Janthir Wilds Spear Beta Event Feedback: Thief

[Glaciate.3901]

1. Auto attack needs a 3rd chain with impactful effect on the 3rd attack. Health Siphon + Dmg and 2 might + Vulnerability seems reasonable. Stealth attack needs unblockable and at least a 70% buff in power coefficient.

2. 2nd chain attack needs a source of superspeed or crippling condi to allow thief to stick on target. Targets can just walk out of spear 2. 

3. Skill 4 needs to be like a spear with a small detonation allowing it to daze in AOE. If not then the daze needs to be longer, at least 1 sec. It would also be decent to add immob.

4. Skill 5 needs to give you stealth for 1 sec. 

Edited July 10 by Glaciate.3901

[bq pd.2148]

On 6/27/2024 at 9:05 PM, bq pd.2148 said:

• the chains are really unreliable against an opponent that avoids some hits as was predictable. that lead me to spamm skill 4 too much for a more reliably ini -> malice buildup and also spamming daze to the target, then when malice is up or about to be up try a burst, best with binding shadows first.
  i still would like the chains to advance regardless of a hit, it would make it more difficult to stay on a target that is trying to kite as one cannot spamm the leap but one could actually use the spears full arsenal then.

bit late to edit in an addendum so ill post it separately:
if current low ini costs are retained and chains were to advance regardless of hit, shadow assault stealth duration should be cut down to 2 seconds.
this is so it is not used like current black powder + 2x spaced heartseeker for near permastealth with mobility and much less counterplay. current interaction has an animation lock in a predictable area at a predictable time, this would not.
 

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

Would love some area denial somewhere on spear. Slam spear into ground overhead creating a wall of shadows that prevents foes and projectiles from entering and pulses blind cripple and vulnerability.  Foes trying to pass through get slowed and tormented

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

I don't understand why we give feedback to the thief sections at all when no one wants to admit arenanet balance team either lack enthusiasm, passion for this class or simply want to mold it into something opposite the original team was trying to do.

 

Axe took 6 months to aknowledge it was missing a blast finisher on one of the skills it was intended to have, countless bugs regarding harrowing storms interaction with Shadow step mechanics, line of sight issues with deaddeye [mark & shadow gust] AND axe skills vs siege/ vinewrath like mobs... I mean there comes a point in time that bandaid patches aren't going to work. Why release a new weapon when you can't even fix the broken weapons and mechanics from before? Its a bad car mechanic situation in terms of balance and bug fixing.

 

The balance team,  in regards to thief in general,  lack the courage of their convictions.  This is in no way a shot to insult anyone, I'm just stating the evidence is there,  act on said evidence and not be biased

Edited August 19 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[Lyralia.2945]

They are changing it to unusable trash it appears. With no mobi we just gonna die if we use it. I prefer stealth, damage and perma superspeed. Duh.

Maybe they should put some of those block puzzles at the office to help sharpen up staff.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

On 8/7/2024 at 7:33 PM, Lyralia.2945 said:

They are changing it to unusable trash it appears. With no mobi we just gonna die if we use it. I prefer stealth, damage and perma superspeed. Duh.

Maybe they should put some of those block puzzles at the office to help sharpen up staff.

how u know they gonna change it to "unusable trash?" was there a vid or something?

Edited August 19 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[Lyralia.2945]

Check the website, https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/sharp-lessons-spear-beta-feedback-update/

 

Explanation:

Losing spear mobility on thief is gonna suck. How can we brawl if we can't catch up with the target? During beta, keep in mind we could easily catch target to apply that subpar damage. Which will not be the case now, so what damage is there (especially if nerfed) will be stretched much thinner. We ain't killing any of the brawler builds on this. D/P has a -teleport- for this reason. Having a very unreliable lunge just doesn't seem like a good tradeoff to me. Like, we go from d/p superspeed, immediate stealth with no real chain, and even teleporting to target to... less reliable lunge with no actual damage, especially if they are nerfing damage even more like they said. Not having a target for the lunge was kinda ideal since you only stop lunging when you actually hit them. RIP.

Again, thief should have more mobi, as well as more reliable mobi, than willybenders. Yet they have more, and they hit like a truck. I feel like I am cheating when I use willbender. You get every boon, for days. Infinite sustain. Tank hits like a boss. Endless group utility. Basically everything cleaves.

 

Edited August 8 by Lyralia.2945

[bq pd.2148]

4 hours ago, Lyralia.2945 said:

Explanation:

Losing spear mobility on thief is gonna suck. How can we brawl if we can't catch up with the target? During beta, keep in mind we could easily catch target to apply that subpar damage. Which will not be the case now, so what damage is there (especially if nerfed) will be stretched much thinner. We ain't killing any of the brawler builds on this. D/P has a -teleport- for this reason.

we still have the same mobility skill, just cannot spamm it back to back. in beta we had more mobility but only that because we wouldn't advance the chains to actually do damage.

now you are a bit slower but you also get to weave in stealth there without needing to hit your target, which can help you get to your target by obscuring your position as well as superspeed from SA. i would say with stealth woven in that is better for getting away and staying (+surviving) at the target.

the damage for axes also was too high in PvE, it got nerfed in PvE. in WvW they are completly un-nerfed (only their power coef. started out lower i think)

i think the spear might not be as good for daredevil ganking, but i think (hope) it be good for deadeye brawling, because it is the first weapon with inbuild reliable stealth access and easier in competitive modes malice dump (DJ does not hit reliably against a non-sleeping opponent) so you can keep up your M7 boons with woven in SA sustain. with M7 + ini from stealth attack you might even build in rending shade.

it all hinges mostly on whether ini costs will remain the same or change i think

Edited August 8 by bq pd.2148

[MKJO.8970]

1 hour ago, bq pd.2148 said:

i think the spear might not be as good for daredevil ganking, but i think (hope) it be good for deadeye brawling, because it is the first weapon with inbuild reliable stealth access and easier in competitive modes malice dump (DJ does not hit reliably against a non-sleeping opponent) so you can keep up your M7 boons with woven in SA sustain. with M7 + ini from stealth attack you might even build in rending shade.

it all hinges mostly on whether ini costs will remain the same or change i think

If Deadeye is yet again going to be the best in slot Elite Spec for a weapon... I will lose my mind... 

[bq pd.2148]

11 minutes ago, MKJO.8970 said:

If Deadeye is yet again going to be the best in slot Elite Spec for a weapon... I will lose my mind... 

well that i suppose is a design problem.

• given the powercreep is in weapons, deadeye scales with them as their additional damage compared to their boon spec would be from excess ini to spamm more (expensive) skills.
• while spectre would only have a chance to get ahead with a torment based weapon and even then has potential locked behind shroud that wont get the powercreep of a new weapon.
• daredevil has slightly higher % for power/condi so that is good, but then also quite a bit of its damage locked behind its dodges which are already bad for being movement but then also dont get better with weapon powercreep.

now in the stream where they first showed the skills, they said the ini gain on stealth attack is specifically so non-deadeye specs can better keep up (by overcapping deadeye ini restore), problem with that approach is that the tradeoff between DPS deadeye and BoonDPS deadeye is the surplus ini, so you would end up with a too strong BoonDPS deadeye.
i still think the only way to tackle this is to scrap all/most ini restoring skills, adjust ini base regen, ini pool, ini costs accordingly and give something else to the traits that lost the ini. however that would be a ton of work and thus unlikely to happen.

[draxynnic.3719]

I think that as long as Arenanet is making thief weapons based on chaining skills together, it's natural for DE to end up ahead. DE is almost custom designed to complete a chain, stealth, stealth attack, repeat.

Daredevil is more likely to interrupt a chain through dodging, and tends to shine with weapons like staff and double dagger that don't rely on chains, and can reinforce the existing strength of lots of evades.

Spectre suitability is the really interesting question.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

11 hours ago, bq pd.2148 said:

well that i suppose is a design problem.

• given the powercreep is in weapons, deadeye scales with them as their additional damage compared to their boon spec would be from excess ini to spamm more (expensive) skills.
• while spectre would only have a chance to get ahead with a torment based weapon and even then has potential locked behind shroud that wont get the powercreep of a new weapon.
• daredevil has slightly higher % for power/condi so that is good, but then also quite a bit of its damage locked behind its dodges which are already bad for being movement but then also dont get better with weapon powercreep.

now in the stream where they first showed the skills, they said the ini gain on stealth attack is specifically so non-deadeye specs can better keep up (by overcapping deadeye ini restore), problem with that approach is that the tradeoff between DPS deadeye and BoonDPS deadeye is the surplus ini, so you would end up with a too strong BoonDPS deadeye.
i still think the only way to tackle this is to scrap all/most ini restoring skills, adjust ini base regen, ini pool, ini costs accordingly and give something else to the traits that lost the ini. however that would be a ton of work and thus unlikely to happen.

Instead of "init gain skills" you think regen rate increase 100% would work?  Sort of like how some classes have more effective protection regen or might (looking at Hardy Conduit, Overshield, Second Skin, or Dark Defiance traits [there are more not related to protection]

 

Maybe vigor would increase rate of initiative regeneration by 50-100% if it's in acrobatics opening more build diversity and playstyles.

 

I'm thinking of going to get a degree to get into coding and gunning to work at anet as the thief main dev xD

Edited August 8 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[Gazrul.3086]

My infinite cartwheeling! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! 😭

[Doggie.3184]

Can you make the finisher icons glow or something so they stand out more?

[RabbitUp.8294]

Minor bug:

The #5 skill shows the regular skill icon in your buff bar to signify the block, but if you use a finisher to get 3 block stacks, the icon is the beta icon.

[RabbitUp.8294]

20 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

Can you make the finisher icons glow or something so they stand out more?

Seconding this. Playing solo feels fine, but in group contect with quckness and my toon hidden by a bunch of aoes and other characters, I have huge trouble following my combo progress and when I do a finisher so I can use 1 or 4.

Having the stealth attack icon glow, and the #4 skill swap to a different icon with a glow would help tremedously.

Edited August 21 by RabbitUp.8294

[Asur.9178]

You guys do know that they don't really read these threads, right? They only use it as a place to make you feel good about venting, by making you feel like you're being heard.

I mean even the most basic axe bugs reported in the axe betas wasn't addressed...and it's the same case with spear.

For example, your auto-attack still cancels your stealth attack. That's just one example. I'm way too fed up with GW2's balance team to bother giving feedbacks anymore.

[Doggie.3184]

Decided to try playing with the auto attack toggled on cuz of it's consistant high cleave range but it keeps breaking Stealth the moment I use Shattering Assault when someone puts Quickness on me.

Is playing with AA turned off an intentional goal of Anet for Thief?

Edited August 24 by Doggie.3184

[TheThief.8475]

9 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

Decided to try playing with the auto attack toggled on cuz of it's consistant high cleave range but it keeps breaking Stealth the moment I use Shattering Assault when someone puts Quickness on me.

Is playing with AA turned off an intentional goal of Anet for Thief?

This is a bug (I hope) that was introduced in the latest update

They changed how skill 3 finisher works, making it only grant stealth when you hit a target (which is annoying and bad since you only have few seconds to use a skill before the combo reset)

This change caused auto attacks to be queued immediately following the finisher which will break the stealth without being able to use the stealth attack (meanwhile rangers laugh in QoL heaven).

If you grant yourself stealths in other ways (I have only tried shadow meld and the DE stolen skill for the moment) the AA Will not be chained and the stealth attack will work properly.

The change they made to skill 3 finisher is bad anyways in my opinion. If they want to change it because it is too much stealth spam in PvP, then make this change for PvP only.

In PvE this is 100% making spear less fun to play for literally no reason at all, and also making it frustrating in some situations where it breaks the flow of the rotation (not because of the bug, but not being able to enter stealth to regain initiative)

Edited August 24 by TheThief.8475

[Felices Bladewing.3914]

• Shattering Assault: This skill now requires its attack to strike a target in order to apply stealth to the thief.

How to completely kitten up within two days.

You are joking anet!

During beta dmg was to high and needed adjustment ok i can see that, but this ruined the weapon for me gz. wouldnt have spent 25€ if this was in the original design for spear

[Asur.9178]

4 hours ago, TheThief.8475 said:

This is a bug (I hope) that was introduced in the latest update

They changed how skill 3 finisher works, making it only grant stealth when you hit a target (which is annoying and bad since you only have few seconds to use a skill before the combo reset)

This change caused auto attacks to be queued immediately following the finisher which will break the stealth without being able to use the stealth attack (meanwhile rangers laugh in QoL heaven).

If you grant yourself stealths in other ways (I have only tried shadow meld and the DE stolen skill for the moment) the AA Will not be chained and the stealth attack will work properly.

The change they made to skill 3 finisher is bad anyways in my opinion. If they want to change it because it is too much stealth spam in PvP, then make this change for PvP only.

In PvE this is 100% making spear less fun to play for literally no reason at all, and also making it frustrating in some situations where it breaks the flow of the rotation (not because of the bug, but not being able to enter stealth to regain initiative)

This is not a new "bug" that was introduced with their change to the skill functionality yesterday. This has been around since beta.

It has to do with timing and effect execution order. Again, as I previously said, these threads and feedbacks are not read and all ignored until their internal teams or streamers/partners point it out.

This "bug" is the same as stealth breaking with rifle, pistol, etc. It's not a "bug", it's terrible design. The aftercast is not longer than it takes the auto attack to flip over, cause it's a terrible design where the skill takes a while to flip over (it's not instant...as it should be).

Edited August 24 by Asur.9178