Dec 10th thief changes

#1 - Nov. 4, 2013, 11:28 a.m.

I couldn’t find a thread to place this in. Here is a summary of what I have seen discussed on the thief changes and some more clarity into what our initial thoughts were and where we stand currently.

Initiative changes
We believe this is one of the most controversial but important changes this patch. The important thing to understand is that we have been and will playtest this a lot more before we push this change. The default rate of initiative regeneration was simply to low and was causing players to either take traits to suppliment it, or to have their effectiveness suffer. This is something that has to change. What these changes intend to do is to increase the power of every single thief build that is not running these traits, and to ever so slightly reduce the maximum amount of initiative you can have per second if you min/max those traits. I know its easy to theorycraft what is going to happen here and there is a lot of danger in that. It is hard to get a sense of this change without playing it, and believe me if I could I would let everyone test a change of this magnitude and gather some more empirical and data driven feedback, but currently our resources are limited, but we still believe that this is a change whose time has come. We will monitor it very carefully when we do release it to make sure it is working as intended.

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Infusion of Shadow
For basic use this trait’s functionality is not going to change. By many players it was being used to grant some initiative when going into stealth. However there were some abusive builds that were using this to maintain very long stealth uptime without having to use their utility skills. The problem with this is that it lets them recharge those skills while in stealth, which takes away the risk associated with using them. We are ok with thieves blowing their cooldowns to have longer stealth, and we are ok with theives bouncing in and out of stealth, but we were not ok with thieves maintaining long duration stealth through abusing a single trait.

Flanking Strikes
I agree that this move may be overkill on the thief. We are currently discussing undoing it. The main motivation was that we really wanted to move Trickster to adept tier to encourge use of those utilities, and the most obvious candidate to move up was Flanking Strikes. This isn’t how we should be making that decision, so we will discuss this and get back to you.

Vigorous Recovery & Bountiful Theft
I’ve seen a lot of talk about this as well, and discussing this already this morning the current vigor is a bit too high, but we may have overdone the reduction. I was thinking about going back to 5s or 6s on Vigorous Recovery, and going back to 10s or 12s on Bountiful Theft.

Thanks,

Jon

#118 - Nov. 5, 2013, 10:50 a.m.

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

It is an incredible buff to this profession and should not be treated lightly. To counter this imagine we took a few weapons and took away the cooldown portion of their trait. They would still be 5% better but other weapons would be 25% better.

Among the changes that is basically what it amounts to, with the exception of one change which I’ll talk about next.

Opportunist
This trait was wildly overpowered. I there was a 15 point minor for any other profession that basically read: "Reduce cooldown of all weapon skills by 33%, it would basically be impossible to run that profession without putting 15 points into that line. Because of this every thief build that is effective uses this line, which improves crit and crit damage. This pigeonholes this profession in a way that makes it frustrating for players and developers. This trait has to be closer to an 8% increase if we expect people to consider not taking 15 point in critical strikes.

By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to. There are a lot of good traits that simply will never see play until we make this change.

Hopefully this explains, in more detail, what we hope to accomplish here.

TLDR; Thieves with 15+ in critical strikes and no other initiative traits will be slightly less efficient. All other thieves will be equally or more efficient.

Jon

#121 - Nov. 5, 2013, 11:04 a.m.

No, I am saying that I don’t want the balance of the thief held hostage by a 15 point minor in critical strikes so we need to take that initiative away from there and put it into the base class mechanics, which is exactly what we are doing.

Jon

#219 - Nov. 6, 2013, 9:20 a.m.

Sorry for the typos, this is from my phone on the bus. Not for dec 10, because it takes time to do, but we are intending to make pistol whip into 2 skills(similar to flanking strike) so we can split initiative costs and balance canceling to chain stun. This is on the docket for the next patch.

Jon

#223 - Nov. 6, 2013, 9:48 a.m.

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now. We talked through this flanking strike vs trickster change again yesterday and are still up in the air on it. I’m only posting updates to the main thread of stuff that is 100% changing.

Jon

#224 - Nov. 6, 2013, 9:50 a.m.

Khisanth.2948:

JonPeters.5630:

Sorry for the typos, this is from my phone on the bus. Not for dec 10, because it takes time to do, but we are intending to make pistol whip into 2 skills(similar to flanking strike) so we can split initiative costs and balance canceling to chain stun. This is on the docket for the next patch.

Jon

That would probably fix the the Combined Training bug as well…

Actually I fixed that bug yesterday when looking at how hard splitting would be and finding the script lacking the combined training check!

#228 - Nov. 6, 2013, 10:01 a.m.

We are thinking about making it into two skills that both cost initiative so we can balance the while thing more easily. For example this would let us increase the stun duration.

#233 - Nov. 6, 2013, 10:09 a.m.

Pavel.8531:

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now.Jon

Suggestion – move it to major instead of flanking strikes, but increase the radius by 40.

And I am thrilled about the PW change… When do you estimate can tell us how will it look like? Because it was quite decent before the 15th of October patch (1s rounded stun meant you could hit with half of the flurry before the stun ran out in wvw). And it always was a great skill for PvE.

Noted. That is likely what we would have done. I would like to hear the opposing view of players who run this trait with only 10 points in trickery…

Jon

#234 - Nov. 6, 2013, 10:09 a.m.

Khisanth.2948:

JonPeters.5630:

Khisanth.2948:

JonPeters.5630:

Sorry for the typos, this is from my phone on the bus. Not for dec 10, because it takes time to do, but we are intending to make pistol whip into 2 skills(similar to flanking strike) so we can split initiative costs and balance canceling to chain stun. This is on the docket for the next patch.

Jon

That would probably fix the the Combined Training bug as well…

Actually I fixed that bug yesterday when looking at how hard splitting would be and finding the script lacking the combined training check!

Shadow Strike is missing the check as well. For the second strike which would be Shadow Strike 2 according to the combat log.

Yeah once I saw that one was missing I went and checked them all. We are good to go there now!

#238 - Nov. 6, 2013, 10:25 a.m.

Daendur.2357:

JonPeters.5630:

Yeah once I saw that one was missing I went and checked them all. We are good to go there now!

And what about “Combo Critical Chance” ? does it work correctly ?
Is 5% enough for a Master trait that affects only 1 of 5 skills and doesn’t affect Shortbow (probably the most common weapon) at all ?

Glad you asked. Once I saw the first one didn’t work I went and checked the second one. That one was only missing on S/P and has also been fixed!

Ahh dual skills and 2H weapons….

…

heh

…

Much harder problem obviously.

Also we are leaving it at 5% chance for now because this one is very hard to test!

#244 - Nov. 6, 2013, 10:51 a.m.

ensoriki.5789:

JonPeters.5630:

We are thinking about making it into two skills that both cost initiative so we can balance the while thing more easily. For example this would let us increase the stun duration.

What no. Not my Pistol Whip.
Why can’t your team just handle skills as they are?
There is not much different in PW’s core from Hundred Blades, Zealots defense, and Blurred Frenzy but you need to split it in two? What?
Sure sometimes reworks need to be done but I dont think this is the case at all.

Whole thing with Initiative was a global resource to use skills as you need them. The More you split skills the more silly it becomes for the initiative system as I feel for it. If its the case you might as well give the Thief CD’s instead of ini if this is going to be a frequent addition.

Maybe I’ve misread you guys , how do you want S/P to play as a weapon set as it seems to differ from how I feel about it. I thought “Hit & run strong damage that doesn’t get blown up while doing that damage”, and brings significant disruption relative to S/D which is a more defensive kit that weakens (boon steal, cripple, vulnerability) a target while having some of the disable of S/P (tactical strike).
You want to make it just a heavy CC kit?

This would just be a buff to pistol whip, with the one caveat that you wouldn’t be able to animation cancel and chain stun.

It would let you do things like use part one, then do some attacks then immobilize target, then use the flurry when they are immobilized. It just opens up skill choice on that weapon.

#246 - Nov. 6, 2013, 10:55 a.m.

PopeUrban.2578:

So I run D/D “zergbunker” Trickery specced thief as such:

20/0/0/20/30

This is not a crit spec, it’s not a FOTM spec, and it is a spec that revolves around steal moreso than most. It was enabled by some great updates to Trickery and is being fundamentally made less fun by the proposed trait updates.

Now, The reason why I run it is that the ~20s stealth makes improvisation actually useful, and lotus poison is a nice condition cover from the auto for basically free.

With 20 in acro I’m using assassin’s reward as backup for the composite overall healing from mug and signet of malice. It’s a fun build that’s a hybrid of evasion and self healing, requiring an active defense and a really aggressive playstyle not possible on other thief builds.

I think this merits saying as if the focus is build diversity, I run a pretty uncommon build, which is being kinda gutted of utilities in favor of (In my Opinion) much less interesting bigger damage and healing numbers.

These changes are doing the following to my build:

Increasing overall healing, but only IF I drop either improvisation (and lotus poison) or lead attacks/sleight of hand.

THE problem is, these two traits are only really in the build in order to support one another. Is there any chance we can move/adjust improvisation (which is highly underused/undervalued, and thus should be a candidate for a buff in this patch) to allow it?

TBH it would make more sense as a master trait in trickery anyway, and richochet would make more sense in deadly arts.

How about swapping the position of ricochet and improvisation, moving a pistol DPS trait to the DPS line and a steal focused trait to the steal line? I’d be able to keep the utilities in place, but still have to give up 10 points in deadly, thus losing lotus poison and bountiful theft, which seems like a fair trade for fluid strikes and the ability to run hard to catch and assassin’s reward.

This would also benefit P/P and venomshare builds.

P/P would be able to run lighter on trickery and get more utility out of deadly arts, making the p/p without venom share overall a better spec due to the 5 extra optional points in critical trikes or a defensive line, which synergize much better with p/p. In addition they’d have an overall better base of optional initiative traits to fuel themselves, and P/P builds would just be overall tighter with less “chaff” trait points to get to the good stuff.

This would also have a potential slight benefit on venomshare builds, allowing them the option of running improv and the other venom traits for possible proc recharges.

This is great feedback. One thing I will tell you is that now your build has 33% more initiative than it used to. This will gain you back that lost survivability and then some IMO.

Jon

#251 - Nov. 6, 2013, 11:35 a.m.

Seetoo.9316:

JonPeters.5630:

Pavel.8531:

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now.Jon

Suggestion – move it to major instead of flanking strikes, but increase the radius by 40.

And I am thrilled about the PW change… When do you estimate can tell us how will it look like? Because it was quite decent before the 15th of October patch (1s rounded stun meant you could hit with half of the flurry before the stun ran out in wvw). And it always was a great skill for PvE.

Noted. That is likely what we would have done. I would like to hear the opposing view of players who run this trait with only 10 points in trickery…

Jon

I happen to use uncatchable in adept in a p/p build with ricochet in master.

The build is currently 0 20 0 30 20 quad pistols (for quick pockets and quick recovery -> unload spam) 15 crit strikes was pretty mandatory so I took combo crit chance as well.

This was meant to be one of the boys up in the front lines where surviving relied a lot on signet of malice + ricochet and feline grace. You can’t “win” every encounter. There will always be oh crap moments where you have to run. Right now uncatchable is the only way my 4p build gets to run away. Cripple for the runners and body shot for the leapers/teletubies.

If you bring uncatchable up to master, then it competes with ricochet and ricochet > uncatchable. Ricochet + signet of malice turn unload into a significant heal skill (which is what lets me stay in the front lines)

Now it was suggested that ricochet could be moved to arms (swap with improvisation). I could get behind that since 3/5 p skills benefit from condition duration. Then unload could benefit from the power.

Thanks for the feedback Seetoo. If we did bring it up to master we would certainly buff it making it master worthy.

#281 - Nov. 6, 2013, 3:32 p.m.

Shogun.7401:

“all thief specs got massive buffs”. Yea, I guess a level 1 thief is now 25% stronger with any weapon.
Sword auto hits 3 targets. Pistol whip hits 3 targets 7 times plus initial strike.
Pistol shot with auto ricochet hits up to four targets. Unload with ricochet hits up to 15 targets.
Considering 100% crit rate on pistol whip/unload is not a problem at all, wan’t me to point out the loss?
Before (unload):
Base regen: 0.75/second
Average opportunist regen: (5(ricochets per unload average) plus 8 hits over)x4 = 52 crits in 7 seconds. 7.42 crits per second. 1-(1-0.3)^7.42 = 93% chance to get 1 initiative EVERY second.
Total regen: 0.75 plus 0.93*1= 1.68 initiative/second (average).
After (unload):
Base regen: 1/second
Opportunist: 0.2/second
Total regen: 1.2/second.
Summary: 30% nerf to P/P, the weakest thief spec.

Good point I hope jon will take a look at the math .

This is incorrect simply because Opportunist already had an ICD. Also a minor trait that gives even 1/2 of what you think it gave is not going to let us balance init regen for any non Opportunist specs.

#282 - Nov. 6, 2013, 3:32 p.m.

UPDATE

No longer swapping Flanking Strikes and Trickster because we felt it was taking away more build diversity than it was creating. We will revisit what to do with Trickster in the future.

#288 - Nov. 6, 2013, 3:49 p.m.

Cyhann.2609:

JonPeters.5630:

UPDATE

No longer swapping Flanking Strikes and Trickster because we felt it was taking away more build diversity than it was creating. We will revisit what to do with Trickster in the future.

Nooo, I was so happy to have Trickster at Adept ;_;. Why not changing it with Merciful Ambush or Instictual Response while buffing these traits? They are quite weak after all.

Yeah those are the kinds of ideas, but we don’t want to move flanking and don’t have time to buff something else right now. I will save these suggestions for when we do get to this.

Jon

#290 - Nov. 6, 2013, 3:53 p.m.

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

#294 - Nov. 6, 2013, 4:01 p.m.

Arkantos.7460:

JonPeters.5630:

Cyhann.2609:

JonPeters.5630:

UPDATE

No longer swapping Flanking Strikes and Trickster because we felt it was taking away more build diversity than it was creating. We will revisit what to do with Trickster in the future.

Nooo, I was so happy to have Trickster at Adept ;_;. Why not changing it with Merciful Ambush or Instictual Response while buffing these traits? They are quite weak after all.

Yeah those are the kinds of ideas, but we don’t want to move flanking and don’t have time to buff something else right now. I will save these suggestions for when we do get to this.

Jon

posted my earlier comment while you make your note official-
It was a great idea maybe you have Long Reach/Uncatchable/merciful Ambush/Instinctual Response für switching,
oh plz it would be so more useful in Adept
‘hope’

It will get there, just hang on because we want to get it right so after Dec 10…

#297 - Nov. 6, 2013, 4:22 p.m.

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

#313 - Nov. 6, 2013, 5:35 p.m.

Imagi.4561:

BobbyT.7192:

The only thing black powder can’t provide is protection against carpet bombing down targets.
Keeping in mind we can still teleport stomp, with shadow step, but we are still giving up a utility/actual stun break to do.

From what I understand, using IS requires using a utility anyways, or burning your Steal.

Yeah you burn your steal (35-20s cooldown) with it, instead of burning shadowstep (50-40s cooldown.)

Jon

#324 - Nov. 6, 2013, 5:58 p.m.

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

#405 - Nov. 7, 2013, 10:29 a.m.

Please respond to some of the more serious, well reasoned arguments concerning this change. There have been a dozen solid arguments as to why this is a bad idea, which take into consideration how S/D is forced to Spec and gear if it wants to remain effective, and also how thief was designed as part of the lowest Base HP pool in the game, with no way to block, go immune or psuedo-immune, no access to protection or stability.

When you make a statement like this, it is important to re-read the original post in general about how to give feedback. I appreciate the passion here, but literally this breaks every rule that I laid down.

How to give good feedback and what to expect.

• Be constructive. If you think a change may cause issues, say why and give examples. Try not to argue with others – make your point and then accept that other people may have different points of view.
• Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!
• Be specific. “I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B”. The more specific you are, the better we are able to understand where you’re coming from, what type of content you play, and it helps us to understand the context for your feedback.
• Be objective. Keep in mind that just because you may not like something, that doesn’t make it bad. Others may have differing opinions. They may play a different type of content, or they may play a different profession, so be objective and keep in mind – we have to balance the game for EVERYONE, not just you.
• Be respectful. This goes for your fellow community members as well as for devs. Respect the ideas and opinions of others.
• Be mindful of scope. These are the changes we are trying to get in for the Dec. 10th balance patch. That doesn’t leave us with time to rework entire classes, or redesign entire weapon sets with this update. Keep scope/work/time/resources in mind when you make your suggestions.
• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.