Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Beta Feedback: Thief

[Jumpel.3972]

I don't like it :

• It's another ranged weapon when we already are at 3 melee and 4 ranged (no melee since HoT btw)
• It's hybrid which make it hard to balance in PVP (RIP Power Sc/D)
• The two new Dual Wield skills (#3) miss the original design of using the left hand weapon first and then the right hand (currently it's only right hand)

On the bright side, Axe have his own gimmick which is cool (even if I'm not a big fan of it) and some people show it  have a good dps in PVE

 

[Geoff Fey.1035]

On 11/30/2023 at 11:25 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Problem 4: Spectres:

Spectres really want to be using torment as one of their primary damaging conditions due to traits that feed off it - they may gain shadow force and healing from it, and potentially extra damage as well. This discourages them from using weapons other than sceptre as they generally want to keep their torment stacks up. A/D 3 does add torment to each axe, but a sceptre is still likely to provide significantly more. Spectre's lower initiative can also make the 2-2-3 combo harder to pull off.

There's only 2 traits that operate off of torment specifically and Larcenous Torment is the main one that matters for Shoud generation. Strength of Shadows is great, but you can get around it if necessary when running an Alac build (and I haven't seen anyone using Hungering Darkness outside of PvP).

Changing Larcenous Torment to operate off of "damaging conditions" would allow greater build variety since Dagger, Shortbow, and Axes would activate it, although the scaling would need to be re-evaluated as overlapping Poison Fields (Shortbow), Death Blossom (Evade + Bleed), and piercing conditions (Axes Torment + Bleed + Poison) could become broken very quickly.

[Sieghart.8745]

From a PvP Standpoint Axe thief was not at all viable. You could have all your axe's out and 1 aegis or 1 reflect and your out of initiative or they dont do enough dps for what their intended to do they need to have Piercing on the axe 3 ability that would make axe work in pvp a little better not to OP but something to make it work cause it uses so much resources to even produce half the damage Shortbow or Rifle can do  

[Tilastik.8193]

Some points were already said before.

If you don't have any spinning axes, then Axe 3 does nothing, instead:

• Axe/Pistol 3 should fire an unblockable bullet at your target, recalling the spinning axes to the enemy struck. 
• Axe/Dagger 3 should teleport and stab the target, recalling the spinning axes to the enemy. Add a flip over skill that is available for a short duration (1 sec) which allow you to teleport back to the previous location (like sword 2).

The Axe travel speed should be faster, especially when they are recalled using Axe 3.  The hit box should also be a little bigger.

Axe 1 feels too slow.. Animation/cast speed need to be increased. However, if it make spinning axes generation too fast, then change Axe 1 to be an attack chain where only the last one generate a spinning axe.  Maybe something like: Bouncing Axe->Bouncing Axe->Piercing Axe (spinning axe)

Spinning axes from Axe 2 should be flashier than the one from Axe 1. 

[itspomf.9523]

On 12/2/2023 at 4:06 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Apart from the obvious, one concern I'd have over the "move axe over to offhand" suggestion is... how many variations of the "recall axes" mechanic would you really want? Currently there's two, and if an offhand comes up next, they'll have to come up with a third. As an offhand, they'd either need to shift the recall to skill 4 or 5 (in which case there'd be only one, and therefore no opportunity to calibrate it to be better with power or conditions) or if they left the recall on skill 3, they'd need to come up with four different variations of it. I'd rather have an offhand that can freely combo with the mainhand in different ways over one that has to come up with a different axe recall skill for four (and possibly more with later releases) different mainhand weapons.

If the recall were skill 5, I'd say it would make the most sense to make the effects depend on specific scenarios:  a solid power basis would serve the weapon well, but be able to scale with conditions by adding additional damage (either through Strike or additional Condition stacks) based on the amount of Bleed/Poison on the target.  Either would complement Pistol or Dagger, and Sword could benefit from already having higher damage and being a pure power weapon (with the only potential downside of the former being that Dagger loses easy access to stealth unless Dagger/Axe 3 becomes a variant of Cloak and Dagger).

I would, however, want offhand axe recall to not teleport, since I'd rather be able to position myself for maximum versatility in when and where I use the skill.

[draxynnic.3719]

12 hours ago, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

There's only 2 traits that operate off of torment specifically and Larcenous Torment is the main one that matters for Shoud generation. Strength of Shadows is great, but you can get around it if necessary when running an Alac build (and I haven't seen anyone using Hungering Darkness outside of PvP).

Changing Larcenous Torment to operate off of "damaging conditions" would allow greater build variety since Dagger, Shortbow, and Axes would activate it, although the scaling would need to be re-evaluated as overlapping Poison Fields (Shortbow), Death Blossom (Evade + Bleed), and piercing conditions (Axes Torment + Bleed + Poison) could become broken very quickly.

"Only" 2. That's 22% of selectable traits, including the only DPS-oriented GM trait (although a solo PvE specter might choose to use the alacrity trait). The DPS-oriented adept major trait is also buffing scepter directly. So a selfish specter build likely has 2 or 3 traits pushing them to scepter, while a support specter build likely wants scepter for support.

A weapon that also has a lot of torment would at least only have the adept major pushing towards using scepter instead.

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, itspomf.9523 said:

If the recall were skill 5, I'd say it would make the most sense to make the effects depend on specific scenarios:  a solid power basis would serve the weapon well, but be able to scale with conditions by adding additional damage (either through Strike or additional Condition stacks) based on the amount of Bleed/Poison on the target.  Either would complement Pistol or Dagger, and Sword could benefit from already having higher damage and being a pure power weapon (with the only potential downside of the former being that Dagger loses easy access to stealth unless Dagger/Axe 3 becomes a variant of Cloak and Dagger).

I would, however, want offhand axe recall to not teleport, since I'd rather be able to position myself for maximum versatility in when and where I use the skill.

Thought on this, and I'm sceptical. Such design tends to result either in a power build with additional steps, or a condition build with an incidental bonus to strike damage.

The bigger concern is that axe is really wanting to be its own playstyle, as opposed to existing 4 and 5 skills that are designed to complement pretty much any playstyle. If the axe skills are good enough to be worth using, you could end up in a situation where you're basically playing axe as your main weapon anyway. It's probably better in the long run for the next weapon to be an offhand, and designed accordingly, than to try to morph the current axe theme into an offhand.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

"Only" 2. That's 22% of selectable traits, including the only DPS-oriented GM trait (although a solo PvE specter might choose to use the alacrity trait). The DPS-oriented adept major trait is also buffing scepter directly. So a selfish specter build likely has 2 or 3 traits pushing them to scepter, while a support specter build likely wants scepter for support.

A weapon that also has a lot of torment would at least only have the adept major pushing towards using scepter instead.

but in order to do effective condition damage youll need to take deadly arts and without trickery specter is crap because of innate base initative, without initiative management specter with axe is crap. ive tried it in current state, its literally crap and the only way to deal anything significant its going to need to have shadow arts and stealth dancing. to prevent the stealth/thief hate, its going to make it worse tbh

Edited December 5, 2023 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[draxynnic.3719]

16 hours ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

but in order to do effective condition damage youll need to take deadly arts and without trickery specter is crap because of innate base initative, without initiative management specter with axe is crap. ive tried it in current state, its literally crap and the only way to deal anything significant its going to need to have shadow arts and stealth dancing. to prevent the stealth/thief hate, its going to make it worse tbh

This refutes my points... how? Deadly Arts has a trait that enhances poison, but where spectre has additional traits that want you to be inflicting torment or specifically using scepter, Deadly Arts poison traits are mostly a source of poison. And unless you're comparing to purely autoattacking on dagger or spamming Choking Gas on shortbow, scepter is already a decent poison source, since one of the dual skills applies poison directly and the other applies immobilise and can therefore trigger Panic Strike. Thief doesn't really have a poison-focused weapon the way scepter focuses torment - a lot of the poison comes from traits and/or utilities instead.

The other half seems to be griping about specter initiative, where sure, that's a thing, but it's a separate issue to whether specter could do with another torment-oriented weapon so it's not scepter on both swaps the overwhelming majority of the time.

[Josif.2015]

Thief using an axe isn't a bad choice, however it was somewhat too strong in the beta. Here are my thoughts on the weapon:

Spinning Axe (axe 1): reduce the duration on spinning axes from 10 to 5 seconds.
Venomous Valley (axe 2): reduce the number of axes from 3 to 2.
Harrowing Storm (axe 3): reduce the number of torment stacks from 2 to 1, remove the immobilize and increase the initiative cost from 4 to 6.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

16 hours ago, Josif.2015 said:

Thief using an axe isn't a bad choice, however it was somewhat too strong in the beta. Here are my thoughts on the weapon:

Spinning Axe (axe 1): reduce the duration on spinning axes from 10 to 5 seconds.
Venomous Valley (axe 2): reduce the number of axes from 3 to 2.
Harrowing Storm (axe 3): reduce the number of torment stacks from 2 to 1, remove the immobilize and increase the initiative cost from 4 to 6.

u must be trolling, this increases the use of initiative anyway by number of axes and then on top of it you want to increase initiative costs anyway? lord, child...no. this is not the way

[Luranni.9470]

I played full glass axe/pistol the full week and actually enjoyed it.  Some notes:

• It is janky and slow (can easily be sidestepped) and you cannot shoot at people standing on top of things. 
• The flip side to that is that you can throw axes  over walls from relative safety then send them onwards. So this is sort of the opposite of pistol behaviour which is fair I guess.
• You cannot use axe 3 on inanimate objects, they will all miss miss miss.
• Being able to get extra range at the cost of losing your initial axe damage is cool and is one of the main things that differentiates it from pistol
• I really enjoyed setting up and then choosing when to burst, I found a lot less damage wasted compared to p/p because of this as even if your initial attack didnt hit (due the the random misses ) you still have an axe sitting there to use later which is nice
• Suffers from the exact same problems as all other projectiles when fighting larger groups making it 100% useless without any unblockable effects, in this way it's absolutely no different from pistol
• Axes not taking on the appearance of the axe skin feels lazy and immersion breaking - why would my axe suddenly completely change appearance?
• Having another main hand and no off-hand also feels very lazy but it isn't just thieves getting the shaft there

In a nutshell axe is more fun than pistol mainhand but serves the exact same purpose - not bringing anything new to playstyle or weapon choices.  I'd like to see it remain similar (the base idea is fun) but it needs something extra to give it its own place to shine in the thief toolkit.

EDIT: If there was an off-hand as well one of the abilities could be to recall active axes to you and have them block/reflect however many attacks depending on axes you had spinning.

Edited December 9, 2023 by Luranni.9470

[Katalan.7930]

CHANGE THE WEAPON ITSELF

I dislike the concept of Thief using an AXE as weapon...Thief became a lumberjack now?!

Last expansion was scepter which was still ok-ish but not what you expect for Thief design even though you did a good job showcasing the Specter which was really appealing to many of use...But this time since we don't have new trait, we want weapon that fit the Thief, so hopefully you change it to Sword off-hand or GS. (In my dream ?)

If not, then you have to rework entirely on the concept of the Axe OR even better, replace it to off-hand this way we have more options (D/A, P/A , S/A, Scepter/A)

[draxynnic.3719]

33 minutes ago, Katalan.7930 said:

CHANGE THE WEAPON ITSELF

I dislike the concept of Thief using an AXE as weapon...Thief became a lumberjack now?!

Last expansion was scepter which was still ok-ish but not what you expect for Thief design even though you did a good job showcasing the Specter which was really appealing to many of use...But this time since we don't have new trait, we want weapon that fit the Thief, so hopefully you change it to Sword off-hand or GS. (In my dream ?)

If not, then you have to rework entirely on the concept of the Axe OR even better, replace it to off-hand this way we have more options (D/A, P/A , S/A, Scepter/A)

First: Not happening. You can advocate for future releases, but they're not going to completely scrap a weapon concept and start anew at this point in time.

Second: One handed waraxes are not lumberjack axes. There's no solid reason why a rogue-type character wouldn't use one.

Third: Even if we somehow ignored the first, you do NOT want them having to squeeze all of the development for whatever weapon you really want, from initial concepting through implementation and testing to release, in a timeframe of less than three months, including the holiday period. If there's a weapon you really want, you want it to have a decent amount of development time.

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

On 12/7/2023 at 12:04 PM, Luranni.9470 said:

•  
• You cannot use axe 3 on inanimate objects, they will all miss miss miss.

Uh, oh 😅. I hope it will be fixed along side the deadeye mark bugs.

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

On 12/3/2023 at 1:14 AM, AquaBR.9250 said:

You will need to change the entire physics of projectiles for this thing, when they go down the edges you just lose your combo because it follow the ground down to the walls, a projectile like this should go straight out of the edge and stay midair

Yep, and if axes drop over cliffs or ledges axe builds will pretty much be non functional for encounters  like Quadim, Diemos, Nourys meta, Suwon meta to name a few. Multiple maps and fractals will also be problematic for axes as well if the axes just drop down to the aether.

Edit: the idea of axes dropping down over ledges is kind of cool in some instances, but ultimately problematic for many cases.

Edited December 14, 2023 by ZeroTheRuler.7415

[Psycoprophet.8107]

I never got the chance to try them. If they double the speed at which the axes return and upped the damage of the power variant would the be viable? If so that would be easy fix for them I'd guess.

[Strutter.2719]

Thematically pretty cool but it's honestly very disappointing that in execution (get it?) axe seems to be just as poorly implemented as weapon mastery for thief. Given that the issues with that were fed back after the beta for that were largely unaddressed, I'm honestly curious if anything will be done with this feedback or if axe will release and be just as useless for thieves. 

Edited December 28, 2023 by Strutter.2719

[TheThief.8475]

All the feedback I can give is that I don't want another ranged and slow weapon on a class I originally choose because of its melee fast paced gameplay

 

You keep ignoring what thief players like about thief in favour of more build diversity that no one asked for, nor is going to like 

Edited January 20 by TheThief.8475

[Doggie.3184]

On 1/7/2024 at 5:15 AM, TheThief.8475 said:

All the feedback I can give is that I don't want another ranged and slow weapon on a class I originally choose because of its melee quick gameplay

 

You keep ignoring what thief players like about thief in favour of more build diversity that no one asked for, nor is going to like 

Yeah I choose it for speed and now heavy armored classes are faster with more benefits >.>

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

15 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

Yeah I choose it for speed and now heavy armored classes are faster with more benefits >.>

It's as if their heavy armor doesn't unencumber them at all. Some heavy armor classes have the least amount of health as well though so 😅...

[Emeth Selch.5926]

The axe is nice, but there are many targets it cannot hit. Not sure if intended.

1. Shadow Behemoth portals: skill 3 cannot hit them (miss)

2. Object on the grounds such as landmines: the axe cannot hit them at all

3. Mouth of Mordremoth's body: skill 3 cannot hit it (miss)

4. Jormag/Primordus Ley Line Siphons (Dragonstorm): skill 3 cannot hit them (miss)

 

Those are the ones I've noticed so far, but I believe similar objects will behave the same way with Thief Axe.

[Szymon.5369]

On 12/4/2023 at 10:40 AM, Jumpel.3972 said:

• The two new Dual Wield skills (#3) miss the original design of using the left hand weapon first and then the right hand (currently it's only right hand)

Honestly of all things with Axe this one also bothers me probably the most, there is no DUAL attack in both dual attacks for Axe. That's an absolutely fundamental misunderstanding of profession's flavor 😞

[TheThief.8475]

2 hours ago, Szymon.5369 said:

Honestly of all things with Axe this one also bothers me probably the most, there is no DUAL attack in both dual attacks for Axe. That's an absolutely fundamental misunderstanding of profession's flavor 😞

They did this so they could use the same animation for both skills... That's sad

Edited March 2 by TheThief.8475

[Bunny.9834]

Out of all the weapons, this feels like the laziest, rushed, most uninspired designed one. 

It's so clunky, buggy (A/D 3 doesn't teleport you behind the enemy like what it says.) 

Pathing issue still there. 

Just terrible overall. 

Not sure why they're so resistant to giving a strike damage based OH weapon.