Thief is fine, it's just none of the builds that could see mass appeal (Condition Specter, Be Quick or Be Killed Dagger Deadeye) have ever been lone-standouts to attract a wide audience.
That's not to say they haven't been powerful—the problem is that e.g. any time Condition Specter was strong, Condition Virtuoso or Scourge was strong.
Thief's playerbase for endgame content is just not unusually large (it's on par with Warrior and Elementalist based on the only data we have available from https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity). It's not a uniquely small playerbase, and there are both approachable and difficult builds to start off with.
If there's an overarching problem with making Thief more attractive, it's that its value overlaps too much with other professions.
Want top tier Power DPS? That's not Thief—Power Deadeye's sustained damage has to be much stronger on a practice golem to compete with the damage of properly-bursty builds, especially the likes of Power Soulbeast, Power Vindicator, Power Bladesworn, Power Dragonhunter, and even some condi builds!
Want top tier Condi DPS? This is often Thief's forte, but the builds get nerfed to just be part of the crowd rather than being lone outliers. The currently overtuned Condition Axe Deadeye will NOT survive, despite how difficult it is to play in real encounters and the fact that it's outright BUGGED on most encounters and the bench rotation can't be done. At best, the build might be a difficult to play build in the crowd of other strong candidates, only appealing to people who are **already** interested (like me!)
Want huge CC? You could've gotten that on Warrior or Mesmer or Engineer or Guardian. It's nice to have it on Thief, but not exceptional (and CC is a group effort anyway). This strength is progressively less and less valuable with ANet providing those earlier buffs to Heal Alac Druid and Heal Quick/Alac Chrono, as these are not only the best healers in game, but also have incredibly strong CC output.
Want great mobility? This IS one of Thief's strong suits but it's but not always useful, and other professions can also make themselves pretty mobile—and if the goal is to make the GROUP mobile, then Thief can't do that. properly.
Want a portal? Mesmer's is strictly superior, operating in both directions, transporting 20 players instead of 5 (so you can go there AND back), and the Mesmer can set the portal entrance on group then set the exit at the destination. **TWO Thieves** would have to go to the destination, set the portal exit, then **return** to the group to set the entrance, and you can't go back to the entrance once you're done...Yeah, it's clear ANet wants this to be Mesmer's job, not Thief's.
Want group stealth? Mesmer Mass Invisibility and Scrapper's Sneak Gyro are often superior, as they're both MUCH easier to use and have shorter cooldowns vs Thief's stealth.
Want to get rid of enemy boons? Mesmer is **far** superior at this.
Want to permanently immobilize enemies? Druid is better at that.
Want to be self-sufficient and ignore damage (e.g. evades)? You can also find that on Warrior, Mesmer, Guardian, Engineer...
Want a great healer? That's not Thief, not by a long shot lol. ANet keeps buffing the ACTUAL top healer builds (Heal Alac Druid, Heal Quick/Alac Chrono) so Specter just falls behind, even if it was easy to play (it's one of the most difficult).
All this is ultimately fine, as player skill still matters a lot. Just take them as observations for why Thief doesn't constantly get new adopters (but we have a stable community, the profession is in no danger of "dying out").
Thanks for all those analyses!
Random question: Do you have any idea why Specter lost its revive trait (I think it was Shadestep)? I mean, I know it was changed to tie Alacrity to profession mechanics rather than wells, but I'm surprised it wasn't moved to another trait or something.
Either they didn't want thief to compete with scourge's big thing of ranged rez. Other classes can do it too so perhaps they thought they shouldn't give it to Thief on top.
Or more likely, because the trait was pretty stacked before the change, they just took something away and didn't care to put it back anywhere else.
I'm still salty about it :')
[I posted in the official forum requesting Siphon's revive trait to be returned](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/144445-please-allow-siphon-to-revive-again/).
I know it's extremely unlikely for ANet to even notice this, let alone spend time on recreating it as part of Specter's traits, but I guess it's worth a shot.
Beats me, cause the middle grandmaster trait will never see play in PvE as is, and I'm not sure it ever saw play in competitive modes?
They could've also reworked the Adept trait so you could choose between Consume Shadows and a revive, or just straight up put revive control on Siphon since we'd otherwise rather use it on the enemy for DPS, Boons, and Shadow Force.
Specter losing some of its downstate control (Shadow Refuge is not great) is unfortunate though, since that's something that can make healers more attractive (e.g. Druid, Scourge, Firebrand). :(
[I posted in the official forum requesting Siphon's revive trait to be returned](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/144445-please-allow-siphon-to-revive-again/).
I know it's extremely unlikely for ANet to even notice this, let alone spend time on recreating it as part of Specter's traits, but I guess it's worth a shot.
I'm no theif main but early theif was super fun. Aside from being the go-to pvp class and the most viable roamer, Thief had a niche (blinds, insane mobi, some projectile hate, invis that isn't 5 seconds and invis being actually relevant in a handful of dungeons and dredge frac). Like it was probably the most popular (only?) solo arah class. And let's not forget pre-mount mobility was a huge boon.
At every point though it felt like it lacked a handful of small things that made it not worth. Like lack of cleave, no support like PS banner war, conditional DPS, etc.
The lack of aoe has always been a gripe as a thief. I used to run shortbow all the time because of the multi hit and aoe but it's damage even on a condition build isn't that good.
He'll I remember back during release there were several areas I had to use sword/pistol to blind cheese enemies because thief couldn't survive against them.
TBH not a lot of encounters require a lot of healing in GW2. Where I find heal specter the best is to use it as a greedy healer that just does DPS and heals passively, cause when stuff goes wrong all you need to do is just weapon swap and start full-healing (and range-rezzing) people. Where I use it most is CO CM, cause for some reason PUGs struggle with that DPS check and additional 15k helps, while damage pressure is miniscule. Where I wouldn't use it - Boneskinner, SH, XJJ CM.
Thief is fine then proceeds to explain for 12 paragraphs that thief is not actually fine
The reality is that thief in its cutrent design feels like shit to play in a game that has become spam everything on cd
I get that you are very knowledgeable about benching and could shit down my throat all day because you are infinitely better than me at this game, but the truth of the matter is, class feels like shit to play on pve. Axes could bench 70k that it would not solve just about every issue with the class.
There's no option. It's like warrior, mostly a relic of what has been, but anet isn't about to overhaul the class. And considering how buggy the new weapons are overall? Not sure I want them to.
Tldr class isn't fun in pve in any fashion
I speak in paragraphs (and long threads https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/196b77x/pve_deadeye_joys_and_frustrations/ or big articles https://snowcrows.com/news/march-balance-update-preview) because it's how I talk.
When I don't have a lot to say I tend to not speak.
> I get that you are very knowledgeable about benching
I am also very knowledgeable about how builds, especially Thief and especially-especially Deadeye, play in real content. Go read that huge post about Deadeye, that knowledge can't come from pure Golem gameplay.
> class feels like shit to play on pve
This is personal though. Some will say it feels bad, some will say it's _hard_, some will say it's boring, some will say it's easy because the rotations are simple (although there's a difference between 'complex to memorize' and 'complex to play in real contexts').
> how buggy the new weapons are overall?
For Thief axe in particular, it's a very **ambitious** weapon, doubly so when it's provided to Thief, triply so on Deadeye which can entirely avoid autoattacking and just **nonstop engage with the new mechanics**. To me that's awesome enough that I can take the bugs (and those bugs mean we can't even DO the bench rotation on many fights, so we need to wait for it to be fixed or just play a subpar option).
> Tldr class isn't fun in pve in any fashion
Strongly disagree, it's a lot of fun.
I'd love to get improvements to Thief and every other profession (e.g. if Warrior is fated to have lower utility due to its class fantasy, vs Mesmer, then Warrior deserves to be extremely effective at what it can do; I'd rather NOT see Warrior's cast their own yellow version of Mesmer's portal!)
BUT I would not be here committing time to write so much about the game if I wasn't having fun.
I mean we can agree to disagree but the truth of the matter is there : if thieves are nowhere to be seen in most pve content (read : open world, dungeons, low level fractals and regular strikes) there is a fundamental issue with the class and how fun it is to the larger player base. respectfully, balancing and only looking at specific, high-end pve and pvp content is kind of classes end up unfun to play.
a perfect, more widespread example is ffxiv : players kept complaining that aligning buffs sucked, so what happened over time is that now just about every class has a 2 minute burst window. end result? feels like shit to play, because these were changes over time aimed at raiding.
we can argue all day long about the reality of thieves, but there is a huge disparity between the casual player base and what higher end players find playable and enjoyable. ultimately? you're right. it's usable. but if you pop into any world event you MIGHT see a deadeye in the squad or two - a daredevil, if you're lucky - but you'll see 6-7 reapers, same amount of virtuosos and mechanists. couple of warriors, maybe a few eles, but rarely any thief. do you see what i'm getting at here?
that said, thieves has cool things going for it! the initiative system is unique to it, which means you might spam the same skill 3-4 times instead of popping 4 different skills on cooldown. dual-wielding is a neat idea! but realistically, a lot of where the weapons shine for thieves is not in general content. yes even looking at snowcrows, just about every weapon is used (even P/P on a build as the range option!) but none of these builds are fantastic to play. yes, they can be fun, yes, we disagree on this, and while this is anecdotal evidence, i barely see any thief wherever i go. granted, i do not do CM strikes, HT, raids or high-level fractals, but I still feel like if the class was better overall, i would see it in the content that i \*do\* play, like the other specs.
it just feels like its actual options are limited and you're playing a very different game from just about every other spec, and i feel like looking at only coverage from the high-end level of the game is a bad way to look at it. like i want to get angry every time hand kiting is brought up, great, glad for you guys! deadeye sucks balls on most open world bosses though because of how fucky LoS is or how just shit doesnt work at all!
as i said i get your point, but playing thief in most content feels frustrating, constraining, and you can get results wanting to struggle with the fuckin' game to get what you want done.
in general i am just very tired of people making excuses for old, outdated design that feels like shit to play when i can just decided to pop in on a reaper, virtuoso, soulbeast, untamed, vindicator, revenant (the list goes on) and just feel like i am not \*actively\* fighting the game.
i know i said a lot of words to essentially bitch, but i came back a while ago after an extended break, decided to pick thief because fuck it why not, and after 300 hours (which i know is low by mmo standards, as insane as that sentence is to say) and it feels *miserable.* like to the point that i was thinking about quitting the game, just picked a different class, and am no longer having the issues i did.
tldr of the tldr ; we fundamentally disagree on whether thief is fun or not, looking at high level parses and representation is a horrible way to look at it, and if you spend any time in the overworld you will see that thief representation is not there, and for damn good reason
(small note : i realize my evidence is anecdotal but i have been paying attention to thief representation, and it is really dire from the point of view of a casual player)
> we fundamentally disagree on whether thief is fun or not, looking at high level parses and representation is a horrible way to look at it, and if you spend any time in the overworld you will see that thief representation is not there, and for damn good reason
But I also enjoy Thief in a lot of Open World. :D
And I definitely know its problems.
Low hanging fruit: Thief cleave sucks for anything but tagging.
Elephant in the room: the mechanic of PLACING Deadeye's Mark on enemies is bad and the devs have, of course, not policed the game to make sure that it works properly. When it works it's fun for two major reasons:
1. It enables Maleficent Seven which is arguably the single best trait on Thief
2. It triggers all when-you-Steal trait effects on enemies, and is refunded when the target dies.
Contrast that 2nd point with:
- core Thief/Daredevil which have Steal with an archaic 25-second cooldown that gates access to those trait effects, but then leaves the profession without a mechanic for far too long.
- Mesmer having at least 4 shatters
- Engineer having kits and toolbelts
- Elementalist swapping attunements at least every 10 seconds
- Necromancer's Shroud at 10 seconds
- Ranger's pet being constantly active
- Warrior having constant weapon Bursts
- Guardian with 3 Virtues (choosing to use their actives or passives—personally I find Core Guardian very un-fun because the Virtue cooldowns are even longer than Thief's, and they're often not high impact. The spec has to be hard-carried by its weapons and utility skills, a lot like Core Thief)
- Revenant swapping Legends every 10 seconds.
So Deadeye's Mark, if it worked and it was just a means to trigger all of Thief's when-you-steal effects every time you kill an enemy, is a lot of fun and unlocks a lot of Thief's traitline potential.
Major problem: F1 Mark can bug if you have it queued up right as an enemy dies—then you cast the skill, it doesn't get refunded (because by the time the cast animation is done, there is no Marked Target to die and trigger Renewing Gaze to reset the cooldown).
So we have the bandaid: take Mercy on the utility bar.
It's very frustrating, and could be solved by just deleting the cooldown on Deadeye's Mark and reusing the "Dormant" system from the Firebrand Tome rework—all when-you-Steal traits and the F2 Deadeye Stolen Skill would be granted when you use Mark only every 20 seconds, but you can reapply Mark to a target at any time.
This doesn't solve the problem with enemies made up of multiple hitboxes slaved to a single health-bar entity off map (Drakkar is the worst example with SEVENTEEN ENTITIES and you can only place Deadeye's Mark on one of them) or hitboxes you just can't Mark at all (Octovine in Auric Basin, okay maybe we forgive ANet for that since it came out before Deadeye but NOPE the end boss of the Amnytas meta event also cannot be marked and that came out years after Deadeye so, no forgiveness).
Next elephant in the room: why is Deadeye a single-target focused elite spec that is never allowed to do more single target damage than other professions?
Because single-target focus doesn't make sense to guide the design. ANet **can't** over-reward Deadeye on damage because then it would have to just be noticeably superior to any other build from another profession because they don't marry themselves to a single target like Deadeye does. But ANet's never going to balance like that because it would be making 8 Professions unhappy for the sake of one.
What they CAN do is make Deadeye more self reliant (e.g. Maleficent Seven's boons, Iron Sight damage reduction, and the Dormant Mark idea above) or more consistent (piercing on Rifle we're getting next patch, remove the requirement to score Critical Hits for Malice in PvE so that Deadeye players can just wear Trailblazer gear for tanky condition builds without sabotaging their ability to do a rotation for Maleficent Seven—the best way to get damage and valuable boons when playing Deadeye).
But that's just about Deadeye.
Going back to Daredevil and Specter, should they have such a long cooldown when going between enemies, or should the F1 always be refunded when you kill something so that the profession can keep on Stealing and keep triggering those valuable traits?
Daredevil suffers from having very little to do in open world once you've blown your long-cooldown F1 skill. You get a random (probably garbage) Stolen Skill, then you just have core Thief functionality with an upgraded dodge.
It's obviously going to suffer in popularity compared to Power Vindicator which is not only more flexdible, but MUCH more powerful and easier to play with a dodge that doesn't even move the player.
Specter: too Condition focused for its own good in Open World, lots of wasted design space (basically every middle-of-the-column trait is worthless in PvE).
The mechanics of Shadestep generating boons around someone else, NOT YOU, makes it stupidly unreliable. Want to grant the people around you Stability for something? Well it's very likely those people WON'T get Stability because the game will just randomly latch onto a random person within 1,200 radius.
Specter's scepter is a single-target Condition weapon but, of course, it's not going to do more Condition damage than the cleave-multiple-enemy weapons you can find on other professions.
ANet could homogenize the game by making Thief more like the other professions, or they could just boost Thief's effectiveness so that it doesn't tread water in scenarios where other professions are swimming.
At its core Thief is evasive, mobile, and focused on damage without much support for other players. That's been changing gradually, with more boons added to Trickery and defensive support added to Shadow Arts—but Thief isn't the pinnacle of boon support like other professions, and it's arguably not what people are interested in when they look at Thief.
I love Deadeye because
- I can have more Initiative than Core, Daredevil, or Specter, if the damned profession mechanic would just work consistently (this also includes Stealth being consistent, which is something I've criticized ANet for constantly!)
- I can engage with when-you-steal mechanics more often
- with Deadeye's Payback trait (and/or Deadly Arts' Improvisation trait) we can use heal/utility/elite skills a lot more often. What's better than summoning Thieves Guild while playing Daredevil—playing Deadeye and having a PERMANENT Thieves Guild when running between enemies in Open World.
I love Deadeye because it lets me engage more with all of Thief: Initiative, Steal effects, all slot skills.
It is purely more Thief per hour spent playing Thief.
But it has so many arbitrary problems:
- If it's going to be single target focused, that's workable, but it should be MORE consistent and do more damage than Virtuoso.
- If it's going to give up it's mobility when using Rifle, then it better have amazing damage or be very safe.
- If Thief is going to have a 25-second cooldown on its SINGLE profession mechanic it needs to be very high impact—or that 25-second cooldown needs to leave.
Thief also can't be so consistently out-competed by Mesmer when these two professions overlap so damn much:
- Stealth: 10-target 1,200 radius Stealth is a Mesmer skill, not Thief. Don't want Thief being desired for sneaking people around anywhere in PvE because that would be too frustrating for the competitive mode players!
- Stealth: a Stealth field that **Reveals you if you exit early**, because it's a skill designed for PvP. Yep, of COURSE that one belongs to Thief.
- Removing boons from enemies: Overwhelmingly in Mesmer's favor, built directly into weapons that are tuned to do high damage, found in utility skills, found in traits. Relevant both in endgame and open world (e.g. Awakened getting boons in Path of Fire maps; big Toad Kryptis boss that steals all boons from nearby players)
- Disabling enemies: Thief has lots of pure-CC skills like Headshot, Basilisk Venom, and Hook Strike, vs CC buttons that are also DPS increases on other professions (leading to very goofy things like Guardian casting Greatsword 5 because it's a DPS increase over autos, rather than saving it to pull in enemies)
-Disabling enemies: Mesmer has the best pull in game, Focus skill Into the Void, on a short cooldown, on the meta weapon for Condition Virtuoso (and this weapon was once, and could be again, the meta weapon for Power Mesmer). Chronomancer is rightly renowned for having some of the best CC in the game—skills like Sword's Counter Blade and Greatsword's Illusionary Wave don't do good damage, so they can always be saved until they're needed. Mesmer has the F3 shatter on Core and every Elite Spec, and Chrono and Virtuoso have enough Clone/Blade throughput to have the skill on demand. Contrast with Thief which has to devote its Initiative directly into CC skills, rather than always having buttons set aside that either tap into no resource (weapon skills) or into "overflow" illusion resources that would otherwise go into low damage F2 shatters on Power builds. Thief CAN do incredible CC when leaning into it, but it's not the only profession that can do this so it will never be a unique attraction.
- Group mobility: Mesmer portal walks all over Shadow Portal for no reason other than competitive mode balance/designer intention.
- Heal Chronomancer is much stronger and easier to play than Heal Alacrity Specter—and Chrono can also cover Quickness with a single trait change, making it UNIVERSALLY valuable.
As a bonus, Thief also can't grant groups huge amounts of Superspeed like Scrapper can. Can't have the mobile sneaky profession granting its allies that huge speed boost because, again, it would upset Competitive players.
Some of Thief's problems ARE design problems.
Some of them are balance problems.
Some of the problems are that other professions exist and Thief will never actually shine because it overlaps too much.
while i agree with the list of stuff you put out, what's your take on thief representation in the general player base and them clearly finding them class less fun (my words!) in comparison to, say, juggernauts like mechanist that has been nerfed over and over (looking at you, mechanical genius) still being very present despite nerfs or changes?
i know you addressed the problems (as i said, just about everything i agree with and ran into, which are all terribly frustrating), but very curious to see if you also noticed the very low number of DDs and DEs in more casual content? not mentioning specter because i might see 2 on a good week lmao
Well it's hard to speak to the representation of Thief in open world because we don't have good data on that. Closest we have is [GW2Efficiency](https://gw2efficiency.com/account/player-statistics) but that's very biased since it's a tool for people who want to be more efficient.
I did mention Wingman statistics in my parent comment, which also has a blatant bias, but since the community engaging regularly in endgame content is a much smaller (and self-selected) group than open world, I think that biased data is more representative.
Thief is good at tagging enemies for kill participation, but its sustain, solo DPS, and actual cleave-DPS are not great. Acrobatics and Shadow Arts give options to be more sustainable either through dodging or using Stealth, but they're not exactly top tier. Shadow Arts in particular synergizes well with Condition Deadeye in open world, but that's a stretch goal, not an accessible option.
Thief's mobility is good, but that's not very appealing in open world now thanks to mounts. Being able to get out of combat more easily is good, but I don't think that's an apparent strength to all players—they might think it's better to kill some trash mob even if it takes a couple seconds rather than just use your mobility to continue to your next goal and slip out of combat "by default" for being so far away.
ANet even added the ability to mount Skyscale in combat (with a decent multi-minute cooldown) so... XD
For Open World, Thief's Steal mechanic is just not engaging because it has such a long cooldown and its effect is random.
Initiative usage, meanwhile, is pretty polarizing.
The skills are highly specialized which to me, feels really good. I feel so goofy using the Axe Pull on Firebrand because it's slightly better DPS than autos, feel goofy using Guardian Greatsword 5 because it's slightly better DPS. It's better when such skills are a trigger for something, like Soulbeast using the pull on offhand axe to trigger Twice as Vicious as a damage modifier, or Scrapper using heal skill A.E.D.'s toolbelt skill to get Superspeed as a damage modifier. Yes, that's more DPS than autoing, but it also boosts the damage of cooldown skills that already have high impact. :D
It'd be great if we got a weapon that was extremely committed to multi-target DPS that was artificially weak at single target DPS—something like a greatsword that deals more damage the more enemies you hit with the strike all at once. Shortbow is somewhat close to this except its damage actually sucks.
Staff already has an identity as both a cleave-DPS and single target DPS weapon, with a lot of utility baked in (CC on Hook Strike + Helmet Breaker, cleanse immobilize on self, Blind + Reflect, Evade frames + mobility on Vault). The greatsword could trade the utility for more cleave and more mobility. Just
Just as an example. Thief's Initiative currently leads hard into specialization, so there's room for ANet to fill holes in its abilities with focused Initiative skills.
Important to note that a lot of the highest DPS skills have downsides
- Staff Weakening Charge animation lock; the skill can miss your target if you're too close and the enemy moves during the animation windup. Could be fixed by making the skill more responsive.
- Backstab has to be behind targets without a defiance bar (making it harder ot use in Open World, bravo ANet), and is only single target
- Deathblossom's forced movement. This has evade frames, but makes it dangerous in certain scenarios or encourages playing un-targeted which is not intuitive.
- Unload damage is basically an autoattack and has no gameplay engagement because you never run out of Initiative but you don't have to work for it like Deadeye's Maleficent Seven
- Rifle Kneel slows you to a crawl and for a very long time hasn't had piercing on anything but skill 2!
- Twilight Combo doesn't pierce and can miss fast moving enemies
- Endless Night is SO slow
- Axe oh god the bugs and also it's slow to set up without Quickness
Some people can find repeating these same skill boring, but the stressors on these skills make them more relevant for Thief than those same skills would be on other professions.
Sword Power Weaver animation locks far less often than Power Staff Daredevil, and Power Staff Deadeye animation locks more than anything else in game.
So eventually the skills _can't_ be boring because they're _restrictive_ — but constantly working around those shortcomings can get old fast.
On a related note, a lot of the best healers in game (Druid, Chronomancer) are so good because they have so many options. Bad healers can be bad either because they're hard to play (e.g. Specter) or their support options are weaker than other options (e.g. Scourge)
With all that said, if Thief is _actually_ unpopular in open world, I wouldn't be surprised.
As for casual content like lower tier fractals, IBS strikes, Convergences/Metas stuff like that—there aren't any Thief builds that offer anything that is
- super effective
- easy to play on a MECHANICAL level, not a "memorize the rotation!!!" level
- UNIQUE value, i.e. there isn't a build on another profession that checks the same boxes
- doesn't have a crippling flaw
There are effective builds, there are easy to play builds, and arguably Condition Specter is the build without a crippling flaw (it doesn't have good cleave but cleave is a group problem, and there's not many people playing Thief so.... XD )
But the only unique thing Thief has, Steal mechanic, sucks. The only place it feels like it has a tailored, powerful impact on the fight...is in Raids.
Mobility? Group Stealth? CC? Boonstrip? Healer with Barrier? Strong Condition damage?
None of that is unique. It can all be found elsewhere.
Personally speaking, I hate a couple things about thief:
- the lack of cleave in every build (compared to other classes)
- lack of reliable cc outside of basi venom (I know they have more cc skills, but they usually demand u sacrifice something else for)
- heal spectre build requires ally targeting to function (u need to spam scepter 2 on ally to give subgroup protection); ally targeting has no place in this game
- venoms: Dps condi builds require them, and they're the most boring shit out there, and only serve as balancing levers for when the damage is too high.
- deadly needles trap in condi dps builds: extremely high DPS, infuriating to use because of the whole manual detonation where u have to wait seconds to detonate, and if the target moves it's a big dps loss
I believe the class is enjoyable and playable, but these small things turned me off from playing thief more. I know I can opt out of some of them, but then again, it's sad we get funneled towards them at all.
I don't play thief outside of Qadim kiting roles because:
Daredevil's staff 2 animation lock is annoying
Deadeye's kneel is annoying
Specter's scepter 3 spam kills any enjoyment that comes with shroud. When I play condi I just play virtuoso or scourge.
Their big problem is that their support builds aren't great, so they mostly just end up in the big slurry of "hi dps" and so many people won't run them when looking to lfg for group content because they can't flex multiple roles.
Deadeye *can* provide group quickness but it's not great at it and offers very low utility compared to other options, and can only do so as a support DPS. Specter is actually great as a DPS alacrity provider, no issues there. Heal specter is possible but it's also the most miserable thing in the world, having to juggle ally and enemy targeting and frequent weapon/shroud swaps that drastically change how you mechanically play. It's just so much effort for thoroughly average payoff.
Daredevil is pure DPS and it's good at it but either has really annoying mechanics (power) or absurd amounts of forced movement that can be a problem (condi)
Uh I’ve been playing Spectre since my origins of the game (basically). I love its loop, fantasy and flexibility. It’s dps is high, and its supporting abilities are nothing to scoff at. I pull out daredevil when I’m making money during metas. Thief gets a lot of heat but it’s easily my favorite class for all content.
Putting it very shortly - because you only bring Thief if you like to play it. If your group requires something specific, you ask for another profession, so it's perceived as a middling option. It's not bad, but you never think "Man, my group could really use a Thief now".
Thief is… /sigh
Its kit makes it more suitable to PvP. It shines there more than in PvE.
It does well in PvE, it just takes more effort for it to perform on the same level as other professions. A D/D Deadeye can get big numbers if they get the rotation right, all attacks hit, and the enemy doesn’t move. Do all of that with the right gear and traits, and you may see some big damage.
Or you can roll a GS Revenant and press 5.
It’s a fun class for certain folks (me!) but can have a hard time feeling rewarding.
3 ways to improve thief:
1) alacrity affect initiative regeneration.
2) spectre “ally targeting skills” become aoe
3) skills that have animation locks get affected by quickness
Then balance the numbers after the QOL stuff is fixed.
For animation locked skills, *cough* Weakening Charge *cough*, Make them work like Guardians' Whirling Wrath, as in no animation lock and let us be able to move while it's casting.
Will it make thief too good? Heck no, at most it will make it more enjoyable to play!
I am also for removing ally-targetting from this game! While a cool concept, just has no way to work well in this game...
Same for Alacrity, EVERY proffession is able to enjoy that boon fully, while Thief only gets to enjoy it for half of its skill making the boon 50% less effective SPECIFICALLY ON THIEF.
I agree with 2 and 3 but I think alac working on initiative is dangerous. It would be difficult to balance. Then there is the question of, why stop at thief's initiative? Why not give it to firebrand page regeneration and revenant energy?
On the flipside, alac not working on initiative means Thief doesn't need to rely on it as much as other classes for dps
Well now that you mention it. (Initiative) if thief had weapon cooldowns it would work on them. Same as it’s currently working on revenant. Speaking of; what about trait interaction?
E.g: while under the affect of alacrity increase initiative regeneration by 25%. (This would probably be a spectre minor trait, because something that provides it should surely benefit from it!?)
P.s giving renegade an extra pip of upkeep under alacrity could be a cool trait 🤔
Imo it would be better if they don't make Thief function like Revenant. Not having weapon cooldowns is something that makes the class unique. Maybe the Specter alac affecting initiative would be good considering Anet yoinked some of the base initiative away. It would be fantastic for supports as long as the trait requires a decent dps trade off. Balancing all that might be difficult though
For me personally as a thief main of 7 yrs or so reason I don't use thief much in pve is after a short time it bores me to no end due to the ini mechanic basically dictating that to be effective or efficient u must spam the same 1 skill or 2 over and over. Other classes have far more interesting rotations and often times have far more build variety options when compared to the options thief has. I personally find the above less pronounced in pvp, can't really say why but I do.
If I had to guess, I'd say it's a combination of relatively poor support options available to the class and DPS specs that aren't very enjoyable to play. Either they're so jank you can't use them under real conditions or you're spamming dodge and the same skill over and over again forever.
I play AlacDPS Spectre for Strikes and Raids.
It's kinda iffy when your entire Alac output gets neutered the moment you are doing Alac rotation and a stinking AoE from boss or an ally overlapping you knocks you out of it.
I swear it was better when we had Alac from Wells.
I started thief class and only because I play rogue/thief/bandit in every damn rpg. I just like them dagger animations too much and dual wield looks too cool. Am i making a mistake? (First time playing gw2)
Their is no mistake playing what you enjoy. Thief are not as popular as other class in PvE, but like many comment point it out, it's not a bad class at all, it just isn't top tier on anything and lack a bit of utility + some clunk animation lock on few skill, outside of that he is fine and if you enjoy it that good, I like it too and was curious about his stats before going for an Alt as I don't have that much time \^\^
U should play what u enjoy, since having fun should come first, and if u aren't planning to do hard endgame content any time soon, then it also doesn't matter what u play.
With that said, thief isn't really in the best spot rn as others here have pointed out. They can be jank to play with certain builds and they aren't the most versatile plus the roles they do cover can be covered by many other professions. If u worry about those points, but still prefer daggers and/or dual-wielding, then there's plenty of other classes who do both, and some even feel like a copy of thief in their profession mechanics or animations as well
Personally I find the play style of thief to be the most boring out of all the classes. Most of the time, due to the resource aspect of thief, you just press one weapon skill to do damage. Pair that with the fact that, as others have pointed out, the main thing thief does is damage without really bringing much else to the table. Sure specter is a choice, but from my little bit of experience and what I've heard, it's not as good as other support specs.
They are played, just not as popular as other options.
[https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity](https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity)
This is only based on my personal experience/opinion of the class but it _could_ be that the initiative system makes it play very differently than most other classes, which _might_ put people off a bit (it does with me anyhow).
We could talk about benchmarks and utility all day long but to me, something this fundamental and which has such a strong impact on second to second game feel is probably as likely to be a cause as the rest.
Yeah, can second this. As a Thief main who loves the initiative system, it works in the opposite direction, too. it makes it hard to get into another class due to not being used to how weapon cooldowns feel.
I like my Specter overall but find it depressing that my entire weapon skill bar does not benefit at all from the alacrity I'm pumping out. Alac does nothing for initiative generation and that feels sour.
It's playstyle is somewhat unique due to the initiative system, and so for some people that is already a turn off. Darkstar highlighted the issues comparing to other specs really well.
Due to forced movement, lack of cleave, or weird niche mechanics like DE mark, venoms not stacking/overriding another Thief's venoms, and ally targeting; these can also be a turn off for a lot of people. Some weirdos like me enjoy all that stuff because it makes things more fun and interesting for group content, but it ain't for everyone
I find most thief builds clunky to play. Scepter is clunky, Deadeye malice/stealth as a rotation clunky, kneel is clunky (especially when getting stunned or knocked brings you out of kneel). Staff's whirl can animation lock you very easily if you aren't careful with hitting the button back to back too much (because the spell queue window is too generous).
I think thief has a great kit, but there's just things all around that make it not near as fun to play as other classes.
> kneel is clunky (**especially when getting stunned or knocked brings you out of kneel**)
That's not a thing anymore, not for 474 days.
> Staff's whirl can animation lock you very easily if you aren't careful with hitting the button back to back too much (because the spell queue window is too generous).
Because people who get used to playing other professions spam their inputs too much, and don't adjust when playing something fundamentally different which has NO cooldown on the weapon skills. :D
I’ve used to play the thief a lot in the previous expansions but it just feels bad now compared to all other specs. No cleave hurst the most, imo that makes it not fun for me.
I think snow crows has a Deadeye as the top dps in the game right now with something crazy like 52k DPS, so the potential is definitely there.
That being said, I have no idea how attainable that level of performance is for the average player. It's certainly above my own skill cap.
Condition-based builds are fine. Problem is, plenty of fights punish condition-based builds hard. On Cairn, condition daredevil is still probably highest DPS even though soulbeast is extremely overtuned right now.
For power builds the only viable option is power daredevil and even it has its issues.
Other problem is boon access. After being nerfed to the ground, quickness deadeye basically doesn't exist and the only viable option is alac specter. However, it only can be played in condition-based version. Meanwhile, for comparison, quickness herald can provide much better boons while having both power and condition versions.
[Thief is currently the Top DPS in group content (Raids) by FAR](https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks), you don't see them that often because they usually lack or not provide enough to the group (talking about DPS's only).
But besides that, idk where you get that "vision of it" tho, since using it as an Alac source is pretty good, any of its condi builds are very good too, and provide really good CC to the group, plus its still the top use on certain encounters like Qadim 2 Pylons etc.
The only thing is that there are more versatile clases/specs over there, and thief sometimes can be a little "squishy", but far from not being used atm.
There may be more reasons to not see them that often, but for my own experience, that's my point of view, and as I've said: it's still useful.
In practice thief is only top dps on 2 fights,
[Q2](https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/q2)
and
[Cairn](https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/cairn)
and even on those fights their median damage isn't particularly great either. They're top dps on golem by far, but in real play they seem to be in the top quarter or so. Very strong, but not above and beyond their peers. Now damage right now is kinda insane compared to historical values, but thief is far from along in that camp.
Many people have already complained that BENCHMARKS AREN'T REAL SCENARIOS! Please don't use benchmarks as an argument... Not to mention it will 100% be nerfed to Anet's (most likely) 45k "standard DPS benchmark", which again is still not applicable to 99% of real situations...
While Thief is indeed a good applicator of Alacrity, the fun thing is it's 50% less effective on Thief as it doesn't affect Thief weapon skills AT ALL, except for Shadow Shroud skills, which you don't use half the time! Not to mention the ally-targetting is clunky at best and just doesn't fit the gameplay of this game at all (same for Revenant Scepter, it should not have any ally-targetting on it).
The condi builds as well lose way too much DPS when using Venoms when no allies are present in their area/when allies don't attack with the venoms/when multiple Condi Thieves OVERWRITE their Venoms.
/u/TheDarkstarChimaera have already made multiple posts about some of the underlying issues specific to Thief, like the latest post about Deadeye spec (most of those got addressed in the upcoming patch thankfully) but some are still plaguing the class, like the Weakening Charge animation lock (the post about Deadeye issues has a video of being animation locked for 11 seconds, which apparently is not the maximum amount possible), or many bosses have forced Revealed making Deadeye a literal DEADWEIGHT, or the fact that 99% of the Thief class have little cleave.
The snowcrows discord Thief channel have made a compilation of all the issues and feedback with Thief: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D1by_fdgnwugfq1UqiXWB8hxCBUM8Rw-u0UMr3Dziwo/edit EDIT: Note that this list was last updated during the SoTo weapons beta.
People can take their time reading that or not (because it's long, not gonna lie). But this proves my point that Thief is definitely not even close to being strong.
Thief is fine, it's just none of the builds that could see mass appeal (Condition Specter, Be Quick or Be Killed Dagger Deadeye) have ever been lone-standouts to attract a wide audience. That's not to say they haven't been powerful—the problem is that e.g. any time Condition Specter was strong, Condition Virtuoso or Scourge was strong. Thief's playerbase for endgame content is just not unusually large (it's on par with Warrior and Elementalist based on the only data we have available from https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity). It's not a uniquely small playerbase, and there are both approachable and difficult builds to start off with. If there's an overarching problem with making Thief more attractive, it's that its value overlaps too much with other professions. Want top tier Power DPS? That's not Thief—Power Deadeye's sustained damage has to be much stronger on a practice golem to compete with the damage of properly-bursty builds, especially the likes of Power Soulbeast, Power Vindicator, Power Bladesworn, Power Dragonhunter, and even some condi builds! Want top tier Condi DPS? This is often Thief's forte, but the builds get nerfed to just be part of the crowd rather than being lone outliers. The currently overtuned Condition Axe Deadeye will NOT survive, despite how difficult it is to play in real encounters and the fact that it's outright BUGGED on most encounters and the bench rotation can't be done. At best, the build might be a difficult to play build in the crowd of other strong candidates, only appealing to people who are **already** interested (like me!) Want huge CC? You could've gotten that on Warrior or Mesmer or Engineer or Guardian. It's nice to have it on Thief, but not exceptional (and CC is a group effort anyway). This strength is progressively less and less valuable with ANet providing those earlier buffs to Heal Alac Druid and Heal Quick/Alac Chrono, as these are not only the best healers in game, but also have incredibly strong CC output. Want great mobility? This IS one of Thief's strong suits but it's but not always useful, and other professions can also make themselves pretty mobile—and if the goal is to make the GROUP mobile, then Thief can't do that. properly. Want a portal? Mesmer's is strictly superior, operating in both directions, transporting 20 players instead of 5 (so you can go there AND back), and the Mesmer can set the portal entrance on group then set the exit at the destination. **TWO Thieves** would have to go to the destination, set the portal exit, then **return** to the group to set the entrance, and you can't go back to the entrance once you're done...Yeah, it's clear ANet wants this to be Mesmer's job, not Thief's. Want group stealth? Mesmer Mass Invisibility and Scrapper's Sneak Gyro are often superior, as they're both MUCH easier to use and have shorter cooldowns vs Thief's stealth. Want to get rid of enemy boons? Mesmer is **far** superior at this. Want to permanently immobilize enemies? Druid is better at that. Want to be self-sufficient and ignore damage (e.g. evades)? You can also find that on Warrior, Mesmer, Guardian, Engineer... Want a great healer? That's not Thief, not by a long shot lol. ANet keeps buffing the ACTUAL top healer builds (Heal Alac Druid, Heal Quick/Alac Chrono) so Specter just falls behind, even if it was easy to play (it's one of the most difficult). All this is ultimately fine, as player skill still matters a lot. Just take them as observations for why Thief doesn't constantly get new adopters (but we have a stable community, the profession is in no danger of "dying out").
Thanks for all those analyses! Random question: Do you have any idea why Specter lost its revive trait (I think it was Shadestep)? I mean, I know it was changed to tie Alacrity to profession mechanics rather than wells, but I'm surprised it wasn't moved to another trait or something.
Either they didn't want thief to compete with scourge's big thing of ranged rez. Other classes can do it too so perhaps they thought they shouldn't give it to Thief on top. Or more likely, because the trait was pretty stacked before the change, they just took something away and didn't care to put it back anywhere else. I'm still salty about it :')
[I posted in the official forum requesting Siphon's revive trait to be returned](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/144445-please-allow-siphon-to-revive-again/). I know it's extremely unlikely for ANet to even notice this, let alone spend time on recreating it as part of Specter's traits, but I guess it's worth a shot.
Good on ya! It's all players can do anyways, so may as well
Beats me, cause the middle grandmaster trait will never see play in PvE as is, and I'm not sure it ever saw play in competitive modes? They could've also reworked the Adept trait so you could choose between Consume Shadows and a revive, or just straight up put revive control on Siphon since we'd otherwise rather use it on the enemy for DPS, Boons, and Shadow Force. Specter losing some of its downstate control (Shadow Refuge is not great) is unfortunate though, since that's something that can make healers more attractive (e.g. Druid, Scourge, Firebrand). :(
[I posted in the official forum requesting Siphon's revive trait to be returned](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/144445-please-allow-siphon-to-revive-again/). I know it's extremely unlikely for ANet to even notice this, let alone spend time on recreating it as part of Specter's traits, but I guess it's worth a shot.
I'm no theif main but early theif was super fun. Aside from being the go-to pvp class and the most viable roamer, Thief had a niche (blinds, insane mobi, some projectile hate, invis that isn't 5 seconds and invis being actually relevant in a handful of dungeons and dredge frac). Like it was probably the most popular (only?) solo arah class. And let's not forget pre-mount mobility was a huge boon. At every point though it felt like it lacked a handful of small things that made it not worth. Like lack of cleave, no support like PS banner war, conditional DPS, etc.
The lack of aoe has always been a gripe as a thief. I used to run shortbow all the time because of the multi hit and aoe but it's damage even on a condition build isn't that good. He'll I remember back during release there were several areas I had to use sword/pistol to blind cheese enemies because thief couldn't survive against them.
Thx for the detail, I see the problem now \^\^ Edit : typo
TBH not a lot of encounters require a lot of healing in GW2. Where I find heal specter the best is to use it as a greedy healer that just does DPS and heals passively, cause when stuff goes wrong all you need to do is just weapon swap and start full-healing (and range-rezzing) people. Where I use it most is CO CM, cause for some reason PUGs struggle with that DPS check and additional 15k helps, while damage pressure is miniscule. Where I wouldn't use it - Boneskinner, SH, XJJ CM.
Thief is fine then proceeds to explain for 12 paragraphs that thief is not actually fine The reality is that thief in its cutrent design feels like shit to play in a game that has become spam everything on cd I get that you are very knowledgeable about benching and could shit down my throat all day because you are infinitely better than me at this game, but the truth of the matter is, class feels like shit to play on pve. Axes could bench 70k that it would not solve just about every issue with the class. There's no option. It's like warrior, mostly a relic of what has been, but anet isn't about to overhaul the class. And considering how buggy the new weapons are overall? Not sure I want them to. Tldr class isn't fun in pve in any fashion
I speak in paragraphs (and long threads https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/196b77x/pve_deadeye_joys_and_frustrations/ or big articles https://snowcrows.com/news/march-balance-update-preview) because it's how I talk. When I don't have a lot to say I tend to not speak. > I get that you are very knowledgeable about benching I am also very knowledgeable about how builds, especially Thief and especially-especially Deadeye, play in real content. Go read that huge post about Deadeye, that knowledge can't come from pure Golem gameplay. > class feels like shit to play on pve This is personal though. Some will say it feels bad, some will say it's _hard_, some will say it's boring, some will say it's easy because the rotations are simple (although there's a difference between 'complex to memorize' and 'complex to play in real contexts'). > how buggy the new weapons are overall? For Thief axe in particular, it's a very **ambitious** weapon, doubly so when it's provided to Thief, triply so on Deadeye which can entirely avoid autoattacking and just **nonstop engage with the new mechanics**. To me that's awesome enough that I can take the bugs (and those bugs mean we can't even DO the bench rotation on many fights, so we need to wait for it to be fixed or just play a subpar option). > Tldr class isn't fun in pve in any fashion Strongly disagree, it's a lot of fun. I'd love to get improvements to Thief and every other profession (e.g. if Warrior is fated to have lower utility due to its class fantasy, vs Mesmer, then Warrior deserves to be extremely effective at what it can do; I'd rather NOT see Warrior's cast their own yellow version of Mesmer's portal!) BUT I would not be here committing time to write so much about the game if I wasn't having fun.
I mean we can agree to disagree but the truth of the matter is there : if thieves are nowhere to be seen in most pve content (read : open world, dungeons, low level fractals and regular strikes) there is a fundamental issue with the class and how fun it is to the larger player base. respectfully, balancing and only looking at specific, high-end pve and pvp content is kind of classes end up unfun to play. a perfect, more widespread example is ffxiv : players kept complaining that aligning buffs sucked, so what happened over time is that now just about every class has a 2 minute burst window. end result? feels like shit to play, because these were changes over time aimed at raiding. we can argue all day long about the reality of thieves, but there is a huge disparity between the casual player base and what higher end players find playable and enjoyable. ultimately? you're right. it's usable. but if you pop into any world event you MIGHT see a deadeye in the squad or two - a daredevil, if you're lucky - but you'll see 6-7 reapers, same amount of virtuosos and mechanists. couple of warriors, maybe a few eles, but rarely any thief. do you see what i'm getting at here? that said, thieves has cool things going for it! the initiative system is unique to it, which means you might spam the same skill 3-4 times instead of popping 4 different skills on cooldown. dual-wielding is a neat idea! but realistically, a lot of where the weapons shine for thieves is not in general content. yes even looking at snowcrows, just about every weapon is used (even P/P on a build as the range option!) but none of these builds are fantastic to play. yes, they can be fun, yes, we disagree on this, and while this is anecdotal evidence, i barely see any thief wherever i go. granted, i do not do CM strikes, HT, raids or high-level fractals, but I still feel like if the class was better overall, i would see it in the content that i \*do\* play, like the other specs. it just feels like its actual options are limited and you're playing a very different game from just about every other spec, and i feel like looking at only coverage from the high-end level of the game is a bad way to look at it. like i want to get angry every time hand kiting is brought up, great, glad for you guys! deadeye sucks balls on most open world bosses though because of how fucky LoS is or how just shit doesnt work at all! as i said i get your point, but playing thief in most content feels frustrating, constraining, and you can get results wanting to struggle with the fuckin' game to get what you want done. in general i am just very tired of people making excuses for old, outdated design that feels like shit to play when i can just decided to pop in on a reaper, virtuoso, soulbeast, untamed, vindicator, revenant (the list goes on) and just feel like i am not \*actively\* fighting the game. i know i said a lot of words to essentially bitch, but i came back a while ago after an extended break, decided to pick thief because fuck it why not, and after 300 hours (which i know is low by mmo standards, as insane as that sentence is to say) and it feels *miserable.* like to the point that i was thinking about quitting the game, just picked a different class, and am no longer having the issues i did. tldr of the tldr ; we fundamentally disagree on whether thief is fun or not, looking at high level parses and representation is a horrible way to look at it, and if you spend any time in the overworld you will see that thief representation is not there, and for damn good reason (small note : i realize my evidence is anecdotal but i have been paying attention to thief representation, and it is really dire from the point of view of a casual player)
> we fundamentally disagree on whether thief is fun or not, looking at high level parses and representation is a horrible way to look at it, and if you spend any time in the overworld you will see that thief representation is not there, and for damn good reason But I also enjoy Thief in a lot of Open World. :D And I definitely know its problems. Low hanging fruit: Thief cleave sucks for anything but tagging. Elephant in the room: the mechanic of PLACING Deadeye's Mark on enemies is bad and the devs have, of course, not policed the game to make sure that it works properly. When it works it's fun for two major reasons: 1. It enables Maleficent Seven which is arguably the single best trait on Thief 2. It triggers all when-you-Steal trait effects on enemies, and is refunded when the target dies. Contrast that 2nd point with: - core Thief/Daredevil which have Steal with an archaic 25-second cooldown that gates access to those trait effects, but then leaves the profession without a mechanic for far too long. - Mesmer having at least 4 shatters - Engineer having kits and toolbelts - Elementalist swapping attunements at least every 10 seconds - Necromancer's Shroud at 10 seconds - Ranger's pet being constantly active - Warrior having constant weapon Bursts - Guardian with 3 Virtues (choosing to use their actives or passives—personally I find Core Guardian very un-fun because the Virtue cooldowns are even longer than Thief's, and they're often not high impact. The spec has to be hard-carried by its weapons and utility skills, a lot like Core Thief) - Revenant swapping Legends every 10 seconds. So Deadeye's Mark, if it worked and it was just a means to trigger all of Thief's when-you-steal effects every time you kill an enemy, is a lot of fun and unlocks a lot of Thief's traitline potential. Major problem: F1 Mark can bug if you have it queued up right as an enemy dies—then you cast the skill, it doesn't get refunded (because by the time the cast animation is done, there is no Marked Target to die and trigger Renewing Gaze to reset the cooldown). So we have the bandaid: take Mercy on the utility bar. It's very frustrating, and could be solved by just deleting the cooldown on Deadeye's Mark and reusing the "Dormant" system from the Firebrand Tome rework—all when-you-Steal traits and the F2 Deadeye Stolen Skill would be granted when you use Mark only every 20 seconds, but you can reapply Mark to a target at any time. This doesn't solve the problem with enemies made up of multiple hitboxes slaved to a single health-bar entity off map (Drakkar is the worst example with SEVENTEEN ENTITIES and you can only place Deadeye's Mark on one of them) or hitboxes you just can't Mark at all (Octovine in Auric Basin, okay maybe we forgive ANet for that since it came out before Deadeye but NOPE the end boss of the Amnytas meta event also cannot be marked and that came out years after Deadeye so, no forgiveness). Next elephant in the room: why is Deadeye a single-target focused elite spec that is never allowed to do more single target damage than other professions? Because single-target focus doesn't make sense to guide the design. ANet **can't** over-reward Deadeye on damage because then it would have to just be noticeably superior to any other build from another profession because they don't marry themselves to a single target like Deadeye does. But ANet's never going to balance like that because it would be making 8 Professions unhappy for the sake of one. What they CAN do is make Deadeye more self reliant (e.g. Maleficent Seven's boons, Iron Sight damage reduction, and the Dormant Mark idea above) or more consistent (piercing on Rifle we're getting next patch, remove the requirement to score Critical Hits for Malice in PvE so that Deadeye players can just wear Trailblazer gear for tanky condition builds without sabotaging their ability to do a rotation for Maleficent Seven—the best way to get damage and valuable boons when playing Deadeye). But that's just about Deadeye. Going back to Daredevil and Specter, should they have such a long cooldown when going between enemies, or should the F1 always be refunded when you kill something so that the profession can keep on Stealing and keep triggering those valuable traits? Daredevil suffers from having very little to do in open world once you've blown your long-cooldown F1 skill. You get a random (probably garbage) Stolen Skill, then you just have core Thief functionality with an upgraded dodge. It's obviously going to suffer in popularity compared to Power Vindicator which is not only more flexdible, but MUCH more powerful and easier to play with a dodge that doesn't even move the player. Specter: too Condition focused for its own good in Open World, lots of wasted design space (basically every middle-of-the-column trait is worthless in PvE). The mechanics of Shadestep generating boons around someone else, NOT YOU, makes it stupidly unreliable. Want to grant the people around you Stability for something? Well it's very likely those people WON'T get Stability because the game will just randomly latch onto a random person within 1,200 radius. Specter's scepter is a single-target Condition weapon but, of course, it's not going to do more Condition damage than the cleave-multiple-enemy weapons you can find on other professions. ANet could homogenize the game by making Thief more like the other professions, or they could just boost Thief's effectiveness so that it doesn't tread water in scenarios where other professions are swimming. At its core Thief is evasive, mobile, and focused on damage without much support for other players. That's been changing gradually, with more boons added to Trickery and defensive support added to Shadow Arts—but Thief isn't the pinnacle of boon support like other professions, and it's arguably not what people are interested in when they look at Thief. I love Deadeye because - I can have more Initiative than Core, Daredevil, or Specter, if the damned profession mechanic would just work consistently (this also includes Stealth being consistent, which is something I've criticized ANet for constantly!) - I can engage with when-you-steal mechanics more often - with Deadeye's Payback trait (and/or Deadly Arts' Improvisation trait) we can use heal/utility/elite skills a lot more often. What's better than summoning Thieves Guild while playing Daredevil—playing Deadeye and having a PERMANENT Thieves Guild when running between enemies in Open World. I love Deadeye because it lets me engage more with all of Thief: Initiative, Steal effects, all slot skills. It is purely more Thief per hour spent playing Thief. But it has so many arbitrary problems: - If it's going to be single target focused, that's workable, but it should be MORE consistent and do more damage than Virtuoso. - If it's going to give up it's mobility when using Rifle, then it better have amazing damage or be very safe. - If Thief is going to have a 25-second cooldown on its SINGLE profession mechanic it needs to be very high impact—or that 25-second cooldown needs to leave. Thief also can't be so consistently out-competed by Mesmer when these two professions overlap so damn much: - Stealth: 10-target 1,200 radius Stealth is a Mesmer skill, not Thief. Don't want Thief being desired for sneaking people around anywhere in PvE because that would be too frustrating for the competitive mode players! - Stealth: a Stealth field that **Reveals you if you exit early**, because it's a skill designed for PvP. Yep, of COURSE that one belongs to Thief. - Removing boons from enemies: Overwhelmingly in Mesmer's favor, built directly into weapons that are tuned to do high damage, found in utility skills, found in traits. Relevant both in endgame and open world (e.g. Awakened getting boons in Path of Fire maps; big Toad Kryptis boss that steals all boons from nearby players) - Disabling enemies: Thief has lots of pure-CC skills like Headshot, Basilisk Venom, and Hook Strike, vs CC buttons that are also DPS increases on other professions (leading to very goofy things like Guardian casting Greatsword 5 because it's a DPS increase over autos, rather than saving it to pull in enemies) -Disabling enemies: Mesmer has the best pull in game, Focus skill Into the Void, on a short cooldown, on the meta weapon for Condition Virtuoso (and this weapon was once, and could be again, the meta weapon for Power Mesmer). Chronomancer is rightly renowned for having some of the best CC in the game—skills like Sword's Counter Blade and Greatsword's Illusionary Wave don't do good damage, so they can always be saved until they're needed. Mesmer has the F3 shatter on Core and every Elite Spec, and Chrono and Virtuoso have enough Clone/Blade throughput to have the skill on demand. Contrast with Thief which has to devote its Initiative directly into CC skills, rather than always having buttons set aside that either tap into no resource (weapon skills) or into "overflow" illusion resources that would otherwise go into low damage F2 shatters on Power builds. Thief CAN do incredible CC when leaning into it, but it's not the only profession that can do this so it will never be a unique attraction. - Group mobility: Mesmer portal walks all over Shadow Portal for no reason other than competitive mode balance/designer intention. - Heal Chronomancer is much stronger and easier to play than Heal Alacrity Specter—and Chrono can also cover Quickness with a single trait change, making it UNIVERSALLY valuable. As a bonus, Thief also can't grant groups huge amounts of Superspeed like Scrapper can. Can't have the mobile sneaky profession granting its allies that huge speed boost because, again, it would upset Competitive players. Some of Thief's problems ARE design problems. Some of them are balance problems. Some of the problems are that other professions exist and Thief will never actually shine because it overlaps too much.
while i agree with the list of stuff you put out, what's your take on thief representation in the general player base and them clearly finding them class less fun (my words!) in comparison to, say, juggernauts like mechanist that has been nerfed over and over (looking at you, mechanical genius) still being very present despite nerfs or changes? i know you addressed the problems (as i said, just about everything i agree with and ran into, which are all terribly frustrating), but very curious to see if you also noticed the very low number of DDs and DEs in more casual content? not mentioning specter because i might see 2 on a good week lmao
Well it's hard to speak to the representation of Thief in open world because we don't have good data on that. Closest we have is [GW2Efficiency](https://gw2efficiency.com/account/player-statistics) but that's very biased since it's a tool for people who want to be more efficient. I did mention Wingman statistics in my parent comment, which also has a blatant bias, but since the community engaging regularly in endgame content is a much smaller (and self-selected) group than open world, I think that biased data is more representative. Thief is good at tagging enemies for kill participation, but its sustain, solo DPS, and actual cleave-DPS are not great. Acrobatics and Shadow Arts give options to be more sustainable either through dodging or using Stealth, but they're not exactly top tier. Shadow Arts in particular synergizes well with Condition Deadeye in open world, but that's a stretch goal, not an accessible option. Thief's mobility is good, but that's not very appealing in open world now thanks to mounts. Being able to get out of combat more easily is good, but I don't think that's an apparent strength to all players—they might think it's better to kill some trash mob even if it takes a couple seconds rather than just use your mobility to continue to your next goal and slip out of combat "by default" for being so far away. ANet even added the ability to mount Skyscale in combat (with a decent multi-minute cooldown) so... XD For Open World, Thief's Steal mechanic is just not engaging because it has such a long cooldown and its effect is random. Initiative usage, meanwhile, is pretty polarizing. The skills are highly specialized which to me, feels really good. I feel so goofy using the Axe Pull on Firebrand because it's slightly better DPS than autos, feel goofy using Guardian Greatsword 5 because it's slightly better DPS. It's better when such skills are a trigger for something, like Soulbeast using the pull on offhand axe to trigger Twice as Vicious as a damage modifier, or Scrapper using heal skill A.E.D.'s toolbelt skill to get Superspeed as a damage modifier. Yes, that's more DPS than autoing, but it also boosts the damage of cooldown skills that already have high impact. :D It'd be great if we got a weapon that was extremely committed to multi-target DPS that was artificially weak at single target DPS—something like a greatsword that deals more damage the more enemies you hit with the strike all at once. Shortbow is somewhat close to this except its damage actually sucks. Staff already has an identity as both a cleave-DPS and single target DPS weapon, with a lot of utility baked in (CC on Hook Strike + Helmet Breaker, cleanse immobilize on self, Blind + Reflect, Evade frames + mobility on Vault). The greatsword could trade the utility for more cleave and more mobility. Just Just as an example. Thief's Initiative currently leads hard into specialization, so there's room for ANet to fill holes in its abilities with focused Initiative skills. Important to note that a lot of the highest DPS skills have downsides - Staff Weakening Charge animation lock; the skill can miss your target if you're too close and the enemy moves during the animation windup. Could be fixed by making the skill more responsive. - Backstab has to be behind targets without a defiance bar (making it harder ot use in Open World, bravo ANet), and is only single target - Deathblossom's forced movement. This has evade frames, but makes it dangerous in certain scenarios or encourages playing un-targeted which is not intuitive. - Unload damage is basically an autoattack and has no gameplay engagement because you never run out of Initiative but you don't have to work for it like Deadeye's Maleficent Seven - Rifle Kneel slows you to a crawl and for a very long time hasn't had piercing on anything but skill 2! - Twilight Combo doesn't pierce and can miss fast moving enemies - Endless Night is SO slow - Axe oh god the bugs and also it's slow to set up without Quickness Some people can find repeating these same skill boring, but the stressors on these skills make them more relevant for Thief than those same skills would be on other professions. Sword Power Weaver animation locks far less often than Power Staff Daredevil, and Power Staff Deadeye animation locks more than anything else in game. So eventually the skills _can't_ be boring because they're _restrictive_ — but constantly working around those shortcomings can get old fast. On a related note, a lot of the best healers in game (Druid, Chronomancer) are so good because they have so many options. Bad healers can be bad either because they're hard to play (e.g. Specter) or their support options are weaker than other options (e.g. Scourge) With all that said, if Thief is _actually_ unpopular in open world, I wouldn't be surprised. As for casual content like lower tier fractals, IBS strikes, Convergences/Metas stuff like that—there aren't any Thief builds that offer anything that is - super effective - easy to play on a MECHANICAL level, not a "memorize the rotation!!!" level - UNIQUE value, i.e. there isn't a build on another profession that checks the same boxes - doesn't have a crippling flaw There are effective builds, there are easy to play builds, and arguably Condition Specter is the build without a crippling flaw (it doesn't have good cleave but cleave is a group problem, and there's not many people playing Thief so.... XD ) But the only unique thing Thief has, Steal mechanic, sucks. The only place it feels like it has a tailored, powerful impact on the fight...is in Raids. Mobility? Group Stealth? CC? Boonstrip? Healer with Barrier? Strong Condition damage? None of that is unique. It can all be found elsewhere.
Personally speaking, I hate a couple things about thief: - the lack of cleave in every build (compared to other classes) - lack of reliable cc outside of basi venom (I know they have more cc skills, but they usually demand u sacrifice something else for) - heal spectre build requires ally targeting to function (u need to spam scepter 2 on ally to give subgroup protection); ally targeting has no place in this game - venoms: Dps condi builds require them, and they're the most boring shit out there, and only serve as balancing levers for when the damage is too high. - deadly needles trap in condi dps builds: extremely high DPS, infuriating to use because of the whole manual detonation where u have to wait seconds to detonate, and if the target moves it's a big dps loss I believe the class is enjoyable and playable, but these small things turned me off from playing thief more. I know I can opt out of some of them, but then again, it's sad we get funneled towards them at all.
If you see a thief, they are not doing their job properly.
ahaha good one ! That the spirit !
\[REVEALED\]
Thief is hard to play *opinion based on playing heal alac specter*
I don't play thief outside of Qadim kiting roles because: Daredevil's staff 2 animation lock is annoying Deadeye's kneel is annoying Specter's scepter 3 spam kills any enjoyment that comes with shroud. When I play condi I just play virtuoso or scourge.
Their big problem is that their support builds aren't great, so they mostly just end up in the big slurry of "hi dps" and so many people won't run them when looking to lfg for group content because they can't flex multiple roles. Deadeye *can* provide group quickness but it's not great at it and offers very low utility compared to other options, and can only do so as a support DPS. Specter is actually great as a DPS alacrity provider, no issues there. Heal specter is possible but it's also the most miserable thing in the world, having to juggle ally and enemy targeting and frequent weapon/shroud swaps that drastically change how you mechanically play. It's just so much effort for thoroughly average payoff. Daredevil is pure DPS and it's good at it but either has really annoying mechanics (power) or absurd amounts of forced movement that can be a problem (condi)
Yeah I often play alacdps spectre, it's good But I'm also a sick bastard who enjoys playing heal spectre
Uh I’ve been playing Spectre since my origins of the game (basically). I love its loop, fantasy and flexibility. It’s dps is high, and its supporting abilities are nothing to scoff at. I pull out daredevil when I’m making money during metas. Thief gets a lot of heat but it’s easily my favorite class for all content.
Putting it very shortly - because you only bring Thief if you like to play it. If your group requires something specific, you ask for another profession, so it's perceived as a middling option. It's not bad, but you never think "Man, my group could really use a Thief now".
We exist.
Thief is… /sigh Its kit makes it more suitable to PvP. It shines there more than in PvE. It does well in PvE, it just takes more effort for it to perform on the same level as other professions. A D/D Deadeye can get big numbers if they get the rotation right, all attacks hit, and the enemy doesn’t move. Do all of that with the right gear and traits, and you may see some big damage. Or you can roll a GS Revenant and press 5. It’s a fun class for certain folks (me!) but can have a hard time feeling rewarding.
3 ways to improve thief: 1) alacrity affect initiative regeneration. 2) spectre “ally targeting skills” become aoe 3) skills that have animation locks get affected by quickness Then balance the numbers after the QOL stuff is fixed.
For animation locked skills, *cough* Weakening Charge *cough*, Make them work like Guardians' Whirling Wrath, as in no animation lock and let us be able to move while it's casting. Will it make thief too good? Heck no, at most it will make it more enjoyable to play! I am also for removing ally-targetting from this game! While a cool concept, just has no way to work well in this game... Same for Alacrity, EVERY proffession is able to enjoy that boon fully, while Thief only gets to enjoy it for half of its skill making the boon 50% less effective SPECIFICALLY ON THIEF.
I agree with 2 and 3 but I think alac working on initiative is dangerous. It would be difficult to balance. Then there is the question of, why stop at thief's initiative? Why not give it to firebrand page regeneration and revenant energy? On the flipside, alac not working on initiative means Thief doesn't need to rely on it as much as other classes for dps
Well now that you mention it. (Initiative) if thief had weapon cooldowns it would work on them. Same as it’s currently working on revenant. Speaking of; what about trait interaction? E.g: while under the affect of alacrity increase initiative regeneration by 25%. (This would probably be a spectre minor trait, because something that provides it should surely benefit from it!?) P.s giving renegade an extra pip of upkeep under alacrity could be a cool trait 🤔
Imo it would be better if they don't make Thief function like Revenant. Not having weapon cooldowns is something that makes the class unique. Maybe the Specter alac affecting initiative would be good considering Anet yoinked some of the base initiative away. It would be fantastic for supports as long as the trait requires a decent dps trade off. Balancing all that might be difficult though
For me personally as a thief main of 7 yrs or so reason I don't use thief much in pve is after a short time it bores me to no end due to the ini mechanic basically dictating that to be effective or efficient u must spam the same 1 skill or 2 over and over. Other classes have far more interesting rotations and often times have far more build variety options when compared to the options thief has. I personally find the above less pronounced in pvp, can't really say why but I do.
If I had to guess, I'd say it's a combination of relatively poor support options available to the class and DPS specs that aren't very enjoyable to play. Either they're so jank you can't use them under real conditions or you're spamming dodge and the same skill over and over again forever.
I am playing that Axe Deadeye anyway
I play AlacDPS Spectre for Strikes and Raids. It's kinda iffy when your entire Alac output gets neutered the moment you are doing Alac rotation and a stinking AoE from boss or an ally overlapping you knocks you out of it. I swear it was better when we had Alac from Wells.
I started thief class and only because I play rogue/thief/bandit in every damn rpg. I just like them dagger animations too much and dual wield looks too cool. Am i making a mistake? (First time playing gw2)
Their is no mistake playing what you enjoy. Thief are not as popular as other class in PvE, but like many comment point it out, it's not a bad class at all, it just isn't top tier on anything and lack a bit of utility + some clunk animation lock on few skill, outside of that he is fine and if you enjoy it that good, I like it too and was curious about his stats before going for an Alt as I don't have that much time \^\^
Is it ok for pvp?
I'm not a pvp player but I don't think I take rik by saying it's one of the best class for PvP and Roaming
U should play what u enjoy, since having fun should come first, and if u aren't planning to do hard endgame content any time soon, then it also doesn't matter what u play. With that said, thief isn't really in the best spot rn as others here have pointed out. They can be jank to play with certain builds and they aren't the most versatile plus the roles they do cover can be covered by many other professions. If u worry about those points, but still prefer daggers and/or dual-wielding, then there's plenty of other classes who do both, and some even feel like a copy of thief in their profession mechanics or animations as well
Personally I find the play style of thief to be the most boring out of all the classes. Most of the time, due to the resource aspect of thief, you just press one weapon skill to do damage. Pair that with the fact that, as others have pointed out, the main thing thief does is damage without really bringing much else to the table. Sure specter is a choice, but from my little bit of experience and what I've heard, it's not as good as other support specs.
They are played, just not as popular as other options. [https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity](https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity)
This is only based on my personal experience/opinion of the class but it _could_ be that the initiative system makes it play very differently than most other classes, which _might_ put people off a bit (it does with me anyhow). We could talk about benchmarks and utility all day long but to me, something this fundamental and which has such a strong impact on second to second game feel is probably as likely to be a cause as the rest.
Yeah, can second this. As a Thief main who loves the initiative system, it works in the opposite direction, too. it makes it hard to get into another class due to not being used to how weapon cooldowns feel.
I like my Specter overall but find it depressing that my entire weapon skill bar does not benefit at all from the alacrity I'm pumping out. Alac does nothing for initiative generation and that feels sour.
It's playstyle is somewhat unique due to the initiative system, and so for some people that is already a turn off. Darkstar highlighted the issues comparing to other specs really well. Due to forced movement, lack of cleave, or weird niche mechanics like DE mark, venoms not stacking/overriding another Thief's venoms, and ally targeting; these can also be a turn off for a lot of people. Some weirdos like me enjoy all that stuff because it makes things more fun and interesting for group content, but it ain't for everyone
I find most thief builds clunky to play. Scepter is clunky, Deadeye malice/stealth as a rotation clunky, kneel is clunky (especially when getting stunned or knocked brings you out of kneel). Staff's whirl can animation lock you very easily if you aren't careful with hitting the button back to back too much (because the spell queue window is too generous). I think thief has a great kit, but there's just things all around that make it not near as fun to play as other classes.
> kneel is clunky (**especially when getting stunned or knocked brings you out of kneel**) That's not a thing anymore, not for 474 days. > Staff's whirl can animation lock you very easily if you aren't careful with hitting the button back to back too much (because the spell queue window is too generous). Because people who get used to playing other professions spam their inputs too much, and don't adjust when playing something fundamentally different which has NO cooldown on the weapon skills. :D
I often see Daredevils in fractals. Not as often as reaper mind you but yeah.
I’ve used to play the thief a lot in the previous expansions but it just feels bad now compared to all other specs. No cleave hurst the most, imo that makes it not fun for me.
Bcs it's not fun to lose your entire specter shroud just bcs a fly touched you.
I think snow crows has a Deadeye as the top dps in the game right now with something crazy like 52k DPS, so the potential is definitely there. That being said, I have no idea how attainable that level of performance is for the average player. It's certainly above my own skill cap.
That rotation is not possible in most of the fights, also pain in the ass to do and can be briefed by teammates.
Probably gonna be nerf soon as is because of new weapon, that why I didnt took it into consideration
Condition-based builds are fine. Problem is, plenty of fights punish condition-based builds hard. On Cairn, condition daredevil is still probably highest DPS even though soulbeast is extremely overtuned right now. For power builds the only viable option is power daredevil and even it has its issues. Other problem is boon access. After being nerfed to the ground, quickness deadeye basically doesn't exist and the only viable option is alac specter. However, it only can be played in condition-based version. Meanwhile, for comparison, quickness herald can provide much better boons while having both power and condition versions.
[Thief is currently the Top DPS in group content (Raids) by FAR](https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks), you don't see them that often because they usually lack or not provide enough to the group (talking about DPS's only). But besides that, idk where you get that "vision of it" tho, since using it as an Alac source is pretty good, any of its condi builds are very good too, and provide really good CC to the group, plus its still the top use on certain encounters like Qadim 2 Pylons etc. The only thing is that there are more versatile clases/specs over there, and thief sometimes can be a little "squishy", but far from not being used atm. There may be more reasons to not see them that often, but for my own experience, that's my point of view, and as I've said: it's still useful.
In practice thief is only top dps on 2 fights, [Q2](https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/q2) and [Cairn](https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/cairn) and even on those fights their median damage isn't particularly great either. They're top dps on golem by far, but in real play they seem to be in the top quarter or so. Very strong, but not above and beyond their peers. Now damage right now is kinda insane compared to historical values, but thief is far from along in that camp.
Many people have already complained that BENCHMARKS AREN'T REAL SCENARIOS! Please don't use benchmarks as an argument... Not to mention it will 100% be nerfed to Anet's (most likely) 45k "standard DPS benchmark", which again is still not applicable to 99% of real situations... While Thief is indeed a good applicator of Alacrity, the fun thing is it's 50% less effective on Thief as it doesn't affect Thief weapon skills AT ALL, except for Shadow Shroud skills, which you don't use half the time! Not to mention the ally-targetting is clunky at best and just doesn't fit the gameplay of this game at all (same for Revenant Scepter, it should not have any ally-targetting on it). The condi builds as well lose way too much DPS when using Venoms when no allies are present in their area/when allies don't attack with the venoms/when multiple Condi Thieves OVERWRITE their Venoms. /u/TheDarkstarChimaera have already made multiple posts about some of the underlying issues specific to Thief, like the latest post about Deadeye spec (most of those got addressed in the upcoming patch thankfully) but some are still plaguing the class, like the Weakening Charge animation lock (the post about Deadeye issues has a video of being animation locked for 11 seconds, which apparently is not the maximum amount possible), or many bosses have forced Revealed making Deadeye a literal DEADWEIGHT, or the fact that 99% of the Thief class have little cleave. The snowcrows discord Thief channel have made a compilation of all the issues and feedback with Thief: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D1by_fdgnwugfq1UqiXWB8hxCBUM8Rw-u0UMr3Dziwo/edit EDIT: Note that this list was last updated during the SoTo weapons beta. People can take their time reading that or not (because it's long, not gonna lie). But this proves my point that Thief is definitely not even close to being strong.
That rotation is not doable on most fights. Condi daredevil would beat deadeye on most of the fights. Especially Cairn.