exact moment is a thief less on the player base and a lost voice. Can't blame them, they were trying to play the less effective thief class among any MMO. (They're sticking with Necro and Mesmer now)

 

We have zero sympathy from other classes too as we're the whiners that like to backstab you on WvW. Everything we touch becomes salt.

 

People don't care about what's healthy for the game and game design in general, as they're only focused on their power level and what they're getting from crazy balance decisions. That's why devs can't listen to feedbacks blindly, they have to get involved in the cause and the only way to achieve this is by putting an experienced thief player in the devs team.

 

We literally had zero agency over the butchering of specter, nobody cared about that 0.69 and ALL THE GAME ANALYSIS THROWN FOR FREE IN THE FORUM DOING WHAT DEVS ARE PAID FOR, VALUING NOT ONLY VIABILITY OF A CLASS BUT GAME DESIGN IN GENERAL; meanwhile people were literally shilling their disabilities trying to justify a 37k 0apm dps applied in high end game PvE.

The most unhealthy thing for the game.

[thaniretouni.4762]

I have a suggestion. Make the debuff revealed to last 12 seconds each time we come back from stealth. Change some skills that apply stealth with something new (for example, make shadow refuge an area where allies evade all melee attacks so groun effects and projectiles can still hit). Now that stealth is not a huge problem. Stealth attacks work differently. Each time you evade an attack either by evading or block to activate ur stealth attack. This effect has an internal cooldown of 2s. So you cannot evade backstab evade backstab in less than 2.5-3 secs if we also calculate the cast and reaction time. Give back our dmg. reduce our initiative to sensible levels and make initiative we gain from trickery baseline so we can increase diversity. Also, specter could regain some of its shroud value to 80% of what it was before the nerf.

[Felices Bladewing.3914]

12 minutes ago, thaniretouni.4762 said:

I have a suggestion. Make the debuff revealed to last 12 seconds each time we come back from stealth. Change some skills that apply stealth with something new (for example, make shadow refuge an area where allies evade all melee attacks so groun effects and projectiles can still hit). Now that stealth is not a huge problem. Stealth attacks work differently. Each time you evade an attack either by evading or block to activate ur stealth attack. This effect has an internal cooldown of 2s. So you cannot evade backstab evade backstab in less than 2.5-3 secs if we also calculate the cast and reaction time. Give back our dmg. reduce our initiative to sensible levels and make initiative we gain from trickery baseline so we can increase diversity. Also, specter could regain some of its shroud value to 80% of what it was before the nerf.

 

technically smoke field could be changed to give smoke aura to leap/blast finisher (something like -10% physical dmg and blind on struck) or give it aegis.

c&d could enable backstab without stealth and receive a 600 shadowstep in return, maybe tune down the cast time.

Hide in Shadows can stay imo, because if you use it only for stealth you waste your heal which is a tradeoff in itself.

Blinding Powder could give other boons and apply daze and get a lower cd

shadow refuge may be changed into a pulsing condi remove

shadow portal could give aegis on port.

 

there are possibilities and those were just out of my mind while writing so dont take them too seriously, but you need someone in the devteam to actually care

[Cyninja.2954]

2 hours ago, MrChatters.9461 said:

A lot of newcomers have it HARD playing thief even on base Tyria maps (I've seen this with few friend that i brought on gw2), so they switch to another class and in that exact moment is a thief less on the player base and a lost voice. Can't blame them, they were trying to play the less effective thief class among any MMO. (They're sticking with Necro and Mesmer now)

 

True, thief can be overwhelming to new players, especially ones used to trading blows with pve enemies from other MMOs.

 

Best advice here imo:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Powder

 

Literally makes all of core Tyria obsolete, except for dredge. Slap on a sword as main weapon, keep Black Powder up and just kill your way through every enemy without taking damage, even groups of enemies.

Once more adept at the class, advance to actually other weapon combinations.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Emolesbian.3170]

- There is an interval to Blind application with Black Powder.

- Blind negate one hit. Multiple hits don't really care.

- It's and expensive move in PVE (6).  So is Pistol Whip (5).

 

Tbh I use Pistol offhand to get access to Head Shot (4) and shred Defiance bar.

Black Powder could find some more utility with Pistol in mainhand and projectile finisher as Unload does good damage and cost only 3 with the refund.

 

In specific scenario tho.

 

[Cyninja.2954]

32 minutes ago, Emolesbian.3170 said:

- There is an interval to Blind application with Black Powder.

- Blind negate one hit. Multiple hits don't really care.

- It's and expensive move in PVE (6).  So is Pistol Whip (5).

Most pve enemies, nearly all in core Tyria, attack slower than the interval of blind application. Given the skill is aoe, it allows avoiding damage from multiple enemies for a near permanent time-frame.

32 minutes ago, Emolesbian.3170 said:

Tbh I use Pistol offhand to get access to Head Shot (4) and shred Defiance bar.

Black Powder could find some more utility with Pistol in mainhand and projectile finisher as Unload does good damage and cost only 3 with the refund.

 

In specific scenario tho.

 

No, you need the initiative for keeping up black powder and the sword auto is better at cleaving down multiple enemies.

The idea here is to give new players a build which behaves as close as possible to traditional MMORPGs, aka trading blows with enemies once they reach you, and not have them burst down single enemies. Autoing on sword, using black powder, tanking multiple enemies with blind, that's the easiest approach one can take.

It worked at launch and still works now and turns a thief played this way into one of the tankiest core classes for core content there is. Especially once you add the other defensive thief abilities into the mix if needed.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Emolesbian.3170]

7 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

[...]

Oh I get it. Fully makes sense to AA with sword. Quite boring tbh. But if it worked and still works, well.

 

Probably explains why new players see thieves as an unattractive class. I won't last long playing this way if I had to roll another thief this way lol.

[Cyninja.2954]

1 minute ago, Emolesbian.3170 said:

Oh I get it. Fully makes sense to AA with sword. Quite boring tbh. But if it worked and still works, well.

Absolutely, it's the thief approach to "necro minion master" boredom build, but it beats dying left and right while running daggers as a new player for example.

 

1 minute ago, Emolesbian.3170 said:

 

Probably explains why new players see thieves as an unattractive class. I won't last long playing this way if I had to roll another thief this way lol.

 

Maybe, my guess is most are having a hard time with the way combat works in this game, similar to elementalists, which also go from "I die in 2 hits" to immortal god if played well.

[Emolesbian.3170]

1 minute ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Maybe, my guess is most are having a hard time with the way combat works in this game, similar to elementalists, which also go from "I die in 2 hits" to immortal god if played well.

 

Couldn't say more about eles 🙏.