Thief mains need to riot. Like, seriously

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

@Daddy.8125 None of your suggestions are going to improve anything without compensating for the active defenses you're nerfing and would essentially turn thief into a free kill. Thief needs to contribute something unique to groups and be able to survive doing it, not do a non-role harder while abusing game mechanics to barely scrape by.

That's untrue as prior metas have existed and shown. 

If today's thief stopped, side noders wouldn't be so bunker. In squishier metas Crit DD builds which don't run SA become meta. 

These do huge damage, and in +1s can litterally down someone extremely quickly which hands them their role in spvp. 

The slowing down on rotation would be required to bring it more in line with herald and mesmer which are susposed to share the same role to thief. 

Thief was perfectly fine prior SAs dominance. The difference now 

Everyone can play thief. Where before you actually knew when u were against a good one. 

What removal of SA would do is make thief punishing. Not underpowered it'd mean u can't just go in with 0 idea what your doing and just win by default providing you are intelligent enough to know the patching to points. 

Edited January 29, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Exitus.3297]

I more or less agree with the OP on this.

 

To add context for what I'm about to say, I quit the game shortly after they dropped the patch increasing the Shortbow cost from 6 to 8 in PvP and WvW. Straight up uninstalled the game and went to other games. I came back to the forums today because I was curious to see if maybe the balancing has gotten any better. Clearly it hasn't

 

To be clear, I didn't leave the game because they nerfed Thieves, specifically Shortbow 5. I left because that particular change along with several other changes in prior patches pretty much showed me the balance team has no idea what they are doing, in my opinion. I don't mean that to insult them, I literally mean they don't know what they are doing.

 

Thieves need to have their skill expression maximized while having their crutches removed, but for some reason ANet keeps making changes that minimize a Thief's skill expression while inadvertently making their crutches mandatory, with rare exception. One example that everyone brings up is Shadow Arts. At the time before I left, nearly *everyone* knew that Shadow Arts was a massive crutch, specifically Shadow's Rejuvenation. Shadow Arts already did things to extend stealth duration, but Shadow's Rejuvenation in particular took the cake because it refunded enough Initiative that perma-stealth was achievable without that much sacrifice. Without Shadow Arts, Perma-stealth was sorta achievable, but it would drain the Thief's resources so it ended up being a give-take. Shadow's Rejuvenation took that concept and threw it out the window. Combine that with the healing in stealth and it pretty much meant a Thief could reset any fight by just waiting and *no one* enjoys fighting against this. It also broke sPvP because a Thief could perma-stealth across the battlefield and appear wherever they wanted and still have enough resources to fight. They could have neutered this one trait and I would have been okay with it. Happy with it even. How did ANet fix this? They nerfed Shortbow 5. So not only did they not address the crutch, they solidified pigeon-holing Thieves into Trickery even more than before.

 

I also checked Acrobatics and they *still* haven't touched the auto-proc traits. Remember when a bunch of players said "Don't worry those traits are just placeholders for them to rework them." I said from the beginning if ANet intended to that they would have done it. So ANet borderline made half of the Acrobatics traitline unusable and then proceeded to leave them there.

 

Trickery is still mandatory after this many years AND  is even more mandatory now due to the Initiative cost increases on skills. They made Trickery the "Initiative" traitline instead of the "Steal" traitline. Wanna know something? I remember back before they overhauled the traitlines before you could have 3 full traitlines. Back then, *every* traitline had a way for the Thief to manage their initiative significantly, not just Trickery. This included both Deadly Arts and Critical Strikes. Despite natural Ini regen actually being slower back then (0.75 per second instead of 1 per second), no one felt forced to grab Trickery because there were ways to gain Initaitive in every tree. They just had different ways of restoring Initiative that reflected their playstyle (E.G. getting crits restored Initiative every couple of seconds in Critical Strikes).

 

While I get other class mains have felt the same way about their class at one point or another (Mesmers and Warriors come to mind in previous updates), I play every class and Thieves have always seemed to get this weird treatment. Not in the sense they are/were undertuned, but that the class itself is constantly pigeon-holed into one thing or another back to back Players will cry that a particular thing about the Thief is OP, then ANet seems to approach the issue in the most haphazard way possible. Thieves move on to the next thing in line, then Players do the same thing again. Repeat this process ad nauseam and here we are.

 

I think this was the only game I have ever played where I loathed seeing the game update notes, because I knew once I read them there would be maybe 1 or 2 things that made sense and a plethora of things that made no sense because they "fixed" a problem in a weird way or threw in a completely irrelevant thing out of left-field. After awhile I decided that I'm not coming back for more.

 

So yes, OP,  Thieves should basically "riot." In my case, I just left the game altogether because I'm tired of dealing with it. I'm tired of adjusting my build, finding something that feels good that I genuinely enjoy, then having to switch to something else because ANet decided to "Balance it". Good luck to anyone who still plays and I hope things improve.

[Aeolus.3615]

On 8/15/2021 at 2:10 PM, The Boz.2038 said:

AHahahaha!
Good one!
Now do Guardian!

Already did on their forum :) they bended well...

[Tsumiju.3071]

On 2/5/2022 at 10:30 PM, Exitus.3297 said:

 I'm tired of adjusting my build, finding something that feels good that I genuinely enjoy, then having to switch to something else because ANet decided to "Balance it". Good luck to anyone who still plays and I hope things improve.

 

This 110% - a lot of my characters are now sat idle just claiming birthday rewards because of exactly this. 

[Morena.9312]

On 2/5/2022 at 11:30 PM, Exitus.3297 said:

I more or less agree with the OP on this.

 

To add context for what I'm about to say, I quit the game shortly after they dropped the patch increasing the Shortbow cost from 6 to 8 in PvP and WvW. Straight up uninstalled the game and went to other games. I came back to the forums today because I was curious to see if maybe the balancing has gotten any better. Clearly it hasn't

 

To be clear, I didn't leave the game because they nerfed Thieves, specifically Shortbow 5. I left because that particular change along with several other changes in prior patches pretty much showed me the balance team has no idea what they are doing, in my opinion. I don't mean that to insult them, I literally mean they don't know what they are doing.

 

Thieves need to have their skill expression maximized while having their crutches removed, but for some reason ANet keeps making changes that minimize a Thief's skill expression while inadvertently making their crutches mandatory, with rare exception. One example that everyone brings up is Shadow Arts. At the time before I left, nearly *everyone* knew that Shadow Arts was a massive crutch, specifically Shadow's Rejuvenation. Shadow Arts already did things to extend stealth duration, but Shadow's Rejuvenation in particular took the cake because it refunded enough Initiative that perma-stealth was achievable without that much sacrifice. Without Shadow Arts, Perma-stealth was sorta achievable, but it would drain the Thief's resources so it ended up being a give-take. Shadow's Rejuvenation took that concept and threw it out the window. Combine that with the healing in stealth and it pretty much meant a Thief could reset any fight by just waiting and *no one* enjoys fighting against this. It also broke sPvP because a Thief could perma-stealth across the battlefield and appear wherever they wanted and still have enough resources to fight. They could have neutered this one trait and I would have been okay with it. Happy with it even. How did ANet fix this? They nerfed Shortbow 5. So not only did they not address the crutch, they solidified pigeon-holing Thieves into Trickery even more than before.

 

I also checked Acrobatics and they *still* haven't touched the auto-proc traits. Remember when a bunch of players said "Don't worry those traits are just placeholders for them to rework them." I said from the beginning if ANet intended to that they would have done it. So ANet borderline made half of the Acrobatics traitline unusable and then proceeded to leave them there.

 

Trickery is still mandatory after this many years AND  is even more mandatory now due to the Initiative cost increases on skills. They made Trickery the "Initiative" traitline instead of the "Steal" traitline. Wanna know something? I remember back before they overhauled the traitlines before you could have 3 full traitlines. Back then, *every* traitline had a way for the Thief to manage their initiative significantly, not just Trickery. This included both Deadly Arts and Critical Strikes. Despite natural Ini regen actually being slower back then (0.75 per second instead of 1 per second), no one felt forced to grab Trickery because there were ways to gain Initaitive in every tree. They just had different ways of restoring Initiative that reflected their playstyle (E.G. getting crits restored Initiative every couple of seconds in Critical Strikes).

 

While I get other class mains have felt the same way about their class at one point or another (Mesmers and Warriors come to mind in previous updates), I play every class and Thieves have always seemed to get this weird treatment. Not in the sense they are/were undertuned, but that the class itself is constantly pigeon-holed into one thing or another back to back Players will cry that a particular thing about the Thief is OP, then ANet seems to approach the issue in the most haphazard way possible. Thieves move on to the next thing in line, then Players do the same thing again. Repeat this process ad nauseam and here we are.

 

I think this was the only game I have ever played where I loathed seeing the game update notes, because I knew once I read them there would be maybe 1 or 2 things that made sense and a plethora of things that made no sense because they "fixed" a problem in a weird way or threw in a completely irrelevant thing out of left-field. After awhile I decided that I'm not coming back for more.

 

So yes, OP,  Thieves should basically "riot." In my case, I just left the game altogether because I'm tired of dealing with it. I'm tired of adjusting my build, finding something that feels good that I genuinely enjoy, then having to switch to something else because ANet decided to "Balance it". Good luck to anyone who still plays and I hope things improve.

 In fact there was rare a balance patch where the thief don't got a nerf (also without any reworks or compensations). And now we have alot of garbage Traits/Traitlines and Weaponsets. Thx to the Crybabies who never ever play this class for a second.

[Amante.8109]

Thief has been eating huge nerfs in PvE and PvP for a literal decade now. There's nothing left to say--thieves have given YEARS of great feedback on how to improve the class while minimizing the things people dislike about it and it's all been summarily ignored. For crying out loud, it's 2022 and Thief *STILL* has to trait into Trickery to get the initiative the class needs to function properly! That's something people have been complaining about since *2012*!

At this point there's nothing to be done. I decided a while ago to stop giving ANet my time and money. If you decide to keep playing the game, stop giving them your money at the least. Given the state of class and game balance and how many times they've promised to work on these things, they don't deserve it.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Amante.8109

[Odin.6487]

a good thief will straight up run over people. you can carry games with sa dd, we have a dueling spec. core S/D, and thats in a nerfed state. You dont want anet to bring back pre nerfed acro, it was straight up faceroll in the right hands. 

imo, as a thief main, anet needs to nerf shadow arts and buff crit strikes and deadly arts. SA is just way too strong at the moment and with the recent nerfs its just going to be picked up more. 

[Nezekan.2671]

8 hours ago, Amante.8109 said:

Thief has been eating huge nerfs in PvE and PvP for a literal decade now. There's nothing left to say--thieves have given YEARS of great feedback on how to improve the class while minimizing the things people dislike about it and it's all been summarily ignored. For crying out loud, it's 2022 and Thief *STILL* has to trait into Trickery to get the initiative the class needs to function properly! That's something people have been complaining about since *2012*!

At this point there's nothing to be done. I decided a while ago to stop giving ANet my time and money. If you decide to keep playing the game, stop giving them your money at the least. Given the state of class and game balance and how many times they've promised to work on these things, they don't deserve it.

True. But thief is not the only class.

As a mesmer and thief main, it's so interesting how both of these classes have suffered almost exactly the same way and I am unfortunate enough to witness this double homicide! I think both of these classes have extremely high skill ceiling and when played well, they can be frustrating to deal with. But the issue here is they keep nerfing CORE traits of these two classes, and what this does is maybe it slightly nerfs  the current meta build, but more importantly it destroys any future build variety, as the core things that are being nerfed apply to all the ways the class can be played, not only the strong build.

Daredevil and Mirage have done this to thief and mirage respectively. A strong elite spec that has caused a lot of core nerfs to the class.

[Gerebos.1065]

When I first saw Cantha for thief I expected some sort of Shinobi/Ninja not this shadow support whatever is it... It was one of my biggest disappointments  this game offered after achievement gatings.

I know this won't be changed anytime soon but I don't gave up hope that one day Thief will get a nice real ninja/shinobi like specialization

[Jianyu.7065]

Not everything can be cliche. 

[Zacchary.6183]

On 3/5/2022 at 1:08 PM, Amnariel.3659 said:

When I first saw Cantha for thief I expected some sort of Shinobi/Ninja

Here's your ninja, bro.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja

Quote

Although shorter swords and daggers were used, the katana was probably the ninja's weapon of choice, and was sometimes carried on the back.[83] The katana had several uses beyond normal combat. In dark places, the scabbard could be extended out of the sword, and used as a long probing device.[97] The sword could also be laid against the wall, where the ninja could use the sword guard (tsuba) to gain a higher foothold.[98] The katana could even be used as a device to stun enemies before attacking them, by putting a combination of red pepper, dirt or dust, and iron filings into the area near the top of the scabbard, so that as the sword was drawn the concoction would fly into the enemy's eyes, stunning him until a lethal blow could be made. While straight swords were used before the invention of the katana,[99] there's no known historical information about the straight ninjatō pre-20th century. The first photograph of a ninjatō appeared in a booklet by Heishichirō Okuse in 1956.[100][101] A replica of a ninjatō is on display at the Ninja Museum of Igaryu.

An array of darts, spikes, knives, and sharp, star-shaped discs were known collectively as shuriken. While not exclusive to the ninja,[102] they were an important part of the arsenal, where they could be thrown in any direction.[103] Bows were used for sharpshooting, and some ninjas' bows were intentionally made smaller than the traditional yumi (longbow).[104] The chain and sickle (kusarigama) was also used by the ninja.[105] This weapon consisted of a weight on one end of a chain, and a sickle (kama) on the other. The weight was swung to injure or disable an opponent, and the sickle used to kill at close range.

Seriously, why does everyone keep asking for literally ninja when thief already has one?

[Noko Anon.9154]

On 2/5/2022 at 3:30 PM, Exitus.3297 said:

Despite natural Ini regen actually being slower back then (0.75 per second instead of 1 per second), no one felt forced to grab Trickery because there were ways to gain Initaitive in every tree. They just had different ways of restoring Initiative that reflected their playstyle (E.G. getting crits restored Initiative every couple of seconds in Critical Strikes).

I had no idea. I'm new the game, and had presumed that the only way to get initiative back was through Trickery, through Shadow's Rejuvenation, or through Upper Hand. Of course, I always knew to take Trickery, and Shadow's Rejuvenation was a great option, but Upper Hand wasn't worth the cost of going into Acrobatics, since it's 1 initiative, it costs a dodge, and Daredevil does everything Acrobatics does, but better. I didn't know that Deadly Arts and Critical Strikes had ways of generating initiative, too. If the development team is as (relatively) new as I am, is it possible they don't know what's been taken away from the profession, either?