Asur.9178

I see the GW2 balance team's trend continues with the increases in initiative costs - impressive.

Wishful thinking to expect it to be changed any time soon considering it's in the Trickery traitline. Most long-time thief veterans know that the balance team is pretty clueless when it comes to thief; you don't need to look far. Just look at the balance patch this week - they once again increased initiative costs.

Pass. The game needs less stealth abuse...not more.

The only QoL that needs to happen with this is that the skills costs half the initiative if you accidentally queue it with no axes present. However, this poses another problem as you can easily spam evade frames if they did that. So, it's best for the skill to do something by itself (other than evade) than just doing everything with axes present. Ie. The skill should do something (other than evade) in addition to pulling the axes. All in all, it's just a matter of learning not to spam your buttons as thief as of right now since the skill doesn't do much of anything without axes on field. There are other significant issues with axe which needs to be addressed first though before even touching this matter. This should be close to the bottom of that list.

Just balance team doing their balance team's job. It took them years (literally) of myself (and possibly others) reporting bugs with Assassin's Reward to finally get them fixed (not sure if all of them are fixed - can't be bothered to test anymore) when I quit the game over a year ago.

I do like how this thread is specifically in the thief subforum and how most people associate stealth with thief only, when there are infinitely more obnoxious and stronger builds like condi druid.

It was decent as a typical niche bound build you see on power D/P or celestial P/P in WvW; but, it was just that...decent. After the bug fix yesterday with the unlimited cast range on A/P 3, it just became significantly worse. In PvE, A/D is a better power option than A/P. One can argue that A/P gives a slightly higher opening burst in something like power DD, but that's all and it assumes auto attack pre-casting (more on this later). Axe (by design) is one of those weapon sets that sounds cool in your head and theoretically, until you implement it and start playing with it (that is assuming it's implemented correctly without any bugs). There are multiple reasons why it's just bad: You can't cast your autos in any direction to pre-set axes without making sure you always de-target first. So, that means you can't attack behind you, nor can you cast anything until you turn around or de-target first (this is normal projectile cast behaviour). Ie. you can't set-up a burst as you kite unless you are wasting a ton of time targeting and de-targeting, as you attempt to lure the enemy into your set axes' range. If an enemy blocks while you have them as target or they simply body block your axe, your axe is not set; it just disappears. The set axes must be in range of the enemy you intend to cast A/X 3 on. So, the smart enemy can just kite around all the time to significantly reduce the on coming burst from A/X 3 as that would limit the number of axes that are always in range at any given time. Due to axes projectile speed, it is also possible to miss hitting with all the axes if the target is simply moving around a lot, especially with something like superspeed. It take forever to build up the "ammunition" for a burst due to the slow auto attacks. Axe 2, with the 3 axes thrown at a time, is not a damage increase on your A/P burst...it's actually a damage loss. If you accidentally cast Axe 2, you override your auto attacks and they will always take priority over your auto attack axes, which has a better power scaling than your Axe 2. This makes the other point about enemies needing to be in range worse because as long as Axe 2 axes exist on the field, you cannot place any auto attack axes. So, a smart enemy, who understands how this works, will simply put large distance between where an Axe 2 is placed as that locks up 3-6/6 axe placements for you immediately. Since the axes track the ground, often times they won't even reach the full distance on highly uneven ground (or on ground where there are usually random obstacles) - especially if it's cast without a target. For those that was around during the first iteration of rifle, this is a similar issue to Cursed Bullet. The power scaling on stealth attack on DE doesn't exist. DE malice scales only condi damage. So, it's bad even in PvE, where you would potentially want to use A/P. Here's a giga meme: A/D (from my testing) performs better as a power build than A/P. If I include a bug here too, then here's another one: the stealth attack (both versions) still doesn't blast finish - not like that'd matter a whole lot cause the blast finisher will be on the target. Other bugs include things like Shadow Savior not even working with A/D...but, I digress. All in all, it's just a very bad design, which is made worse by the plethora of issues and bugs that it currently has. P/P will be a better version of its meme-self after March balance patch; but, it'll always be a meme and RP build because of its design. S/P on the other hand is doomed. The only way to salvage S/P is to actually completely change the dual skill. I don't mean tweak numbers or effect, but a complete redesign. As it is currently, it's completely garbage in PvE, WvW, and sPvP...and that's not just a number or effect problem - that's a fundamental design issue. It's not an issue of just "learning and adapting". Thief has had only 2 offhands for over a decade. Nobody truly enjoys playing with the exact same thing for over a decade; people want changes in the way they play something. It's the whole reason why people play alts, unless they are fully satisfied with the changes that are implemented to their favourite class; or on a much bigger scale, a completely different game - like myself; I quit this game for over a year...came back only because I saw one out of the three changes I've wanted to see for years coming in March balance patch. So, if I'm not satisfied with March balance patch after its release and axe fails to impress me after the plethora of issues are fixed (if they are fixed), I will quit again until those other two major issues are addressed; and If I happen to completely move on from the game by then because the balance team takes another year/two years to address them, I'm not coming back. For example, when I quit, I still remember them giving lip service about how Specter trade-off will be removed after they toned down Specter in sPvP...well, it's over 1 year and I came back and still see it hasn't been removed and power specter is still bad and S/D is still dead in sPvP after they decided to nerf it at multiple levels (effectiveness and initiative cost increase). I'm too old and I'm too impatient to continue giving ANet money for working at a sloth's pace. They are not an indie company and they don't have an excuse to leave long standing issues sitting at the back for so long (I'm talking about Trickery and Sword in PvE - the one that they are addressing is Acrobatics). I've supported the game since GW1 beta, and I'm all out of patience with the GW2 balance team when it comes to thief. So, no, learning and adapting is not a good enough excuse to neglect a class so much.

A/P has more significant problems than just the terrible A/P 3 design (duplicate of A/D, minus the shadowstep). That's ignoring all the problems with axe's functionality in general that is currently plaguing the weapon. Pistol offhand on its own is terrible without a great finisher on the MH/3 or a ridiculously strong 3. It's why D/P is godly in design and Sc/P is good, while the rest are just awful: S/P is dead, P/P is a meme, A/P is terrible. It's also why any decent/good thief (myself inclusive) wanted either both a MH and OH or just an OH as a new weapon...not another MH or 2H.

You understood me fine; they did not - it's okay. Misunderstandings are inevitable in the internet and some people just need something to argue about. Don't continue going back and forth with them and de-railing the thread further as you both seem to be a bit argumentative. I see they responded above - just be the bigger person and ignore it.

Below are my thoughts on the changes. A bit flabbergasted that Specter got no changes - in particular Consume Shadows and Amplified Siphoning. As mentioned earlier, can't win them all. I also see that they still did not remove the Specter tradeoff yet, even though they said it will be removed in the future over a year ago in stream. Been a long time; I might just come back to this game with the proposed changes to Sword and Acrobatics - though I'm still HIGHLY disappointed to see that Preparedness and Sleight of Hand (Trickery in general) is still a problem. NB. Format is messed up, but maybe I will fix it later.

I've seen more than enough from the stream. I don't need to stick around for the 29th to know there will be nothing relevant being addressed. The team STILL does not have a thief player among them, guiding them in the right direction...for over 10 years. DE nerfed with no actual relevant adjustment. Moving with 25% movement speed while kneeling is worse than cancelling kneel and moving and re-kneeling. The ability to move at a snail's pace is not justified by the range nerf and the initiative cost increase. Trickery is still a shoehorn traitline for over 10 years in PvP; Acrobatics is still an insignificant traitline for over 2 years (almost 3 years now) in all gamemodes; and Sword is still garbage in PvE. None of them were addressed at any level. Said this for months, and....I'm done. I will occasionally keep an eye on future balance updates and may return if the said issues are finally addressed (highly doubtful at this point), until I lose any and all interest in the game...but, I am done with the game for now. For those who intend to still stick around supporting these serious lack of attention to the class for years, I wish you all good luck with your hopium and future endeavors.

Let's face it: thief utilities are mostly garbage; but so are most classes' utilities. The number of unused utilities and traits are a joke. You'd imagine that a balance team does their job properly and tries to bring unused and bad skills/traits up to par with the heavily used ones, instead of only ever touching meta builds to nerf/adjust them, but nope...that requires knowledge and understanding of a class' issues (good and bad) to do that. I expect nothing relevant from today's Balance Philosophy stream and the November patch...but I do envy those with a tank full of hopium.

Do you know why most Thieves don't speak up?...because instead of fighting against an immovable force, it's easier to just reroll to a different class and be done with it; and once you're done with it, there's no reason for you to concern yourself with posting about it and fighting a losing battle. Having said that, my 'hopium' tank has been empty for quite some time now (years actually). As I mentioned numerous times since a few months ago, I'm merely waiting for the November patch. That will determine my decision about whether I, personally, quit the game or not. Having been around for over 17 years with the franchise and over 10 years with GW2 alone, and spending countless hours and money in the games, I'm sure they don't mind losing people like me who've invested so much into their growth. Granted a large portion of this is from afking, I think it still gets the point across of just how long I've been around...and how long I've tolerated the nonsense. When the team is so full of ignorant people who fail to recognize the issues with Trickery (Preparedness and Sleight of Hand specifically), Acrobatics, and Sword (in PvE specifically) for over 10 years, there's some serious problems.

I am utterly shocked *insert Pikachu face*:

You'll have better luck getting struck by lightning by walking outside during a thunderstorm with a metal rod in hand, hoping to get struck by lightning, than you will getting seen and heard by relevant people in charge of balancing the game, let alone thief.