Weaponmaster Training Beta Feedback: Thief

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

If anet gives guardian dual pistols and bouncy bullets im going to be pissed unless we get ricochet trait back

 Lest I remind them of wvw scavenger/vampire runes guardian with staff auto in the frontline with 900 range prior to its range nerf

Edited July 18 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[TheThief.8475]

53 minutes ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

If anet gives guardian dual pistols and bouncy bullets im going to be passed unless we get ricochet trait back

 Lest I remind them of wvw scavenger/vampire runes with staff auto guard Frontline with 900 range prior to its range nerf

They won't dare

Right Anet? Right?

[tanpopo.9102]

I didn't get to try thief in the last open test, but I would like to say that Specter trait lines could use some power or strike options. I like the theme of the Specter but not so much the somewhat awkward scepter, and I've preferred to play the "plain" old power-based weapons... which tend to underperform as a Specter. Now that weapon choices are opening up, it'd be nice to see.

Edited July 24 by tanpopo.9102

[FelsPinguin.5902]

On 7/6/2023 at 7:37 AM, Impling.4170 said:

Consume Shadows feels like it acts as more of a detriment than a benefit in any of the builds I run in PvP/WvW.

Totally agree there. After they introduced the stack mechanic in combination with the reduced health to shroud scaling of 0.69 this trait has become nearly useless in wvw and PvP.

If you calculate generously with 20k health your shroud ist only 13.8k. For 5 stacks of consume shadows you already lose 5x4% totaling to 20% in wvw and PvP. Considering you are not attacked once (which is in a Combat scenario Not realistic) you remain with 11.040 shroud health. Now 32.5% gets transfered to healing by consume shadows resulting in an amazingly Low heal of 3.588 for losing 11k shroud health.

If you calculate realisticly (17k health, being Hit for 2k within the 5 Seconds) you end Up with a heal of only 2.399,8. Which throws the question why the hell WE would need the overheal mechanic with these small numbers.

Just as a comparison a single measured Shot traited with traversing dusk and Shadow savior heals 3.392 for your primary target and 2.316,5 for the Rest. Not calculating any healing Power.

[Matty.6751]

Bonus from spending Malice points with both the Scepter and Staff needs to be added to the text box for it when you hover over the weapon skill and in the weapon skill tab. 

Also, the Rifle Sneak Attack doesn't let you move like before the Kneel changes if you don't have Deadeye spec active. 

On a side note, these new weapons for the specs are underwhelming. I'm also sad that we are only getting Main Hand axe when some of the other classes get new weapons for both hands, like Guardian dual pistol. Main-hand and Off-Hand axe would be better, even just Off-Hand axe would allow for more customization. 

 

Edited August 22 by Matty.6751

[oZZie.4762]

Is it just me, or does Specter not benefit at all from Weaponmaster Training? I can't see how staff or Rifle could possibly help me in basically any build. Maybe even Thief in general, idk.

[MrAmputatoes.6031]

Every thief weapon isnt great with weaponmaster training. Deaths Judgement deals poor damage outside of DE, Staff is built around evades and Scepter is entirely condi.

Scepter Deadeye is.... ok... but Malicious Intent doesnt work well with Malicious Shadowsqall since you dont love Malice until after the channel ends.... Thief is really just a side character at this point and if The Axe only mainhand doesnt really show that, idk what to tell yah.

 

[sapdan.2435]

lol

 

 

[Meridian.9103]

13 hours ago, sapdan.2435 said:

lol

 

 

Another boring 3-3-3 build, just what thief needed

[FelsPinguin.5902]

The core Problem why you cannot use staff and rilfe efficiently on other specializations is that you Miss Out the specific weapon traits. If you Take rilfe without deadeye you Miss Out 240 precision and stealth on Dodge. If you Take staff without daredevil you Miss Out 240 Power and endurance on Initiative. This alone makes the weapons way worse without their specialization and very hard to get Something useful Out of it.

I Had high hopes that they would adjust the weapons specific traits in Order to make the weapons more useful without them but also to make Elite specializations useful without the specific weapon. However, sadly they did nothing to Change that.

[Szymon.5369]

Tbh staff seems fine as it was not reliant as much on Daredevil, it's rather that Specter has no power synergy to make it shine, and for Deadeye the Malicious stealth attack doesn't benefit you much (stacks personal quickness which is redundant in group content). I can't check it as I didn't buy expac yet but there's no reason for staff to be actually bad as a braindead-easy LI build on Deadeye, it just won't beat current options.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

On 8/24/2023 at 7:44 AM, FelsPinguin.5902 said:

The core Problem why you cannot use staff and rilfe efficiently on other specializations is that you Miss Out the specific weapon traits. If you Take rilfe without deadeye you Miss Out 240 precision and stealth on Dodge. If you Take staff without daredevil you Miss Out 240 Power and endurance on Initiative. This alone makes the weapons way worse without their specialization and very hard to get Something useful Out of it.

I Had high hopes that they would adjust the weapons specific traits in Order to make the weapons more useful without them but also to make Elite specializations useful without the specific weapon. However, sadly they did nothing to Change that.

Annnnnnnd not to mention specter has innate reduced initiative, making it pathetic with anything outside its intended weapon sets. They were warned before the expansion and update went live and blatantly ignored it. They don't care at all lol.

 

Pathetic company, need ncsoft to take back over tbh

Edited August 25 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[Asra.8746]

On 8/23/2023 at 2:07 PM, sapdan.2435 said:

lol

 

 

That build is HIGHLY volatile, inconsistent, and not at all recommend for real gameplay scenarios. You need to pray to RNG gods for good crits. If you want to try replicate it. grind away at golem till you get a decent string of crits.

It's a poor choice for trying to make an argument in this case.

[FelsPinguin.5902]

Also scepter on deadeye or daredevil offer clear benefits over the Vice versa combinations. The weapon trait from specter for scepter ist only minor and therefore quite neglectable. Also you benefit from more Initiative Baseline and additional Initiative traits Like Maleficent seven. Therefore the combination is better.

However, in Order to offer real build variety in all combinations imho there needs to be certain adjustments:

• Specter needs to get rid of the Initiative reduction. Maybe while toning down scepter.
• The weapon improvement traits need to be incorporated into the weapon itself. E.g. raising the damage of staff instead of giving extra Power to daredevil builds or placing the stat buffs on other traitlines.

[TheThief.8475]

On 8/28/2023 at 8:41 PM, Asra.8746 said:

That build is HIGHLY volatile, inconsistent, and not at all recommend for real gameplay scenarios. You need to pray to RNG gods for good crits. If you want to try replicate it. grind away at golem till you get a decent string of crits.

It's a poor choice for trying to make an argument in this case.

And the scepter stealth skill animation is a tragedy and can be interrupted by any button press.

I tried this build, because of the malice crit generation you HAVE TO constantly look at malice to not kitten up the rotation which makes the build not enjoyable in fights where you need to focus on mechanics and not at the kitten UI.

Weapon master for Thief is worse than I expected (and I expected nothing) only staff DE atm seems to be working as an enjoyable OW build that provide self quickness (tho it doesn't have a lot of stealth access to proc it)

I was hopeful that they would refine professions and elite specs in the long run with this feature being introduced, then I realized it was locked behind SotO, which means that this half cooked system will probably be supported only for one year at best and will never reach its latent potential (Or do they have other reasons to spend a lot of balance and design resources on something that only affects owners of SotO?)

At this point my only hope is that the new expansions will include elite specs reworks as core updates in addition to new weapons/ utilities because the disparity between professions keeps rising, and rising, and rising, and we're close (if not at) the bottom.

Edited August 30 by TheThief.8475

[cjttruelife.9172]

On 8/24/2023 at 4:44 AM, FelsPinguin.5902 said:

The core Problem why you cannot use staff and rilfe efficiently on other specializations is that you Miss Out the specific weapon traits. If you Take rilfe without deadeye you Miss Out 240 precision and stealth on Dodge. If you Take staff without daredevil you Miss Out 240 Power and endurance on Initiative. This alone makes the weapons way worse without their specialization and very hard to get Something useful Out of it.

I Had high hopes that they would adjust the weapons specific traits in Order to make the weapons more useful without them but also to make Elite specializations useful without the specific weapon. However, sadly they did nothing to Change that.

core everythings better, f2p is all that matters this game was a dead beta project before any expansion.

Edited September 20 by cjttruelife.9172

[xellink.7568]

sword has the highest auto attack damage and is not impacted by initiative. If spectre has a slight power rework it could be a melee low intensity build that can compete with hammer mechanist.

Acrobatics ?21

Critical Strikes 321

Spectre 333

Sword Power alac spectre

Edited September 29 by xellink.7568

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

On 9/29/2023 at 6:29 AM, xellink.7568 said:

sword has the highest auto attack damage and is not impacted by initiative. If spectre has a slight power rework it could be a melee low intensity build that can compete with hammer mechanist.

Acrobatics ?21

Critical Strikes 321

Spectre 333

Sword Power alac spectre

i see this being funny as hell with 232 specter... shallow grave for them condi spammers... lower cd on steal... just dish out all condis BACK to them xD i smell a fun build to play....23(2) ( the 2 being used to obtain conditions without directly being focused, but keep the condis coming to you to give back to the enemy...tether ally, target enemy, stay in shroud as long as you can...when ally gets a bunch of condis transferred to you, siphon the enemy and dish it back out TO them...maybe with extended expertise to make their damage last longer xD then watch as the long duration slows screw their cleanse times -dang, i wanna make a build now so bad.

Edited October 13 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[weed.3761]

Thief is the class the benefited the least from weapon master. It just has too much 2handed weapons... give him some one handed weapons to work with and mix with other weapons

[Puck.3697]

On 10/14/2023 at 7:46 PM, weed.3761 said:

Thief is the class the benefited the least from weapon master. It just has too much 2handed weapons... give him some one handed weapons to work with and mix with other weapons

Well we are getting main hand axe, woulda been nice to get off hand to match though. 

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

10% of the playerbase has about 88 million hours combined into thief and when insay q0% I literally mean only 10% play it. The game preaches diversity but doesn't give anything for bug fixes, unused utilities, reversion of old skill usage, etc to keep up with the other classes updates wise. Weaponmaster is a clear indicator of the shortcomings that arenanet development team has...it's like a scary monster no one wants to bother with...yes I'm FULLY aware we as players don't know crap about balance and we ARE not listened to...I only want things FIXED and looked at before they come out with half-arsed patches. 

 

 

 

We can post bugs all day, whine all day but unless they ser a legitimate reason to listen to us, such as overperformance, we are factually going to be ignored. If they don't know what to do balance wise, then remap the entire mechanics, thief style to actually fit into the game to BRING about thus diversity game...otherwise it's going to be worthy of being called a f****ing NPC at this point or a mule character. 

 

Hated by all, master of none. No one's going to want you in a normal balanced composition in wvw because you really lack in areas provided by other classes...venoms sure, but it's immediately cleansed by blobs and only benefits to TAG someone. There is NO group synergy in most game modes that are favored. Shroud? Yeah maybe 2 casts before u get 1 tapped out of Shroud, alot of good that did.

 

 

 

Daredevil is what acrobatics SHOULD BE but how long have we been sitting on an acrobatics traitline worth a f***?...years...just like the alliance system 

 

 

 

Tbh I think the new team is incompetent but it's not their fault, they got thrown into it when other devs were quitting or laid off without so much as a "do a great job" with lack of content like "this class does this"

 

 

[Asra.8746]

It's not complex to understand why they struggle to balance and address thief problems (including those problems that have persisted for over a decade), when you understand that nobody in the balance team actually likes/plays thief.

You cannot balance and address the problems of a class when you don't understand the class itself, nor care about it - you can pretend to understand it and care about it for public display, but anyone that has observed the various balance teams' balancing attempts of this class and ignore the issues of the class for over a decade understands the balance team's incompetency and ignorance when it comes to this class.

The saddest part of it all is that there's been numerous people with phenomenal feedbacks, constructive criticisms, and suggestions over the years, which have all gone ignored.

 

I will give you a very recent example of the favouritism displayed by the balance team: keep reading...it's fun.

They decided to give thief yet another main hand weapon for SotO. Thief has had 2 off hand weapons for over a decade. Thief's specialty is supposed to be dual-wield, yet time and time again, they have decided to go the lazy route and design as few skills and options as possible for thief (2 two-hand weapons and 1 main hand weapon for past expansions). What does that mean? It means if they add a main hand weapon, they can avoid having to come up with ideas to design more skills (5 vs 6 or better yet, 12 if they actually decided to give both main hand and off hand) - technically, those numbers are lower because nobody plays using a single main hand, unless they are RPing; so, it's realistically only 4, 6, or 11 (based on what they are doing, it's effectively 4 skills).

Can you think of another class that has a dual wield system? That's right, it's CMC's favourite class: elementalist (with weaver). Guess what elementalist gets...a main hand. Do you know how many skills that is? Let me enlighten you: 18 skills. That's right...you read that right. 18 skills!

 

TLDR of the recent example:

Thief and Weaver share the same dual wield system.

SotO weapons adds effectively 4 skills for thief (5 if you count the minor stealth skill tweak from deadeye), while it adds 18 skills for weaver (12 skills for all other elementalist specs).

Guess what CMC mains and loves most. Take a wild guess... 🤡

 

PS: One can argue that axe might have an auto-attack chain skill, but so can the pistol...and that would still bring it up to 6 skills instead of 4 based on all the information we have available to us.

Edited October 27 by Asra.8746

[Puck.3697]

On 10/27/2023 at 6:49 PM, Asra.8746 said:

It's not complex to understand why they struggle to balance and address thief problems (including those problems that have persisted for over a decade), when you understand that nobody in the balance team actually likes/plays thief

It's complex to understand why they don't rework a class they feel this way about however. 

Tbh we arent alone in this boat however sadly. 

[Chibbles.4803]

We really do need some new off-hand weapons. I'd love to see Sword mainhand be viable in PvE content. 
It feels like Thief is so kitten limited in terms of PvE. There is no diversity in builds or weapons like the other classes have.
Having to choose between 3 option when others have like 6 isn't "diversity".