Thief is dead.

[xellink.7568]

3 hours ago, Vadar.5724 said:

I've been noticing that if I look around I rarely see any thieves at all. I might see one other in a 50 man ow squad. If you look around crowded hubs like wizards tower or arboratone, you don't see any. I have played thief enough to have full legendary gear and a high wvw and pvp rank and its just got painful to play over time. Everything is just clunky and badly thought out.

I see Condi DPS Spectres and Condi Alac Spectres all the time. In fact i saw A LOT of spectres right after scourge got nerfed. When scourge got buffed, a lot of players shifted back to play scourge, but there are still enough spectres to be significant. In fact, i hardly see any of the elementalist e-specs to be honest, in raids and in fractals.

 

On 10/22/2023 at 2:25 AM, Zacchary.6183 said:

The only thing thief has ever excelled at over other professions was exploiting mechanics, hence your list. Except for maybe 3, its all niche. The last two aren't even special. Soloing X or having comparatively high AA damage isn't exclusive to thief, nor is it indicative of any advantage it may have over other professions. I wouldn't count shadowstepping up anything as some massive advantage either (outside of speedrunning and skipping) since the system has had pathing issues ever since anet changed it years ago.

In fact, thief has been so niche in endgame content for so long that anet had to shoehorn in usefulness to incentivize players into bringing them into raids, for example Raid Stolen Skills added some time after w4. "BiS for kiting" and mechanics in general is the nice way to say least useful on-stack. How often do you hear "I'm going to raid on my thief" over "I'm going to switch to thief for mechanics"? How often do you see a thief in a boonblob that isn't spamming Choking Gas on the enemy boonblob? Or NOT roaming/tapping? Or outside of decap/+1 "roles"? Its rare, at least in my experience. Nobody wants to bring thieves unless they need them and it shows.

 

Every class has its own way of exploiting mechanics. 

Necro for condis and boon strips and in the case of scourge, ultimate carry revives.

Guardian and its group support, and in the case of Firebrand being the answer for almost everything else, carrying the biggest toolbox on a healer.

Mesmer for versatility of its utilities and in the case of Virtuoso, unchallenged ranged DPS

Thief for its ability to solo kite, high mobility and in the case of spectre, superior Alac DPS Support

Mechanist and its Automation and recently one of the best Power Alac on hammer (sorry engineers)

Ranger for well-rounded survivability, and in the case of soulbeast, effective hybrid DPS, and probably the best Alac Heal on Druid

Renegade for its premium multifaceted identity, and Herald being the best Quick DPS.

You know what is not useful?
Elementalist and Warrior.

Elementalists are the worst, with skills that can totally kill your allies like conjure weapons. The only use for eles is to bunker up on 2v2 ranked arenas and drag the game for as long as possible until the other party rage quits.

When I was farming PVP, facing an enemy spellbreaker 1v1 on side nodes are like free kill. if you shadow step up a platform, you get lots of free hits you can load them with condis and force them to make bad plays. They have no range alternative. I used to play spectre hahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, sorry, that memory always makes me laugh uncontrollably.

 

Quote

Its been like that for years now, alongside the numerous bugs and design flaws anet has yet to address since HoT. Countless requests to bring back Ricochet, make Preparedness baseline, etc. all so thief doesn't feel like it's being funneled to BiS traits just to perform. The lack of representation throughout its entire lifespan which would have helped make changes to the profession more sensible had they experienced the high-effort, low reward gameplay themselves. Even with the weaponmaster powercreep, thief felt like it got a mayo sandwich compared to other professions. At the end of the day, thief is niche and exists for aesthetics. But it stops being fun when you want to be useful outside of its niches.

Every class is funneled into good traits to perform, not just thief. With weaponmaster, some classes got shafted, thief isn't the only one, like warrior.

If you want to talk about niche, bladesworn is the most niche espec in the game. It can hit 3 hands on adina with a thief combo and that won the world record. 2 thieves 8 bladesworns. Try bladesworning on deimos. There's no reason to bring bladesworn into fractals too. The game mode is so fast, your team would have cleared the mobs while you are still charging dragon slash. 'Hey where did everyone go?'

At least deadeye can effectively give quickness with a super simple rotation. 

Who knows, maybe ricochet got removed because axe is designed to bounce against multiple foes.

[Zacchary.6183]

13 hours ago, xellink.7568 said:

and in the case of spectre, superior Alac DPS Support

High APM, minimal utility. Requires ritualist for it to not be crap because you'll be dealing bad damage otherwise. Other alacs are more well-rounded and often offer something other than just alac.

[xellink.7568]

3 hours ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

High APM, minimal utility. Requires ritualist for it to not be crap because you'll be dealing bad damage otherwise. Other alacs are more well-rounded and often offer something other than just alac.

We all know it's easy to perform. How did requiring ritualist's become part of the argument. 

The thing about spectre is that it has a very high skill ceiling but a low skill floor. If you think that alac is all it does, you should explore more or listen to what others have to say.

While I tend to joke about spectre being s-class for Samarogs door, spectre is probably one of the few classes that can carry most of Samarog's defiant bar. This is literally present in every boss and it is possible to prep and specialise skills for the encounter which makes thief fun, just like batman. 

Performance and hunting a raid boss is never a thief problem. The biggest problem is the kitten amounts of equipment load outs for each scenario and the lack of equipment slots

[Zacchary.6183]

On 10/24/2023 at 12:34 AM, xellink.7568 said:

but a low skill floor

Thief in general does not have a low skill floor. It hasn't had a low skill floor since its chain of nerfs started shortly after launch. Thief as a whole has plenty of spam builds, but the mindlessness is offset by resource management. You can't dump initiative and expect to get the same results as a generic rotation on other professions. The only time this isn't a problem is with M7 because it returns such a huge chunk of initiative when it procs. The sheer number of specific loadouts needed to function per build/mechanic is a symptom of what I explained earlier. It needs to commit to be effective. It's more useful off the stack. It's for niches and aesthetics.

[Lucinellia.9247]

On 10/21/2023 at 6:03 PM, Antrix.4512 said:

Yeah, Specter is the most "challenging" and very VERY interesting healer with a very high learning curve, and I'm sure that even after a couple of months I'm still learning this spec. But all the hard work pays off handsomely in the end.

Initially, I'd wipe the whole party, but now, with very rare exceptions, EVEN IF someone drops - it's because they ran far away from me, and the situation didn't even allow me to teleport to them, etc. Huge thanks to the guides and an amazing community, especially Lucinellia Lyndra (@Lucinellia.9247?) for the help and guidance on the healing spec.

Thanks for the kind comments! The main document hasn't been updated in a while and I was initially hoping for a balance patch during October before adding some more details. With the stream preview on Friday we should hopefully get an idea if anything is changing substantially for Heal Specter and I do hope that we get a better Relic for supplemental boons. In case there are any Anet employees lurking about, these are the major changes we need (short of an entire rework that realises ally targeting is not functional in Guild Wars 2):

1. Ally Shadow Sap Protection increased from a baseline of 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
2. Reduced effectiveness for non-targeted allies from Scepter abilities of 25%, instead of 50%. This would mean that the new splash baseline Protection on allies would be 3.75 seconds.
3. Increased range of ally targeted boon application via Scepter abilities to at least 360 units. I would prefer 480 units personally because you can't control where other players go.
4. Increased range of Alacrity and boon application from Shadestep to at least 480 units around the tether. Similar reasoning to the above - we can't control what other players do and this is a unique constraint for Specter.
5. Alacrity application around the Specter and the tethered target. The application around the Specter can likely get away with being smaller in area (even down to 240 to prioritise the tether as the main source), as it is mainly to compensate for the tether going for a wander. This would also improve consistency for boon application between Specter and Deadeye, affording better coherent identity to Thief boon supports.

There are some other bug fixes like increasing the number of ally targets that ally Shadow Sap and ally Shadow Squall can travel through before missing, but if the above happens then Heal Specter is in a very strong place and doesn't need any major changes (outside of a rework that recognises ally targeting in Guild Wars 2 is a very silly idea).

As an aside, I still see some misconceptions crop up from time to time with Heal Specter, especially outside of HT CM where skill usage varies more, so I am planning on making a video overview when time is kind. I also owe Iskarel a boss encounter write up for the Snow Crows site but NaNoWriMo is breathing down my neck...

Edited October 25, 2023 by Lucinellia.9247

[xellink.7568]

2 hours ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Thief in general does not have a low skill floor. It hasn't had a low skill floor since its chain of nerfs started shortly after launch. Thief as a whole has plenty of spam builds, but the mindlessness is offset by resource management. You can't dump initiative and expect to get the same results as a generic rotation on other professions. The only time this isn't a problem is with M7 because it returns such a huge chunk of initiative when it procs. The sheer number of specific loadouts needed to function per build/mechanic is a symptom of what I explained earlier. It needs to commit to be effective. It's more useful off the stack. It's for niches and aesthetics.

Maybe we have different agreements on the definition on difficulty. To me difficulty is playing the piano, like how weaver used to be, like doing a 20-30 hit combo on Tekken and that is totally destroyed by the alac/quickness. Build loadout has been a very irritating barrier to enjoy thief but it is not a technical difficulty that cannot be resolved with gold or gems.

For thief, it has always been very easy to hit above 30k, as compared to other LI builds, say for example Power Rifle or Power Hammer Mechanist that still remains super popular. 

Thief has always had a low skill floor but this also requires conscious trait decisions, such as going BQoBK instead of M7s. Switching traits isn't difficulty. Its inconvenience. Just answer me, how much different is BQoBK's DPS different than a full Rifle M7's DPS rotation. For myself, its 38k vs 42k. Go full signets, 34-36k on a F1-5111111 build. Very easy, something power mechanists can only dream about. 

For alac DPS spectre, before the new alac rework, its just spam wells on cooldown, no utility, but very easy to play, somewhat rewarding. Now, the new Alac DPS spectre is even easier to play, and even much more rewarding. Condi spectre is sooooo easy to learn (but hard to master). There is so much space for skill expression on condi spectre when its explored to a deeper level. 

Look at the other condis:
Have you played condi berserker? You need to use skills in rapid succession or your DPS drops like mad.
Don't talk about condi reaper, nice on golem, but bring that kitten into twin largos and it suffers so bad due to movement.
Condi mechanist, such a stupid build. And its condi alac variant is equally dumb as well, I can't understand why snowcrows would put it up. 

But the venoms on condi spectre, no cast time, no interrupts, no cancels. How can you complain that spectre's skill floor is high? The only trouble is that you need to invest in ritualist for alac, and vipers for condi dps. Thats not difficulty, just inconvenience. 

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

9 hours ago, Lucinellia.9247 said:

Thanks for the kind comments! The main document hasn't been updated in a while and I was initially hoping for a balance patch during October before adding some more details. With the stream preview on Friday we should hopefully get an idea if anything is changing substantially for Heal Specter and I do hope that we get a better Relic for supplemental boons. In case there are any Anet employees lurking about, these are the major changes we need (short of an entire rework that realises ally targeting is not functional in Guild Wars 2):

1. Ally Shadow Sap Protection increased from a baseline of 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
2. Reduced effectiveness for non-targeted allies from Scepter abilities of 25%, instead of 50%. This would mean that the new splash baseline Protection on allies would be 3.75 seconds.
3. Increased range of ally targeted boon application via Scepter abilities to at least 360 units. I would prefer 480 units personally because you can't control where other players go.
4. Increased range of Alacrity and boon application from Shadestep to at least 480 units around the tether. Similar reasoning to the above - we can't control what other players do and this is a unique constraint for Specter.
5. Alacrity application around the Specter and the tethered target. The application around the Specter can likely get away with being smaller in area (even down to 240 to prioritise the tether as the main source), as it is mainly to compensate for the tether going for a wander. This would also improve consistency for boon application between Specter and Deadeye, affording better coherent identity to Thief boon supports.

There are some other bug fixes like increasing the number of ally targets that ally Shadow Sap and ally Shadow Squall can travel through before missing, but if the above happens then Heal Specter is in a very strong place and doesn't need any major changes (outside of a rework that recognises ally targeting in Guild Wars 2 is a very silly idea).

As an aside, I still see some misconceptions crop up from time to time with Heal Specter, especially outside of HT CM where skill usage varies more, so I am planning on making a video overview when time is kind. I also owe Iskarel a boss encounter write up for the Snow Crows site but NaNoWriMo is breathing down my neck...

Im hopinh the stream can show me meaningful reasons to come back. I was only taking a break but we will see! You 2 have been an immense help on EcK collaborations 🙂 thanks Luci & Chimaera !