Suggestions for an overall balance of the thief playstyle.

[Harald.8674]

Hello, i feel that i'am not very original since a lot of people like to post rework of thief skills/traits. But since it is my main class and i like balance, here goes my point of view on the matter.(I have been playing GW2 since late 2012 untill now on all 3 game modes; although i do prefer WvW for the combat/build diversity )

1. General

• Stealth attack skills cd reduced from 1 sec to 0,5 sec. (they aren t strong enaugh to warrant a full sec without auto attack)

• You can no longer stack stealth more than 5 times. After the limit is reached recieve an exhaustion debuff that will prevent future stealth stacking, be it by combo or skills. Debuff ends when you are revealed or when stealth expire. Quoting the old fonctionality from the wiki: "Stealth stacks up to 5 times. When capped, new longer stacks will replace old shorter stacks". This change is to prevent camping stealth indefinitely. It will still be possible to time stealth combo/skills just as the previous stealth expire.

• Reveal lasts for 3 seconds in all game modesReveal skills from others professions will all apply 3 sec of reveal. This will need further balancing since some are very weak while others are strong already.Stealth trap on wvw could be reworked to have the same foncionality as the "siege disabler": throwable that reveals for 3 sec in a 360 radius.Reveal no longer stack in duration, so u will never have the debuff longer than 3 seconds .

2. Traits

Deadly arts

Adepts

• Serpent's touch: no longer affects downstate, effect given to 'apply poison'
• Dagger training: renamed 'apply poison', all attacks of a 33% chance of inflicting poison on hit (2 sec) instead of just daggers. /Could also be a 100% chance with 3 sec cooldown./
• Trapper's respite: removed. Replaced with 'leeching venoms' (Siphon life from your foe when triggering a venom. This can only occur once per strike. Venom recharges are reduced) from shadow arts.

Masters

• Panic strike: inflicting vulnerability to a foe poison them (3sec of poison/ 5sec cd). Striking a foe under 50% health apply 10 stacks of vulnerability for 5 second.
• Revealed training: moved to shadow arts. New trait; 'powerful venoms': grant 3 stacks of might in a 360 radius for 8 second when you use a venom skill.

Grandmasters

• Improvisation: reworked to be less random; Stolen skill will heal on use (2k, same as mug), cure two condition and give the player fury; swiftness; regeneration for 5 second

Critical strikes

Adepts

• Keen observer: replaced by the old 'opportunist' trait; critical hits restore 1 initiative on a 10 sec cooldown. Keen observer could be merged with twin fangs if people miss it.
• Signets of power: swap place with 'hidden killer' and become a grand master. new functionality: retain the passive of signets after using them. Signets recharge 20% faster.

Masters

• Unrelenting strikes: cd reduced from 10 sec to 8 second
• Sundering shade: replaced with the old 'sundering strikes'; apply 3 stacks of vulnerability for 5 second when you criticaly hit stuff (5 sec cd).
• Ankle shots: replaced by the old 'ricochet'; pistols deal 5% more damage and have a 50% chance to bounce to another near target (max 2 bounces).

Grandmasters

• Ferocious strikes: no longer have a health treshold ( still inferior to exposed weakness in DA in my oppinion)
• Hidden killer: replaced by signets of power. It becomes an adept and regain his old functionality (100% crit chance in stealth only).

Shadow arts

Adepts

• Merciful Ambush: moved to master tier and merged with 'shadow protector'. New adept minor: 'quick shadow'; gain 2 sec of superspeed when you enter stealth.
• Concealed defeat: becomes 'sneaky and tough'; gain 2 sec of protection when using a deception skill. Deception skills recharge 20% faster.
• Shadow's embrace: remove 2 conditions when you enter stealth. Also remove 1 condition when u gain the reveal debuff (attacking from stealth).

Masters

• Shadow protector: same trait with 'merciful ambush' added to it.
• Hidden thief: movement speed in stealth reduced to 33%.
• Leeching venoms: moved to DA adept. replaced by the GM trait 'cloacked in shadow'.

~~Grandmasters ~~

• Shadow's rejuvenation: gain 500hp and 1 initiative when you enter stealth. Also gain 500hp when u attack from stealth and get revealed.
• Rending shade: moved to trickery. Replaced by 'revealed training' from DA. Revealed training now gives +200 power and +200 condition damage when u have the revealed debuff.
• Cloacked in shadow: moved to master tier. New GM; 'strenght of the dark side': gain 1 stack of might (10 sec) for each second u stay in stealth.

Acrobatics

Adepts

• Instant reflexes: deleted. Replaced by 'guarder initiation' from Acro master tier.
• Vigorous recovery: gain 20 endurance when using a healing skill.

Masters

• Guarded initiation: moved to adept tier. New trait: 'Swiss knife upgrade'; shortbow deals 10% more damage and its auto attack causes 2 sec of bleeding (bounces as well).
• Swindler's equilibrium: sword deals 10% more damage. Gain 3 second of stability (8 sec cd) when you evade an attack while wielding a sword.
• Hard to catch: when disabled, you are instead dased for 0,5 sec and gain 50 endurance. Cooldown from 30 sec to 20 sec.

Grandmasters

• Assassin's reward: healing per initiative spent increased by around 20%.

Trickery

Adepts

• Burst of agility: cooldwon reduced drom 60 sec to 50 sec.

Masters

• Boontiful theft: boons stolen reduce from 3 to 2 (back to pre buff state, where it was already a mendatory trait).
• Pressure striking: same but also make steal daze the target for 1sec ( taken from sleight of hand) reduce torment stacks duration to 6 second to compensate for the buff.

Grandmasters

• Quick pockets: also reduce weapon swap cooldown by 20 sec with the 3 initiative refund on swap.
• Sleight of hand: deleted. Replaced by 'rending shade' from shadow art GM ( steal 2 boons with stealth attacks. 3 sec cooldown on boon theft)
• Bewildering Ambush: no longer apply confusion on steal. Now apply 3 stacks of confusion for 5 second when you hit with a stealth attack ( 3 sec cooldown).

Daredevil

Masters

• Impacting disruption: now does the same damage in all game modes (unerfed in pvp). Added a 3 second cooldown. Does not affect the utility 'Palm strike'.

Grandmasters

• Impaling lotus: reduce the radius of the attack from 360 to 300 (same distance as the dodge)
• Unhinderered combatant: no longer cause exhaustion (unerfed). But now it cannot remove immobilized./Or: dodging costs 5 more endurance if you are crippled and/or chilled; and 10 more endurance if you suffer from immobilized (for a maximum of 60 endurance per dodge). I like the first option because immob used to be the weakness of never ending dodgers.
• Bounding dodger: reduce the damage of the dodge by 10%.

I didn t play Deadeye enaugh to have a solid opinion on the goods and the bads of that specs.

3. Weapon skills

Daggers

• Dagger auto: reduced damage by 10% / Or increase cast time of the chain. It does too much damage for the utility (endurance gain and poison) it has.
• Death blossom (D/D skill 3): increase power damage by 20% but reduce the evade frame to what it was before (0,25 sec). For making this skill more hybrid and less spammable.
• Cloak and dagger(.../D skill 5): initiative cost reduced to 5.
• Shadow shot (D/P skill 3): reduce the damage by 5%.
• Shadow strike (P/D skill 3): deals 3 stack of torments in all game modes (it was 4 in PvP and 2 in PvE/ WvW).
• Flanking strike/Larcenous strike (S/D skill 3): reduce the damage of larcenous strike by 10%(or maybe lower the extra bonus from 20% to 10% instead)

Pistols

• Sneak attack (pistol's stealth attack): bleeding goes from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Vital shot (auto attack): bleeding goes from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Body shot (P/... skill 2): increase power damage and projectile speed. Vulnerability duration increased from 3 sec to 5 sec. Immobilized duration reduced from 1,5 sec to 1sec.
• Black powder (.../P skill 5): lower initiative cost to 5. Reduce duration from 4 sec to 3 sec but blinds will now pulse every seconds.
• Unload (P/P skill 3): damage reduced by 10% / Or longer cast time.

Shortbow

• Surprise shot (shortbow's stealth attack): somewhat better projectile speed.
• Trick shot (auto attack): somewhat better projectile speed.
• Cluster bomb (SB skill 2): somewhat better projectile speed.
• Disabling shot (SB skill 3): smoother animation/ less ruberbanding.

Staff

• Hook strike (staff's stealth attack): caste time reduced from 0,75 sc to 0,5 sec.
• Vault (Staff skill 5): damage reduce by 5%.

4. Utilities

Healing skills

• Skelk venom: reduce cast time from 1 sec to 0,75 sec.
• Hide in shadows: reduce cast time from 1 sec to 0,75 sec.
• Signet of malice: reduce cast time from 1,25 sec to 0,75 sec.

Traps

Faster arming time and larger hitboxes.Shadow trap: make it work like a lesser, self 'portal' (for better path finding)

Others

• scorpion wire: make the skill work like 'spear of justice' (guardian pull) for reliability.
• Caltrops: reduce cast time from 1 sec to 0,75 sec. Reduce Bleeding and cripple duration from 10 sec to 5 sec but give bleed his 2 stacks back.
• Signet of shadows: reduce cooldow from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.
• Shadow refuge: reduce cooldown from 60 sec to 50 sec. reduce the pulses from 5 to 4 but increase healing per pulse from 355 to 500.
• Bandit's defense: reduce the block duration from 1,5 sec to 1 second.
• Distracting daggers: base damage increased by 10%. the daggers will do 50% more damage if they interrupt a skill. /Or cause confusion on interrupt ( 2 or 3 stacks for 5 sec).
• Impairing daggers: improved projectiles speed a little bit.
• Basilisk venom: reduce cast time from 1 sec to 0,75 sec. Reduce stun duration from from 1,5 sec to 1 second.

Disclaimer

I know that most of those changes look like nerfs (reducing the power of both D/P and S/D meta builds) but i feel that it is needed if we want to have more options (both in traits and weapons to choose from ).Also these are only thoughts i had on the subject. Nothing is to take seriously and i would gladly accept criticism/feedback; even more from a dev.It is also foolish to balance thief in a "fair" way ( => nerfing of the outliers) while some classes/specs are so dominant already (looking at scourge, firebrand and mirage). this balancing process has to be done to all classes at the same time. At least reducing the power of the meta builds for those specs would go a long way for the competitive aspect of this great game.I am also a fan of: less passives traits => more active combat thinking. Less packed skills, less instant skill ( i did reduce the power of steal for that reason).Even though i like fast paced combat, it became a bit too extreme where toughness is insignifiant and it is a game of dodge/block/invuln/cleanse or die.

PS: thank you if you had patience to read all of it.PPS: English is not my mother tongue; so be cool :)

[Alatar.7364]

This would be broken as hell -> Panic strike: inflicting vulnerability to a foe poison them (3sec of poison/ 5sec cd). Striking a foe under 50% health apply 10 stacks of vulnerability for 5 second.

This would be broken as hell -> Improvisation: reworked to be less random; Stolen skill will heal on use (2k, same as mug), cure two condition and give the player fury; swiftness; regeneration for 5 second

This would be broken a bit -> Swindler's equilibrium: sword deals 10% more damage. Gain 3 second of stability (8 sec cd) when you evade an attack while wielding a sword.

Oh hell no -> Sleight of hand: deleted. Replaced by 'rending shade' from shadow art GM ( steal 2 boons with stealth attacks. 3 sec cooldown on boon theft)

That would probably be fair -> Impacting disruption: now does the same damage in all game modes (unerfed in pvp). Added a 3 second cooldown. Does not affect the utility 'Palm strike'.

Not sure if interesting or "hell no" -> Unhinderered combatant: no longer cause exhaustion (unerfed). But now it cannot remove immobilized./Or: dodging costs 5 more endurance if you are crippled and/or chilled; and 10 more endurance if you suffer from immobilized (for a maximum of 60 endurance per dodge). I like the first option because immob used to be the weakness of never ending dodgers.

Again? -> Bounding dodger: reduce the damage of the dodge by 10%.

I suppose it is all quite interesting but also a bit Confusing. Not sure what to think about it at the moment, but some of these Changes are either too much or not meaningful in any way.If I had to chose between Bountiful Theft and your new Pressure striking it would be like a Sophie's Choice to me =DAlso, wouldn't 'Swiss knife upgrade' better be off as Swiss Arrow or Swift Arrow? =D

[bq pd.2148]

i wont agree to an unfinished nerflist, without knowing how other classes shall be changed together with this how am i to tell if it is balanced then?i still will give comment on some of your proposals :

@"Harald.8674" said:

• You can no longer stack stealth more than 5 times. After the limit is reached recieve an exhaustion debuff that will prevent future stealth stacking, be it by combo or skills. Debuff ends when you are revealed or when stealth expire. Quoting the old fonctionality from the wiki: "Stealth stacks up to 5 times. When capped, new longer stacks will replace old shorter stacks". This change is to prevent camping stealth indefinitely. It will still be possible to time stealth combo/skills just as the previous stealth expire.

how exactly is indefinitely stealthcamping an issue ? you wont kill anything in any mode with it. in spvp it is plain stupid. in WvW it may have its uses to hide in keeps and towers but that only works if the opponents are unable to use reveal skills or preassure the black powder. even if they cant get you out of stealth then, they can simply gank you when you kill the lord. the old functionality still works btw longer stacks replace shorter stacks and you cant have more then 5 stacks, so when you stack more you replace the ones you already got.

• Reveal lasts for 3 seconds in all game modesReveal skills from others professions will all apply 3 sec of reveal. This will need further balancing since some are very weak while others are strong already.this would make all reveal skills weak.Stealth trap on wvw could be reworked to have the same foncionality as the "siege disabler": throwable that reveals for 3 sec in a 360 radius.with the same cd as siege disabler and being doggable would be fine. ( current trap is not doggable)Reveal no longer stack in duration, so u will never have the debuff longer than 3 seconds .it doesnt stack in duration atm, it allways replaces it. for instance on DBL near earth keep you get a 24h or so reveal from sands and if you get hit by a reveal skill it will replace the sand so you can stealth when it expires in the sand.

2. Traits
   • Signets of power: swap place with 'hidden killer' and become a grand master. new functionality: retain the passive of signets after using them. Signets recharge 20% faster.

hidden killer being able to use with no quarter would be very strong and encourage people to play valkyrie , cavalier mix builds - a good thief without defense stats is already hard to kill, with defensive stats - good luck.Shadow artseverything here are just plain nerfs already an underused traitline cause you wont kill anything while in stealth and therefor it is inefficient for most of the game. i do play with SA in WvW but it will no longer be worth to lose that much damage for so little sustain after your changes.Acrobatics

• Vigorous recovery: gain 20 endurance when using a healing skill.more dogges O.O
• Hard to catch: when disabled, you are instead dased for 0,5 sec and gain 50 endurance. Cooldown from 30 sec to 20 sec.so when i recieve a headshot for 1/4s daze i will get dazed for 1/2 seconds - nice.
• Quick pockets: also reduce weapon swap cooldown by 20 sec with the 3 initiative refund on swap.so instead of 10s cooldown on weapon swap it will be -10 seconds ?
• Sleight of hand: deleted. Replaced by 'rending shade' from shadow art GM ( steal 2 boons with stealth attacks. 3 sec cooldown on boon theft)i dont see what stealth attacks got to do with trickery, this would also put all boonhate into trickery wich is not good for build diversity. i would have rather expected you to propose changes to initative so trickery wont be mandatory for initative alone anymore.
• Bounding dodger: reduce the damage of the dodge by 10%.already does very little damage, i feel warriors deal more damage on dogge with their adept minor trait .I didn t play Deadeye enaugh to have a solid opinion on the goods and the bads of that specs.how can you propose changes to core lines if you havent played both elite specs to know how those changes would affect the elite specs?
• Body shot (P/... skill 2): increase power damage and projectile speed. Vulnerability duration increased from 3 sec to 5 sec. Immobilized duration reduced from 1,5 sec to 1sec.the immobilize is already too short, the projectile speed is not an issue but the precast and aftercast of this skill, it just takes ages to cast.
• Black powder (.../P skill 5): lower initiative cost to 5. Reduce duration from 4 sec to 3 sec but blinds will now pulse every seconds.the blind every second was 'too stronk' so it was changed, reducing the duration as compensation is irrelevant if you also reduce cost as we dont have hard CD on it.Staff
• Vault (Staff skill 5): damage reduce by 5%.already pretty useless skill no need to nerf the damage.
  4. UtilitiesShadow trap: make it work like a lesser, self 'portal' (for better path finding)you wanted to remove permastealth, its only use if at all is to hide in structures in WvW. with this trap tho you can never get rid of a thief there lol.
• Distracting daggers: base damage increased by 10%. the daggers will do 50% more damage if they interrupt a skill. /Or cause confusion on interrupt ( 2 or 3 stacks for 5 sec).still trash skill then.

you want quite some nerfs to stealth heavy play but want strong buffs to doggespamm considering 20 endurance on heal and partly reverted UC change. i do think doggespamm thief is alot more cancer then permastealth. there is alot more counterplay to permastealth, altho most people dont use it. so no matter how the changes to the other classes along this shall look like i dont like the general direction of your suggestions as spamming dogges is as brainless as letting autoprocs do the stuff, dogges should be meaningfull and choosing the correct attacks to dogge should be important for the outcome of the fight, not spamming them and only depend on the correct dogge rotation.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

@MUDse.7623 said:

• Bounding dodger: reduce the damage of the dodge by 10%.already does very little damage, i feel warriors deal more damage on dogge with their adept minor trait .

It’s not a feeling, it’s the truth Reckless Dodge does more damage than Thief Bounding Dodge In PvP.

Reckless Dodge:

May 16, 2017

Added missing skill fact for unblockable.Increased damage by 20%

Damage: 398 (1.5)? The

Bounding Dodger:

May 16, 2017

Bound: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 24% in PvP only.

Damage: 354 (1.33)?

On the same day they nerfed bound in PvP they buffed Reckless Dodge In ever game mode, now Bounding Dodge In WvW is higher Damage at 1.75 coefficient.

[Harald.8674]

thx for the feedback MUDse.

I am not again stealth playstyle at all ( i used to chain CnD on people with the old powerful shadow art trait line ). I just think the in and out of stealth playstyle is more healthy than camping stealth for eternity. People didn t like ghost thief for a reason.

Hidden killer (the old version) might be too strong for an adept, but critial strikes traitline needs some love.

The sustain nerf in shadow arts are only if you camp stealth for a long time. I know deadeye builds use SA but that spec needs buff in other areas (less clunky kneel mechanic, faster malice gain when attacking).

Vigorous recovery is right now one of the most useless trait in the game (feline grace already gives perma vigor by itself). You could delete it for all i care. I just had no idea for an interresting rework .Hard to catch could daze for 1/4 sec if that bugs you so much, u still gain some endurance (less than the old version still).

My mistake for quick pockets, i meant 20% cooldown reduction on weapon swap.

Trickery is the class mechanic for thief. Both initiative and stealth attacks are unique to thief so i thought it was fitting to put rending shade there. Just a point of view.

For the rest i don t think perma dodging is healthy. UC no longer removing immobilize instead of exhaustion is a more fair nerf to that strong GM trait i believe.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

@Harald.8674 said:thx for the feedback MUDse.

I am not again stealth playstyle at all ( i used to chain CnD on people with the old powerful shadow art trait line ). I just think the in and out of stealth playstyle is more healthy than camping stealth for eternity. People didn t like ghost thief for a reason.

Hidden killer (the old version) might be too strong for an adept, but critial strikes traitline needs some love.

The sustain nerf in shadow arts are only if you camp stealth for a long time. I know deadeye builds use SA but that spec needs buff in other areas (less clunky kneel mechanic, faster malice gain when attacking).

Vigorous recovery is right now one of the most useless trait in the game (feline grace already gives perma vigor by itself). You could delete it for all i care. I just had no idea for an interresting rework .Hard to catch could daze for 1/4 sec if that bugs you so much, u still gain some endurance (less than the old version still).

My mistake for quick pockets, i meant 20% cooldown reduction on weapon swap.

Trickery is the class mechanic for thief. Both initiative and stealth attacks are unique to thief so i thought it was fitting to put rending shade there. Just a point of view.

For the rest i don t think perma dodging is healthy. UC no longer removing immobilize instead of exhaustion is a more fair nerf to that strong GM trait i believe.

The thing with ghost thief and all the complaints was that it dealt Damage with traps while not being revealed from stealth, currently Thieves can’t effectively do any damage while stealthed without revealing themselves.

[Tails.9372]

@Harald.8674 said:

• Unload (P/P skill 3): damage reduced by 10% / Or longer cast time.P/P already does only like 50% of what your average damage dealer is capable of doing, nerfing it even further is totally ridiculous. If anything this skill could use a ~100% dmg buff.