Curious about something. What Kind of Thief do y'all wanna fight?

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

Had an experience today when I was fighting a player on Daredevil who was playing meta SB. After the fight he mentioned that he didn't like my build, to which I asked:

"What kind of build would you like?"

He could not give me a straight answer regarding this, so I wanna see something real quick.

See poll. If the answer is a tie, please pick whichever experience you like the most out of all of them. What do you all want? 

[Hotride.2187]

A good one, so usually low stealth, lots of blinking and excellent dodges and bursts.

[Zuko.7132]

14 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Had an experience today when I was fighting a player on Daredevil who was playing meta SB. After the fight he mentioned that he didn't like my build, to which I asked:

"What kind of build would you like?"

He could not give me a straight answer regarding this, so I wanna see something real quick.

See poll. If the answer is a tie, please pick whichever experience you like the most out of all of them. What do you all want? 

You should do this for war. 
 

1. No cc, high dps, fast animations, mobile, low sustain

2. Cc, high dps, telegraphed animations, slow, high sustain

ect. I don’t know what kind of fight people want from a warrior other than an easy one. 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

All thieves is the correct answer, because thief is a real class with actual telegraphs, with high risk high reward play, where depending on skill you could ace an opponent or mess up and die instantly.

This is how a game is supposed to be designed. This is the way ^

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

15 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Had an experience today when I was fighting a player on Daredevil who was playing meta SB. After the fight he mentioned that he didn't like my build, to which I asked:

"What kind of build would you like?"

You have more patience than me.
When I witness any such comments I usually dedicate at least 30 minutes into making sure with absolute certainty that they definitely do not like the build they're fighting.

 

How can they know just after one go? Run it 5 more times, regardless of what they say, just to be safe, and may CmC's balance account for all fairness. 🙏

[Downstate.4697]

anything without stealth really. Thief really needs its initiative costs to come down

[Kodama.6453]

Let's see

• perma stealth is annoying
• perma evasion is annoying
• extreme mobility is annoying

..... this concludes basically every form of defense a thief has. Sooooo, let's fight dead thieves. Dead thieves are good.

/s

Edited February 20, 2023 by Kodama.6453

[Sinister.5792]

I want

 

-HIGH MOBILITY 

-HIGH DAMAGE 

-HIGH STEALTH 

 

 

[Crab Fear.8623]

Long time ago I asked to increase bandits defense, shot down.

It's a matter of ego.

Take away stealth, but the health of thief needs to be mid tier, and the stealth attacks need a rework.

forbidden boons like prot, stab, blocks, ect.... need to be given.

initiative costs need to be reduced.

 

may as well be a ranger.

 

 

[Spellhunter.9675]

I want to fight a thief that has nothing to bother me and will die as soon as I look at him. Honest answer. 

[Hotride.2187]

20 minutes ago, Spellhunter.9675 said:

I want to fight a thief that has nothing to bother me and will die as soon as I look at him. Honest answer. 

You can play mobile games I guess.

[Terrorhuz.4695]

Another option: nuke from orbit the cleanse on thief.

As in: Signet of Agility cleanses, it's fine. That's a dedicated cleansing skill, that's what it should do.
Every other skill that got free cleanse slapped on top for no reason gets hard nuked.
Shadowstep would still be the strongest stunbreak in the game even without 3 conditions cleansed, Infiltrator's Strike would still be a great port even without the cleanse, Dash is a powerful rotational tool even without cleanse, all of those healing skills (stealth, or evade) are obscenely powerful already without having cleanse too.

Once all the free cleanse is removed, thief can get ports, blinds, evades, stealth, reduced initiative cost on most of the key skills (Infiltrator's Arrow too, why not?), make Preparedness baseline, whatever goes. It's a fun class to play, with great tools to express skill, it deserves a spot in the meta. It just sorely needs to have a single hard counter to keep it in check, and conditions IMHO are the best way to do that (just as they were the bane of gs mesmers in the past)

Edited February 20, 2023 by Terrorhuz.4695

[Waffles.5632]

It's the shaco problem from LoL. Thieves should not have infinite possibilities to "reset" a fight via stealth. IF they engage, the they should be comitted, if they disengage, they shouldn't be able to hop back in with their CD's up before their opponents.

If the mechanics allow this, thieves basically get to decide when and where to fight and the opponent has no agency other than to wait on point for a thief or who may or may not be there.

 

Any stealth should be limited to 3 secs. 5 secs MAX. Anything longer and it's shaco terrority for real, especially when combined with shadowsteps and such.

The major problem is always spammable stealth+mobility because any class with that is going to be an absolute mess of frustration and pain to go against. See dragonhunter which single-handedly had it's entire identity associated with rune of trapper way back when. What changed?

They got spammable stealth+super speed.

 

And for those who don't know who/what Shaco is, he's a champ from LoL that has stealth+teleport+burst+clones and traps lmfao. Talk about Mesmer and Thief fiesta. What always happened against any good Shaco player is they would initiate (from stealth), and if they didn't get the kill, they'd just stealth away again and repeat. Their opponent was never given any choice in the matter. Fights always centered around what the Shaco wanted to do in any 1v1.

Riot fixed this by making their stealth CD really long, longer than the average team fight, so the Shaco player now had to make a lot of hard choices, do I use my stealth to engage or disengage, because I can only use it realistically once now. Furthemore, this allowed the really good shacos to shine, because player skill was now the most important factor, not the stealth mechanic.

 

So low stealth, high mobility, close/mid range is the "best" thief to fight against, but most thieves know that and thus avoid those kinds of builds unless they're really gangster and want to send a message.

Edit: Things would also be different IMO if every class had it's own reveal skill as a standard, that way if you see enemy thief during pre-match, you can swap to that skill. As it is now though, revealed is the least accessible mechanic, only given to a few classes here and there.

Edited February 20, 2023 by Waffles.5632

[apharma.3741]

Are these the only options?
There's problems on both sides of the thief equation.
People don't like fighting something that makes a mistake and just yeets out of there or retreats into stealth (especially if your weapon abilities require a target) when they mess up, denying the kills and satisfaction of winning. Even less so hearing black powder going off nearby and not wanting to leave the node to a decap where the theif gets to decap and then get to your fight a few seconds after you nullifying your hard won fight.

On the other hand it's no fun playing a class that's mobile and designed to +1 or 1v1 something that is basically a raid boss that sits there doing it's rotation and the window of opportunity is really short or non existent. A thief that cannot get a kill or has to try and add into a 2v2 or 3v2 is a decap bot and then you're entirely reliant on your team not doing bad things. Unfortunately most people are extremely bad at rotations and strategic thinking of what classes/roles should be where.

[Leonidrex.5649]

20 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

All thieves is the correct answer, because thief is a real class with actual telegraphs, with high risk high reward play, where depending on skill you could ace an opponent or mess up and die instantly.

This is how a game is supposed to be designed. This is the way ^

high risk o.O

[Eddbopkins.2630]

20 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

All thieves is the correct answer, because thief is a real class with actual telegraphs, with high risk high reward play, where depending on skill you could ace an opponent or mess up and die instantly.

This is how a game is supposed to be designed. This is the way ^

Going Invisible is telegraph gameplay? Doing invisible back stabs and invisible heartseakers is telegraph?

Edited February 20, 2023 by Eddbopkins.2630

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 hour ago, Eddbopkins.2630 said:

Going Invisible is telegraph gameplay? Doing invisible back stabs and invisible heartseakers is telegraph?

Yes, it's actually ridiculously predictable depending on which skill they obviously use the enter stealth and how much time they have before reveal.

I dodge stealthed Thief attack with like 90% accuracy, unless it's the first strike and I did not know the Thief was there.

[Dr Meta.3158]

How about we just make stealth visible to all players within 360 radius of the user.

[AliamRationem.5172]

I'd like a version of thief with strong stealth openers and an evasive play style with good combat mobility.  However, I think in-combat stealth should be strictly limited and combat mobility should be largely limited to offensive utility, not disengage-whenever-I-want.

Translation:  Thief should be scary off the opener, difficult to get away from, but punished hard for mistakes and not able to simply stealth or port away whenever they feel like it.

Edited February 20, 2023 by AliamRationem.5172

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I'd like a version of thief with strong stealth openers and an evasive play style with good combat mobility.  However, I think in-combat stealth should be strictly limited and combat mobility should be largely limited to offensive utility, not disengage-whenever-I-want.

Translation:  Thief should be scary off the opener, difficult to get away from, but punished hard for mistakes and not able to simply stealth or port away whenever they feel like it.

I am reading all the votes and posts and this seems to be what people ideally want (please continue submitting posts though). Thanks for the opinions and explanations on this.

I may do a second, smaller poll regarding how we can get high mobility/evasive/low stealth playable with it also requiring a commitment to the fight. I don't mind backing that if it works. 

I had a discussion with @Zacchary.6183 recently that made me interested in potential solutions that don't require class design that breeds animosity. I want to see if there is a path there I may have overlooked that perhaps we can suggest. 

@Waffles.5632

Quote

So low stealth, high mobility, close/mid range is the "best" thief to fight against, but most thieves know that and thus avoid those kinds of builds unless they're really gangster and want to send a message.

When you say "those kinds of builds," can you be a bit more specific? What weapon sets are you associating with this (or, ideally, would like to be associated with this)? I'd imagine there's more to it than thieves avoiding it because it's less annoying to deal with, but that's discussion for later.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

23 hours ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

You have more patience than me.
When I witness any such comments I usually dedicate at least 30 minutes into making sure with absolute certainty that they definitely do not like the build they're fighting.

 

How can they know just after one go? Run it 5 more times, regardless of what they say, just to be safe, and may CmC's balance account for all fairness. 🙏

 

I'd run it 5 more times if I was playing warrior or some other class where the player fighting me had a clear advantage and was just whining, but I know how this particular interaction looks on both sides of this match and "more annoying thief", while funny, will not help. This time, at least. 

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

2 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Yes, it's actually ridiculously predictable depending on which skill they obviously use the enter stealth and how much time they have before reveal.

I dodge stealthed Thief attack with like 90% accuracy, unless it's the first strike and I did not know the Thief was there.

Don't boo this. Trevor is right, but you can't see how he's right unless you play thief to some degree of mastery.

Once you do you can generally understand their stealth rhythm by imagining what you would do in that situation and reacting accordingly, but if you have not played thief to this level of mastery when the thief vanishes it is a black box where anything can happen to you. I can fight thieves pretty reliably on warrior (even before the spellbreaker patches), but I can also see how not having that little blueprint of "here are all the things the thief can do from this distance, from this angle, with the cooldowns he hasn't used" would make interacting with them obnoxious at best and demoralizing at worst. 

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Zacchary.6183]

16 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I had a discussion with @Zacchary.6183 recently that made me interested in potential solutions that don't require class design that breeds animosity. I want to see if there is a path there I may have overlooked that perhaps we can suggest. 

Would be nice if the rest of the thief community could contribute too. Its understandable that some like the way it is, but others don't. Me personally, I'm having fun on my vind in raids and fractals.

[Waffles.5632]

1 hour ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@Waffles.5632

When you say "those kinds of builds," can you be a bit more specific? What weapon sets are you associating with this (or, ideally, would like to be associated with this)? I'd imagine there's more to it than thieves avoiding it because it's less annoying to deal with, but that's discussion for later.

My bias is Mirage so for me the best fights against thieves are power DD builds who get up close.

I despise condi because generally that's more hit and run from range+stealth, and also ranger/thief condi's are ridiculously frustrating. I've been poisoned for 20+ secs and that's just never cool. Especially when it comes from traps you can't see that are on nodes. Unless I'm missing a graphics setting or something, I just never see them and then boom CC+poison+bleeding or w/e and literally 80% of my hp is gone now and the thief/ranger didn't do anything skill wise.

 

However don't take this as a slight. That is my personal bias. Objectively speaking, those builds work, although I don't really see enough of them to like, complain about it. It's frustrating when it happens, but it doesn't happen often enough to be memorable.

 

However power thief builds are always memorable. The thief goes in stealth, and like you and @Trevor Boyer.6524 said, there is a degree of predictability to them. You know at the very least, if you've 1v1'd thieves before, that, when they stealth it generally means they're gonna open on you, and if you keep the focus on the node, that's how you win battles versus thieves. That in itself is super fun. The back and forth, the clashing of blades and mobility. The mind games of baiting each other out. etc.

Whether I lose or win IDC at that point because the experience is what makes my heart flutter. It's a real test of skill and tactics.

Power thieves have my heart, but condi thieves are no thank you lol. They're usually the runs always running away (makes sense, kite while condi's wither down your opponent, still not fun to fight against tho)

Condi thieves generally use "cowardly" tactics, but again, objectively, that's what wins and is safest more or less. I don't fault anyone for playing anything, just some builds are fun to fight, while others aren't. Unless a build is literally OP broken, IMO there's really no "wrong" way to fight, as long as you're winning. I mean if I followed what everyone liked then I wouldn't of ever played Mirage to begin with for example. I know mixing myself with my clones is super frustrating for some people, and they would much rather prefer I never play the class, but imma still play it 😈

 

The downside to power thief is when you slip up you get punished hard. Really hard. Not only by enemy, but then your team starts blaming you as well. Same experience on Mesmer. If you're winning nobody realizes it's because you're doing your job roaming, but the second your team is losing and looking for someone to blame, always the thief or mes, followed by whoever is at far.

So from a new player perspective, like who wants to deal with that lol? Much easier and more forgiving to get good on condi and then when you get confident, switch to power and flex.

 

These two videos are NOT 1:1 obviously, but I do feel they give the idea/vibe of what I'm talking about here:

 

versus engaging DD ^^ I actually think he is condi lol, but I'm baiting until I feel I can land my magic bullet and pounce. I love that dynamic.

 

versus traps ^^^ (I feel DH trapper plays similarly enough to condi rangers/thieves, but obv there are some differences, closest video I could find to show what I'm talking about)

 

See what I mean? Traps and condis are just generally very stale IMO. Games, even pvp games, are always supposed to be about fun before anything, this is why certain playstyles are just frowned upon, no matter their efficacy.

Even if I would have lost in the first vid, I most likely would have learned something, or at the very least, realized my mistake, therefore I can adapt for next time. In the second vid tho there's literally nothing to be done except don't face check nodes, but I only have one dodge so I have to face check nodes unfortunately ty anet for giving Vindi 2 dodges.

 

Hope this helps and that I explained it well!

 

Edit: also Anet's design philosphy of power requiring 3 stats but condi only requiring 2 means like what? 90% of all condi builds are also tanky with over 20k+ hp more or less? I personally think that is a flaw and that condi should require 3 stats just like power.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Waffles.5632

[Shagie.7612]

i think high mobility and being slippery is fine in a game mode like TDM, but in conquest where decapping is as fast as it is, the ability to be somewhere and back as quickly as thief can presents problems for allowing that player to do anything but be a backcapping bot

EoD gave out some crazy mobility so it's a little less true now but if you can decap nodes and be back to fights, and be useful in those fights, you end up with matches where it pretty much comes down to which team has a better thief because the only way to deal with a thief is with your own. that's been the story of plenty of ATs throughout the game's life.